Читать книгу Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel - Страница 20

16

‘May I have a cognac, please?’ I speak up to hide my nervousness.

‘A cognac?! You must be joking, my girl! And you’ll sing a little lower, if you don’t mind!’

This funny Flemish expression means ‘lower your voice’. I wasn’t singing, I didn’t feel like it. I am afraid of this new life, afraid that I have lost my head and made a bad decision.

I am eleven years old, it’s my first night at boarding school and I can’t sleep. This is the first time I’ve been refused a cognac. They’ve also refused to take my bags up. What is this place?

‘Straight to the sickroom with you, my girl!’

Sister Assissia is shocked, and wants to be sure I am of sound mind.

I am sane and realise for the first time, from the astounded look of this strict but kindly adult, that the relationship between alcohol and the body is an unnatural one, that the two are not bound together like the body and water. Alcohol is not merely a bracing liquid that stings and warms, leaving you dizzy and making you sing even if you’re tone-deaf.

Alcohol is not natural, not good.

I am returned to my room.

‘So, no cognac, my girl. But three Hail Marys and two Paters will send you to sleep just as well!’

Sister Assissia shows me my room, shuts the door behind her and rushes off, bemused, thinking of the vast amount of work that will be needed to sort me out.

This is a religious secondary boarding school, not far from Utrecht. I am now in a finishing school for smart young ladies preparing for life as upper-class wives.

At the hotel, when I couldn’t sleep I used to either serve myself a small cognac or finish off the customers’ glasses, making crazy mixtures that knocked me out fast. I was sometimes upset in the evenings, left alone to face the issues confronting a growing girl. I would feel sad when I heard them announce the departure of the last train for Hilversum.

The girls in the other rooms must be asleep but I am not. I open the window. There’s no station here, no noise, the silence is total. The air is so bracing and clean it makes my head spin. I cannot believe Utrecht is only a few miles away. I’m in the middle of nowhere, here. A few bats beat the night sky slowly with their pointy wings. No red Coca-Cola signs; just a faint gleam, down and to the left at the entrance to the school, lighting up the notice ‘Do not walk on the grass’. You have to take the gravel track, the straight and narrow path that leads to the road and the trees, the tall, dark, still trees waiting to take back their earth.

No walking on the lawn, no cognac, no being up at this late hour. I come from a world in which anything is allowed, except dancing naked and slobbering on my cheek. The change is harsh. Sister Assissia is doing her rounds. I can hear her tired step and the clink of the crucifix that hangs down her front. I quickly turn off the light and slip under the covers fully dressed. I lie still, listening to the doorknob creak like at the hotel. The door closes and the steps move away. I will not have to change rooms. I am alone and without alcohol. The merry-go-round in my head spins ever faster. The Square’s neon sign is a bright flame that dazzles me when I close my eyes. My father’s laughter and the cries of the station make me dizzy. I am discovering silence, and absence. I didn’t see much of my parents but I knew they were there, at the end of the corridor or in the attic, and my aunts were close by too. At the hotel there were bits of love scattered around like jigsaw pieces, for me to put together again each day. It was my bright red fairground, the unique place in which I had landed. I had got used to it, as only children can.

I will get used to these prison-bar trees, this forbidden lawn, the holy water. I am eleven years old, I will get used to anything, just about.

I find the 6 a.m. wake-up call hard. Fasting through Mass every day so as to be pure before God makes me weak. The costumed people, the high-pitched, loud singing and the mysterious dance in a mist of incense all combine to make me dizzy. After a few days of this the tired, upset and lazy girl faints. Back to the sickroom, pale and limp but away from Mass and the wake-up call. At night, with a torch under the covers, I read a book about cowboys and Indians – free, lively and wild.