All My Friends by Marie NDiaye

Author:Marie NDiaye
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Published: 2013-05-21T07:00:00+00:00

* * *

He continued to haunt the Mours' farmyard.

Every morning, after walking those of his brothers and sisters who still went to school as far as the bus stop and leaving them on the narrow strip of grass between the road and the cornstalks, he hurried onward down that same road, already hot and dry, soon seeing the bus pass him by, glimpsing his brothers’ and sisters’ faces pressed to the windows, their noses flattened, their eyes too close together, and raised one hand toward those unlovely faces in an attempt at a jaunty wave, thinking “They look just like me,” with pity and disgust, for how was it that such varied progenitors had each time produced this same sort of child, without spark, without strength, without qualities? There was some kind of . . . something in that . . . a cruel trick, an injustice? Or else . . .

He stopped to rest. His head spun, his vision paled. When he finally reached the Mours’ vast, tidy farmyard, his breath came heavy and rough, he was exhausted. Sometimes Madame Mour spotted him and assigned him some chore, which he took his time with, so that he could stay a while longer and try to understand what was eluding him. He refilled the four dogs’ food bowl in the corner of the yard where they were chained up, or opened the old car’s trunk to carry in the bags of food bought at the distant supermarket for the week to come, and meanwhile he focused all his faculties, straining to pick up any sign of a change, of a metamorphosis . . . of . . . what? What must the Mour household be like, with handsome Anthony gone? Like the surface of a still, silent water once the stone of humiliation and regret has been swallowed and forgotten? Like the surface of a water more silent than ever before?

Madame Mour would be waiting for him on the front step, arms crossed, distant and benevolent. She watched him intently, narrowing her eyes. She tucked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears and tapped the ground with the toe of her espadrille, unconcerned by the dust she kicked up.

Soon he helped Madame Mour bring in a computer and set it up on a little table in one corner of the kitchen. And when he came the next day, there was Anthony on the screen, against a background of blue sky and glass towers, amid which René thought he could make out the smiling face of the woman named E. Blaye, Anthony so handsome, so glowing, that René couldn’t repress a brief groan.

“You see?” said Madame Mour, triumphant. “You see, you see?”

Had René ever doubted it? Doubted what? The spectacular radiance, the prosperity, the new ecstasy that shone in Anthony’s eyes, that strewed even the sky behind him with sparkles? And the woman’s face was shining as well, splashed with Anthony’s magnificence.

“He sent us some money,” said Madame Mour. “A lot of money, already.

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