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Overview
Elisabeth Alione is convalescing in a hotel in rural France when she meets two men and another woman. The sophisticated dalliance among the four serves to obscure an underlying violence, which, when the curtain of civilization is drawn aside, reveals in her fellow guests a very contemporary, perhaps even new, form of insanity.
Like many of Marguerite Duras’s novels, Destroy, She Said owes much to cinema, displaying a skillful interplay of dialogue and description. There are recurring moods and motifs from the Duras repertoire: eroticism, lassitude, stifled desire, a beautiful woman, a mysterious forest, a desolate provincial hotel.
Included in this volume is an in-depth interview with Duras by Jacques Rivette and Jean Narboni.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802190574 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/20/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 705 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
An overcast sky. The bay windows shut.
From where he is in the dining room he can't see outside.
But she can. She is looking out. Her table touches the windowsill.
The light makes her screw up her eyes. They move to and fro. Some of the other guests are watching the tennis matches too. But he can't see.
He hasn't asked to be moved to another table, though.
She doesn't know she is being watched.
It rained this morning about five.
Today the air the balls thud through is close and heavy. She is wearing a summer dress.
The book is in front of her. Begun since he arrived? or before?
Beside the book are two bottles of white pills. She takes some at every meal. Sometimes she opens the book. Then shuts it again almost at once. And looks at the tennis matches.
On other tables are other bottles and other books.
Her hair is black, greyish black, smooth, not in good condition, dry. You can't tell what color her eyes are. Even when she turns back toward the room they're still blinded by the glaring light near the window. Round the eyes, when she smiles, the flesh is already delicately lined. She is very pale.
None of the people in the hotel play tennis. The players are local boys and girls. No one minds.
"It's pleasant to have the youngsters about. And they're very considerate."
No one but he has noticed her.
"You get used to the noise."
When he arrived six days ago she was already there, the book and the pills in front of her. She was muffled up in a long jacket and black slacks. It was cool.
He noticed how well-dressed she was, her figure, then the way she moved, the way she slept on the grounds every day, her hands.
Someone telephones.
The first time she was in the grounds. He didn't listen to the name. The second time he couldn't catch it.
So someone phones after her afternoon nap. By arrangement, no doubt
Sunshine. The seventh day.
There she is again, by the tennis courts, on a white chaise-longue. There are other white chaises-longues, mostly empty, empty and lying stranded face to face, or in circles, or alone.
After her nap he loses sight of her.
He watches her from the balcony as she sleeps. She is tall, and looks as if she were dead, just slightly bent at the hips. She is slim; thin.
The courts are deserted at this hour. Tennis is not allowed during nap time. It starts again about four and goes on till dusk.
The seventh day. But the torpor of the siesta is shattered by a man's voice, sharp, almost brutal.
No one answers. He wasn't talking to anyone.
No one wakes.
She's the only one so near the tennis courts. The others are farther away, either in the shade under the hedges or on the grass in the sun.
The voice that just spoke goes on echoing through the hotel grounds.
Day. The eighth. Sunshine. It's hot now.
Though she is usually so punctual, she wasn't there when he went into the dining room at lunchtime. She came in after they had started serving, smiling, calm, less pale. He'd known she must still be there because of the book and the pills, her place set as usual, and because there had been no stir in the hotel corridors during the morning. No arrivals, no departures. So he knew, quite logically, that she hadn't left.
When she comes in she walks past his table.
She sits in profile facing the windows. This makes it easier for him to keep watch on her.
She is beautiful. But it is invisible.
Does she know?
"No. No."
The voice dies away over by the gate into the forest. No one answers. It is the same voice — sharp, almost brutal.
Not a cloud in the sky today. The heat is increasing, becoming settled, permeating the forest, the grounds of the hotel.
"Almost oppressive, don't you think?"
Blue blinds have been let down over the windows. Her table is in the blue light coming through them. It makes her hair black, her eyes blue.
Today the balls seem to thud right through your head and your heart.
Dusk in the hotel. She sits on in the neon light of the dining room, drained of color, older.
With a sudden nervous gesture she pours some water into her glass, opens the bottles, takes out some pills and swallows them.
It's the first time she's taken twice the prescribed dose.
It's still light outside. Nearly everyone has gone. The bay windows are open. A breeze comes in through the stiff net curtains.
She grows calmer.
He has picked up the book, his book, and opens it. He doesn't read.
Voices can be heard from the grounds.
She goes out.
She has gone out.
He shuts the book.
Nine o'clock, dusk, dusk in the hotel and over the forest.
"Do you mind?"
He looks up and recognizes him. He has been here in the hotel all the time, since the first day. He's always seen him there, yes, either in the grounds, or the dining room, or in the corridors, yes, always, or in the road that runs by the hotel, round the tennis courts, at night, in the daytime, wandering round and round, round and round, alone. His age doesn't strike one. His eyes do.
He sits down, takes out a cigarette, offers him one.
"I'm not disturbing you?"
"Not at all."
"I'm here alone too, you see."
"Yes."
She stands up. Walks past.
He is silent.
"We're always the last, every evening. Look, they've all gone." His voice is sharp, almost brutal. "Are you a writer?"
"No. Why are you speaking to me today?"
"I sleep badly. I dread going to my room. I toss and turn, my thoughts wear me out."
They are silent.
"You haven't answered my question. Why today?"
He looks at him at last.
"You were expecting it?"
"I suppose I was."
He gets up, makes a gesture of invitation.
"Shall we go over by the windows?"
"There's no point in it."
"All right."
He hasn't heard her go up the stairs. She must have gone out in the garden to wait for it to be completely dark. But he can't be sure.
"All the people here are tired, had you noticed? No children or dogs or papers or television."
"Is that why you're here?"
"No. It's the same here to me as it would be any-where else. I come back every year. I'm not an invalid any more than you are. No. This place has memories for me. They wouldn't interest you. I met a woman here."
"And she hasn't come back?"
"She must have died."
He says everything in the same monotonous voice.
"There could be other explanations," he adds. "But that's what I think."
"But you come back in the hope of finding her?"
"Oh no, I don't think so. You mustn't think it was a ... oh no. But she kept me interested a whole summer. That was all."
"Why?"
He pauses before answering. He rarely looks anyone in the eye.
"I couldn't say. It was a question of me — me and her together. Do you see? Shall we go over by the windows?"
They get up and cross the empty dining room. They stand by the windows, facing the grounds. Yes, that's where she was. She is walking round the tennis courts, dressed in black today. She's smoking. All the guests are outside. He doesn't look out into the grounds.
"My name's Stein," he says. "I'm a Jew."
There she goes, past the porch. Now she's gone.
"Did you hear what I said my name was?"
"Yes — Stein. It must be quite cool now. I thought they were all in bed. But they're all outside."
"Today the balls seemed to thud right through your head and your heart, didn't they?"
"Yes."
Silence.
"My wife's coming to get me in a few days. We're taking a vacation."
His smooth face becomes even more inscrutable. Is he brooding?
"I never imagined that."
"What did you think?"
"Nothing. I didn't think anything," Stein says.
Four people have taken it into their heads to play croquet at this hour. You can hear them laughing.
"What energy!" he says.
"Don't change the subject."
"My wife is very young. Young enough to be my daughter."
"What's her name?"
"Alissa."
"I thought you had no attachments outside the hotel." He smiles. "No one ever phones you. You don't get any letters. And now here all of a sudden Alissa is going to put in an appearance."
She halts by a path — the path that leads to the forest — hesitates, then walks toward the porch of the hotel.
"In three days. At the moment Alissa's staying with her family. We've been married two years. She goes to see her family every year. She's been there about ten days. I can scarcely remember what she looks like."
She has come indoors again. Those are her footsteps. She's going along the corridor.
"I've lived with various women," Stein says. "You and I are about the same age, so I've had plenty of time for women. But I've never married any of them. I may have gone through the pretenses, but never without an inner howl of refusal. Never."
Now she's on the stairs.
"And you? Are you a writer?"
"I'm in the process of becoming one," says Stein. "Do you see?"
"Yes. I suppose it's always been like that?"
"Yes. How did you guess?"
No longer any sound of any kind. She must have gone into her room.
"How?" Stein asks again.
"By the way you keep asking questions. Questions that get you nowhere."
They look at each other and smile.
Stein points out at the grounds and beyond.
"Outside the grounds," he says, "six miles or so from the hotel, there's a very well-known view. You can see all the hills that underlie this region."
"Is that where everyone is when the hotel's empty in the afternoon?"
"Yes. They always come back by dusk, have you noticed?"
Silence.
"Anything else here besides the view?"
"I've never heard of anything else worth seeing. No ... nothing apart from that. Only the forest. It's there all round us."
Darkness swallows up the tops of the trees. No color left anywhere.
"I only know the grounds," Max Thor says. "I haven't been outside."
Silence.
"At the end of the main path," says Max Thor, "there's a gate."
"Oh, you've noticed it?"
"Yes."
"They don't go into the forest."
"Oh, you knew that too?" Stein says.
"No. I didn't know."
Silence.
Then Stein goes as he came — without hesitation, without warning. He walks out of the dining room with his long indefatigable stride. Once out in the grounds he walks more slowly. He walks about among the others. He scrutinizes them without any restraint. He never speaks to them.
Sunshine and heat in the grounds.
She has changed her position on the chaise-longue. She has turned over and gone to sleep again, her legs stretched out and parted, her arm bent up over her face. Until today he had avoided going past her. Today, coming back from the far side of the grounds, he does just that, he walks past her. His footsteps on the gravel pierce the stillness of the sleeping body, make it start. The arm lifts slightly, and two eyes gaze at him from under it, unseeing. He walks by. The body goes still again. The eyes close.
Stein was coming down the steps of the hotel absentmindedly. They pass each other.
"I tremble all the time," says Stein, in a sort of trembling uncertainty.
Dark. Dark, except for gleams of light on the other side of the grounds.
Stein is there beside him nearly every evening now. He comes after dinner. She is still at table. To her right, one last lingering couple. She is waiting. What for?
A sudden lurid glow of the last light.
Stein and he have left the table. They are sitting in a couple of armchairs facing her. A lamp is on. Two mirrors reflect the setting sun.
"Madame Elisabeth Alione is wanted on the telephone."
A clear, high, airport voice. Stein doesn't move.
She gets up and goes across the dining room. She walks easily. Smiles mechanically as she goes past the armchairs. Disappears into the hall.
The last couple leave. In the silence, no sound from the telephone booth, beyond the office in the other wing of the hotel.
Stein gets up and goes over to the bay windows.
Someone switches the dining room lights off, thinking everyone's gone.
"She won't come back again this evening," says Stein.
"Did you know the name?"
"I must have. I must have known and forgotten. It wasn't a surprise to me."
He peers out into the grounds.
"They're all outside," he says. "Except her. And us. She doesn't like the evening."
"You're wrong. She always goes out in the garden after dinner."
"Not for long. And she always hurries in."
He walks back calmly and sits down again beside him. He looks at him for a long while without expression.
"Last night," says Stein, "when I was outside, I saw you sitting at your desk writing. Slowly. With difficulty. Your hand hovered over the page a long time. Then started writing again. And then suddenly it gave up. You stood up and came out on the balcony."
"I sleep badly. Like you."
"We both sleep badly."
"Yes. I listen. To the dogs. To the walls creaking. Till my head spins round. Then I write something."
"That's it. What? A letter?"
"Perhaps. But who to? Who to? In the dead of night, in the empty hotel, who to write to, that's the question, isn't it?"
"Well," says Stein, "the exciting things that happen to us at night, you and me. I walk about the grounds. Sometimes I hear my own voice."
"I've seen you sometimes. Heard you too, just before daybreak."
"That's right. That's me. The dogs in the distance, and my voice."
They look at each other in silence.
"Have you got it with you?" says Stein.
He takes the white envelope out of his pocket and gives it to Stein. Stein opens it, unfolds the letter, is silent a moment, then reads.
"'Madame,'" he reads, "'Madame, I have been watching you for ten days. There's something about you that fascinates me, puts me in a turmoil, and I can't, I simply can't, make out what it is.'"
Stein stops, then goes on.
"'Madame, I would like to get to know you. I wouldn't expect anything out of it for myself.' "
Stein puts the letter back in the envelope and the envelope down on the table.
"How quiet it is," Stein says. "Who'd believe our nights are such an ordeal?"
Stein leans back in his chair. They are both in the same position.
"You don't know anything?" Stein asks.
"Nothing. Only the face. And the way she sleeps."
Stein switches on the lamp between the two chairs and looks at him.
Silence.
"She doesn't get any letters either," Stein goes on. "But someone telephones. Usually after her siesta. She wears a wedding ring. But no one has come to see her yet."
Silence.
Stein gets up slowly and goes out.
While Stein is gone the other man gets up, goes over to Elisabeth Alione's table, and puts his hand out toward the book, which is shut. But he draws back and doesn't turn it over.
Stein comes back with the hotel register. They go and sit down again under the lamp.
"They're never in the office at this hour," he says. "It was easy."
He leafs through the register, stops.
"Here she is," Stein says.
"Alione," Stein says very clearly. He goes on reading slowly, and more quietly. "Alione. Maiden name: Villeneuve. Born Grenoble, March 10, 1931. Occupation: none. Nationality: French. Address: 5 avenue Magenta, Grenoble. Date of arrival: July 2."
Stein riffles through the pages and stops again.
"And here you are," says Stein. "Right next to her. Thor. Max Thor, born Paris, June 20, 1929. Occupation: university professor. Nationality: French. Address: 4 rue Camille-Dubois, Paris. Arrived July 4."
He shuts the register, goes out, comes back at once and sits down again beside Max Thor.
"So we know something," he says. "We're gradually getting somewhere. We know about Grenoble. And the words: Villeneuve, Elisabeth — Villeneuve at eighteen!"
Stein seems to be listening. Someone is walking about overhead.
"They've gone up to bed," he says. "We could take a walk outside now, if you like? There are still lights in the bedroom windows."
Max Thor doesn't move.
"Alissa," says Max Thor. "Alissa. I'm impatient for her to get here."
"Come," says Stein gently.
He gets up. They start to go. Before they reach the door Stein points to the letter on the table.
"Are we going to leave it on the table?"
"No one ever comes by here," says Max Thor. "And there's no name on it."
"Are you leaving it there for Alissa?"
"Oh ... yes, perhaps for Alissa," Max Thor says.
He points to Elisabeth Alione's table.
"She's been reading the same novel for a week," he says. "The same shape, the same cover. She must keep starting it and forgetting what she's read and starting it all over again. Did you know?"
"Yes."
"What kind of a book is it?"
Stein ponders.
"Would you like me to see? I can allow myself to do things you wouldn't do."
"As you like."
Stein goes over to Elisabeth Alione's table, opens the book at the title-page and comes back.
"It's nothing," Stein says. "A bookrack novel. Nothing."
"That's what I thought," Max Thor says.
Dazzling light. It has rained during the morning. Sunday.
"My brothers were there with their wives and children," says Alissa. "The house was full."
Elisabeth Alione opens the book. Max Thor listens to Alissa.
"I must say it was very gay, especially in the evenings. Mother stays very young."
Elisabeth Alione shuts the book. Her table is set for three. She looks toward the dining room door. She's in black. The bay windows are closed.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Destroy, She Said"
by .
Copyright © 1970 Grove Press, Inc., and Hamish Hamilton Ltd..
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
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