Viviane by Julia Deck

something really wrong here.
    In the cradle the child has set out to break her toy, tired of these stupid animals that go around in circles without ever leaving their orbit. Great thrashings of the lowerlimbs communicate their contradictory injunctions to the mobile, sending lions and giraffes flying in every direction, crashing together like clacking castanets. You’re about to take her in your arms when the doorbell rings. It’s nearly midnight. No one has yet visited you in this apartment and you wonder who it could possibly be.
    Well it’s the police.
    In the doorway stands that inspector from the other day, that Philippot with the tender, inviting eye, who were he to go about it more skillfully would wangle out any and all confessions. He is accompanied by a subordinate but you don’t register any details of his physiognomy. You look the inspector up and down, waiting for an explanation and he offers none, showing you his police credentials according to regulations and saying Madame Hermant, you’re to come with us, collect the child’s things and please come along.
    What does one do in these circumstances. One flutters in vain, asking questions nobody answers. The policemen hurry you along, put things into your hands barking you’ll be needing this and that and in the end they hand you a travel bag they’ve found in a packing box and you stuff your daughter’s things inside it. Plucking the cradle from its frame, they carry itout to the stairs and you run after them, dashing down the steps behind the child they’re carrying off, tripping over the coat dangling from your arms, your shoes only halfway on your feet.
    A vehicle is parked outside the building. Its door is open; a policeman motions you inside while the officer who’s carrying the cradle and the traveling bag hands them over to a man who has come out of the shadows. It’s Julien. He’s there, he doesn’t look at you, he grabs the loot and disappears. You’re given no time to take in this picture. The policemen push you into the backseat where you find yourself between the inspector and his subordinate. The driver pulls away immediately and you look desperately into the rearview mirror, pleading for a sign, an augury, some hope, but the face in the mirror does not recognize you.

15
    Let’s see where we are, says the chief inspector. On the other side of the desk, the prisoner is slumped in defeat. We received a phone call from your husband, he continues; it seems that you are not yourself these days. So tell me, what are those marks on your arms, Madame Hermant?
    The woman’s arms are covered; she studies them without moving. Then the chief inspector explodes: he stands up, pounding his fat fist on the desk, and walks around it yelling stop fucking with me, show me your arms now and tell me how they got that way.
    Since she still does nothing, the inspector who brought her in steps forward and pulls up one sleeve of her sweater. The chief inspector is right next to her, the mass of his face swollen in a grotesque close-up. All she sees is an orbit, black against the backlighting becauseit’s the accused who is illuminated, the lamp shining in her face, the face of an animal dragged from the depths of its burrow. But in that instant she loses all fear. A feeling of destiny sweeps over her: she awaits the fatal blow.
    You’ve been fighting? bellows the chief inspector, his thick breath shooting directly into the nostrils of the accused woman, you had a fight and the other one fought back, is that it? You look like a middle-class lady but you have your little moods, get angry and then you can’t answer for yourself? Huh, Madame Hermant?
    The echo of these suppositions dies away in the office, and she says yes looking down at her lap, yes I had a fight. And who with? continues the chief inspector in the same vein, the syllables falling like projectiles around the person in pain. With