The Collected Stories of Colette (85 page)

Then he rushed, gesticulating, up the steps. Behind him there burst out shrill cries of terror. He realized that they came from the little dimpled child in its miniature fez and he regretted having behaved like a maniac.

A few minutes later, the four of them sat at a table eating large, stringy shrimps, stuffed artichokes, and baby lamb. Bessier Senior, a rose in his buttonhole, tried vainly to steer the conversation back to the business of the villa.

“What’s your opinion, Bonnemains? Farrhar made no secret of the fact that the pasha, after spending a summer at Deauville, has developed a passion for Norman buildings with crossbeams and all that. A Norman cottage in Tangiers, no, that’s really too much! Bonnemains, my dear chap, I’m talking to you, d’you hear?”

Far less deferential than usual, Bonnemains laughed in his face, displaying his splendid teeth to tempt Rose.

“I hear perfectly, my dear fellow, I hear perfectly. But in the first place, I’m a little drunk with this sun and this country and this heavy white wine that glues one’s tongue. And in the second place, I’ve a horror of meddling in other people’s affairs. Didn’t you know that?”

Bessier Senior raised his fair eyelashes and, for no apparent reason, laid his hand on Rose’s forearm.

“No, dear boy, I didn’t know anything of the kind. Rose, fish me a bit of ice out of the pail. Thank you. I prefer your hand to the Spanish waiter’s.”

He took his time to drink before adding, with too emphatic graciousness: “My affairs won’t always be ‘other people’s affairs’ to you, Bernard. At least, so I dare to hope.”

“Yes, yes. Always these Old World courtesies,” thought Bernard. “He doesn’t give a damn for me, yet I still owe him some thanks. What can I say to him? He’s obviously expecting some polite formula of gratitude.”

“My dear Cyril, no one’s clumsier than I am at showing a gratitude which . . . I should so much like, particularly for your sake, to prove myself before you give me your official confidence . . .”

At the word “official,” Bessier once more unveiled his bluish eyes and fixed them for a moment on Bernard. He smiled into space, took the tea rose out of his buttonhole, and inhaled it at length, using the rose and the pale hand as a screen between himself and Bernard. Bernard had to be content with this coquettish gesture which implied: “All in good time,” or “That’s understood.”

Odette, who was smoking discreetly, had allowed herself neither an allusive smile nor a meaningful look. “Well trained,” thought Bernard. “I’ll never get such good results with Rose. Unless by great kicks in the . . .” He laughed and became once more the Bernard Bonnemains whom he himself believed to be the authentic one. This Bernard was a strong, likable young man, rather an optimistic character, who used anger as a defense against his fundamental shyness and who was inclined to covet his neighbor’s goods when they were flourished under his nose.

Some black, bitter coffee kept the two couples sitting on at the table. The hot air rose up from the gravel and a cool salt breeze smelling of cedarwood stirred over their heads. Caught by the sun which had moved around, Bessier folded a newspaper into a hat and put it on. It gave him an intolerable resemblance to a portrait of a middle-aged woman by Renoir. Suddenly Bernard could stand no more and he stood up, knocking his chair over on the gravel.

“If I die of heart failure,” scolded Odette, “I know who’ll be responsible.”

“Oh, come now . . . come . . .” Rose began plaintively.

“A little touch of colic, dear friend?” simpered Bessier under his wide-brimmed printed hat.

“Oh, Cyril!” said Rose reproachfully.

“I might have replied,” thought Bernard, as he reached his room, “that I actually was suffering from violent indigestion. Each one of those three said exactly what I knew they would say. Life is becoming impossible.”

He locked his door, pulled down the blinds, and flung himself on his bed. The half-open window let in noises, not one of which was African: banging crockery, telephone bells, someone languidly dragging a rake. A ship’s siren filled the air, drowning all other sounds, and Bernard, relaxed almost to the point of tears, shut his eyes and opened his clenched fists.

“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with me? The need to make love, obviously. My Rose, my little Rose . . . Rose of my life . . .”

He turned over with a leap like a fish. “Those names sound as silly for her as they do for me to say them. She’s my Rose, my delicious little blond slavey, my pretty goldilocks of a washerwoman?” He broke off with a kind of sob of impatience, which he managed to choke down and which had nothing to do with tenderness. “Enough of all this gush! Tonight we’re going for a walk, Rose and I.”

On the wooden slats of the blinds, he conjured up the old pond in the deserted park, overgrown with delicate wild grasses, the trickle of water diverted from the dried-up lion’s mouth, and Rose lying on her back. But a kind of ill will spoiled his pleasure and his hope, and he refused to be taken in by himself. “Yes, I know perfectly well that all this story would be much prettier if Rose were poor. But if she were poor, I shouldn’t be thinking of marrying her.”

Sleep fell on him so suddenly that he had no time to settle himself in a comfortable position. He slept, lying sprawled across the bed, one arm bent and the back of his neck pressing against the feather pillow. When he woke up, which was not till the sun had moved to another window, he was stiff all over. Before raising his perspiring head, he caught sight of the corner of an envelope under the door. “What’s the trouble now?”

We’re going out
, Rose had written.
Dear Bernard, we didn’t want to disturb your rest
 . . .

“We, we . . . who the hell are ‘we’? I’ll give her a lesson in family solidarity!” In the glass, he saw his untidy image; his shirt rucked up, his trousers unbelted, and his hair on end, and thought he looked ugly.

Cyril has an awful migraine and asks us, as a favor, to have dinner at the hotel and go to bed early. As usual, Odette, as a model wife, entirely agrees with Cyril. But I admit that I myself
 . . .

Bernard ran to the window, pulled up the blinds, and leaned over the cooling patio. From now until tomorrow it would be bathed in shadow and spray from the fountain. The jet of water, shooting up straight from its basin, quivered in the breeze. Beyond the arcades lay the chalky African soil with its ubiquitous riot of pulpy white arum lilies.

He waited, naked, for his bath to fill. His young, slightly heavy body, without scar or blemish, pleased him. The thought of Rose gave him one of those moments of magical anguish such as he had felt when he was fifteen, moments when desire is so fierce that it almost consumes its object, then forgets it.

Freshly bathed and shaved, dressed in light clothes and smelling good, he went down and stood at the edge of the garden. He was rash enough to let his pleasure show on his face.

“You look like a First Communicant,” said the voice of Bessier.

“I can smell you from here,” said Odette. “You’ve put it on with rather a heavy hand. That Counterattack of yours . . . I’ve always said it wasn’t a man’s toilet water.”

“On the other hand, I adore his white woolen socks,” said Bessier.

“Personally,” went on Odette, “I’d have preferred not
quite
such a blue tie. With a gray suit, a really blue tie looks as silly as a bunch of cornflowers in one’s buttonhole.”

She was sitting so close to her husband that their shoulders touched. United in their spite, they were summing him up as if he were a horse. It was their unity which struck Bernard as even more offensive than their insolence.

“Have you quite finished?” he said roughly.

“Now then, you! Come off it!” cried Odette.

Bessier restrained her by laying his heavy white hand on her arm. “We’ve quite finished,” he said affectionately to Bernard. “Don’t get annoyed because your friends are sensitive to all the outward signs that show you want to be handsome and gay.”

“I’m not . . . I don’t particularly want to . . .” Bernard clumsily protested.

The blood was singing in his ears and he ran a finger between his neck and his shirt collar. He was afraid he would not be able to stand Odette’s little laugh, but Bessier had the situation well in hand and reproved his wife.

“You’ve touched him to the quick, otherwise to the tie! Insult my mother but don’t dare suggest that I’ve chosen the wrong tie!”

He was speaking to her with a paternal mildness. Suddenly he grabbed the nape of her neck and kissed her on her peevish mouth, on her moist, shining teeth. “He’s indecent, that fellow,” thought Bernard. But all the same, it gave him a pang to imagine the chill, the perfect regularity of the teeth Bessier had kissed. He turned away, paced a few steps, and returned to the couple.

“For they certainly are a couple,” he admitted. Bessier was stroking the shoulder of a silent and softened Odette, stroking it with the hand of an indifferent master. “It’s unusual for a husband and wife to be a couple.” He felt annoyed, in spite of the soft green twilight and the wind laden with the scent of mint tea.

“Here’s our Rose,” announced Bessier in a studied voice.

Bonnemains, who had recognized the little short step, carefully avoided turning around, but an exclamation from Odette made him forget his discretion.

“Whatever’s the matter with you? What’s gone wrong?”

He saw that Rose had thrown her dark blue raincoat over the rather crumpled dress she had kept on ever since the morning and that she was coming toward them with her head bent and wearing a brave little martyred smile.

“Have you lost a relation?” cried Odette.

“Oh, I’ve such a migraine. It’s this afternoon. You dragged me through the bazaars, and I simply can’t stand the smell of leather there is everywhere here. Forgive me, Cyril and Bernard, I just hadn’t the energy. I’ve stayed just as I am without changing my frock. I know I look simply frightful.”

“You look frightful, but you smell marvelous,” observed Odette. “How you can stand scent when you’ve got a migraine! Doesn’t she smell good, Bernard?”

“Delicious,” said Bernard easily. “She smells of . . . wait a minute . . . marzipan tart . . . I adore that!”

He even went so far as to pretend to bite Rose’s bare arm. Rose looked crosser than ever and went and sat very close to Cyril.

“Either we’re the worst actors in the world,” thought Bernard, “or else the Bessiers can sense a kind of atmosphere around me and Rose. Which doesn’t stop the child being slyer than I supposed. Look at her now, got up in that dark thing over her light dress, a dress that’s already been rumpled in full view of everyone. It’s true that when it comes to deception, the stupidest of them has a genius for it.”

After a thoughtful silence, Odette said in a resigned voice: “Well, we’re all going to bed early.”

They had a strange dinner, served in the patio under a naked electric bulb, which was soon covered with little moths in a hurry to die. Rose pretended at first that she could not eat; then devoured her food. Bernard insisted on champagne and pressed his three guests to drink. The two women held back at first, then Odette pushed her empty glass across the tablecloth to Bernard like a pawn on a chessboard and drank glass after glass, only giving herself time to take a deep breath between each refill. She gave great gasps and “ahs” as if she had been drinking under a tap, and the glitter of her teeth between her lips, the sight of her moist palate and tongue in her open mouth dazzled Bernard in spite of himself. “Yet Rose has a lovely, healthy, desirable mouth too. But Odette’s great carnivorous mouth suggests something else.” After a spasm of uncontrollable laughter, Odette had absurdly to wipe away tears. She clutched Rose’s bare arm and Bernard saw the flat fingers, with the nails varnished dark red, print hollows in the flesh. Rose made no sound but seemed terror-stricken, and slowly and cautiously removed her arm from the fingers which gripped it, as if disentangling it from a briar. Bernard filled up the glasses and drained his own. “If I stop drinking, if I look at these people too close, I shall chuck everything and clear out.”

He went on looking at them, however, and most of all, he looked at Rose. Her hair was standing out like the spokes of a wheel, her cheeks and ears were crimson, and there was a paler ring around her eyes. Her eyes were brilliant and vacant, but her quivering mouth had a majestic and dishonored expression as if she had just submitted to a long, passionate embrace. At the moment when all four of them stopped drinking and talking, she seemed so overcome that Bernard was afraid she would refuse to follow him.

But suddenly she got up stiffly and announced that she was going up to bed.

“You can’t want to more than I do,” said Bessier. “But permit me to drink a toast to the lady who’s watching us and listening to us.”

He grabbed his glass and raised his bluish eyes, clouded by the wine, to the sky. Bonnemains followed his gaze and was astonished to see a pink moon, halfway to being round, appearing in the square of sky above the patio.

“Well, of all things! I’d forgotten the moon. So much the worse. Anyway, what the hell! In its second quarter, and rather misty at that, the moon doesn’t give much light. It’s not the moon that’ll stop us from . . .”

“Well,” said Odette gloomily. “I’m going to bed, too. What about you, Bernard?”

“Aha!” said Bonnemains. “I’m not going to commit myself to anything. After all, I’m a bachelor. I haven’t renounced the pleasures of Africa.”

When he saw all three of them vanish up the staircase, which did not yet boast an elevator, he felt at the end of his strength and his patience. His last gesture of sociability cost him an immense effort. With voice and hand, he acknowledged Bessier’s “Good night” as the latter went up the stairs behind Rose. “He climbs like an old man. He’s got an old man’s back.” Before the trio disappeared, he thought he saw the hand of the “old man” deliberately touch Rose’s buttocks. The second turn of the stairs, on the first landing, allowed him to see that both the women were well ahead of Bessier. “I made a mistake. I’ve had just one or two glasses too many.” He looked questioningly at the half-moon, which was rapidly ascending the sky. “Not a cloud. Well, it can’t be helped.” He waited till the little Spaniards in dirty white jackets had cleared the table and ordered a glass of iced water. “I smell of wine and tobacco. After all, so does Rose. Anyway, thank God she’s a woman who’s not squeamish about the human body—a real woman.”