Lol stein was born here is 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 she—I have never seen him—they say he lives in Paris. He parents are dead.
I have never heard anything especially noteworthy about Lol Stein’s childhood, even from Tatiana Karl, her best friend during the school years together.
On Thursday, 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, 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 tunes—a program of nostalgic favorites—which were all the 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 school—and she wasn’t the only person to think so—there was already something lacking in Lol, something which kept her 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 school—although she slipped through their fingers like water—because 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 her opinion that it was perhaps, indeed, Lol Stein’s heart which wasn’t—as she says—there; 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.
Copyright © 1986 by Marguerite Duras. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
