by Colette
My forehead on a man’s shoulder! . . . Am I dreaming? I’m neither dreaming, nor rambling. My head, my senses are all calm, mournfully calm. And yet, in the untroubled state of mind which keeps me there, there’s something more, something better than indifference, and if my absentminded, chaste hand is playing with the gold braid on his vest, it’s because I feel sheltered and protected—like a lost cat that people take in, which can play and sleep only when it’s got a home . . .
Poor admirer . . . what is he thinking about as he sits there motionless, respecting my silence? I bend back my head to look at him, and I quickly lower my eyes, dazzled, confused by the man’s expression. Oh, how I envy him for being able to love so strongly, able to gain such handsomeness from his passion!
His eyes have met mine, and he smiles heroically.
“Renée . . . Do you think you may possibly love me some day, whenever it is?”
“Love you? How I’d like to, my friend! You don’t look like a vicious man . . . Don’t you feel that I’m on the way to becoming attached to you?”
“Attached to me . . . That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, Renée: it isn’t the path that leads to love . . .”
He’s so absolutely right that I make no protest.
“But . . . wait . . . you never know . . . Maybe when I come back from my tour . . . And then, at last, a very, very deep friendship . . .”
He shakes his head . . . No doubt he has no use for my friendship. As for me, I’d be very happy to have a friend who’s not as old and “used up” as Hamond—a real friend . . .
“When you come back! . . . First of all, Renée, if you really hoped to love me some day, you wouldn’t be thinking of leaving me behind. In two months it will be just like now, the same Renée will hold out her little cold hands, her eyes won’t let mine in, and these lips which hold back even when offering themselves . . .”
“It’s not my fault . . . Here are these lips . . . Take them . . .
I’ve rested my head on his shoulder, and I shut my eyes, more resigned than curious, then I open them again a second later, surprised that he hasn’t pounced with the greedy haste he displayed yesterday . . . He has merely turned slightly toward me, and is encircling me comfortably with his right arm. Then he joins my two hands together with his free hand and leans down; I see the slow approach of that serious, unfamiliar face, of this man whom I know so little of . . .
By now there’s almost no space or air between our two faces; I’m breathing rapidly, as if drowning, and I make an effort to break loose. But he’s holding onto my hands and tightening his arm around my waist. I throw back my neck in vain just as Maxime’s lips reach mine . . .
I haven’t closed my eyes. I knit my brows to threaten those eyes above me, which are trying to subdue and extinguish mine—because the lips kissing me, soft, fresh, impersonal, are just the same as yesterday, and their inadequacy irritates me . . . Suddenly they change and I no longer recognize the kiss, which comes to life, becomes persistent, dies away, and resumes, taking on movement and rhythm, then halts as if awaiting a response that fails to come . . .
I move my head ever so slightly because of the mustache brushing against my nostrils, with its scent of vanilla and sweet tobacco . . . Oh! . . . all at once, in spite of myself, my lips have voluntarily parted, my mouth has opened as resistlessly as a ripe plum splitting in the sunshine . . . From my lips down to my sides, down to my knees, I feel the rebirth and diffusion of that exigent pain, that swelling of a wound about to reopen and widen—the sensual pleasure I had forgotten . . .
I let the man who has reawakened me drink of the fruit he is squeezing. My hands, stiff just a while ago, abandon themselves, warm and soft, in his hand, and my body, flung back, seeks to fit into his. Bent over the arm that supports me, I burrow a little more deeply into his shoulder, I cling close to him, careful not to detach my lips, careful to prolong our kiss in comfort.
He understands and acquiesces, with a little grunt of happiness . . . Finally sure that I won’t run away, now it’s he who separates himself from me, catches his breath, and studies me, biting his own wet lips. I let my eyelids fall, I no longer have the need to see him. Perhaps he’ll undress me and take full possession of me . . . It doesn’t matter. I’m awash in an irresponsible, slothful joy . . . I’m in no hurry, except for that kiss to resume. We have all the time in the world . . . Proudly my friend picks me up in both arms like a bunch of flowers, and places me on the couch semirecumbent. There he joins me. His mouth now has the same taste as mine, with the faint fragrance of my rice powder . . . His skillful mouth wants to renew itself and vary the caress even further, but I already venture to show my preference for a nearly motionless kiss, a long, peaceful one—the slow crushing together of two flowers, in which there only vibrates the palpitation of two coupled pistils . . .
Now we’re resting. A long truce during which we catch our breath. This time I left him, and stood up, needing to wring my hands, to stretch, to grow taller. To straighten up my hair and look at my new face, I have picked up my hand mirror, and I’m laughing at us, seeing us both with drowsy faces, with trembling lips that glow and are slightly swollen. Maxime has remained on the couch, and his wordless summons receives the most flattering reply: my gaze, like that of a submissive dog, a little crestfallen, a little beaten, very pampered, and ready to accept anything, the leash, the collar, the place by her master’s feet . . .
HE HAS left. We dined together, in slapdash fashion: Blandine cooked some cutlets in gravy, with gherkins . . . I was dying of hunger. “And love satisfying our every need, except . . .,” he quoted, to show he’s read Verlaine.
The end of dinner didn’t throw us back into each other’s arms, and we haven’t become lovers, because he’s correct and I don’t like impromptus . . . But I committed myself and became engaged joyfully, without any flirtatiousness:
“We have plenty of time before us, don’t we, Max?”
“Not too much, darling! I feel so old, now that I’m waiting for you!”
So old . . . He doesn’t know my age . . .
He has left, he’ll be back tomorrow . . . He couldn’t tear himself away from me, and I was afraid I’d weaken, so I held him back at arm’s length . . . I felt warm, and he was sniffing at me eagerly, as if ready to bite . . . Finally he left. I say “finally” because now I’ll be able to think about him, about us . . .
“Love,” he said. Is it love? I wish I were sure. Do I love him? My sensuality frightened me; but maybe it was only a fit, an overflowing of my strength that has been reined in for so long; afterwards, no doubt, I’ll realize that I truly love him . . . If he were to come back and tap at my shutter . . . Yes, of course I love him. I recall with emotion some of the inflections of his voice today—the echo of his little amorous grunt is enough to take my breath away—and, besides, how kind he was, how strong, how sympathetic to my loneliness when I laid my head on his shoulder! . . . Yes, I love him! Who’s made me so timorous? I didn’t make such a to-do when . . .
What grave has my mind just carelessly stumbled over? It’s too late to run away; once again I’m face to face with my merciless adviser, the one who speaks to me from out of the mirror . . .
“You didn’t make such a to-do when Love, swooping down on you, found you so wild and brave! You didn’t wonder, that day, whether it was love! There was no way to be mistaken: it was love, your first love. It was, and it will never be the same again! Though a simple girl, you had no trouble recognizing it, and you didn’t deny it either your body or your childlike heart. It was the love that isn’t foreseen, chosen, or reasoned out. And it will never be the same again! It took from you that which you can give only once: your trust, the religious awe of the first caress, the novelty of your tears, the flower of your first suffering! . . . Love again if you can; no doubt it will be granted to you, so that, at the peak of your wretched happiness, you can be reminded that, in love, nothing counts but the first love; so that you can undergo, at every moment, the pun
ishment of remembering, the horror of making comparisons! Even when you say, ‘Oh, this is better,’ you’ll suffer from the realization that nothing is good if it isn’t unique! There’s a God who tells the sinner, ‘You wouldn’t be seeking Me if you hadn’t already found Me . . .’ But Love shows no such pity; he says, ‘You that found me once are losing me for good!’ Did you think, when you lost yours, that your suffering was over? It’s not! While seeking to restore to life that which you once were, taste your comedown; at each celebration of your new life, drain the poison poured into it by your first, your only love! . . .”
***
I’m going to have to speak with Margot and confess this event to her, this sunstroke which is burning up my life . . . Because there’s no getting away from it, we love each other. No getting away and, besides, I’m resolved on it. I’ve sent all my memories and regrets packing, along with what I call my mania for sentimental filigree, my “yes,” “because,” “but,” and “nevertheless” . . .
We see each other at all hours; he carries me away and numbs me with his presence; he prevents me from thinking. He makes the decisions, almost gives the orders, and at the same time that I sacrifice my freedom to him, I also sacrifice my pride, since I tolerate the arrival at my home of an extravagant abundance of flowers and out-of-season fruit. And I’m now wearing pinned to my collar a glistening dart, all bleeding with rubies, as if it were fixed in my throat.
And yet, we aren’t lovers! Patient now, Max imposes on himself and on me an engagement period that’s oddly depressing and that, in less than a week, has already left us a little thinner, and languid. It’s not any depravity on his part, it’s the vanity of a man who wants to be desired and, at the same time, wants to allow me a specious “freedom of the will” for as long as I choose . . .
Anyway, there isn’t much left for me to wish for . . . And now all I have to fear is this unfamiliar ardor which emanated from me at our first contact and is always fiercely ready to obey him . . . Yes, he has good reason to delay the hour that will unite us fully. I now know all I’m worth, and the magnificence of the gift he’ll receive. I’ll outdo his most outlandish hopes, I’m sure! Let him glean from his orchard to some extent, if he wants to . . .
And he frequently wants to. For my pleasure and for my uneasiness, Chance has seen to it that this tall fellow, with his simple and symmetrical good looks, is a subtle lover, just made for women, and endowed with so much foresight that his caresses seem to be thinking in step with my desires. He makes me remember (and I blush at it) something a lecherous little vaudeville colleague of mine once said when she was praising the skill of a new lover: “Honey, I couldn’t do it better myself!”
But . . . I’m going to have to inform Margot! Poor Margot, whom I’m forgetting . . . As for Hamond, he’s vanished. Thanks to Max, he knows everything, and he keeps away from my house like a discreet relative . . .
And Brague! Oh, the expression on Brague’s face at our last rehearsal! He greeted my arrival in Max’s car with his finest Pierrot grimace, but didn’t say anything yet. He even displayed an unusual, undeserved courtesy, because that morning I was clumsy, absentminded, and quick to blush and apologize. Finally he burst out:
“Scram! Back to him! Take your fill of him and don’t come back here until you’ve had it up to here! . . .”
The more I laughed, the more he thundered, like a little Asiatic devil:
“Chuckle, go on, chuckle! If you could see what you look like!”
“What I look . . .!”
“Your puss looks greedy, as if it could never have enough! Don’t raise your eyes to me, Messalina! . . . Look at her,” he shouted, calling invisible gods to witness, “she shows those peepers in broad daylight! And in the Dryad’s love scene, when I ask her to give it all she’s got, and then some, and to shed hot tears over it, she comes up with the little carafe of a girl taking First Communion!”
“Does it really show that much?” I asked Max, who was driving me home.
The same mirror that reflected my boastful “defeated” countenance the other night now frames a thin face with the wary smile of an affable fox. Yet, some flame flickers back and forth over it, beautifying it, so to speak, with a troubled youthfulness . . .
And so I’ll confess everything to Margot: my lapse, my happiness, the name of the man I love . . . It isn’t easy for me. Margot isn’t a woman who’ll say, “I told you so,” but I think that, even though she’ll show no signs of it, I’m going to sadden and disappoint her. “You’re a burnt child who’s returning to the fire!” Yes, I’m returning to it, and so willingly! . . .
I find Margot irrevocably the same in the large studio where she sleeps, eats, and raises her Brabançon dogs. Tall, erect, in a Russian blouse and a long black jacket, she is bending her pale face with its Roman cheeks, and her coarse gray hair cut short above her ears, over a basket in which a little yellow runt is stirring, a tiny dog in a flannel shirt, raising toward her its forehead as knobby as a bonze’s and its lovely, imploring squirrel’s eyes . . . Around me are yelping and fidgeting six impudent little animals which a whip crack sends racing back to their straw kennels.
“What, Margot, another Brabançon? It’s an obsession!”
“Not at all!” says Margot, who sits down opposite me, cradling the sick animal on her lap. “I don’t like this poor little thing.”
“Was it given to you?”
“No, I bought it, naturally. That will teach me never to visit the dogseller again, that old crook Hartmann. If you had seen this Brabançon in his window, with her little sick rat’s face and her vertebrae jutting out like a rosary, and especially her eyes . . . You know, hardly anything touches me any more except the eyes of a dog for sale . . . So I bought her. She’s half-croaked with enteritis; you can never see that at the dealer’s: they dope the dogs with cacodylic acid . . . Tell me, child, I haven’t seen you for some time: are you working?”
“Yes, Margot, I’m rehearsing . . .”
“I can tell; you’re tired out.”
With her friendly gesture she takes my chin, to tilt back my face and draw it nearer. Upset, I shut my eyes . . .
“Yes, you’re tired out . . . You’ve gotten old,” she says in a deep tone.
“Gotten old! . . . Oh, Margot! . . .”
My entire secret is given away in that sorrowful cry, accompanied by a gush of tears. I take refuge with my severe friend, who pats my shoulder with the same “Poor little thing” she just used to comfort the sick Brabançon . . .
“Come now, come now, poor little thing, come now . . . It will pass. Here’s some boric acid to wash out your eyes. I was just making some for Mirette’s eyes. Not with your handkerchief! Take some absorbent cotton . . . There! . . . Poor little thing, do you really need all your beauty right now?”
“Oh yes! . . . Oh, Margot . . .”
“ ‘Oh, Margot!’ People would think I beat you! Look at me! Are you very cross with me, poor little thing?”
“No, Margot . . .”
“You know very well,” she continued in her soft, even voice, “that you can always find every sort of help at my place, even the most painful of all: the truth . . . What did I say to you? I said, ‘You’ve gotten old . . .’ ”
“Yes . . . Oh, Margot . . .”
“Come now, don’t start again! I meant that you’ve gotten old this week! You’ve gotten old today! Tomorrow, or in an hour, you’ll be five years or ten years younger . . . If you had come yesterday, or tomorrow, I no doubt would have said to you, ‘My, you’ve gotten younger!’ ”
“Just imagine, Margot, I’ll be thirty-four soon!”
“Go ahead and complain; I’m fifty-two.”
“It’s not the same thing, Margot; I need so much to be pretty, to be young, to be happy . . . I have . . . I . . .”
“You have a lover?”
Her voice is still soft, but the expression on her face has changed slightly.
“I don’t have a lover, Margot! Only, there’
s no doubt that . . . I’m going to have one. But . . . I love him, you know!”
This type of silly excuse tickles Margot.
“Ah, you love him . . . Does he love you, too?”
“Oh!”
With a prideful gesture I clear my boyfriend of all suspicion.
“Good. And . . . how old is he?”
“Just my age, Margot: almost thirty-four.”
“That’s . . . good.”
I find nothing to add. I’m terribly bothered. I was hoping that, once my first embarrassment was over, I could babble about my joy and tell her all about my friend, the color of his eyes, the shape of his hands, his kindness, his uprightness . . .
“He’s . . . he’s very nice, you know, Margot . . .,” I risk timidly.
“That’s good, child. Do the two of you have any plans?”
“Plans? No . . . We haven’t been thinking of things yet . . . We’ve got time . . .”
“That’s true: you do have time . . . And what becomes of the tour in all this?”
“My tour? Well! My romance doesn’t change anything.”
“Are you taking along your . . . your fellow?”
Though all wet with tears, I can’t help laughing: Margot is referring to my friend with a discretion born of distaste, as if she were mentioning something nasty!
“I am taking him along, I am . . . That is . . . To tell the truth, Margot, I have no idea. I’ll see . . .”
My sister-in-law raises her eyebrows:
“You have no idea! You have no plans! You’ll see! . . . My word, you two are amazing! What, then, are you thinking about? After all, you’ve got nothing else to do but make plans and prepare your future!”
“Our future . . . Oh, Margot, I don’t like the future! To prepare for it! It prepares for itself without anybody’s help, and it arrives so quickly . . .”
“Is it a question of marriage, or of shacking up?”
I don’t reply immediately, embarrassed for the first time by chaste Margot’s quite crude vocabulary . . .