The Collected Stories of Colette (16 page)

“Oh, yes, it is! It was a terrible scene . . .” She opened her gold mirror, powdered her face, and wiped her eyelids with a moist finger. “A terrible scene, yesterday . . .”

“Jealous?”

“Him, jealous? I’d be only too happy! He’s mean. He scolds me for things . . . but there’s nothing I can do about it!”

She sulked, her chin doubled up against her high collar.

“You be the judge, then! He’s a delicious young man, and for six months there hasn’t been a single cloud, not a hitch, never this! He got moody sometimes, but with an artist . . .”

“Oh, he’s an artist?”

“A painter, my dear. And a very talented one. If I could tell you his name, you’d be very surprised. He has twenty red-pencil drawings he’s done of me, some with my hat on, some with it off, in all my dresses! There’s something soaring, something ethereal about them. The movement in the skirts is an absolute wonder . . .”

She was coming to life, a bit undone, the wings of her thin nose shining with carefully daubed tears and the beginnings of a faint blotchiness . . . her eyelashes had lost their black mascara, her lips their carmine . . . Beneath the big hat, both becoming and ridiculous, beneath the postiche
chichis
, I could make out for the first time a not very pretty woman, but not ugly either, a bland woman you might say, but touching, sincere, and sad.

Her eyelids suddenly reddened.

“And . . . what happened?” I asked, taking the risk.

“What happened? Why, nothing! We’ll say
nothing
, my dear. Yesterday, he greeted me in a funny way . . . like a doctor . . . And then friendly all of a sudden: ‘Take off your hat, darling!’ he said to me. ‘I’m keeping you for dinner, all right? I’ll keep you for good if you want!’ It was this very hat I had on, and you know what a terrible struggle it is to get it on and take it off again.”

I didn’t know, but I nodded my head, with great conviction.

“. . . I sulk a little. He insists, I sacrifice myself and start taking out my pins and one of my
chichis
stays caught in the barrette of my hat, there, you see . . . It didn’t matter to me, everybody knows I have hair, don’t they, and he better than anyone! But he’s the one who’s blushing and trying to hide. I replanted my
chichi
, like a flower, put my arms around his neck, my lips up to his ear, and whispered to him that my husband was away in Dieppe on business, and that . . . Well, you understand! He didn’t say anything. Then he threw down his cigarette and it all started. The things he said to me! The things he said to me . . . !

With each exclamation she struck her knees with her open hands, with a common and disheartened gesture, like my maid when she tells me that her husband has beaten her again.

“He said the most unbelievable things to me, my dear! He controlled himself at first, but then he started walking around talking . . . ‘I couldn’t want anything more than to spend the night with you, darling . . .’ (the nerve!) ‘but I want . . . I want what you must give me, what you can’t give me!’”

“Good Lord, what?”

“Wait, you’ll see . . . ‘I want the woman you are
at this moment
, the graceful, slim little fairy crowned with a gold so light and so abundant that her hair spills down to her brow like foam. I want this skin the color of fruit ripened in a hothouse, and these paradoxical lashes, all this beauty from the English School! I want you, just as you are now, and not how the cynical night will give you to me; I remember!—you’ll come to me conjugal and tender, uncrowned and uncurled, with your hair untouched by the iron, straight and twisted into braids. You’ll come small, without your high heels on, your eyelashes missing their velvety softness, your powder washed away; you’ll come disarmed and self-assured, and I’ll be left speechless in front of this other woman . . . !

“‘But you already knew that,’ he cried, ‘you knew it! The woman I desired, you, as you are now, has almost nothing in common with her poor and simple sister, who comes out of your bathroom every night! What gives you the right to change the woman I love? If you care about my love, how do you dare deflower the very thing I love?’

“The things he said, the things he said! I didn’t budge, I looked at him, I was cold . . . And you know, I didn’t cry! Not in front of him.”

“It was very wise of you, my dear, and very brave.”

“Very brave,” she repeated, lowering her head. “As soon as I could move, I got out. I heard terrible things about women, about all women; about the ‘prodigious unconsciousness of women, their improvident pride, their animal pride which, deep down, always thinks it will be enough for the man . . .’ What would you have said?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing, it’s true. What is there to say? I’m not far from agreeing with him, a crude man pushed to the limit. He’s almost right. It’s always good enough for the man! Women have no excuses. They’ve given men every reason to run away, to cheat, to hate, to change. Ever since the world began, they’ve been inflicting men, behind the bed curtains, with a creature inferior to the one he desired. They rob him with effrontery nowadays, when reinforced hair and rigged corsets turn any ugly, saucy little woman into “a striking little lady.”

I listen to my other friends talk, I look at them, and I sit there, embarrassed for them . . . Lily, the charmer, the page with short, frizzy hair, imposes on her lovers, from the first night on, the nakedness of her head, bumpy with brown snails, the fat and hideous hairpin snail! Clarissa preserves her complexion while she sleeps with a layer of cucumber cream, and Annie pulls all her hair back Chinese-style, tied with a ribbon! Suzanne coats her delicate neck with lanolin and swaddles it in old worn-out linen; Minna never goes to sleep without her chin strap on, the purpose of which is to stave off the fattening of her cheeks and chin, and she glues a little paraffin star on each temple.

If I get indignant, Suzanne raises her fat shoulders and says: “Do you think I’m going to ruin my skin for a man? I don’t have a change of skin. If he doesn’t like lanolin, he can leave. I’m not forcing anyone.” And Lily declares impetuously: “In the first place, I am
not
ugly in my curlers! They make me look like a little frizzy-headed schoolgirl at an awards ceremony.” When Minna’s “friend” complains about her chin strap, her response is: “Darling, don’t be a bore. You’re quite happy at the races if someone behind you says: ‘That Minna, she still has the oval face of a virgin!’” And Jeannine, who wears a reducing belt at night! And Marguerite, who . . . no, I can’t write that . . . !

My little friend, grown plain and sad, was listening to my obscure thoughts, and her guess was that I did not pity her enough. She stood up . . .

“That’s all you have to say to me?”

“My poor dear, what do you want me to say to you? What I think is that nothing is lost, and that your painter-lover will be scratching on your door tomorrow, maybe even this evening . . .”

“Do you think he might have telephoned? He’s not basically a mean person. He’s a little crazy, it’s just a passing thing, isn’t it?”

She was already on her feet, bright with hope.

I say “yes” to everything, full of goodwill and the desire to satisfy her . . . And I watch her hurry down the sidewalk, her steps shortened by her high heels. Maybe he really does love her. And if he does, the time will come again when, despite all the embellishments and all the frauds, she will once again become for him, with the shadows’ help, the faun with freely flowing hair, the nymph with unblemished feet, the beautiful slave with flawless flanks, naked as love itself . . .

What Must We Look Like
?

“What are you doing Sunday, tomorrow?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason . . .”

My friend Valentine, in order to inquire as to how I will spend my Sunday, has assumed too indifferent an air.

I insist: “No reason? Are you sure? Come on, out with it . . . You need me!”

She slips away gracefully, the clever thing, and answers sweetly, “My dear, I always need you.”

Oh, that smile! I am always left at a loss, whenever I’m taken in by her petty, sophisticated duplicity. I’d rather give in right away.

“Oh, Sunday, Valentine, I go to the concert, or else I go to bed. I’ve been going to bed quite a lot this year, because Chevillard has poor accommodations and because the Colonne concerts, which come after, are all alike.”

“Oh! You think so?”

“Yes, I do. If you’ve gone to Bayreuth in the past, quite faithfully, if you’ve enjoyed Van Rooy as Wotan and suffered through Burgstaller as Siegfried, you get no pleasure, none whatsoever, in finding him at Colonne’s, in civilian clothes, with the awkward gait of a frenetic sacristan crowned with childish ringlets, the knees of an old ballerina, and the mawkishness of a seminarian. An unkind coincidence brought us together, at the Châtelet, him on stage, me in the audience, a few weeks ago, and I had to listen to him bellow—twice—an “
Ich grolle nicht
” which Madame de Maupeou wouldn’t dare serve to her relatives from the provinces! I fled before the concert was over, to the great relief of my neighbor to my right, the “lady companion” of a Paris city councillor, my dear!”

“Were you bothering her?”

“I was making her uncomfortable. She doesn’t know me anymore, since our separation and division of property changed me so much. She trembled every time I batter an eyelash, for fear I might kiss her.”

“Oh, I understand!”

She understands! Eyes lowered, my friend Valentine taps on the clasp of her gold purse. She is wearing—but I’ve already told you all about it—a huge, high hat, beneath which is an abundance of ruinously expensive blond hair. Her Japanese-style sleeves make her arms look like a penguin’s, her skirt, long and heavy, covers her pointed feet, and it requires a terrible single-mindedness to appear charming under so many horrors.

She had just said, as if despite herself: “I understand . . .”

“Yes, you understand. I’m sure you do. You must understand that . . . My dear, shouldn’t you be going home? It’s late, and your husband . . .”

“Oh, that’s not very nice of you . . .”

Her blue-gray-green-brown eyes beg me, humbly, and I repent immediately.

“I was only joking, silly! Come on now, what is it you wanted to do with my Sunday?”

My friend Valentine opens her little penguin arms comically and says, “Well, that’s just it, it’s almost as if it was on purpose . . . Imagine, tomorrow afternoon I’ll be all alone, all alone . . .”

“And you’re complaining.”

The word just slipped out. I feel her almost sad, this young doll. Her husband away; her lover . . . busy; her friends—her real friends—celebrating the Lord behind closed doors, or going off in their cars . . .

“You wanted to come here tomorrow, my dear? Well then, come! It’s a very good idea.”

I don’t believe a word of it, but she thanks me, with that little-lost-dog look, exactly the sort of thing I find touching, and off she goes, quickly, in a rush, as if she really did have something to do.

SUNDAY
. My dear Sunday, day for idleness and my warm bed, my Sunday—for eating like a glutton, sleeping, reading—lost, ruined, and for whom? For an uncertain friend I feel vaguely sorry for.

Don’t go to sleep, my gray contented pussycat, for my friend Valentine will soon ring the bell, make her entrance, swish about, and carry on. She will run her gloved hand over your back, and your spine will shudder as you look at her with murderous eyes. You know she really doesn’t like you very much, my short-haired country girl; she goes into ecstasies over Angoras, which have capes like collies and whiskers like Chauchard. Ever since you scratched her that day, she keeps her distance; she knows nothing about your violent little soul, delicate and vindictive, the soul of a bohemian cat. As soon as she comes, turn your striped back to her, roll yourself up into a turban at my feet, on the satin scratched by your curved claws shaped like the thorns of a wild rosebush.

Shhh! she rang . . . here she is! She shivers and haphazardly plants her icy little nose on my face—she kisses so poorly!

“Lord, your nose has lost consciousness, my dear. Sit down
in
the fire, for heaven’s sake.”

“Don’t laugh, it’s terrible out there! All the same, you’re lucky you’re in bed! Twenty-five degrees; we’ll all die.”

In fact, my friend’s face had turned lilac, the somewhat greenish lilac of plums just beginning to ripen.

A splendid tailored suit, made of mousy brown velvet, hugs her, clings to her, from collar to feet. Especially the jacket, oh, the jacket! tight at the top, flared at the bottom, the embroidered peplum hitting the knees, like a little overskirt . . . And thrown over that, in twenty-five-degree weather, a sable stole, an expensive scrap of useless fur—and here she is dying of cold with her nose turning purple.

“You little dodo! Couldn’t you at least have put on your broadtail coat?”