Her Father's Daughter by Marie Sizun

half-finished suits dotted about the place, of sewing-machine oil, and, mingling with all of this, coming from the back of the apartment, there are strong smells of cooking, unfamiliar to the child.
    They sit the child down in the workshop. They bring her some peculiar biscuits, some milk and honey. They’re kind to her. Very kind. You must come back, says the woman. They don’t have children. The child laughs. She feels comfortable. She wonders whether she would rather stay here for ever. She’s sleepy.
    Perhaps she slept. Looking back, she won’t remember. The memory stops with that fantasy about adoption. The bittersweetness of, as she sees it, having left her parents. A feeling of endless time. Of breaking away. A sort of journey.
    Â 
    It’s late when she gets home. It’s already evening. Evening noises in the building. The light somehow softened, soothed. The Armenian tailor takes the child back to her door. He rings the bell for her. The child’s slightly anxious. But the father, who opens the door to them, looking amazed, smiles, not angry at all. Why does he look so happy?
    â€˜Oh, the child!’ he says. ‘Good God! I’d completely forgotten about her… What’s the time, then? I’m sorry… Thank you so much… She didn’t come knocking on your door, did she?’
    And before the Armenian has even finished explaining, the father’s talking again.
    â€˜It’s happened, you know,’ he says. ‘The Americans have arrived… The first operations were a success…’
    â€˜Oh,’ the Armenian says simply. ‘I see… I’ll go and tell my wife.’
    They shake hands. The father even invites the Armenian in for a drink, but he declines: he still has work to do. Another time, he says. Another time. And withdraws.
    Â 
    The door closes, leaving the father and child together. They’re alone. The mother’s still not home.
    The father doesn’t scold the child this evening. He doesn’t criticize her once. He looks at her with a hint of amusement and tenderness in his eye. The child feels that, for the first time since he came home from Germany, he’s actually seeing her. He’s interested in her.
    And then that astonishing thing, with her there, sitting on the sofa beside him, and him sort of dreaming, lost in thought, the sudden gesture.
    â€˜What pretty hair you have,’ he says. And, just for a moment, she feels the big hand with the freckles smoothing over her hair in a sort of caress.

    Â 
    Â 
    Was it that evening, the evening of the landings, which would always be the evening of the Armenians in the child’s mind, or was it a bit later – because surely things didn’t happen that quickly? Anyway, it was at this point in their story that her father took her, awkwardly, onto his lap, just like that, to tell her something. For the first time. Like a normal father. A real father. Like the ones who tell their children stories, in the evening, affectionately, just like that.
    It’s a funny old story that the father tells the child, a story about trees and farm workers, about carts, grey skies and snow, a story she didn’t understand at all – a story from Germany, he said. Most likely she was too surprised, too affected by the novelty of what was happening, to pay attention. So odd sitting on those big enemy knees, being close up to the smell of tobacco, mingled with a subtle fragrance of eau de cologne. And she watches that hand she so dreads, the hand that slaps, and she feels it stroking her hair. It is very gentle now, very soft and attentive.
    But oddest of all is hearing this other voice her father has, a voice that isn’t scolding, or shouting or being sarcastic. A voice telling a story. A voice talking. A voice talking to her. It’s the voice she’s listening to. Not the words.
    Â 
    It didn’t last very long. Li came home. She went into the