The Collected Stories of Colette (102 page)

“You’re talking like a child. As if one could have any peace without money! I know what I’m talking about. So it’s not getting on as fast as you think it should, your cottage?”

“I can’t quite make out. The builders play bowls in the alley under the trees. And they’ve made a charming little camping ground by the well. Open-air fire, fish soup . . . grilled sausages, bottles of
vin rosé
too: they offered me a glass.”

Madame Suzanne was so amused that she flung herself back in her chair and slapped her thighs.

“Madame Ruby! Come and listen to this!”

Her partner came over to us, with a napkin over one hand and the middle finger of the other capped with a thimble. For the first time, I saw her occupied in a thoroughly feminine way and wearing round spectacles with transparent frames. She went on gravely embroidering drawn threadwork while Madame Suzanne went over “the misfortunes of Madame Colette.”

“You look like a boy sewing, Madame Ruby!”

As if offended, Madame Suzanne took the napkin from her friend’s hands and held it under my nose.

“It’s true that embroidering suits her about as well as sticking a feather in her behind. But look at the work itself! Isn’t it exquisite?”

I admired the tiny regular lattices and Madame Suzanne ordered tea for the three of us. An intermittent mistral was blowing. It would be silent for some moments, then give a great shriek and send columns of white sand whirling across the courtyard, half burying the anemones and the pansies. Then it would crouch behind the wall, waiting to spring again.

During this first week, I had not enjoyed one entire warm spring day. We had not had one single day of that real spring weather which soothes one’s body and blessedly relaxes one’s brain. The departure of the two boys, followed by that of the lady in black and her withered daughter, gave the partners plenty of free time. My only idea was to get away, yet, against my will, I was growing used to the place. That mysterious attraction of what we do not like is always dangerous. It is fatally easy to go on staying in a place which has no soul, provided that every morning offers us the chance to escape.

I knew the timetable of the buses which passed along the main road, three miles away, and which would have put me down at a station. But my daily mail quenched my thirst for Paris. Every afternoon at teatime, I left my work, which was sticking badly, and joined “those women” in a little room off the drawing room which they called their boudoir. I would hear the light step of Monsieur Daste on the wooden staircase as he came down eager for tea and one of his favorite delicacies. This consisted of two deliciously light pieces of flaky pastry sandwiched together with cheese or jam and served piping hot. After dinner I made a fourth at poker or
belote
and reproached myself for doing so. There is always something suspect about things which are as easy as all that.

My griffon bitch, at least, was happy. She was enjoying all the pleasures of a concierge’s dog. In the evenings, she left her nest in the woolen hood to sit on Madame Ruby’s lap. She noted and listed these new patterns of behavior, keeping her ears open for gossip and her nose alert for smells. She continued to react against Monsieur Daste, but as a wary, intelligent dog rather than as his born enemy.

“Madame Suzanne, what does one do in this part of the world to make workmen get on with the job?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Offer them a bonus. I know
I
wouldn’t offer one.”

“Isn’t you better give your camping builders a kick in the pants?” suggested Madame Ruby.

She jabbed the air with her needle.

“Tsk, tsk!” said Madame Suzanne reprovingly. “Pour us out some tea and don’t be naughty. Drink it hot, Madame Colette. I heard you coughing again this morning when I was getting up at six.”

“Did I make as much noise as all that?”

“No, but we’re next door. And your hanging cupboard is in a recess so that it juts out right at the back of our . . .”

She stopped short and blushed as violently as an awkward child.

“Our apartment,” Madame Ruby suggested lamely.

“That’s right. Our apartment.”

She put down her cup and threw her arm around Madame Ruby’s shoulders with an indescribable look—a look from which all constraint had vanished.

“Don’t worry, my poor old darling. When you’ve said a thing, you’ve said it. Ten years of friendship—that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a long-term agreement.”

The tweed-jacketed embroidress gave her an understanding glance over her spectacles.

“Of course, I wouldn’t talk of such things in front of old Daddy Daste . . . He’ll be back soon, won’t he?”

“He wasn’t at lunch today,” I observed.

I was promptly ashamed of having noticed his absence. Petty observations, petty kindnesses, petty pieces of spite—indications, all of them, that my awareness was becoming sharper, yet deteriorating too. One begins by noticing the absence of a Monsieur Daste and soon one descends to “The lady at table 6 took three helpings of French beans . . .” Horrors, petty horrors.

“No,” said Madame Suzanne. “He went off early to fetch his car from Nice.”

“I didn’t know Monsieur Daste had a car.”

“Good gracious, yes,” said Madame Ruby. “He came here by car and by accident. The car in the ditch and Daddy Daste slightly stunned, with a nest beside him.”

“Yes, a nest. I expect the shock is made the nest fall off a tree.”

“Wasn’t it a scream?” said Madame Suzanne. “A nest! Can’t you just see it!”

“Do you like Monsieur Daste, Madame Suzanne?”

She half closed her blue eyes and blew smoke from her painted mouth and her nostrils.

“I like him very much in one way. He’s a good client. Tidy, pleasant, and all that. But in another way, I can’t stand him. Yet I’ve not a word to say against him.”

“A nest . . .” I said again.

“Ah, that strikes you, doesn’t it? There were even three young ones lying dead around the nest.”

“Young ones? What kind of bird?”

She shrugged her plump shoulders.

“I haven’t any idea. He got off with some bruises and he’s been here ever since. It’s fifteen days now, isn’t it, Ruby?”

“Two weeks,” answered Madame Ruby managerially. “He paid his second the day before yesterday.”

“And what’s Monsieur Daste’s job in life?”

Neither of the two friends answered immediately and their silence forced me to notice their uncertainty.

“Well,” said Madame Suzanne. “He’s the head of a department in the Ministry of the Interior.”

She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and her eyes fastened on mine as if she expected me to protest.

“Does that seem very unlikely, Madame Suzanne?”

“No! Oh, no! But I did not know that civil servants were usually so good at climbing. You should just see how that man can climb.
Really
climb.”

The two friends turned simultaneously toward the window, which was darkening to blue as the night came in.

“What do you mean, really climb?”

“Up a tree,” said Madame Ruby. “We is not seen him go up, we is seen him coming down. Backward, a tiny step at a time, like this.”

With her hands she mimed an acrobatic descent down a mast on a knotted rope.

“A tall tree in the wood, over toward the sea. One evening before you arrived. One of those days when it was so hot, so lovely you is no idea.”

“No,” I said sarcastically. “I certainly haven’t any idea. For over a week I’ve been disgusted with your weather. I suppose Monsieur Daste was trying to dazzle you with his agility?”

“Just imagine!” cried Madame Suzanne. “He didn’t even see us. We were under the tamarisks.”

She blushed again. I liked that violent way she had of blushing.

“Madame Suzanne,” said Madame Ruby phlegmatically, “you is telling your story all upside down.”

“No, I’m not! Madame Colette will understand me, all right! We were sitting side by side and I had my arm around Ruby, like that. We felt rather close to each other, both in the same mood and not spied on all the time as we are in this hole.”

She cast a furious glance in the direction of the kitchen.

“After all, it’s worth something, a good moment like that! There’s no need to talk or to kiss each other like schoolgirls. Is what I’m saying so very absurd?”

She gave her companion a look which was a sudden affirmation of loyal love. I answered no with a movement of my head.

“Well, there we were,” she went on. “Then I heard a noise in a tree, too much noise for it to be a cat. I was frightened. I’m brave, really, you know, but I always start by being frightened. Ruby made a sign to me not to move, so I don’t move. Then I hear someone’s shoe soles scraping and then
poof!
from the ground. And then we see Daddy Daste rubbing his hands and dusting the knees of his trousers and going off up to Bella-Vista. What do you think of that?”

“Funny,” I said mechanically.

“Very funny indeed, I think,” she said. But she did not laugh.

She poured herself a second cup of tea and lit another cigarette. Madame Ruby, sitting very upright, went on embroidering with agile fingers. For the first time, I noticed that, away from their usual occupations, the two friends did not seem happy or even peaceful. Without going back on the instant liking I had felt for the American, I was beginning to think that Madame Suzanne was the more interesting and more worth studying of the two. I was struck, not only by her fierce, indiscreet jealousy which flared up on the least provocation, but by a kind of protective vigilance, by the way she made herself a buffer between Ruby and all risks, between Ruby and all worries. She gave her all the easy jobs which a subordinate could have done, sending her to the station or to the shops. With perfect physical dignity, Madame Ruby drove the car, unloaded the hampers of eggs and vegetables, cut the roses, cleaned out the parakeets’ cage, and offered her lighter to the guests. Then she would cross her sinewy legs in their thick woolen stockings and bury herself in an English or American magazine. Madame Suzanne did not read. Occasionally she would pick up a local paper from a table, saying: “Let’s have a look at the
Messenger
,” and, five minutes later, drop it again. I was beginning to appreciate her modes of relaxing, so typical of an illiterate woman. She had such an active, intelligent way of doing nothing, of looking about her, of letting her cigarette go out. A really idle person never lets a cigarette go out.

Madame Ruby also dealt with the letters and, when necessary, typed in three languages. But Madame Suzanne said that she “inspired” them and Madame Ruby, nodding her beautiful faded chestnut head, agreed. Teatime cleared Madame Suzanne’s head and she would communicate her decisions in my presence. Whether from trustfulness or vanity, she did not mind thus letting me know that her eccentric summer clients did not mind what they paid and demanded privacy even more than comfort. They planned their stays at Bella-Vista a long time ahead.

“Madame Ruby,” said Madame Suzanne suddenly, as if in response to a sudden outburst of the mistral, “I hope to goodness you haven’t shut the gate onto the road? Otherwise Daddy Daste won’t see it and he’ll crash into it with his car.”

“I asked Paulius to light the little arc lamp at half past six.”

“Good. Now, Madame Ruby, we’ll have to think about answering those two August clients of ours. They want their usual two rooms. But do remember the Princess and her masseur also want rooms in August. Our two Boche hussies, and the Princess, and Fernande and her gigolo—that’s a whole set that’s not on speaking terms. But they know each other . . . they’ve known each other for ages . . . and they can’t stand one another. So, Madame Ruby, first of all you’re to write to the Princess.”

She explained at considerable length, knitting her penciled eyebrows. She addressed Ruby as “Madame” and used the intimate “
tu
” with a bourgeois, marital ceremoniousness. As she spoke, she kept looking at her friend just as an anxious nurse might scrutinize the complicated little ears, the eyelids, and the nostrils of an immensely well-looked-after child. She would smooth down a silvery lock on her forehead, straighten her tie, flatten her collar, or pick a stray white thread off her jacket.

The expression on her face—it was tired and making no attempt just then to hide its tiredness—seemed to me very far from any “perverted” fussing. I use the word “perverted” in its usual modern sense. She saw that I was watching her and gave me a frank, warm smile which softened the blue eyes that often looked so hard.

“It’s no news to you,” she said, “that our clientele’s rather special. After all, it was Grenigue who gave you our address. At Christmas and Easter, you won’t find a soul. But come back in July and you’ll have any amount of copy. You realize that, with only ten rooms in all, we have to put up prices a bit; our real season only lasts three months. I’ll tell you something that’ll make you laugh. Last summer, what do you think arrived? A little old couple, husband and wife, at least a hundred and sixty between them. Two tiny little things with an old manservant crumbling to bits, who asked if they could inspect the rooms, as if we were a palace! I said to them—as nicely as possible—‘There’s some mistake. You see this is a rather special kind of inn.’ They didn’t want to go. But I insisted, I tried to find words to make myself understood, old-fashioned words, you know. I said, ‘It’s a bit naughty-naughty, so to speak. People come here and sow their wild oats, as it were. You can’t stay here.’ Do you know what she answered, that little old grandmother? ‘And who told you, Madame, that we don’t want to sow some wild oats too?’ They went away, of course. But she had me there, all right! Madame Ruby, do you know what the time is? Time you gave that embroidery a rest. I can’t hear a sound in the dining room and the courtyard’s not lit up. Whatever’s the staff thinking about?”