Lol has poured herself a glass of sherry and is drinking in little sips. She is reflecting.
"I don't know yet," she says at length. "I take the days one at a time, as they come. The house is so big. There's always something new I have to look after. It's difficult not to. Oh, I'm referring simply to household matters, you know, errands to run and shopping to do."
Tatiana laughs.
"You can't be serious," she says.
Again she gets up and circles the living room, a trifle impatient. Lol remains where she was. I move back, out of sight. I can no longer see what they are doing. She must by now have come back to her place. Yes.
"What kind of errands?" she asks harshly.
Lol raises her head, is terrified. I contemplate bursting into the room and obliging Tatiana to shut up. Lol responds immediately, her tone a trifle guilty:
"Oh, some pieces of china impossible to match, for one thing. You keep on hoping some store in the suburbs will have the pattern you want."
"John Bedford mentioned something about an errand you went on last week out in the suburbs . . . somewhere way out . . . and you got home so late . . . goodness! Tell me, is that true, Lol?"
"In that short space of time he managed to tell you all that?"
I move from one bay window to another, to see or hear better. Lol's voice no longer betrays any trace of concern. She has simply turned a shade more toward Tatiana. What she is about to say does not interest her. She seems to be listening, listening for something that Tatiana cannot hear: my movements to and fro along the walls.
"It happened quite naturally. We were talking about you, your life, about your finicky habits, which seem to worry him slightly. Were you aware of that?"
"He's never mentioned it to me, at least not that I remember," Lol says. "I have a feeling he likes to see me go out"—she then adds: "Listen to the music, and to them playing billiards. They've forgotten about us too. We don't do much entertaining, especially this late. I really do enjoy it, though."
"You wanted to buy some shrubs, didn't you? some plants for a hedge?" Tatiana asks, this time a little too casually.
"One of John's friends told me that in this region some people had succeeded in growing pomegranates. So I began to keep an eye out for some."
"You had one chance in a thousand of finding any, Lol."
"No," Lol says gravely, "not even one."
This lie doesn't bother Tatiana. On the contrary.
Lol is lying. Careful this time, taking due precaution to vary her approach, Tatiana ventures to touch on another area, further back in time.
"Were we actually such close friends in school? How do we look in that photograph?"
Lol seems distressed.
"I'm afraid I've mislaid it again," she says.
Now Tatiana knows for sure: Lol Stein is also lying to her. The lie is glaring, incomprehensible, totally inexplicable. Lol is smiling at Tatiana. It is as though Tatiana is giving up, as though she has made up her mind not even to try and understand.
"I can't really remember now whether we were such close friends," Lol says.
"In school," Tatiana says. "Don't you remember being in school?"
Tatiana is staring fixedly at Lol: is she going to dismiss her from her life forever or, on the contrary, see her again, be anxious to see her again? Lol is still smiling at her, with a vague, indifferent smile. Is she with me now, behind the bay windows? or somewhere else?
"I don't remember," she says. "Not about any friendship. I don't remember anything of the kind."
I have the impression that she realizes that she ought to watch her step, that she is somewhat frightened by what is going to come next. I can see it in her eyes, which are searching for mine. Tatiana still hasn't seen anything. She says—now it's her turn to lie—she ventures:
"I'm not sure whether I'll be able to see you as often as you would apparently like."
Lol's response is a veritable supplication:
"Ah," she says, "you'll see, just wait, Tatiana, you'll get used to me."
"The problem is, I have lovers," Tatiana says. "My lovers occupy every minute of my free time. Which is the way I want it."
Lol sits down. Her expression is one of sadness, mixed with discouragement.
"I didn't realize," she says softly, "I didn't realize you used such words, Tatiana."
She gets up. She tiptoes away from Tatiana as though she were concerned not to wake some sleeping child close by. Tatiana follows her, feeling a bit contrite because of what she takes to be Lol's increasing depression. They are both by the window, very close to where I am standing.
"What is your opinion of our friend Jack Hold?"
Lol turns till she is facing the grounds. Her voice is louder, without expression, incantatory:
"The best man in the world is dead for me. I have no opinion."
They fall silent. Their backs are to me, I see them both framed by the curtains of the French doors. Tatiana murmurs:
"After all these years. I wanted to ask you, Lol, whether ..."
I fail to catch the rest of Tatiana's sentence because I am now moving toward the doorstep where Lol is standing, her back to the garden. Lol's voice is still clear, resonant. She means to escape the aura of intimate revelation, wants to make her words public.
"I don't know," she says, "I don't know whether I still think about it."
She turns around, smiles, says almost without any break from what she has just said:
"Why, here's Mr. Hold. I thought you were in the billiard room."
"I was until a moment ago."
I advance into the light. To Tatiana, it all seems quite natural.
"You look as though you're cold," she says to me.
Lol ushers us into the room. She pours me a glass of sherry, which I drink. Tatiana is lost in her thoughts. Is she upset, however slightly, because I happened on the scene too soon? No, she is too deeply absorbed by Lol to be upset. Lol, her hands on her knees, leaning forward in a familiar posture, directs her words to Tatiana:
"Love," she says, "I remember."
Tatiana is staring into space.
"That ball, Lol! oh, that ball!"
Lol, without shifting position, stares into the same void as Tatiana.
"What?" she asks. "How do you know?"
Tatiana has a moment of doubt. Then at last she cries out:
"But Lol, I was there the whole night, there beside you!"
Lol evinces no surprise, nor does she even try to remember, it's no use.
"Ah! So it was you," she says. "I'd forgotten."
Does Tatiana believe her? She hesitates, darts a sidelong glance at Lol, quivering, her hopes more than confirmed. Then Lol, with a kind of pitiful curiosity, a century-old refugee from her youth, asks:
"Did I suffer? Tell me, Tatiana, I've never really known."
Tatiana says:
"No."
She slowly shakes her head, for a long time.
"No. I'm your only witness. I can tell you that you didn't. You were smiling at them. You weren't suffering."
Lol's fingers dig into her cheeks. Lost in that ball, entrapped, they both are completely oblivious of my presence.
"I remember," she says, "I must have been smiling."
I move past them in the room. Neither one says anything.
I leave. I head for the billiard room, in search of Peter.
"They're waiting for us."
"I was looking for you."
"I was out on the lawn. Come, let's join them."
"You think it's all right?"
"I have a feeling it doesn't matter to them whether they talk in our presence. They may even prefer it."
We enter the living room. They are both still silent.
"Aren't you going to call John Bedford?"
Lol gets up, goes out into the vestibule, closes a door —the sound of the violin is suddenly softer.
"He'd just as soon not be with us tonight."
She pours us all some sh
erry, and serves herself. Peter Beugner downs his in a single draft, the silence terrifies him, he can't bear it.
"I think it's time we were leaving," he says, "whenever Tatiana is ready."
"Oh, no! not yet," Lol begs.
I am standing, I wander restlessly about the room, my eyes upon her. The thing ought to be obvious. But Tatiana is plunged deep into the Town Beach ball. She has no desire to leave, nor has she even bothered to reply to her husband. This ball was also Tatiana's. Oblivious to all around her, she is once again seeing a person who was there.
"John is becoming more and more of a fanatic about his music," Lol says. "Sometimes he goes on playing till the wee hours of the morning. In fact, it happens more and more often."
"He's a man people are talking about, I've heard people mention his concerts," Peter Beugner says. "It's rare that his name doesn't crop up in the course of a dinner or a party."
"Yes, that's true," I say.
Lol is talking in order to keep them, to keep me, searching for some way to make my task easier. Tatiana is not listening.
"In fact, Tatiana, you were talking about him," says Peter Beugner, "because he married Lol."
Lol sits down on the edge of her chair, prepared to get to her feet if anyone makes a move to leave.
"John got married under somewhat unusual circumstances, that some people found rather amusing. That's probably another reason why people talk about him, they remember our marriage."
Then I address my question to Tatiana:
"What was Michael Richardson like?"
They are not surprised, they look at each other, endlessly, endlessly, decide that it is impossible to describe, to give an account of those moments, of that evening whose veritable depth and density they, and they alone, are familiar with, that night whose hours they had seen slip by, one by one, until the last had gone, and, by that last hour, love had changed hands, identity, one error had been exchanged for another.
"He never came back, never," Tatiana says. "What a mad night!"
"Came back?"
"He has no ties left in Town Beach. His parents are dead, and he's sold whatever they left him. He's never once set foot in Town Beach again."
"I knew that," Lol says.
Their words are for themselves alone. The sound of the violin can still be heard. It is fairly obvious that John Bedford is also practicing to avoid having to be with us this evening.
"Do you think he may be dead?"
"He may be. He was as dear to you as life itself."
Lol's reply is a slight pout, indicating doubt.
"What about the police, why did the police come?"
Tatiana glances at us, somewhat startled, frightened: this is one fact she didn't know.
"No, your mother mentioned the police, but they never came."
She is reflecting. And it is when she does that the obscurity returns. But it returns only for the ball, never for anything else.
"That's strange, I thought they had. Did he really have to leave?"
"When?"
"In the morning?"
Lol Stein grew up here in South Tahla, her father was originally from Germany, he was a professor of history at the university, her mother was from South Tahla, Lol has a brother nine years her elder, he lives in Paris, she never makes the slightest allusion to this one relative, Lol met the man from Town Beach one morning during summer vacation, at the tennis courts, he was twenty-five, the only son of well-to-do parents whose land holdings in the area were extensive, he had no vocation, was a cultured, brilliant, extremely brilliant person, a moody, saturnine man, Lol fell in love with him the moment she saw him.
"Seeing that he had changed, he had to leave."
"The woman," Tatiana says, "was Anne-Marie Stretter, she was French, the wife of the French Consul in Calcutta."
"Is she dead?"
"No. She's old."
"How do you know?"
"I sometimes see her during the summer. She spends a few days in Town Beach. It's all over. She never left her husband. Their affair must have lasted only a short while, no more than a few months."
"A few months," Lol repeats.
Tatiana takes Lol's hands, lowers her voice:
"Listen to me, Lol, listen to me now. Why do you say things that aren't true? Are you doing it on purpose?"
"People around me," Lol begins again, "people around me were mistaken about the reasons."
"Answer me."
"I lied."
I ask:
"When?"
"All the time."
"When you shouted?"
Lol makes no move to retreat, she places herself in Tatiana's care. None of us moves a muscle, the two women have forgotten us.
"No. Not then."
"Did you want them to stay?"
"What?" Lol says.
"What did you want?"
Lol does not reply. No one presses her to. Then she answers me:
"I wanted to see them."
I go out onto the steps. I wait for her. From the first minute, when the two women embraced on the path in front of the terrace, I have been waiting for Lol Stein. She wants me to wait. Tonight, by keeping us here, she is playing with fire, she is delaying, postponing this wait, one has the impression that she is still waiting in Town Beach for what is going to happen here. I'm mistaken. Where are we heading with her? One can be consistently wrong, but no, I'm ceasing to be: she wants to see, and to have me witness with her, the darkness of tomorrow, which will be the darkness of the night of Town Beach, advance upon us, swallow us up. She is the night of Town Beach. Later, in a little while, when I kiss her on the mouth, the door will open and I shall go through it. Peter Beugner is listening, he is no longer talking about leaving, his embarrassment has disappeared.
"He was younger than she was," Tatiana is saying, "but by the time the night was over they both seemed to be the same age. We all were old, infinitely old. You were the oldest."
Each time one of them speaks, a floodgate opens. I know that the last one will never be reached.
"Did you notice, Tatiana, at the end, while they were dancing, they said something to each other?"
"I did notice, but I didn't hear what they said."
"I did: 'maybe it will kill her.' "
"No. You couldn't have heard them. You were there with me the whole time, behind the green plants at the end of the room."
Lol is coming back. Here she is, suddenly indifferent, distracted.
"You mean the woman who was caressing my hand was you, Tatiana?"
"Yes, it was."
"No one"—she sighs—"no one had thought of that!"
I come back inside. They both know that I haven't missed a single word.
"When it began to grow light out he looked around for you, but he couldn't find you. Did you know that?"
Lol knew nothing.
There is no way of approaching Lol. One can neither get close to her or move away from her. You have to wait until she comes in search of you, until she wants to. What she wants, I now understand clearly, is to be seen and encountered by me in a certain space, a setting she is presently arranging. What setting? Is it peopled by ghosts from Town Beach, by the only survivor, Tatiana, filled with pretenses, with twenty women all bearing the name of Lol? Or is it different? In a little while I shall be formally introduced to Lol, by Lol. How is she going to manage to bring me close to her?
"For ten years I've been under the impression that there were only three people left: the two of them, and me."
I ask again:
"What is it you wanted?"
With precisely the same hesitation as before, the same interval of silence, she replies:
"To see them."
I see everything. I see love itself. Lol's eyes are stabbed by the light: all around, a dark circle. I see both the light and the dark which surrounds it. She keeps advancing toward me, at the same pace. She cannot advance any faster, or any slower. The slightest modification in her movement would seem to
me to be a catastrophe, the definitive defeat of our affair: no one would be there for the assignation.
But what is there about me I am so completely unaware of and which she summons me to know? who will be there, at that moment, beside her?
She is coming. Keeps on coming, even with the others present. No one sees her coming.
She is still talking about Michael Richardson, they had finally understood, they were searching for some way to leave the ball, they went in the wrong direction, heading for imaginary doors.
Whenever she speaks, whenever she moves, when she looks or is lost in thought, I have the feeling that I am witnessing with my own eyes some personal and capital manner of lying, an immense yet strictly limited field of lies. For us, this woman is lying about Town Beach, about South Tahla, about this evening, for me, for us, in a little while she will lie about our meeting, that I can foresee, she is lying about herself too, because the abyss between us, between her and the three of us, she alone is responsible for—but in silence —in a dream so compelling that it has escaped her, and she is unaware she ever had it.
I desperately want to partake of the word which emerges from the lips of Lol Stein, I want to be a part of this lie which she has forged. Let her bear me with her, let our affair take, from this point forth, a different course, let her consume and crush me with the rest, I shall bend to her will, let my hope be to be crushed with the rest, to be bent to her will.
A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?
Lol starts out toward the steps, slowly, then walks back, just as slowly.
Seeing her, it occurs to me that that will perhaps suffice for me, simply to see her and leave it at that, that it will be pointless to carry the matter any further, either in gesture or in word. My hands are becoming the trap wherewith to ensnare her, immobilize her, keep her from constantly moving to and fro from one end of time to the other.
"It's terribly late, and Peter has to get up early," Tatiana finally says.
She thought that Lol's movement toward the door was an invitation to leave.
"No, please don't go," Lol says. "When I closed John's door he didn't even notice, no, please don't go, Tatiana."
"You'll have to offer him our apologies," Tatiana says. "It's not important, really."
The Ravishing of Lol Stein Page 7
