The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras Read Free Book Online Page A

from which all preference is excluded. They are together, two trains which meet and pass, around them the landscape, sensuous and lushly green, is the same, they see it, they are not alone. One can come to terms with them. By opposite paths, they have arrived at the same result as Lol Stein, they by doing, saying, by trying and failing, by going away and coming back, by lying, losing, winning, advancing, by coming back again, and she, Lol, by doing nothing.
    There is a choice seat waiting to be taken, a seat which she failed to have ten years before in Town Beach. But where? It can't be compared to that opera seat in Town Beach. But what seat is it then? She will have to be content with this one so that, at last, she can make her way, move a step or two toward that distant bank upon which they, the others, dwell. Toward what? What is that bank?
    The long, narrow building must have been used sometime in the past either as a barracks or as some kind of administration building. One section of it serves as a garage for buses. The other is the Forest Hotel, of doubtful reputation but the only place in town where couples can meet in complete confidence. The street it faces is called Forest Boulevard, and the hotel is the last number on the street. Along its façade stands a row of ancient alder trees, some of which are missing. Behind the hotel there stretches a broad field of rye, smooth and treeless.
    There is still a last vestige of sunlight on this flat landscape, on this field.
    Lol remembers this hotel from the times she went there as a young girl with Michael Richardson. And she has probably ventured out as far as this hotel on some of her walks. It was there that Michael Richardson told her he loved her. The memory of that winter afternoon has, like the rest, been engulfed in forgetfulness, been swallowed up in the slow, daily glaciation of South Tahla beneath her footsteps.
    It was here, on this same spot, that a girl from South Tahla began to adorn herself—it must have taken several months—for the Town Beach ball. It was from here that she left to go to that ball.
    On Forest Boulevard, Lol slackens her step. There's no point in following so close behind now that she knows where they're going. The worst that could happen is that she might run the risk of being recognized by Tatiana Karl.
    When she reaches the hotel, they have already gone upstairs.
    Lol, on the street, waits. The sun is setting. Dusk is falling, in a rush of red, doubtless sad. Lol waits.
    Lol Stein is behind the Forest Hotel, stationed at one corner of the building. Time passes. She has no idea whether the rooms that look out over the field of rye are still the ones they rent out by the hour. This field, only a few short yards from her, is plunged, deeper and deeper, into a green, milky shadow.
    On the third floor of the Forest Hotel, a light goes on in one of the windows. Yes. They are the same rooms as in her day.
    I see how she gets there. Very quickly, she reaches the field of rye, slips into it, sits down in it, stretches out in it. Before her is that lighted window. But Lol is far from its light.
    The idea of what she is doing never crosses her mind. I still maintain that this is the first time, that she is there without the faintest idea of being there, that, if she were asked, she would simply say that she was resting. From the fatigue of getting there. From the fatigue that will follow. From the necessity of returning. Living, dying, she breathes deeply, tonight the air is like honey, cloyingly sweet. She does not even question the source of the wonderful weakness which has brought her to lie in this field. She lets it act upon her, fill her until she thinks she will suffocate, lets it lull her roughly, pitilessly, until Lol Stein is fast asleep.
    The rye rustles beneath her loins. Young, early-summer rye. Her eyes riveted on the lighted window, a woman hearkens to the void—feeding upon, devouring this non-existent, invisible spectacle, the