Marguerite Duras - Ravishing of Lol Stein

Originally published in France as Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein by Editions Gallimard. Copyright 1964 by Editions Gallimard. This translation first published in the United States by Grove Press, Inc., in 1966.

For Sonia

L OL S TEIN was born here in South Tahla, and she spent a good part of her youth in this town. Her father was a professor at the university. Lol has a brother nine years older than sheI have never seen him they say he lives in Paris. Her parents are dead.

I have never heard anything especially noteworthy about Lol Stein's childhood, even from Tatiana Karl, her best friend during their school years together.

On Thursdays, which was a school holiday, they used to go out and dance in the empty playground. They had an aversion to marching in schoolgirl file with the others, and preferred to remain back at the school. And they knew how to get their way too, Tatiana said, they were a beguiling pair and knew, better than the other students did, how to solicit that favor and get their teachers to grant it. Shall we dance, Tatiana? A radio in a nearby building was blaring a medley of old-fashioned tunesa program of nostalgic favoriteswhich were all they needed. With the monitors gone, alone in the vast school courtyard where, that day, between dances, they could hear the street noises: Come, Tatiana, come, let's dance, Tatiana, come on. That much I know.

This too: Lol was nineteen when she met Michael Richardson one morning during summer vacation, at the tennis courts. He was twenty-five. He was the only son of well-to-do parents, whose real estate holdings in the vicinity of Town Beach were considerable. He had no real vocation. Their parents consented to the marriage. Lol must have been engaged for six months, the wedding was to take place that autumn, she had just finished her final year of school and was on vacation in Town Beach, when the biggest ball of the season was held at the municipal casino.

Tatiana does not believe that this fabled Town Beach ball was so overwhelmingly responsible for Lol Stein's illness. No, Tatiana Karl traces the origins of that illness back further, further even than the beginning of their friendship. They were latent in Lol Stein, but kept from emerging by the deep affection with which she had always been surrounded both at home and, later, at school. She says that in schooland she wasn't the only person to think sothere was already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her from being, in Tatiana's words, "there." She gave the impression of being in a state of passive boredom, putting up with a person she knew she was supposed to be but whom she forgot about at the slightest occasion. The epitome of thoughtfulness, but also of indifference, people were quick to discover, she never seemed to suffer or be hurt, had never been known to shed a sentimental, schoolgirl's tear. Tatiana still maintains that Lol Stein was beautiful, that they vied for her affection at schoolalthough she slipped through their fingers like waterbecause the little they managed to retain was well worth the effort. Lol was funny, an inveterate wit, and very bright, even though part of her seemed always to be evading you, and the present moment. Going where? Into some adolescent dream world? No, Tatiana answers, no, it seemed as though she were going nowhere, yes, that's it, nowhere. Was it her heart that wasn't there? Tatiana apparently inclines toward the opinion that it was perhaps, indeed, Lol Stein's heart which wasn'tas she saysthere; it would doubtless come, but she, Tatiana, had never seen any sign of it. Yes, it seemed that it was in this realm of her feelings that Lol Stein was different from the others.

When the rumors of Lol Stein's engagement first began to be heard, Tatiana only half believed them: who in the world could Lol have found who was capable of capturing her attention so completely?

When she met Michael Richardson and saw how madly Lol was in love with him, Tatiana was completely taken aback. But there still remained a lingering doubt: was this not a means whereby Lol was ending the days when her heart was not yet touched completely?

I asked her if Lol's subsequent illness was not proof positive that she was wrong. She repeated that it was not, that she, personally, believed that this crisis and Lol were but one and the same, and always had been.

I no longer believe a word Tatiana says. I'm convinced of absolutely nothing.

Here then, in full, and all mixed together, both this false impression which Tatiana Karl tells about and what I have been able to imagine about that night at the Town Beach casino. Following which I shall relate my own story of Lol Stein.

As for the nineteen years preceding that night, I do not want to know any more about them than what I tell, or very little more, setting forth only the straight, unadulterated chronological facts, even if these years conceal some magic moment to which I am indebted for having enabled me to meet Lol Stein. I don't want to because the presence of her adolescence in this story might somehow tend to detract, in the eyes of the reader, from the overwhelming actuality of this woman in my life. I am therefore going to look for her, I shall pick her up at that moment in time which seems most appropriate, at that moment when it seems to me she first began to stir, to come toward me, at the precise moment when the last arrivals, two women, came through the door into the ballroom of the Town Beach casino.

The orchestra stopped playing. A set was just ending.

The dance floor had emptied slowly. There was no one on it.

The older of the two women had paused for a moment to glance around at the crowd, then she had turned back, smiling, at the girl who was with her. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, this girl was her daughter. They were both tall, both built in the same way. But while the girl displayed a certain awkwardness because of her height, and because of her somewhat angular build, her mother, on the contrary, bore these defects like the emblems of some obscure negation on the part of nature. Her elegance, both when she moved and when she was in repose, was upsetting, Tatiana maintains.

"They were on the beach this morning," said Lol's fianc, Michael Richardson.

He had stopped, he had watched the new arrivals, then he had steered Lol toward the bar and the cluster of green plants at the far end of the room.

The two women had crossed the dance floor and headed in the same direction.

Lol, rooted to the spot, had watched, as had he, the advance of that careless, slightly-stooped grace of a dead bird. She was thin. She must always have been thin. She had clothed that thinness, Tatiana clearly recalled, in a very low-cut black dress, with a double layer of tulle over it, also black. This was the bearing and the clothing she desired, and she looked exactly the way she wanted to look, unquestionably. The admirable bone structure of her body and her face showed through her skin. As she thus appeared, so later would she die, with her desired body. Who was she? They later learned: Anne-Marie Stretter. Was she beautiful? How old was she? What had she, Anne-Marie Stretter, experienced that other women had missed? By what mysterious path had she arrived at what appeared to be a gay, a dazzling pessimism, a smiling indolence as light as a hint, as ashes? A certain self-assured boldness was all that seemed to hold her upright. But how graceful it was, as was the woman herself! Their loping, country way of walking would keep the two of them in step wherever they went. Where? Nothing more could ever happen to that woman, Tatiana thought, nothing more, nothing. Except her death, she thought.

Had she looked at Michael Richardson as she passed by? Had this non-look of hers swept over him as it took in the ballroom? It was impossible to tell, it is therefore impossible to know when my story of Lol Stein begins: her gazefrom close-up one could see that this defect stemmed from an almost painful discoloration of the pupilwas diffused over the entire surface of her eyes, and was hard to meet. Her hair was dyed red, the sun had burned her red, a seaside Eve whom the light did not do justice to.