Daughters Beyond Command by Véronique Olmi

Author:Véronique Olmi
Format: epub

The streets were strewn with figures on the ground, shadows that belonged to no one. The lights in the metro glared with raw intensity, everything seemed about to collapse in an unstable atmosphere. On leaving the metro at Sablons in the quiet of Neuilly, the danger of the night fell by several degrees.

Once she lay in bed, Hélène thought again of Éléonore’s kiss, and, in remembering what may have happened, a warm, stinging shame washed over her in waves, her toes, thighs, belly, scalp, her entire body aching with a sensation of guilt and pleasure. She switched on the light, looked around the room, already it was no longer hers, toys filled the big, luminous closet, Caprice’s old basket had become a bed for a doll, and all the framed photographs represented those who bore the name, the heirs. She realized this was her last childhood room, with its single bed, and the adults on the other side of the wall, and her schoolwork on the little desk. Sabine, do animals suffer? What? I’m asking you whether animals suffer. Go to sleep, Hélène, go to sleep . . .

There was, in the affection her dog had given her, something she had never found again since: the promise of infallibility. She understood that Caprice’s last night had been here in this room, and his basket had not been moved since, he’d wanted to die where she used to hold him, where he could smell her trace, her atoms, her odor, the love that bound them like a rope. As a child, she thought, I already knew. Thanks to him, I knew. Animals suffer. Because they love.

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