The Ravishing of Lol Stein

by Marguerite Duras

  And then there came a time when Jack Hold no longer was able to take Tatiana Karl again.

  Tatiana Karl thought that he had fallen asleep. She granted him this moment of respite, snuggled up against this person who was a thousand miles away, who was nowhere, in the fields, and waited until he would seize her again. But she waited in vain. As he lay sleeping, or so she thought, she spoke to him:

  "Ah, those words, you shouldn't say them, they're dangerous."

  Tatiana Karl was sorry. She was not the woman he might have learned to love. But why couldn't she be, why couldn't she be the one just as well as someone else? It was understood from the start that she would merely be his South Tahla mistress, that this would define the limits of their love, she did not want the sudden and overwhelming change in Michael Richardson to play any part in her affair. But now, suddenly, were these words of love wasted?

  That evening, Tatiana says, for the first time since the Town Beach ball, she again discovered, she again savored the full sweetness of sentiment.

  I went back to the window, she was still there, there in that field, alone in that field in a way she could never reveal to anyone. She told me, at the same time as I became aware of my love, of her inviolable self-sufficiency, a giantess with the hands of a child.

  He went back to the bed, stretched out beside Tatiana Karl. They lay folded in each other's arms, bathed in the evening coolness. The sweet smell of ripe rye drifted in through the open window. He mentioned it to Tatiana.

  "Can you smell the rye?"

  She breathed in, she could smell it. She told him it was getting late and said that she had to go. She arranged to meet him three days later, fearing he would refuse. On the contrary, he agreed, without even checking to make sure he was free that day.

  At the door, she asked him if he could give her any inkling as to his feelings.

  "I want to see you again," he said, "to keep on seeing you again and again."

  "You shouldn't talk like that," she said, "you really shouldn't."

  After she was gone, I turned out the lights and waited, in order to give Lol a chance to leave the field and get back to town without any risk of running into me.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY I make arrangements to get away from the hospital for an hour in the afternoon. I go looking for her. I take a turn past the cinema in front of which she first found me. I drive past her house: the doors and windows of the living room are wide open, John Bedford's car is not there, it's Thursday, a school holiday, I can hear the laughter of a little girl coming from the lawn just outside the billiard room, then the mingled laughter of two little girls, she has only daughters, three of them. A maid with a white apron, young and rather pretty, comes out onto the steps, starts down a path toward the lawn, notices me parked in the street, smiles at me, and disappears. I drive off. I want to avoid going toward the Forest Hotel, I drive there anyway, stop the car and circle the hotel, keeping a good distance away as I do, I walk around the field of rye, the field is empty, she only comes when we're there, Tatiana and I. I leave. I drive slowly through the main streets of town, it occurs to me that she may be on one of the streets in Tatiana's neighborhood. There she is. She is walking along the boulevard which goes past Tatiana's house, about two hundred yards from the house. I park the car and follow her on foot. She walks all the way to the end of the boulevard. She is walking fairly fast, her gait easy and relaxed, a lovely sight to behold. She seems taller to me than on the other two occasions when I've seen her in the past. She is wearing her gray coat and a black, brimless hat. She turns right, into a street leading toward her own house, and disappears. Exhausted, I return to the car. So she's still taking her walks, and I can always manage a chance meeting if I can't bear to wait for our next scheduled date. She was walking rather fast, then at times she would slow down and stop, then off she would go again. She was taller than she had been in her house, taller and more slender. I recognized the gray coat, but not the black, brimless hat, she hadn't worn it in the rye field. I shall never accost her. Just as no one else accosts her. I shall never go up to her and say: "I couldn't wait for such and such a day, or such and such a time." Tomorrow. Does she go out on Sunday? Here it is Sunday. It is vast and beautiful. I'm not on duty at the hospital. One day separates me from her. For hours on end I go looking for her, in the car, on foot. She is nowhere to be found. Her house is still the same, with the bay windows open. John Bedford's car is still not there, no little-girl laughter now. At five o'clock I go to the Beugners for tea. Tatiana reminds me of Lol's invitation for the day after tomorrow, Monday. An awkward invitation. It's as though she were trying to keep up with the Joneses, Tatiana says, to act like a good middle-class housewife. This evening, this Sunday evening, I drive past her house again. Her house with the open bay windows. John Bedford's violin. She is there, she is sitting in the living room. Her hair is down. Three little girls move to and fro around her, busy doing something, but what it is I can't make out. She doesn't move, lost in her thoughts, says nothing to the children, the children say nothing to her. One by one—I remain there for a fairly long time—the little girls give her a kiss and leave the room. Lights go on up on the second story. She remains in the living room, in the same position as before. Suddenly she smiles to herself. I don't call out to her. She gets up, turns out the lights, and disappears. It's tomorrow.

  It's a tearoom, not far from the Green Town station. Green Town is at least an hour by bus from South Tahla. She's the one who picked the place, this tearoom.

  She was already there when I arrived. There weren't many people, it's still early. I spotted her immediately, sitting by herself, surrounded by empty tables. From the other end of the room, she smiled at me, a pleased, conventional smile, different from any smile I had seen from her before.

  She greeted me pleasantly, almost politely. But when she lifted her eyes, I saw them filled with a wild, crazy joy with which her whole being must have been inflamed: the joy of being there, across from him, across from the secret he implies, a secret she will never reveal, and he knows it.

  "My God! how I've looked for you, I've tramped the streets looking for you."

  "I'm a great walker," she said. "Did I forget to tell you? I go for long walks every day."

  "You told Tatiana," I said.

  Once again I have the feeling I can stop right there, be satisfied with no more than simply having her there to look at.

  Merely seeing her unnerves me terribly. She makes no demands as far as conversation goes, and is capable of enduring silence indefinitely. I want to do something, say something, a long-drawn-out bellow made up of all words fused into one and reduced to the same magma, intelligible to Lol Stein. I say nothing. I say:

  "I have never waited for anything the way I've waited for today, when nothing will happen."

  "We're moving toward something. Even if nothing happens, we're moving toward some goal."

  "What goal?"

  "I don't know. The only thing I know anything about is the immobility of life. Therefore, when this immobility is destroyed, I know it."

  She is again wearing the white dress she was wearing the first time I saw her at Tatiana Karl's. It is visible under her gray raincoat, which is unbuttoned. As I look at the dress, she takes off her raincoat, revealing her bare arms. Summer is in her cool arms.

  Leaning toward me, she whispers:

  "Tatiana."

  I knew that she was asking me a question.

  "We saw each other on Tuesday."

  She knew that. She becomes beautiful, that same sort of beauty that, late at night four days before, I had snatched away from her.

  She asks in a rush:

  "How was it?"

  I didn't answer immediately. She thought I hadn't understood the question. She goes on:

  "How was Tatiana?"

  If she hadn't mentioned Tatiana Karl, I would have done it myself. She is full of anxiety. She doesn't know herself what is going to ensue, what the reply is going to lead to. We are both fa
ce to face with the question, her admission.

  I accept this. I already accepted it on Tuesday. And probably even from the very first moment I met her.

  "Tatiana is admirable."

  "You can't bear to be without her, can you?"

  I see that a dream is almost realized. Flesh is being rent, is bleeding, is awakening. She is trying to listen to some inner commotion, fails to, is overwhelmed by the realization, however incomplete, of her desire. Her eyelids are fluttering from a light too strong. I avert my gaze for as long as it takes for that endless moment to pass.

  I reply:

  "I can't bear to be without her."

  Then it's impossible, I look at her again. Her eyes are filled with tears. She is repressing some frightful pain to which she fails to yield, which, on the contrary, she cultivates with all her might, on the edge of bringing it to climactic expression, which probably would be akin to happiness. I say nothing. I offer her no help in dealing with this anomaly of her make-up. The moment is drawing to a close. Lol's tears are checked, returned to the controlled stream of her body's tears. The moment has moved neither toward victory nor toward defeat, has taken on no other coloring pleasure alone, a negative force, has passed.

  She says:

  "And you'll see, soon it will be even better between you and Tatiana."

  I smile at her, still in the same state of being aware, and at the same time ignorant, of a future which she alone controls without knowing it.

  There are two of us who don't know. I say:

  "I hope so."

  Her face changes, blanches.

  "But what about us?" she says. "What will we do about that?"

  I understand, I would have rendered this same verdict if I had been in her place. I can put myself in her place, but I would be doing so from a direction she would not approve of.

  "I hope so too," she says.

  She lowers her voice. Her eyelids are dotted with fine beads of perspiration whose taste I know from the other night.

  "But you have Tatiana Karl, there's no one else like her in your life."

  I repeat:

  "No one else like her in my life. When I talk about her, that's how I describe her."

  "You must," she says, then adds: "I love you, you have no idea how much I love you already!"

  The word travels through space, seeks, and alights. She has placed the word on me.

  She loves, loves the man who must love Tatiana. No one. No one loves Tatiana in me. I belong to a perspective which she is in the process of constructing with impressive obstinacy, I shall not resist. Tatiana, little by little, is forcing her way in, is breaking down the doors.

  "Come on, we're going for a walk. I have some things I want to tell you."

  We walked down the boulevard behind the railroad station, which is almost deserted. I took her arm.

  "Tatiana arrived at the room shortly after I did. Sometimes she does that on purpose to try and make me think she's not coming. I'm aware of that. But yesterday I had a terrible desire to have Tatiana there with me."

  I wait. She asks no questions. How do I know that she knows? That she is sure I saw her out there in the field of rye? From this: from the fact that she is not asking any questions? I go on:

  "When she did arrive, she had that holier-than-thou air about her, you know, that air of remorse and false shame, but you and I both know what that air conceals in Tatiana."

  "Dear Tatiana."

  "Yes."

  He tells Lol Stein:

  "Tatiana removes her clothes, and Jack Hold watches her, stares with interest at this woman who is not the woman he loves. As each article of clothing falls, he recognizes still more of this insatiable body to whose existence he is quite indifferent. He has already explored this body, he knows it better than does Tatiana herself. And yet his eyes remain fixed upon its hollows, where the skin is thin, of a white which subtly follows the lines of the body, shades either to a pure arterial blue or to a sunny brown. He stares at her until the identity of each line is blurred, and even the entire body."

  But Tatiana is speaking:

  "But Tatiana is saying something," Lol Stein murmurs.

  To make her happy, I would invent God if I had to.

  "She utters your name."

  I did not invent that.

  He hides Tatiana Karl's face beneath the sheets, and thus has her headless body at his disposal, at his entire disposal. He turns the body this way and that, raises it, does with it whatever he desires, spreads the limbs or draws them in close, stares fixedly at its irreversible beauty, enters it, remains motionless, awaits being trapped into forgetfulness, forgetfulness is there.

  "Ah, how beautifully Tatiana knows how to let herself go, it's absolutely amazing, it must be extraordinary."

  This rendezvous was a source of great pleasure to Tatiana and him alike, greater than usual.

  "Doesn't she say anything else?"

  "Beneath the sheet that covers her, she talks of Lol Stein."

  Tatiana is going on in great detail, and frequently repeating the same details over and over again, about the ball at the municipal casino where, people say, Lol Stein went mad. She describes at great length the thin woman dressed in black, Anne-Marie Stretter, and the couple they formed, she and Michael Richardson, tells how they had the strength to keep on dancing, how absolutely amazing it was to see the way they had been able to retain that habit in the course of that wild night which seemed to have banished every other habit from their lives, even, Tatiana says, the habit of love.

  "You have no idea," Lol says.

  Once again I have to stop Tatiana from talking, there beneath the sheet. But then, much later, she starts in again. As she is leaving, she asks Jack Hold if he has seen Lol again. Although they had never agreed between them how to respond to such a question, he decides to lie.

  Lol stops.

  "Tatiana wouldn't understand," she says.

  I lean forward, I smell the odor of her face. She is wearing some little-girl perfume, like talcum powder.

  "Contrary to habit, I let her leave before me. Then I turned out the lights in the room. I stayed there in the dark for a long time."

  She dodges the question by her reply, but only by a hair's breadth, just long enough to say something else —with a trace of sadness in her voice:

  "Tatiana is always in such a hurry."

  I reply:

  "Yes."

  Looking at the boulevard, she says:

  "I have no way of knowing what went on in that room between Tatiana and you. I'll never know. When you tell me, it's something else."

  She sets off walking again, then asks in a near whisper:

  "Tatiana, with her head hidden beneath the sheet, she's not me, is she?"

  I put my arm around her, I must be hurting her, she gives a little cry, I let her go.

  "It's for you."

  We're hidden below a wall. I can feel her breath against my chest. I can no longer see her face, her sweet face, its diaphanous outline, her eyes almost always filled with surprise, her searching, astonished eyes.

  And it is at this point that the idea of her absence became unbearable to me. I told her so, said that the thought of leaving her was sheer torture to me. She, Lol, had no such feeling, she was surprised by my words. She did not understand.

  Why should I leave?

  I said I was sorry. But there's nothing I can do about the feeling of horror, it's still there. I am aware of her absence, her absence yesterday, even now I miss her constantly.

  She has talked to her husband. She has told him she felt things were practically over between them. He didn't believe her. Wasn't it a fact that she had already told him such things in the past? No, she never had.

  I ask: has she always returned home?

  I said it casually enough, but she was not fooled by the sudden change in my voice. She says:

  "Lol has always returned home safe and sound with John Bedford."

  Then she goes off on a long tangent
about a fear of hers: those close to her, especially her husband, believe that it is not impossible that she might fall ill again one day. This is why she hasn't spoken too him as candidly as she would have liked. I refrain from asking her what basis there is at present for this fear. She doesn't offer any explanation. In all probability she hasn't once alluded to this threat in ten years.

  "John Bedford is under the impression he saved me from the depths of despair. I never disabused him of that notion, I've never told him it was something else."

  "What?"

  "That from the first moment that woman walked into the room, I ceased to love my fiancé."

  We are sitting on a bench. Lol has missed the train she had made up her mind to take back. I kiss her, she returns my kisses.

  "When I say that I no longer loved him, I mean to say that you have no idea to what lengths one can go in the absence of love."

  "Give me some idea."

  "I can't."

  "Tatiana's life means no more to me than the life of some stranger, some distant person whose name I don't even know."

  "It's even more than that."

  We remain in each other's arms. I have her on my lips, warm on my lips.

  "It's a substitute."

  I don't let her go. She is talking to me. Trains are passing.

  "You wanted to see them?"

  I take her mouth. I reassure her. But she wrests free, stares at the ground.

  "Yes. I wasn't there any longer. They took me with them. When I woke up, they were gone."

  She frowns slightly, and this is so unlike her, I know, that I'm alarmed by it.

  "Sometimes I'm a little frightened it might start all over again."

  I don't take her in my arms again.

  "No."

  "But we're not afraid. That's only a word."

  She sighs.

  "I don't understand who's there in my place."

  I bring her closer to me. Her lips are cool, almost cold.

  "Don't ever change."

  "But what if someday I . . . ?" she stumbles over the word she fails to find. "Will they still let me take my walks?"