It's time I sit down and write the story of Eloise. I wish the World remembers her, and I want the World to remember her voice.
Biographies are always a difficult exercise: the writer has their own image of their subject, they want to use them, often after they have departed this mortal world and have lost the opportunity to represent themselves, to teach the reader some lesson. But what lesson could there be in a life, which is often the product of circumstances, which is casual and chaotic, which doesn't follow a straight and pre-determined path?
I will let Eloise choose how to present her life, and I will offer the picture that Elosie has drawn of herself in the many letters she has written to me over the years we have known each other.
Of course, I will have to rearrange the stories in their chronological order. Eloise has never stuck to conventions and some of the stories that appear as a single narrative here are, in fact, reconstructed from various fragments over many letters, written at different times and from different places. I try not to step away from the role of respectful curator of her life, and I will limit myself to putting all the elements back to form a unified structure.
I also had to make sense of some of what she said, and I hope the end result is coherent. Some of the dates and the names vary across the different accounts. Of course, I told myself, once I started noticing these small discrepancies, some details are easy to forget. People change their minds, and coherence is the vanity of the person who has never truly lived. But then, as I tried to make sense of this confusion, I had to admit that Eloise didn't simply forget and wasn't just careless with the details: entire events would be told with completely different endings.
I'm sure that she spun lies. She would tell a story one way or another, depending on her mood, or depending on what her immediate necessities might have been. She would write a story casting blame on everyone but herself, if she wanted to play the part of a victim of circumstances, but she would then tell it again, maybe having forgotten of having told it to me before, ending it in tragedy to elicit sympathy. Other times, she would confess her guilt of all events, while at others she seemed to relish playing the part of the villain.
Maybe, she enjoyed telling me a story. Maybe, none of this is true.
I simply don't know. I've done the best I could with all this.
I have kept all her letters, from her first one to the last. It's all here. I have no heir, and I wonder if all these yellowing papers will be burnt upon my death, or if anything will remain. I'm sure that, if the priest gets here first, he will rush to do so.
I will then leave my account, neatly bound, to my friend the doctor. He is rather prudish in his tastes and, although a man of science, seems to regard the darker aspects of our human nature not as a fact of life worthy of interest, but as an aberration from our truer, higher nature which is in need of a cure. But, I hope, he might preserve this volume out of regard for his friend, once I have departed this World. He is much younger than me, and he will certainly outlive me by many years. It is my wish that he finds someone to pass this volume to.
Before I begin the account of Eloise's life, I will say two words about myself. Maybe, my life, which, so far, has been rather uneventful, will be remembered, as an appendage to the much more riveting existence of Eloise.
I am a librarian. I haven't lived much, if not inside the pages of the novels I have read, and often re-read, throughout my life.
I grew up in the city. My father had a small shop where he sold buttons. My mother looked after the family in our small apartment. After high school, I joined the army, not having sufficient funds to pursue the academic life, which would have been my dream. After the service, I applied for the post at the city library. I got accepted, and I have worked there until the present day.
I have built a life that suits my temperament. I start my day at dawn with a brisk walk. After leaving my apartment, I walk to the church, where I haven't set foot in many years. Still, I admire its Gothic lines, whether they're a testament to human ingenuity, its faith in a protecting force, I cannot tell you, but its image fills me with reverence, and I often believe I can grasp some secular mystery hidden in its geometry. Then, I walk along the edge of the park until I see my old high school. I often stop to look at the building. It doesn't have any special feature to recommend it: it's an old, two-storey building, with a yellow façade and red shades. Above the oversized door, the name of the institution. Often, just by virtue of this vision, I am reminded of an event from the past, sometime small, sometime more relevant, of my life within those walls. After this habitual rest, I walk to the municipal palace and then to the courthouse, which I religiously touch with two fingers to signal the mid-point of my walk. Then, I retrace my steps. I have breakfast, read or write or engage in some leisurely activity for some time, and, finally, I catch the bus at eight o'clock. At eight thirty, I enter the library, where I will spend the rest of the day until five o'clock.
It's a large library, but it's upkeeping isn't hard work. Not many people visit it these days. Usually, old people looking for a copy of the daily papers to peruse, and, after lunch, some students. This occupation leaves me time to think. I wonder about the shape of the universe, the first philosophers, the life of miners underground. Sometimes, I consult volumes on these matters, but mostly I let my mind wonder and imagine, and I tell myself stories, which might be true, but might be fanciful and ridiculous to the experts.
Back home, dinner is often simple and is generally a single course followed by some fruit. I don't care for television, although I own one, so I am in bed early.
This is to say, that my life is lived with calm regularity. It's a life whose fitness to my nature I have never ceased to appreciate.
Therefore, I cannot explain what possessed me to sign up to the program and volunteer to host a foreign student for some time at my place. A few years ago, some charitable organisation held a public talk in the main room of the library. Not many people were in the audience. The speaker told the people in the room of the difficulties of these students. They lived in what amounted to orphanages and had never had the luxury of a holiday. The difficulties in their lives had left scars, he said, which meant that their academic results were poor, and their hopes for meaningful employment and a better, easier life were meagre.
The charity this speaker represented had organised some sort of cultural exchange for a group of students to come to our town and attend the local school for a period. Would anyone in the audience be interested in providing lodging?
I don't know why the story and the need of these boys and girls moved me so much. I had a perfectly nice childhood: we weren't rich, but we weren't poor. We always had food, and we enjoyed a week at the sea, hosted by my father's sister, every summer. I knew nothing of privation.
I had forgotten about my enrolment in this program until I received a letter to announce that a student, Eloise, was scheduled to arrive, and to have certain obvious commodities ready, a bed, food, and so on.