The Ravishing of Lol Stein (16 page)

Her words had come in a rush. Perhaps her sentence was left suspended because of the noise of the brakes beginning to be applied: we're in Town Beach. She gets up, goes to the window, I get up too, and together we see the seaside resort come into view.

It sparkles in the midday light.

There is the sea, calm, in different iridescent tints depending on the make-up of the bottom, a weary blue.

The train descends toward the sea. Suspended in the sky above is a layer of light purple haze, which the sun is in the process of burning away. We can see that there are very few people on the beach. The majestic curve of the gulf is colored by a broad circle of bath houses. The tall, white, regularly spaced street lights give the square the proud look of some broad boulevard, a strange height above sea level, urban looking, as though the sea had made inroads on the town since she was a child.

In the center of Town Beach, as white as milk, an enormous bird poised for flight, its two equal wings trimmed with balustrades, its overhanging terrace, its green cupolas, its green shutters lowered against the summer sun, its rodomontades, its flowers, its angels, its garlands, its gold, its milk-whiteness, as white as snow, as sugar: the municipal casino.

It moves slowly by to the high-pitched, drawn-out squeal of the brakes. It stops, completely visible now.

Lol laughs, jokes:

"The Town Beach casino, how well I know it!"

She leaves the compartment, pauses in the corridor, reflects.

"Promise me we're not going to stay in the station waiting room."

I laugh.

"I promise."

On the station platform, and in the street, she takes my arm, my wife. We are leaving our night of love, the compartment of the train. Because of what has happened between us, we can touch each other more easily, more intimately. I now know the full power, the sensitivity of this gentle face—which is also her body, her eyes, her seeing eyes are too—drowned in the sweetness of an endless childhood which floats just on the surface of the flesh. I say to her:

"I know you better since our train ride together."

She knows what I mean by that, she slows down, overcomes what seems to be a temptation to turn back.

"You are now part of this trip which people have kept me from taking for ten years. How stupid they were!"

As we leave the station she looks in both directions, hesitating which way to go. I start walking, taking her with me, in the direction of the casino, the better part of which is now concealed by the intervening buildings of the town.

Nothing is happening within her except a recognition of the sites, a formal, still very pure, unruffled recognition, a trifle amused perhaps. Her hand is in mine. The memory itself goes back beyond this memory, back beyond itself. She was perfectly normal once upon a time, before she went mad at Town Beach. What am I saying?

I say:

"This town is not going to serve any purpose for you."

"What would I remember?"

"Come here the way you came to South Tahla."

"Here is the way I came to South Tahla," Lol says again.

The street is wide and descends with us toward the sea. Some boys in bathing suits and brightly colored beach robes are walking up the street. Their complexions are all the same hue, their hair is slicked down by the salt water, they look as though they all belong to the same large family, to which they are going home. They bid each other good-bye, and each goes his separate way, after having agreed upon a time to meet later at the beach. Most of them disappear inside small, furnished one-story bungalows, leaving the street emptier and emptier, the farther we go up it. Women's voices shout first names. Children answer that they are coming. Lol stares with curiosity at her youth.

Without realizing it, we've arrived in front of the casino. It was there, off to our left a hundred yards away, set in the midst of a lawn which we had been unable to see from the station.

"What do you say we go to the casino?" Lol says.

A long corridor crosses it from side to side, one end of which opens onto the sea and the other onto the main square of Town Beach.

The municipal casino of Town Beach is deserted except for a woman in the cloakroom just at the entrance and a man dressed in black who is pacing the floor, his hands behind his back; he yawns.

Long dark curtains with a floral design on them cover all the exits, they stir constantly in the breeze that sweeps the corridor.

Whenever there is a gust of wind, one catches
a
glimpse of deserted rooms with closed windows, a gambling room, two gambling rooms, the tables covered with large sheets of metal painted green and padlocked shut.

Lol sticks her head into every opening and laughs, as if she is enjoying this game of exploring the past. Her laugh is contagious and starts me to laughing too. She is laughing because she is looking for something she thought was here, something she therefore ought to find, but doesn't. She walks ahead, retraces her steps, lifts a curtain, pokes her head inside, says No, that's not it, no question about it, that's not it. She calls upon me to confirm her lack of success each time another curtain falls back into place, she looks at me and laughs. In the muted light of the corridor her eyes are shining, bright, clear.

She examines everything. Not only the posters announcing coming events, the gala evenings and the contests, but the display windows full of jewelry, dresses, and perfumes as well. Someone other than myself might have been taken in by her at this particular moment. I find myself the spectator of a display of gaiety both unexpected and irresistible.

The man pacing the floor comes over to us, bows to Lol, and asks her if he can be of any service, if she needs anything. Lol, taken aback, turns to me.

"We're looking for the ballroom."

The man is pleasant and helpful, he says that at this time of day the casino is, of course, closed. This evening at half past seven. I explain as best I can, say that all we want is a quick look, because we came here when we were young, just a peek in is all we'd like.

The man smiles sympathetically and asks us to follow him.

"Everything is closed. You'll have a hard time seeing."

He turns into a corridor perpendicular to the one from which we have just come: that is what we should have done. Lol has stopped laughing, she slows down but continues to follow behind, dragging her heels. And then we are there. The man lifts a curtain, we still can't see, and he asks us whether we remember the name of the ballroom, since there are, in fact, two in the casino.

"La Potinière," Lol says.

"Then this is it."

We go in. The man lets go of the curtain. We find ourselves in a fairly large room. Tables are set in a circle around the dance floor. At one end there is a stage with a red curtain, which is closed, and at the other end a promenade with a border of green plants. A table covered with a white tablecloth is there, long and narrow.

Lol was looking. Behind her, I was trying to accord my look so closely to hers that, with every passing second, I began to remember her memories. I remembered events contiguous to those events she remembered having been present at, sharp profiles of similarities that vanished the moment they were seen into the dark night of the room. I heard the fox trots of an uneventful youth. A blonde was roaring with laughter. A couple—two lovers—came toward her, a slow-moving comet, the primary maw of love, she still didn't realize what it meant. A sputtering of secondary incidents, a mother's screams, occurs. The vast, dark field of dawn arrives. A monumental calm reigns over everything, engulfs everything. One trace remains, one. A single, indelible trace, at first we know not where. What? You don't know where? No trace, none, all has been buried, and Lol with it.

The man is pacing to and fro behind the curtain in the corridor, he coughs, he is waiting patiently. I move closer to Lol. She doesn't see me come. She cannot keep her eyes fixed for more than a moment on one thing, has trouble seeing, closes her eyes to see better, opens them again. Her expression is set, conscientious. She can spend the rest of her life here looking, stupidly seeing again what cannot be seen again.

We heard the faint click of a light switch, and the ballroom's ten chandeliers light up together. Lol gives a cry. I call out to the man:

"Thank you, but that won't be necessary."

The man turns out the lights. By contrast, the room is much darker than before. Lol leaves. The man is waiting behind the curtains, smiling.

"Has it been a long time?" he asks.

"Oh, ten years," Lol says.

"I was here."

His expression changes, he recognizes Miss Lol Stein, the indefatigable dancer—seventeen years old, eighteen—of the Potinière. He says:

"I'm sorry."

He must know the rest of the story too, I can see he obviously does. Lol hasn't the slightest inkling that he knows.

We have emerged through the main door out onto the beach.

We went to the beach without having made up our minds to. Once outside in the light, Lol stretched, yawned broadly. She smiled, she said:

"I got up so early this morning I'm sleepy."

The sun, the sea, the tide is going out, is out so far it has left behind a marshland of sky-blue puddles.

She lies down on the sand, gazes at the patches of blue water.

"Let's go and get something to eat, I'm hungry."

She falls asleep.

Her hand, lying on the sand, falls asleep with her. I toy with her wedding ring. Beneath it the skin is lighter, smoother, like a scar. She is completely oblivious. I remove the ring, smell it, is has no odor, I slip it back on. She is completely oblivious.

I make no effort to fight the deadly monotony of Lol's memory. I fall asleep.

S
HE
'
S
STILL
ASLEEP
, in the same position. She's been asleep for an hour. The light is more oblique now. Her eyelashes cast a shadow. A light breeze is blowing. Her hand is still in the same place as it was when she fell asleep, buried a trifle deeper in the sand, her fingernails are no longer visible.

She wakes up a moment after I do. There are very few people on this part of the beach, here the beach is silty, people go swimming farther down, miles away, the tide is way out, ebb tide for the moment, beneath the screams and shrieks of the idiotic gulls. We study each other. We've known each other so briefly. At first we're astonished. Then we rediscover our current memory, our marvelous, recent memory of this morning, we move into each other's arms, let me hold her tight, we stay this way, not saying a word, there being nothing to say until, looking toward that section of the beach where the swimmers are and which Lol, because of the position of her head on my shoulder, cannot see, there is some commotion, a crowd gathering around something I cannot see, perhaps a dead dog.

She gets up, takes me to a little restaurant she knows. She is famished.

Here we are then at Town Beach, Lol Stein and I. We are eating. Another series of events might have taken place, other revolutions between people other than ourselves, with other names, other spans of inner time might have occurred, longer or shorter, other tales of oblivion, of a vertical descent into the oblivion of memory, of lightning-like access to other memories, of other long nights, of love without end, of God knows what? Lol is right. That does not interest me.

Lol is eating, gathering sustenance.

I refuse to admit the end which is probably going to come and separate us, how easy it will be, how distressingly simple, for the moment I refuse to accept it, to accept this end, I accept the other, the end which has still to be invented, the end I do not yet know, that no one has invented: the endless end, the endless beginning of Lol Stein.

Watching her eat, I forget.

There's no way we can avoid spending the night in Town Beach. We realize this while we are eating, and the realization affixes itself to us, clings to us, we forget there might have been any other possibility. It is Lol who says:

"If you like we can spend the night here."

She's right, we can't get back.

I say:

"Yes, we'll stay here. We have no choice."

"I'm going to telephone my husband. The mere fact that I'm in Town Beach can't really be sufficient reason for him to ... "

She adds:

"Afterward I'll be so good and reasonable. Since I've already told him it was all over between us, I can change, can't I? I can, you see I can."

She clings to this conviction.

"Look at my face, you must be able to see it, tell me we can't go back."

"I can see it in your face, we can't go back."

In successive, steady waves, her eyes fill with tears, she laughs strangely, a laugh I have never heard.

"I want to be with you, you've no idea how I want to be with you."

She asks me to go and rent a room. She's going down to the beach to wait for me. I go to a hotel. I rent the room, I ask questions someone answers, I pay. I'm with her waiting for me: the tide is finally coming back in, it drowns the blue marshes one after the other until, progressively, slowly but surely, they lose their individuality and are made one with the sea, some are already gone, others still await their turn. The death of the marshes fills Lol with a frightful sadness, she waits, anticipates it, sees it happen. She recognizes it.

L
OL
DREAMS
of another time when the same thing that is going to happen would happen differently. In another way. A thousand times. Everywhere. Elsewhere. Among others, thousands of others who, like ourselves, dream of this time, necessarily. This dream contaminates me.

I'm obliged to undress her. She won't do it herself.

Now she is naked. Who is there in the bed? Who does she think it is?

Stretched out on the bed, she does not move a muscle. She is worried. She is motionless, remains there where I have placed her. Her eyes follow me across the room as I undress, as though I were a stranger. Who is it? The crisis is here. An attack brought on by the way we are now, here in this room, she and I alone.