The Ravishing of Lol Stein (5 page)

Did he look like her fiancé from Town Beach? No, not in the slightest. Did he have certain mannerisms that reminded her of her dead lover? Yes, no doubt he did, especially the way he looked at women. He too, like the other one, must have been an incorrigible ladies' man, must have borne the burdens of his body only with them, this body which, with every glance, demanded more. Yes, Lol decided, he did have, there emanated from him, that initial expression that Michael Richardson had had, the one that Lol had known before the ball.

He was not as young as Lol had thought the first time she had seen him. But she may have been mistaken. She doubtless found that he must be an impatient person, perhaps easily given to cruelty.

He scanned the boulevard in the vicinity of the cinema. Lol had taken refuge back around the corner of the building.

Behind him, in her gray coat, Lol, unmoving, waits for him to make up his mind which way to go.

This is what I see:

The heat of a summer which till that day she had listlessly endured explodes and spreads. She is submerged in it. Everything is: the street, the town, this stranger. What heat, and what is this weariness? Nor is it the first time she has felt it. For several weeks she has sometimes wished she had a bed, or something akin to a bed, right there where she was, a bed on which to lay this heavy, leaden body, this body so difficult to move, this thankless and tender maturity, just on the verge of falling down upon an unresponsive, all-devouring earth. Ah, what is this body with which she suddenly feels herself saddled? Whatever became of the indefatigable, birdlike body that had been hers up till now?

He made up his mind: he headed up the boulevard. Did he have a moment's hesitation? Yes. He looked at his watch and decided on that direction. Did Lol already know the name of the woman he was going to meet? Not yet, not quite. She is still unaware that it is the woman she has followed, through this man from South Tahla. And yet this woman is now no longer merely the woman she caught a glimpse of in front of her garden: I think she is already more for Lol.

If there was a certain place where he had to be at a certain time, he apparently had plenty of time between that and the present moment. He therefore spent it in the following manner, walking rather in that direction than in some other, in the vague hope, which he never abandoned, thought Lol, of meeting some other woman, of following her and standing up the one he was supposed to meet. He spent this time in a way Lol found exquisite.

He walked at a steady pace, close to the shop windows. He is not the first who, for the past several weeks, has been walking this way. He would turn and stare at any woman who was beautiful and alone, sometimes he would stop and ogle them in a vulgar way. Each time he did, Lol gave a start, as though he had done it to her.

On a beach, in the full flush of her youth, she had previously seen someone act like this, the way a lot of men in South Tahla acted. Does she suddenly remember having been a victim of it? Does it make her smile? In all probability these tentative advances can be counted among Lol's happy and tender memories. Now she sees their surreptitious stares directed at her, in an absolute equivalence. She, who does not see herself, is thus seen, in others. Therein lies the omnipotence of this substance whereof she is made, without any particular ties.

They are walking on a beach, for her. They don't know it. She has no trouble following him. He takes big steps, but his torso, carefully controlled, moves hardly at all. He didn't know it.

It was a weekday. There were few people about. It was just before the height of the holiday season.

I see this:

Careful, calculating, she walks a good distance behind him. When he stares at another woman, she lowers her head or averts her gaze. What little he can see perhaps—this gray coat, this black beret, nothing more—is not dangerous. When he pauses in front of a shop window, or anything else, she slows down so that she won't have to stop at the same time as he. If they were to see her—the men from South Tahla—Lol would turn and run away.

She wants to follow. Follow, then take by surprise, threaten to surprise. She has wanted to for some time. If she wants to be taken by surprise in her turn, she does not want it to happen before she has decided on it.

The boulevard rises gently toward a square which they reach at the same time. From there three other boulevards head out toward the suburbs. This is the side of town the forest is on. Children's shouts.

He followed the one that leads farthest away from the forest: a straight avenue, only recently opened, on which the traffic is heavier than on the others, the fastest route out of town. He began to walk faster. It was getting late. The time he had left before his appointment, the time they both had left, both he and Lol, was growing shorter and shorter.

Thus he was spending this time in a way that, in Lol's eyes, was perfect: looking for something. He wasted it well, he walked and walked. Each one of his steps echoes in Lol, strikes, strikes true, in the same place, the nail of flesh. For the past several days, the past several weeks, the steps of the men of South Tahla have been striking the same way.

This I invent, I see:

The only times she feels the suffocating heat of summer are when he does something besides just walking, when he runs his fingers through his hair, when he lights a cigarette, and especially when he eyes a passing woman. At these times Lol doubts that she has the strength to keep on following him, while she continues to do so, to follow this man among all the men of South Tahla.

Lol knew where this highway led once it had passed the houses on the square, and when it had also passed the small commercial center detached from the town proper, consisting of a cinema and a few bars.

I invent:

At that distance, he can't even hear the sound of her footsteps on the sidewalk.

She is wearing the silent, low-heeled shoes she wears to go walking. Still, she takes an added precaution, she removes her beret.

When he stops on the square where the boulevard ends, she takes off her gray coat too. She is in navy blue, a woman he still doesn't see.

He paused beside a bus stop. There was a large crowd of people, many more than in town.

Then Lol walks clear around the square and takes up a position near the stop for buses leaving in the opposite direction.

The sun had already disappeared, and its rays were lighting the rooftops.

He lighted a cigarette, paced back and forth a few times the length of the bus stop. He glanced at his watch, saw that it was not quite time, and waited. Lol found that he was capable of looking around him in half a dozen directions at once.

There were women there, a crush of women waiting for the bus, women crossing the square, women passing by. Not one of them escaped his glance, Lol imagined, not one who might have suited his fancy or, if worst came to worst, someone else's fancy, why not? He eyed their dresses like a ferret, thought Lol, perfectly at his ease there in the crowd while waiting for this appointment of which he already had a foretaste there right under his nose, taking, imagining he was having for a few seconds each of the women, then rejecting them, mourning each and every loss, mourning one alone, the one who did not yet exist but who, if she did, would be capable of making him, at the last minute, stand up the woman among a thousand others who was about to come, come toward Lol Stein, the woman Lol was waiting for with him.

S
HE
DID
IN
FACT
arrive, she descended from a bus crowded with people on their way home from work.

The moment she heads toward him, with that very slow, very gentle, circular movement of her hips which makes her, at every step, the object of some secret, ceaseless, caressing self-flattery, as soon as Lol sees the black mass of dry, mistlike hair with the tiny, white, triangular face beneath, that face dominated completely by those very large, very bright eyes, gravely disturbed by their ineffable remorse at belonging to this adulterous body, Lol admits that she recognized Tatiana Karl. Then, and only then, she believes, the name that had been hovering on the edge of her consciousness for weeks was there: Tatiana Karl.

She was discreetly dressed in a casual black suit. But her hair was done with great care, there was a gray flower in it, she had pinned it up with gold combs, and she had gone to great lengths to fasten her fragile hairdo with a long, wide, black hair band which, where it passed close to her face, framed her bright eyes, made them look even larger, even more sorrowful, and this hair-do, which would have been destroyed by the slightest exposure to the wind, which, in fact, a mere look would undo, she must have—Lol is speculating now—she must have had to imprison in a dark hair net so that, at the proper moment, he would be the only one who could breach and destroy its admirable artificiality, one single movement of his hand would bathe her in its fallen tresses, that marvelous head of hair which, suddenly, Lol remembers and sees again, luminously juxtaposed to this one. In those days people said that, sooner or later, she would have to have her hair cut, that its sheer weight would wear her out and make her round-shouldered, would disfigure her because its mass was disproportionate to her large eyes and the tiny bone structure of her thin face. Tatiana Karl has not cut her hair, she has accepted the challenge of having too much.

Is that the way Tatiana looked that day? Or somewhat, or completely, different? There were times when she wore her hair down, in a long pony tail, times when she wore light-colored dresses. I no longer know for sure.

They exchanged a few words and started walking down that avenue, out beyond the suburbs.

They kept a step apart. They scarcely spoke.

I think I can see what Lol Stein must have seen:

There is an incredible contact between them, which does not stem from an intimate knowledge of each other but, on the contrary, from a disdain for such knowledge. They both have the same expression of silent consternation, of terror, of profound indifference. The closer they get to their destination, the faster they walk. Lol Stein watches these lovers, she devours them with her eyes, she invents them. She is not deceived by the way they look, not she. They don't love each other. What is there for her to say? Others surely would say it. If she were to talk she would phrase it differently, but she does not speak. Other ties bind them in a grip which is not one of sentiment or of happiness, it is something else which bestows neither joy nor sorrow. They are neither happy nor unhappy. Their union is constructed upon indifference, in a way which is general and which they apprehend moment by moment, a union from which all preference is excluded. They are together, two trains which meet and pass, around them the landscape, sensuous and lushly green, is the same, they see it, they are not alone. One can come to terms with them. By opposite paths, they have arrived at the same result as Lol Stein, they by doing, saying, by trying and failing, by going away and coming back, by lying, losing, winning, advancing, by coming back again, and she, Lol, by doing nothing.

There is a choice seat waiting to be taken, a seat which she failed to have ten years before in Town Beach. But where? It can't be compared to that opera seat in Town Beach. But what seat is it then? She will have to be content with this one so that, at last, she can make her way, move a step or two toward that distant bank upon which they, the others, dwell. Toward what? What is that bank?

The long, narrow building must have been used sometime in the past either as a barracks or as some kind of administration building. One section of it serves as a garage for buses. The other is the Forest Hotel, of doubtful reputation but the only place in town where couples can meet in complete confidence. The street it faces is called Forest Boulevard, and the hotel is the last number on the street. Along its façade stands a row of ancient alder trees, some of which are missing. Behind the hotel there stretches a broad field of rye, smooth and treeless.

There is still a last vestige of sunlight on this flat landscape, on this field.

Lol remembers this hotel from the times she went there as a young girl with Michael Richardson. And she has probably ventured out as far as this hotel on some of her walks. It was there that Michael Richardson told her he loved her. The memory of that winter afternoon has, like the rest, been engulfed in forgetfulness, been swallowed up in the slow, daily glaciation of South Tahla beneath her footsteps.

It was here, on this same spot, that a girl from South Tahla began to adorn herself—it must have taken several months—for the Town Beach ball. It was from here that she left to go to that ball.

On Forest Boulevard, Lol slackens her step. There's no point in following so close behind now that she knows where they're going. The worst that could happen is that she might run the risk of being recognized by Tatiana Karl.

When she reaches the hotel, they have already gone upstairs.

Lol, on the street, waits. The sun is setting. Dusk is falling, in a rush of red, doubtless sad. Lol waits.

Lol Stein is behind the Forest Hotel, stationed at one corner of the building. Time passes. She has no idea whether the rooms that look out over the field of rye are still the ones they rent out by the hour. This field, only a few short yards from her, is plunged, deeper and deeper, into a green, milky shadow.

On the third floor of the Forest Hotel, a light goes on in one of the windows. Yes. They are the same rooms as in her day.

I see how she gets there. Very quickly, she reaches the field of rye, slips into it, sits down in it, stretches out in it. Before her is that lighted window. But Lol is far from its light.

The idea of what she is doing never crosses her mind. I still maintain that this is the first time, that she is there without the faintest idea of being there, that, if she were asked, she would simply say that she was resting. From the fatigue of getting there. From the fatigue that will follow. From the necessity of returning. Living, dying, she breathes deeply, tonight the air is like honey, cloyingly sweet. She does not even question the source of the wonderful weakness which has brought her to lie in this field. She lets it act upon her, fill her until she thinks she will suffocate, lets it lull her roughly, pitilessly, until Lol Stein is fast asleep.