Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir

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 I sometimes imagine being given the option: ‘Would you like your tulips grated, Ms Kristel, or in a bouquet?’

My mother talked to us about the war, too. At a very young age she used to go off on her wooden-wheeled bicycle – there weren’t any tyres left – and cycle for hours to swap a piece of silverware for some potatoes. One night, exhausted and empty-bellied, she had knocked on a farmhouse door and pleaded her hunger. The generous peasant woman sat her down at the table and gave her a melted-cheese pancake so rich, so big for that concave belly that my mother was ill for several days, and had to stay at the woman’s house. My mother used to say that she was going to find her, so she could thank her and take the opportunity to have her to stay instead.

Dutch people are thrifty and they bear grudges; on holiday in Germany they’re still prone to exclaim, ‘Give me back my bicycle!’ Mine had stayed at the hotel. Just as well – I was always falling off because I was so dreamy and lazy I had forgotten to pedal.

Father Gianotten is so modern and believes so much in love – ‘because God is love’ – that he has married one of the schoolgirls.

Sister Christine bears the heavy burden of our sexual education. She is clearly overwhelmed by this unrequested mission, and speaks in a brittle monotone of a threatening world. Men are governed by uncontrollable urges due to the hormones that run through their veins like poison, and women spend their lives trying to escape these male urges. The rest – the detail, the reproductive technique necessary for humanity’s survival – is in Latin. Those whistling words are messengers from another world; they leave me pensive.

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‘Kristel! Post!’

The tone of my mother’s letter is new, the stains many, the words hard to decipher. Have they been blurred by alcohol, or tears? I cannot understand them all. My mother is devastated, screaming her despair: my father has a mistress, not a passing fling but a woman who is winning his heart, who wants him. The words are rough, coarse, my mother is wrecked. I am terror-stricken. Sister Marie Immaculata grabs my letter, reads it and turns pale.

‘These words are not appropriate for you, Sylvia. I will call your mother and speak to her. Calm yourself.’

I forget the letter. It will soon be the holidays. I perfect my manners and carry on having a good time.

‘The man must enter the restaurant first!’

‘But isn’t he supposed to hold the door for the ladies, Sister?’

‘No! The man protects the woman. When entering an unknown space he is firstly making sure that people’s attention will fall on him rather than the naturally shy and reserved woman. Yes, I am saying shy and reserved! Secondly, he is checking that there are no crooks inside. Evil is everywhere, and the man protects the woman from evil …’

I have always waited at restaurant doors to check whether the man had manners. Whether he would protect me or let me walk in as if brandishing a trophy.

I now have a little group of followers at boarding school. They gaze at me, and listen rapt to my risqué stories. I tell them about the hotel, its pulsating, unusual life, everything I’ve seen there, everything I’ve learned about men and women. The striptease customer with her boa, who compèred the staff party and tried in vain to seduce ‘Uncle’ Hans. The secret world of transitory customers, freedom re-found for a single night in an isolated space – a hotel room is a parallel, distant world. I mime the faces of the chambermaids as they discover stains while stripping the beds. I reveal the complex stories of my world, so different to the one in which we live. I speak of life as it really is, not in theory, not in Latin.

The nuns reprimand me:

‘There’s nothing to be proud of about coming from such a circus, my girl!’

They want to protect me, in their simple, boundaried way, from a confused adult world in which I might go astray.

One must pray for life to be nothing but love.

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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 applestrudels … these are afew 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.

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My parents got divorced. That’s it, that’s what’s happened. Disunited, for life. It was my brave mother who officially told me. I am the oldest, entitled to responsibility, to scolding and to announcements, from the most trivial to the most serious. My parents have divorced. I am a neutral, one-way receptacle of news, of sharp wounds and of this announcement which has broken the thread of a life, devastated its shape and coherence.

We had been a scattered family, rather drunken, our bond one of industrious indifference and chaste, silent proximity. Work, introversion, the impossibility of really meeting and an incapacity for warm-heartedness had kept us at a distance from each other. We had been a family as bruised and divided as war veterans, but a family nonetheless.

My mother says that it doesn’t matter, that God will take care of us. God won’t do a thing, and neither will my mother. I see how hurt she is: she trembles all the time and her eyes shirk contact, blinking away her tears so they don’t fall. My mother wants to be strong and to keep thinking that she understands life, its organising principles. She clings to her rigid, protective framework but it is cracking, like an old sea wall that has been leaking for a long time.

My mother realises the power of love when he leaves. My father’s love, which she had thought hers, has settled on another woman, another body, and my mother is doubled up in pain and will be for the rest of her life.