The Vagabond

by Colette

  Ah! I finally have that letter from Max, and I now read it with a palpitation that I know only too well, a palpitation made more painful by a recollection: wasn’t there a time in my life when Taillandy, “the man that no woman has ever left flat,” according to his own description, suddenly became infuriated at my absence and silence, and wrote me love letters? The mere sight of his jagged handwriting made me turn pale, and I felt as if my heart were very small, round, and hard, and thumping—just like today, just like today . . .

  To crush this letter from Max without reading it, to take a deep breath like a hanged man who’s been cut down in time, and to run away! . . . But I can’t . . . It’s only a brief temptation. I’ve got to read it . . .

  May Chance be blessed! My friend didn’t understand. He thought I was going through a fit of jealousy, the alarm of a flirtatious woman who wants to receive from her beloved the most flattering and formal reassurance . . . He gives me this reassurance, and I can’t help smiling, because he praises his “adored soul,” at times as if she were a highly respected sister and at times as if she were a pretty mare . . . “You’ll always be the most beautiful!” No doubt, he believes what he’s saying. But could he make any other reply? Maybe, at the moment he wrote those words, he raised his head and looked at the deep forest in front of him, with an imperceptible hesitancy and suspension of thought. Then, I imagine, he shrugged his shoulders, as if feeling a chill, and he wrote gallantly, slowly: “You’ll always be the most beautiful!”

  Poor Max! . . . The better part of me seems to be conspiring against him now . . . The day before yesterday, we were departing at dawn and, in the railroad car, I was resuming my repose in snatches, interrupting it and recommencing it twenty times, when a salty gust, redolent of fresh seaweed, opened my eyes again: the sea! Sète, and the sea! There it was, flanking the full length of the train, returning just when I had stopped thinking of it. The seven-o’clock sun, still low, was not yet piercing it; the sea was refusing to let itself be possessed; not yet fully awake, it retained a nocturnal tint of blue ink, with white crests . . .

  Saltpans were parading by, rimmed by turf gleaming with salt, and there were sleeping villas as white as that salt amid their dark laurels, lilacs, and Judas trees . . . Half-asleep, like the sea, surrendering myself to the rocking of the train, I thought I was skimming the nearby waves with the cutting flight of a swallow . . . I was savoring one of those perfect moments, one of those joys felt by a sick man unaware of his surroundings—when a sudden memory, an image, a name, changed me back into the ordinary creature I had been the day before and the days before that . . . For how long had I just forgotten Max, for the first time? Yes, forgotten him, as if I had never known his gaze or the caress of his lips; forgotten him, as if there were no more imperious concern in my life than to search for words, words to express how yellow the sun is, how blue the sea, how gleaming the salt with its fringe of white jet . . . Yes, forgotten him, as if there were nothing urgent in the world other than my desire to possess the wonders of the earth by way of my eyes!

  At that same moment, an insidious spirit prompted me: “What if there really were nothing more urgent? What if everything else were nothing but ashes? . . .”

  IAM LIVING amid mental storms that never let me be. Painfully and patiently I’m regaining my vocation for silence and dissimulation. I find it easy again to follow Brague across a city, up, down, through the squares, cathedrals, and museums, into the smoke of the little pubs where “the food is terrific!” In our cordial relationship we don’t talk much, we seldom smile, but sometimes we burst out laughing, as if we were more open to merriment than to gentleness. I laugh readily at Brague’s stories, making my laughter shrill, just as, when he talks to me, he exaggerates his very artificial vulgarity.

  We’re sincere with each other, but not always perfectly candid . . . We have our traditional jokes, which cheer us up traditionally: Brague’s favorite, which irritates me, is to play the satyr. This pantomime is performed on trolley cars, where my colleague chooses for his victim, now a timid young woman, now an aggressive old maid. He sits down opposite her, slouching grossly; he gives her a lustful stare to make her blush, cough, adjust her veil, and turn her face away. The “satyr’s” stare becomes insistent, lecherously, then all his features, mouth, nostrils, eyebrows contribute toward denoting the special pleasure of a sex fiend . . .

  “It’s an excellent exercise for facial expression!” Brague assures me. “Once they establish a pantomime chair for me in the national school of music and drama, I’ll rehearse it with all my female pupils, together and separately.”

  I laugh, because the poor woman, terror-stricken, never fails to get off the trolley very quickly, but the grimacing perfection of the nasty practical joke gets on my nerves. My body, somewhat strained, undergoes illogical attacks of intolerant chastity, out of which I fall into a brazier, kindled in a second by the memory of a scent, gesture, or amorous cry—a brazier which lights up the pleasures I haven’t felt, and in the flames of which I am consumed, motionless, knees together, as if at the slightest movement I’d risk having my burns spread farther.

  Max . . . He writes me, he’s waiting for me . . . How cruel his trustingness is for me to bear! More cruel to bear than to delude, because I, too, write, I write at length with inexplicable freedom. I write letters on shaky pedestal tables, sitting sidewise on chairs that are too high, I write with one foot shod and the other bare, my paper wedged between the breakfast tray and my open handbag, amid my brushes, perfume bottle, and buttonhook; I write in front of the window that enframes a rear court or the most delightful gardens or vaporous mountains . . . I feel at home amid this disorder of a temporary camp, this no-matter-where and no-matter-how; I feel lighter than I do among my own haunted furniture . . .

  ***

  “How does South America grab you?”

  That bizarre question of Brague’s, yesterday, dropped like a stone into my after-dinner reverie, during that all-too-short hour when I fight off sleep and my distaste for putting on makeup and undressing while I’m just beginning to digest my food.

  “South America? It’s far away.”

  “Lazybones!”

  “You don’t get it, Brague. I said, ‘It’s far away,’ exactly as if saying, ‘It’s beautiful!’”

  “Oh, good! . . . In that case . . . Salomon is feeling me out for a tour in those parts. Well?”

  “Well?”

  “We can think it over?”

  “We can think it over.”

  Neither one of us is the dupe of our feigned nonchalance. I’ve learned, to my cost, never to get my impresario excited about a tour by showing my eagerness to go. On Brague’s part, till further notice he’s careful not to show me the profitability of a deal, for fear of instigating a raise in my percentage of the gross salary.

  South America! Hearing those two words, I was dazzled like an ignorant woman who sees the New World through a shower of magical stars, gigantic flowers, precious gems, and hummingbirds . . . Brazil, Argentina . . . what sparkling names! Margot once told me she was taken there when very small, and my dumbfounded eagerness is fastening onto her description of a spider with a silver belly and a tree covered with fireflies . . .

  Brazil, Argentina, but . . . What about Max?

  What about Max? . . . Since yesterday I’ve been loitering around that question mark. What about Max? What about Max? It’s no longer a thought, it’s a refrain, a sound, a little rhythmic croak that inevitably brings on one of my “fits of vulgarity.” What foulmouthed ancestor is barking in me with this virulence which is not merely one of words, but also one of feelings? I’ve just crumpled up the letter to my sweetheart that I had begun, and I’m swearing under my breath.

  “What about Max? What about Max? Again! How long am I going to find that man underfoot? What about Max? What about Max? So I only exist to worry about that nuisance of a playboy? Truce, Lord, truce! Enough fuss, enough romances, enough wasted time, enough men! My poor woma
n, look at yourself, look at yourself! You aren’t old, far from it, but you’re already a sort of old bachelor. You have the obsessions of one, the grumpiness, the finicky sensitivity—enough to make you suffer, to make yourself unbearable. What are you going to do ‘in that galley’ . . . not even a galley, but a laundry boat, firmly moored to the bank of the Seine, where ancestral clothes are washed? If you were at least capable of carrying on a nice little affair with that tall galoot, for two weeks, three weeks, or two months, and then saying goodbye! We owe each other nothing, we’ve both enjoyed each other . . . When with Taillandy, you should have learned how to leave people flat! . . .”

  And I go on and on . . . I employ a crude, malicious ingenuity in insulting my lover and myself: it’s a sort of game in which I lash myself into saying true things that I don’t believe, or don’t believe yet . . . And this lasts until the moment when I notice that it’s raining cats and dogs: across the street, the roofs are streaming and their gutters overflowing. A long, cold drop rolls down the pane and falls on my hand. Behind me, the hotel room has become black . . . I’d feel cozy leaning on the shoulder of the man I was just insulting, calling him a nuisance of a playboy . . .

  I turn on the ceiling light, and, to keep busy, I risk a temporary ordering of the writing desk; I open the blotter, between the cheval glass and the bouquet of narcissus; I try to achieve some semblance of a home, I wish for some hot tea and toast, for my familiar lamp with its pink shade, the barking of my dog, the voice of my elderly friend Hamond . . . A large white sheet of paper is there, tempting me, and I sit down:

  “Max darling, yes, I’m coming back; I come back a little every day. Can it be true that only twelve nights separate me from you? Nothing is less certain: I feel as if I’ll never see you again . . . How awful that would be! How wise it would be! . . .”

  I stop: isn’t that putting it too clearly? . . . No. Anyway, I wrote “would be,” and a man in love will never take a conditional mood too seriously . . . I can continue in the same reassuring fashion, I can risk melancholy generalizations and timid reservations . . . And since I nevertheless fear some sudden decision that could bring Max here in less than twelve hours, I don’t forget to drown the whole letter in a flood of sweet nothings that, unfortunately, carries me away . . .

  What I’m doing here is a little revolting . . .

  ***

  How time goes by! Where are the Pyrenees with their blossoming cherry trees, the tall austere mountain range that seemed to be following us, sparkling with a snow that makes you thirsty, flecked with vertiginous shadows, split by blue abysses, and speckled with bronze forests? Where are the narrow valleys, the green Spanish grass, and the wild orchids as white as gardenias? Or the little Basque town square where the dark hot chocolate steamed? How distant it is already, the icy torrent, full of mischievous charm, stirred up by the snowmelt, as transparent and milky as moonstones!

  Now we’re leaving Bordeaux after giving five performances in three days:

  “Fine town!” Brague was sighing in the station. “I had myself a little Bordelaise . . . and I don’t mean a mushroom sauce! She was one of those half-pints you find by dozens on the Cours, see? Only so high, with boobs, short legs, small, plump feet, and wearing so much damn mascara and powder, with hair so done up in curls, that I defy you to say whether they’re pretty or not. They glow, they chat, they wiggle . . . they suit me to a T!”

  He was exuding a calm happiness, and I looked at him with a hostility that was a little nauseated, the way I look at people eating when I’m no longer hungry . . .

  The timorous springtime is fleeing before us. It gets younger by the hour, and leaf after leaf, blossom after blossom, close up again as we head north once more. In the sparser shade of the hedges, the April daisies have reappeared, along with the last faded violets . . . The paler blue of the sky, the shorter grass, and a sour dampness in the air create the illusion of being rejuvenated and going backward in time . . .

  If only I could rewind the last few months, back to the winter day when Max first came into my dressing room! . . . When I was small and just learning how to knit, they made me take out rows and rows of stitches till I found the little oversight I hadn’t been aware of, a dropped stitch, which the people in school called “an error” . . . An error, that’s all my poor second romance will have been in my life, that romance which I called my dear warmth, my light . . . It’s here, right near my hand, I can grab it, yet I’m running away . . .

  Because I will run away! A premeditated escape is being organized way down in the depths of me, though I’m not yet taking a direct part in it . . . At the decisive moment, when I shall need merely to call, like a madwoman, “Quick, Blandine, my valise and a taxi!” I shall perhaps be deceived by my confusion, but, dear Max, whom I tried to love, I confess here with the sincerest sorrow: from now on, everything is decided.

  Except for this sorrow, haven’t I become what I used to be once again—that is, free, frightfully alone and free? The transitory grace by which I was touched is withdrawing from me, since I refused to immerse myself in it. Instead of saying to it, “Take me!” I ask it, “What are you giving me? Another self? There is no other myself. Are you giving me a young, ardent, jealous sweetheart who’s sincerely in love with me? I know: that means a master, and I don’t want any more masters . . . He’s kind, he’s frank, he admires me, he’s straightforward? Well, in that case, he’s below me, and it would be a misalliance . . . He awakens me with one glance, and I cease to belong to myself if he puts his lips to mine? In that case, he’s my enemy, the thief who steals me from myself! . . . I’ll have everything, all that money can buy, and I’ll lean over a white terrace overflowing with the roses from my gardens? But it’s from there that I’ll see the true lords of creation passing by: the wanderers! . . . ‘Come back,’ my sweetheart implores me, ‘abandon your profession and the sad shabbiness of the milieu you’re living in; come back to your equals’ . . . I have no equals, I only have fellow wayfarers . . .”

  Windmills are turning on the horizon. In the little stations that the train passes through, the Breton headdresses, the first white headdresses, are flowering like daisies . . . Here I am, entering dazzled into the yellow realm of broom and furze! Gold, copper, vermilion, too—because pale rape plants are mingled in—set these poor heaths aflame with unbearable light. I lean my cheek and my open hands on the windowpane of the railroad car, surprised not to find it warm. We’re riding through a fire, miles and miles of blossoming furze, a desolate treasure that even the goats reject, in which the butterflies, burdened by the warm scent of half-ripe peaches and pepper, flit by on torn wings . . .

  ***

  It’s in Caen, two days before our return home, that I find this letter from Max, one line, without a signature: “My Renée, don’t you love me any more?”

  That’s all. I hadn’t foreseen that gentleness and that very simple question, which thwarts all my literary efforts. What did I write to him last time? . . .

  It hardly matters. If he loves me, it’s not in my letters that he’s read the warning. If he loves me, he’ll be familiar with those mysterious impacts, with that light, maleficent finger which hits you in the heart, those tiny thunderclaps which suddenly freeze a gesture or cut your laughter short—he’ll be aware that betrayal, desertion, and lies strike at a distance; he’ll know the brutality and infallibility of presentiment!

  My poor, poor friend, whom I tried to love! You might have died or cheated on me, and I’d never have known—I, whom the best-concealed infidelity used to wound by telepathy in the past . . .

  “My Renée, don’t you love me any more?” . . . I didn’t burst into passionate tears, but I jotted on a sheet of paper the condensed phrases of a vaguely reassuring telegram:

  “Day after tomorrow, five o’clock, will be home. All my love.”

  In some subtle way I envy that suffering man. I reread his lament, and I speak to that letter as if to him in person, my mouth hard and my eyebrows maliciou
s:

  “You love, you suffer, and you complain! You’re just like me when I was twenty. I’m deserting you and, thanks to me, you may possibly acquire what you now lack. You’re already seeing through walls: doesn’t that surprise you, you big, dense male? A refined nervous system, an innocent and ardent suffering, a hope that grew green again, tenaciously, like a mown meadow, all of that was my lot in life, and now it will be yours. I can’t take it back from you, but I owe you a grudge for it . . .”

  A handful of letters accompany Max’s. Blandine herself writes: “Madame, Monsieur Maxime has brought back Fossette, she has yet another new collar. Monsieur Maxime is asking after Madame, he doesn’t look very happy, you can see he’s been waiting for Madame . . .”

  A letter from Hamond, who speaks simply but writes with almost ceremonious courtesy; a letter from Margot, who has nothing to tell me but fills two leaves with nunlike chitchat: everyone is rushing to write to me, just when I’m coming back, as if their conscience were reproaching them a little for having neglected me for some time . . .

  Whom will I confide in when I’m back? Hamond? Margot? Neither one. I tear up their insubstantial nonsense before leaving the stifling tomb called the “star dressing room” at the Folies-Caennaises, in order to go onstage. We’re in an old-style café chantant: we have to walk through some of the audience to enter the stage; that’s the worst part of the evening. They jostle us, they intentionally block our path to take a longer look at us; my bare arm leaves some powder on a man’s jacket, someone’s hand slyly tugs at my embroidered shawl, furtive fingers grope my hips . . . Our heads high, we endure the contempt and the lust of this overheated crowd, as if we were proud prisoners . . .