The Collected Stories of Colette (41 page)

They watched me coming, disappointed themselves perhaps by my everyday appearance. I felt that they were superior to me by a stoicism early and dearly acquired. Remembering what had brought me to this particular street, I felt that solidarity is easier for us than sympathy. And I decided to say “Good afternoon” to them.

“Isn’t that the limit?” said Lise, by way of reply.

“What’s the limit? Won’t you tell me?”

“Why, that your eyes are blue. I thought they were brown. Grayish-brown or blackish-brown. Some sort of brown, anyway.”

Carmen thrust out a finger gloved in suede and half pulled back the tissue paper which protected my flowers.

“It’s Parmas. Looks a bit like a funeral, perhaps. But the moment Gibriche is better . . . Do we go in? It’s on the ground floor.”

“Looks out on the yard,” said Lise contemptuously.

Gribiche’s house, like many in the region of Batignolles, had been new around 1840. Under its eaves, it still preserved a niche for a statue, and in the courtyard there was a squat drinking fountain with a big brass tap. The whole building was disintegrating from damp and neglect.

“It’s not bad,” observed Lise, softening. “Carmen, did you see the statue holding the globe?”

But she caught the expression on my face and said no more. From a tiny invisible garden, a green branch poked out. I noted for future reference that the Japanese “Tree of Heaven” is remarkably tenacious of life. Following close behind Lise, we groped about in the darkness under the staircase. In the murk, we could see the faint gleam of a copper door handle.

“Well, aren’t you ever going to ring?” whispered Carmen impatiently.

“Go on, ring yourself, then, if you can find the bell! This place is like a shoe cupboard. Here we are, I’ve found the thing. But it’s not electric . . . it’s a thing you pull.”

A bell tinkled, crystal clear, and the door opened. By the light of a tiny oil lamp I could make out that a tall, broad woman stood before us.

“Mademoiselle Saure?”

“Yes. In here.”

“Can we see her? We’ve come on behalf of the Eden Concert Company.”

“Just a minute, ladies.”

She left us alone in the semidarkness, through which gleamed Lise’s inflexible face and enormous eyes. Carmen gave her a facetious dig in the ribs without her deigning to smile. She merely said under her breath: “Smells funny here.”

A faint fragrance did indeed bring to my nostrils the memory of various scents which are at their strongest in autumn. I thought of the garden of the peaceful years of my life; of chrysanthemums and immortelles and the little wild geranium they call Herb Robert. The matron reappeared; her corpulence, outlined against a light background, filling the open frame of the second door.

“Be so good as to come in, ladies. The Couzot girl . . . Mademoiselle Impéria, I should say, told us you were coming.”

“Ah,” repeated Lise. “Impéria told you we were coming. She shouldn’t have . . .”

“Why not?” asked the matron.

“For the surprise. We wanted to make it a surprise.”

The word “surprise” on which we went through the door permanently linked up for me with the astonishing room inhabited by Gribiche and her mother. “It’s unbelievable, the size of their room . . .” We passed with brutal suddenness from darkness to light. The enormous old room was lit by a single window which opened on the garden of a private house—the garden with the Japanese tree. Thirty years ago Paris possessed—and still possesses—any number of these little houses built to the requirements of unassuming, stay-at-home citizens and tucked away behind the big main buildings which almost stifle them. Three stone steps lead up to them from a yard with anemic lilacs and geraniums which have all run to leaf and look like vegetables. The one in this particular street was no more imposing than a stage set. Overloaded with blackened stone ornaments and crowned with a plaster pediment, it seemed designed to serve as a backcloth to Gribiche’s heavily barred window.

The room seemed all the vaster because there was no furniture in the middle of it. A very narrow bed was squeezed against one wall, the wall farthest away from the light. Gribiche was lying on a divan-bed under the dazzling window. I was soon to know that it was dazzling for only two short hours in the day, the time it took the sun to cross the slice of sky between two five-story houses.

The three of us ventured across the central void toward Gribiche’s bed. It was obvious that she neither recognized us nor knew who we were, so Carmen acted as spokesman.

“Mademoiselle Gribiche, we’ve all three come on behalf of your comrades at the Eden Concert. This is Madame Lise Damoiseau . . .”

“Of the ‘Hell of Poisons’ and Messalina in ‘Orgy’,” supplemented Lise.

“I’m Mademoiselle Brasero of the ‘Corrida’ and the ‘Gardens of Murcia.’ And this is Madame Colettevilli, who plays the sketch ‘Miaou-Ouah-Ouah.’ It was Madame Colettevilli who had the idea . . . the idea of the subscription among friends.”

Suddenly embarrassed by her own eloquence, she accomplished her mission by laying a manila envelope, tied up with ribbon, in Gribiche’s lap.

“Oh, really . . . I say, really. It’s too much. Honestly, you shouldn’t . . .” protested Gribiche.

Her voice was high and artificial, like that of a child acting a part. I felt no emotion as I looked at this young girl sitting up in bed. I was, in fact, seeing her for the first time, since she bore no resemblance either to the white, unconscious lay figure or to the French soldier who had incurred a fine of twenty francs. Her fair hair was tied back with a sky-blue ribbon, of that blue which is so unbecoming to most blondes, especially when, like Gribiche, they have thin cheeks, pallid under pink powder, and hollow temples and eye sockets. Her brown eyes ranged from Lise to Carmen, from Carmen to me, and from me to the envelope. I noticed that her breath was so short that I gave the matron a look which asked: “Isn’t she going to die?”

I gave her my flowers, putting on the gay expression which the occasion demanded.

“I hope you like violets?”

“Of course. What an idea! Is there anyone who
doesn’t
like violets? Thanks so much. How lovely they smell . . .”

She lifted the scentless bunch to her nostrils.

“It smells lovely here too. It reminds me of the smell of the country where I lived as a child. A bit like the everlastings you hang upside down to dry so as to have flowers in winter . . . What is it that smells so good?”

“All sorts of little odds and ends,” came the matron’s voice from behind me. “Biche, pull your legs up so as Madame Colettevilli can sit down. Do be seated, ladies. I’ll bring you up our two chairs.”

Lise accepted her seat with some hesitation, almost as if she had been asked to drink out of a doubtfully clean glass. For a moment that beautiful young woman looked extraordinarily like a prudish chair attendant. Then her slightly knitted eyebrows resumed their natural place on her forehead like two delicate clouds against a pure sky and she sat down, carefully smoothing her skirt over her buttocks.

“Well,” said Carmen. “Getting better now?”

“Oh, I’ll soon be all right,” said Gribiche. “There’s no reason now why I shouldn’t get better, is there? Especially with what you’ve brought me. Everyone’s been ever so kind . . .”

Shyly she picked up the envelope but did not open it.

“Will you put it away for me, Mamma?”

She held the envelope out to her mother, and my two companions looked decidedly worried as they saw the money pass from Gribiche’s hands into the depths of a capacious apron pocket.

“Aren’t you going to count it?” asked Lise.

“Oh!” said Gribiche delicately. “You wouldn’t like me to do that.”

To keep herself in countenance, she kept rolling and unrolling the ribbons of the sky-blue bed jacket, made of cheap thin wool, which hid her nightdress.

She had blushed and even this faint upsurge of blood was enough to start her coughing.

“Stop that coughing now,” her mother urged her sharply. “You know quite well what I said.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” protested Gribiche.

“Why mustn’t she cough?” inquired Carmen.

The tall, heavy woman blinked her prominent eyes. Though she was fat, she was neither old nor ugly and still had a ruddy complexion under hair that was turning silver.

“Because of her losses. She’s lost a lot, you see. And all that isn’t quite settled yet. As soon as she gets coughing, it all starts up again.”

“Naturally,” said Lise. “Her inside’s still weak.”

“It’s like . . . It’s like a girl I know,” said Carmen eagerly. “She had an accident last year and things went all wrong.”

“Whatever did she take, then?” asked Lise.

“Why, what does the least harm. A bowl of concentrated soap and after that you run as fast as you can for a quarter of an hour.”

“Really, I can’t believe my ears!” exclaimed Madame Gribiche. “My word, you’d think there was no such thing as progress. A bowl of soapy water and a run! Why, that goes back to the days of Charlemagne! Anyone’d think we lived among the savages!”

After this outburst, which she delivered loudly and impressively, Madame Saure, to give her her right name, relapsed into portentous silence.

Carmen asked with much interest: “Then she oughtn’t to have taken soapy water? According to you, Madame, she’d have done better to have gone to one of those ‘old wives’?”

“And have herself butchered?” said Madame Saure with biting contempt. “There’s plenty have done that! No doubt they think it funny, being poked about with a curtain ring shoved up a rubber tube! Poor wretches! I don’t blame them. I’m just sorry for them. After all, it’s nature. A woman, or rather a child, lets a man talk her into it. You can’t throw stones at her, can you?”

She flung up her hand pathetically and, in so doing, nearly touched the low ceiling. It was disfigured by concentric brown stains of damp, and cracked here and there in zigzags like streaks of lightning. The middle of it sagged slightly over the tiled floor whose tiles had come unstuck.

“When it rains outside, it rains inside,” said Gribiche, who had seen what I was looking at.

Her mother rebuked her.

“That’s not fair, Biche. It only rains in the middle. What d’you expect nowadays for a hundred and forty-five francs a year? It’s the floors above that let in the water. The owner doesn’t do any repairs. He’s been expropriated. Something to do with the house being out of line. But we get over it by not putting any furniture in the middle.”

“A hundred and forty-five francs!” exclaimed Lise enviously. “Well, that certainly won’t ruin you!”

“Oh, no sir, no sir, no sir!” Gribiche said brightly.

I nearly laughed, for anything which disturbed Lise’s serenity—envy, avarice, or rage—took away what little feminine softness her statuesque beauty possessed. I tried to catch Carmen’s eye and make her smile too, but she was absorbed in some thought of her own and fidgeting with the kiss-curl on her left cheek.

“But, look,” said Carmen, reverting to the other topic, “if the ‘old wife’ is no better than the soapy water, what’s one to do? There isn’t all that much choice.”

“No,” said Madame Saure professionally. “But there is such a thing as education and knowledge.”

“Yes, people keep saying that. And talking about progress and all that . . . But listen, what about Miss Ourika? She went off to Cochin China, you know. Well, we’ve just heard she’s dead.”

“Miss Ourika? What’s that you’re saying?” said the high, breathless voice of Gribiche.

We turned simultaneously toward the bed as if we had forgotten her.

“She’s dead? What did she die of, Miss Ourika?” asked Gribiche urgently.

“But she was . . . she tried to . . .”

To stop her from saying any more, Lise risked a gesture which gave everything away. Gribiche put her hands over her eyes and cried: “Oh, Mamma! You see, Mamma! You see.”

The tears burst out between her clenched fingers. In three swift steps Madame Saure was at her daughter’s side. I thought she was going to take her in her arms. But she pressed her two hands on her chest, just above her breasts, and pushed her down flat on her back. Gribiche made no resistance and slid gently down below the cheap Oriental cushion which supported her. In a broken voice, she kept on saying reproachfully: “You see, Mamma, you see. I told you so, Mamma . . .”

I could not take my eyes off those maternal hands which could so forcefully push down a small, emaciated body and persuade it to lie prone. Two big hands, red and chapped like a washerwoman’s. They disappeared to investigate something under a little blue sateen quilt, under a cretonne sheet which had obviously been changed in our honor. I forced myself to fight down my nervous terror of blood, the terror of seeing it suddenly gush out and spread from its secret channels: blood set free, with its ferruginous smell and its talent for dyeing material bright pink or cheerful red or rusty brown. Lise’s head was like a plaster cast; Carmen’s rouge showed as two purple patches on her blanched cheeks as they both stared at the bed. I kept repeating to myself: “I’m not going to faint, I’m not going to faint.” And I bit my tongue to distract from that pressure at the base of the spine so many women feel at the sight of blood or even when they hear a detailed account of an operation.

The two hands reappeared and Madame Saure heaved a sigh of relief: “Nothing wrong . . . nothing wrong.”

She tossed her silvery hair back from her forehead, which was gleaming with sudden sweat. Her large majestic features which recalled so many portraits of Louis XVI did not succeed in making her face sympathetic. I did not like the way she handled her daughter. It seemed to me that she did so with an expertness and an apprehension which had nothing to do with a mother’s anxiety. A great bovine creature, sagacious and agreeable but not in the least reassuring. Wiping her temples, she went off to a table pushed right up against the wall at the far end of the room. The sun had moved on and the room had grown somber: the imprisoned garden showed black under its “Tree of Heaven.” In the distance Madame Saure was washing her hands and clattering with some glasses. Because of the distance and the darkness, her forehead seemed as if, any moment, it must touch the ceiling.