by Colette
‘What about you and Montassuy?’
Claire turned red with belated modesty.
‘Ah, that’s just what I was going to tell you … The first minute, he was so surprised to see the lamps go out that he only kept on holding my hand. Then he put his arm round my waist again and said very quietly: “Don’t be frightened.” I didn’t say a word and I could feel him bending over me and kissing my cheeks. Ever so gently, feeling his way, and it was actually so dark that he made a mistake (Claire, you little hypocrite!) and kissed my mouth. I enjoyed it so much – it made me feel simply marvellous … In fact I was so excited that I nearly fell over and he had to hold me up by hugging me tighter still. Oh! he’s nice, I love him!’
‘Well, what happened after that, you slut?’
‘After that, old mother Trouillard lit the lamps again, grumbling like anything. She swore that if such a thing ever happened again, she’d bring a complaint and they’d have the dances stopped.’
‘The fact is, it really was going a bit far! … Ssh … be quiet … Who’s that coming?’
We were sitting behind the briar-hedge, quite near the road that ran a couple of yards below us. There was a bench on the edge of the ditch so it was a marvellous hide-out for listening without being seen.
‘It’s those two masters!’
Yes, it was Rabastens and the gloomy Armand Duplessis who were walking along and talking. What an unhoped-for bit of luck! The coxcomb, Antonin, wanted to sit down on that bench because of the pale sunshine that had warmed him a little. We were about to hear their conversation and we shuddered with joy in our field, right above their heads.
‘Ah!’ said the southerner with satisfaction, ‘one’s quite warrm here. Don’t you agree?’
Armand muttered some vague remark. The man from Marseilles started up again. He was going to do all the talking, I was certain!
‘You know, I like this part of the world. Those two schoolmistress ladies are extremely pleasant. I admit Mademoiselle Sergent is ugly! But that little Mademoiselle Aimée is a smart girl! I feel decidedly pleased with myself when she looks at me.’
The sham Richelieu sat up straight; his tongue was loosened:
‘Yes, she’s attractive, and so charming! She’s always smiling and she chatters away like a hedge-sparrow.’
But he promptly regretted his expansiveness and added in a different voice:
‘She’s a very charming young lady. You’re certainly going to turn her head, Don Juan!’
I nearly burst out laughing. Rabastens as Don Juan! I had a vision of him with his round head and plump cheeks adorned with a plumed hat … Up there, straining towards the road, the two of us laughed at each other with our eyes, without moving a muscle of our faces.
‘But, goodness me,’ went on the heartbreaker of the elementary school, ‘she’s not the only pretty girl round here. Anyone would think you hadn’t noticed them! The other day, in the classroom, Mademoiselle Claudine came in and sang quite charmingly (I may say that I know what I’m talking about, eh?) and she’s not a girl you’d overlook, with that hair flowing down her back and all round her and those very naughty brown eyes! My dear chap, I believe that girl knows more about things she oughtn’t to know than she does about geography!’
I gave a little start of astonishment and we might easily have been discovered for Claire let off a laugh like a gas-escape which might have been overheard. Rabastens fidgeted on his bench beside the absorbed Duplessis and whispered something in his ear, laughing in a ribald way. The other smiled; they got up; they went away. The two of us up there were in ecstasies. We danced a war-dance of joy, as much to warm ourselves as to congratulate ourselves on this delicious piece of spying.
On my way home, I was already ruminating on various alluring tricks to excite that hulking ultra-inflammable Antonin still more. It would be something to pass the time during recreation when it rained. And I who believed he was in process of plotting the seduction of Mademoiselle Lanthenay! I was delighted that he wasn’t trying to make up to her, for what little Aimée struck me as being so amorous that even a Rabastens might have succeeded – who knows? It’s true that Richelieu was even more smitten with her than I had supposed.
At seven o’clock in the morning, I arrived at school. It was my turn to light the fire, worse luck! That meant breaking up firewood in the shed and ruining one’s hands; carrying logs, blowing on the flames and getting stinging smoke in one’s eyes … Good gracious, the first new building was already rising high and the boys’ school, identical with it, had got most of its roof on! Our poor old half-demolished school looked like a tiny hovel by these two buildings that had so quickly sprouted out of the ground. The lanky Anaïs joined me and we went off to break up firewood together.
‘D’you know, Claudine, there’s a second assistant-mistress arriving today, and we’re all going to be forced out of house and home. They’re going to give us classes in the Infants’ School.’
‘What a brilliant idea! We shall catch fleas and lice. It’s simply filthy over there.’
‘Yes, but we’ll be nearer the boys’ classroom, old thing.’
(Anaïs really is shameless! However, she’s perfectly right.)
‘That’s true. Now, you twopenny-halfpenny fire, are you going to catch or not? I’ve been bursting my lungs for the last ten minutes. Ah, I bet Monsieur Rabastens blazes up a lot quicker than you do!’
Little by little, the fire made up its mind to burn. The pupils arrived; Mademoiselle Sergent was late. (Why? It was the first time.) She came down at last, answered our ‘Good morning’ with a preoccupied air, then sat down at her desk saying: ‘To your places’ without looking at us and obviously without giving us a thought. I copied down my problems while I asked myself what thoughts were troubling her and I noticed, with uneasy surprise, that from time to time she darted quick looks at me – looks that were at once furious and vaguely gratified. Whatever could be up? I was not comfortable in my mind. Not at all. I began to search my conscience … I couldn’t think of anything except that she’d watched us going off for our English lesson, Mademoiselle Lanthenay and me, with a barely-concealed, almost rueful anger. Aha! so we were not to be left in peace, my little Aimée and I? Yet we were doing nothing wrong! Our last English lesson had been so delightful! We hadn’t even opened the dictionary, or the Selection of Phrases in Common Use, or the exercise-book …
I meditated, inwardly raging as I copied down my problems in wildly untidy writing. Anaïs was surreptitiously eyeing me, obviously guessing something was up. I looked again at that terrible Redhead with the jealous eyes as I picked up my pen which I’d dropped on the floor by a lucky piece of clumsiness. But … but she’d been crying … I couldn’t possibly be mistaken! Then why those angry, yet almost pleased glances? This was becoming unbearable; it was absolutely essential to question Aimée as soon as possible. I didn’t give another thought to the problem to be transcribed:
… A workman is planting stakes to make a fence. He plants them at such a distance from each other that the bucket of tar, in which he dips their lower ends to a depth of 30 centimetres, is empty at the end of 3 hours. Given that the quantity of tar which remains on the stake equals 10 cubic centimetres, that the bucket is a cylinder whose radius at the base is 0.15 metres and whose height is 0.75 metres and is three-quarters full, that the workman dips 40 stakes an hour and takes 8 minutes’ rest during that time, what is the number of stakes and what is the area of the property which is in the form of a perfect square? State also what would be the number of stakes necessary if they were planted 10 centimetres further apart. State also the cost of this operation in both cases, if the stakes cost 3 francs a hundred and if the workman is paid 50 centimes an hour …
Must one also say if the workman is happily married? Oh, what unwholesome imagination, what depraved brain incubates those revolting problems with which they torture us? I detest them! And the workmen who band together to complicate the amount of work of which they are capable, w
ho divide themselves into two squads, one of which uses one-third more strength than the other, while the other, by way of compensation, works two hours longer! And the number of needles a seamstress uses in twenty-five years when she uses needles at 50 centimes a packet for eleven years, and needles at 75 centimes for the rest of the time but if the ones at 75 centimes are … etc., etc.… And the locomotives that diabolically complicate their speeds, their times of departure, and the state of health of their drivers! Odious suppositions, improbable hypotheses that have made me refractory to arithmetic for the rest of my life!
‘Anaïs, come up to the blackboard.’
The lanky bean-pole stood and made a secret grimace, like a cat about to be sick, in my direction. Nobody likes ‘coming up to the blackboard’ under the black, watchful eye of Mademoiselle Sergent.
‘Work out the problem.’
Anaïs ‘worked it out’ and explained it. I took advantage of this to study the Headmistress at my leisure: her eyes glittered, her red hair blazed … If only I could have seen Aimée Lanthenay before class! The problem was finished at last, thank goodness. Anaïs breathed again and returned to her place.
‘Claudine, come to the blackboard. Write down the fractions 3325/5712, 806/925, 14/56, 302/1052 (Lord preserve me from fractions divisible by 7 and 11, also from those divisible by 5, by 9 and by 4 and 6, and by 1.127) and find their highest common factor.’
That was what I had been dreading. I began dismally and I made some idiotic blunders because my mind wasn’t on what I was doing. How swiftly they were reprimanded by a sharp movement of the hand or a frown, those small lapses I permitted myself! At last I got through it and returned to my place, followed by a ‘No witticisms here please!’ because I’d replied to her observation ‘You’re forgetting to wipe out the numbers’ with:
‘Numbers must always be wiped out – they deserve to be.’
After me, Marie Belhomme went up to the blackboard and produced howler after howler with the utmost good faith. As usual, she was voluble and completely self-confident when wildly out of her depth; flushed and undecided when she remembered the previous lesson.
The door of the small classroom opened and Mademoiselle Lanthenay entered. I stared at her avidly. Oh, those poor golden eyes had been crying and their lids were swollen! Those dear eyes shot one scared look at me and were then hurriedly averted. I was left in utter consternation; heavens, whatever could She have been doing to her? I turned red with rage, so much so that Anaïs noticed and gave a low, sneering laugh. The sorrowful Aimée asked Mademoiselle Sergent for a book and the latter gave it to her with marked alacrity, her cheeks turning a deeper crimson as she did so. What could all that mean? When I thought that the English lesson did not take place till tomorrow, I was more tormented by anxiety than ever. But what was the good? There was absolutely nothing I could do. Mademoiselle Lanthenay returned to her own classroom.
*
‘Girls!’ announced the wicked Redhead. ‘Get out your school-books and your exercise-books. We are going to be forced to take refuge for the time being in the Infants’ School.’
Promptly all the girls began to bustle about with as much frenzied energy as if their stockings were on fire. People shoved each other and pinched each other, benches were pushed askew, books clattered to the floor and we scooped them up in heaps into our big aprons. That gawk Anaïs watched me pile up my load, carrying her own luggage in her arms; then she deftly tweaked the corner of my apron and the whole lot collapsed.
She preserved her expression of complete detachment and earnestly contemplated three builders who were throwing tiles at each other in the playground. I was scolded for my clumsiness and, two minutes later, that pest Anaïs tried the same experiment on Marie Belhomme. Marie screamed so loud that she got some pages of Ancient History to copy out. At last our chattering, trampling horde crossed the playground and went into the Infants’ School. I wrinkled my nose: it was dirty. Hastily cleaned up for us, it still smelt of ill-kept children. Let’s hope the ‘time being’ isn’t going to last too long!
Anaïs put down her books and promptly verified the fact that the windows looked out on the Headmaster’s garden. As for me, I’d no time to waste in contemplating the assistant-masters; I was too anxious about the troubles I foreboded.
We returned to the old classroom with as much noise as a herd of escaped bullocks and we transported the tables. They were so old and so heavy that we bumped and banged them about as much as possible in the hope that one of them at least would completely come to bits and collapse in worm-eaten fragments. Vain hope! They all arrived whole. This was not our fault.
We didn’t do much work that morning, which was one good thing. At eleven, when we went home, I prowled about trying to catch a glimpse of Mademoiselle Lanthenay, but without success. Had She put her under lock and key then? I went off to lunch so seething with suppressed rage that even Papa noticed it and asked me if I had a temperature … Then I returned to school very early, at quarter past twelve, and hung about, bored, among the few children who were there; country girls who were lunching at school off hard-boiled eggs, bacon, bread-and-treacle, and fruit. And I waited vainly, torturing myself with anxiety!
Antonin Rabastens came in (at least this made a diversion) and bowed to me with all the grace of a dancing bear.
‘A thousand pardons, Mademoiselle. By the way, haven’t the lady teacherrs come down yet?’
‘No, Sir, I’m waiting for them. I hope they won’t be long for “absence is the greatest of all ills!”’ I had already expatiated half a dozen times on this aphorism of La Fontaine’s in French essays which had been highly commended.
I spoke with a sweet seriousness. The handsome Marseillais listened, with an uneasy look on his kindly face. (He’ll begin to think I’m a bit crazy, too.) He changed the subject.
‘Mademoiselle, I’ve been told that you read a great deal. Does your father possess a large library?’
‘Yes, Sir, two thousand, three hundred and seven volumes precisely.’
‘No doubt you know a great many interesting things. And I realized at once, the other day – when you sang so charmingly – that you had ideas far beyond your age.’
(Heavens, what an idiot! Why couldn’t he take himself off? Ah! I was forgetting he was a little in love with me. I decided to be more amiable.)
‘But you yourself, Sir, I’ve been told you have a beautiful baritone voice. We hear you singing in your room sometimes when the builders aren’t making a din.’
He turned red as a poppy with pleasure and protested with enraptured modesty. He wriggled as he exclaimed:
‘Oh, Mademoiselle! … As it happens, you’ll soon be able to judge for yourself, for Mademoiselle Sergent has asked me to give singing-lessons to the older girls who are studying for their certificate. On Thursdays and Sundays. We’re going to begin next week.’
What luck! If I had not been so preoccupied, it would have been thrilling to tell the news to the others who knew nothing about it as yet. How Anaïs would drench herself in eau-de-Cologne and bite her lips next Thursday! How she would pull in her leather belt and coo as she sang!
‘What? But I know nothing whatever about it! Mademoiselle Sergent hasn’t said a word to us.’
‘Oh! Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it? Would you be good enough to pretend you don’t know?’
He implored me with ingratiating movements of his torso and I shook my head to fling back my curls which weren’t in the least in my way. This hint of a secret between us threw him into ecstasies. It was obviously going to serve as a pretext for glances full of understanding – exceedingly commonplace understanding on his part. He went off, carrying himself proudly, with a farewell that already had a new touch of familiarity.
‘Good-bye, Mademoiselle Claudine.’
‘Good-bye, Sir.’
At half past twelve, the rest of the class arrived and there was still no sign of Aimée. I refused to play, pretending that I had a headache, and, inwardly,
I chafed.
Oh! Oh! Whatever did I see? The two of them had come down, Aimée and her redoubtable chief; they had come down and were crossing the playground. And the Redhead had taken Mademoiselle Lanthenay’s arm – an unheard-of proceeding! Mademoiselle Sergent was talking very softly to her assistant who, still a little scared, was raising her eyes towards the other who was much taller than herself. Those eyes already looked reassured and pretty again. The spectacle of this idyll turned my anxiety to chagrin. Before they had quite reached the door, I rushed outside and hurled myself into the midst of a wild game of ‘Wolf’, yelling ‘I’m playing!’ as if I were yelling ‘Fire!’ And, until the bell rang for class, I galloped till I was out of breath, now chasing, now being chased, doing all I could to stop myself from thinking.
During the game, I caught sight of the head of Rabastens. He was watching over the wall and enjoying the sight of these big girls running about and showing – some, like Marie Belhomme, unconsciously and others, like the gawky Anaïs, very consciously indeed – calves that were pretty or ludicrous. The amiable Antonin honoured me with a gracious smile, an excessively gracious one. I did not think it necessary to return it, on account of my companions, but I arched my chest and tossed my curls. It was essential to keep this young man entertained. (In any case, he seems to me a born blunderer and destined to put his foot in it on every conceivable occasion.) Anaïs, who had noticed him too, took to kicking up her skirts as she ran so as to exhibit legs which, however, were far from attractive, also to laughing and uttering bird-like cries. She would have acted flirtatiously in the presence of a plough-ox!