The Case of Lisandra P. by Hélène Grémillon Read Free Book Online Page B

“cessation of months,” right? “Plaza de Mayo.” In both cases, there’s a reference to months: does this association of ideas suggest anything to you?
    ALICIA
    Only that you want to bring this conversation to an end, right? You want to impress me with your own secret interpretation, so that I won’t go any further with my dreary assessment; but old age can’t be psychoanalyzed—you can’t do anything about it; you can describe old age and that’s it. Aren’t you disgusted?
    VITTORIO
    I’ll say it again, no, it doesn’t disgust me. Just stop with your questions and answers.
    ALICIA
    May I continue?
    VITTORIO
    Please go ahead.
    ALICIA
    Yesterday morning, I measured my height, and guess what? I have shrunk, already three-quarters of an inch. That’s it, it’s the beginning of the end. To start with, you get shorter—nature has gotten some things right after all, so now you start off by taking up a bit less space in other people’s visual fields; it may be imperceptible tothe naked eye but it helps you convey to others that you are becoming less interesting and you are beginning to disappear. Everything starts shrinking now. I can see it with my breasts. People say that old women’s breasts sag, but that’s not right; they empty out, they become pockets of soft skin, hanging, dead. Death starts with the skin. Before, I had nice breasts, you know, full and perky, so full, even after Juan’s birth, my breasts filled my hands. I loved to hold them, both at the same time, I loved that feeling, but now it’s as if there’s nothing beneath my fingers. I can pull on the skin and it stretches, like the deflated rubber of a child’s balloon, which would have floated up into the sky when it was intact, but now it’s stuck on the ground, for good. If a man touched me, he could wrap himself up in my skin. Not to mention the weight I put on even if I don’t eat—it’s as if menopause was eating away inside us, eating what used to be our shape to make us shapeless; it devours us from inside. It says, I’ll take your breasts and put them on your hips, I’ll take what used to be your pretty butt and spread it over your stomach and your back and your waist. Why do you keep looking at the clock? You can’t wait for this session to be over, right? Men revel in the beauty of a woman’s body, but they can’t stand it if she’s past it, any more in words than in pictures, and that’s why you, too, have chosen a younger woman, to shield yourself from that vision of horror. You disappoint me. A person always wants their shrink to be different from everyone else, to be better, to be above the worst failings of humanity. But in fact, everybody is just the same. Does your wife shave, too? Apparently girls shave now; even at the age of twenty, they’re already nostalgic for their youth. And it’s not over, poor things, if they only knew. I hate them. Water still flows through their bodies, the running water of a stream, whereas only stagnant pond water fills our limbs, and distorts them.But go ahead and laugh, young ladies, you cannot imagine what’s in store, you’ll have to go through it someday, too, so go right ahead, show them off, your little legs, show off your breasts and your firm arms, you’ll have to hide them soon enough, you’ll have to bury them beneath the long flowing garments that will fill your wardrobes one day, summer and winter alike, and the end will come for your pretty décolletés, your sexy negligees, your stockings, and your little skirts, and before you’re buried in the ground your body will be buried under ever thicker layers of material, and soon your pouting lips will have no power over anyone. I hate them. I have to stop going out because just the sight of them all shiny and new drives me crazy. Yesterday I was walking behind this young girl who was swaying