Her Father's Daughter by Marie Sizun Page B

father.
    No memories at all, up until the moment when she was alone with him again, walking through the streets, after the lady had left, the lady who’d wanted to kiss her goodbye.
    â€˜You’ll see her again soon,’ the father said as they walked away. ‘I love her very much, you know.’
    The child said nothing. It’s true, she lost her tongue that day.
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    The father and child walk back through the streets they came along that morning. They’re both thinking about all sorts of things. And then the father asks the child what she thought of the lady. The child thinks. She ends up saying she doesn’t know.
    â€˜But you do think she’s pretty, don’t you?’ the father says, not letting it drop.
    Yes, the child thinks she’s pretty. She won’t say more than that. That will be all for today. She’s tired.
    The father gently squeezes the child’s hand in his. But the child thinks of the lady’s white hand, and her own hand stays inert.
    When they arrive home, the child’s father takes her all the way to the door, kisses her and then leaves, very quickly, as usual.
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    The child realizes she hasn’t asked the wretched question.
    When her mother appears and asks how she got on with her task, she says she forgot.

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    That night the child has a strange dream. She’s in the local square with her mother, as she so often used to be. Her mother is sitting on a bench alone and the child’s not far away, playing with a ball. It’s a beautiful day. The mother’s wearing a very pretty dress, a red one, and her nails are painted red too.
    All of a sudden someone arrives, someone the child doesn’t immediately recognize. But yes, of course, it’s her father, wearing the blue jumper he wore to the restaurant and with his pipe in his hand. He sits down next to the mother and talks to her, right up close. They’re not at all angry, quite the opposite; he’s put an arm around her shoulders, like lovers do, and they’re looking at each other the way they used to, when the father came home.
    And the child feels something inside her, an odd, a very odd kind of contentment.
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    But just then she wakes up. The feeling of happiness lasts a little longer. And a little longer. And disappears.

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    Now the father comes to pick up the child every other Sunday. Sometimes the blonde lady is there, sometimes she isn’t.
    The last time the child is to be alone with her father he suggests taking her outside in the fresh air, onto the fortifications at the old city gate, the Porte des Lilas. The child thinks this lilac-scented name is pretty, but you know, her father says, there are no lilacs there. Even so, the child says.
    It’s a Sunday afternoon. Her father didn’t come to pick her up till after lunch. He seems in a good mood. In fact he seems in a much better mood since he left home.
    It’s a lovely day. In the bus they stood on the platform at the back, which delighted the child.
    Once there, at the fortifications (the father also calls it the wastelands , an expression the child rather likes), there are sorts of hills and lots of grass. It’s almost the country. There are people sitting or lying on the grass, children running. Youngsters tearing down the slopes on bicycles.
    The father and his child climb up the highest hill. It’s hard for the child. When she tires, her father puts her on his shoulders. From up there the child risks this gesture, wrapping her arms around her father’s neck. She presses her cheek to her father’s head and is happy to be reacquainted with the smell of his hair, and of his skin, which is always mingled with the smell of pipe tobacco.
    They reach the summit. Hoisted up on her father’s shoulders, the child feels she’s on top of the world.
    Above them and around them there’s nothing but the vast blue sky, dangling its unusual-shaped clouds over