Destroy, She Said Read online

  “How strongly,” says Max Thor, smiling, “how strongly sometimes one feels one mustn't write that book. I shall never write any books.”

  “Can one really say a thing like that?”

  “Yes, and mean it.”

  “Stein will write,” says Alissa. “So we don't need to.”

  “Yes.”

  Elisabeth Alione walks with her tranquil gait out of the light near the bay windows. She brushes by the empty tables, theirs included. She keeps her eyes lowered. Max Thor glances almost imperceptibly toward Alissa, who apparently watches Elisabeth without particular attention.

  She has gone. They are silent.

  “So it would be about the tennis courts?” asks Alissa.

  “Yes. The tennis courts being looked at”

  “By a woman?”

  “Yes. Preoccupied.”

  “By what?”

  “The void.”

  “Would it be about the tennis courts empty at night, too?” Alissa goes on.

  “Yes.”

  “They look like cages,” she says dreamily. “Would you make things up in your book?”

  “No. I'd describe.”

  “Stein?”

  “No. Stein looks for me. I'd describe what he looks at.”

  Alissa gets up, goes over to the bay windows, comes back. Max Thor looks at her fragile form.

  “I wanted to see what she was looking at,” says Alissa.

  “You're so young,” says Max Thor, “that when you walk . . .”

  She doesn't answer.

  “What do you do all day? All night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don't read?”

  “No. I pretend to.”

  “How far along are you with the book?”

  “Stuck in endless preliminaries.”

  He has got up. They look at each other. Her eyes are shining.

  “It's a good subject,” says Alissa. “The best.”

  “Sometimes I talk to Stein. This state can't last more than a few days.”

  She is in his arms. But she pushes him away.

  “Go out in the grounds,” she tells him. “Disappear in the grounds. Let it eat you up.”

  As they kiss the lights go out and the two chairs on the other side of the room are illuminated, picked out.

  “I'll come,” says Alissa. “I'll come out in the grounds with you.”

  Max Thor goes out. Alissa runs to the armchair and throws herself into it, her head in her hands.

  Complete darkness.

  The lights are on in the grounds. In the dining room, Alissa is still outlined against the armchair. Stein appears. He goes over to Alissa, sits down near her without saying anything, calmly. On the table is a white envelope.

  “Alissa,” he says at last. “It's Stein.”

  “Stein.”

  “Yes. I'm here.”

  She doesn't move. Stein slides down onto the floor and rests his head on her knees.

  “I don't know you, Alissa,” Stein says.

  “Perhaps he's stopped loving me in a certain way?”

  “It was here he realized he couldn't imagine his life any more without you.” He uses the familiar “tu.” From now on they both do.

  They are silent. He places his hands on her body.

  “You're part of me, Alissa. Your fragile body is part of mine. And I don't know you.”

  A clear high airport voice calls through the grounds:

  “Elisabeth Alione is wanted on the telephone.”

  “What a lovely name that woman has,” says Alissa. “The one who was watching the tennis courts before you came. Elisabeth Alione. That's an Italian name.”

  “She was here when he came.”

  “Always alone?”

  “Nearly always. Her husband comes sometimes.”

  “Yesterday—was that idiot at her table him?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was crying. Apart from that, she always looks half asleep. She takes sedatives. I've seen her. She must take more than she should.”

  “So they say.”

  “Yes. She's not striking at first sight, and then suddenly she becomes so . . . It's strange . . . She walks well. And she sleeps lightly, almost like a child . . .”

  She sits up and takes Stein's head in her hands.

  “You can't talk to me, can you?”

  “No.”

  “This is the first time it's been impossible for him and me to talk to one another. The first time he's hidden anything from me . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn't really know what it is, does he?”

  “He only knows everything would go if you went.”

  She picks the letter up slowly and opens the envelope.

  “Stein, look at it with me.”

  Side by side, almost indistinguishable from one another, they read:

  “ ‘Alissa knows,’” Stein reads. “ ‘But what does she know?'”

  Quite calmly Alissa puts the letter back in the envelope and tears it up.

  “I wrote it for you,” says Stein, “before I knew you'd guessed.”

  They go over, arms entwined, to the bay windows.

  “Has she come back from the telephone?” asks Alissa.

  “Yes.”

  “He isn't with her? Isn't he talking to someone? Look, Stein. Look for me.”

  “No, no one. He never talks to anyone. You can hardly get a word out of him. He only speaks when he's spoken to. A whole part of him is dumb. He's sitting waiting.”

  “We make love,” Alissa says. “Every night we make love.”

  “I know,” says Stein. “You leave the window open and I see you.”

  “He leaves it open for you. To see us.”

  “Yes.”

  Alissa has put her childish lips on Stein's hard mouth. He speaks like that.

  “Do you see us?” Alissa says.

  “Yes. You don't say anything. Every night I wait. Silence clamps you to the bed. The light stays on and on. One morning they'll find you both melted into a shapeless lump like tar, and no one will understand. Except me.”

  Day in the garden. Sun.

  Alissa Thor and Elisabeth Alione are lying about thirty feet apart. Alissa is watching Elisabeth Alione through half-shut eyes.

  Elisabeth Alione is asleep, her unprotected face bent slightly on one shoulder. Her body is dappled with patches of sunlight filtering through the leaves. The sun shines steadily. The air is perfectly still. Alissa, in a series of dazzling insights, discovers the body under the dress, the long lean-thighed runner's legs, the extraordinary flexibility of the sleeping hands hanging from the wrists, the waist, the dry mass of hair, the position of the eyes.

  From behind the dining room window Max Thor looks out on the grounds. Alissa doesn't see him. She is turned toward Elisabeth Alione. All Max Thor can see of Alissa is her hair, her legs on the chaise-longue, and that she's pretending to be asleep.

  Max Thor remains for a moment looking out at the grounds. When he turns around Stein is there.

  “They've all gone for a walk,” Stein says. “We're alone.”

  Silence.

  The windows are open onto the grounds.

  “How quiet,” Stein says. “You can hear them breathing.”

  Silence.

  “Alissa knows,” MaxThor says. “But what does she know?”

  Stein doesn't answer.

  Alissa has stood up. She is walking barefoot along the path. She goes past Elisabeth Alione. She seems to hesitate. Yes. She comes back to where Elisabeth Alione is and stands there a moment opposite her. Then she goes over to her own chaise-longue and moves it a few yards, nearer to Elisabeth Alione.

  Max Thor's face, seemingly suspended at the window, suddenly turns away.

  Stein doesn't move.

  Elisabeth Alione slowly wakes. It was the scraping of the other chaise-longue on the gravel that awoke her.

  They smile at each other.

  Max Thor has drawn back and is not
looking again yet. He stands there rigid, his eyes half-shut.

  “You were right in the sun,” Alissa says.

  “I can sleep right in the sun.”

  “I can't.”

  “It's a habit. I can go to sleep just as easily on the beach.”

  “She's spoken,” says Stein.

  Max Thor comes over and looks.

  “Her voice is the same as when she spoke to Anita,” he says.

  “Just as easily?” Alissa asks.

  “It's cold where I come from,” says Elisabeth Alione. “So I can never get enough sun.”

  Alissa's blue eyes look intriguing in the shadows.

  “You've just arrived.”

  “No, I've been here three days.”

  “Really?”

  “We're quite close to one another in the dining room.”

  “I don't see very well,” Elisabeth Alione says. Then, smiling: “In fact I can't see a thing. I usually wear glasses.”

  “But not here?”

  She makes a little grimace.

  “No. I'm here convalescing. It rests my eyes.”

  “Where did you meet Alissa?” Stein asks.

  “Asleep,” says Max Thor, “in one of my lectures.”

  “I see,” Stein says.

  “That's what most of my students do. I've forgotten everything I know.”

  “I see. Fine.”

  “Convalescing?” Alissa asks.

  Elisabeth Alione screws up her eyes to look at the woman listening so intently.

  “I'm here because of a confinement that went wrong. The baby was born dead. It was a little girl.”

  She sits up straight, runs her hands through her hair, smiles painfully at Alissa.

  “I take medicine to make me sleep. I sleep all the time.”

  Alissa has sat up too.

  “It must have been a great shock?”

  “Yes. I couldn't sleep any more.”

  She speaks more slowly:

  “And it had been a difficult pregnancy.”

  “Here comes the lie,” Max Thor says.

  “It's still a long way off.”

  “Yes, she doesn't know about it yet.”

  “A difficult pregnancy?” asks Alissa.

  “Yes. Very.”

  They are silent.

  “And you still think about it a lot?”

  The question has made her start. Her cheeks are less pale than they were.

  “I don't know . . .” She corrects herself. “I mean, I'm not supposed to, you see . . . And then I sleep a lot . . . I could have gone to stay with my parents in the South. But the doctor said I ought to be quite alone.”

  “Total destruction will come first through Alissa,” Stein says. “Don't you agree?”

  “Yes. And do you agree she isn't altogether safe?”

  “Yes,” Stein says. “Alissa isn't altogether safe.”

  “Quite alone?” Alissa asks.

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “Three weeks. I came on July 2.”

  A wave of deep silence passes over the hotel and grounds. A tremor has gone through Elisabeth Alione.

  “Was there someone there?"—she points—"on the other side of the grounds?”

  Alissa looks round.

  “It could only be Stein, if it's anyone,” Alissa says.

  Silence.

  “Perhaps you needed to get a grip on yourself, on your own, without anyone to help you,” Alissa says.

  “Perhaps. I didn't ask any questions.”

  She looks as if she were waiting. She stares at the grounds intently.

  “Soon they'll all be coming back from their walk,” she says.

  “She looks at the void,” Stein says.

  “That's the only thing she looks at. But she docs it well.”

  “That's right,” Max Thor says. “It's the way she does it that . . .”

  “Yes, they'll soon be back,” Alissa says.

  “Oh . . . I wish I could wake up,” Elisabeth says.

  She stands up, as if she suddenly didn't feel well. Alissa doesn't move.

  “Were you told to walk for a bit every day?”

  “Yes. Half an hour. There's no reason why not.”

  Elisabeth moves her chaise-longue nearer to Alissa and sits down again. They are quite close. Elisabeth Alione's eyes are very light.

  She has to make a visible effort to look at Alissa. And now she suddenly sees Alissa's face for the first time.

  “We could go for a walk together if you like . . .” she says.

  “In a moment,” Alissa says.

  “Did you want Alissa as soon as you saw her?” Stein asks.

  “No,” Max Thor says. “I didn't want anyone. And you?”

  “As soon as she walked through the door,” says Stein.

  “In a moment,” Alissa says. “It's early yet.”

  “The second doctor I saw,” says Elisabeth Alione, “said the opposite. He wanted me to go somewhere cheerful with lots of people. But my husband thought the first doctor was more sensible.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh . . . I did as they wanted . . . It's all the same to me. The forest's supposed to be restful.”

  Here come the tennis players. They don't see the two women. Alissa and Elisabeth Alione look at the tennis courts.

  Alissa has smiled, but Elisabeth hasn't noticed.

  “You don't play tennis?”

  “I don't know how . . . And then I was . . . the confinement was . . . I'm not supposed to exert myself.”

  “Torn,” says Max Thor. “Bloody.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you go into the forest?”

  “Oh no. Not on my own. Have you seen it?”

  “Not yet. I've only just arrived. I've only been here three days.”

  “Of course . . . Perhaps you're ill too?”

  “No.” Alissa laughs. “We're here by mistake. We thought it was just an ordinary hotel. I can't remember who recommended it . . . Someone at the university, I expect. They specially mentioned the forest.”

  “Oh.”

  Elisabeth Alione suddenly feels hot. She throws back her head in search of air.

  “How muggy it is,” she says. “What is the time?”

  Alissa gestures that she doesn't know.

  They are silent.

  “Two years ago, the night she came to my place, Alissa was eighteen,” Max Thor says.

  “In the bedroom,” says Stein slowly, “in the bedroom Alissa isn't any age.”

  “Did you want the child very much?” asks Alissa.

  She hesitates.

  “I think so . . . the question didn't arise.”

  “Alissa only believes in the Rosenfeld theory,” Stein says. “Did you know?”

  “Yes. You did too, I suppose?”

  “I've just found out.”

  “Well . . .” says Elisabeth Alione, “it was my husband really . . . he wanted another child. I was terribly afraid he'd be disappointed. I used to get terribly frightened . . . that he wouldn't love me any more because the baby was . . . But I mustn't talk about it. The doctor said I wasn't to.”

  “And you listen to him?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Her eyes question her. Alissa waits.

  “You needn't listen to anyone,” Alissa says gently. “You can do as you like.”

  Elisabeth Alione smiles.

  “I don't want to.”

  “Would you like to come into the forest?”

  Suddenly, a glint of fear in Elisabeth Alione's eyes.

  “Are we going to let her go into the forest with Alissa?” Max Thor asks.

  “No,” Stein says. “No.”

  “I'm here,” Alissa says. “Don't be afraid.”

  “There's no point.” She gives a hostile look at the forest. “No, no point.”

  “Would you be afraid, with me?”

  “No . . . but what's the point?”

  Alissa gives up.
/>   “You're afraid of me,” she says softly.

  Elisabeth Alione gives an embarrassed smile.

  “Oh no, it's not that . . . It's just that . . .”

  “What?”

  “It terrifies me.”

  “You can't see it,” Alissa says, smiling.

  “Oh . . . that's what people think,” she says.

  “No,” Alissa says softly. “You were afraid of me. Only a little. But you were afraid nonetheless.”

  Elisabeth looks at Alissa.

  “You're very strange,” she says. “Who are you?”

  Alissa smiles absently at Stein and Max Thor.

  “Do you think so?”

  Stein looks happy. Elisabeth suddenly sees the two men at the window.

  “Oh. There was someone there,” she says.

  “No. They've only just come.”

  Silence.

  “You're always alone,” Alissa says.

  “People don't talk to one another here.”

  “What about you? Would you have spoken to me if I hadn't spoken to you?”

  “No.” Elisabeth smiles. “I'm rather shy. And then I'm not bored—I take too much medicine to get bored. Oh, the time goes quite fast. Not much longer now . . .”

  Alissa is silent. Elisabeth Alione looks toward the windows. Stein and Max Thor are no longer there: they are in the grounds now.

  “How long?”

  “A week . . . My husband's the one who's bored . . . He brings my daughter to see me on Sundays. She was here yesterday.”

  “I saw her. Quite grown-up.”

  “Fourteen and a half. She's not a bit like me.”

  “You're wrong. She still looks like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . people have it all wrong about resemblance. She walks like you. She looked at the tennis courts the way you did when you were crying.”

  Elisabeth looks down at the ground.

  “Oh,” she says, “that was nothing. I was just being childish. It was because of Anita. I miss her.”

  “I don't have any children yet,” Alissa says. “I haven't been married long.”

  “Oh"—she looks at Alissa covertly—"you've got plenty of time. Is your husband here?”

  “Yes. He's been here on his own. His table's on the far side of the dining room, to the left. Do you know who I mean?”

  “With glasses? Not all that young? . . . I mean––––”

  “That's right. I could be his daughter.”