Her Father's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

and looks down at her socks, now grey with dust.
    Is it the mismatch between what he’s doing and what he’s saying, what he’s doing addressed to the mother and what he’s saying addressed to her, the daughter? Unsettled, the child stays silent, her head still obstinately lowered.
    â€˜I’m delighted to meet you…’ the unfamiliar voice goes on, with the same affectation of formality, the same earnest kindliness.
    â€˜Come on, my darling,’ the mother says through her tears – yes, she’s really crying properly now – ‘give your daddy a kiss, then!’
    The child doesn’t move.
    The man leans towards her and kisses her. Looks at her. The child feels awkward at the touch of him. His eyes on her. She’s still made of stone. But he’s already sitting back up.
    â€˜You’re not very talkative, young lady. So, you see, because I’m of no interest to you, I’m going to pay a bit more attention to another pretty lady,’ he says with a smile.
    And now he’s kissing the child’s mother, on the mouth this time, slowly, and, surprised and embarrassed, the child looks away.
    â€˜Why don’t you sit her on the bed?’ the husband says to his wife.
    The child is put on the bed, perched at the foot, a little way away from the couple.
    â€˜Give her my box of pipes,’ he says next, indicating something on the bedside table, ‘to keep her busy…’
    The mother hands the child a small painted wooden box.
    Sitting motionless, the child focuses all her attention on the lid, which is decorated with a colourful picture of a horseman on a galloping white steed. She can see nothing except this image now, shuts herself away in mindlessly contemplating it, far removed from these two people kissing and talking in hushed tones so close by. On and on go their hushed tones. Their gazing.
    Inside the child’s head, in her body, something turns to ice.
    *
    How long will this performance last? The child now feels as if time, which went by so swiftly earlier, has stopped, as if she’s been here for hours, sitting on the end of this bed. She’s been forgotten. They don’t see her. She’s disappeared. She’s not in this world.
    She opens the box she’s been lent. The acrid smell of tobacco, violently unfamiliar to the child. Inside are two small pipes, one made of wood; the other has a white porcelain bowl with decorative painting. A little picture in colour: against a wooded background, huntsmen in strange clothes.
    Paralysed in a sort of torpor, the child longs only to be delivered, for them to leave.
    Apparently the man who is her father won’t be coming home with them today. He needs to rest a little longer.
    Of the journey home alone with her mother, the child will remember nothing.

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    No memories either of the days immediately after that first meeting. A black hole. An absence. As if none of it existed. As if, after that hospital visit, she abstained from looking, thinking or even feeling, or as if she had forgotten to do these things. Just got through this time, slept through this time, an interlude.
    What did the mother and child say to each other over those last few days spent alone? What questions did the child ponder, what thoughts did she churn over? There’s no knowing.
    â€˜The child’s going soft in the head,’ concluded the grandmother when the child failed to respond to a request she’d made for the third time.
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    The child is dreaming. It’s as if she’s asleep on her feet.

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    One day – it may have been one evening – the father eventually came home. For real this time. He came home to the apartment, all on his own, by surprise, sooner than expected. The doctors must have thought he was better.
    The child was looking at some pictures when she heard the doorbell ring. Her mother, who went to open the door, let out a scream. When the child