The Ravishing of Lol Stein (7 page)

Tatiana no longer has about her that fresh-linen smell of the dormitories where, in the evenings, her laughter used to ring out in search of a friendly ear to whom she could relate the practical jokes she had dreamed up for the next day. The next day is here. Tatiana, in her golden skin, smells of amber now, the present, the present alone, which turns round and round, whirls in the dust and at last alights with a cry, the soft cry with broken wings, and Lol is the only person to notice the break in it.

"Lord! It's been ten years since I've seen you, Lola!"

"Yes, ten years, Tatiana."

Arm in arm, they ascend the terrace steps. Tatiana introduces Peter Beugner, her husband, to Lol, and Jack Hold, a friend of theirs—the distance is covered —me.

I'
M
THIRTY
-
SIX
YEARS
OLD
, a member of the medical profession. I've been living in South Tahla only for a year. I'm in Peter Beugner's section at the State Hospital. I'm Tatiana Karl's lover.

From the moment Lol entered the house, she never so much as glanced at me again.

She immediately began talking to Tatiana about a photograph she had happened to come across while she was cleaning up a room in the attic recently: they were both in it, holding hands, in the school yard, dressed in the school uniform. They were fifteen. Tatiana didn't remember the picture. Personally, I believed it existed, Tatiana asked if she could see it. Lol promised to show it to her.

"Tatiana has talked to us about you," Peter Beugner said.

Tatiana isn't a very talkative person anyway, and that day she was even less so than usual. She hung on Lol Stein's every word, prodded her into talking about her recent life. She wanted both to acquaint us with, and learn more herself about, the way Lol lived, about her husband, her children, her house, how she spent her time, about her past: Lol was not the most talkative person in the world either, but she spoke clearly enough, rationally enough to reassure anyone who might have been concerned about her present condition—but not her, not Tatiana. No, Tatiana was concerned about Lol in a different way than were the others: that she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be completely cured of one's passion. And besides, Lol's had been an ineffable passion, that she was quite willing to admit, even today, in spite of the reservations she still has concerning the part it had played in Lol's breakdown.

"You speak of your life as though you were reciting from a book," Tatiana said.

"From one year to the next," Lol said with a vague smile, "I see nothing any different around me."

"Tell me something, you know what I mean, about how we were when we were young," Tatiana begged.

Lol racked her brain, searching for something, some detail out of her youth that might have enabled Tatiana to rediscover some vestige of that real friendship she had felt for Lol during their school years together. She found nothing. She said:

"If you want my opinion, I think people were wrong in their judgment."

Tatiana did not reply.

The conversation drifted into platitudes, slowed, became dull because Tatiana was watching Lol like a hawk, watching her slightest smile, her every move, and that occupied her entirely. Peter Beugner spoke to Lol about South Tahla, and about the changes that had taken place in the town since the women had been young. Lol had followed each detail of South Tahla's development, the construction of new streets, the plans for new buildings in the suburbs, she spoke of it as she spoke of her life, in a calm, controlled voice. Then again silence set in. They talked of Uxbridge. They talked.

Nothing about this woman betrayed the slightest hint, even fleetingly, of Lol Stein's breakdown, her strange mourning for Michael Richardson.

Of her insanity—which had been eradicated, leveled —nothing seemed to remain, no trace except her presence that afternoon at Tatiana Karl's. The reason for her presence was a streak of color on a smooth, unbroken horizon, but only a faint streak, for, quite plausibly, she might merely have been bored with herself and come to pay a call on Tatiana Karl. Still, Tatiana was wondering why, why she was there. It was inevitable: she had nothing to say to Tatiana, nothing to tell, she seemed only to have the vaguest recollection, virtually no memory at all, of their school days together, and her ten years in Uxbridge required no more than ten minutes to sum up.

I was the only one to realize, because of that immense, half-starved look she had given me while she had been embracing Tatiana, that there was a specific purpose behind her visit here. How was that possible? I had my doubts. In order to derive an even greater pleasure in remembering exactly how she had looked at me, I persisted in doubting. It was completely different from her expression at present. There remained no trace of it. But her indifference toward me now was too obvious to be natural. She studiously avoided looking at me. Nor did I say anything to her.

"In what way were people wrong?" Tatiana said at last.

Tense, not liking to be interrogated in this way, she none the less made this reply, profoundly sorry to disappoint Tatiana:

"About the reasons," she said, "they were wrong about the reasons."

"That I knew," Tatiana said, "I mean ... I suspected as much. Things are never as simple . . ."

Once again Peter Beugner changed the subject. Obviously he was the only one of us who could not bear to see Lol's face when she spoke of her youth. He began talking again, talking to her about what? about how beautiful her garden was, and her lawn, he explained that he had passed by her house and seen it, and what a marvelous idea it was to have planted that hedge between her house and that street with its heavy traffic!

She seemed to sense something, to suspect that there was more than a purely platonic relationship between Tatiana and me. Whenever Tatiana turns her attention from Lol for a moment, when she leaves off questioning her, it becomes more apparent: whenever she is in the presence of one of her lovers, Tatiana is inevitably affected by the always recent memory of her afternoons in the Forest Hotel. Whenever she gets to her feet, moves from one spot to another, whenever she rearranges her hair, or sits down, her movements are sensual. Her girlish body, her wound, her happy misery, cries out, calls for the paradise of her lost unity, calls endlessly, now and forever, for someone to console her and comfort her, her body is whole only in a hotel bed.

Tatiana serves tea. Lol's eyes follow her. We are both watching her, Lol and I. Any other aspect of Tatiana becomes secondary. In Lol's eyes, and in mine, she is nothing but Jack Hold's mistress. I have a difficult time following what they are both reminiscing about now, in a bantering tone, something about their youth, about Tatiana's hair. Lol says:

"Ah, when you unpinned your hair and let it down in the evening, the whole dormitory would come and watch. We used to give you a hand."

It will never be a question of Lol's blondness, nor of her blue eyes, never.

I intend to find out why, no matter what I have to do, why, why me?

Then this happened. As Tatiana is once again arranging her hair I am thinking back to yesterday—Lol is watching her—I remember my head buried in her breast, yesterday. I have no idea that Lol saw us, and yet the way she is watching Tatiana is what prompts me to remember. It seems to me I already know a trifle more about what is going on inside Tatiana when, naked, she rearranges her hair in the room in the Forest Hotel.

What was this unruffled ghost concealing about a love so deep, so strong, they said, that it had literally driven her mad? I was on my guard. She is soft and gentle, smiling, she is speaking of Tatiana Karl.

Personally, Tatiana did not believe that Lol Stein's insanity could be traced back solely to that ball, she traced its origins back further, further in Lol's life, back to her youth, she saw it as stemming from somewhere else. In school, she says, there was something lacking in Lol, she was already then strangely incomplete, she had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become. In school, she was a marvel of gentleness and indifference, she changed friends with abandon, she never made the least effort to combat boredom, nor had she ever been known to shed a sentimental schoolgirl's tear. When the rumor of her engagement to Michael Richardson first became known, she, Tatiana, had only half believed it. Who could Lol have found, who could ever have captured her so completely? or at least to a sufficient degree to entice her into marriage? who could have captured her unfinished heart? Does Tatiana still believe she was wrong?

I also seem to remember Tatiana's telling me some bits of gossip, lots of gossip, rumors that had been rife in South Tahla at the time of Lol Stein's marriage. Didn't one rumor have it that she was already pregnant with her first daughter? I can't remember exactly, this one, and the others like it, are nothing but a confused murmur in the distance which I can no longer distinguish from the tales that Tatiana tells at present. Now, I alone of all these perverters of the truth know this: that I know nothing. That was my initial discovery about her: to know nothing about Lol Stein was already to know her. One could, it seemed to me, know even less about her, less and less about Lol Stein.

Some time went by. Lol stayed on, happy still, but not convincing any of us that it was because she had seen Tatiana again.

"Do you ever have occasion to come by the house?" Tatiana asks.

Lol says that she sometimes does, she goes out walking every day, in the afternoon, today however she made a point of coming, she had written several letters to the school and then to Tatiana's parents, after she had come across that photograph.

Why was she staying on and on?

It is now evening.

In the evening, Tatiana always grew sad. She could never forget. Again tonight she glanced outside: the white standard of lovers on their maiden voyage still floats over the darkened city. No longer is defeat Tatiana's lot, she bursts forth, pours over the universe. She says that she would have liked to take a trip. She asks Lol if she feels the same way. Lol says that she hasn't ever given the matter any thought.

"Perhaps I would, but where?"

"You'll find some place," Tatiana says.

They could not get over the fact that they had never run into each other in the center of town. But the fact is, Tatiana says, that she does not go out a great deal at this time of year, and when she does it's generally to pay a visit to her parents. That's not true. Tatiana has plenty of free time. I take up all of Tatiana's free time.

Lol is recounting the story of her life subsequent to her marriage: the birth of her children, her vacations. She gives a detailed, room-by-room description— maybe that's what she thinks we want to know—of the house she had formerly lived in Uxbridge, a description that goes on so long that, once again, Tatiana and Peter Beugner begin to grow uncomfortable. I listen, hanging on her every word. Actually, she is telling about how a dwelling becomes empty when she moves in.

"The living room is so big that we could have given a dance in it. I was never able to do a thing with it, nothing I tried in the way of furnishings seemed to work."

She goes on with her descriptions. She is talking of Uxbridge. Suddenly she is no longer doing it to please or impress us, like some little girl reciting her lessons, the way she must have promised herself she would. Her words are flowing faster, her voice is louder, her eyes are no longer upon us: she is saying that the ocean is not far from that house they used to live in in Uxbridge. Tatiana gives a start: the ocean's a good two hours from Uxbridge. But Lol notices nothing.

"I mean, if it weren't for the new buildings that have gone up we could have seen the beach from my bedroom window."

She goes on to describe that room, and the slip is forgotten. She comes back to Town Beach, which she does not confuse with anything else, again she is present among us, in full possession of all her faculties.

"Some day I'll go back there, there's no reason why I shouldn't."

I wanted to see her eyes on me again: I say:

"Why not go back there sometime this summer?"

She looked at me, the way I wanted her to. This look, which slipped away from her, altered her train of thought. She answered vaguely:

"Perhaps this year. I used to love the beach"—to Tatiana—"do you remember?"

Her eyes are like velvet, the way only dark eyes can be, hers now are a mixture of still water and silt, revealing nothing at present except a kind of drowsy sweetness.

"You still have that sweet, gentle expression you always had," Tatiana says.

Here, in a smile, here is a kind of joyous mockery which, to my mind, is inappropriate. Tatiana suddenly recognizes something.

"Ah!" she says, "that's the way you used to make fun of people whenever anyone told you that."

Perhaps she had just fallen asleep for a long moment.

"I wasn't making fun. You thought I was. How lovely you are, Tatiana! Ah, how well I remember!"

Tatiana got up to embrace Lol. Another woman took over in her stead, unforseeable, out of place, unrecognizable. Whom was she making fun of, if indeed she was?

I had to know her, because such was her desire. The pink of her cheeks is for me, she smiles for me, her ironic comments are meant for me. It is warm, suddenly we are stifling in Tatiana's living room. I say:

"You're beautiful too."

With a movement of her head, an abrupt movement, as though I had slapped her, she turns to me:

"Do you think so?"

"Yes," says Peter Beugner.

She laughs again.

"How ridiculous!"

Tatiana becomes solemn. She contemplates her friend attentively. I realize that she is virtually certain that Lol is not completely recovered. I can see that this is profoundly reassuring to her; even this pale vestige of Lol's insanity puts a halt to the terrible swift flight of things, slows to some slight extent the insensate flight of past summers.

"Your voice is different," Tatiana says, "but I would have recognized your laugh anywhere."