by Colette
“It isn’t a question of anything . . . We’re getting to know each other, we’re learning what we’re like . . .”
“Learning what you’re like!”
Margot studies me, her lips pinched, with a cruel merriment in her little gleaming eyes.
“Learning what you’re like! . . . I see: it’s the period when you’re showing off to each other, eh?”
“I assure you, Margot, that we’re hardly showing off,” I say, forcing myself to smile. “That game is all right for very young lovers, but neither of us, he or I, is a very young lover by now.”
“All the more reason!” Margot retorts implacably. “You have more things to hide from each other . . . My dear,” she adds softly, “you know that my phobia is ridiculous. Marriage seems like such a monstrous thing to me! Didn’t I make you laugh when I told you that, in my first days as a wife, I refused to share a bedroom with my husband because I thought it immoral to live so close to a young man who wasn’t a member of my family? I was born that way, what can I tell you? I’ll never improve . . . Didn’t you bring along Fossette today?”
Like Margot, I make an effort to cheer myself up:
“No, Margot. Last time I was here, your pack of hounds gave her such a bad welcome!”
“It’s true. My pack isn’t in great form just now! Come here, cripples!”
They don’t wait to be asked twice. From a row of kennels there emerge, in a little shivering, wretched flock, half a dozen dogs, the largest of which would fit in a hat. I know nearly all of them, rescued by Margot from the “dogseller,” snatched from that stupid, evil business which plants in a shop window animals that are sick, gorged or starved, or else doped up . . . Some of them, in her home, have become once again healthy, cheerful, and sturdy animals; but others retain forever a stomach out of kilter, a scabby skin, a hysteria they can’t shake off . . . Margot tends to them the best she can, though disheartened by the realization that her charity accomplishes nothing, and that there will eternally be “pedigreed dogs” for sale . . .
The sick dog has fallen asleep. I have nothing more to say . . . I look at the big room, which always bears a slight resemblance to an infirmary, with its curtainless windows. Lined up on a table are drugstore bottles, rolled bandages, a tiny thermometer, and a very small rubber bulb for giving the dogs enemas. There’s a smell of iodine and cresyl . . . All of a sudden I feel the urge to leave and return immediately—immediately!—to my narrow, warm “hut,” with its hollowed-out couch, its flowers, and the man I love . . .
“Goodbye, Margot, I’m going . . .”
“Go, child!”
“You’re not too angry with me?”
“Whatever for?”
“For being so crazy and ridiculous; in short, for being in love . . . I had promised myself so firmly . . .”
“Angry with you? Poor little thing, that would be really mean of me! . . . A new love . . . You can’t be having such a great time . . . Poor little thing!”
I’m in a hurry to get back home. I feel chilled, frozen, and so unhappy! . . . Whew! All the same, it’s over: I’ve told Margot everything. I’ve gotten the dousing with cold water I was expecting, and I hasten to shake it off, get dry, and blossom out by the fire . . . My lowered veil hides the traces of my sorrow, and I hasten—I hasten to him!
***
“Monsieur Maxime is here waiting for Madame.”
Because my maid Blandine says “Monsieur Maxime” now, lovingly, as if speaking about her infant.
He’s here!
I dash into my bedroom and shut myself in: he mustn’t see my face! Quick! The rice powder, the kohl, the lipstick . . . Oh! There, under my eyes, that pearly, sentimental furrow . . . “You’ve gotten old . . .” Fool, going off to weep like a little girl! Haven’t you learned how to suffer with dry eyes? Where are the days when my glistening tears rolled down my velvet cheeks without wetting them? In the past, to win my husband back, I knew how to use my tears as adornments, when I’d cry in front of him, my face raised, my eyes wide open, not wiping away but shaking off those slow pearls which made me more beautiful . . . Poor creature that I am!
“Here you are at last, my darling, my fragrant one, my delicious one, my . . .”
“Goodness, how silly you are!”
“Oh yes,” my friend sighs, with ecstatic conviction.
He indulges in his favorite game, which is to lift me in his arms till I touch the ceiling; he kisses me on the cheeks, on the chin, on my ears, on my mouth. I struggle just enough so that he’s compelled to show his strength. Our wrestling ends up to his advantage, and he tips me over completely in his arms, head downward and feet in the air, until I shout for help and he sets me back down on my feet. My dog dashes over to protect me, and the rough sport, which I like, is mingled with hoarse barks, shouts, and laughter . . .
Oh, how good this healthy stupidity is! What a jolly companion I have here, as unconcerned about appearing to be witty as about disarranging his tie! . . . How pleasantly warm it is here, and how our laughter, like that of jousters confronting each other, quickly changes into an amorous challenge! He devours his “delicious” woman, tasting her slowly, like a gourmet . . .
“How good you’d be to eat, darling! . . . Your mouth is sweet, but when I bite them your arms are salty, just ever so little, and your shoulder, and your knees . . . I’m sure you’re salty from head to foot, like a cool seashell, right? . . .
“You’ll find out all too soon, Big Ninny!”
Because I still call him Big Ninny, but . . . in a different tone of voice.
“When? . . . Tonight? Today is Thursday, isn’t it?”
“I think so . . . yes . . . why?”
“Thursday . . . is a very good day . . .”
He says silly things, very merrily, leaning back amid tumbled cushions. A lock of hair falls across one eye; he has that vague look in his eyes which he gets in his major fits of desire, and he opens his mouth a little to breathe. A handsome rustic, a woodcutter taking his siesta on the grass, that’s what he changes back into (and I don’t mind it at all) with each of his nonchalant poses . . .
“Get up, Max, we have to have a serious talk . . .”
“I don’t want to be made unhappy!” he sighs plaintively.
“Max, come now!”
“No! I know what you mean by a serious talk . . . That’s what Mother says every time she wants to discuss business, money, or marriage!”
He buries himself in the cushions and shuts his eyes. It’s not the first time he’s manifested this obstinate frivolity . . .
“Max! You remember that I’m leaving on April fifth?”
He partly opens his eyelids with their feminine lashes and gratifies me with a long gaze:
“You’re leaving, darling? Who made that decision?”
“My impresario Salomon and I.”
“Good. But I haven’t given my consent yet . . . Anyway, all right. You’re leaving. Well, you’re leaving with me.”
“With you!” I say, frightened . . . “Do you really not know what a tour is like?”
“Sure I do. It’s a trip . . . with me!”
I repeat:
“With you? For forty-five days? Don’t you have anything to do?”
“Sure I have! Ever since meeting you, I haven’t had a minute I could call my own, Renée.”
A pretty answer, but . . .
Disconcerted, I gaze at this man who has nothing to do, who always finds money in his pocket . . . He has nothing to do, it’s true, I had never thought about it! He has no profession, not even a sinecure to mask his idle freedom . . . How odd it is! Before him I’d never met any man without an occupation . . . He can devote all of himself to love, day and night, like . . . like a harlot.
That bizarre thought—that of us two, he’s the courtesan—suddenly strikes me funny, and his sensitive eyebrows are drawn together . . .
“What’s this? You’re laughing? . . . You won’t leave!”
“You don’t say
! And what about my forfeit for breaking the contract?”
“I’ll pay it.”
“And Brague’s forfeit? And the Old Caveman’s?”
“I’ll pay them.”
Even if it’s a joke, I only half-like it. Can I doubt any longer that we’re in love? Here we are on the brink of our first quarrel! . . .
I was wrong, because here’s my friend next to me, almost at my feet:
“My Renée, you know perfectly well that you can do anything you want!”
But he has laid his hand on my forehead, and his eyes are fixed on mine, seeking my obedience in them . . . Anything I want? Unfortunately, right now I want only him!
“On your tour, are you still going to perform Dominance?”
“We’re taking along The Dryad, too . . . Oh, what a lovely purple tie you’ve got on! It makes you look all yellow!”
“Forget about my tie! Dominance, The Dryad, et cetera, are just excuses for showing off your beautiful legs and all the rest!”
“You should complain! Wasn’t it on the stage that ‘all the rest’ had the honor of being introduced to you?”
He hugs me to himself so hard that it hurts:
“Be still! I remember! Every night for five days I said painful things to myself, and each time I thought they were decisive. I felt stupid for coming to the Emp’-Clich’, as you call it, and after your exit I’d leave, insulting myself. Then, the following day, I’d make a cowardly compromise: ‘This is the very last night I’ll be seen in that dump! But I want to be sure of the color of Renée Néré’s eyes, and, besides, yesterday I was unable to get there for the beginning.’ In short, I was already behaving like an imbecile!”
“Already an imbecile! You’ve got quite a way with euphemisms, Max! I find it so odd that a man can be smitten with a woman just by looking at her . . .”
“It depends on the woman he’s looking at. You know nothing of such things, Renée Néré . . . Imagine: after seeing you mime Dominance for the first time, I spent at least an hour drawing a diagram of your face. I carried it off, and I don’t know how many times I repeated, in the margins of a book, a little geometrical drawing that only I can interpret . . . Also, there was a moment in your pantomime when you filled me with unbearable joy: it was when you were sitting on the table and reading the threatening letter from the man you were deceiving. Remember? You slapped your thigh as you bent backward with laughter, and I could hear that your thigh was bare under your thin dress. You executed that gesture robustly, like a young floozy, but your face was aflame with such keen, well-defined malevolence, so far superior to your easy-to-get body . . . Do you recall?”
“Yes, yes . . . that’s how it was . . . Brague was satisfied with me when I did that scene . . . But, Max, that’s . . . that’s only admiration, desire! Has it changed into love since then?”
He looks at me in great surprise:
“Changed? I’ve never thought about it. No doubt I loved you from that time on. There are many women more beautiful than you, but . . .”
With a motion of his hand he expressed all the incomprehensible, incurable side of love . . .
“All the same, Max, what if, instead of a good little middle-class woman like me, you had met some cool, knowing bitch as mean as hell? Didn’t the fear of that hold you back?”
“It never occurred to me,” he says with a laugh. “What a funny idea! You see, we men don’t think of so many things when we’re in love!”
He’s apt to say things like that, which set me straight, I who do think of so many things!
“Little one,” he murmurs, “why do you perform in vaudeville?”
“Big Ninny, why aren’t you a cabinetmaker? Don’t answer by saying that you have the means to live a better life, I know! But what do you want me to do? Sewing, typewriting, streetwalking? Vaudeville is the trade of those who haven’t learned any.”
“But . . .”
From his tone I realize he’s going to say something serious and embarrassing. I lift my head, which had been resting on his shoulder, and I observe attentively that face with its hard, straight nose, its wild eyebrows that shelter affectionate eyes, its bushy mustache that conceals a mouth with skillful lips . . .
“But, darling, you no longer need vaudeville, because I’m here and . . .”
“Shh!”
I urge him to be silent; I’m agitated, almost frightened. Yes, he’s here and prepared for all sorts of generosity. But that doesn’t concern me, I don’t want it to. I can’t manage to draw a personal conclusion from the fact that my friend is wealthy. I can’t succeed in allotting him the place in my future he’s ambitious for. No doubt, that will come. I’ll get used to it. I ask for nothing better than to glue my lips to his and to discover in advance that I belong to him, yet I can’t associate his life with mine in my mind! If he were to declare to me, “I’m getting married,” I think I’d reply politely, “Warmest congratulations,” while thinking deep down, “It’s none of my business.” And yet, two weeks ago, I didn’t like the way he surveyed little Jadin so complacently . . .
Emotional complications, fussing, hairsplitting, psychological soliloquies. My God, how ridiculous I am! Wouldn’t it fundamentally be much more honest, and worthy of a woman in love, to reply to him, “Of course, you’re here! Since we love each other, it’s you I ask everything of. It’s so simple! If I really love you, you owe me everything, and any bread that hasn’t come to me from your hands is impure bread.”
These thoughts of mine are most proper. I ought to speak them out loud, instead of keeping silent in a wheedling way, rubbing my cheek against my friend’s clean-shaven cheek, which is as soft as a very soft pumice stone.
FOR SO MANY DAYS, my elderly friend Hamond had been stubbornly staying home, with the pretext of rheumatism, flu, or an urgent task, that I ordered him to come over. He has delayed no further, and his discreet, detached look of a relative visiting newlyweds doubles my pleasure at seeing him again.
Here we are alone together and affectionate, just as in the past . . .
“Just as we used to be, Hamond! And yet, what a change!”
“Thank God for that, child! Are you going to be happy at last?”
“Happy?”
I look at him with sincere surprise.
“No, I won’t be happy. I’m not even thinking of it. Why would I be happy?”
Hamond clicks his tongue: it’s his way of scolding me. He thinks I’ve got a fit of depression.
“Come now, come now, Renée . . . So things aren’t going as well as I thought?”
I break out into a very merry laugh:
“Oh yes, Hamond, things are all right! Too much so! I’m afraid we’re beginning to adore each other.”
“And so?”
“And so! You believe that there’s something in that to make me happy?”
Hamond can’t help smiling, and it’s my turn to be melancholy:
“What torments have you flung me into again, Hamond? Because it was you, admit it, it was you . . . Torments,” I add more quietly, “that I wouldn’t exchange for the greatest joys.”
“Ah!” Hamond exclaims in relief. “At least you’ve been rescued from that past which was still festering in you! To tell the truth, I was sick and tired of seeing you gloomy, mistrustful, withdrawn into your memories and fears of Taillandy! Forgive me, Renée, but I would have done some really nasty things to endow you with a new love!”
“Really! Do you think a ‘new love,’ as you call it, destroys the memory of the first, or . . . reawakens it?”
Confused by the harshness of my question, Hamond finds nothing to say. But he touched on my sore spot so clumsily! . . . And, besides, he’s only a man: he doesn’t know. He must have been in love so many times: he no longer knows . . . His consternation arouses my pity.
“No, my friend, I’m not happy. I’m . . . better or worse than that. Only . . . I have no idea where I’m headed. I need to tell you that, before I become Maxime’s mistress altogether . . .
”
“Or his wife!”
“His wife?”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to!”
My hasty response was blurted out before I could think things through—an animal leaps far away from the trap even before seeing it . . .
“That’s unimportant, anyway,” Hamond says in a casual tone. “It adds up to the same thing.”
“You think it’s the same thing? Maybe for you, and for many men. But for me! Hamond, remember what marriage was for me . . . No, I’m not talking about the infidelities, you don’t understand! I’m talking about intimate life together, which makes so many wives into a sort of nursemaid for grownups . . . To be a married woman is . . . how shall I put it? It means trembling if your lord’s cutlet is overcooked, if his mineral water isn’t cold enough, if his shirt is badly starched, his detachable collar flabby, or his bath too hot; it means taking on the exhausting role of a buffer between your lord’s bad moods, your lord’s stinginess, his greediness, his laziness . . .
“You’re forgetting his lecherousness, Renée,” Hamond softly interrupts me.
“I’m not forgetting it by a damn sight! . . . The role of mediator, I was saying, between your lord and the rest of the human race. Hamond, you have no way of knowing, you were married so short a time! Marriage is . . . it’s: ‘Tie my cravat for me! . . . Kick out the maid! . . . Cut my toenails. Get up and make me some camomile tea . . . Prepare an enema for me . . .’ It’s: ‘Give me my new suit, and pack my valise, so I can hurry up and meet her . . .’ A housekeeper, a nurse, a nanny—enough, enough, enough!”
Finally I laugh at myself and my old friend’s long, shocked face . . .
“My heavens, Renée, how you do vex me with your urge to generalize! ‘In this district, all the servant girls are redheads!’ Women don’t always marry a Taillandy! And I swear to you that, for my humble part, I would have blushed to ask a woman to perform any of those menial duties which . . . Just the opposite! . . .”
I clap my hands:
“Terrific! I’m going to learn all! ‘Just the opposite!’ I’m sure you didn’t have a match when it came to buttoning her boots or fastening the snaps of her tailored skirt! Unfortunately, not every woman can marry a Hamond! . . .”