The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras

Author:Marguerite Duras [Duras, Marguerite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9780394743042
Google: zUzXAAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 18491043
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 1964-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

She comes back from seeing the Beugners to the door. She comes in, slowly, and leans against the French doors. With bowed head, her hands behind her gripping the curtains, she remains there. I feel I am going to fall. I can sense my body growing weak, some sort of level is rising, drowning the blood, my heart is of silt, goes soft, turns to sludge, is going to sleep. Who could she have met in my place?

“So, what about that encounter?”

The poor woman in her black dress is thin and bowed. She lifts her hand, calls to me.

“Ah! Jack Hold, I was sure you had guessed.”

She steels herself for a violent outburst. For all hell to break loose.

“Tell me anyway, do.”

“Tell you what?”

“Who it is.”

“It’s you, you, Jack Hold. I met you seven days ago, at first when you were alone, then later when you were with a woman. I followed you to the Forest Hotel.”

I had a moment of fear. I wanted to return to Tatiana, to be in the street.

“Why?”

She lets go of the curtains, straightens up, comes toward me.

“I picked you.”

She is coming, looking, this is the first time we have been close to each other. She is white, stark white. She kisses me on the mouth. I give her nothing in return. I was too frightened, I can’t yet. She anticipated that impossibility. I am in the night of Town Beach. It is all over. There, nothing is given to Lol Stein. She takes. I still feel like running away.

“But what is it you want?”

She doesn’t know.

“I want …” she says.

She falls silent, looks at my mouth. And then here we are, staring into each other’s eyes. Despotically, irresistibly, she wants.

“Why?”

She shakes her head, murmurs my name.

“Jack Hold.”

Lol’s virginity uttering that name! Who, except her, Lol Stein, the so-called Lol Stein, had noticed the inconsistency of the belief in that person so named. A dazzling discovery of the name the others have abandoned, have failed to recognize, which was invisible, an inanity shared by all the men of South Tahla, as much a part of myself as the course of my blood through my veins. She has plucked me, taken me from the nest. For the first time my name, pronounced, names nothing.

“Lola Stein.”

“Yes.”

From somewhere beyond the burned-out ruins of her being, she greets me with a smile. Her choice implies no preference. I am the man from South Tahla she has decided to follow. Here we are, bound together inextricably. Our emptiness grows. We repeat our names to each other.

I move closer to this body. I want to touch it. First with my hands, then with my lips.

I’ve become awkward. Just as my hands touch Lol, the memory of an unknown man, now dead, comes back to me: he will serve as the eternal Richardson, the man from Town Beach, we will be mingled with him, willy-nilly, all together, we shall no longer be able to recognize one from the other, neither before, nor

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