Thérèse and Isabelle (9 page)

“It's a landscape, nicely done.”

Isabelle was making overtures while her hair mingled with mine.

I was afraid I would scream. I stepped backward.

Isabelle threw back her lock of hair, stepped forward. Her cheek pressed a long kiss on mine.

“Stop, I say, stop, you are killing me.”

She pushed me, furiously, into Renée, excused herself.

Younger girls disturbed us with their shouts. I love you and you won't answer me, said the hand resting in mine. Renée was gazing at the photograph, guessing, probably, at the couple next to her, for she
dared not look up. I was caught between the false innocence of the one and the other's audacity. Isabelle's hand, through the folds in her apron, was stroking me. It was crazy. I was rotting away, my flesh was bursting ripe.

“You can give back the photograph at the end!” said Renée.

“Leave it. She's examining it,” said Isabelle to Renée.

Guessing that the glazed paper was my protection, Isabelle fended off the lightning that would have struck right through me, that would have revealed the terrifying halo in my belly. I collapsed, clutching the landscape in my hand.

“Slap her,” Renée said to Isabelle; “slap her, she'll recover.”

Isabelle did not reply.

“A handkerchief, quick a handkerchief, eau de cologne,” shouted someone else. “Thérèse has collapsed . . . Thérèse is ill.”

“Find some vinegar, find some spirit!”

I was listening and resting on the tiles while simulating a dead faint to follow my collapse. I dared not get to my feet for fear of ridicule. I am often exhausted on waking up: I imagine the sorrow, I imagine the absence of sorrow of those finding out that I had ceased to live. Isabelle was still silent, Isabelle was getting used to my death. Girls were shaking me, peering under my eyelids, calling my name; I was not there. I had disappeared because I could not love her in public: the scandal I had spared us would fall upon me alone. I stood up, avoiding the horrid smell of vinegar.

“It was nothing,” I said.

I patted my forehead.

“Go up to the dormitory,” said the new monitor. “Who will go with her?”

She dabbed at my forehead, my lips, with her cursed vinegar.

“I'll go,” said Isabelle.

We left, a sorry pair, and heard the military step of the girls going into the refectory.
Isabelle was embracing a girl who had had a fainting spell. The wretchedness is greater than the fault. We walked without speaking, without looking at each other. She stopped when I stopped, she walked when I started to walk again. I tramped sadly over the mat at the foot of the stairs, I hoped for reconciliation. She . . . I loved her all along the banisters, at every step. Every time I lifted a foot I made a vow of reconciliation. She withdrew her arm, buttoned her smock up at the wrist, put her arm around my waist again, to comply with the monitor's order. It was a nurse who sent me down the dormitory passage, who lifted the curtain to my cell, who went off to her own room. My smock sprayed with vinegar, my wet hair, were disheartening.

She opened the curtain wide, she aired everything before coming in. She would disinfect my soul; she was intimidating me.

“Why did you do that?”

She addressed me like family, she was honeying our past.

“Why did you do that?”

“. . .”

“Did you fake it or were you really tired?”

“I faked it. Don't scold me.”

“I'm not scolding you.”

“Leave that brush alone! Don't go . . .”

She came back into my box and the sun presented her to me. I gave her hand my deepest kiss.

“Forgive me,” I pleaded.

“Don't. It's awful, what you're saying. Are you tired?”

“I won't be tired until the holidays.”

“I must be seen in the refectory, Thérèse.”

Her weight on my knees was comforting.

“Close your eyes, listen: I collapsed in the hall because you were getting too close. My strength vanished. You were provoking me.”

“It's true,” said Isabelle.

She opened her eyes: our soft kiss made us moan.

“Someone's coming,” said Isabelle. “The saliva . . . wipe away the saliva . . .”

“Not yet at table, Isabelle!” exclaimed the head monitor. “As for you, I'll have your breakfast brought up here.”

When I returned to the study room, I found an envelope inside my locker. I sat down in Isabelle's place, since I had no lesson to attend; I contemplated the ink splots on her desk. A few girls were studying in the light of the new day. The white envelope rustled when I touched my hand to my heart; Isabelle's writing shivered. I put off reading it, I studied a physics textbook, I worked halfheartedly inside my idler's carapace. The sun was tempting me, the sky's brightness was tinting my wrists; through the open windows, the teachers' pompous
voices had lost the resonance lent them by winter classrooms.

Seasons, give us your rags. Let us be wanderers with our hair slicked down by rain. Isabelle, would you . . . would you set up home with me beside an embankment? We would devour our crusts like lions, we seek out the piquancy of the gales; we would have a house, lace curtains, while the caravans are passing, heading for the borders. I would undress you in the corn, I would shelter you inside haystacks, I would lie with you in the water beneath the low branches, I would care for you upon the forest mosses, I would take you in the alfalfa fields, I would raise you up on the hay wains, my Carolingian lady.

I escaped from the study room, I read her letter in the lavatories:

“Gather strength, sleep when you can, fortify yourself for the night to come, think of our future from this evening.”

I wound the chain of the flush around my neck; with each link, I kissed the next of Isabelle's vertebrae. I tore up her instructions and threw them into the lavatory bowl. Quarter past nine. The clock in the great court marked an Olympian time, higher than the narrow time of the classrooms.

My physics book's paper cover tore off, my retractable pencil rolled away beneath the radiator: the things I was leaving behind were fleeing from me. Outside in the corridor, day students were waiting for the second class, they were coming and going behind the glass door. They were not in love: their ease and their nonchalance oppressed me.

“You're being spoken to,” said a girl.

I was sleeping during the cosmography class.

“She's been ill,” said the girl. “She fainted in the hall. We don't know what's wrong with her.”

I went back to sleep.

After cosmography came ethics, through which I also dozed. Eleven twenty-five, eleven thirty, eleven thirty-five. I could see our reunion in the broad angle of that eleven thirty-five. My awaking had been that of an undisciplined sentry. I powdered my face beneath my desk lid; in my powder compact mirror I discovered what Isabelle would love and what she would not. The bell was ringing, pupils roaring, I had a plan.

“Yes, two roses . . . two red roses. Go to the best florist . . .”

“What size?” asked the day student.

“Whichever are the prettiest. Yes, if you like: for a teacher. Smell them before you buy. Pink roses, ideally.”

“Leave me to it,” said the day student, “you can count on me.”

Other day students were slashing at my face with their scarves, their gloves; they were pushing me, dragging me toward the
forbidden gate. I turned on my heel: I had someone.

Tucked beneath the roof, the music room retained the animal heat of the hundred girls who had practiced there hour after hour. I went inside. I flopped down at a desk. I could hear the sound of water dripping into a basin, I listened for each drop to fall. She did not know where I was, loving her. I wanted her to come up here because I could not imagine she would not foresee this. Twenty to twelve . . . I counted to six between two drops of water. Her step.

She was trampling on my heart, my belly, my forehead even before she came in. A city of light was coming toward me. This must be some devastating enchantment. I guessed that she was looking for me through the glass while I had been picturing her in the darkness beneath my eyelids. I did not look up, I did not emerge from the folds of my widow's weeds. Crows scattered, frost
whitened the hazels. She was coming, she was breathing through my lungs.

“I've looked everywhere for you,” said Isabelle.

Isabelle appeared behind me, she sobbed with happiness. She sat down on the bench.

We loved and we were holding each other: we held each other balancing on a wild rose petal. She considered my lips, she touched them with one rough hand:

“Is it you, really you?”

The hand was seeking truths on my eyelids.

Her face dropped, her face descended lower than my breasts.

“Your face is too far away,” I said.

“I've torn your dress,” said Isabelle.

She fixed my dress with a pin, she carried out her repairs while I breathed in the perfume of memories in her hair.

“Someone's coming!”

We sprang apart, we each ran to hide in
a different corner. An accompanist turned the key to her room. She passed by, drew away again, peaceful and statuesque.

“The monitor told me to take you to the doctor at four o'clock,” said Isabelle.

I ran into her arms as she ran to mine.

“Quarter to twelve!” said Isabelle. “Come on, come on . . .”

We fell together on the steps to the stage.

“Quarter to twelve, Thérèse!”

I hesitated, for my fingers were stained with ink.

“Don't stop me!” I said, out of nervousness.

I was afraid of demeaning her by lifting up her skirt.

“Almost ten to twelve, Isabelle!”

“If you don't speak more softly we'll be caught,” said Isabelle.

I lifted up her skirt; Isabelle shivered against my temple.

I ventured beneath the crumpled skirt: her underpants frightened me. She was
quite indecent beneath her dress. My hand advanced between skin and jersey.

“Let me do it. Don't look if it shocks you,” said Isabelle.

I looked.

She lifted herself up, she released my hand.

“Such impossible underpants,” she said.

The hand of one entranced tugged them off, stuffed the garment into the pocket of her smock. Isabelle revealed herself there on the steps.

“They were gripping you tightly, my golden lamb. You're all rumpled. You feel my cheek there on you, my darling Mongolian. I'm combing you, untangling you, teasing you, my little brazier . . . You're glowing Isabelle, you're glowing . . .”

I stood up, I glared at her.

“Come back . . . Don't leave me.”

“Are you sure?”

I was sadistic. Waiting and making her wait is a delicious perdition.

“What if someone discovers us,” I dreamed aloud.

“I can't wait any longer,” whimpered Isabelle. Her hands were clutching at her face.

I fell to my knees before the medallion, I gazed rapt at the shining in her tangle. I ventured in like a smuggler, my face first. Isabelle gripped me between scissoring legs.

“I'm looking; I'm caught,” I said.

We waited.

Sex was filling our minds. Isabelle was split from head to toe. An incalculable number of hearts were beating in her belly, against my head.

“Yes, yes . . . slower. I said slower . . . higher. No . . . lower down. Almost . . . almost there . . . Yes . . . yes . . . That's almost it . . . Faster, faster, faster,” she said.

My tongue was searching in the salty darkness, in the sticky darkness, over fragile
flesh. The more I labored, the more mysterious became my efforts. I hesitated around the pearl.

“Don't stop. I tell you that's it.”

I was losing it, regaining it.

“Yes, yes,” moaned Isabelle. “You're there, you're there,” she cried in ecstasy. “Go on. Please . . . there . . . yes, there . . . just there . . .”

Her anguish, her mastery, her orders, her contradictions were confusing me.

“You don't want to guide me,” I said, alone outside our universe of fantasy.

I spoke to her between the lips of her sex.

“I'm doing nothing else,” she said. “You're not thinking about what you're doing.”

“I'm thinking too much,” I said.

Tears of my sweat are soaking her pubic hair.

“Teach me . . . teach me . . .”

“Lift your face, look.”

Lying on the steps of the stage, Isabelle sought within herself, found it.

“Come closer, look, look. That's it. If you lose it, you'll find it again. Oh, oh . . . No. Not now. You! You!”