Chapter 25
On the other side of the shared wall, Tiphaine was vainly trying to reestablish the nebulous bond she had managed to establish the previous day with Nassim.
To her disappointment, today the child was withdrawn, lacking all enthusiasm and warmth.
One step forward, two steps back. She really didn’t like the kid.
Too polite and well behaved. Always in control.
He was cute, but the lack of spontaneity made him seem cold, almost unpleasant.
She tried to reach out to him, find subjects that might interest him, but he responded with infuriating indifference.
When she suggested they carry on reading the book they had begun together the day before, he declined with a look of undisguised boredom.
The boy’s rejection was like a slap in the face.
Tiphaine felt a wave of dislike come over her, and the profound injustice of having to endure the presence of this kid in this house, this unwelcome stranger, was like a torment.
Her own son was no longer there. Her sweet, funny, happy-go-lucky, bright-eyed child.
Alive! The grief she had managed to suppress the last few years began growling in her guts, rising into her chest and exploding in her throat, ripping into it with poisonous fangs, torturing her. A feeling of oppression. Suffocation.
She went out onto the deck. She needed air. She took a deep breath to control the violence raging within her, a destructive storm, like a tornado of dislike. Feeling a little calmer, she glanced up and noticed an open window. It was Nassim’s bedroom window.
Maxime’s bedroom window.
A dagger. Straight through her heart, a blade laying waste to everything, sinking into her flesh and releasing the venom of guilt, perhaps the worst poison of all. The one that never leaves you. Whose fire slowly consumes you.
How she had tried. Tried to make it an ally. An obstacle to the destiny that taunted her, reopening old wounds and mocking her distress. She had done everything to defeat her demons, to keep going. To reconcile the past with the present.
She turned, went back into the house, and collared the little boy.
“Nassim, will you go and fetch a comic book from your bedroom?”
The boy was sitting at the dining room table drawing. He looked up unenthusiastically.
“You can go if you like.”
Tiphaine let out a deep sigh of irritation.
“Nassim, the reason I’ve asked you to go is precisely so I don’t have to.”
Her tone was cold, verging on mean. With a hint of malice. Nassim sensed menace. He put down his pencil and went upstairs.
Tiphaine calmly went back out onto the deck. She hesitated a moment, then stood on her toes, looked up, and called, “Nassim! Nassim!”
She waited a few seconds, then called up again, “Nassim!”
The boy’s head appeared at the open window.
“Yes?”
“Can you bring down the same comic book as yesterday?”
“What?”
Tiphaine was speaking too quietly for the boy to be able to hear. He leaned out a bit farther.
“Can you bring the Titeuf that we were reading yesterday?”
Tiphaine didn’t raise her voice and Nassim frowned, embarrassed that he couldn’t understand what she was asking.
“I can’t hear you,” he said, leaning out even farther.
Tiphaine lowered her voice even more.
“Come on, Nassim, it’s not exactly complicated. Titeuf, the same comic book we were reading yesterday—can you bring it down?”
“Bring what down?”
Time stopped. The little boy leaned a little farther out, on tiptoes now, his hands gripping the window ledge.
Suddenly Tiphaine screamed and lifted her arms in a panic.
“Nassim! Be careful, you’re going to fall!”
Her fear took the boy by surprise; startled, he tipped forward. He was leaning a little more out into the void. His feet left the ground for a long-drawn-out split second, during which it was as if he were weightless, horizontal, so light and fragile . . .
He looked like an angel about to take flight.
The next moment, stunned and in shock, he leaned back and, in a survival reflex, pushed hard with his hands against the window ledge and fell heavily back onto his bedroom floor.
Down in the garden, Tiphaine looked up at the sky and uttered a sigh of frustration.