Girls Closed In

By France Théoret

In this novel from a Quebecois feminist writer, a shy sixteen-year-old falls in love with a classmate while attending a Catholic boarding school for prospective schoolteachers. When the fantasized relationship fails she takes superficial refuge with a group of girls recognizing her own loneliness and that of the group. {Guernica Editions}

• Language: English
• Publisher: Guernica
• Release date: Jan 1, 2005
• ISBN: 9781550714487

France Théoret

France Théoret is the author of nine books, including The Tangible Word.

Book preview

FRANCE THÉORET

GIRLS CLOSED IN

 PROSE SERIES 71

TRANSLATED BY LUISE VON FLOTOW

GUERNICA

Toronto – Buffalo – Lancaster (U.K.)

2005

I

THE SHAME OF DENIS RÉGIMBALD

1

She writes normal people make their lives easy. I know that, I am not a normal person and my life is not easy. This thought has just come to me and I can not deny it. Still, I am immediately aware that it is not true. My first response is introspection, that’s what I learnt at the same time as I was learning the alphabet in elementary school.

Our school teachers taught us to examine our consciences, and I continue to do this unwittingly, the reflex is so deeply rooted in me. I got a poor education that forced me to be reserved, and pretend to be humble.

My life has consisted of a great number of discoveries. I have learnt that the most serious reproach, and one that no one dares utter for fear of a boomerang effect, is that a woman does not have a sense of family. The woman who wrote the letter doesn’t dare get too personal with me. Her decision to generalize is brutal. The implication is that I will understand the message since we’re used to generalizations and allusions. I have long been thinking about the way we talk to each other and about the consequences. The sense of family and the indirect reproach go together. She knows the message will get through, and at the same time she thinks it will somehow be tempered. So it’s a question of hitting hard, and then reducing or denying the effect.

As a response to her indirect verbal attack I could stop all further participation in the activities of the family clan. I have already been practising a certain detachment. A complete break isn’t really possible. Even though I never mount an attack, she’s wary. Distrustful. We have our habits, and they take us along parallel paths, paths of avoidance.

As I have already said, I constantly put myself into question and will continue to subject myself to this scourge even though, as the object of this deadly introspective activity, I am in the process of self-destructing. I will look somewhere else for the fuller meaning of the phrase normal people make their lives easy.

There’s no communication problem between the two of us. I’m not dying for her to understand me. I would like her to accept me, if that’s possible. As for the lack of understanding between us, only a religious sect could claim to diminish that. I feel sad and somehow condescending to evoke sects and their rigid structures, which are as far removed from my interests as my ability to answer the implied reproach in her letter.

I don’t have to answer. I have taken my distance and assumed a neutral position. The damage has been done. This phrase of hers pushes me into a mould, into a cage not a rage. The feeling of being observed, limited to dimensions established in advance, is prescriptive. I have always hated this feeling, and rattled the bars in a violent struggle against my limits. It’s an effect of the countless authors I’ve read. I took the ideas I didn’t find in my environment from them.

Normal people make their lives easy, this sentence overwhelms me, shatters me. The introspective machine works as a great grinder, merciless in its demands. The moralizing letter is right there, open on my writing desk. I will not be putting it away with my other mail. I am pacing through my big apartment, going in circles. I tend to confuse my identity as a civil servant working for the City with the rest of my activities. My recent promotion has neither decreased nor increased my tendency to want to pass unnoticed. My education has led me to seek simplicity and deprivation, and I do so ruthlessly. The letter is moralistic, it is pushing me to a new examination of myself. If I could reduce everything to simple and immediate well-being, to the lightest duties, I would never have received such a letter. I cannot. I wonder how necessary it is for me to forestall people sending me such letters. I announced my recent promotion. The news was not taken well. I am stuck.

*

The document I’m working on is half-finished. I brought it home just in case. It’s on my writing desk, near the letter. The evening is sad beyond all measure. If I had a girlfriend, I’d phone her to talk about the letter. I imagine reading the letter to her to avoid the abstruse generalizations that can confuse conversations. I would say here are the facts. What do you think? I don’t have a girlfriend, only an excellent colleague at work. Too many years have gone by since I had a girlfriend.

I’ve moved often, changed jobs, spent years studying, left a marriage, all of which has caused a certain social instability. My girlfriends haven’t followed me and I haven’t tried to hold on to them. I often feel that I’ve behaved badly. I’ve always found it hard to talk about my feelings, or my body, with a girlfriend, and not fall into the trap of terrible generalities that destroy relationships.

Months can go by without my thinking about Yolande. But her image always comes back and my memory of her never leaves me cold. At that time in my life, I was looking for the distinctive, the bizarre, the fruitfully strange. I believed in my own uniqueness, and I haven’t stopped. I thought this uniqueness meant I had the means to express it, some way of giving it shape. All I thought about was how to distinguish myself from the others. That was the only way I saw of protesting against my environment, which represented the whole of society. I hadn’t yet learnt that uniqueness is not a form of protest in itself but rather a fulfillment of yourself through your acts.

I felt as though I was suffocating. What I’d thought of as unique was cerebral, ideal, a figment of my imagination. I was disconnected. I confused uniqueness with eccentricity, behaviour that detaches you from normal human relations. I was torn, I didn’t want to attract attention or become what others might call a character. I thought of putting together all my possible options and concocting a re-birth that would fit with what I imagined. I thought that what comes from yourself develops due to your intelligence and constant efforts of will.

I was capable of admiration. My internal monologues swelled my words. I moved from admiration to fascination. Without really knowing, I’d been in danger of being dispossessed. But I’d seen that there was something special about Yolande. I’d felt it, seen it immediately. It’s a gift I have. The letter that exhorts me to a normal, easy life is in line with my education and seeks to continue my effacement.

The attraction I felt for Yolande when I was in boarding school is proof that my current attempt to disappear has a touch of sadness and the feeling of having failed. I’d guessed at Yolande’s solitude. I’d been right. There is a solitude that does not confine you to boredom and isolation.

*

I am ironing my white blouse. I am concentrating on pulling the cloth tight. A yellow light comes from the ceiling. My shadow casts a gray stain on the fine cotton. The wide-open collar is the only stylish thing about the blouse. I note my tendency to asceticism, my error in seeking neutrality. I don’t have to do what my education taught me. I have already worn the white cotton blouse of a boarding school uniform.

What was once my life force, nameless, secret, yet nonetheless active, is fraying. The mauve night wafts in the open window. Its discreet purple overlays the soft glistening cloth. Yolande used to spend entire nights in a jazz bar. I have also known sleepless nights. Night is falling and I have no desire to disappear. I laugh at myself, proof that I am divided.

Right here, I am contemplating emptiness. The night is suspended. I exercised my right to be unique in the face of humiliations and reprimands. I look deep into the night. Custom requires that I do not respond to the letter lying open on my desk. Threats of punishment, insults, and hurtful predictions have already wounded me, and strengthened my introspective voice. Outside the clan, I learnt what I had already guessed in the first flickers of my uniqueness. And that is what the letter cannot forgive.

The urban night shimmers.

2

Denis Régimbald. I recognize him as soon as he steps into my tiny office. He softly shakes my hand, his shoulders slope over my writing