WAITING FORTOMORROW
Also available in English from Graywolf Press
The Last Brother
WAITING FOR TOMORROW
A NOVEL
Nathacha Appanah
Translated from the Frenchby Geoffrey Strachan
GRAYWOLF PRESS
Copyright © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2015
English translation copyright © 2018 by Geoffrey Strachan
First published as En attendant demain by Editions Gallimard, Paris
The author and Graywolf Press have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify Graywolf Press at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Significant support has also been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Target, the McKnight Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Amazon Literary Partnership, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.
Special funding for this title was provided by Edwin C. Cohen.
Published by Graywolf Press
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Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
www.graywolfpress.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-803-7
Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-993-5
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Graywolf Printing, 2018
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938027
Cover design and illustration: Kimberly Glyder Design
For Bernard Gouley
and Clotilde Monteiro
CONTENTS
Today
PART ONE
A New Year’s Eve party
An oddly matched couple
A stay-at-home mother
A man who paints
“The song of the fourth floor”
Today
PART TWO
The day of the grass snake
The concert
The world as Laura sees it
A dinner
Today
The Melody of Adèle
PART THREE
The first day of winter
The swans on the lake
A kind of truth
Today
Tomorrow
WAITING FORTOMORROW
Today
DAWN BREAKS OVER THE HORIZON. It moves across the sea, soaring over the empty beach where Anita and Adèle had sat one festive evening, climbing up silently through the city, slipping along without pausing in the street where, at number seven, a children’s shoe store has taken the place of Adam’s architectural office. It reaches the top of the hill and lingers there, gray and hazy for a moment, before suddenly plunging down the far side. It sweeps over houses, streets, trees, and flowers asleep on balconies. Down in the valleys it seems to dance, lightly, discreetly. It seeps into the forest and spills across the lake where no one ventures now since Adèle drowned there four years, five months, and thirteen days ago.
The dawn finds Anita in her kitchen, seated at a great wooden table, with her back to the broad bay windows through which, for several minutes more, a few stars can be seen in the sky. Anita is wearing a long turquoise skirt, its hem now frayed by wear, and a gray pullover that belongs to her husband, Adam. She has had a sleepless night. She has been thinking about the old days, remembering forgotten dreams, things left undone, she has tried to look into her heart, she has been thinking about Adèle. Sitting there, barefoot, her eyes red, Anita is waiting for day finally to break, with a dry crack like the tough, wrinkled shell of a walnut.
The morning light slips slowly across the living room and enters the bedroom where Laura, Anita and Adam’s daughter, is asleep. At this moment Laura is dreaming that she is swimming in the lake. It is a dream she often has, she runs along the jetty to give herself momentum, takes off, and performs a perfect swan dive. Her strokes are graceful, almost soundless, as if Laura were made of water. Those of her father, whose presence she senses close beside her, are noisy and powerful. Adèle is in this dream too, but she is swimming beneath her, completely underwater. It is a strange sensation but not unpleasant. Laura feels as though she is surrounded, supported. In her dream Laura has forgotten that for the past four years, five months, and thirteen days she has been unable either to run or to perform swan dives, or to swim.
The dawn bathes the house and the forest in a dove gray color and makes its way across fields and mountain villages. When it reaches the front of the prison complex surrounded by barbed wire, Adam is on his feet, his face pressed against the little window, gripping the bars with both hands. Just now, when he climbed onto the table to reach the opening, he recalled the traditional French name for windows set high in the wall: they are known as jours de souffrance, “dark days.” Adam is waiting for the dawn, as he has been waiting for his release for four years, five months, and thirteen days. He has had a sleepless night, he has been thinking about the old days, all those promises not kept, the dozens of little acts of cowardice one scatters in one’s path. He has been thinking about Adèle. Now Adam stands there, barefoot, and at last he is looking the dawn in the eye.
PART ONE
A New Year’s Eve party
TWENTY YEARS EARLIER in a traditional solid brick house in Montreuil, on the eastern outskirts of Paris, Adam and Anita are perched on a vast, deep sofa covered in green velvet. A pile of clothes lies between them—coats, jackets, sweaters, scarves, hats, gloves—and as yet each is unaware of the other’s presence. It is the last half hour of the old year, it is still the twentieth century, they are both twenty-four. They are each haunted by a sense of failure, the feeling that, somehow or other,
