Thérèse and Isabelle Read Free

hid the face of a girl reclining in a hospital room, frightened me. I switched off the flashlight.
    Isabelle got up. She took the book from me, and the flashlight.
    â€œCome now,” she said.
    She had got back into bed.
    From her bed, she shone the flashlight at me.
    I came forward. Isabelle was gently patting her hair.
    I sat down on the mattress edge. She reached over my shoulder, she picked up my book from the table, gave it to me, reassured me. I leafed through it since she was staring at me; I didn’t know which page to stop at. She was waiting for whatever I was waiting for. I fixed on the capital letter of the first sentence.
    â€œEleven o’clock,” Isabelle said.
    We wanted to hear the impact and the dying away of the school clock’s eleven strokes. I stared at words on the first page without seeing anything. She took back my book, turned off the light.
    Isabelle pulled me backward, she laid me down across the eiderdown, lifted me, held me in her arms: she was releasing me from a world I had never lived in to launch me into one I could not yet inhabit. With her lips she parted mine, moistenedmy clenched teeth. The fleshiness of her tongue frightened me: the foreign sex did not enter. I waited, withdrawn, contemplative. The lips wandered over my lips: a dusting of petals. My heart was beating too loudly and I wanted to listen to this seal of sweetness, this soft new tracing. Isabelle is kissing me, I tell myself. She was drawing a circle around my mouth, she encircled my trouble, put a cool kiss at each corner, she dived down to place two notes, returned, rested. Beneath their lids my eyes were wide with astonishment, the thundering of the conch shells too vast. Isabelle continued: we descended knot by knot into a night beyond the school’s night, beyond the night of the town and of the tram depot. She had made her honey on my lips, the sphinxes had gone to sleep once more. I realized that I had been missing her even before we met. She listened to all she gave me, she kissed condensation on a window.Isabelle tossed away her hair under which we had sheltered.
    â€œDo you think she’s asleep?” Isabelle asked.
    â€œThe monitor?”
    â€œShe’s asleep,” Isabelle decided.
    â€œShe’s asleep,” I agreed.
    â€œYou’re shivering. Take off your nightgown, come here.”
    She drew back the covers.
    â€œCome without the light,” Isabelle said.
    She stretched out against the partition, in her bed, at ease. I took off my gown, I felt too new standing on the carpet of an ancient world. I had to rush to her straight away for the ground would not support me. I lay down on the edge of the mattress, ready to creep away like a thief.
    â€œYou are cold. Come closer,” said Isabelle.
    A sleeping girl coughed, tried to divide us.
    Already she is holding me back, already I was being held back, already we tormented each other, but the joyful foot that was touching mine, the ankle rubbing against my ankle, reassured. My nightgown tickled me while we embraced and swayed together. We had stopped, we had returned to memories of the dormitory, we listened to the night. Isabelle turned on the light: she wanted to see my face. I took the light from her. Lifted by a great wave, Isabelle slipped into bed, rose, plunged her face to mine, hugged me tightly. The roses were fraying from the belt she put around me. I put the same belt around her. And yet I wavered. I did not dare.
    â€œThe bed mustn’t squeak,” she said.
    I looked for a cool place in the pillow, as if it were there that the bed would not squeak; I found a pillow of blond hair. Isabelle gathered me to her.
    We embraced again, we wanted to engulf each other. We had cast off our families, theworld, time, certainty. Clasping her against my gaping open heart, I wanted to draw Isabelle inside. Love is an exhausting invention. Isabelle, Thérèse, I pronounced in my head, getting used to the magical