The Collected Stories of Colette (3 page)

PART I

Early Stories

Born into an unmonied family, I never learned a métier. I knew how to climb, whistle, and run, but no one ever suggested that I earn my living as a squirrel or a bird or a deer. The day necessity put a pen in my hand, and in return for my written pages I was given a little money, I realized that every day thereafter I would slowly, tractably, patiently have to write . . 
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CLOUK/CHÉRI

EARLY VERSIONS OF
CHÉRI

Chéri was first hatched as “Clouk.” When I gave birth to this beautiful young man—who would believe it?—he was ugly, something of a runt, and sickly, suffering from swollen adenoids. But I had a vague feeling that I would not form any attachment to this quasi-scrofulous child. Spurned and thin-skinned, Clouk awoke from a few months’ sleep, cast off his pale little slough like a molting snake, emerged gleaming, devilish, unrecognizable, and I wrote the first versions of Chéri without knowing at the time that a few succinct, casual stories would ripen and grow into two rather bitter novels
.

THE OTHER TABLE

“And what if I do look at them? They’re not going to eat me. Anyway, they really are characters. What happens to some women . . . it’s not funny! The fattest one is . . . what’s her name? Yes, I remember, I’ve seen pictures of her; even with hairstyles the way they were back then, she was very pretty. No, no champagne, it makes me bloated. Besides, we’re not setting up shop here: when I think I have to be at my singing lesson at nine in the morning, it’s not funny!”

Clouk says nothing. He wipes his monocle with the corner of his handkerchief and at the same time closes his bad eye, which the lights in the restaurant, so white they are mauve, sting to the point of tears. It is only midnight, it is raining; the manager can tell there won’t be many for supper and divides his attention between the corner where Clouk has just sat down opposite the dazzling Lulu and the table where four women are noisily eating away . . .

“Clouk, your nose!” prompts Lulu peremptorily. “I’m forever having to stop you from sniffling, and it’s not funny!”

“I wonder what she does think is funny,” muses Clouk. But he keeps quiet, like a good little boy, docile and loving, and sighs cautiously, through his mouth, so as to avoid the imperceptible, irritating nasal “clouk” to which he owes his nickname. He looks at Lulu. She is all black fire, dark sheen; she makes one think of jet, of deep-red rubies. She took the time, after leaving the stage, to take off her makeup and then reapply it outrageously, as if ashamed of the freshness of her twenty-four years. Her eyes, her rather thick hair, which she does not dye, her teeth, all shine with insolent strength.

Pearls and more pearls, a white dress which, in the style of the day, combines Louis XV panniers, a Directoire-style sash, Byzantine décolletage, and Japanese sleeves; on her head is a little black glengarry, which looks as if it is worth four sous, from which there rises an aigrette worth fifty louis. Her feet are not happy under the table because of two purple shoes with gold heels. But she no longer pays them any attention. Good heavens, one’s feet are always what hurt most when, for three hours every night, one treads the boards of a raked stage, when one is subjected to spiked heels during the day and to unyielding ballet shoes in the morning.

For Lulu works. Four years have been enough to transform an undernourished dressmaker’s assistant into a highly paid star of the music hall. In order to become rich she acquired the taste for money, and hard work gave her a sense of pride. Lulu is as proud as any locksmith or electrician. Like them she says in a tough voice and with mock simplicity, “I’m not afraid to work.” She also says, “I didn’t know how to do anything, but I learned how to do everything!” She in fact sings, dances, and acts with a cinematographic spirit and swiftness that is already being called “the Lulu style” . . .

“Now who’s looking at those silly women! Clouk, you must have some old relative in the crowd!”

Clouk laughed stupidly into his glass and glanced at the neighboring table where there was some rather loud shouting going on over a broken glass. Two operetta singers, once notorious, were laughing through all their jovial wrinkles, across from a poor, graying bit player with a healthy appetite. The fourth woman is Léa de Lonval, overripe, enormous, and magnificent as a heavy fruit fallen beneath a tree . . . All four have given themselves over to the pleasure of eating a good supper unescorted, and drinking a champagne as celebrated as themselves. They form a well-heeled and cordial group of jewel-bedecked matrons. Clouk, listening to Lulu, turns his sickly little boy’s smile toward them, without doing it on purpose . . .

“So, you see, Clouk, I’m not saying this play they’re bringing out for me this winter isn’t a marvelous play, not at all. But they’re telling me that if I do it, I’ll be considered a great actress overnight . . . As if I need them to be considered great . . . Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s a hopeless play.”

“Yes?”

“Hopeless. I read it. For example, at one point it says that Linda—Linda, that’s my role—Linda ‘feverishly paces the living room with long strides,’ and a little further on, ‘She runs after him, panic-stricken,’ and a little further than that, ‘Linda, raising her arms to the sky in a wide, imploring gesture . . .’”

“Yes?”

“What do you mean, ‘yes’? Oh, my poor dear, I can be talking to you about the theater, or literature, or anything serious, and you always have the same silly look on your face! You must understand that that scene, the way it is, can’t be done! Can you see me, in a day dress, pacing the stage ‘with long strides’? Can you see me, in that same dress, running after my lover ‘panic-stricken’? And then try, just try raising your arms ‘in a wide, imploring gesture’ with sleeves nowadays not having any seams at the shoulders! So I told them, I said to the authors, ‘I don’t care if your play flops, but
I
do not want to fall flat on my face, nor do I want to dress like Raymond Duncan! There would have to be changes, a lot of changes!’”

“Yes . . .”

“‘Yes’ . . . There’s one thing no one can take away from you, you are a gifted conversationalist!”

Clouk keeps himself from sniffling and adjusts the monocle which he uses to hide a weak eye, smaller and paler than the other. He remains silent. What could he say? Lulu’s metallic voice, her gemlike dazzle overwhelm him. That is how she is, vigilant, merciless, with a tough youthfulness nothing can penetrate. She is not a monster, she is one of those terrible young girls of today, hard and narrow-minded. He has seen her cry, but with rage, during her lessons. He has seen her laugh, to make fun of him or a friend. She is thought of as sensual, but he knows very well that she displays her beautiful skin, white and blue like milk in shadow, coldly, and that this too is part of her “job.”

Clouk can hear, striking against the lace-covered windows, the hissing of a winter downpour which has almost turned to sleet. He is thinking about getting home, about Lulu’s conjugal silence, the voice teacher coming at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, the masseuse who comes after him . . . As she does every day, Lulu will have that set, stern look on her face, darkened by important matters. As he does every day, he will wait until it is time for her to make her entrance, when her charming mouth flowers into fresh, aggressive laughter. He feels cold, a little ill. What he needs is . . .

Clouk stares at the other table, the table with the old ladies. They laugh constantly, and perhaps for no reason, with that lightheartedness which comes to a woman when the peril of men has at last left her. Léa de Lonval, a colorful woman beneath her white hair, looks like Louis XV, and the older of the operetta singers has the sauciness of a racy grandmother. If Clouk dared, he would slip over to their table, all frail and small, squeeze in between those fat gossips’ arms, amid the rustling skirts and the doughy knees, and lean up against the ample shoulders, lost, drowned in that melting warmth of slightly senile nannies; he would warm himself, console himself for being the envied lover of Lulu, sparkling there in front of him like a frosty little tree . . .

THE SCREEN

When Lulu left him, Clouk did not give in right away to the stunned despair which dismays the very young. He went on with his life, going out to restaurants and bars, driving around in his car. His everyday little face seemed unchanged, clean and comical, his left eyebrow clamped down to hold his monocle in place, his fishlike mouth open slightly. As he was ordinarily quiet, no one noticed that he wasn’t speaking at all and that he was sniffling more often. He was conducting himself quite well. But the “close” circle of friends who were looking after him finished him off with enough sympathy to kill an ox. One would clap him on the back with the crude cordiality of a sergeant. One melancholy and sisterly friend discreetly informed him as to Lulu’s whereabouts and carryings-on, under the guise of “keeping things out in the open.” Without saying a word, the least cruel would hand Clouk a full glass . . .

And so when his friends, gasping from self-sacrifice, wanted to return to their usual occupations, it was noticed that Clouk, drinking more, was not eating at all, and that his collars looked like hoops around the neck of a plucked bird.

Clouk was suffering, still stunned. He did not dare say it, and he began confronting his interrogators with the smile of one whose feet have been stepped on while waltzing. His headstrong, youthful sadness knew nothing of the confidences in which the lyricism of old incorrigible lovers takes comfort. He believed he was hardly thinking at all, did not delude himself, and did not repeatedly whisper her name: “Lulu . . . Lulu . . .” But without knowing it, he endured a twofold pain. At times he would reel, light-headed, floating, as if blank forever; at times he would run away, hoping to leave far behind him, in the place he was fleeing, the intolerable memory.