One day, I suddenly heard her voice as if she were speaking to me. A sentence came back to me I had forgotten. The voice said, earnestly, solemnly:
“Believe, Olivia, believe, I don’t want to harm you.”
There descended on me then a sudden and almost magic calm. Grace touched me mysteriously. The stifling, blinding clouds rolled away from my heart, from my eyes; I was able to breathe, to see once more. I was saved.
That night, I wrote her a letter. I told her that I had hated her, that that had been the worst of my pain, but that now I was reconciled to her, to life. I loved her again with all that was best in me. I was going to be happy; I was going to work, to live. I was going to try again.
I wrote by the same post to Signorina and begged for news.
Signorina had written to me once or twice. She had told me of their arrival in a big Canadian town, and of their settling into a small house. Mlle Julie had refused to start another school. They had enough to live on and were able to occupy themselves sufficiently. Signorina gave Italian lessons. Mlle Julie was busy with translations. Short, dry letters. Signorina was no writer. But once she told me that the ivory paper-cutter had been found in the garden, and that Mlle Julie always used it.
Need I say, however, that the letter I longed for in answer to mine, the letter I hoped for, was to be from Mlle Julie? I dreamt of it. I wrote it in my head. It was to be tender and helpful. But it never came. It was only Signorina who wrote. I give her letter:
Olivia mia,
You ask for news. There isn’t much to give you. There has been no particular change since last I wrote. Mlle Julie is well, but she still has fits of weeping. She had one the other day, and I knew it was because she had had a letter from you. I found the pieces in the waste-paper basket. Yesterday she said to me, “Tell Olivia not to write again.” That was all.
As for me, I am happy. But you needn’t mind. She doesn’t care for me really, and when she comes to die, she will turn me out of her room and not allow me to come near her. I know that. In the meantime, I brush her hair and go on my knees before her and cut her nails. That is enough for me. It wouldn’t be for you. Your share has been something more. But you have had to pay for it.
Addio.
Thank God that when that letter came, I was able to think of her and no longer of myself.
* * *
* * *
It was four years later that I got my last letter from Signorina.
Olivia mia,
Mlle Julie died last night of pneumonia. She wasn’t ill long. She was able to give me some few directions of what to do in case of her death and told me how to dispose of some of her belongings. She said I was to send you her ivory paper-cutter.
She has left me enough to live on. My mother and sister are coming to join me.
Addio.
The ivory paper-cutter is lying on my desk as I write this. It has her name engraved on it: JULIE.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
* Richard Tedeschi, ed., Selected Letters of André Gide and Dorothy Bussy (Oxford University Press, 1983).
Olivia Page 11
