The Collected Stories of Colette (64 page)

“You’re not on the telephone?”

I raised my eyes to the ceiling. A little hole in the molded comice still showed where the telephone wire had passed through it. When
I
was in this place, I had the telephone. I could beg and implore without having to bother to go outside.

“Not yet, Madame. We’re going to have it put in, of course.”

She blushed, as she did whenever there was a question of money or of lack of money, and seemed to make a desperate resolve.

“Madame, since you think as I do that my sister is wrong to be so obstinate, if you have two minutes . . .”

“I have two minutes.”

“I’ll go and tell my sister.”

She went out through the hall instead of opening the door on the right of the fireplace. She walked gracefully, carried on small, arched feet. Almost at once, she came back, agitated and with red rims to her eyelids.

“Oh, I don’t know how to apologize! She’s terrible. She says, ‘Not on your life’ and ‘What are you sticking your nose in for?’ and ‘I wish to goodness everyone would shut up.’ She says nothing but rude things.”

Mademoiselle Barberet blew her distress into her handkerchief, rubbed her nose, and became ugly, as if on purpose. I had just time to think: “Really, I’m being unnecessarily tactful with these females,” before I turned the handle of the right-hand door which recognized me and obeyed me without a sound. I did not cross the threshold of
my
room whose half-closed shutters filled it with a faintly green dusk. At the far end of the room, on a divan-bed that seemed not to have moved from the place I had chosen for it in the old days, a young woman, curled up like a gun dog, raised the dim oval of her face in my direction. For a second, I had that experience only dreams dare conjure up: I saw before me, hostile, hurt, stubbornly hoping, the young self I should never be again, whom I never ceased disowning and regretting.

But there is nothing lasting in any touch of the fabulous we experience outside sleep. The young me stood up, spoke, and was no longer anything more than a stranger, the sound of whose voice dissipated all my precious mystery.

“Madame . . . But I told my sister— Really, Rosita, whatever are you thinking of? My room’s untidy, I’m not well. You must understand, Madame, why I couldn’t ask you to come in.”

She had only taken two or three steps toward me. In spite of the gloom, I could make out that she was rather short, but square-shouldered and self-assured. As a cloud outside uncovered the sun, the construction of her face was revealed to me: a straight, firm nose, strongly marked brows, a little Roman chin. It is a double attraction when well-modeled features are both youthful and severe.

I made myself thoroughly amiable to this young woman who was throwing me out.

“I understand perfectly, Madame. But do realize that your sister’s only crime was to imagine I might be of some use to you. She made a mistake. Mademoiselle Rosita, it’ll be all right, won’t it, to fetch the typescript as usual, next Monday?”

The two sisters did not notice the ease with which I found the curtained door at the far end of the room, crossed the dark little hall, and shut myself out. Downstairs, I was joined by Rosita.

“Madame, Madame, you’re not angry?”

“Not in the very least. Why should I be. She’s pretty, your sister. By the way, what’s her name?”

“Adèle. But she likes to be called Délia. Her married name is Essendier, Madame Essendier. Now she’s heartbroken, she’d like to see you.”

“Very well, then! She shall see me on Monday,” I conceded with dignity.

As soon as I was alone, the temptation to be entrapped in this snare of resemblances lost its power; the strident glare of the rue des Martyrs at midday dissipated the spell of the bedroom and the young woman curled up “day and night.” On the steep slope, what quantities of chickens with their necks hanging down, small legs of mutton displayed outside shops, fat sausages, enameled beer mugs with landscapes on them, oranges piled up in formation like cannon balls for ancient artillery, withered apples, unripe bananas, anemic chicory, glutinous wads of dates, daffodils, pink panties, bloomers encrusted with imitation Chantilly, little bags of ingredients for homemade stomach remedies, mercerized lisle stockings. What a number of
postiches
—they used to call them “chichés”—of ties sold in threes, of shapeless housewives, of blondes in down-at-heel shoes and brunettes in curlers, of mother-of-pearl smelts, of butcher boys with fat, cherubic faces. All this profusion, which had not changed in the least, awakened my appetite and vigorously restored me to reality.

Away with these Barberets! That chit of a girl with no manners was a sniveler, a lazy slut who must have driven her husband’s patience beyond all bounds. Caught between a prim, fussy old maid and a jealous young wife, what a charming life for a man!

Thus, wandering along and gazing at the shops, did I indict Madame Délia Essendier, christened Adèle . . . “
Adèle . . . T’es belle
 . . .” Standing in front of a sumptuous Universal Provision Store, I hummed the silly, already hoary song, as I admired the oranges between the tumbled rice and the sweating coffee, the red apples and the split green peas. Just as in Nice one longs to buy the entire flower market, here I would have liked to buy a whole stall of eatables, from the forced lettuces to the blue packets of semolina. “
Adèle . . . T’es belle
 . . .” I hummed.

“If you ask
me
,” said an insolent-eyed local girl, right under my nose, “I’d say
The Merry Widow
was a lot more up-to-date than that old thing.”

I did not reply, for this strapping blonde with her hair curled to last a week, planted solidly on her feet and sugared with coarse powder, was, after all, speaking for the whole generation destined to devour my own.

All the same I was not old, and above all, I did not look my real age. But a private life that was clouded and uncertain, a solitude that bore no resemblance to peace had wiped all the life and charm out of my face. I have never had less notice taken of me by men than during those particular years whose date I dissemble here. It was much later on that they treated me again to the good honest offensive warmth of their looks, to that genial concupiscence which will make an admirer, when he ought to be kissing your hand, give you a friendly pinch on the buttock.

The following Monday, on a sultry March morning when the sky was a whitish blue and Paris, dusty and surprised, was spilling her overflow of jonquils and anemones into the streets, I walked limply up the steep slope of Montmartre. Already the wide-open entrances to the blocks of flats were ejecting the air that was colder inside than out, along with the carbonic smell of stoves that had been allowed to go out. I rang the bell of Mademoiselle Rosita’s flat; she did not answer it and I joyfully welcomed the idea that she might be out, busy buying a pale escallop of veal or some ready-cooked sauerkraut . . . To salve my conscience, I rang a second time. Something brushed faintly against the door and the parquet creaked.

“Is that you, Eugène?” asked the voice of Mademoiselle Barberet.

She spoke almost in a whisper and I could hear her breathing at the level of the keyhole.

As if exculpating myself, I cried: “It’s me, Mademoiselle Rosita! I’m bringing some pages of manuscript . . .”

Mademoiselle Barberet gave a little “Ah!” but did not open the door at once. Her voice changed and she said in mincing tones: “Oh, Madame, what can I have been thinking of. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

A safety bolt slid in its catch and the door was half opened.

“Be very careful, Madame, you might stumble . . . My sister’s on the floor.’

She could not have spoken more politely and indifferently had she said: “My sister’s gone out to the post.” I did, in fact, stumble against a body lying prone, with its feet pointing skyward and its hands and face mere white blurs. The sight of it threw me into a state of cowardice which I intensely dislike. Drawing away from the body stretched out on the floor, I asked, to give the impression of being helpful, “What’s the matter with her? Would you like me to call someone?”

Then I noticed that the sensitive Mademoiselle Rosita did not seem to be greatly perturbed.

“It’s a fainting fit . . . a kind of dizziness that isn’t serious. Just let me get the smelling salts and a wet towel.”

She was already running off. I noticed she had forgotten to turn the light on and I had no trouble in finding the switch to the right of the front door. A ceiling light in the form of a plate with a crinkled border feebly lit up the hall and I bent down over the prostrate young woman. She was lying in an extremely decent attitude, with her skirt down to her ankles. One of her bent arms, whose hand lay palm upward, beside her ear, seemed to be commanding attention, and her head was slightly averted on her shoulders. Really, a very pretty young woman, taking refuge in a sulky swoon. I could hear Mademoiselle Rosita in the bedroom, opening and shutting a drawer, slamming the door of a cupboard.

And I found the seconds drag heavily as I stared at the tubular umbrella stand, at the cane table; in particular, at a door curtain of Algerian design that roused a regret in my heart for a rather pretty strip of leafy tapestry that used to hang there in the old days. As I looked down at the motionless young woman, I realized, from a narrow gleam between her eyelids, that she was secretly watching me. For some reason, I felt disagreeably surprised, as if by some practical joke. I bent over this creature who was shamming a faint and applied another approved remedy for swoons—a good, hard, stinging slap. She received it with an offended snarl and sat up with a jerk.

“Well! So you’re better?” cried Rosita, who was arriving with a wet towel and a liter of salad vinegar.

“As you see, Madame slapped my hands,” said Délia coldly. “You’d never have thought of that, would you? Help me to get up, please.”

I could not avoid giving her my arm. And supporting her thus, I entered the bedroom she had practically asked me to leave.

The room reverberated with the noises of the street that came up through the open window. There was just the same contrast I remembered so well between the cheerful noises and the mournful light. I guided the young pretender to the divan-bed.

“Rosita, perhaps you’d have the charity to bring me a glass of water?” *

I began to realize that the two sisters adopted a bitter, bantering tone whenever they spoke to each other. Rosita’s small steps went off toward the kitchen and I prepared to leave her younger sister’s bedside. But, with an unexpected movement, Délia caught hold of my hand, then clasped her arms around my knees and wildly pressed her head against them.

You must remember that, at that period of my life, I was still childless and that friendship, for me, wore the guise of undemonstrative, offhand, unemotional comradeliness. You must also take into account that, for many months, I had been starved of the coarse, invigorating bread of physical contact. A kiss, a good warm hug, the fresh touch of a child or anyone young had remained so long out of my reach that they had become distant, almost forgotten joys. So this unknown young woman’s outburst, her surge of tears, and her sudden embrace stunned me. Rosita’s return found me standing just where I was and the imploring arms unloosed their grip.

“I let the tap run for two minutes,” explained the older sister. “Madame, how can I apologize . . .”

I suddenly resented Mademoiselle Barberet’s air of business-like alacrity; her two ringlets bobbed on her right shoulder and she was slightly out of breath.

“Tomorrow morning,” I interrupted, “I’ve got to buy some remnants in the St-Pierre market. So I could come and collect the typed copies and you can give me news of . . . this . . . young person. No, stay where you are. I know the way.”

What stirred just now in the thicket? No, it isn’t a rabbit. Or a grass snake. Or a bird that travels in shorter spurts. Only lizards are so agile, so capable of covering a long distance fast, so reckless . . . It’s a lizard. That large butterfly flying in the distance—I always had rather bad eyesight—you say it’s a Swallowtail? No, it’s a Large Tortoiseshell. Why? Because the one we’re looking at glides magnificently as only the Large Tortoiseshell can, and the Swallowtail has a flapping flight. “My husband, such a placid man . . .” a friend of mine used to tell me. She did not see that he sucked his tongue all day long. She thought he was eating chewing gum, not differentiating between the chewing of gum and the nervous sucking of the tongue. Personally, I thought that this man had cares on his mind or else that the presence of his wife exasperated him.

Ever since I had made the acquaintance of Délia Essendier I had found myself “recapping” in this way lessons I had learned from my instinct, from animals, children, nature, and my disquieting fellow beings. It seemed to me that I needed more than ever to know of my own accord, without discussing it with anyone, that the lady going by has a left shoe that pinches her, that the person I am talking to is pretending to drink in my words but not even listening to me, that a certain woman who hides from herself the fact that she loves a certain man cannot stop herself from following him like a magnet whenever he is in the room, but always turns her back to him. A dog with evil intentions sometimes limps out of nervousness.

Children, and people who retain some ingenuous trait of childhood, are almost indecipherable, I realize that. Nevertheless, in a child’s face, there is just one revealing, unstable area, a space comprised between the nostril, the eye, and the upper lip, where the waves of a secret delinquency break on the surface. It is as swift and devastating as lightning. Whatever the child’s age, that little flash of guilt turns the child into a ravaged adult. I have seen a serious lie distort a little girl’s nostril and upper lip like a harelip . . .

“Tell me, Délia . . .”

 . . . but on Délia’s features nothing explicit appeared. She took refuge in a smile—for me—or in bad temper directed against her older sister, or else she entered into a somber state of waiting, installing herself in it as if at the window of a watchtower. She would half sit, half lie on her divan-bed, which was covered with a green material printed with blue nasturtiums—the last gasps of the vogue for Liberty fabrics—clutching a big cushion against her, propping her chin on it, and scarcely ever moving. Perhaps she was aware that her attitude suited her often cantankerous beauty.