The Ravishing of Lol Stein

by Marguerite Duras

  I dance too slowly, and often my feet are two lead weights, I can't keep time to the music. Lol absently follows my mistakes.

  Tatiana's eyes pursue us on our painful course around the living room.

  Finally, Peter Beugner makes his way over to her and invites her to dance.

  I've had Lol in my arms for a hundred years. I talk to her in such a way that my words are indiscernible. Thanks to Peter Beugner's maneuvers on the floor as he dances, Tatiana is hidden from us. In our hiding place, she can neither see us nor hear us.

  "You went to the seashore."

  "Yesterday I went down to Town Beach."

  "Why didn't you say anything about going? Why? Why did you go there?"

  "I thought that ..."

  She fails to finish the sentence. I press her gently.

  "Try to tell me. That . . ."

  "You've probably already guessed."

  "This can't go on. I must see you, this can't go on."

  Here's Tatiana. Has she noticed that I have just said something, then repeated it in a rush? Lol and I say nothing. Then, once again, we are in the line of vision of John Bedford, whose tepid, only slightly intrigued gaze is upon us.

  Though still in my arms, Lol has lost the beat and stopped following me, a dead weight all of a sudden.

  "We can go to Town Beach together if you like, the day after tomorrow."

  "For how long?"

  "For a day, maybe."

  We agree to meet at the station very early in the morning. She specifies a time. I have to speak to Peter Beugner and let him know I'll be away for a day. Shall I do it?

  I invent:

  Look, they've stopped talking again, Tatiana is thinking. I'm used to it, I know how to make him moody, silent and depressed, he has trouble getting out of these states, he seems to enjoy them. But I don't think I've ever seen him as silent with me as he is now with Lol Stein, even when he came for me the first time, one afternoon when Peter was away, and drove me to the Forest Hotel, without ever saying a word. Here is what I don't know: that man who is fading away, who says that he loves, desires, wants to see her again, who fades away even more as he says this. I must be slightly feverish tonight. Everything is leaving me, my life, my life.

  Again, like a good girl, Lol is dancing, following me. When Tatiana cannot see, I move Lol away from me so that I can see her eyes. I see them: a transparency is looking at me. Again I cannot see. I pull her back against me, she does not resist; no one, I believe, is paying any attention to us. The transparency has gone through me, I can still see it, blurred now, it has moved on toward something else that is less clear, something endless, it will move on toward something else, some endless thing that I will never know.

  "Lol Stein, eh?"

  "Ah, yes."

  I hurt her. I thought so because I felt a warm "ah" against my neck.

  "We must put an end to this. When?"

  She does not reply. Tatiana is looking at us again.

  I invent:

  Tatiana is speaking to Peter Beugner:

  "I must have a word with Jack Hold about Lol."

  Is Peter Beugner mistaken concerning her true intention? His love for Tatiana is one that has survived more than one test, a sentiment which hangs heavily on him but which he will drag with him to the grave, they are united, their house is more solid than most, it has stood up beneath the buffeting of many a storm. In Tatiana's life, the one and only compelling and overriding obligation, which it is unthinkable she will ever give up some day, is the certainty that she will always come back to Peter Beugner, he is her return, her respite, her sole constancy.

  I invent:

  This evening, Peter Beugner, his ear to the wall, detects the slight crack in his wife's voice that she, Lol, always hears.

  It is I who am responsible for the intimacy between them now, without either one of them ever acknowledging it.

  Peter Beugner says:

  "Lol Stein still isn't well. You saw how she was at dinner, how her mind wandered, it was really quite impressive, I'm sure that's what interests Jack Hold about her."

  "Do you really think so? But isn't she playing on that interest?"

  Peter Beugner's words are consoling:

  "The poor girl, how could she?"

  Peter Beugner takes his wife in his arms, he wants to prevent what he senses are the first pangs of suffering in her from developing. He says:

  "Personally, I haven't noticed anything between them, absolutely nothing, I must say, except for that interest I mentioned to you."

  Tatiana grows slightly impatient, but does not show it.

  "I suggest you study them a little more closely."

  "All right, I will."

  Another record replaces the first. The couples have not separated. They are at the other end of the living room. The remarkable thing about them, suddenly, is not their awkwardness, which now is not all that noticeable, but the expression on their faces as they dance, an expression that is neither friendly nor polite nor bored but is rather—Tatiana is right—the mark of the absolutely rigid, stifling reserve that each of them exhibits toward the other. Especially when Jack Hold speaks to Lol and she answers him without there being the least change in this reserve, without it being possible for anyone to guess either the nature of the question asked or that of the answer which will be given.

  Lol answers me:

  "If only we knew when."

  I forgot Tatiana Karl, I admit having committed that crime. I was in the train, I had her next to me for hours, we were already on our way to Town Beach.

  "What's the point of taking this trip now?"

  "It's summer. It's the best time."

  Since I don't answer her, she goes on to explain:

  "And besides, we haven't any time to lose. Tatiana's beginning to fall in love with you. . . ."

  She stops. Is it conceivable that Lol would like to have happen between Peter Beugner and Tatiana what I merely imagine in my mind?

  "Is that what you wanted?"

  "Yes. But you were supposed to fall in love with her too. She wasn't supposed to know anything about it."

  Her air of apparent sophistication might have reassured observers less demanding than Tatiana and Peter Beugner.

  "I may be wrong. Everything may be perfectly all right."

  "But why did she go to Town Beach again?"

  "For me."

  Peter Beugner is smiling at me cordially. Lurking behind that smile there is now a conviction, a warning, that if tomorrow finds Tatiana in tears, I shall be dismissed from his section at the hospital. I imagine in my mind that Peter Beugner is lying.

  "You're making a mountain out of a mole hill," he says to his wife. "He couldn't care less about Lol Stein. He scarcely listens to what she says."

  Tatiana Karl finds herself surrounded by lies, she has a moment of dizziness, and the thought of her death flows in upon her, cool water which she rubs upon that burn, let it come and cover over that shame, let it come, and then the truth will be known. What truth? Tatiana gives a sigh. The dance is over.

  I danced with the woman from Uxbridge, danced well in fact, and I talked with her, I committed that crime as well, and I was relieved to commit it. And Tatiana must have been convinced that it was Lol Stein. But did I discover what intrigues me about Lol Stein on my own, wasn't it she who showed it to me, isn't it something of hers? The only thing new for Tatiana, betrayed tonight, the only new development for her in years, is the fact that she is suffering. I imagine to myself that this new development twists her heart, makes her start to perspire heavily at the roots of her sumptuous head of hair, strips her expression of its haughty desolation, diminishes it, threatens to totter her perennial pessimism: who knows? perhaps the white standard of lovers on their maiden voyage will pass close by my house?

  Tatiana makes her way through the dancers, reaches my side, asks me for this dance, which is just starting.

  I dance with Tatiana Karl.

  Lol is seated next to th
e record player. She is the only person who does not seem to have noticed. She is glancing absently through a stack of records, she seems depressed. This is what I think about Lol Stein tonight: things are becoming somewhat clearer around her, and she is suddenly seeing the sharp edges, the remains that are left here and there throughout the world, which turn this way and that, she sees this leftover already half eaten by rats, Tatiana's pain, and is embarrassed by it, sentiment is rife everywhere, people are slipping on that greasy substance. She used to think that it was possible for there to be a time which filled and emptied alternately, which filled and emptied, and then was ready to be used again, always, to be used and reused, she still believes it, she will always believe it, she will never be cured.

  In urgent, whispered tones, Tatiana is talking to me about Lol.

  "When Lol speaks of happiness, what does she mean?"

  I didn't lie.

  "I don't know."

  "What in the world's wrong with you, what's wrong with you?"

  For the first time since the beginning of her affair with Jack Hold, Tatiana, with a show of indecency, with her husband looking on, lifts her face toward her lover, till it is so close to him that he could have placed his lips on her eyes. I say:

  "I love you."

  Once the words have been uttered, my mouth remained opened, so that they could flow out to the last drop. But, if the order is given once again, we shall have to do it all over again. Tatiana has seen that his eyes, beneath his lowered eyelids, were more than ever glancing in another direction, away from her, over there where the frail hands of Lol Stein are upon the pile of records.

  This morning, over the phone, I had already told her.

  She quivers at the insult, but the blow has been struck, Tatiana is felled. She accepts these words whenever she comes across them, Tatiana Karl does, today she rebels against them, but the fact remains she did hear them.

  "Liar, liar."

  She bows her head.

  "I can't bring myself to look into your eyes any more, your filthy eyes!"

  And then:

  "It's because you believe, as far as what we do together is concerned, that that's of no importance, right?"

  "No. It's because it's true. I love you."

  "Shut up!"

  She gathers her forces, tries to strike deeper, thrust harder.

  "Have you noticed the way she is, how dead her body seems compared to mine, how unexpressive it is?"

  "Yes, I've noticed."

  "Have you noticed anything else about her you'd care to tell me?"

  Lol is still over there by herself, going through the stack of records in her hands.

  "It's not easy. Lol Stein is not, so to speak, anyone of any consequence."

  In a voice that seems almost relieved, an almost bantering tone, Tatiana voices a threat the extent of which she does not seem to appreciate but which I find terrifying beyond description.

  "I trust you realize that if you were to change too much in your feelings toward me, I should have to stop seeing you."

  After that dance, I went over to Peter Beugner and informed him of my intention to be away for the entire day the day after tomorrow. He did not ask me where I was going.

  And then I came back over to Tatiana. I said to her:

  "I'll meet you tomorrow at six o'clock. At the hotel."

  She said:

  "No."

  I AM THERE at six o'clock on the appointed day. Tatiana probably will not come.

  The gray shape is in the field of rye. I remain at the window for a long time. She does not move. I have the feeling she is fast asleep.

  I stretch out on the bed. An hour goes by. When it grows dark, I turn on the lights.

  I get up, I undress, I lie down again. I want Tatiana so badly I can't bear it. I want her so badly it makes me cry.

  I don't know what to do. I go to the window, yes, she's fast asleep. She comes there to sleep. I leave the window, again I stretch out on the bed. I caress myself. He speaks to Lol Stein, lost forever, he comforts her for a nonexistent misfortune of which she is unaware. In this way he kills time. The moment of oblivion arrives. He calls out to Tatiana, asks her to help him.

  Tatiana came in, her hair down, her eyes red too. Lol is immersed in her happiness, our sadness which sustains it seems negligible to me. The odor of the field drifts in through the window. And then Tatiana's drowns it out.

  She sits down on the edge of the bed, and then slowly undresses, lies down beside me. She is crying. I say to her:

  "I know how you feel, because I feel just as terrible."

  I don't even try to take her, I know that I won't be able to. My love for that shape out there in the field is too great, will henceforth be too strong, it's all over.

  "You came too late."

  She buries her face in the sheets, speaks to me across a great distance.

  "When?"

  I can't resort to any more lies. I stroke her hair, which has spilled out over the bedclothes.

  "This year, this summer, you came too late."

  "I couldn't get here at the right time. It's because I started to love you too late."

  She sits up, raises her head.

  "Is it Lol?"

  "I don't know."

  More tears.

  "Is it our dear little Lol?"

  "Go, go on home."

  "That lunatic?"

  She is shouting. I stop her, with my hand over her mouth.

  "Tell me it's Lol or I'll scream."

  I lie for the last time.

  "No. It's not Lol."

  She gets up, paces back and forth across the room, stark naked, goes to the window, comes back, returns to the window, she too does not know what to do with herself, she has something on her mind, she hesitates, something she can't quite bring herself to say, then finally it comes out in a near whisper, almost a whisper. She tells me:

  "We're not going to see each other any more. It's all over."

  "I know."

  Tatiana's ashamed of what will happen during the next few days and buries her face in her hands.

  "Our little Lola, I know it's because of her."

  Again anger seizes hold of her, snatches her from her tender daydream.

  "How is it possible? a lunatic?"

  "It's not Lol."

  Calmer still, more controlled, she is trembling like a leaf. She comes over next to me. Her eyes are blinding mine.

  "I'll find out, you know."

  She moves away, she is facing the field of rye, and I can no longer see her face, which is turned toward the field, then I can see it again, the expression is still the same. She was watching the setting sun, the field of rye full of fire.

  "I have ways of finding out, and when I do I'll warn her, oh, I'll do it gently, I won't hurt her, I'll know how to tell her to leave you alone. She's crazy, she won't even suffer when I tell her, that's how insane people are, you know."

  "Friday at six o'clock, Tatiana, you'll come one more time."

  She is crying. The tears are still flowing, from afar, from behind the tears, expected like all tears, arrived at last, and, I seem to recall, Tatiana appeared not to be displeased, seemed to be restored by them.

  LIKE THE FIRST TIME, Lol is already there on the station platform, almost alone, the workers' trains are earlier, the cool wind slips in beneath her gray coat, her shadow is lengthened on the stone of the platform, stretching toward the shadows of the morning, it is mingled with a green light that shifts back and forth and catches on everything in myriads of little blinding explosions, fastens upon her eyes which, from a distance, are laughing as they come forward to meet me, the mineral light in them gleams, gleams bright and clear.

  She is not hurrying, it is still five minutes to train time, her hair is slightly mussed, she is wearing no hat, to get here she had to walk through gardens, gardens where the wind blows free.

  From up close, I recognize in the mineral glint of her eyes the joy of Lol Stein's entire being. She is ste
eped in joy, the signs of which are lighted to the very limits of possibility, they emanate from her entire being in waves. Strictly speaking, there is here present only the cause of that joy, for joy itself remains invisible.

  The minute I saw her in her gray coat, in her South Tahla costume, she was the woman in the rye field behind the Forest Hotel. The woman who is not. And the woman who is, in that field and here beside me, I had them both, both enclosed within me.

  The rest I forgot.

  And all day long during the trip this situation remained unchanged, she was beside me and separated from me by a great distance, abyss and sister. Since I know—have I ever been so completely convinced of anything?—that I can never really know her, it is impossible for anyone to be closer to another human being than I am to her, closer to her than she is to herself, she who so constantly takes wing away from her living life. If there are others who come after me who know her as well, I will accept their coming.

  We kill time, exchanging no word, stretching our legs along the station platform. The moment our eyes meet, we burst out laughing.

  Our train is virtually empty, a local train sandwiched in between the early morning workers' trains and the later commuters' trains. She has chosen it on purpose, she says, for the very reason that it is so slow. We will be in Town Beach around noon.

  "I wanted to see Town Beach with you again."

  "You've already seen it again, the day before yesterday."

  Did she consider it unimportant whether she said it or not?

  "No, I never really went back, not all the way back. The day before yesterday I didn't leave the station. I stayed in the waiting room. I fell asleep. I realized that without you there was no point in going. I wouldn't have recognized anything. I took the first train I could find back."

  Gently, modestly, she leaned back against me. She was asking to be kissed, without openly asking.

  "Whenever I remember Town Beach, I can't bear to think of it without you any more."

  I put my arm around her waist and caressed her. The compartment is empty, like a bed that is made. Little girls, three little girls, crossed my mind. I don't know them. The oldest one, Tatiana says, is the image of Lol.