The Ravishing of Lol Stein (12 page)

"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?"

"I'll hide you."

"If that day comes, will they be mistaken?"

"No."

She turns around and says, with a smile which bespeaks a staggering confidence:

"I know that whatever I do, you'll understand. The problem will be proving to the others you're right."

At that moment, I am ready to take her away with me forever. She nestles against me, ready to be taken away.

"I want to stay with you."

"Why don't you?"

"Tatiana."

"You've got a point."

"You might just as well love Tatiana," she says, "it wouldn't change anything for . . ."

She adds:

"I don't understand what's happening."

"It wouldn't change anything."

I ask:

"Why this dinner day after tomorrow?"

"I must, for Tatiana. Quiet, let's not say a word for a moment."

Her silence. We remain motionless, our faces scarcely touching, without a word, for a long time. The noise of the trains merges into a single outcry, which reaches our ears. Without moving, her lips all but closed, she says to me:

"In a certain state of mind, all trace of feeling is banished. Whenever I remain silent in a certain way, I don't love you, have you noticed that?"

"Yes, I've noticed." She stretches, laughs.

"And then I begin to breathe again," she says. I'm supposed to see Tatiana again on Thursday at five o'clock. I tell her so.

T
HUS
THIS
DINNER
at Lol's took place.

Three other people, whom neither Peter Beugner nor I had met, are invited. An elderly lady—a professor at the Uxbridge Conservatory of Music—and her two children, a young man and a woman whose husband, whom John Bedford is apparently anxious to meet, is not scheduled to arrive until after dinner.

I am the last to arrive.

I have not arranged any further meeting with her. As she was about to board her train, she told me that we would set a date tonight. I'm waiting.

Over dinner, the conversation drags. Lol does nothing to enliven it, perhaps she is not even aware of the heavy silence. Nor does she give us any hint, however slight, of the reason why she has brought us together this evening. Why? For the simple reason that we are probably the only people she knows well enough to invite to her house. If, as Tatiana says, John Bedford has some friends, especially musician friends, she also tells me that he sees them without his wife, outside his home. It's obvious that Lol has brought together everyone she knows. But why?

A private conversation is developing between the elderly lady and John Bedford. I hear: "If only the young people were aware of the existence of our concerts, believe me, we'd have full houses." The young woman is talking to Peter Beugner. I hear: "Paris in October." Then: "I've finally made up my mind."

Again, Tatiana Karl, Lol Stein, and I find ourselves together: none of us says a word. Tatiana phoned me last night: Yesterday I went looking for Lol, without finding her either in town or at her house. The living room, where she and her daughters can usually be seen after dinner, was dark. I slept badly, still obsessed by this same doubt that daylight alone can dispel: that someone may notice something, that she may no longer be allowed out alone in South Tahla.

Tatiana seems impatient for the meal to end, she is nervous and worried. I have a feeling she would like to ask Lol something.

Between us, words are few and far between. Tatiana asks Lol where she intends to spend her vacation. In France, Lol says. Again we fall silent. Tatiana studies both of us in turn, she must realize that the interest we showed in each other, Lol and I, the other evening, is missing. Since our previous assignation at the Forest Hotel—as a bachelor I'm often invited to the Beugners for dinner—she has not spoken of Lol again.

Little by little, everyone around the table enters into the conversation. People are asking the hostess questions. The three guests from out of town seem to be on a footing of affectionate familiarity with her. People are a shade more solicitous with her than they need be, than their remarks or replies require. In everyone's gentle amiability—which is also the attitude of her husband when dealing with her—I detect the sign of the anxiety, both past and present, which is the constant concern of those around her. They speak to her because it would be awkward not to, but they are afraid of what she may reply. Is their concern more noticeable tonight than usual? I don't know. If not, I find that reassuring, I find in that fact the confirmation of what Lol has told me about her husband: John Bedford suspects no one or nothing, his sole concern being, so it would seem, to prevent his wife from saying something she shouldn't, something dangerous, in public. Tonight especially, perhaps. He has misgivings about this dinner party which, in spite of his feelings, he has allowed Lol to give. If there is someone he fears, it is Tatiana Karl, the way Tatiana stares insistently at his wife, that I know, I have watched him closely, and he has noticed this. Even when he is engrossed in his conversations with the elderly lady about his concerts, he does not fail to keep an eye on Lol. He loves Lol. But, if he were to lose Lol, is it probable he would be just the same? just as affable? The attraction—how strange this is—that Lol exerts on both of us might sour my present relationship with him. I don't believe he knows her except through the second-hand reports about her past insanity, he must think he has a wife full of unexpected charms, not the least of which is that of her being threatened. He thinks he is protecting his wife.