Читать книгу Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel - Страница 24

20

It is summer and I’m back at the hotel.

We’re going to the seaside for a few days; my father has rented us a sweet little house. Aunt Mary is coming too. In the car my mother says nothing. She opens the window, taking great gulps of the warm air and staring fixedly at the clear sky. My father regularly informs us of the number of miles still to go. His voice is unusually monotonous. Marianne is sad to have left Anneke, and my brother is leaning on the back shelf guessing the makes of the passing cars. Aunt Mary is dozing. I watch the treeless fields rush by, perfectly fenced flat rectangles in single but various colours. Night is slowly falling. What silence, for the holidays!

We have barely arrived when my father tells us that tomorrow morning he will be making an important announcement, for which he will wake us up. But now it’s bedtime. Aunt Mary is prostrate; she’s in a low phase. My mother goes straight to her room without checking the house as she usually does, without sweeping or inspecting the fridge. The furniture is covered in sheets. I entertain myself by waving them through the air in a great cloud of dust that makes Aunt Mary cough. At last some movement, some noise!

In the bedroom Marianne is not asleep. She asks me about boarding school. Do I have any new friends? She has grown up, and tells me that she’s already tried smoking. I scold her, smiling, happy that she’s sharing my room as before. I grab her ear in gentle revenge for her desertion. She pretends that it hurts. We have a singing competition; she starts with a musical film she’s already seen three times, The Sound of Music. I laugh – I’ve seen the film and it’s delightful, but it’s a kids’ film! My sister doesn’t understand the English words but the rousing, simple tunes – joyful lullabies – have seeped into her like a divine message. Marianne stands on the bed and apes Julie Andrews in that scene where the kindly governess attempts to distract seven half-orphaned children terrified by the storm: ‘Cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels … these are a few of my favourite things … when the dog bites, when the bee stings …’ Julie teaches the children that when life becomes hard you have to think of simple, good things to drive away the fear. I tease my sister but I must admit that many years later I can still remember every word of that wonderful song, which I’ve sung far more often than I’ve ever prayed.

‘Krim kolor poni! …’ Marianne sings her beloved gobbledegook over and over again. I interrupt to launch into my grown-up Beatles songs, demonstrating my mastery of English to this uncultured little kid. Then I tell her it’s time to sleep – and Marianne obeys me. I go to the window, the sea is rough and the gulls are circling and crying.

‘Stormy weather, stormy weather …’ mutters Aunt Mary in the corridor, sounding like a ghost.

I can’t sleep. My father wants to make an important announcement. Is he going to sell the hotel? Is he ill? Does he not want us any more? I am worried, tossing restlessly as if I were at sea. I have left the door open and can hear my mother’s voice, much quieter than usual. I move towards the corridor and listen to her whispering on and on. I can’t make out the words but I get a sense of the tone. She seems to be questioning my father, who isn’t replying; she is pleading with him.

It is morning. I haven’t slept much. My father comes in and wakes us rather curtly. My mother is in the kitchen, she hasn’t put on her flowery, sleeveless summer dress. She seems to be cold, and kisses us without looking at us.

There’s a ring at the door. I jump, the chime is loud and unexpected. Aunt Mary suddenly wakes up on her chair, grumbles and goes to answer. I hear shouting. We rush to the door to see a white-faced woman. Hanny’s eyes are outlined in black, her lips are thin and bright red and her backcombed hair has been pulled up into a huge round beehive on the top of her head, and sprayed solid. I take a step backwards, she looks like a witch. My father moves Aunt Mary out of the way and invites the woman in. My mother comes out of the kitchen, stands behind my father and looks away.

‘Children, this is my new wife!’

My mother doesn’t say anything. She has known for a few days, and she has relented; she accepts everything, it seems.

Aunt Mary screams and flies into a rage, grabbing the sherry bottle by the living-room door and whacking the woman on the head with it, like in a cartoon. The woman emits funny little shrieks and extricates herself, unhurt. Her beehive has acted as a buffer. My father grasps his sister round the waist and takes her to her room, then sits down wearily. The woman is looking at me with a faint smile.

It’s not possible. It can’t be! In this moment, right here, right now, if I rush at my father, telling him how much I love him and begging him to keep my mother, he will do it. He has to, he will listen to his daughter. I jump on his knee and plead.

‘Daddy, no! You can’t do this!’

I shake his heavy shoulders. He bursts into sobs, avoiding my kisses and saying in a broken voice: ‘But I’m weak, my little one, weak …’

My father has chosen. The woman continues to smile. Her hair is slightly dishevelled but she is standing firm, solid. Blood rushes to my brain. I see red. I am full of rage, concentrated and built up over fourteen years. I am a bloodthirsty lion. I pounce on the witch, punching and scratching her, pulling at her plastic bun, calling her a whore – that new, never-spoken word. I want to kill her, slaughter her, exterminate her.

My mother and father eventually manage to control me. The woman is knocked to the ground but is not crying. Tough, despicable creature, uncrushable insect. I am shut in my room for the rest of the day. I bash on the door, yelling and crying, then suddenly stop. I take myself back in hand. Hold my head high. ‘Stand tall, hold your head up …’

I tell myself that there’s no point, that I must accept this split as an inexplicable but possible and natural part of life. Tomorrow the rough sea might be smooth as velvet. My father is leaving. It must be the time of year. You think you can control love, life, bonds, you think you are building something, but in fact it’s all just seasons passing.

What will happen now? I don’t know. I’m afraid of the next phase in this dissolved life. You have to accept that there’s no sense to life, that nature is absurd and changeable. You have to carry on, struggling along between sun and bad weather, between the first ball and the last dance.