The Collected Stories of Colette (31 page)

“. . .”

“Same goes for me, not but what there’s a deal I could say on the subject . . .”

“. . .”

“Yes, yes, I’ll get you dressed, never you worry. Now, for your first scene, is it this blue dress, or that tea gown affair in pink?”

“. . .”

“Good! Once I know, I don’t need telling a second time. Now, that is really something, that muslin with nothing under it. Very becoming. Why, it’s the very spit of the costume little Miriam wore at the Empyrée, you remember?”

“. . . ?”

“Little Miriam, you surely remember, in the ‘Apotheosis of Aviation,’ in this year’s Spring Revue! And this one here does make a difference, as you might say, with the dress you wore at the Empyrée, don’t it?”

“. . . ?”

“Why, the other winter. The peasant skirt, with the kerchief tied over your head, and clogs. My heart gave a jump when I read your name on the posters here! I saw you again as you were in your piece at the Empyrée; it seemed like I was still there!”

“. . . ?”

“Me? Perish the thought! You have to have time on your hands to feel proper fed up. My work’s cut out for me here, for it’s me that has the cleaning of the dressing rooms. They’ve got no man to do the job, the theater here being so small! And matinee twice a week! And those conferences, when I’ve got to be on the spot in case the audition ladies need a stitch putting in here or a pin there . . . During the acts, yes, I must say it does get a bit lonely-like in the corridor; I get chilly, sitting there on my chair. I doze off, and wake up thinking I’m still at the Empyrée-Clichy . . . Just think, when one’s been dresser for fifteen years in the same establishment! And fifteen years of good service, I may say. Never a harsh word did I have from Madame Barney, ‘the boss,’ as you used to say. There’s an able woman for you, Madame! Hard on slackers, maybe, but above all fair. Naturally, one spared oneself no pains when working for her. In the last revue, if you remember, I had sixteen ladies to dress, eight on my passage and eight on the landing, the landing, you know, they had to convert into a dressing room for want of space. I’m not saying it turned out the most suitable place: persons undressing don’t much care to see whoever it may be passing through at any moment as they rush up and down the stairs . . . Not to mention the drafts . . . Sixteen, I ask you! My fingers were worn to the bone with all those hooks and eyes. But there you are, Madame, never an entrance missed!”

“. . . ?”

“But of course, I’m very happy here. What makes you think I’m not? Monsieur Lafougére is a very nice man. He’s engaged my son, as from tonight.”

“. . . ?”

“Oh, no, not as an actor, you couldn’t expect that! He starts as a stagehand. That makes a pair of you making your debut together like. It’s for his health that I’m here. The doctor says to me, he says: ‘What he needs is the south for his bronchial tubes.’ Monsieur Lafougére has taken on the two of us.”

“. . . ?”

“Oh, no, you won’t be late. Precious little chance of you ever being late here! A show billed for eight-thirty may well start at nine, more or less. Ah, we’re not with Madame Barney no more! The music hall, I always say, is founded on punctuality.”

“. . . ?”

“What’s that noise you can hear? That’s the actors in the second piece, the one with the dancing. Listen to them, just listen! And we shout, and we sing, tra-la-la, and we pick quarrels! They’ve no manners, no self-respect. No, but I ask you, do you hear them? With a row like that, there’s no more believing myself at the Empyrée-Clichy. You’ve worked there yourself, so you can tell me whether you ever heard one word spoken louder than another in that house! The theater and the café concert, it’s not the same thing, whatever people may say!”

“. . .”

“Oh, you can sigh, I don’t blame you! Many’s the time I have to bite back my words not to give the ladies here a piece of my mind. Only the other day one of them yelled in my face, ‘Keep the door shut, Jeanne, can’t you, when people are stark naked in their dressing room. It’s plain to see you come from the music hall!’ Another word, and I’d have answered back: ‘And it’s plain to see that’s where you don’t come from. They’ve got no time for the likes of you! In the music hall, we’ve no use for a skimpy cricket like you; what we want are persons who have the wherewithal to fill out their tights and their stays . . .’ Such words are best left unspoken: home truths are never popular . . . Your little bronze shoes and stockings to match, do you want me to have them ready for the second play?”

“. . . !”

“Could be it’s a Greek play; but you’ll never find anything that sets off your legs to better advantage than bronze stockings and a pair of little shoes like these here. The main point about dancing is to set off one’s legs. However, let us say I’ve never said a word . . . You’ve never been back there again, to the old place?”

“. . . ?”

“But to the Empyrée-Clichy, of course! You don’t know if my old colleague Ma Martin is still there?”

“. . .”

“So much the worse. I’d very much like to have news of her. She’d promised me faithfully to write, but envy must have turned her heart green. My engagement here has made many envious of me, you know. ‘To Nice!’ is what Ma Martin said to me, ‘you’re going to Nice! You are among the honored! You’ll be able to go over to Monte Carlo and win a fortune!’”

“. . . ?”

“No, I’ve not been there yet. But I’ll go there, all right! I’ll go, if only to be able to tell them all at the old place that I have been there. I’ll first tell Ma Martin, then I’ll tell Madame Cavellier . . .”

“. . . ?”

“Madame Cavellier, the romantic ballad singer, Rachel’s sister!”

“. . . ?”

“Oh, yes, surely you do! Madame Cavellier, with a husband in the claque, her sister, an American dancer, and her son a program seller in the lobby. Good Lord, aren’t you forgetful now! I’d never have thought it of you! And Rita, don’t you remember her? I knew it. Well, she’s there no more.”

“. . . ?”

“Where but at the Empyrée-Clichy, what do you expect?”

“. . . ?”

“What! Haven’t I been talking to you of nothing but the Empyrée-Clichy? But what else would you have me talk of? Ah, but you’re still a proper tease, I can see that! Don’t chaff me unkindly, I have a real liking for you, because we were there together. And I can say this to you, for I know you won’t laugh at me, but I read through, in yesterday’s
Comœdia
, the full account of the Christmas Revue at the Empyrée-Clichy. Well, at the idea that they’d managed the whole thing without me—the rush and bustle of the dress rehearsal, the critics’ preview, and the first night—why the paper dropped from my hands, and I began to cry like a silly old fool.”

“Hold her! Hold her! Oh, the bitch, she’s nipped her again!”

Manette has just eluded the stagehand’s grip and hurled herself on Cora, who was half expecting it. But the little fox terrier is endowed with the speed of a projectile and her teeth have bitten right through the collie’s thick fur and into the flesh of the neck. Cora does not retaliate at once; her ears intent on the curtain bell, her pendulous lips drawn back as far as her eyes, she offers no other threat to her comrade than a grimace as fierce as a vixen’s mask and a strangled rattle, soft as the purring of a large cat.

Back in her master’s arms, with the hair all down her back on end like pig’s bristles, Manette is choking to say something offensive.

“They’d like to gobble each other up!” the stagehand remarks.

“The idea!” Harry retorts. “They’re too conscientious for that. Quick, the collars.”

While he is tying around Cora’s neck the blue ribbon which sets off to advantage her fair coat, the color of ripe wheat, the stagehand fastens on Manette’s back a pug’s harness of green velvet studded with gold, heavy with plaques and jingle bells.

“Hold her tight, just long enough for me to get into my dolman . . .”

Harry’s snuff-colored cardigan, brown with sweat, disappears beneath his sapphire-blue dolman, padded around the shoulders and almost skintight. Cora, restrained by the stagehand, gasps ever more loudly, keeping her eyes trained upward on Manette’s posterior, on a Manette almost in convulsions and quite terrifying, with her bloodshot eyes and backward cockled ears.

“Wouldn’t a good dressing down quiet ’em?” ventures the boy in the blue jacket.

“Never before their act,” Harry snaps categorically.

Behind the lowered curtain, he tests the equilibrium of the railings which enclose the track of miniature obstacles, makes certain the platform and hurdle are secure, and polishes with a woolen rag the nickel-plated bars of the springboards on which the yellow collie will rebound. It is he too who goes to fetch from his dressing room a set of paper hoops still damp from hasty resticking.

“I do everything myself!” he declares. “The master’s eye . . .”

Behind his back the stagehand shrugs his shoulders. “The master’s eye, my foot! That means no tip for the team!”

The two-man “team” bears Harry no grudge on his fifteen francs a day takings. “Fifteen francs for three mouths and ten paws, that’s not much!” the stagehand concedes.

Three mouths, ten paws, and two hundred kilos of luggage. The whole concern tours throughout the year with the aid of special third-class half-fare rates. The year before there was an extra “mouth,” that of the white poodle now defunct; an overage old campaigner, a dog that had had his day, well known in every French and foreign establishment, and much regretted by Harry, who loves to sing the praises of poor old Charlot.

“He knew how to do everything, Madame: waltz, somersault, springboard work, all the tricks of a canine calculator, he knew the lot. He could have taught me a few, I’m telling you, and I’ve trained a good few circus dogs in my time! He loved his job, and nothing else, as for the rest, he was a duffer. Toward the end you wouldn’t have given a bob for him had you seen him by day, he looked so old, fourteen he must have been, at least, and that stiff from the rheumatics, with his eyes running and his black muzzle going all gray. He only began to wake up when the time for his act came around; it was then that he was well worth seeing! I used to doll him up like a movie star, with black cosmetic on his nose, thick pencil around his poor old rheumy eyes, I’d starch-powder him all over to make him white as snow, then add the blue ribbons! My word, Madame, he soon came alive again! Hardly had I finished his makeup when off he went, walking on his hind legs, sneezing, and carrying on no end till the curtain rose. Back in the wings again, I used to wrap him in a blanket and then give him a spirit rub. I certainly prolonged his life, but no performing poodle can last forever!

“My two bitches there, they do their work all right, but it’s not the same thing at all. They love their master, they fear the whip, they use their heads and are conscientious, but there’s no professional pride in their makeup. They go through their routine as though they were pulling a cart, no more, no less. They’re hard workers, but they’re not true artistes. It’s easy to see from their faces that they’d like to be through with the whole performance, and the public don’t like that. Either they think the animals are playing them up, or else they make no bones about saying, ‘Poor beasts, how sad they look! What tortures they must have endured to learn all those monkey tricks!’ I’d just like to watch ’em, all those ladies and gentlemen of the Protection for Animals, trying to put the dogs through their paces. Why, they’d do exactly like me and my sort. Sugar, hunting crop; hunting crop, sugar; with a good dose of patience added: there’s no other way that I know of.”

At this very moment the “hard workers” are eyeing each other with hostile intent. Manette, perched on a block of multicolored wood, is nervously trembling; while, facing her, Cora has laid her ears back flat like a sorry cat.

At the shrill of the bell, the orchestra interrupts the heavy polka, intended to calm the public’s impatience, with the opening bars of a slow valse; as if obeying a signal, the two dogs adjust their position: they have recognized
their
valse. Cora gently swishes her tail, pricks her ears, and takes on the neutral expression, amiable and bored, which makes her resemble the portraits of Empress Eugénie. Manette, insolent, alert, rather too fat, awaits the painfully slow rise of the curtain and Harry’s arrival on the scene, yawns, and starts panting at once, from exasperation and thirst.

The act begins, without incident, without rebellion. Cora, forewarned by a flick of the whip under her belly, does not cheat while taking her jumps. Manette walks on her front legs, valses, barks, and jumps a few obstacles erect on the back of the yellow collie. Their performance is commonplace, but correct; there is nothing to be said against it.

Inveterate grumblers may find fault, perhaps, with Cora’s queenly aloofness, or with the small terrier’s artificial zest. It’s easy to see that such grouchers have not got months of touring in their paws, and know nothing of the horrors of guard’s vans, hostels, bread-and-meat mash that distends but does not nourish, the long hours of waiting in railway stations, the too-short constitutional walks, the iron collar, the muzzle, and above all the eternal waiting, the nerve-racking wait for exercise, for starting out, for food, for a thrashing. These exacting spectators ignore the fact that the life of performing animals is spent in waiting, and that this wears them out.