by Colette
“What about that little Jadin?”
“You found her to your liking the other night, didn’t you? At the Emp’-Clich’?”
Intrigued, Dufferein-Chautel leans forward. His face moves into the full light of the lamp, and I can make out the exact shade of his brown irises, tawny and speckled as certain agates from the Dauphiné . . .
“You were in the audience? I didn’t see you!”
I empty my wineglass before replying mysteriously:
“Ah! There, you see? . . .”
“So! You were there? . . . Yes, little Jadin is nice. You know her? I find her very nice.”
“More than me?”
I deserved to have him reply to that thoughtless, idiotic phrase, so unworthy of me, in some other way than by an astonished silence. I’d like to kick myself! . . . Bah, what does it matter? I’m leaving! . . . I tell them my itinerary: all over France, but only the big cities! Posters as if for . . . for Madame Otero! And the lovely regions I’ll see, and the sunshine I’ll find in the south, and . . . and . . .
The champagne—it doesn’t take more than three glasses!—finally makes my merry chatter sluggish. Speaking, what an outlay of energy for a woman who keeps mute for days at a time! . . . My two friends are smoking now, and they’re growing more and more distant behind their curtain of smoke . . . How far away I am! I’m already gone, diffused, safe from harm on my journey . . . Their voices become muffled, move off, mingled with the rumble of trains, whistles, the lulling surge of an imaginary orchestra . . . Oh, how sweet it is to depart, how sweet this slumber, which carries me off to some invisible shore! . . .
“What? Six o’clock? Good, thanks . . . Oh, it’s you?”
I was sleeping and dreaming of my journey: a bellhop was pounding at the door in my dream, shouting that it was six o’clock . . . And I find myself sitting up with a start in the hollow of my old couch, on which my weariness and my slight intoxication knocked me out. Standing opposite me, the Big Ninny is blocking the room to its full height. My eyes, opened too quickly, blink in the lamplight, and the edges of the shade and of the strongly illuminated table wound my eyes like so many gleaming blades . . .
“It’s you? Where’s Hamond?”
“Hamond has just left.”
“What time is it, then?”
“It’s midnight.”
“Midnight!”
I’ve slept over an hour!
Mechanically I raise my flattened hair, combing it with my fingers, then I pull the hem of my robe down to the tip of my slippers . . .
“Midnight? Why didn’t you leave with Hamond?”
“We were afraid you might get scared finding yourself alone here . . . So I stayed.”
Is he making fun of me? I can’t make out his face, so high up, in the dark . . .
“I was tired, you understand . . .”
“I understand very well.”
What is this dry tone of reprimand? I’m thunderstruck! Truly, if I were a coward, this would be the right time to call for help—alone with this dark individual who’s talking to me from way up there! . . . Maybe he’s drunk, too.
“Tell me, Dufferein-Chautel, are you feeling poorly?”
“I’m not feeling poorly.”
Thank goodness, he begins walking: I had had my fill of seeing him so high up, so close to me!
“I’m not feeling poorly, I’m angry!”
“Ah! Ah!”
I reflect for a moment, then I very foolishly add:
“Because I’m going on tour?”
Dufferein-Chautel stops in his tracks:
“Because you’re leaving? I wasn’t thinking of that. Since you’re still here, I don’t need to think about your departure. No. I’m annoyed with you. I’m annoyed with you because you were sleeping.”
“Yes?”
“It’s ridiculous to fall asleep like that! In front of Hamond! And even in front of me! It’s obvious that you don’t know what you look like when you’re asleep! Or else you do it on purpose, and it’s shameless of you!”
He sits down abruptly, as if breaking into three pieces, and now he’s very close to me, with his face at the level of mine:
“When you sleep, you don’t look as if you’re sleeping! You look . . . well, in short, you look as if you’ve closed your eyes to conceal a joy that’s stronger than you! Precisely! Your face isn’t like that of a sleeping woman . . . In short, you understand what I mean, damn it! It’s revolting! When I think that you must have slept that way in the presence of God knows how many men, I feel as if I could kill you!”
He’s sitting at a slant on a fragile chair, half-turning away his distressed face, which is split by two large creases, one on his forehead and the other down his cheek, as if the explosion of his anger has just cracked it. I feel no fear; on the contrary: it’s a relief to me to find him sincere, like the man who entered my dressing room two months ago.
And so, here before me, with his childish rage, his animal obstinacy, and his calculated sincerity, my enemy, my tormenter is reappearing: Love. There’s no mistake about it. I’ve already seen that forehead, those eyes, and those convulsed hands knotted together, yes, I’ve seen all that . . . in the days when Adolphe Taillandy desired me . . .
But what am I to do with this man? I’m not offended, I’m not even moved (or very little!), but what am I to do? What am I to reply? . . . This protracted silence is becoming more unbearable than his admission. If he’d only go . . . but he doesn’t budge. I risk not even the slightest movement, fearing lest a sigh or the rippling of my robe might be enough to revivify my adversary—I no longer dare say “my admirer,” no, he loves me too much! . . .
“You have nothing more to say to me?”
The sound of his voice, gentler now, gives me such keen pleasure that I smile, freed from that silence which wouldn’t let me breathe.
“Goodness! I really don’t see . . .”
He turns toward me, with the cumbersome affability of a big dog:
“It’s true, you don’t see . . . Oh, you have a talent for not seeing! As soon as it comes to me, you don’t see, you don’t see a thing! You look right through me, you smile over my head, you speak right past me! . . . And I pretend to be a man who doesn’t see that you don’t see. How clever! How worthy of you and of me.”
“Listen, Dufferein-Chautel . . .”
“And you call me Dufferein-Chautel! I know I have a ridiculous name, like a congressman’s or an industrialist’s or the head of a discount bank! It’s not my fault! . . . Yes, yes, laugh! . . . At least I consider myself lucky,” he adds more quietly, “if I can make you laugh . . .”
“Come now, what do you want me to call you? Dufferein? Chautel? Or Duduffe? Or . . . just plain Maxime, or Max? . . . Oh, please give me my hand mirror, there on the little table, and my powder puff: what my face must look like! . . . The champagne, my snooze, and no more powder on my nose!”
“It doesn’t matter!” he says, impatiently. “For whose benefit do you want to powder yourself at this hour?”
“For mine, first of all. And then for yours.”
“For mine it isn’t worth the trouble. You treat me like a man who’s courting you. What if I were simply a man who’s in love with you?”
I look at him, more mistrustfully than ever before, disconcerted to find in this man, now that it’s a question of love between us, a particular intelligence and an ease of manner so well concealed beneath his Big Ninny exterior. An aptitude for love, yes, that’s what I divine in him, that’s where he surpasses and embarrasses me!
“Tell me frankly, Renée . . . Is knowing that I love you hateful to you, or a matter of indifference, or vaguely pleasant?”
He isn’t offensive, he’s neither humble nor tearful, there’s nothing shy or cautious about him . . . Emulating his directness, I become emboldened and reply:
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“That’s just what I thought,” he says, seriously. “In that case . . .”
&n
bsp; “In that case?”
“There’s nothing for it but to say goodbye!”
“It’s half-past twelve.”
“No, you misunderstood. I mean, never to see you again, to leave Paris!”
“To leave Paris? Why?” I ask candidly. “There’s no need to. And I haven’t forbidden you to see me again.”
He shrugs his shoulders:
“Oh, I know what I’m doing! . . . When things go wrong, when I have . . . troubles, in short, I go back to our place.”
He really did say “our place,” like a man from the provinces, tenderly.
“Is it nice where you are?”
“Yes. There’s the forest, a lot of firs, plenty of oaks. I like fresh cuttings, you know, when the woods have been chopped down and only the saplings are left, and the big circles where they’ve burned charcoal, and where strawberries grow the following summer . . .”
“And lily-of-the-valley . . .”
“And lily-of-the-valley . . . And foxgloves, too. You know them? They grow this high, and you put your fingers in their bells when you’re a kid . . .”
“I know . . .”
He tells his story badly, my woodcutter from the Ardennes, but I see so clearly what he tells!
“I go there in the summertime, by car. I hunt a little, too, in the fall. It’s Mother’s place, naturally. Old lady Keep-Chopping!” he says, laughing. “She chops, chops, saws, and sells.”
“Oh!”
“But she doesn’t ruin the environment, you know! She knows all about wood, she understands it as if she were a man, and even better!”
I listen to him with a new pleasure, glad that he’s forgetting me for a moment, that he’s talking like a worthy woodcutter about his mother’s forest. I didn’t remember he was from the Ardennes, and he never took the trouble to tell me he loved his region. Now I know why he looks like a ninny! It’s because he wears his clothes a little as if they were his holiday clothes, with a lovable awkwardness he can never get rid of, like a handsome peasant in his Sunday best . . .
“Only, if you reject me, Renée, my mother will know immediately that I’ve come back to her place for a ‘cure,’ and she’ll be set again on seeing me married. That’s what you’re exposing me to!”
“Go ahead and get married.”
“You don’t seriously mean that?”
“Why not? Just because a personal experience was disastrous for me? What does that prove? You ought to get married, it would suit you very well. You look like a married man. You parade your bachelorhood in clothes that are like a young father’s, you’re delighted with the fireside, you’re as affectionate, jealous, stubborn, and lazy as a pampered husband, and basically despotic and a born monogamist!”
Stupefied, my admirer stares at me in silence, then leaps to his feet.
“Yes, I am all that!” he exclaims. “I am all that! She said so! I am all that!”
I curtly restrain his cries and gestures:
“Do be still! What’s come over you? Because you’re selfish, when all is said and done, and lazy, and a sit-by-the-fire, does that make you feel like dancing?”
Very docilely he sits back down opposite me, but his shepherd dog’s eyes stare at me with a victorious sagacity:
“No. It’s all the same to me if I’m all that you say: what makes me feel like dancing is that you know it!”
Ah, fool that I am! Here he is, triumphant, glorying in my confession, the confession of my curiosity, if not of a keener interest . . . Here he is, conceited, trembling with the desire to reveal more of himself. If he dared, he’d shout, “Yes, I am all that! So you’ve condescended to see me, while I was despairing of ever existing in your eyes? Look at me again! Discover all of me, invent weak points and laughable points in my character, heap imaginary vices on me . . . My concern isn’t for you to know me as I am: create your admirer the way you want him, and afterwards—just as a master artist touches up and improves the mediocre painting of a beloved pupil—afterwards I shall cunningly, little by little, make him resemble me!”
Shall I tell him my thoughts aloud, to confuse him? . . . Careful! I was just about to do another clumsy thing. He won’t be confused, he’ll listen to his fortune teller with delight, and he’ll loudly praise that second sight which love grants! . . . And what is he waiting for now? For me to fall into his arms? Nothing surprises an infatuated man. I wish he were far away . . . I fight my need to rest, to unwind, to raise one hand and implore: “Time out! Stop! I don’t know this game. If I feel like it, we’ll start it again; but I don’t have the strength to follow you, and I get caught every time, as you clearly see . . .”
His watchful eyes come and go, rapidly, from my eyelids to my mouth, from my mouth to my eyelids, seeming to read my face . . . Suddenly he stands up and turns away, abruptly discreet.
“Good night, Renée!” he says in a quieter tone . . .” Please forgive me for staying so late, but Hamond had urged me . . .”
I protest, with an embarrassment like a society woman’s:
“Oh, that doesn’t matter . . . on the contrary . . .”
“Is your concierge very hard to awaken?”
“I hope not . . .”
We’re so pitifully silly that a little of my mirth comes back to me.
“Wait!” I say, all of a sudden. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t wake up the concierge: you’re going to leave by the window . . .”
“By the window? Oh, Renée . . .”
“We’re on the ground floor.”
“I know. But aren’t you afraid . . . someone might see me? A tenant of the building might be coming home just then . . .”
“What’s that to me?”
In spite of myself, I have displayed such a scornful indifference in replying and shrugging my shoulders that my admirer no longer dares to show his pleasure. At bottom, this departure through the window at one in the morning—and from my bedroom, if you please!—must be filling him with a student’s joy. Oh, what youth! . . .
“Jump! Right! Good night!”
“See you tomorrow, Renée?”
“If you wish, my friend . . .”
What youth! . . . And yet this man is thirty-three! . . . As I am . . . Thirty-four in six months . . .
I’ve heard him running on the sidewalk, in a clinging drizzle that coats the pavement and wets the windowsill, on which I remain leaning, like a woman in love . . . But, behind me, nobody has rumpled the big bed, ordinary and fresh, spread with uncreased sheets, a bed that, in the insomnia I’m resigned to, I won’t even ruffle.
He’s gone. He’ll be back tomorrow, and the days after that, since I’ve given him permission. When he returns, he’ll be almost happy, awkward, full of hope, with that air of saying “I ask for nothing” which in the long run irritates me like a beggar’s mechanical request . . . When it would have been so easy to hurt him with a refusal that still involved no danger, so that he’d go away with a fresh, curable wound! . . .
In the square of my lighted window the drizzle comes down, white against the black background of the street, like a rain of flour from a mill . . .
I succumbed, I admit it—I succumbed when I gave that man permission to come back tomorrow—to the desire to retain in him not an admirer, not a friend, but a greedy spectator of my life and my person. “You have to get awfully old,” Margot said to me one day, “to give up the vanity of living in someone’s company!”
Could I sincerely declare that, for some weeks now, I haven’t reveled in the attentions of this passionate spectator? I refused him my keenest glances, my freest smiles; when speaking to him I regulated the sound of my voice; I made my face a blank in his presence, but . . . But wasn’t it so that, hurt and humbled, he’d realize that all my reticence was for his benefit, that for his sake I was taking the trouble to impoverish my own existence? There’s no disguise without coquetry, and it takes as many pains, as much vigilance, to make yourself ugly all the time as to make yourself beautiful.
If my admirer
is watching my open window in the darkness, he can be proud! I don’t miss him, I don’t want him here, but I’m thinking of him. I’m thinking of him as if I were taking stock of my first defeat . . .
The first? No, the second. There was one evening—oh, what a poisoned recollection, and how I curse it for coming back to life at this moment!—one evening when I leaned like this, looking down at an invisible garden. My very long hair was hanging down from the balcony like a silken rope . . . The certainty that I was in love had just swooped down on me, but, far from buckling under it, my adolescent strength bore up under it proudly. Neither doubt, nor even the most gentle melancholy, sobered that triumphal, solitary night garlanded by wisteria and roses! . . . The man who aroused that blind, innocent excitement—what did he do with it?
Let’s close the window, let’s close the window! I tremble too hard at seeing a provincial garden rising through the curtain of the rain—a green-and-black garden, silvered by the rising moon, in which there passes the shadow of a girl dreamily rolling her long braid around her wrist, like a caressing serpent . . .
“MARSEILLES, Nice, Cannes, Toulon . . .” “No, Menton before Toulon . . .”
“And Grenoble! We’ve got Grenoble, too!”
We check off the cities on our tour the way kids count their marbles. Brague has decided that we’ll perform two pantomimes, Dominance and The Dryad.
“For the big burgs where we stop for four or six days,” he assures me, “it’s a good idea to have a spare number.”
It’s all right with me. Anything is all right with me. This morning, no one is more benevolent and approving than I. Almost the only sounds in the Cernuschi studio where we’re working are Brague’s outbursts and the laughter of the Old Caveman, who’s thrilled by the thought of going on tour and making fifteen francs a day; his starved young face with the hollow blue eyes reflects a constant joy, and God knows whether he suffers for it!
“Damn dickhead!” Brague howls, “I’ll teach you how to smile like a ballerina! People would think you never saw a caveman! Twist your mouth, I tell you! More than that! Let your eyes go limp! And let your jaw tremble! Something in the style of Chaliapin, okay? . . .”