Free The Lover by Marguerite Duras Page A

sure of myself, at the heart of my essential certainty, the certainty that later on I’ll be a writer.
    That’s the place where later on, once the present is left behind, I must stay, to the exclusion of everywhere else. The hours I spend in the apartment show it in a new light. It’s a place that’s intolerable, bordering on death, a place of violence, pain, despair, dishonor. And so is Cholon. On the other bank of the river. As soon as you’ve crossed to the other side.
    I don’t know what became of Hélène Lagonelle, I don’t even know if she’s dead. It was she who left the boarding school first, a long while before I went to France. She went back to Da Lat. Her mother sent for her, I believe to arrange a match for her, I believe she was to meet someone just out from France. But I may be wrong, I may be projecting what I thought wouldhappen to Hélène Lagonelle onto her prompt departure at her mother’s request.
    Let me tell you what he did, too, what it was like. Well—he stole from the houseboys in order to go and smoke opium. He stole from our mother. He rummaged in closets. He stole. He gambled. My father bought a house in Entre-Deux-Mers before he died. It was the only thing we owned. He gambles. My mother sells the house to pay his debts. But it isn’t enough, it’s never enough. When he’s young he tries to sell me to customers at the Coupole. It’s for him my mother wants to go on living, so he can go on eating, so he can have a roof over his head, so he can still hear someone call him by his name. Then there’s the place she bought for him near Amboise, ten years’ savings. Mortgaged in one night. She pays the interest. And all the profit from the cutting down of the woods I told you about. In one night. He stole from my mother when she was dying. He was the sort of person who rummaged in closets, who had a gift for it, knew where to look, could find the right piles of sheets, the hiding places. He stole wedding rings, that sort of thing, lots of them, jewelry, food. He stole from Dô, the houseboys, my younger brother. From me. Plenty. He’d have sold her, his own mother. When she dies he sends for the lawyer right away, in the midst of all the emotion. He takesadvantage of it. The lawyer says the will is not valid. It favors the elder son too much at my expense. The difference is enormous, laughable. I have to refuse or accept, in full knowledge of the facts. I say I’ll accept: I’ll sign. I’ve accepted. My brother lowers his eyes. Thanks. He weeps. In the midst of all the emotion of our mother’s death. He’s quite sincere. At the liberation of Paris, probably on the run for having been a collaborator in the South, he has nowhere to go. He comes to me. He’s running away from some danger, I never quite knew what. Perhaps he informed on people, Jews perhaps, anything is possible. He’s very mild and affectionate, as always after he’s committed murders or when he needs your help. My husband has been deported. He sympathizes. He stays three days. I’ve forgotten, and when I go out I don’t lock anything up. He rummages around. I’ve been keeping my rice and sugar rations for when my husband comes back. He rummages around and takes them. He also rummages around in a little closet in my bedroom. He finds what he’s looking for and takes all my savings, fifty thousand francs. He doesn’t leave a single note. He quits the apartment with the spoils. When I see him again I won’t mention it, it’s too shaming for him, I couldn’t. After the fake will, the fake Louis XIV chateau is sold for a song. The sale was a put-up job, like the will.
    After my mother’s death he’s left alone. He has nofriends, never has had, sometimes he’s had women who “worked” for him in Montparnasse, sometimes women who didn’t work for him, at least to begin with, sometimes men, but then they did the paying. He lived a very lonely life. And more so as he grew older. He was only a layabout, he