Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel

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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.

       17

      ‘Kristel! Stand up straight! Always stand up straight, girls! The world is not on your shoulders but under your feet!’

      Sister Marie Immaculata strives to teach us good manners.

      Marie Immaculata … what a pretty name. Pure and dignified, like her. Is it an adopted name, a stage name? What is the real name of this pale, virgin Marie Immaculata? Who is she?

      ‘Stand tall! Hold your head high! It’s not what’s on the ground that’s nigh!’

      Sister Marie Immaculata is uncompromising, and good.

      I have always stood up straight. I find it impossible to slouch – Sister Marie’s classes have helped me to hold myself well throughout my life, whatever the situation. Stay upright, look strong, give the impression of being so at all times. My dancer’s bearing has given my chaotic life some style, some tautness, a slightly aloof elegance that has borne me aloft, held high, out of reach of the vulgar and commonplace.

      I stood straight, but I was clumsy. I struggled to hold a fork well, and the whole class used to laugh at me. Food spurted easily off my plate, I was always staining my neighbours’ clothes. I was happy to learn grace but not to bend myself to these daunting and ridiculous rules about table manners: start with the outermost knife and fork, then, with each dish, move in towards the plate, then, delicately, take the water glass by its stem, not the wine glass first like a drunkard, then, delicately, bring it to your lips.

      ‘And not the other way round, girls!’

      I was distracted. I would go straight to the fish fork, which had the least sharp teeth. I didn’t like the other one; it was ‘Uncle’ Hans’s fork. I would bump the stem of my glass, creating a rhythm as shrill as my grandfather’s xylophone, driving the priestess of good manners crazy.

      On Saturdays the daughters of ministers and diplomats drove off in a lovely, dreamlike procession of limousines. I stayed put, or took the train for my Utrecht station.

       18

      ‘Kristel! Post!’

      Sister Marie Immaculata has a pseudo-strict manner that belies her sweetness and helps her keep order. She knows how important post is – it’s obvious from the silent gathering of usually boisterous girls. The unruly herd has miraculously transformed into waiting rows of ramrod-straight little grey stakes. We all want to know if we still exist in the outside world. My mother has written to me, as she does every week, the content always similar – what’s happening at the hotel, Dad, Aunt Mary’s moods, and the weather in Utrecht, as if it were different to here. I should have had a postbox at the hotel. Would my mother have put a daily letter in it? Perhaps she needs this modest distance, this absence, in order to write the words she doesn’t say.

      My mother’s letters are colourful. Aunt Mary knocked out a drunken customer who wanted to take her upstairs. The hotel boiler broke suddenly, making the temperature plummet and the customers flee. My father is away more and more, likewise searching for a little warmth.

      I like these letters. The softness of the paper, my mother folded between my fingers. Often there are crossings-out and the faint smell of sherry, and stains blurring her neat handwriting. I wait eagerly for these letters, this belated attention.

      My mother never saw how happy her dull words made me, how I wrung my hands as I waited and smiled when my name was called. Every week I hung on the pretty lips and perfect diction of Sister Marie Immaculata.

      I have a good time at this strange boarding school, imposing my passive rule, spending cheerful, normal, sporty years there. Running, swimming, jumping. Letting off steam, making my changing body move and sweat.

      I start smoking. Even the sisters smoke on Sundays. Like my father I favour filterless Camels, whose strong smoke scratches my throat. I am proud of this adult act that I can accomplish without coughing, tough like him.

      Is there any option but to behave like your father, and mother? Can one break with this need to belong? Perhaps with age and the ravages of poor imitation.

      The maths teacher is called Hees Been. He has a gammy leg which makes him wince when he stretches it out. He is fairly young, and more interested in the changing curves of our bodies than in geometry. He has a long lock of plastered-back hair, on which he unconsciously wipes his snot when he sneezes. I enjoy playing with this easy prey, making him pay for my disgust. I fold over my waistband to make my skirt as short as possible, then retrieve imaginary bits of chalk from the floor, bending gently in two, sensing the top of my thighs becoming visible, feeling the cool air on the lower parts of my bottom and watching the teacher’s face turn red. He says nothing, he is watching me, my buttocks are a vision to behold. His confusion and my power make me feel good. Everyone is laughing and I smother my own giggles with my back to the class. Then, stunned and naive, I sit back down in the first row, inhabited by the short-sighted and those whose surnames begin with A. I am delighted with my demonstration – if not mathematical then at least physiological.

      Sister Gertrude speaks to us in perfect Queen’s English. I like the language, and soon realise that it’s the key to getting away. Sister Gertrude’s hairstyle is a black-and-white rectangle perfectly aligned with the dark arm of her steel spectacles, making her resemble a shoebox. Sister Gertrude is ugly, but kind.

      My father says you have to be ugly to become a nun.

      Sister Marie Andrée teaches French and history. She tells us about the war in her warm, solemn, captivating voice. With her class unusually silent she describes the never-forgiven invasion, the suffering of a nation, the confiscated bicycles, the people starving to death and eating grated tulip bulbs.

      That cruel, intimate image stayed with me for a long time. Lovely bright tulips, twofold and useful. At flower shops

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