by Colette
Does he think? Does he read? Does he work? . . . I believe he belongs to that numerous, very commonplace category of people who are interested in everything but accomplish nothing. No wit, a certain readiness of understanding, a quite adequate vocabulary enhanced by a beautiful, rich voice, and that promptitude for laughter and childish merriment noticeable in so many men: such is my admirer.
To be perfectly truthful, let me mention what I like best about him: a gaze that’s sometimes absent, questing, that sort of inner smile in his eyes which can be seen in sensitive people, whether violent or shy.
He has traveled, but just like everyone else: not very far, not frequently. He has read what everybody reads, he knows “quite a few people” but can’t name three intimate friends outside of his elder brother; I forgive him for being so ordinary because his simplicity is devoid of all humility, and because he never talks about himself.
His eyes seldom meet mine, which I turn away. I can’t forget the reason for his presence and his patience. Yet, what a difference there is between this man sitting here on my couch and that wild animal with unruly desires which forced my dressing-room door! I give no indication that I recall our first meeting, except that I hardly speak to the Big Ninny. Whatever attempt he makes, I reply concisely, or else I address to Hamond the answer meant for my admirer . . . This mode of indirect conversation lends our get-togethers an indescribable slowness and false gaiety . . .
***
I’m still rehearsing the new pantomime with Brague. Sometimes the Folies-Bergère gives us asylum in the morning, or else it’s the Empyrée-Clichy that lends us its stage for an hour; we’re still roaming from the Gambrinus beer parlor, which is accustomed to the noisy shouts of performers on Baret tours, to the Cernuschi dance studio.
“It’s falling into shape . . . ,” says Brague, who’s as stingy with compliments for others as for himself.
The Old Caveman is rehearsing with us: he’s a half-starved youngster of eighteen, whom Brague shakes up, badgers, and loads with insults, to the point of arousing my pity:
“You’re too hard on him, Brague! He’s going to cry!”
“Let him cry, and I’ll kick him in the ass! Tears don’t get any work done!”
Maybe he’s right. The Old Caveman chokes back his tears, tries to round out his “prehistoric” back, and dedicates himself to guarding a Hamadryad who’s attitudinizing in her white knitted sweater . . .
One morning last week Brague took the trouble to come in person and let me know that there wouldn’t be a rehearsal on the next day. He found us—Hamond, Dufferein-Chautel, and me—finishing lunch.
I had to let Brague stay for a few minutes, offering him coffee and introducing him to my guests . . . And I saw his little shiny dark eyes furtively coming to rest on my admirer with a curious satisfaction, a kind of assuredness that foolishly vexed me . . .
When I was showing him out again, my partner didn’t interrogate me or permit himself any personal allusions, and my embarrassment doubled. I rebelled against the silliness of explaining: “He’s a chum, you know . . . a friend of Hamond’s who came for lunch . . .”
Fossette is now wearing a red morocco collar with gilded studs, in a deplorable “sporting” taste. I didn’t have the heart to say I thought it was ugly . . . That damned little servile female is fawning up to the well-dressed gentleman, who smells of maleness and tobacco, and whose patting takes the form of a sharp slap on her back . . .
Blandine is everywhere at once, polishing the windowpanes, and bringing the tea tray without being asked, when my admirer is here . . .
Everybody, following the example of my old friend Hamond, seems to be conspiring against me in favor of Maxime Dufferein-Chautel . . . Unfortunately, it costs me so little effort to remain invulnerable! . . .
Invulnerable, and even worse than feelingless: repelled. Because when I give my hand to my admirer, the touch of his long, hot, dry hand surprises and displeases me. I never brush up against the cloth of his jacket without bristling nervously a little, and I involuntarily avoid his breath when he speaks, even though it’s fresh and clean . . . I wouldn’t consent to tie his tie, and I’d rather drink out of Hamond’s glass than out of his . . . Why?
It’s because . . . this fellow is a man. In spite of myself, I always remember he’s a man. Hamond isn’t a man, he’s a friend. And Brague is a colleague; so is Bouty. Those slender, well-muscled acrobats who reveal the most flattering details of their anatomy beneath their lustrous tights . . . well, they’re acrobats!
Has it ever occurred to me that Brague, who in Dominance hugs me so hard he bruises my ribs, and seems to be crushing my lips with his ardent kiss, has a sex? . . . No. Well, the slightest glance from my admirer, his most proper handshake, remind me of why he’s there and what he’s hoping for . . . What a fine pastime this would be for a coquette! What a fine flirtation, irritating and earnest!
The trouble is, I don’t know how to flirt. I lack the aptitude, I lack the experience, I lack the lightness of touch, and above all, oh, above all, there’s the memory of my husband!
If for just a moment I recollect Adolphe Taillandy in the exercise of his functions—that is, toiling doggedly, with the hunter’s persistence he’s known for, to seduce a woman or girl, I feel chilled, tense, and completely hostile to lovemaking . . . I recall only too well the conquering expression on his face, his eyes glazed over, his mouth like a cunning child’s, and that ploy of sniffing as if there were perfume in the air . . . Bah! All those maneuvers and ruses for the sake of love—for the sake of a goal that can’t even be called love—am I to adopt them and imitate them? Poor Dufferein-Chautel! Sometimes I think you’re the one being deceived here, and I ought to tell you . . . tell you what? That I’ve become an old maid again, immune to temptation, and cloistered in my own way between the four walls of a vaudeville dressing room?
No, I won’t tell you that, because, like pupils taking the tenth lesson at Berlitz, we can only exchange rudimentary sentences, in which the words bread, salt, window, temperature, theater, and family take up most of the space . . .
You’re a man, too bad about you! Everyone in my household seems to have it in mind, not the way I do, but in order to congratulate you on it—from Blandine, who observes you with untiring contentment, down to Fossette, whose wide canine smile also says, “At last, a man in the house—MAN!”
I don’t know how to talk to you, poor Dufferein-Chautel. I waver between my personal way of expressing myself, a little clipped, with sentences sometimes left unfinished, but with respect for the preciseness of a technical term—my ex-bluestocking language—and the low but lively, vulgar but picturesque idiom that one learns in the vaudeville house, with its sprinkling of “You said it!,” “Shut up!,” “I’m out of here!,” and “No way!” . . .
I hesitate so long that I choose to remain silent . . .
“HAMOND, DEAR, how happy I am to be lunching with you! No rehearsal today, sunshine, and you. It’s wonderful!”
My old friend, who suffers from stabbing rheumatism, is flattered and smiles at me. He’s very thin just now, old-looking, lightweight, very tall, with a fleshless hooked nose, strongly resembling the Knight of the Doleful Countenance . . .
“Yet it seems we’ve already had the pleasure of lunching together this week. What an overflow of affection for my old bones, Renée!”
“Exactly, I’m overflowing. It’s nice out today, I’m in a good mood, and . . . we’re all alone!”
“Meaning what?”
”That the Big Ninny isn’t here—you’ve guessed it!”
Hamond shakes his head with its long, melancholy face:
“No question about it, you’ve got an aversion for him!”
“Not at all, Hamond, not at all! It’s . . . it’s nothing! . . . And, look, for several days now, I’ve been thinking of being frank with you: I absolutely can’t detect in myself even the shadow of any feeling for Dufferein-Chautel . . . except for distrust, maybe.”
&n
bsp; “Well, that’s something.”
“I don’t even have an opinion of him.”
“It would be a pleasure to offer mine. This honorable man has no history.”
“Not enough!”
“Not enough? That’s really provoking! You never encourage him to tell you his story.”
“That’s all I need! Can’t you see him, with his big hand on his big heart, saying, ‘I’m not like other men . . .’? Isn’t that what he’d say? At such moments men always say the same thing that women do.”
Hamond stares at me with an ironic look:
“I really like you, Renée, when you lay claim to experience that you fortunately don’t possess. ‘Men do this . . . men say that . . .’ How did you get so sure of yourself? Men! Men! Have you known many?”
“Just one. But what a specimen! . . .”
“Exactly. You don’t accuse Maxime of reminding you of Taillandy?”
“Heavens, no. He doesn’t remind me of anything! Not of anything, I tell you! He isn’t witty . . .”
“Men in love are always slightly foolish. The same with me when I was in love with Jeanne . . .”
“And me, of course, when I was in love with Adolphe! But that was conscious foolishness, almost sensual. Do you remember when Adolphe and I were invited out to dinners and I used to put on my look of inferiority, ‘like a girl married without a dowry,’ as Margot used to say? My husband would speechify, smile, settle everyone’s problems, shine . . . No one else was visible. If people looked at me for a moment, I think it was only to pity him. They gave me so clearly to understand that, without him, I didn’t exist!”
“Oh, come now . . . you’re exaggerating a little . . .”
“Not a bit, Hamond! Don’t argue! I used to strive wholeheartedly to stay as much out of sight as possible. I loved him so idiotically!”
“The same here!” Hamond says, growing animated. “Do you remember when my little doll of a Jeanne used to give her opinion of my paintings? ‘Henri was born conscientious and outmoded,’ she used to proclaim. And I didn’t make a peep!”
We laugh, we’re happy, it makes us younger to stir up those bitter, humiliating memories . . . Why does my old friend have to spoil this Saturday, so in line with all our traditions, by bringing up the name of Dufferein-Chautel?
I pout angrily:
“Again! Leave me in peace for a while with that gentleman, Hamond! What do I know of him? That he’s clean, properly brought up, that he likes bulldogs and smokes cigarettes. If, on top of all that, he’s also infatuated with me (let me be modest about it), that’s no great merit.”
“But you do all you can to avoid knowing him!”
“I have the right to.”
Hamond gets annoyed and clicks his tongue disapprovingly:
“You have the right, you have the right . . . Your arguments are infantile, my dear friend, I assure you! . . .”
I free my hand, which he was keeping under his, and I speak rapidly, in spite of myself:
“What do you assure me? That he’s a guaranteed-safe investment? What do you want, after all? For me to sleep with that gentleman?”
“Renée!”
“Well, it’s got to be said! You want me to behave like everyone? To make up my mind? Him or somebody else, what does it matter? . . . You want to disturb the peace that I’ve won back, you want to direct my life toward some other concern than the rugged, bracing, and natural one of earning my own living? Or are you prescribing a lover for my health, like a purge? What for? I’m feeling well, and, thank God, I’m not in love, I’m not in love, I’ll never again love anyone, anyone, anyone!”
I’ve shouted that so loud that I suddenly fall silent in embarrassment. Hamond, feeling less emotional than I, gives me time to get control of myself, while my blood, which has risen to my cheeks, slowly redescends to my heart . . .
“You’ll never again love anyone? My Lord, that may be true. And that would be the saddest thing of all . . . You, young, strong, and affectionate . . . Yes, that would be the saddest thing of all . . .”
Angry, close to tears, I look at the friend who dares talk to me that way:
“Oh, Hamond! . . . It’s you, you, saying that to me? After what you . . . what we have been through, can you still hope for love?”
Hamond turns his eyes away, those eyes so young in his old face; he stares at the bright window and replies vaguely:
“Yes . . . I’m very happy just as I am, it’s true . . . But to be so sure of myself for that reason, to declare that I’ll never love anyone again, I wouldn’t dare to, absolutely not . . .”
That strange reply of Hamond’s has dried up our conversation, because I don’t like talking about love . . . The most intentional smuttiness doesn’t scare me, but I don’t like talking about love . . . If I had lost a dearly loved child, I think I would never again be able to pronounce its name.
***
“Come have a feed at Olympe’s tonight,” Brague said to me at the rehearsal. “After that, we’ll go say goodbye to our buddies in the revue, at the Emp’-Clich’.”
I can’t possibly be mistaken: this isn’t an invitation to dinner; we’re two colleagues, and the etiquette (there is one!) prevalent among theatrical colleagues rules out all ambiguity.
So tonight I meet Brague at Olympe’s Bar, which has a bad name. Bad name? What do I care? Freed from worries about my reputation, it’s without apprehension and without pleasure that I cross the threshold of this little Montmartre eatery, which is quiet from seven to ten and jumping the rest of the night with a rather artificial racket of shouts, clattering plates, and guitars. I used to dine here sometimes, quickly, alone or with Brague last month before showing up at the Empyrée-Clichy.
A waitress from the provinces, calm and slow amid the customers’ calls for her, tonight serves us pickled pork and cabbage, a healthful, filling dishes too heavy for the enfeebled stomachs of the little neighborhood prostitutes eating near us, alone, with that wild look which animals and undernourished women have in view of a heaping plate. Oh, this place isn’t always jolly!
Brague, bantering though basically moved by pity, criticizes two women who have just come in, young, thin, with ludicrous hats that pitch to and fro on their hairdos. One is striking, bearing her head with a furious insolence; her rebelliously skinny but charming figure is completely distinct under her tight sheath of pink printed cotton, bought from an old-clothes dealer. On this freezing February night, she’s covered by a cloak, a sort of light cape, also of cotton, but blue and embroidered with faded silver . . . She’s frozen, demented with the cold, but her desperate gray eyes reject all pity; she’s ready to insult or claw the first person who’ll look distressed and say, “Poor kid!”
In this Montmartre neighborhood they’re not an unusual species, these hookers dying of poverty and pride, beautiful in their glaring destitution. I come across them here and there, hauling their lightweight duds from table to table in the eateries on the Mount, cheerful, tipsy, savage, prepared to bite, never gentle, never tender, hating their job but working at it all the same. Men call them “damn little tramps” with a self-satisfied, scornful laugh, because they’re of a breed that never gives in, that will never admit to being hungry, cold, or in love, that dies saying, “I’m not sick,” that bleeds when struck but returns the blows . . .
Yes, I know something about those women, and it’s them that I think of when I look at the little tart, frozen and proud, who has just come into Olympe’s place.
A starved half-silence reigns in the bar. Two rouged young men exchange shrill remarks from opposite ends of the room, without conviction. A hoyden with stumpy legs, who’s dining on a crème de menthe and water while waiting for a meal that may possibly turn up, feebly retorts to their comments. A bulldog bitch, pregnant to the point of bursting, is panting painfully on the worn carpet, her ballooning belly studded with prominent teats . . .
Brague and I chat, made sleepy by the gas heat. I think about all the mediocre restau
rants in all the cities where we’ve sat at a table like this, weary, indifferent, and curious, with unfamiliar dishes in front of us . . . Brague has a cast-iron stomach for dealing with the swill in hotels and railroad-station refreshment rooms; as for me, if I can’t manage the tough “home-style” veal or leg of lamb, I make up for it on the cheese and the omelet . . .
“Say, Brague! Isn’t that man there with his back to us Dancing Stéphane?”
“Where? . . . Yes, it’s him . . . with a prostitute.”
In fact, with such a prostitute! I’m astounded at that fifty-year-old brunette with hair on her upper lip . . . And as if he felt our eyes on him, Dancing Stéphane turns halfway around and sends us one of those knowing winks which in a stage play signify “Sh! A secret!” and are performed so discreetly that they’re seen by the entire audience.
“Poor bastard! He really earns his money!” Brague whispers . . . “Our coffee, miss,” he calls, “so we can hightail it out of here!”
The coffee is an ink of an olive-black color which leaves a sticky dye on the sides of the cups. But because I no longer drink good coffee, I’ve developed a taste for these hot, bitter brews which smell like licorice and quinine . . . You can do without meat in our line of work, but not without coffee . . .
Though we’re served ours very quickly, Dancing Stéphane has bolted ahead of us—he’s skating in the revue at the Emp’-Clich’—behind his mature companion. Shamelessly he imitates, behind her, for our benefit, the gesture of an athlete lifting a four-hundred-pound weight, and we’re vile enough to laugh at it . . . Then we leave this gloomy place, called “a place of amusement,” where at this hour everyone is drowsing beneath the rosy-pink lightbulbs: the pregnant bitch, the exhausted hoydens, the waitress from the country, and the manager with the waxed mustache . . .
Outdoors, the perimeter boulevards and the Place Blanche, where a glacial wind is swirling, enliven us again, and I feel joyfully infected with the fever of activity, the need to work . . . a mysterious, indefinable energy which I’d expend by dancing just as I would by writing, running, acting, or pulling a handcart . . .