The Ravishing of Lol Stein

by Marguerite Duras

  I also seem to remember Tatiana's telling me some bits of gossip, lots of gossip, rumors that had been rife in South Tahla at the time of Lol Stein's marriage. Didn't one rumor have it that she was already pregnant with her first daughter? I can't remember exactly, this one, and the others like it, are nothing but a confused murmur in the distance which I can no longer distinguish from the tales that Tatiana tells at present. Now, I alone of all these perverters of the truth know this: that I know nothing. That was my initial discovery about her: to know nothing about Lol Stein was already to know her. One could, it seemed to me, know even less about her, less and less about Lol Stein.

  Some time went by. Lol stayed on, happy still, but not convincing any of us that it was because she had seen Tatiana again.

  "Do you ever have occasion to come by the house?" Tatiana asks.

  Lol says that she sometimes does, she goes out walking every day, in the afternoon, today however she made a point of coming, she had written several letters to the school and then to Tatiana's parents, after she had come across that photograph.

  Why was she staying on and on?

  It is now evening.

  In the evening, Tatiana always grew sad. She could never forget. Again tonight she glanced outside: the white standard of lovers on their maiden voyage still floats over the darkened city. No longer is defeat Tatiana's lot, she bursts forth, pours over the universe. She says that she would have liked to take a trip. She asks Lol if she feels the same way. Lol says that she hasn't ever given the matter any thought.

  "Perhaps I would, but where?"

  "You'll find some place," Tatiana says.

  They could not get over the fact that they had never run into each other in the center of town. But the fact is, Tatiana says, that she does not go out a great deal at this time of year, and when she does it's generally to pay a visit to her parents. That's not true. Tatiana has plenty of free time. I take up all of Tatiana's free time.

  Lol is recounting the story of her life subsequent to her marriage: the birth of her children, her vacations. She gives a detailed, room-by-room description— maybe that's what she thinks we want to know—of the house she had formerly lived in Uxbridge, a description that goes on so long that, once again, Tatiana and Peter Beugner begin to grow uncomfortable. I listen, hanging on her every word. Actually, she is telling about how a dwelling becomes empty when she moves in.

  "The living room is so big that we could have given a dance in it. I was never able to do a thing with it, nothing I tried in the way of furnishings seemed to work."

  She goes on with her descriptions. She is talking of Uxbridge. Suddenly she is no longer doing it to please or impress us, like some little girl reciting her lessons, the way she must have promised herself she would. Her words are flowing faster, her voice is louder, her eyes are no longer upon us: she is saying that the ocean is not far from that house they used to live in in Uxbridge. Tatiana gives a start: the ocean's a good two hours from Uxbridge. But Lol notices nothing.

  "I mean, if it weren't for the new buildings that have gone up we could have seen the beach from my bedroom window."

  She goes on to describe that room, and the slip is forgotten. She comes back to Town Beach, which she does not confuse with anything else, again she is present among us, in full possession of all her faculties.

  "Some day I'll go back there, there's no reason why I shouldn't."

  I wanted to see her eyes on me again: I say:

  "Why not go back there sometime this summer?"

  She looked at me, the way I wanted her to. This look, which slipped away from her, altered her train of thought. She answered vaguely:

  "Perhaps this year. I used to love the beach"—to Tatiana—"do you remember?"

  Her eyes are like velvet, the way only dark eyes can be, hers now are a mixture of still water and silt, revealing nothing at present except a kind of drowsy sweetness.

  "You still have that sweet, gentle expression you always had," Tatiana says.

  Here, in a smile, here is a kind of joyous mockery which, to my mind, is inappropriate. Tatiana suddenly recognizes something.

  "Ah!" she says, "that's the way you used to make fun of people whenever anyone told you that."

  Perhaps she had just fallen asleep for a long moment.

  "I wasn't making fun. You thought I was. How lovely you are, Tatiana! Ah, how well I remember!"

  Tatiana got up to embrace Lol. Another woman took over in her stead, unforseeable, out of place, unrecognizable. Whom was she making fun of, if indeed she was?

  I had to know her, because such was her desire. The pink of her cheeks is for me, she smiles for me, her ironic comments are meant for me. It is warm, suddenly we are stifling in Tatiana's living room. I say:

  "You're beautiful too."

  With a movement of her head, an abrupt movement, as though I had slapped her, she turns to me:

  "Do you think so?"

  "Yes," says Peter Beugner.

  She laughs again.

  "How ridiculous!"

  Tatiana becomes solemn. She contemplates her friend attentively. I realize that she is virtually certain that Lol is not completely recovered. I can see that this is profoundly reassuring to her; even this pale vestige of Lol's insanity puts a halt to the terrible swift flight of things, slows to some slight extent the insensate flight of past summers.

  "Your voice is different," Tatiana says, "but I would have recognized your laugh anywhere."

  Lol says:

  "Don't worry, there's no need to worry, Tatiana."

  With eyes lowered, she waited. No one answered her. It was to me that she had spoken.

  Curious, amused, she leaned over to Tatiana.

  "What did my voice used to be like? I can't really remember."

  "A trifle harsh. You used to speak fast. We had trouble understanding you."

  Lol burst out laughing.

  "I was hard of hearing," she says, "but no one knew it. My voice was the voice of someone who can't hear."

  On Thursdays, Tatiana relates, they both used to balk at marching in schoolgirl file with the rest of the students, they used to dance instead in the empty playground—shall we dance, Tatiana?—a record player in a neighboring building, always the same one, used to play a medley of old-fashioned dance tunes, a nostalgic program they used to look forward to, the school monitors were gone, there they were alone in the vast school yard where, that day, they could hear the street noises. Come on, Tatiana, come on, let's dance; sometimes, in a fit of exasperation, they play, they shout, they try to frighten each other.

  We watched her as she listened to Tatiana and seemed to call upon me to verify the truth of this past. Is that really it? Is that the way it really was?

  "Tatiana has told us about those Thursdays," says Peter Beugner.

  Tatiana, as she does every day, has let the semi-darkness settle down, and I have a chance to study Lol Stein at length, at sufficient length, before she leaves, so that I shall never forget her.

  When Tatiana switched on the lights, Lol reluctantly got to her feet. To what fictitious home was she returning? I still didn't know.

  Once she is up, on the verge of leaving, she finally says what she had to say: she wants to see Tatiana again.

  "I want to see you again, Tatiana."

  Then, what should have appeared natural seems false. I lower my eyes. Tatiana, who is trying to catch my attention, loses it like a lost coin. Why does Lol, who seems fully able to get along without needing anyone, want to see me, Tatiana, again? I go out onto the steps. It is not yet completely dark, I realize, far from it. I hear Tatiana asking:

  "Why do you want to see me again? Did that photograph make you want to see me again all that much? I'm intrigued."

  I turn around: Lol doesn't know which way to turn, her eyes search for mine, she hesitates between a lie and the truth and, courageously, opts for the lie.

  "That photograph was part of it," she adds, "and besides, I'm supposed to get out and
meet people nowadays."

  Tatiana laughs:

  "That's hardly like you, Lola."

  I learn that nothing can match Lol's unaffected laugh when she is lying. She says:

  "We'll see, we'll see where it will all lead to. I feel so much at home with you."

  "Yes, we'll see," Tatiana says gaily.

  "You know you don't have to see me again, I'll understand."

  "I know," Tatiana says.

  A touring theatrical company was in South Tahla that week. Wouldn't that be a good opportunity to get together again? They could go to the theatre and then come back to Lol's afterward, to meet John Bedford.

  Couldn't Peter Beugner and Jack Hold join them as well?

  Tatiana had a moment of hesitation, then she said that she would come, she would give up her plans to go to the shore. Peter Beugner was free. I'll do my best, I say, to cancel a previous dinner engagement. That same evening Tatiana and I have a rendezvous at the Forest Hotel.

  The following day I phoned Tatiana and told her that we would not be going to the Bedfords. She thought I was sincere. She told me that it was impossible for her not to accept Lol's invitation this first time.

  JOHN BEDFORD has retired to his room. He has a concert tomorrow. He has some exercises to run through on the violin.

  At this point of the evening it is about half-past eleven, and we are in the children's playroom. It is a large bare room, with a billiard table. The children's toys are in one corner, stacked away in boxes. The billiard table is very old, it must have already been in the Stein family before Lol was born.

  Peter Beugner is playing billiards. I am watching him. When we left the theatre, he told me that we should leave Tatiana and Lol alone together for awhile before rejoining them. It seemed likely, he had added, that Lol had some deep dark secret to reveal to Tatiana, which would explain why she had been so insistent about seeing her again.

  I circle the billiard table. The windows looking out over the garden are open. A large door which leads out onto a lawn is also open. The room is next to John Bedford's room. Lol and Tatiana can hear the violin— as we can—but for them it is less loud. A vestibule separates them from these two rooms where the men are. They can no doubt also hear the dull click of the billiard balls as they strike each other. John Bedford's exercises on two strings are high-pitched and piercing. Their monotonous frenzy is wildly musical, the song of the instrument itself.

  The weather is beautiful. But Lol, contrary to custom, has shut the bay windows in the living room. When we reached the darkened house, with its open windows, she told Tatiana, who was surprised to see them that way, that she was in the habit of leaving them open at this time of year. But not tonight. Why? Tatiana probably asked her why. Tatiana's the one who wants to open her heart to Lol, this heart we two never allude to between us, and not vice-versa, that much I know.

  Lol has shown Tatiana her three sleeping children. We heard their muffled laughter echoing on the floor above. And then they came back downstairs to the living room. We were already in the billiard room. I don't know whether Lol was surprised to find us gone. We heard the three bay windows being closed.

  She, on the other side of the vestibule, and I, here in this game room, whose floor I am pacing, are waiting to see each other again.

  It was an amusing play. The women laughed a lot. On three occasions, Lol and I were the only ones laughing. During intermission, as I was passing Tatiana and John Bedford, I was able to gather that they were talking, in a brief aside, about Lol.

  I leave the billiard room. Peter doesn't even notice me go. We make it a rule not to remain alone together for too long at a time, because of Tatiana. I have a strong suspicion that Peter Beugner isn't as oblivious as Tatiana would like to think. I skirt the house, and in a few steps find myself outside one of the lateral bay windows of the living room.

  Lol is seated facing that bay window. She does not yet see me. The living room is smaller than the billiard room, and is furnished with a number of unmatching easy chairs and a large glass case of black wood which houses books and a butterfly collection. The walls are bare, painted white. Everything is meticulously clean, rectilinear in its arrangement, most of the chairs are flush against the walls, and the light, which is inadequate, comes from ceiling fixtures.

  Lol gets up and offers Tatiana a glass of sherry. She, Lol, is not yet drinking. Tatiana seems to be on the verge of confiding something to Lol. She is speaking, then breaks off what she is saying, lowers her eyes, says something, no, that's not yet it. Lol moves about, tries to parry the blow. She does not want Tatiana's secrets, she wouldn't know what to do with them, one even has the impression they would embarrass her. She has us in her hands. Why? How? I have no idea.

  I have no plans for meeting Tatiana again at the Forest Hotel until the day after tomorrow, yes, two days from now. I would like to make it tonight, after we leave Lol's. I have a feeling that tonight my desire for Tatiana will be sated forever, the task accomplished, however arduous, long, and difficult it may be, however exhausting, at which point I shall be faced with a certainty.

  Which certainty? It will probably involve Lol, but how I don't know, nor do I know what it will mean, what physical or mental part of Lol will be illuminated as a result of my gratified desire for Tatiana, nor have I even tried to stop and figure it out.

  Now Tatiana gets up, says something very heatedly. At first Lol steps back, then she comes back over close to Tatiana and lightly strokes her hair.

  Up until the very last minute, I tried to entice Tatiana to the Forest Hotel, whereas it was Lol I was supposed to see again. I couldn't do that to a friend, Tatiana said, after such a long absence, what she's been through in the past, and that fragility, too, did you notice how fragile she was? No, I can't turn down that invitation. Tatiana thought I was being sincere. In a little while, shortly, in two short days I shall possess all of Tatiana Karl, possess her completely, until there's nothing left to possess.

  Lol is still stroking Tatiana's hair. At first she gazes at her intently, but then she is staring vacantly into space, she is stroking the way some blind person in search of her bearings might. Then it's Tatiana's turn to step back. Lol raises her eyes, and I can see her lips forming the name: Tatiana Karl. Her expression is tender, opaque. Her look, which was meant for Tatiana, falls upon me: she notices me outside the bay window. She shows no sign of emotion. Tatiana fails to notice anything. Lol moves forward, toward Tatiana, she comes back, puts her arm around her lightly and, without seeming to, leads her toward the French doors which open onto the grounds. She opens it. I see what she wants. I move forward, keeping to the wall. There. I'm at the corner of the house. From this point I can hear what they are saying. Suddenly, here are their voices, interwoven, tender, diluted by the night, similarly feminine voices which seem but one voice when they reach me. I can hear both of them. That is what Lol wanted. It is she who is speaking:

  "Look at all these trees, these beautiful trees of ours. How lovely it is out."

  "Tell me, Lola, what was hardest for you?" Tatiana asks.

  "Keeping to a regular schedule. For the children, for meals, for sleep."

  Tatiana gives a long, plaintive, weary sigh.

  "To this day my house is an ungodly mess. I have a rich husband, no children, so, really . . . what's the point? ..."

  Lol, with the same gentle movement she had used before, guides Tatiana back to the center of the living room. I return to my post at the bay window from where I can observe them. I can hear them and I can see them. She offers her a chair in such a way that her back will be to the garden. She sits down opposite her. The entire span of the bay windows is directly in her line of vision. If she chooses to look she can. She does not look, not once.

  "Do you have any urge to change, Tatiana?"

  Tatiana shrugs her shoulders and does not reply, at least nothing I can hear.

  "You're wrong, Tatiana. Don't change, don't, you really shouldn't."

  Tatiana now:
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  "There were two choices open to me from the start: to live the way we used to when we were young, open to a whole range of possibilities, you remember, or else settle down into a fixed pattern, the way you have, you know what I mean, please don't take offense, but you know."

  Lol listens. She has not forgotten my presence, but she is truly divided between the two of us. She says:

  "I never had a chance to choose my life. It was a good thing I didn't, people used to say, what would I have done if I'd had to make a choice? But now I can't conceive of any other life I might have had in the place of this one. Tatiana, I'm terribly happy tonight."

  This time it's Tatiana who gets up and puts her arm around Lol. I can see them clearly. Lol offers some slight resistance to Tatiana's affectionate gesture, but Tatiana probably attributes it to Lol's modesty. She does not take offense. Lol breaks away and goes to the middle of the room. I step back, against the wall. The next time I look in, they are back in their respective chairs.

  "Listen to John. Sometimes he'll practice till four in the morning. He's completely forgotten us."

  "Do you always listen?"

  "Almost always. Especially when I . . ."

  Tatiana is waiting. The rest of the sentence doesn't follow. Tatiana continues:

  "And what about the future, Lol? Don't you ever imagine anything . . . anything a bit different?"

  How full of affection Tatiana's words are!