Violette Leduc - Thérèse and Isabelle

“Why are we here? Are you hungry?”

“No,” said Isabelle.

“Me neither.”

“Give me my bag, though,” said Isabelle.

I gave it to her and fled from the patisserie.

At last I bought the two roses I had wanted for her. I saw her again while I was at the till, paying for the flowers. Isabelle was looking for me, biting her lip. My love was clear eyed but it was love. I hid the flowers inside my jacket.

“Very clever!” she said. “Why did you run out?”

We were going back up the rue de la Maroquinerie.

“Let’s stop here. Choose the bag you like best and I’ll buy it for you. I will carry it when we’re alone in the corridors at school,” I said.

“It’s as if you were giving me a keepsake, as if you were going away. Don’t buy me anything,” said Isabelle.

The shop assistant was setting a box calf drum in a corner of the shop window.

“Let’s go back to school. It’s time to go,” said Isabelle.

“I would but you’re not moving.”

“I’m frightened of the future,” said Isabelle.

“Frightened. . you!”

“I’m miserable, Thérèse.”

The town snapped in two.

“If you’re unhappy I will die.”

“Don’t talk. Hold my arm tight, look at the window display. We must go back to school but I feel as though we mustn’t. I’m frightened,” Isabelle said again.

“Let’s leave school. We won’t die of hunger.”

“They’ll catch us. We would be parted straight away. Keep me warm,” said Isabelle.

“Don’t be unhappy.”

“Look! In the mirror. See. . they’re pointing at us,” said Isabelle.

It was raining threatening fingers. Still, our confidence was enough to charm the cobbles. The azure sky between far-off branches mussed our hair.

“Are we running away?”

“Where to?” said Isabelle.

“To Madame Algazine’s.”

“That was a bad idea.”

Our school reappeared; we felt our connection to the great, nameless family that would be studying in the study rooms before dinner. I went by the dormitory for the sake of the roses, and hid them in my dirty laundry bag.

At seven o’clock, Isabelle came into the refectory following the others.

I threw my napkin under the table, I bent down to whisper that I would carry her handbag and that I would carry the zephyr too, if the zephyr were tiring her.

She was coming. I counted her steps down the long passage. Fifteen drumrolls thundered in my heart. How many times was I put to death during her coming. The same citadel of love was nearing: my throat contorted.

Isabelle was watching the ardent blue: Isabelle loved me at the hour of sunset on the stained-glass window. The monitor called my name from the far end of the refectory.

“Do wake up,” said another girl.

Isabelle was also calling me; Isabelle was sucking the colors from me:

“Do you love me? Do you still love me?” I entreated with every look.

The monitor told me that I should not go to study, that I should go up to the dormitory to rest, that it was an order from the head monitor.

The day was declining, my cell fading away, down blowing from the lips of my absent beloved. Night was taking over; night, our swans’ wing covering. Night, our canopy of gulls.

I focused my flashlight, shone it on the flowers I had bought, savored the air of occasion. The night drew outlines around the roses in the gardens outside.

I began the leisurely toilette of a bride-to-be; as I soaped, I hid fronds of orange flowers between my legs, under my arms; I paraded a trail of cool scent around my cell; I proceeded into the passage with the scepter of our future, I entered Isabelle’s cell: her belongings were austere, her bed abandoned. I slipped out of time. I stayed waiting, my face hidden in my hands.

The girls came in like an invading army; the monitor had turned on the lights. I could not escape. The girls were running down the passage, shouting, laughing.

“You! In my box!”

Arm outstretched, she was clutching the curtain that she had roughly wrenched back on its rail, into this frame she brought her hair wild at the close of the day, her haunted face, her potent eyes.

My dressing-gown cord fell onto the rug. Isabelle stared at my nightgown.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s so white. .”

She threw me onto her bed, she entered but drew out again straight away. A little girl had lifted the curtain, a little girl was looking at us. She fled, she screamed:

“Blood, I saw blood!”

“Back to your box!” ordered Isabelle.

Isabelle looked at her three bloody fingers.

I ran out.

“What is going on?” asked the monitor, leaving her bedroom and coming a few paces into the passage.

I slipped into my bed, I looked at the red stain on my nightgown.

“Just a cut. It’s already dry,” said Isabelle.

“A bad one?” asked the monitor.

There was a troubling silence.

“I bleed easily,” said Isabelle.

I got out of bed, I repaired the damage inflicted by my warrior.

“Isabelle. .”

Wresting her name from me, the new monitor tarnished my Isabelle.

“Yes,” replied Isabelle, quite naturally, as she went on brushing her teeth.

“Is it really nothing, just a cut?” asked the monitor.

“It’s nothing at all,” said Isabelle, her mouth full of dental paste froth.

Girls were chattering over the vigorous fragrance of the eau de cologne; Isabelle was getting into bed and the bedsprings were free to creak.

The monitor began her round.

“Good night, mademoiselle,” murmured one girl.

The lights were turned out in the passage.

A foolhardy lover brushed against my curtain, left a little of her secret in the curtain’s folds. The whisperings sank into an abyss. The dormitory gave way to sleep.

I too was heavily struck with drowsiness. I dreamed: Isabelle was holding my wrist, trailing my hand and the flowers over my sex. I woke up lacerated, greedy.

I waited by the window with the roses, imagining Isabelle’s arrival. The curtain lifted just as I was gazing at it, seeing nothing. Isabelle came in; centuries of love sighed. Isabelle in a negligee, the broad-winged collar of her nightgown folding down over her dressing-gown lapels, Isabelle had the preoccupied gaze of a queen.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

I laid the roses on the bed, I let myself slide down, I pressed kisses on her feet. Isabelle did wish me to adore her. The flowers fell, we feared that the leaves’ rustling might awaken the monitor, but the night’s surprise was Isabelle’s face next to mine.

“You put on your schoolgirl dress,” she said.

She felt the crispness of the pleats. Her cheek followed the slope from my groin to my knee.

A water lily bloomed in my stomach, the veil of the white lady floated over my moors.

“Come,” she said, with assurance.

We crossed the passage, we entered Isabelle’s box.

The doily on her night table lent its impulse of whiteness, the pillow was innocent. She was breaking the flowers’ stems in two.

Where had my roses come from? When had she taken the tooth-glass from the dressing table? When had she poured the water? When had she bent over the washbowl? I was considering Isabelle in the shadows of all the world’s countries.

“Where are you?” she said.

I shook the night from my shoulders as you shake snow from a winter hood; the roses leaning over the lip of the tooth-glass were my equals, roses for a boarding-school girl.

“Breathe them in,” said Isabelle.

I was struck dumb.

“Breathe them in!”

She put the glass and its roses in my hands, tossed her hair back, revealed her high, open collar to me, her neck. My flashlight and the tooth-glass knocked together.