The Collected Stories of Colette (84 page)

“It was pathetic, that little thing who danced naked,” said Rose.

Bernard was grateful to her for having thought, at the same moment, just what he himself was thinking. Odette shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s not pathetic. It’s inevitable. In Madrid one goes to see the Goyas. Here, you mustn’t miss native girls in the nude. But I admit the sight isn’t worth the effort of staying up till half past three.”

“But it is,” thought Bernard. “Only not with her or Rose. You can’t expect women to lay aside their own particular brand of indecency and their instinct for spontaneous comparison. Any pleasure in the world would be spoiled for me if Odette were looking on. I knew everything she was thinking: ‘That Zorah . . . her breasts won’t last three years. My back’s longer than hers. My breasts are more like apples, not so much like lemons as hers. I’m made quite differently
there
 . . .”’

He was embarrassed to find himself imagining the details of a woman’s body over which he had no rights and he blushed as he met Odette’s look. “That female guesses everything. I’ll never manage to do what I want to do tonight. Rose will never have the courage.”

Ahmed seemed to be listening to the distant voice of the invisible Tangiers and pulled up his white sleeve to consult his wristwatch. He bent over the little circle of lush, trampled grass and picked a blue flower, which he slipped between his ear and his fez. Then he fell back into his immobility, his lids and lashes hiding his great dark eyes.

“Ahmed!”

Bernard had called him almost in an undertone. Ahmed started.

“We’re going down again, Ahmed.”

Ahmed turned toward Rose and Odette, questioning them with his smile. They both smiled back so promptly and with such obvious pleasure that Bernard was annoyed. Ahmed’s slippers and lean, agile ankles led the way: Bernard took note of all the turnings and landmarks. “It’s as easy as anything. The first turning that forks upward from the big avenue. Anyway, one can hear the trickling of the water almost at once.” But he remained dissatisfied. He was languid under the assault of noon; the growing light and heat sapped his vitality. Nevertheless, he would like to have owned that vast domain, which struck him as peculiarly Oriental.

“I’ll say goodbye to Odette and Bessier. I’ll shut myself up with Rose. I’ll keep Ahmed and that wild little Arab girl we saw down there.”

On their way back down the slope they saw once again the pines and the blue cedars and, lower down, the white arums which Ahmed contemptuously beheaded as he passed.

Lower down still, a little girl, whose skin was almost black, crossed their path, followed by her white hens. Her hair was plaited into a horn, one shoulder was half bare, and her breasts, under the native muslin, were conical.

“Ah, that’s the nice little thing we saw over by the kitchens,” exclaimed Odette.

The nice little thing shot her an insulting look and disappeared.

“Success! Ahmed, what’s she called? Yes, the little thing over there. Don’t act the idiot! It doesn’t take
me
in for a moment. What’s her name?”

Ahmed hesitated and fluttered his lashes.

“Fatima,” he said, at last.

“Fatima,” echoed Rose, “Isn’t that pretty! She had a smile for Ahmed. What a look she gave
us
!”

“She’s got a marvelous mouth,” said Bernard. “And those thick teeth that I adore.”

“That I adore!” mocked Rose. “Merely that! Do you hear that, Odette?”

“I hear all right,” said Odette. “But I don’t care a damn what he says. My feet are hurting.”

They reached the crumbling wall of the park. As he stopped a moment to thank the ever-speechless Ahmed with a handshake, Bernard noticed that a gate was missing and a rusty padlock hung at the end of a useless chain.

The three companions turned into the narrow, almost shadeless path, barbed with prickly pears. Odette walked ahead, her eyes almost closed between the black fringe of her hair and the white bar of her teeth. Rose twisted her ankle and groaned. Bernard, who was following her, took her by the elbow and mischievously squeezed her arm as he helped her along.

“So you’ve got the wrong sort of shoes on, too? Couldn’t either of you come to Africa with any other sort of shoes except those absurd white buckskin things?”

“No, stop, that’s the limit,” Rose wailed. “As if I hadn’t enough to put up with as it is, without your having to . . .”

“Oh, give over,” broke in Odette, without turning around. “He’s just another of those chaps who say, ‘For goodness’ sake, wear espadrilles!’ and then they’re furious with you because, with no heels, all your skirts droop at the back.”

Bernard made no retort. The noonday hour, while depressing his two weary companions, was making him turn ferocious. He stared at the sea, which seemed to be going down along with them, sinking back into its depths behind the tufted hills, the empty spring fields, and the silent little gardens where everything was in flower. “This is no time to be trailing around outdoors! And these two women! One teeters along, stumbling over everything, and the other’s limping. As to their conversation, one’s is as idiotic as the other’s. I wonder what the hell I’m doing here!”

Since he knew very well what he was doing there, he forced himself to be less cantankerous and managed to take a little pleasure in the swallows, which were scything the air just above the ground and turning short with a whistle of wings.

The plaster-strewn enclosure, which the Mirador Hotel intended shortly to convert into an Arab garden with formal pools, boasted no more than a yellow patio. Its squat archways threw back blinding reflections of various shades of yellow. A tuft of wild oats made one of these look almost green: some red geraniums turned another to the fleshy pink of watermelons. An Ali Baba jar of blue cinerarias threw a blue halo on the yellow wall, a kind of azure mirage. The strangled painter revived in the depths of Bernard Bonnemains.

“What light! Why not let myself be tempted by a long, uneventful life here . . . No, farther away than this . . . I’d have a little concubine, or two . . .” He pulled himself up out of decency. “Or Rose, of course. But with Rose it wouldn’t be possible. And it wouldn’t be the same.”

A smell of
anis
whetted his desire for a drink. He turned his head and saw Bessier Senior sitting at one of the little tables, writing.

“So there you are, Cyril!” cried Odette. “I bet you’ve only just come down!”

But Bonnemains had already noticed that there were three glasses on the table and that on an adjoining one, among squeezed lemons, siphons, and tumblers, lay several bluish pages torn from the pad Bessier used for making notes. He took in all these details at one glance, with a professional jealousy as swift as a woman’s suspicion and far more intelligent.

“You’re wrong,” answered Bessier laconically. “You three had a good walk?”

For a moment he raised his eyes toward the newcomers, the eyes of a fair man who had once been handsome. Then he went on writing. His hair was still thick, though its gold had faded. He affected a prewar coquetry. He liked clothes which were almost white, let one silver lock fall over his forehead, and made considerable play with his pale lashes and his shortsighted eyes.

“I find him as embarrassing as a faded beauty,” thought Bernard. “I’ve nothing against him except that he’s Rose’s brother-in-law.”

Accustomed to keeping quiet when Bessier was working, the two women sat down and waited, their hats on their knees. Rose slipped Bernard a faintly imploring smile, which revived his sense of the power he had over her. “After all, a real blonde, a hundred percent blonde, is pretty rare.” As Odette so charmingly put it: “Pink cheeks at twenty-five; blotches and broken veins at forty-five.” He followed the crimson play of light on Rose’s bare neck and under her chin and in her nostrils, and felt an immense desire to paint her. Misunderstanding his look, she lowered her eyes.

“I’ve finished,” said Bessier. “But there’s a post out this afternoon . . . Have you three only come back to eat? Bonnemains, you look disappointed. Purple in the face, but disappointed. Wasn’t it worth the effort?”

He dabbed his prominent, sensitive eyes with the tips of his fingers and smiled with automatic condescension.

“Oh, yes . . . quite,” said Bernard uncertainly.

“Oh,
yes
!” cried Rose. “It’s adorable. And we haven’t seen more than a quarter of it! You should have come, Cyril. Such greenery everywhere! And the oranges! I’ve eaten twenty if I’ve eaten one! And the flowers! It’s crazy!”

Bernard stared at her in surprise. His private Rose bore no resemblance to this pretty, voluble little bourgeoise. Then he remembered that the Rose who belonged to the Bessier brothers was expected to behave childishly, to blush frequently and drop an occasional brick to the accompaniment of tender, indulgent laughs. He clenched his jaws. “Spare us any more, Rose!”

“And the villa?” asked Bessier. “What’s the villa like? As hideous as they say?”

“The villa?”

“There’s no more a villa than there’s a . . .” said Odette.

“Perhaps it was the way up to the villa,” interrupted Bernard, “that Ahmed was pointing out near the top of the hill. These women weren’t interested in finding out anything. And as Ahmed doesn’t speak French . . .”

Bessier raised his eyebrows.

“He doesn’t speak French?”

“So
he
says,” insinuated Odette. “Personally, I’ve my own ideas about
that
.”

Bessier turned to Bernard and spoke to him as if he were a child of eight. “My dear little Bonnemains, don’t bother yourself about the villa. I’ve got it all here.”

“You’ve got it all? All what?”

Bessier pushed two or three leaves of his notebook, a creased yellow plan, and an old photograph across the iron table.

“There!” he said theatrically. “While you were having a good time, I . . .”

Rose had stood up and her crisp, curly hair brushed Bernard’s ear as she bent over the photograph. But Bernard, tense and absorbed, was not giving Rose a thought. The faded old photograph occupied his whole attention.

“The villa,” explained Bessier, “here they call it the palace—that’s this huge black smudge.”

“Mh’m,” nodded Bernard. “I see. I see. What else?”

“Well,” said Bessier, “I’ve had some fellows here this morning. One called Dankali. One called Ben Salem, one called—eh—Farrhar with an ‘h’—who’s got power of attorney. Odette and Rose, let my
anis
alone, will you? If you want some, make it yourself, as Marius says. Farrhar even told me that he’d once started studying architecture in Paris, so he felt as if he were a sort of colleague of mine. Too honored! Architecture leads to everything, provided you get out of it. He’s extremely elegant. A pearl tiepin and a blue diamond on his finger.”

“Blue?” squealed Rose.

“How big?” asked Odette greedily.

“Big as my fist. Once and for all, have you finished sucking at my
anis
? I’ve a horror of people drinking through my straws. It absolutely revolts me. You know that perfectly well!”

“Me too,” thought Bernard. The sight of Odette and Rose bending over Cyril’s tumbler, each with a straw between her lips, made him pinch his lips wryly and swallow his saliva as he did every time anything showed him Rose in familiar intimacy with the two Bessiers. He loathed it when Bessier lit Rose’s cigarette or lent her a handkerchief to wipe her lips or her fingers; when he put a spoon to her mouth with a lump of sugar soaked in coffee.

“. . . those three chaps were well worth seeing,” Bessier went on. “Dankali is the contractor . . .”

“I know,” said Bernard.

Bessier did not conceal his surprise. “But how do you know?”

“All the trucks and timberyards and fences and houses under construction are plastered with
DANKALI AND SONS
,” said Bernard. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“I haven’t, by Jove. But I’ll certainly remember it in the future.”

He paused awhile, gently tapping his prominent eyeballs.

“It’s a big job. They’re razing the villa to its foundations and starting all over again. The pasha’s made up his mind.”

“Bravo!” said Bernard. “Isn’t that going to mean your staying out here longer?”

“On the contrary. Of course I shall have to come back in September with the plans of the whole thing on paper.”

“Ah yes. Quite.”

Bessier looked dreamy and appeared to have no more to say.

“He said, ‘I shall come back.’ He didn’t say, ‘We shall come back,’” thought Bernard. “So much for you, you thoroughgoing swine.”

The two women, used to keeping silence while professional discussions were taking place, sat idle on a bench. “If I were to ask him how he got the job, he might tell me,” thought Bernard. “But where would that get me?”

He reproached himself for the little shiver which dried his light sweat and for the terrible professional jealousy which was ruining his day.

“I’ll swallow that like all the rest. But
shall
I swallow it? I’ve had my back up ever since I came out. The fact is that, except for Rose, I can’t bear the sight of these people anymore.” He looked about him and his eyes came to rest on two hard brown hands, two forearms the color of oak which, a few steps away, were turning over and pressing down the damp earth at the foot of the daturas under the arcade. On the kitchen doorstep, a small roly-poly child with a fez on its head tottered, fell on the ground, and laughed. Above the whistling of the gray swifts, which were drinking on the wing from the newly made fountain, rose a quavering song which trailed its long notes and its intervals of augmented seconds in the air and relaxed Bernard Bonnemains’s contracted heart. “I’d like to live among them, among the people here. It’s true that most of them don’t belong here.” His eyes returned to Rose. Her cheeks were scarlet and her hair tumbled: he could see that she was worried about him. “That girl’s going to pay for the others! I swear that she’s going through with it tonight, and how! And if she gets caught, if we both get caught, very well then! I can’t see that it matters.” He could not stop himself from admiring the attitude of the Fiji Islander. At the mention of the “big job,” she had manifested her greed and delight only by a brief flicker in her eye. Now she was combing her fringe and her hair gleamed as blue as a Chinese girl’s in the sun. “She keeps all the ‘how, why, and when?’ for when they’re alone together. She’s an admirable female in her own way.” He turned again to Rose, who was disentangling her rough golden curls in imitation and humming as she did so. “As for her . . . The time it takes her to grasp anything! But she’s entirely made—admirably made too—to be enjoyed.” His desire gripped him again. It disturbed him yet, at the same time, it revived his awareness of the African spring, of his own strength, of the agreeable present moment. He leaped to his feet and cried: “Food! Food! Let’s eat or I’ll not be responsible for my actions!”