The Collected Stories of Colette (65 page)

“But tell me, Délia, when you got married, didn’t you have a presentiment that . . .”

Propped up like that, with her skirt pulled down to her ankles, she seemed to be meditating, rather than waiting. Since profound meditation is not concerned with being expressive, Délia Essendier never turned her eyes to me, even when she was speaking. More often than not, she looked at the half-open window, the reservoir of air, the source of sounds, a greenish aquarium in the shade of the green-and-blue curtains. Or else she stared fixedly at the little slippers with which her feet were shod. I, too, in the old days, used to buy those little heelless slippers of imitation silk brocade, adorned with a flossy pompon on the in-step. In those days they cost thirteen francs seventy-five and their poor material soon tarnished. The young voluntary recluse I saw before me did not bother herself with shoes. She was only half a recluse, going out in the morning to buy a squirrel’s provisions, a provender of fresh bread, dry nuts, eggs, and apples, and the little meat that sufficed for the appetite of the two sisters.

“Didn’t you tell me, Délia . . .”

No. She had told me nothing. Her brief glance accused me of imagining things, of having no memory. What was I doing there, in a place which ought to have been forbidden ground for me, at the side of a woman young enough to give no indication of being a wife and who manifested neither virtues nor nobility of mind nor even as much intelligence as any lively, gentle animal? The answer, I insist, is that this was a period in my life which motherhood and happy love had not yet enriched with their marvelous commonplace.

People might already have taken me to task for my choice of associates—those who tried to got an extremely poor reception—and my friends might have been surprised, for example, to find me pacing up and down the avenue du Bois in the company of a shabby groom who brought and took away the horses hired out by a riding school. A former jockey who had been unlucky and come down in the world and who looked like an old glove. But he was a mine of information on everything to do with horses and dogs, diseases, remedies, fiery beverages that would kill or cure, and I liked his meaty conversation even though he did teach me too much about the way animals are “made up” to get a better price for them. For example, I would gladly have been dispensed from knowing that they pour sealing wax into a French bulldog’s ears if it has slightly limp auricles . . . The rest of his expert knowledge was fascinating.

With less fundamental richness, Marie Mallier had considerable charm. If any of my circle had decided to be captious about all the things Marie Mallier did in the course of what she broadly described as “touring in operetta,” I would not have stood for it. Reduced to accepting all and sundry, the only transgressions Marie Mallier really enjoyed were the unprofitable delights of sewing and ironing. For the spice of an occupation, generally considered innocent, can be more exciting than many a guilty act performed out of necessity.

“To make a darn so that the corners don’t pucker and all the little loops on the wrong side stand out nice and even,” Marie Mallier used to say. “It makes my mouth water like cutting a lemon!” Our vices are less a matter of yielding to temptation than of some obsessive love. Throwing oneself passionately into helping some unknown woman, founding hopes on her that would be discouraged by the wise affection of our friends, wildly adopting a child that is not ours, obstinately ruining ourselves for a man whom we probably hate, such are the strange manifestations of a struggle against ourselves that is sometimes called disinterestedness, sometimes perversity. When I was with Délia Essendier, I found myself once again as vulnerable, as prone to giving presents out of vanity as a schoolgirl who sells her books to buy a rosary, a ribbon, or a little ring and slips them, with a shy note, into the desk of a beloved classmate.

Nevertheless, I did not love Délia Essendier, and the beloved class-mate I was seeking, who was she but my former self, that sad form stuck, like a petal between two pages, to the walls of an ill-starred refuge?

“Délia, haven’t you got a photograph of your husband here?”

Since the day when her arms had clasped my knees, Délia had made no other mute appeal to me except, when I stood up to go, a gesture to hold me back by the hand, the gesture of an awkward young girl who has not learned how to grip or offer a palm frankly. All she did was to pull on my fingers and hurriedly let them go, as if out of sulkiness, then turn away toward the window that was nearly always open. Following the suggestion of her gaze, it was I who would go over to the window and stare at the passers-by, or rather at their lids, for in those days, all men wore hats. When the entrance down below swallowed up a man with a long stride, dressed in a blue overcoat, in spite of myself I would count the seconds and reckon the time it would take a visitor in a hurry to cross the hall, walk up to our floor, and ring the bell. But no one would ring and I would breathe freely again.

“Your husband, does he write to you, Délia?”

This time, the reticent young person whom I continued to ask tactless questions, whether she left them unanswered or not, scanned me with her insulting gaze. But I was long past the stage of taking any notice of her disdain, and I repeated: “Yes, I’m asking if your husband writes to you sometimes.”

My question produced a great effect on Rosita, who was walking through the bedroom. She stopped short, as if waiting for her sister’s reply.

“No,” said Délia at last. “He doesn’t write to me and it’s just as well he doesn’t. We’ve nothing to say to each other.”

At this, Rosita opened her mouth and her eyes in astonishment. Then she continued her light-footed walk and, just before she disappeared, raised both her hands to her ears. This scandalized gesture revived my curiosity, which at times died down. I must also admit that, going back to the scene of my unhappy, fascinating past, I found it shocking that Délia—Délia and not myself—should be lying on the divan-bed, playing at taking off and putting on her little slippers, while I, tired of an uncomfortable seat, got up to walk to and fro, to push the table closer to the window as if by accident, to measure the space once filled by a dark cupboard.

“Délia, was it you who chose this wallpaper?”

“Certainly not.
I’d
have liked a flowered paper, like the one in the living room.”

“What living room?”

“The big room.”

“Ah, yes. It isn’t a living room, because you don’t live in it. I should be more inclined to call it the workroom, because your sister works in it.”

Now that the days were growing longer, I could make out the color of Délia’s eyes—around her dilated pupils there was a ring of dark gray-green—and the whiteness of her skin, like the complexion of southern women who are uniformly pale from head to foot. She threw me a look of obstinate mistrust.

“My sister can work just as well in a living room if she chooses.”

“The main thing is that she works, isn’t it?” I retorted.

With a kick, she flung one of her slippers a long way away.

“
I
work too,” she said stiffly. “Only nobody sees what I do. I wear myself out; oh, I wear myself out. In there . . . In there . . .”

She was touching her forehead and pressing her temples. With slight contempt, I looked at her idle woman’s hands, her delicate fingers, long, slim, and turned up at the tips, and her fleshy palms. I shrugged my shoulders.

“Fine work, a fixed idea! You ought to be ashamed, Délia.”

She gave way easily to tempers typical of an ill-bred schoolgirl with no self-control.

“I don’t only just think!” she screamed. “I . . . I work in my own way! It’s all in my head!”

“Are you planning a novel?”

I had spoken sarcastically but Délia, quite unaware of this, was flattered and calmed down.

“Oh! Well, not exactly so . . . it’s a bit like a novel, only better.”

“What is it you call better than a novel, my child?”

For I allowed myself to call her that when she seemed to be pitchforked into a kind of brutal, irresponsible childishness. She always flinched at the word and rewarded me with an angry, lustrous glance, accompanied by an ill-tempered shrug.

“Ah, I can’t tell you that,” she said in a self-important voice.

She went back to fishing cherries out of a newspaper cornet. She pinched the stones between her fingers and aimed at the open window. Rosita passed through the room, busy on some errand, and scolded her sister without pausing in her walk.

“Délia, you oughtn’t to throw the stones out into the street.”

What was I doing there, in that desert? One day, I brought some better cherries. Another day, having brought Rosita a manuscript full of erasures, I said: “Wait. Could I redo this page on . . . on a corner of a table, doesn’t matter where. There, look, that’ll do very well. Yes, yes, I can see well enough there. Yes, I’ve got my fountain pen.”

Leaning on a rickety one-legged table, I received, from the left, the light of the solitary window and, from the right, the attention of Délia. To my amazement, she set to work with a needle. She was doing the fine beadwork that was all the rage at the moment for bags and trimmings.

“What a charming talent, Délia.”

“It isn’t a talent, it’s a profession,” said Délia in a tone of disgust.

But she was not displeased, I think, to devote herself, under my eyes to work that was as graceful as a charming pastime. The needles, fine as steel hairs, the tiny multicolored beads, the canvas net, she manipulated them all with the deftness of a blind person, still half recumbent on a corner of the divan-bed. From the neighboring room came the choppy chatter of the typewriter, the jib of its little carriage at every line, and its crystalline bell. What was I doing in that desert? It was not a desert. I forsook my own three small, snug rooms, my books, the scent I sprayed about, my lamp. But one cannot live on a lamp, on perfume, on pages one has read and reread. I had moreover friends and good companions; I had Annie de Pène, who was better than the best of them. But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious.

With Rosita, with Délia, I was insured against the risk of making confidences. My hidden past climbed the familiar stairs with me, sat secretly beside Délia, rearranged furniture on its old plan, revived the colors of the “rainy moon,” and sharpened a weapon once used against myself.

“Is it a profession you chose yourself, Délia?”

“Not exactly. In January, this year, I took it up again because it means I can work at home.”

She opened the beak of her fine scissors.

“It’s good for me to handle pointed things.”

There was a gravity about her, like the gravity of a young madwoman, that oddly suited Délia. I thought it unwise to encourage her further than by a questioning glance.

“Pointed things,” she reiterated. “Scissors, needles, pins . . . It’s good.”

“Would you like me to introduce you to a sword swallower, a knife thrower, and a porcupine?”

She deigned to laugh and that chromatic laugh made me sorry she was not happy more often. A powerful feminine voice in the street called out the greengrocer’s cry.

“Oh, it’s the cherry cart,” murmured Délia.

Without taking time to put on my felt hat, I went down bareheaded and brought a kilo of white-heart cherries. Running to avoid a motorcar, I bumped into a man who had stopped outside
my
door.

“Another moment, Madame, and your cherries . . .”

I smiled at this passer-by, who was a typical Parisian, with a lively face, a few white threads in his black hair, and fine, tired eyes that suggested an engraver or a printer. He was lighting a cigarette, without taking his eyes off the first-floor window. The lighted match burned his fingers; he let it drop and turned away.

A cry of pleasure—the first I had ever heard from Délia’s lips—greeted my entrance, and the young woman pressed the back of my hand against her cheek. Feeling oddly rewarded, I watched her eating the cherries and putting the stalks and stones into the lid of a box of pins. Her expression of greed and selfishness did not deprive her of the charm that makes us feel tender toward violent children, withdrawn into their own passions and refusing to condescend to be pleasant.

“Just imagine, Délia, down there on the pavement . . .”

She stopped eating, with a big cherry bulging inside her cheek.

“What, down there on the pavement?”

“There’s a man looking up at your windows. A very charming man, too.”

She swallowed her cherry and hastily spat out the stone.

“What’s he like?”

“Dark, a face . . . well, pleasant . . . white hairs in his black hair. He’s got red-brown stains on his fingertips, they’re the fingers of a man who smokes too much.”

As she tucked her slipperless feet under her again with a sudden movement, Délia scattered all her fragile needlework tools on the floor.

“What day is it today? Friday, isn’t it? Yes, Friday.”

“Is he your Friday lover? Have you got one for all the days of the week?”

She stared full in my face with the insulting glare adolescents reserve for anyone who treats them as “big babies.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

She rose to pick up her embroidery equipment. As she flourished a delicate little antique purse she was copying against the light, I noticed her hands were trembling. She turned toward me with a forced playfulness.

“He’s nice, isn’t he, my Friday lover? D’you think he’s attractive?”

“I think he’s attractive, but I don’t think he looks well. You ought to look after him.”

“Oh, I look after him all right, you needn’t worry about
him
.”

She began to laugh crazily, so much so that she brought on a fit of coughing. When she had stopped laughing and coughing, she leaned against a piece of furniture as if overcome with giddiness, staggered, and sat down.