Thérèse and Isabelle Page 4

  I was walking on ocean currents, I advanced, taking care of my crystal feet, of the flowers in my fist. I went into Isabelle’s box, I skipped the first hour of class for her. Her cell felt liberated, like my grandmother’s bedroom the day they took away her coffin.

  I want Isabelle. Let her come back, since the undertakers haven’t snatched her from me. I wait for her within the four corners of this hearse, I breathe the smell of her bedspread, I wait for her with mourning in my breast. The headmistress will inspect the cells, will find me on Isabelle’s bed, will expel me. We will be parted. I cannot leave her bed. I am trapped. What will we do tonight?

  I made up a story of dizzy spells; I lied to the teacher, to the other girls; I slipped into the class, into the lesson; I made up more than necessary. I was thinking of Isabelle, I was tormenting myself behind my pile of books.

  My mother gave in, but she gave in with bad grace. My mother has said it time and again, my mother will take me back before the holidays if she misses me, if she gets bored. If she were not married, I would be the one begging her: anything, anything you want but not to live far away from you in a school. Now it is the reverse. She is married. We are apart. How long will we remain apart? The time is over when I would scratch in the dirt for her, when I would slip through barbed-wire fences. I used to steal potatoes for us, from the fields. She took all my goods and chattels from me, even my satchel and lunch box. She sold our rabbits for a pittance—such a shame—eight days before her wedding. That was the end of my meadows. I used to insist that I was her fiancée. She would sigh. I didn’t know what exasperation looked like. She married without getting engaged. I scrubbed our three steps but she wanted a merchant. I will not be her daily laborer, I will not be her factory worker bringing in the money. She sold the rag-and-bone man the ash drawer from our stove, that I used to empty into the henhouse while the first drops of coffee were falling in our cafetière, imitating soft tongue-clicking sounds. Where are our clothespins, our laundry blue? She threw it all out. Mademoiselle was getting married. She sold off everything. She has all she requires. She is a married woman. I have become a convent-school boarder: I have no home. A man divided us. Hers. Your mother would be so happy if you didn’t call me “Monsieur” . . . I shall always call him “Monsieur.” Another piece of bread, Monsieur. No Monsieur, I don’t like rare meat. Call him “father,” she says, after the meal. Never. I prefer the refectory table where all our bread is shared. We thrust our hands into the bread basket, we do not say no thank you, yes please. I wandered about behind her: don’t get married, don’t get married . . . We would have done great things together: we would have been everything to each other. I would be cozy in her bed. She called me her little beggar; she would say: come nestle in my arms. She has a Louis XVI bed and she won’t walk arm in arm with me anymore. Monsieur is between us. She wants a daughter and a husband. I have a demanding mother. I am locked up in a school, I don’t walk behind them any longer on the evening promenade, I don’t sleep in the room adjoining theirs any more. She wants me to swaddle her, she wants me to devote myself to her as soon as he has left. You are the only one in the world, I only love you in this world she tells me, but she has someone else. I have met Isabelle, I have someone too. I belong to Isabelle, I no longer belong to my mother.

  At the blackboard a girl was drawing lines, crossing out triangles, writing the first letters of the alphabet next to the angles. I kept away from geometry.

  What will we do in the night to come? Isabelle knows. Tomorrow, in this class, in front of this desk, I will know what we have done. I stare at the small b. I shall quickly recall what we did last night. Everything we did before she picks up the cloth, before she rubs out the small b. I cannot remember all the details. We didn’t do anything. I am unfair. She kissed me, she came to me. Yes, she came. What a world . . . She came to lie upon me. I throw myself at Isabelle’s feet. I can hardly remember what we did and it is all I can think about. What will we do tonight? Another girl rubs out the triangle, small a, small b, small c.

  By four o’clock, my fever was mounting. Unleashed, the girls launched themselves into the corridors, their mouths full of soft white rolls.

  I will come into the study room on tiptoe, I will drop my hand onto her shoulder, I will take her by surprise, I will whip her with my question. What will we do tonight?

  I got there but I did not go in. People are working, officiating. I can hear the humming of their effort through the glass door, I am waiting for the right moment to appear, to play casual. I cannot see Isabelle there in supervised study. I shall enter like an invader. I entered like a felon.

  “Quiet,” said a girl, without raising her head.

  It was stricter than in church. Isabelle was studying at the first table near the platform. I sat down in my place, opened a book to be like her; I kept watch, I counted one two three four five six seven eight. I cannot approach her, I cannot distract her. A girl went up to Isabelle’s table and, without any hesitation, showed her an exercise. They were conversing, debating a point. Isabelle was living as she had lived before drawing me into her box. Isabelle was deceiving me, Isabelle fascinated me, Isabelle was starving me.

  I cannot read now. The question recurs in each meander of the geography book. How can I use up the time? She turns her profile to me, she exposes herself, she does not know that I am drinking her in, she turns toward me, she will never know what she has given me. She speaks, she is far away, she works, she discusses: a colt gambols in her head. I am nothing like her. I will go to her, I will come between Isabelle and the other girl. She is yawning—she is so human—she pulls the pin from her twist of hair, pushes it back with the same gesture, her gesture in the lavatories. She knows what she will do tonight but she is not worried about it.

  Isabelle leaned back over her work when the girl left the study room. Isabelle had seen me.

  I came down between the rows, squeezed tight by the walls of my joy.

  “My love. You were there?” she said.

  My head was empty.

  “Bring your books over. We shall work together. It is stifling in here.”

  I opened the window and looked stoically out into the schoolyard.

  “You’re not bringing your books?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “I could never work close to you. It is so strong . . .”

  When she sees me and her face changes, it is genuine. When she does not see me and her face does not change that is genuine too.

  “You really want me?” I ask.

  “Sit down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “My sweet.”

  “Don’t call me my sweet. I am afraid.”

  “Sit down, let’s talk.”

  “I can’t talk anymore.”

  I sat down near her, I sobbed a soundless sob.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  She took my hand beneath the desk.

  “Isabelle, Isabelle . . . What shall we do during recreation?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk.” I took back my hand.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” Isabelle insisted.

  “Don’t you understand?”

  “We will be together again. I promise you.”

  Toward seven in the evening, some girls gathered around me, suggested a stroll, some gossip. I faltered, I separated myself from them without acknowledging it. I was not free and no longer their age. I froze: Isabelle was tidying her books, she was close. The would-be truants and their temptations went off to another table. One tall girl standing alone before the open window was embroidering a handkerchief, her back to the sky. She raised her eyes, looked at me without seeing, she went on embroidering. I stayed at my desk. Isabelle was tidying her books yet the embroiderer was she.

  My peach skin: the evening light in the playground at seven o’clock. My chervil: arachnean lace in the air. My sacred caskets: the trees�
�� foliage with their breezy altars. What will we do tonight? The evening shades into the day, I see the evening in royal renaissance costume. The air cossets me but I don’t know what we will do for our next night together. I hear noises, I hear seven-in-the-evening voices that embrace the thoughtful horizon. The glove of infinity has me in its grip.

  “What are you looking at, Thérèse?”

  “There . . . the geraniums . . .”

  “What else?”

  “The boulevard, the window—they’re all you.”

  “Give me your arm. Don’t you want to?”

  The evening came upon us with its velvet mantle down to our knees.

  “We can’t go arm in arm. People will notice, we’ll be caught.”

  “Are you ashamed?” asked Isabelle.

  “Ashamed of what? Don’t you understand? I am being careful.” Groups of girls were watching us. Isabelle took my arm.

  “Imagine you were expelled. It would be . . .”

  I could not finish, I could not picture myself dead.

  I tried again:

  “You are the best student in the school. You won’t be expelled. Imagine if I were.”

  “It would be dreadful,” said Isabelle.

  I shivered.

  “Let’s run!” she said.

  Girls were waiting for the dinner bell in clusters by the walls and left the yard to us.

  The schoolyard was ours. We ran, arms around each other’s waist, our foreheads tearing through that lace in the air, we listened to the rippling of our hearts in the dust. Tiny white horses rode in our breasts. The girls and monitors laughed and clapped, they encouraged us when we began to slow.

  “Faster, faster! Close your eyes. I’m leading,” said Isabelle.

  There was a wall to put behind us. We would be alone.

  “You’re not running fast enough. Yes, yes . . . Close your eyes, close your eyes.”

  I obeyed.

  Her lips brushed my lips.

  “I’m afraid of falling over and killing myself,” I said.

  I opened my eyes: we were alive.

  “Afraid? I’m guiding you,” she said.

  “We can run more if you want.”

  I was exhausted.

  “My woman, my child,” she said.

  She gave and she withheld words. She could hug them to her while hugging me. I half-released my fingers from around her waist, I counted: my love, my woman, my child. Three fingers for my three engagement rings.

  A girl was ringing the dinner bell.

  “Keep on ringing,” called Isabelle to her.

  Drowned in her ringing, the ringer laughed.

  “One more run,” pleaded Isabelle. “I must talk to you, I must tell you about it.”

  “Talk to me?”

  I thought there would be no more nights. We were running but I was paralyzed. I took the lead:

  “Am I not to come?”

  The bell was ringing long and loud.

  “You will come tonight,” said Isabelle.

  It seemed that the ringer was ringing differently and that our wedding was beginning on the church steps, once the other couples had been blessed.

  “Louder, louder,” called Isabelle to the ringer.

  “Enough, enough!” Shouted the playground monitor. The girl hooked the chain back on its nail.

  We walked in step, through the resounding throng. We were severe, shackled, we were an official couple without past, without future, we had cast-iron crowns upon our heads, bailiff’s chains across our chests, our majesty was conferred by the weight of our finery, we proceeded with our wrists gripped in our identical uniforms.

  A convent bell rang in another world.

  We shuffled into rows.

  “Speak again.”

  “No, since it’s over,” said Isabelle.

  The ringing of the bell faded away: the convent was drowning in the general shipwreck, the girls fell silent for the minute of silence. Isabelle changed places. We closed ranks, we kept our distance and the embroiderer embroidered among the troops.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you,” I said too.

  The little ones were already eating. We ignored the words we had just exchanged, we each chatted to the girl on the other side, we sought refuge in these distractions.

  My neighbor on the right was embroidering something under the table.

  “Who’s that for?”

  “That question again!” she exclaimed. “For my brother. Do you like the pattern?”

  “You have a brother?”

  “Do you like the pattern?”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eighteen. A year older than me. It’s he who will get me out of here. We shall never leave each other.”

  “You know that already?”

  “When we’ve finished our studies we shall run a family hotel together at the seaside. We have the money . . .”

  “Do you look much like him?”

  “I’m the very image of him as a girl. Why were you running so fast with Isabelle?”

  “Why won’t you ever leave your brother?”

  The servants were bringing in the dishes, my neighbor put away her needlework. I ate as old people do: alone with my plate. Isabelle rested her elbow on the book she had taken from me while we were running in the yard.

  Dusk was falling as crepe falls over faces. I wanted to lay my body on Isabelle’s, I wished we could go up to the dormitory. But she was thinking, huddled in the folds of her stony white apron. There she was, my museum, there the snag in the crepe. I languished, I was deadly, the big cats’ stalking slowed the routes through my favorite landscapes, the refectory clock’s stilted time wanted persuasion. The unpredictable breeze swept in, it caressed my hands, seduced my memories.

  How secret our separation was, in the general evening separation, when we all scattered at the dormitory door.

  As ever, I was back at my percale curtain. An iron hand snatched me away, steered me elsewhere. Isabelle threw me onto her bed and buried her face in my underpants, in my crotch.

  “Come back when they are asleep,” she said.

  She drove me away, she fascinated me.

  I was in love: I had nowhere to hide. I should have only waiting rooms and the time suspended between our meetings. I dropped onto my bed.

  “I didn’t hear a noise,” said the monitor. “What are you doing? Not yet undressed!”

  “I was lying down. I was thinking about my work,” I say.

  “You must get undressed. Quickly now. I’m turning out the lights.”

  The curtain fell closed again, Isabelle coughed.

  Isabelle was coughing, sitting up in bed. Isabelle was ready with her cape of hair over her shoulders. Her cape. Returning to this scene paralyzed me. I collapsed onto her chair, onto the rug: the scene followed me everywhere. The monitor had turned out the lights.

  “I’m dying to get to sleep,” said a girl at the far end of the dormitory.

  “Shush,” retorted the new monitor.

  The dormitory settled.

  I was undressing in the darkness, pressing my chaste hand to my skin, I was breathing myself in, recognizing myself, abandoning myself. I packed the silence down into my washbasin; wringing out my wash sponge, I was wringing out the silence too; drying myself, I smoothed it along my skin.

  The monitor turned the light out in her room; a girl was muttering; Isabelle coughed again: she was calling me. I decided that if I did not close the box of dental paste, I would remember this atmosphere, of before I returned to Isabelle and her box. I was creating a past for myself.

  “Are you ready?” whispered Isabelle, behind my curtain.

  She was gone again. Her discretion delighted and disappointed me.

  Once again I opted for the regulation nightgown, which I now put on; I calculated too that I would change what I wore every evening, that a day student could give my dresses to a laundry in town.

  I opened the window in my cell. The night and
the sky needed nothing of us. Living in the open air would be sacrilege. Only our absence could further ornament the trees’ evening. I dared a quick look into the passage but the passage was disheartening. Their sleep frightened me: I hadn’t the courage to step over the sleeping girls, to walk barefoot over their faces. I closed the window and, like the leaves, the percale quivered.

  “Are you coming?”

  I turned on the light: her hair did indeed fall like a cape as I had pictured it, but I hadn’t foreseen the sturdy tautness of her nightgown. Isabelle stepped away again.

  I came in with my flashlight, which I held as you hold a missal.

  “Take off your clothes,” said Isabelle.

  She was leaning on one elbow, her hair raining down over her profile.

  “Take off your dress, turn out the light.”

  I turned out her hair, her eyes, her hands. I shed my nightgown. This was not new: I was casting off the lovers’ first night.

  “What are you doing?” said Isabelle.

  “Dawdling.”

  “Come!”

  “Yes Isabelle, yes.”

  She was growing restless in bed while I, in my shyness, was posing naked for the shadows.

  “But what are you up to?”

  I slipped into her bed. I had been cold, I would be warm.

  I stiffened, I didn’t want to crush her pubic hair. She forced me, she laid me down along her body; Isabelle wanted the union of our skins. I was reciting my body upon hers, bathing my belly in the lilies of her belly, finding my way inside a cloud. She skimmed my hips, she shot strange arrows. I rose up, I fell back onto her.

  “We must not move, not breathe. Be dead,” she said.

  We were listening to what was happening inside us, emanating from us. Couples surrounded us, spying.

  The springs creaked.

  “Careful!” She said, at my mouth.

  The monitor had switched on the light in her room.

  I was kissing the mouth of a vanilla-scented little girl. We had turned good again.

  “Let’s hug each other,” said Isabelle.

  We tightened the circle of our hold.

  “Crush me . . .”

  She wanted to but she couldn’t. She was thrashing my pelvis.