Thérèse and Isabelle

by Violette Leduc

  “What’s wrong with me, what are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  I didn’t dare talk to her about her immortality. She took my hand, she laid her cheek in it.

  “Let me fix you.”

  Isabelle was happy to give herself to me:

  “What are you doing with me?”

  “I’m putting flowers on you.”

  “You do know this is serious?” Isabelle said.

  “I’m not playing.”

  “But it’s not real. We mustn’t waste our time.”

  “You are lovely and I’m making you lovelier.”

  “I won’t have you make an idol of me.”

  I saw the scintillation of my tears. I did not cry.

  “What have I done to you, tell me what I’ve done to you,” I begged. “I wanted to ornament you . . .”

  “That’s all?” asked Isabelle.

  “That’s all.”

  But I loved her with crepe bows on every finger. She sat up in the bed:

  “I know it: we will be parted,” she said.

  I gathered up the bedspread, I struggled with the bolster.

  We had created this celebration of oblivion to time. We hugged to us all the Isabelles and the Thérèses who would be in love after us, with other names; we ended up clutching each other in the midst of creakings and tremblings. We had rolled, entwined, down a slope of darkness. We had stopped breathing to bring a stop to life and a stop to death.

  I broke into her mouth as one goes to war: I was hoping I would ransack her entrails and mine.

  The note of a whistle, a train, a station, but the silence remained, weighing on our heads. Isabelle put her hair on my shoulder.

  “Are you sleepy?”

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  She mumbled it.

  Something came away from my hip, fell upon the mattress: a hand. Isabelle was asleep. The dawn would be our dusk, from one minute to the next.

  My face brushed against hers.

  “Don’t sleep.”

  The dawn, ever punctual when something somewhere is dying, lay waiting with her trailing chiffons. Small boats could be seen heaving themselves clear of the reeds.

  “Don’t sleep . . .”

  I prized the hand away from its ringlets, I listened out across my kingdom. Her sleeping excited me. I planted my eight-year-old, little girl’s lips on her pale lips, I betrayed Isabelle with Isabelle herself, I cheated her of the kiss that I was giving her. She awoke at my mouth:

  “You’re there?”

  She was talking: she was bringing me the finest of the shadows where she had been resting. I was breathing the sulphurous haze of her presence.

  “You want to?”

  “Yes,” said Isabelle.

  We skimmed and flew over our shoulders with the wild fingers of autumn. We hurled great striations of light into nests, we fanned caresses, we wove patterns out of the sea breeze, we wrapped our legs in zephyrs, we held the hum of taffeta in our palms. Entering was so easy. Our flesh was in love with us, our scent sprayed up. Our leavening, our bubbles, our bread. The back and forth was not servitude but back and forth of beatitude. I was losing myself in Isabelle’s finger as she was losing herself in mine. How our conscientious fingers dreamed . . . What weddings of movement. Clouds helped us. We were streaming with light.

  The wave came on reconnaissance, it intoxicated our feet, it swept through again. Lianas were released, a clarity grew within our ankles. The unfurling sweetness was complete. My knees crumbled to ashes.

  “It’s too much. Tell me it’s too much.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “I can’t be quiet, Isabelle.”

  I was kissing her shoulder, giving myself up to the shipwreck once more.

  “Speak.”

  “I can’t,” said Isabelle.

  “Open your eyes.”

  “I can’t,” said Isabelle.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “You.”

  “Speak, speak.”

  “Aren’t you happy?”

  “Look . . . No, don’t look.”

  “I know. Soon it will be light. Close your eyes, ward it off,” said Isabelle.

  The sun was rising, Isabelle was falling asleep again.

  I was yawning in the wet and milky meadows, I demanded help and protection from the sleeper, possessor of the dark night whose passing I lamented. In her head my sleeper held night that could never come to an end, in her heart my sleeper held the song of the unsleeping nightingale. I breathed lightly, I was barely alive next to her.

  She was embracing me, she did not forget her anxiety while sleeping:

  “You’re not asleep.”

  “I’m asleep. Sleep.”

  A few girls turned over: the dawn was shimmering in their dreams.

  I got up and Isabelle got up too. I went out into the passage but she dragged me roughly back into her cell.

  She opened her gown, she showed me her pride, she made me sore with her thigh between my thighs. I wanted to go. Her sleep had made me desperate.

  “Don’t go!”

  Isabelle collapsed:

  “Why did I sleep, why?”

  She was shaking.

  Too much love wearies.

  “Do what you would like to do,” I said.

  She licked, she scented the night’s residues on my face, she kneeled.

  Her face found its way, it was exploring me. Lips saw and touched what I would not see. I was humiliated for her. Indispensable and neglected, so I was with my face far from Isabelle’s face. Her damp forehead troubled me. A saint was licking my stains. Her gifts impoverished me. She was giving too much of herself: I was guilty.

  “Go and rest. There’s one girl studying already,” Isabelle said.

  I obeyed. I threw myself into the river of sleep.

  “I hope we find you quite awake now,” said the monitor. I was asleep on my feet.

  “The relative propositions may consequently indicate different circumstantial relationships . . .”

  Isabelle was saying this to someone else. Isabelle was already tidying her box.

  I woke up properly, dressed with care, ready for her greeting. She came in with a whirlwind’s scorn while I was smoothing brilliantine through so as to be like a precious bloom.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  We could not look at each other.

  “It’s a fine day.”

  “Yes, it’s a fine day.”

  But the sun was being hoisted over us. We looked down.

  “Are you ready?” asked Isabelle.

  “No. You can see that.”

  Her name, which I was avoiding, my saliva, which I could not swallow . . .

  “Would you like me to help you?”

  “No.”

  “I would like my watch back,” said Isabelle.

  “Of course. Your watch . . .”

  I fussed around the night table.

  “Put it on my wrist,” said Isabelle.

  We saw each other again, we looked once more with the eyes of our night.

  “Please, put my bracelet on.”

  “Tell me if I make it too tight.”

  “It’s easy. There’s a mark.”

  “Can’t you do it?” Isabelle asked.

  “I can,” I said.

  “Your voice has gone,” she said.

  “Has it? Will you excuse me? I must finish tidying up.”

  I tossed the lid of the washbasin onto the floor, I emptied the basin.

  “Too much racket in there,” said the monitor.

  “Don’t file your nails in here. Don’t file your nails . . .”

  “Why not?” asked Isabelle.

  “Not here. Not now.”

  “But you’re dusting . . .”

  “Don’t file your nails. Stop.”

  Isabelle opened the window in my cell.

  “You threw out your filings?”

  “You didn’t like it,�
� said Isabelle.

  I put away the soap, I cleaned the porcelain dish where I kept my toothbrush.

  Isabelle is ready to stab me. This idea ran through me while I was putting away the towels and sponges on the towel rail. I was expecting the bite of a knife.

  “Did the monitor see you come in?” Isabelle did not want to reply.

  I took up the honeycomb towel again, I dried the tooth-glass.

  “Does she know you are here?”

  Suddenly she pulled my hair. She plunged her dagger into the nape of my neck.

  “Someone’s coming,” Isabelle said.

  Isabelle tore herself from her task. She edged the curtain aside, she slipped out.

  “False alarm. No one’s in the passage,” said Isabelle. She reassured me. She had vanished.

  But the monitor had come:

  “There was someone in here with you. Don’t deny it. Your friend’s name?”

  “Friend?” I said contemptuously.

  “Why are you smirking?”

  “Isabelle was helping me. She helps me when I am slow. Our old monitor knew that.”

  “You surprise me. I thought you two did not get on. Hurry along then, hurry, we’re going downstairs,” said the monitor relieved by my words.

  Andréa, a half boarder who used to come in early, who lunched with us in the refectory but dined and slept in the country, spent her Thursdays and Sundays looking out on a meadow, beside a stable. Andréa made charming winter quarters. Her eyes shone with cold, the ice melting her always-chapped lips. I would shake her hand; I was touching the oxygen of freedom.

  “Is it sunny over your way?” I would ask.

  “The weather’s the same as here,” she would reply.

  “No more frosts?” I would ask, out of nostalgia for the white frosts.

  “The frosts are over. My father is sharpening his scythe for the harvest,” she said. That morning, I left Andréa to her white frosts.

  “Renée was showing me some photographs. What do you think of this one?” Isabelle asked me before we went into the refectory.

  “It’s a landscape, nicely done.”

  Isabelle was making overtures while her hair mingled with mine.

  I was afraid I would scream. I stepped backward.

  Isabelle threw back her lock of hair, stepped forward. Her cheek pressed a long kiss on mine.

  “Stop, I say, stop, you are killing me.”

  She pushed me, furiously, into Renée, excused herself.

  Younger girls disturbed us with their shouts. I love you and you won’t answer me, said the hand resting in mine. Renée was gazing at the photograph, guessing, probably, at the couple next to her, for she dared not look up. I was caught between the false innocence of the one and the other’s audacity. Isabelle’s hand, through the folds in her apron, was stroking me. It was crazy. I was rotting away, my flesh was bursting ripe.

  “You can give back the photograph at the end!” said Renée.

  “Leave it. She’s examining it,” said Isabelle to Renée.

  Guessing that the glazed paper was my protection, Isabelle fended off the lightning that would have struck right through me, that would have revealed the terrifying halo in my belly. I collapsed, clutching the landscape in my hand.

  “Slap her,” Renée said to Isabelle; “slap her, she’ll recover.”

  Isabelle did not reply.

  “A handkerchief, quick a handkerchief, eau de cologne,” shouted someone else. “Thérèse has collapsed . . . Thérèse is ill.”

  “Find some vinegar, find some spirit!”

  I was listening and resting on the tiles while simulating a dead faint to follow my collapse. I dared not get to my feet for fear of ridicule. I am often exhausted on waking up: I imagine the sorrow, I imagine the absence of sorrow of those finding out that I had ceased to live. Isabelle was still silent, Isabelle was getting used to my death. Girls were shaking me, peering under my eyelids, calling my name; I was not there. I had disappeared because I could not love her in public: the scandal I had spared us would fall upon me alone. I stood up, avoiding the horrid smell of vinegar.

  “It was nothing,” I said.

  I patted my forehead.

  “Go up to the dormitory,” said the new monitor. “Who will go with her?”

  She dabbed at my forehead, my lips, with her cursed vinegar.

  “I’ll go,” said Isabelle.

  We left, a sorry pair, and heard the military step of the girls going into the refectory. Isabelle was embracing a girl who had had a fainting spell. The wretchedness is greater than the fault. We walked without speaking, without looking at each other. She stopped when I stopped, she walked when I started to walk again. I tramped sadly over the mat at the foot of the stairs, I hoped for reconciliation. She . . . I loved her all along the banisters, at every step. Every time I lifted a foot I made a vow of reconciliation. She withdrew her arm, buttoned her smock up at the wrist, put her arm around my waist again, to comply with the monitor’s order. It was a nurse who sent me down the dormitory passage, who lifted the curtain to my cell, who went off to her own room. My smock sprayed with vinegar, my wet hair, were disheartening.

  She opened the curtain wide, she aired everything before coming in. She would disinfect my soul; she was intimidating me.

  “Why did you do that?”

  She addressed me like family, she was honeying our past.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “. . .”

  “Did you fake it or were you really tired?”

  “I faked it. Don’t scold me.”

  “I’m not scolding you.”

  “Leave that brush alone! Don’t go . . .”

  She came back into my box and the sun presented her to me. I gave her hand my deepest kiss.

  “Forgive me,” I pleaded.

  “Don’t. It’s awful, what you’re saying. Are you tired?”

  “I won’t be tired until the holidays.”

  “I must be seen in the refectory, Thérèse.”

  Her weight on my knees was comforting.

  “Close your eyes, listen: I collapsed in the hall because you were getting too close. My strength vanished. You were provoking me.”

  “It’s true,” said Isabelle.

  She opened her eyes: our soft kiss made us moan.

  “Someone’s coming,” said Isabelle. “The saliva . . . wipe away the saliva . . .”

  “Not yet at table, Isabelle!” exclaimed the head monitor. “As for you, I’ll have your breakfast brought up here.”

  When I returned to the study room, I found an envelope inside my locker. I sat down in Isabelle’s place, since I had no lesson to attend; I contemplated the ink splots on her desk. A few girls were studying in the light of the new day. The white envelope rustled when I touched my hand to my heart; Isabelle’s writing shivered. I put off reading it, I studied a physics textbook, I worked halfheartedly inside my idler’s carapace. The sun was tempting me, the sky’s brightness was tinting my wrists; through the open windows, the teachers’ pompous voices had lost the resonance lent them by winter classrooms.

  Seasons, give us your rags. Let us be wanderers with our hair slicked down by rain. Isabelle, would you . . . would you set up home with me beside an embankment? We would devour our crusts like lions, we seek out the piquancy of the gales; we would have a house, lace curtains, while the caravans are passing, heading for the borders. I would undress you in the corn, I would shelter you inside haystacks, I would lie with you in the water beneath the low branches, I would care for you upon the forest mosses, I would take you in the alfalfa fields, I would raise you up on the hay wains, my Carolingian lady.

  I escaped from the study room, I read her letter in the lavatories:

  “Gather strength, sleep when you can, fortify yourself for the night to come, think of our future from this evening.”

  I wound the chain of the flush around my neck; with each link, I kissed the next of Isabelle’s vertebrae. I tore up her instruc
tions and threw them into the lavatory bowl. Quarter past nine. The clock in the great court marked an Olympian time, higher than the narrow time of the classrooms.

  My physics book’s paper cover tore off, my retractable pencil rolled away beneath the radiator: the things I was leaving behind were fleeing from me. Outside in the corridor, day students were waiting for the second class, they were coming and going behind the glass door. They were not in love: their ease and their nonchalance oppressed me.

  “You’re being spoken to,” said a girl.

  I was sleeping during the cosmography class.

  “She’s been ill,” said the girl. “She fainted in the hall. We don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  I went back to sleep.

  After cosmography came ethics, through which I also dozed. Eleven twenty-five, eleven thirty, eleven thirty-five. I could see our reunion in the broad angle of that eleven thirty-five. My awaking had been that of an undisciplined sentry. I powdered my face beneath my desk lid; in my powder compact mirror I discovered what Isabelle would love and what she would not. The bell was ringing, pupils roaring, I had a plan.

  “Yes, two roses . . . two red roses. Go to the best florist . . .”

  “What size?” asked the day student.

  “Whichever are the prettiest. Yes, if you like: for a teacher. Smell them before you buy. Pink roses, ideally.”

  “Leave me to it,” said the day student, “you can count on me.”

  Other day students were slashing at my face with their scarves, their gloves; they were pushing me, dragging me toward the forbidden gate. I turned on my heel: I had someone.

  Tucked beneath the roof, the music room retained the animal heat of the hundred girls who had practiced there hour after hour. I went inside. I flopped down at a desk. I could hear the sound of water dripping into a basin, I listened for each drop to fall. She did not know where I was, loving her. I wanted her to come up here because I could not imagine she would not foresee this. Twenty to twelve . . . I counted to six between two drops of water. Her step.

  She was trampling on my heart, my belly, my forehead even before she came in. A city of light was coming toward me. This must be some devastating enchantment. I guessed that she was looking for me through the glass while I had been picturing her in the darkness beneath my eyelids. I did not look up, I did not emerge from the folds of my widow’s weeds. Crows scattered, frost whitened the hazels. She was coming, she was breathing through my lungs.