We walked in step, through the resounding throng. We were severe, shackled, we were an official couple without past, without future, we had cast-iron crowns upon our heads, bailiff’s chains across our chests, our majesty was conferred by the weight of our finery, we proceeded with our wrists gripped in our identical uniforms.
A convent bell rang in another world.
We shuffled into rows.
“Speak again.”
“No, since it’s over,” said Isabelle.
The ringing of the bell faded away: the convent was drowning in the general shipwreck, the girls fell silent for the minute of silence. Isabelle changed places. We closed ranks, we kept our distance and the embroiderer embroidered among the troops.
“I love you.”
“I love you,” I said too.
The little ones were already eating. We ignored the words we had just exchanged, we each chatted to the girl on the other side, we sought refuge in these distractions.
My neighbor on the right was embroidering something under the table.
“Who’s that for?”
“That question again!” she exclaimed. “For my brother. Do you like the pattern?”
“You have a brother?”
“Do you like the pattern?”
“How old is he?”
“Eighteen. A year older than me. It’s he who will get me out of here. We shall never leave each other.”
“You know that already?”
“When we’ve finished our studies we shall run a family hotel together at the seaside. We have the money. .”
“Do you look much like him?”
“I’m the very image of him as a girl. Why were you running so fast with Isabelle?”
“Why won’t you ever leave your brother?”
The servants were bringing in the dishes, my neighbor put away her needlework. I ate as old people do: alone with my plate. Isabelle rested her elbow on the book she had taken from me while we were running in the yard.
Dusk was falling as crepe falls over faces. I wanted to lay my body on Isabelle’s, I wished we could go up to the dormitory. But she was thinking, huddled in the folds of her stony white apron. There she was, my museum, there the snag in the crepe. I languished, I was deadly, the big cats’ stalking slowed the routes through my favorite landscapes, the refectory clock’s stilted time wanted persuasion. The unpredictable breeze swept in, it caressed my hands, seduced my memories.
How secret our separation was, in the general evening separation, when we all scattered at the dormitory door.
As ever, I was back at my percale curtain. An iron hand snatched me away, steered me elsewhere. Isabelle threw me onto her bed and buried her face in my underpants, in my crotch.
“Come back when they are asleep,” she said.
She drove me away, she fascinated me.
I was in love: I had nowhere to hide. I should have only waiting rooms and the time suspended between our meetings. I dropped onto my bed.
“I didn’t hear a noise,” said the monitor. “What are you doing? Not yet undressed!”
“I was lying down. I was thinking about my work,” I say.
“You must get undressed. Quickly now. I’m turning out the lights.”
The curtain fell closed again, Isabelle coughed.
Isabelle was coughing, sitting up in bed. Isabelle was ready with her cape of hair over her shoulders. Her cape. Returning to this scene paralyzed me. I collapsed onto her chair, onto the rug: the scene followed me everywhere. The monitor had turned out the lights.
“I’m dying to get to sleep,” said a girl at the far end of the dormitory.
“Shush,” retorted the new monitor.
The dormitory settled.
I was undressing in the darkness, pressing my chaste hand to my skin, I was breathing myself in, recognizing myself, abandoning myself. I packed the silence down into my washbasin; wringing out my wash sponge, I was wringing out the silence too; drying myself, I smoothed it along my skin.
The monitor turned the light out in her room; a girl was muttering; Isabelle coughed again: she was calling me. I decided that if I did not close the box of dental paste, I would remember this atmosphere, of before I returned to Isabelle and her box. I was creating a past for myself.
“Are you ready?” whispered Isabelle, behind my curtain.
She was gone again. Her discretion delighted and disappointed me.
Once again I opted for the regulation nightgown, which I now put on; I calculated too that I would change what I wore every evening, that a day student could give my dresses to a laundry in town.
I opened the window in my cell. The night and the sky needed nothing of us. Living in the open air would be sacrilege. Only our absence could further ornament the trees’ evening. I dared a quick look into the passage but the passage was disheartening. Their sleep frightened me: I hadn’t the courage to step over the sleeping girls, to walk barefoot over their faces. I closed the window and, like the leaves, the percale quivered.
“Are you coming?”
I turned on the light: her hair did indeed fall like a cape as I had pictured it, but I hadn’t foreseen the sturdy tautness of her nightgown. Isabelle stepped away again.
I came in with my flashlight, which I held as you hold a missal.
“Take off your clothes,” said Isabelle.
She was leaning on one elbow, her hair raining down over her profile.
“Take off your dress, turn out the light.”
I turned out her hair, her eyes, her hands. I shed my nightgown. This was not new: I was casting off the lovers’ first night.
“What are you doing?” said Isabelle.
“Dawdling.”
“Come!”
“Yes Isabelle, yes.”
She was growing restless in bed while I, in my shyness, was posing naked for the shadows.
“But what are you up to?”
I slipped into her bed. I had been cold, I would be warm.
I stiffened, I didn’t want to crush her pubic hair. She forced me, she laid me down along her body; Isabelle wanted the union of our skins. I was reciting my body upon hers, bathing my belly in the lilies of her belly, finding my way inside a cloud. She skimmed my hips, she shot strange arrows. I rose up, I fell back onto her.
“We must not move, not breathe. Be dead,” she said.
We were listening to what was happening inside us, emanating from us. Couples surrounded us, spying.
The springs creaked.
“Careful!” She said, at my mouth.
The monitor had switched on the light in her room.
I was kissing the mouth of a vanilla-scented little girl. We had turned good again.
“Let’s hug each other,” said Isabelle.
We tightened the circle of our hold.
“Crush me. .”
She wanted to but she couldn’t. She was thrashing my pelvis.
“Don’t listen to her,” she said.
The monitor was urinating in her chamber pot.
“She will go back to sleep,” I said.
Isabelle rubbed her toe against my instep, a sign of friendship.
“She’s gone back to sleep,” said Isabelle.
“If she was listening for us. .”
“She’s a pain.”
I met Isabelle’s mouth with mine; I was afraid of the monitor; I drank down our saliva. It was an orgy of dangers. We had had darkness in our mouths and in our throats, we knew that peace had returned.
“Press me down,” she said.
“The springs. . they’ll squeak. . we’ll be heard.”
We were talking among the dense foliage of summer nights.
I was pressing, blotting out myriads of alveoli.
“Am I heavy?”
“You will never be heavy. I’m a little cold,” she said.
My fingers saw her wan shoulders. I flew away, with my beak I picked up wisps of wool caught in thorny hedges, I laid them around Isabelle’s shoulders. I was drumming on her bones with my downy hammers, my kisses tumbled down one after the other, I launched into an avalanche of tenderness. My hands relieved my tired lips: I molded the sky around her shoulder. Isabelle sat up, she took my wrists, she fell back down and I fell with her into the hollow of her shoulder. My cheek rested in a contour.