Thérèse and Isabelle

by Violette Leduc

  The man raised the felt hat already in his hand; the door opened by itself.

  “Ladies first,” said the man.

  He stepped aside, his hat still raised. Isabelle gave me a push. I went in first. Perished raincoats hanging from the coat stand there had seen their last rainfall long ago and, below them, gold-topped walking sticks with animal heads carved in wood and silver sheared off on every side like stems in a spray of flowers. The bearded man was wiping his shoes.

  “You know your way, of course,” he hinted, in a sybaritic voice quite unlike the way he had spoken outside.

  “No!” said Isabelle.

  We were standing against the wall, we had the damp of it at our backs while he was trotting about the corridor, hat in hand, briefcase under one arm. He crooked a forefinger, hesitated, then knocked twice on a glass door camouflaged by imitation stained glass.

  “But, come in, do come in . . .”

  The voice emanated from a mountain of goodwill.

  He stroked his beard, opened the door.

  “I pray you . . .”

  He was staring at Isabelle’s high-necked blouse.

  I was expecting more dressmaker’s mannequins, offcuts of fabric, reels of thread, where instead there were only plants, miniature shrubs, birds, cages.

  “I’ll go and look for her,” the man said.

  He vanished into a small courtyard that was pleasantly crowded with bulb geraniums, ivies, potted vines, ferns, watering cans, and shelves for the plants.

  “Let’s get out!” I said.

  “Wait for her,” said Isabelle sharply.

  Isabelle was looking at a painting that had orange rocks and waves of blue jam. The birds singing in their cages were making the light sparkle.

  “I pray you, please don’t stand up for me,” said the lady. “You must excuse me. I was tending to my duchesses.”

  She pointed at the plants with a rope of pearls that hung down to her stomach.

  “You mustn’t be noisy when we have company,” she told the birds.

  The man with his briefcase and the hat in his hand nodded to us: he left just as he had come.

  “He couldn’t find Mademoiselle Paulette. He apologizes,” said the woman, her expression no less coarse.

  Despite her great size, her age, her weight, she sprang over to perch on the table.

  “I’m at your disposal.”

  Isabelle stood up.

  “We have come for a room.”

  Mme Algazine contemplated us and played with her pearl necklace.

  “We should like to hire one for about an hour,” Isabelle said.

  A cage suspended from a ring swung to and fro, the bird inside giving little peeps beneath its china cupola.

  “I see,” said Mme Algazine.

  She tossed her pearls behind her, so they hung down her back.

  “You are minors,” she said.

  She pranced off into the courtyard. Isabelle ground her teeth. But she was coming back with a tender lettuce leaf, which she poked between the bars of the swinging cage. She headed back into the courtyard just as buoyantly.

  I stood up, I called:

  “Madame!”

  “Right away, my little ones, right away,” she said condescendingly.

  “Madame!” said Isabelle resolutely.

  She reappeared once more.

  “We should like to hire a room, I tell you.”

  Mme Algazine opened her eyes wide:

  “Why did you not say so when you came in, my little kittens?”

  “We did say it.”

  Sometimes the bright wings were battered against the cage bars; the wound in our minds was gray.

  “You are minors . . .? Obviously.”

  “Yes,” we replied together.

  “Are you boarders at the school . . .? You are wearing the uniform.”

  “We will pay you, we have the money,” said Isabelle.

  “You’ll pay afterward,” said Mme Algazine.

  Isabelle unbuttoned her cardigan but I put myself in front of her. Mme Algazine would see nothing of any chest beyond what was shielding it.

  “Will you take a drop of port, will you want to eat a few teacakes in the room?”

  “We will drink and eat whatever you like,” said Isabelle. “Show us the way.”

  “Not shy are we . . .?”

  Mme Algazine opened the glass door, she pointed to the stairs with her necklace, which she handled as one would a hosepipe.

  “Electricity is expensive, gas too, oil too, and matches too. Everything is expensive,” said Mme Algazine, in the voice of her true nature.

  The staircase was dark. On the landing we passed decrepit rooms, folding beds that had burst open, we bumped into boxes of crockery, drifts of fallen plaster, ragged curtains. Mme Algazine showed us the way, her eyes sliding distractedly over everything.

  “Yours will be the first door,” she said.

  “Thank you, oh thank you,” said Isabelle.

  “I’ll bring your port up to you shortly.”

  Mme Algazine retreated, alone and old, down the sordid staircase.

  Isabelle took the key from the keyhole, she went in first.

  “Two beds!” she said.

  She wanted to close the door but she could not quite manage. The key she threw at the mantelpiece, where it fell to the floor. She flung her boarder’s straw hat to the back of the room, pushed the table against the door.

  “Take it off,” she said, reproachfully, “we aren’t paying anyone a visit here.”

  She sent my hat flying at the mirrored wardrobe, she undid my hair.

  “Lie down with me on the tiles,” she said.

  My mouth met her mouth as a dead leaf meets the earth. We sank into that long kiss, we recited our wordless litanies, we were greedy, we smeared our faces with the saliva passed between us, we stared without recognizing each other.

  “Someone’s moving in the room next door,” I said.

  She sat up. I tortured her when I made her wait.

  “Me, Isabelle. Not you.”

  I ravaged her as if she were struggling against me.

  “Someone is moving in the room next door. Look, Isabelle, look, in the wall.”

  “It’s a spyhole,” she said.

  “They can see us. I’m sure they can see us.”

  I lay down over her, I hid her from the strangers.

  “Which ‘they’?” asked Isabelle silkily.

  “I don’t know. The people in the room. Listen! The sound our bedsprings make in the dorm.”

  Isabelle stared. I had surprised her.

  “Forget other people and lie down better than that,” Isabelle said.

  She scratched me, or perhaps she scraped her nails on the tiles.

  “Our bedsprings at night . . . I’m begging you: listen.”

  Someone knocked.

  “Open it,” she said. “It’s the door.”

  Someone tried to push the door open, they were speaking:

  “What have you done here? Have you barricaded yourselves inside?”

  I picked up the key, I pulled away the table. Mme Algazine pushed her head through the opening:

  “You can take the tray from the landing yourselves, since you’ve locked yourselves in.”

  Lying on the floor in the middle of the room, Isabelle crossed her arms over her face.

  I fetched the tray, I heard the groans of the bedsprings in the room next door. I came back into our room:

  “Don’t you want to drink it? You won’t get up?”

  “I want you to come here,” said Isabelle.

  “The sound our bed makes at night . . .”

  “It isn’t the sound of our bed at night,” said Isabelle.

  I listened. The regular rhythm was not like our fitful rhythm in Isabelle’s box.

  “Who is it?”

  “A couple.”

  The bed went quiet. I was still listening.

  “Come here,” said Isabelle, “come here you
, still in your clothes.”

  I came: my chest was burning through her dress.

  “Marry me, marry me all over,” moaned Isabelle. Her smile grew broader and I possessed her everywhere that skin met fabric: my arms, my legs were winding around her. I hid in her neck:

  “The sound has started again.”

  I could not tear myself away from that regular cadence.

  “Listen!”

  “I can’t hear anything,” said Isabelle.

  I was trapped by the rhythm, condemned to follow it, to hope for it, fear it, to edge closer to it.

  “Let’s drink the port,” said Isabelle.

  I was listening hard.

  “Drink!” ordered Isabelle.

  I obeyed. The amber heat filled my chest.

  “Listen! Someone’s screaming.”

  Isabelle shrugged:

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  She strutted around the room. Someone was sighing, whimpering.

  Isabelle reached over the folding bed: she was rummaging in her bag.

  “Less noise. They’re complaining,” I said.

  Someone was immured in the bedroom next to ours, someone who was trying to escape but couldn’t find a way out.

  Isabelle was filing her nails.

  “Stop me from hearing it!” I said.

  Isabelle went on filing her thumbnail.

  The last wail pierced as high as the North Star. Isabelle’s nail file gnawed into the silence.

  Isabelle put her file back in her handbag.

  “We’re wasting our time. Why did we rent this room?”

  “I don’t know anymore,” I said.

  Isabelle slapped me.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know . . .”

  Isabelle slapped me again.

  “It’s a couple. There’s a couple in the next room,” I said.

  She took up the little coffee table, she threw it into the marble fireplace. Isabelle’s fury bewitched me.

  “Undress me,” said Isabelle.

  I took off her clothes, I laid them out one by one on the folding bed.

  She was naked, severe, standing very straight in the center of the room. I took her hand, I led her over and with the other hand, as we passed, I righted the little table.

  I fell on Isabelle, I laid bare the shape of her legs, of her instep; I saw myself in the mirror. The room was old; the mirror reflected back the buttocks and embraces of every couple. I took her leg in my arms, skimmed over it with my chin, my cheek, my lips. I stroked her back and forth as if with a bow; the mirror showed everything I did; the slaps she had given me tingled.

  “You’re slipping away from me,” she said.

  I looked in the mirror at her hands clasped over her pubic hair, I felt the pleasure of one alone.

  “You won’t undress, like me?” said Isabelle.

  I was kissing her knee, looking at myself in the mirror, loving my gaze upon myself.

  “You’re neglecting me,” said Isabelle.

  I tore myself from the mirror: sex of such sweet depths. But the mirror attracted me, the mirror was summoning me back for more solitary embraces. I stroked Isabelle’s lips and pubic hair with her finger. I held the pressure of our pleasure between my thighs.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sleep a moment.”

  “I’m wondering if you love me,” said Isabelle.

  “I didn’t feel like answering yes.”

  Isabelle sat up on the pillow, she crossed her legs. The gathered shapes of her were daunting.

  “Look up. Such a fuss about nothing,” said Isabelle.

  A door opened, closed again.

  “It’s the couple!”

  Isabelle stifled a yawn:

  “Yes, a couple.”

  She opened her thighs:

  “Say if you don’t want to.”

  I threw myself at her sex. I would have preferred it to be simpler. I almost wanted to sew it back up all round.

  “My darling trout, my beloved submarine pout. I’m coming back to you. I’m here. The couple has gone . . . We are alone . . . It’s the pink brute. I love it, it devours me. I adore it without illusions.”

  “You’re biting me, hurting me,” said Isabelle.

  “I admit it, my delicate, I admit it, my little burning flower.”

  “Yes . . . like in the music room, like in the music room . . . Gently . . . gently . . . That’s almost right. Almost, almost . . .”

  “You’re talking too much, Isabelle.”

  I plunged my face back inside the holy image. I was licking, gulping, I stopped to rest but my rest was a mistake.

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I went back to work: I had a sun to light up. I saw what she was seeing and what she was listening to with the sight and hearing of our sex, I anticipated everything she was anticipating.

  “Still . . . still . . .”

  A cat was licking, a cat was blindly toiling and stroking away.

  “Long, so long,” Isabelle intoned.

  I was pressing on like a scratched record circling round and round. Her pleasure was beginning in me. I came away for some air.

  “They’re listening to us, Isabelle!”

  She closed her legs, seized up.

  “Open the door, check,” said Isabelle.

  I waited, crouching there in my clothes.

  “Open the door, come back quickly. I’m waiting for you,” said Isabelle.

  “The door is too far. You want me to start all over again!”

  I became my most winning, I seduced the inmost folds with my finger’s singing, I stroked the sex as I watched it in the mirror. I looked on. I could see the mist of someone breathing under the door and I could see it in the mirror too.

  “Come and lie down with me,” said Isabelle.

  “There’s someone there. I saw them.”

  “You’re torturing me!” said Isabelle.

  I threw her jacket over her, pulled away the table and stepped outside. The brooding staircase.

  “There’s no one there,” I said.

  “Don’t touch me again,” said Isabelle.

  Isabelle lay down on her front.

  I stayed standing next to the bed. I couldn’t decide whether to undress.

  “I ought to strangle you,” said Isabelle.

  She rolled over onto her back:

  “Shall we go? Shall I get dressed?”

  “Don’t deny me your hair. Not a bun.”

  “I’m redoing my hair. You’re abandoning me,” said Isabelle.

  “Oh, what have I done! There was someone there. I wasn’t dreaming it,” I said.

  “You were raving.”

  I let myself drop onto the bed:

  “Don’t stop me . . . Take your hands away, forgive me. I will love you. You will teach me. Yes, I’m coming. You are beautiful. Your legs are beautiful too. I do want to. Take my finger. I’ll give and receive, give and receive.”

  I abandoned her again. I ran around the room, I brought her clothes, which I threw at her and at her streak of saliva.

  “You are infernal. I shall end up cursing you,” said Isabelle, suddenly strained.

  “People can see us, they are looking at us,” I complained.

  “Where?”

  Isabelle rolled back onto her chest: she was shaking the bars on the bed.

  “There’s an eye. I can see it.”

  “Be quiet, be quiet! Nearly . . . nearly . . . It’s growing, it’s growing,” Isabelle said.

  She turned onto her back, she bent her legs and brought them right up to the dip of her stomach. She was consuming herself.

  “It’s my fault if you don’t get anywhere,” I said.

  “I won’t get anywhere and it is your fault,” said Isabelle.

  “In the window . . . the eye . . .”

  Isabelle stood up, walked naked and dignified across the room.

  “It’s hunger, it’s exhaustion, my poor Thérè
se. I can’t see a thing. There is nothing but dust and spiderwebs in that window.”

  Isabelle got back into bed, she stretched out under the American eiderdown.

  “You really don’t want to get undressed? It’s warm under here,” she said.

  She wiggled her foot, she was provoking me beneath that satin!

  “It’s nice here . . . Why are you standing around?”

  “I’m afraid of the eye.”

  “So come here, then!”

  Reaching out from the bed, she took my hand.

  “Let’s go, Isabelle. Let’s escape from this house. I’ll help you to dress on the landing,” I said tenderly.

  She let go of my hand.

  “A moment ago you were afraid of the landing.”

  “Now it’s the window,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “You’re afraid of everything.”

  “I saw that eye.”

  Isabelle was laughing.

  “Don’t you want us to go really?” I said.

  She turned away from me.

  I ran out onto the landing and she came to join me but she came naked. Her mound was pronounced. There could be a kind of personality in that, too.

  “I’m cold because of you,” said Isabelle.

  She was dragging me back by my hands.

  “We’ll do it together,” she said, in a voice that was meant to be encouraging.

  “I’m frightened of the room.”

  “Together . . . at the same time . . . We will call out as much as we like. We’ll scream together.”

  We went back into the bedroom.

  “I would prefer to go.”

  “That would be preferable,” said Isabelle.

  She was getting dressed. Again I ran onto the landing, I left her to the intimacy of her suspender belt, to her regret. But every atom of that house was a spy.

  “Your handkerchief, your hat . . . Where are you, little scaredy-cat?”

  She came to look for me on the landing.

  Her hand swept over my hair, the mauve scent of her powder shivered my arms and legs into pieces.

  She held out her hand, for me to lean on and get back on my feet. We kissed.

  “Let’s look once more,” said Isabelle.

  Abandoned, the place had reassumed an air of innocence.

  We felt our way down through the darkness of the staircase; we managed not to crush the little, fluttering wings of our reconciliation, we took the spring back to its source.

  “You had a room with two beds . . . Is that correct?”

  “A folding bed and a double,” said Isabelle.