Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye Page A

and sucking on her lower lip.
    Norah couldn’t very well bellow at Sony, “And all that because our father took you from us when you were five!”
    No, she couldn’t, she could say nothing to this haggard face, those hollow, dead eyes, and those dry lips that seemed detached from the smile that played on them.
    The visit was over.
    The jailers were leading the prisoners out.
    Norah glanced at her watch. Only a few minutes had elapsed since she’d entered the room.
    She waved to Sony and shouted, “I’ll be back again!” as he moved away, dragging his feet, a tall and gaunt figure in a grubby T-shirt and an old pair of trousers cut off at the knee.
    He turned and made the gesture of putting a cup to his lips.
    “Yes, yes,” she shouted, “there’s coffee there, and something for you to eat!”
    The room was stiflingly hot.
    Norah clung to the grating, afraid she’d pass out if she let go.
    She was then dismayed to discover she’d lost control of her bladder, as she felt a warm liquid running down her thighs and calves and onto her sandals. But she could do nothing about it and even the sensation of passing urine seemed to elude her.
    She stepped away from the puddle in horror.
    But in the rush for the exit no one appeared to have noticed.
    She was shaking so violently with fury against her father that her teeth were chattering.
    What had he done to Sony?
    What had he done to them all?
    He was ubiquitous, inhabiting each one of them with impunity, and even in death he would go on hurting and tormenting them.
    She asked Masseck to drop her at the hotel.
    “You can go home,” she said. “I’ll manage, I’ll take a taxi.”
    To her intense embarrassment the smell of urine soon filled the Mercedes.
    Without saying a word Masseck lowered the windows in front.
    She was relieved to find the hotel terrace empty.
    But the vision of Jakob and the girls continued to haunt her. The subtle but clearly perceptible shadow of their cheerful, conspiratorial presence hung over her, so that when she felt a puff of wind she looked up. But all she could see above her head was alarge bird with pale feathers outlined against the sky. It flapped its wings heavily and clumsily, casting over the terrace a huge, cold, unnatural shadow.
    Once again she felt a spasm of anger, but it passed as soon as the bird did.
    She went into the hotel and looked for the bar.
    “I’m looking for Monsieur Jakob Ganzer,” she said to the man at the reception desk.
    He nodded, and Norah made her way to the bar in her wet sandals. The green carpet with its golden leafy pattern was the same as it had been twenty years earlier.
    She ordered tea and went to the toilet to wash her legs and feet.
    She took her panties off, rinsed them in the basin, squeezed the water out of them, and held them for a long time under the hand dryer.
    She was afraid of what awaited her in the bar, where she’d noticed that there was a computer connected to the Internet that customers could use.
    Sipping her tea slowly, so as to postpone as long as possible the moment when she’d have to start her Internet search, she eyed the barman as he watched a soccer match on the big screen above the bar, and she kept thinking that for the children of a dangerous man like her father there was no worse fate than to be loved by him.
    Because Sony was certainly the one who’d paid most dearly for being the child of such a man.
    As for herself, well, it was true that nothing irreparable had happened yet, just as it was possible she hadn’t yet understood what was in store for her and Lucie, or even realized that the devil gripping her was crouching there and biding his time.
    She paid for thirty minutes of connection time and soon found, in the archives of the paper Le Soleil , a long article about Sony.
    She read and reread it with increasing horror, going over the same words again and again.
    Holding her head in her hands she stammered, “Oh my God, Sony, oh my God, Sony,” unable at