The Ravishing of Lol Stein Read Online Free PDF Page A

suburb.
    South Tahla is a fairly large town, large enough so that Lol was reasonably certain that she could pass unperceived when she went on her walks. All the more so because there was no one section she preferred, she walked through all of them and seldom returned to the same places.
    Nothing, moreover, about Lol's clothing or conduct was such as to attract any special attention. The only thing that might have was her personage itself, Lola Stein, the girl jilted at the Town Beach casino years ago, who had been born and raised in South Tahla. But assuming there were some people who might have recognized her as this girl, the victim of Michael Richardson's monstrous, despicable behavior, who would ever have been tactless or spiteful enough to remind her of it? Who would have said:
    "Pardon me, Miss, but if I'm not mistaken, aren't you Lola Stein?"
    No one.
    Though it had been rumored in town that the Bedfords had moved back to South Tahla, and though some people had been able to confirm the rumor, having seen the young woman pass by, no one had tried to talk to her. They no doubt decided that she had taken a big step in coming back, and that she deserved to be left alone.
    I do not think it ever occurred to Lol that people went out of their way to avoid greeting her in order not to put her in the embarrassing situation of reminding her of a painful experience out of the past, of some difficult moment from her former life, since she herself did not take the initiative of greeting anyone and thus seemed to indicate her wish to forget.
    No, Lol must have given herself the credit for passing unperceived in South Tahla, she must have considered it a test she had to pass every day and from which she daily emerged victorious. Each day, following her walk, she must have felt all the more reassured: if she willed it, people scarcely saw her, she was almost invisible. She thought that she had been cast into a mold, the identity of which was extremely vague and to which a variety of names might be given, an identity whose visibility she could control.
    The couple's definitive move back to South Tahla, its stability, its handsome home, its relative wealth, its children, the quiet regularity of Lol's walks, the tasteful sobriety of her gray coat, the fashionable cut of her dark dresses—did not all these things attest to the fact that she had emerged forever from a traumatic experience? I can't say for sure. But one fact is certain: no one went up and tried to talk to her during those weeks when she went wandering happily through the town, no one.
    And what about her, did she, Lol, recognize anyone in South Tahla? Aside from the woman—and she was not even sure about her—she had glimpsed that overcast day in front of her house? I doubt it.
    When I followed her—from a concealed vantage point across the street—I could see that she sometimes smiled at certain faces, or at least that was the impression one got. But Lol's captive submissive smile, the immutable smugness of her smile, was such that people never did any more than smile in turn. She seemed to be mocking both herself and the other person, a trifle embarrassed but also amused at finding herself on the other side of the wide river which separated her from the people of South Tahla, the side they were not on.
    Thus Lol Stein found herself back in South Tahla again, the town where she had been born, that town she knew like the back of her hand, without having anything, no visible sign by which she could tell that she had been recognized in return. She recognized South Tahla, recognized it constantly both from having known it earlier in her life and from having known it the evening before, but without there being any proof reflected by South Tahla to reinforce her own, each time that she recognized something, a bullet whose impact was always the same. All by herself, she began to recognize less, and then, in a different way, she began to return day after day, step by step,