Thérèse and Isabelle

by Violette Leduc

  “I’ve looked everywhere for you,” said Isabelle.

  Isabelle appeared behind me, she sobbed with happiness. She sat down on the bench.

  We loved and we were holding each other: we held each other balancing on a wild rose petal. She considered my lips, she touched them with one rough hand:

  “Is it you, really you?”

  The hand was seeking truths on my eyelids.

  Her face dropped, her face descended lower than my breasts.

  “Your face is too far away,” I said.

  “I’ve torn your dress,” said Isabelle.

  She fixed my dress with a pin, she carried out her repairs while I breathed in the perfume of memories in her hair.

  “Someone’s coming!”

  We sprang apart, we each ran to hide in a different corner. An accompanist turned the key to her room. She passed by, drew away again, peaceful and statuesque.

  “The monitor told me to take you to the doctor at four o’clock,” said Isabelle.

  I ran into her arms as she ran to mine.

  “Quarter to twelve!” said Isabelle. “Come on, come on . . .”

  We fell together on the steps to the stage.

  “Quarter to twelve, Thérèse!”

  I hesitated, for my fingers were stained with ink.

  “Don’t stop me!” I said, out of nervousness.

  I was afraid of demeaning her by lifting up her skirt.

  “Almost ten to twelve, Isabelle!”

  “If you don’t speak more softly we’ll be caught,” said Isabelle.

  I lifted up her skirt; Isabelle shivered against my temple.

  I ventured beneath the crumpled skirt: her underpants frightened me. She was quite indecent beneath her dress. My hand advanced between skin and jersey.

  “Let me do it. Don’t look if it shocks you,” said Isabelle.

  I looked.

  She lifted herself up, she released my hand.

  “Such impossible underpants,” she said.

  The hand of one entranced tugged them off, stuffed the garment into the pocket of her smock. Isabelle revealed herself there on the steps.

  “They were gripping you tightly, my golden lamb. You’re all rumpled. You feel my cheek there on you, my darling Mongolian. I’m combing you, untangling you, teasing you, my little brazier . . . You’re glowing Isabelle, you’re glowing . . .”

  I stood up, I glared at her.

  “Come back . . . Don’t leave me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I was sadistic. Waiting and making her wait is a delicious perdition.

  “What if someone discovers us,” I dreamed aloud.

  “I can’t wait any longer,” whimpered Isabelle. Her hands were clutching at her face.

  I fell to my knees before the medallion, I gazed rapt at the shining in her tangle. I ventured in like a smuggler, my face first. Isabelle gripped me between scissoring legs.

  “I’m looking; I’m caught,” I said.

  We waited.

  Sex was filling our minds. Isabelle was split from head to toe. An incalculable number of hearts were beating in her belly, against my head.

  “Yes, yes . . . slower. I said slower . . . higher. No . . . lower down. Almost . . . almost there . . . Yes . . . yes . . . That’s almost it . . . Faster, faster, faster,” she said.

  My tongue was searching in the salty darkness, in the sticky darkness, over fragile flesh. The more I labored, the more mysterious became my efforts. I hesitated around the pearl.

  “Don’t stop. I tell you that’s it.”

  I was losing it, regaining it.

  “Yes, yes,” moaned Isabelle. “You’re there, you’re there,” she cried in ecstasy. “Go on. Please . . . there . . . yes, there . . . just there . . .”

  Her anguish, her mastery, her orders, her contradictions were confusing me.

  “You don’t want to guide me,” I said, alone outside our universe of fantasy.

  I spoke to her between the lips of her sex.

  “I’m doing nothing else,” she said. “You’re not thinking about what you’re doing.”

  “I’m thinking too much,” I said.

  Tears of my sweat are soaking her pubic hair.

  “Teach me . . . teach me . . .”

  “Lift your face, look.”

  Lying on the steps of the stage, Isabelle sought within herself, found it.

  “Come closer, look, look. That’s it. If you lose it, you’ll find it again. Oh, oh . . . No. Not now. You! You!”

  I looked through her fingers’ angle at her gilded hair, I shivered with the shivering of the muscles in her hand. The finger was twisting. Soon I would spew out the delights of her orgasm.

  Her neck tensed, her mind was elsewhere. Her eyes opened: Isabelle was staring at paradise.

  “You. Not me,” she said.

  She withdrew from herself, clenched her fist.

  “A minute past twelve! They’re in the refectory. Past twelve . . . I’m afraid I might be wrong.”

  “Yes, yes . . . Go on until tonight if we have to,” she said.

  I labored so hard that I tasted the flesh of fantasy. Too near her sex I thought that I wanted to give her what she desired. My mind was caught up in flesh, my abnegation growing. When I lacked saliva I would make it. I did not know if it was mediocre or indeed wonderful for her, but when the pearl slipped away I would find it again.

  “It will be there, it will always be there,” said Isabelle.

  Nostalgia and bliss were mixing together.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  She fell silent, she kept watch over her sensations.

  I received what she was receiving, I was Isabelle. My effort, my sweat, my rhythm were exciting me. The pearl wanted what I wanted. I was discovering the little virile sex that we have. A eunuch was gathering courage.

  “I’m going to come my love. So good: I’m going to come. It’s too good. Keep going. Don’t stop, don’t stop. Forever, forever, forever . . .”

  I sat up; I wanted to see a prophesy on our bellies.

  “Don’t let me go, don’t leave me here,” cried Isabelle panicking.

  “Tell me when, won’t you,” I said, my face in the furnace of her sex.

  “Yes, but don’t leave me.”

  I persevered, nothing but a reflection of her.

  “It’s started. It’s starting. It’s rising. Through my legs, through my legs . . . Yes, my love, yes. Forever . . . go on . . . In my knees, in my knees . . .”

  She was observing the sensation, she was seeking relief.

  “It’s rising, it’s rising higher.”

  She fell silent. I was submerged and swept away with her. There were stigmata in my guts.

  We thanked each other with fragile smiles.

  “This time someone is coming. Hide. I’ll go out, I’ll stand in front of the window. Go to the dormitory . . . We’ll leave together at four o’clock,” Isabelle whispered.

  “Your hair! Your hair!”

  She tied the chaos and madness up in that twist; she walked out mistress of herself.

  A girl ran up, along the corridor. I listened behind the door.

  “You’re out of your mind,” Renée was saying. “You know what the time is? Twenty-five past twelve. I’ve looked for you everywhere: in the classrooms, in the study room, in the infirmary. The head is furious.”

  “Does she know?” Isabelle asked.

  “She came into the refectory. She was horrified by your empty seat. But what were you doing?”

  “I was in the chemistry lab. I was working. I must explain it to the head,” said Isabelle.

  “Thérèse has also disappeared. We thought she was sick in the dormitory. I took her lunch up to her. Nobody there. You’re unbelievable,” said Renée.

  They went off.

  The tray was there in my cell, with its cold leavings of meat, lentils, two small green apples.

  Eat. Eat to be strong at four in the afternoon, I exhorted myself befor
e swallowing down the miserable, tepid items of food.

  “Are you quite better now?” asked a monitor whom I jostled with my tray at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’m going to the doctor at four,” I said smugly. I ran into the playground to see her again.

  “Isabelle is in trouble, Isabelle is working,” Renée told me.

  “In the future you will ask my permission to go up to the dormitory even if you are not feeling well,” the new monitor said to me.

  The girls were lining up to go in and study.

  We all heard the chiming of the tram’s little bell, the tracks’ complaining as the tram drew away. The town’s noises and effluvia were no longer my escape: school had become our trysting place, school was now my bracelet and my necklace.

  Isabelle was studying. I opened a book, I heard:

  “Faster, slower, go on, go on, it’s started, it’s starting, higher, lower, don’t leave me, don’t let me go, forever, forever . . . I’m going to come. It’s so good. I’m coming. It’s too good . . . Forever, forever . . . It’s there, will always be there.”

  I listened to her voice until the end of study period.

  “Twelve roses! What were you thinking?” I said to the day student. “I said two, not twelve. And a shoebox too. I’m in a fix now!”

  “I hardly had any lunch thanks to you. I had to look for the box in the attic. It’s all I could find to hide them in and you’re still not happy! Just two roses looked mean. You can pay me when you’ve the money.”

  “I’ll pay you right now but you’ll have to keep them in your room. You’ve got to take them off my hands. I’ll take two and you can give the others to your father and mother . . .”

  “It was for a monitor!”

  “No . . . but you’ve given me an idea.”

  “We can decide this later. I like big bouquets,” the day student said.

  She ran off and I ran off too, to the dormitory with the flowers.

  “What are you doing here?” inquired the new monitor. “You’re not permanently unwell!”

  The fragrance of cheap shampoo smothered my roses when she looked out of her curtains.

  “I was looking for you. I wanted to give you these flowers . . .”

  “Where are they from?”

  “I disobeyed you. A girl bought them for me. They are from a florist.”

  “We’ll overlook it this time but don’t do it again.”

  She was in raptures.

  “I oughtn’t dare,” she said, “really, I ought not. Come in. Let’s see what it is you’re presenting to me.”

  Everywhere were doilies, cambrics, lawns, contrasting lights, ribbons, embroidered cushions that exuded femininity. She cut the string around the box with embroidery scissors. She pulled away the paper; her long hands were greedy.

  “Roses . . .”

  I leant over my flowers, my sacrifice that she dared not awaken.

  “It’s too much. I ought to scold you. Really, it’s too much.”

  Fruitcake! I thought to myself. She clasped my hand in thanks.

  I slept as usual, I regained energy, I was refreshed, sitting at the back through the rest of my classes.

  At four o’clock, Isabelle was waiting for me at the classroom door.

  “I’m taking you to the doctor,” she said.

  “We were all right here,” I said, beneath the general clatter.

  “It’s an order,” said Isabelle. “I’m going up to the dorm to dress and it would be best for you to come up too.”

  Our connection was unravelling, the strength drained from my heart. To be going outside with her, this was incredible.

  It was there that I rediscovered her.

  Isabelle had left her cell, her hair loose, her shoulders wrapped in her Arab riding shawl; Isabelle was reassuring me with the costume of our first encounter. She was stroking the handle of her hairbrush.

  “Let’s go. Think of it: we’re leaving,” she said.

  “Don’t go back into your cell. So I never lose sight of you,” I said.

  The hand holding the brush fell back. The hair was snuffed out.

  I ran to her:

  “Go back to yours, be beautiful without me there to see it,” I said.

  Isabelle threw her brush into the passage. She was putting her shawl around my neck.

  “I want to strangle you. I do want to,” she said.

  But she didn’t pull it tight.

  This intimacy in the passage disoriented me. I led her by the hand, I showed her the bouquet of roses:

  “I gave them to her at half past one. You’re not cross?”

  “Cross! They’re just flowers,” she said, without looking back at them.

  The shawl around her shoulders billowed with every step, her hair moved me more than the roses. I went back into my box:

  “This appointment is a torment to me.”

  “Not me. I feel like walking out with you and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll say that the doctor was called away for an emergency. I’ll fix it.”

  Isabelle came back. She lifted my curtain.

  “You aren’t getting ready? Do you want me to help?”

  “I’m not used to this. I’m a little scared.”

  She seized my wrists:

  “Scared! Can’t you see that I’m ready to sacrifice everything?”

  “Even your studies?”

  “My studies more than anything, as that would be the hardest thing,” Isabelle said.

  “I would not want that. I’d never want that,” I said.

  We got ready. The shouts from the playground were no longer our concern.

  “I’m entrusting her to you,” the head monitor said to Isabelle. “You have the letter with the number and the street name. You will find him there. He’s expecting you. Come back with good news, won’t you.”

  “Will you permit us a short stroll in town?” Isabelle asked.

  “On condition that you don’t take advantage. Don’t run away,” she called.

  We had crossed the great courtyard calmly but the flowers, the lawn, the trees had all flown by. The concierge nodded to us.

  We walked along the school wall, we heard a piano teacher’s voice, his beating time with the ebony ruler that was always kept by the upright piano.

  “Aren’t you happy?”

  “We were fine at school.”

  We had walked along one wall of Saint Nicholas’s: the priests were teaching, the boys going wild.

  “Can we go arm in arm?”

  “We ought to keep from doing that,” said Isabelle.

  Just as we used to listen for them in the playground, the sounds of the tram and its bell rose up toward school. Soon the girls would hear the hum of the slow local service. Sleepy houses began to give way to shops; the squeal of the tram on its rails lingered out beyond school: we were in town.

  Isabelle stopped in front of a display of leatherware. She wanted me to pause with her at this graveyard of black suede things:

  “Do you like this stuff?”

  “I like, I like . . . You know what I like,” said Isabelle.

  I was proud to feel as if we were two against the town.

  “Will you ever forget me? I never will,” said Isabelle. She was gazing at a paste buckle.

  “You will always be alive in me. You will die with me,” I said.

  My eyes were closed, I imagined that she was speaking softly to me in the dormitory at night.

  I slipped my arm under hers, I molded her gloved hand, I pushed my finger into the lozenge, as far as the hand’s hollow. The idle shop assistant was watching us.

  “The headmistress would say that we are comporting ourselves badly. Yes, give me your arm,” said Isabelle.

  We walked on, we skipped over the light beyond a church tower. The gentle tone of an ambulance sounded through our exaltation, the rattle of milk churns striking against each other, the driver snoozing at his wheel made me nostalgic for pools of buttercups.

  We w
ere running to outrun liberty, we were running alongside the depot’s pinnacles of anthracite; we zigzagged in among the blue glittering, straightened out again near the stacked wedges. I remember the charcoal burner with the stoven-in face whom we puzzled, who vanished inside the depot, I remember his white eyes and the trolley he was pushing with his fingertips.

  “What shall we do now?” inquired Isabelle.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Shall we take a walk? Shall we go to the waiting room? Pick up a railway platform ticket? Have tea in a patisserie?”

  She brushed all this away with one hand.

  “I know a place,” said Isabelle.

  “. . .”

  “Say something. I know a place for us to go together. Aren’t you pleased?”

  We were trotting along beside the stony wall of a factory. Somewhere, a while away, a beam thudded to the ground.

  “Let’s go to this hotel,” said Isabelle. “Not exactly a hotel. A house.”

  I unlinked my arm from hers.

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s a house where a lady will receive us, a pleasant lady.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s her business. She will have to be pleasant,” said Isabelle.

  We reached a square with an arc of trees pollarded down to stumps.

  “Will you decide?”

  “I’m afraid to,” I said.

  We marched furiously around the amputated trees.

  “So? A yes or a no?”

  “We were fine at school . . .”

  “This will be far better than at school,” said Isabelle.

  I took her handbag, I carried it alongside my purse, I linked my arm in hers: twining together, our fingers made love.

  “Aren’t you hungry? There are some patisseries,” I said, with a faint hope of distracting her from her plan.

  “I’ve not been hungry since I met you. There it is. That’s the one.”

  “Algazine, Dresses and Coats: is that the place?”

  “Ring the bell, go on then, ring it. It’s on your side.”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Allow me,” said a bearded man, “you’ll allow me, since I take it you’ve not yet rung . . . Were that the case, however . . .”

  “Consider it done,” replied Isabelle.