by Colette
I don’t know what my gaze and my silence are telling him, but his expression suddenly changes:
“Truly, Madame, I’m just a ninny and a low character, as I now see too late. Throw me out, come, I have fully deserved it, but not before I lay at your feet my deepest regards.”
He takes leave again like a man about to depart . . . but he doesn’t go. With that somewhat whorish craftiness that men possess, for half a second he awaits the reward for his change of heart and—goodness knows, I’m not such a monster!—he obtains it:
“And so, sir, I shall say to you nicely what I would have said to you brusquely: please leave!”
I laugh good-naturedly as I show him the door. He doesn’t laugh. He remains there, his forehead thrust forward and his free fist, clenched, hanging loosely. This pose makes him look almost menacing, awkward, with the slightly clumsy bearing of a polite woodcutter. The ceiling lamp is reflected on his dark hair, which is combed to the side, smooth as if lacquered; but his eyes elude me, hidden in deep sockets . . .
He doesn’t laugh, because he desires me.
He doesn’t wish me well, that man, he wishes to have me. He’s in no mood for jokes, even off-color ones. This bothers me, finally, and I’d prefer to see him . . . aroused, at ease in the role of a man who’s had a good dinner and has gotten an eyeful in the first row of the orchestra . . .
His burning desire for me weighs on him like a cumbersome piece of armor.
“Well, sir, aren’t you leaving?”
He replies precipitously, as if I had awakened him:
“Oh yes, yes, Madame! Of course I’m leaving. I beg you to accept my apologies and . . . ”
“ . . . And I remain very truly yours!” I concluded, in spite of myself.
It’s not especially funny, but he laughs, he finally laughs, dropping that stubborn expression which was putting me out of countenance . . .
“How kind of you to rescue me, Madame! There’s something else I wanted to ask of you . . . ”
“No, no! You’re going to beat it at once! I’ve exhibited a patience I can’t understand, and I risk catching bronchitis if I don’t get out of this dress, in which I’ve felt as hot as three moving-men!”
With the tip of my index finger I push him out, because when I mentioned getting out of my dress, his face became gloomy and rigid again . . . After my door was shut and bolted, I heard his muffled voice begging:
“Madame! Madame! I wanted to know whether you like flowers. And which ones.”
“Sir! Sir! Leave me in peace! I’m not asking you who your favorite poets are, or whether you prefer the seashore to the mountains! Go away!”
“I’m going, Madame! Good evening, Madame!”
Whew! That big ninny of a man cut short my fit of the blues: there’s that much gained.
For three years now, that’s what my amorous conquests have been like . . . The gentleman in orchestra seat eleven, the gentleman in stage box four, the gigolo in the second balcony . . . A letter, two letters, a bouquet, another letter . . . that’s all! My silence soon discourages them, and I must confess that they aren’t very persistent about it.
Destiny, henceforth sparing of my strength, seems to be brushing the stubborn lovers from my path, those hunters who track a woman even after she’s escaped into the water like a stag and is swimming away . . . The men I tempt don’t write me love notes. Their letters—hasty, brutish, and awkward—reveal their desires, not their character . . . I make an exception of one poor youngster who rambled on for twelve pages, revealing a talkative but humbled love. He must have been very young. He dreamed of himself as a Prince Charming, the poor kid, as being rich and mighty: “I’m writing all this to you on the table of the tavern where I live, and every time I raise my head I see my ugly mug opposite me in the mirror . . . ”
That young lover with the “ugly mug” was still able to dream about someone, amid his blue palaces and enchanted forests.
No one is waiting for me on a road that leads neither to fame, wealth, or love.
Nothing—I know—leads to love. Love must spontaneously fling himself across your path. He obstructs it forever, or, if he departs, he leaves the path battered and caved in . . .
That which remains of my life reminds me of one of those jigsaw puzzles consisting of two hundred fifty oddly shaped and multicolored pieces of wood. Must I put the original decor back together piece by piece: a tranquil house amid the woods? No, no, somebody has mixed up all the lines of the gentle landscape; by now I couldn’t even rediscover the wreckage of the blue roof embellished with yellow lichen, or the Virginia creeper, or the deep, birdless forest . . .
Eight years of marriage, three years of separation: that’s what constitutes a third of my existence.
My ex-husband? You all know him. He’s Adolphe Taillandy, the pastelist. For twenty years he’s been painting the same feminine portrait: against a murky golden background, borrowed from Lévy-Dhurmer, he poses a woman in a low-cut dress whose hair, like a precious padding, forms a halo around a velvety face. The skin at the temples, in the shadow of the neck, on the swelling of the breasts, is iridescent with the same impalpable effect of velvet, blue as the velvet of those beautiful grapes which tempt one’s lips:
“Potel and Chabot paint no better than this!” Forain said one day, viewing one of my husband’s pastels.
Aside from his notorious “velvet effect,” I don’t think Adolphe Taillandy has any talent. But I readily admit that his portraits are irresistible, especially to women.
In the first place, he definitely sees them all as blondes. Even the hair of Madame Guimont-Fautru, that skinny brunette, was adorned by him with red and gold reflections, which he found God knows where and which, spread over her lusterless face and over her nose, turn her into an orgiastic Venetian courtesan.
Taillandy did my portrait too, in the past . . . No one recalls any longer that she’s me, that little Bacchante with a shiny nose, the middle of her face lit by a sunbeam as if she were wearing a mother-of-pearl mask, and I still recall my surprise at finding myself so blonde. I also recall the success of that pastel and those which followed it. There were the portraits of Madame de Guimont-Fautru, the Baronne Avelot, Madame de Chalis, Madame Robert-Durand, and the singer Jane Doré; then we come to those, less famous because the sitters are anonymous, of Mademoiselle J. R., Mademoiselle S. S., Madame U., Madame Van O., Mrs. F. W., and so on.
Those were the days when, with that cynicism which is characteristic of handsome men, and which suits him so well, Adolphe Taillandy used to proclaim:
“I want only my mistresses as sitters, and only my sitters as mistresses!”
For my part, the only genius I found in him was one for telling lies. No other woman, none of his women, can have had my opportunities for gauging, admiring, fearing, and cursing his rage to lie. Adolphe Taillandy lied feverishly, sensuously, tirelessly, almost involuntarily. For him adultery was merely one of the ways—and not the most pleasurable—of lying.
He thrived on lying with a power, variety, and prodigality that increasing age has failed to exhaust. At the same time that he was perfecting some ingenious treachery, planned ever so carefully and enlivened with all the skill of his masterly cunning, I’d see him squandering his crafty energy on vulgar impositions, needless ones, caddish ones, on childish and all but idiotic fairy tales . . .
I met him, married him, lived with him more than eight years . . . and what do I know of him? That he does pastels and has mistresses. I also know that he daily performs that disconcerting miracle of appearing to one man like a hard worker who thinks only of his profession; and, to one woman, like a seductive, unscrupulous debauchee; to another woman, a paternal lover who spices up a brief infatuation with a pleasing hint of incest; to yet another, the weary, disillusioned, aging artist who’s adorning his declining years with a delicate love affair; there are even women to whom he’s quite simply a kindly libertine, still as sturdy and raunchy as you’d like; and then there’s the highbo
rn goose who’s really fallen for him, and whom Adolphe Taillandy whips, tortures, scorns, and takes back again with all the literary cruelty of an “artist” in a fashionable novel.
That very same Taillandy, without transition, slips into the guise of the no less conventional, but more outmoded, “artist” who, in order to subdue the final resistance of a little lady who’s married, with two children, tosses away his sticks of pastel, rips up his sketch, weeps real tears that moisten his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, and puts on his slouch hat to run and drown himself in the Seine.
There are many other Taillandys as well whom I’ll never know—not to mention one of the most horrible ones: Taillandy the businessman, Taillandy the sharper and financial adventurer, cynical and brutal or plain and elusive, depending on what the matter in hand calls for . . .
Among all those men, which is the real one? I humbly state: I have no idea. I don’t think there’s a real Taillandy . . . One day that balzacian genius of lies suddenly ceased to drive me to despair, or even to arouse my interest. For me he was once a sort of frightening Machiavelli . . . maybe he was only a quick-change artist like Fregoli.
Besides, he’s still at it. Sometimes I think about his second wife, with tepid pity . . . Is she still blissfully and lovingly nurturing what she calls her victory over me? No, by now she’s beginning to discover, terrified and powerless, what kind of man she married.
God, how young I was, and how I loved that man! And how I suffered! . . . This isn’t a cry of pain or a vindictive lament—no, I sometimes utter it with a sigh, just as if I were saying, “If you only knew how sick I was four years ago!” And when I admit, “I was so jealous, I wanted to kill and die,” it’s in the manner of those who relate, “I ate rats during the 1870 siege . . . ” They recall it, but they’ve kept only the bare memory of it. They know they ate rats, but they can no longer work up the shiver of horror or the fever of famine.
After he began to cheat on me, after the rebellions and submissions of a young loving wife who stubbornly went on hoping and living, I had started to suffer with unmanageable pride and obstinacy, and to write.
Merely for the pleasure of taking refuge in a past that was not so far away, I wrote a short rural novel, The Ivy on the Wall, as attractive, plain, and clear as the ponds back home, a chaste little novel of love and marriage, slightly naive and very charming; it enjoyed an unexpected success far beyond its merits. I came across my photo in all the picture magazines, Modern Life awarded me its annual prize, and Adolphe and I became “the most interesting couple in Paris,” the couple that gets invited to dinner and is pointed out to prominent foreigners . . . ”You don’t know the Taillandys? Renée Taillandy possesses a very pretty talent.” “Oh, and he?” “He . . . oh, he’s irresistible!”
My second book, Alongside Love, sold much less well. All the same, in giving birth to it, I had tasted the sensuous joy of writing, that patient struggle with sentences, which unbend and curl up like a tamed animal, that motionless waiting period and that lying in wait which finally “charms” the words . . . My second volume sold poorly. But it was able to gain for me—what’s the expression? oh yes!—“the esteem of men of letters.” As for my third, The Birdless Forest, it fell on its face and never got up again. That one is my favorite, my own “unknown masterpiece” . . . It was considered to be rambling and confused, and incomprehensible, and too long . . . Even now, I love it when I open it, I love myself in it with all my heart. Incomprehensible? Maybe for you. But for me its warm darkness is illuminated; for me, certain phrases are enough to recreate the fragrance and color of things I’ve experienced, phrases as resonant, full, and mysterious as a shell in which the sea sings; and I think I’d like it less if you liked it, too . . . Rest assured! I’ll never write another book like that one; I wouldn’t be able to.
Other tasks, other concerns occupy me right now, especially the need to earn my keep, to trade my gestures, my dancing, the sound of my voice for hard cash . . . I acquired the habit of it and the taste for it quickly, with that very feminine appetite for money. I’m earning my keep, it’s a fact. When things are going right, I tell myself over and over, happily, that I’m earning my keep! Vaudeville, in which I became a mime, a dancer, and even an actress occasionally, has also made me—surprised as I was to find myself counting, haggling, and bargaining—an honest but tough little businesswoman. It’s a profession that the least gifted woman learns quickly when her freedom and her life depend on it . . .
Nobody was able to understand why we separated. But, before that, would they have at all understood my patience, my long, cowardly, and complete obligingness? Unfortunately, it isn’t only the first forgiveness that hurts . . . Adolphe soon learned that I belonged to the best, the true breed of women: having forgiven him the first time, I became, by way of a skillfully managed development, a woman who suffers and then accepts her suffering . . . Oh, what a learned teacher I had in him! How carefully he meted out indulgence and demandingness! . . . When I displayed too much rebelliousness he even went so far as to hit me, but I think he had very little desire to do so. A man who’s carried away by rage doesn’t beat you as well as that, and he hit me every so often merely to bolster his prestige. At the time of our divorce, people weren’t far from putting all the blame on me in order to exonerate “handsome Taillandy,” who was only guilty of being attractive and playing around. I came very close to being intimidated and to giving in, restored to my customary submissiveness by all the brouhaha concerning us . . .
“What? He’s been cheating on her for eight years, and she’s only just now thought of complaining! . . . ”
I received visits from authoritarian, lofty friends who know “what life is all about”; I had visits from elderly relatives, whose most serious argument was:
“Dear girl, what do you want? . . . ”
What did I want? Basically, I knew very well. I was sick and tired of that existence. What did I want? To die rather than to go on with my humiliated life, that of a woman “who has everything to be happy about”; to die, yes, to risk poverty before suicide, but never to see Adolphe Taillandy any more, that Adolphe Taillandy who only showed his true colors in the intimacy of our home, the one who was so skillful at giving me warnings without raising his voice, towering over me with his frightening sergeant-major’s jaw:
“Tomorrow I’m starting the portrait of Madame Mothier; please be so good, will you, as not to scowl at her that way any more!”
To die, and before that to risk the worst social disasters, but no longer to intercept the sudden gesture that hides a crumpled letter, or the pretendedly ordinary phone conversation, or the look on the face of the valet, his accomplice—no longer to hear him say to me in a casual tone:
“Weren’t you going to visit your mother for two days this week? . . . ”
To leave him, but no longer to lower myself to walk around with one of my husband’s mistresses for an entire day while he, reassured and protected by me, was embracing another woman! To leave and die, but no longer to pretend ignorance, no longer undergo the nighttime waiting, the sitting up, when your feet are frozen in the bed that’s too big, no longer to hatch those schemes of revenge which take form in the dark, swell up to the beating of your wounded heart that’s poisoned with jealousy, and then burst at the tinkle of a key in the lock and grow cravenly calm when a familiar voice calls:
“What? Not asleep yet?”
I was sick and tired of it.
You can get used to not eating, to pain in your teeth or stomach, you can even get used to the absence of a person you love, but you don’t get used to jealousy. And so that happened which Adolphe Taillandy, who thinks of everything, hadn’t foreseen: one day when, in order to welcome Madame Mothier more heartily on the big studio couch, he had rudely thrown me out my door, I didn’t come back.
I didn’t come back that night, or the next, or the ones that followed. And that’s where my story ends—or begins.
I won’t dwell on the brief, morose transi
tional period when I responded with the same peevish arrogance to all the blame, advice, condolences, and even congratulations.
I discovered those few dogged friends who rang the doorbell of a tiny apartment rented at random. In my outrage at their show of defying public opinion by coming to see me—that sacrosanct, sovereign, and despicable public opinion—with a furious gesture I cut off all that still linked me with my past.
What, then? Isolation? Yes, isolation, except for three or four friends: obstinate ones, undetachable ones, determined to put up with all my snubs. How unkindly I received them, but how I loved them, and how I feared, when watching them depart, that they wouldn’t come back! . . .
Yes, isolation. It scared me, like a remedy that could kill me. And then I realized that . . . I was merely continuing to live alone. The training went way back, to my childhood, and the first years of my marriage had hardly interrupted it; when my husband began to cheat on me, it had resumed, austere and terribly hard to take—and that is the most commonplace element in my story . . . How many women have known that withdrawal into themselves, that patient retreat which comes after the rebellious tears? I do them this justice, which is flattering to me: it’s usually only in her grief that a woman is capable of rising above mediocrity. Her resistance to grief is infinite; it can be applied, and over-applied, without any risk of her dying, just so long as some childish physical cowardice or some religious hope turns her thoughts away from the suicide that would simplify everything.
“She’s dying of sorrow . . . She died of sorrow . . . ” When you hear clichés like that, shake your head in disbelief, not in pity: it’s rare for a woman to die of sorrow. She’s such a sturdy animal, so hard to kill! You think sorrow is eating away at her? Not at all. Much more often, even if she was born weak and sickly, it furnishes her with tireless nerves, unbending pride, an ability to wait and dissimulate which enhances her, and scorn for those who are happy. In her suffering and dissimulation she trains herself and becomes supple, as if in daily physical exercise that’s full of risks . . . Because she’s constantly brushing up against the sharpest, most pleasant, and most appealing of all temptations: that of taking revenge.