by Colette
‘Love in the Night or anything else. It doesn’t matter what.’
She hesitated, then refused.
‘Let me listen to the jazz . . . even from here you can hear it’s simply marvellous.’
He did not insist. He restrained his impatience and mastered the tingling which had now spread over his entire body.
A swarm of gay little suns, revolving brightly against the darkness, took flight. Alain secretly confronted them with the constellations of his favourite dreams.
‘Those are the ones to remember. I’ll try and take them with me down there,’ he noted gravely. ‘I’ve neglected my dreams too much.’ At last, in the sky over the Folie, there rose and expanded a kind of straying pink and yellow dawn which burst into vermilion discs and fiery ferns and ribbons of blinding metal.
The shouts of children on the lower balconies greeted this miraculous display. By its light, Alain saw Camille absent and remote, absorbed in other lights in her own mind.
As soon as the night closed in again, his hesitation vanished and he slipped his own bare arm under Camille’s. As he touched that bare arm, he fancied he could see it; its whiteness hardly tinged by the summer and clothed in a fine down that lay flat on the skin, reddish-brown on the forearm, paler near the shoulder.
‘You’re cold,’ he murmured. ‘You’re not feeling ill?’
She began to cry very quietly and so promptly that Alain suspected she had been preparing her tears.
‘No. It’s you. It’s you who . . . who don’t love me.’
He leant back against the wall and drew Camille against his hip. He could feel her trembling, and cold from her shoulders to her knees, bare above her rolled stockings. She clung to him faithfully, leaning all her weight on him.
‘Aha, so I don’t love you. Right! Is this another jealousy scene on account of Saha?’
He felt a muscular tremor run through the whole of the body he was supporting, a renewal of energy and self-defence. Encouraged by the moment, by a kind of indescribable opportunism, he insisted: ‘Instead of adopting this charming animal, like me. Are we the only young couple who have a cat or a dog? Would you like a parrot or a marmoset – a pair of doves – a dog, to make me very jealous in my turn?’
She shook her shoulders, protesting with annoyance through closed lips. With his head high, Alain carefully controlled his own voice and egged himself on. ‘Go on, a few more bits of nonsense; fill her up and we’ll get somewhere. She’s like a jar that I’ve got to turn upside down to empty. Go on. Go on.’
‘Would you like a little lion . . . or a baby crocodile of barely fifty? No? Come on, you’d much better adopt Saha. If you’d just take the least bit of trouble, you’d soon see . . .’
Camille wrenched herself out of his arms so violently that he staggered.
‘No!’ she cried. ‘That, never! Do you hear me? Never!’
‘Ah, now we’ve got it!’ Alain said to himself with delight. He pushed Camille into the room, pulled down the outer blind, lit up the rectangle of glass in the ceiling, and shut the window. With an animal movement, Camille rushed over to the window and Alain opened it again.
‘On condition you don’t scream,’ he said.
He wheeled the only armchair up to Camille and sat astride on the solitary chair at the foot of the wide, turned-down bed with its new, clean sheets. The oilcloth curtains, drawn for the night, gave a greenish cast to Camille’s pale face and her creased white dress.
‘Well?’ began Alain. ‘No compromise possible? Appalling story? Either her or me?’
She answered with a brief nod and Alain realized that he must drop his bantering tone.
‘What do you want me to say?’ he went on, after a silence. ‘The only thing I don’t want to say to you? You know very well I’ll never give up this cat. I should be ashamed to. Ashamed in myself and ashamed before her.’
‘I know,’ said Camille.
‘And before you,’ Alan finished.
‘Oh, me!’ said Camille, raising her hand.
‘You count too,’ said Alain hardly. ‘Tell me. Is it only me you’ve anything against? You’ve no reproach against Saha except her affection for me?’
She answered only with a troubled, hesitant look and he was irritated at having to go on questioning her. He had thought that a short violent scene would force all the issues; he had relied on this easy way out. But, after her one cry, Camille had stiffened defensively and was furnishing no fuel for a quarrel. He resorted to patience: ‘Tell me, my dear. What is it? Mustn’t I call you my dear? Tell me, if it were a question of another cat and not Saha, would you be so intolerant?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she said very quickly. ‘You wouldn’t love it as much as that one.’
‘Quite true,’ said Alain with loyal accuracy.
‘Even a woman,’ went on Camille, beginning to get heated, ‘you probably wouldn’t love a woman as much as that.’
‘Quite true,’ said Alain.
‘You’re not like most people who are fond of animals. No, you’re not. Patrick’s fond of animals. He takes big dogs by the scruff of their necks and rolls them over. He imitates cats to see the faces they make – he whistles to the birds.’
‘Quite. In other words, he’s not difficult,’ said Alain.
‘But you’re quite different. You love Saha.’
‘I’ve never pretended not to. But I wasn’t lying to you, either, when I said to you: “Saha’s not your rival.”’
He broke off and lowered his eyelids over his secret which was a secret of purity.
‘There are rivals and rivals,’ said Camille sarcastically.
Suddenly she reddened. Flushed with sudden intoxication, she advanced to Alain.
‘I saw the two of you!’ she almost shrieked. ‘In the morning, when you spend the night on your little divan. Before daybreak. I’ve seen you, both of you.’
She pointed a shaking hand towards the balcony.
‘Sitting there, the two of you . . . you didn’t even hear me! You were like that, cheek to cheek.’
She went over to the window, recovered her breath and marched down on Alain again.
‘It’s for you to say honestly whether I’m wrong in being jealous of this cat and wrong in suffering.’
He kept silence so long that she became angry again.
‘Do speak! Do say something! At the point we’ve got to . . . What are you waiting for?’
‘The sequel,’ said Alain. ‘The rest.’
He stood up quietly, bent over his wife, and lowered his voice as he indicated the french window: ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You threw her over?’
With a swift movement she put the bed between herself and him but she did not deny it. He watched her escape with a kind of smile: ‘You threw her over,’ he said dreamily. ‘I felt very definitely that you’d changed everything between us. You threw her over . . . she broke her claws trying to clutch on to the wall.’
He lowered his head, imagining the attempted murder.
‘But how did you throw her over? By holding her by the skin of her neck? By taking advantage of her being asleep on the parapet? Had you been planning this for a long time? You hadn’t had a fight with each other first?’
He raised his head and stared at Camille’s hands and arms.
‘No, you’ve no marks. She accused you well and truly, didn’t she, when I made you touch her. She was magnificent.’
His eyes left Camille and embraced the night, the dust of stars, the tops of the three poplars which the lights in the room lit up.
‘Very well,’ he said simply, ‘I’m going away.’
‘Oh listen . . . do listen . . .’ Camille implored wildly, almost in a whisper.
Nevertheless, she let him go out of the room. He opened cupboards, talked to the cat in the bathroom. The sound of his footsteps warned Camille that he had changed into his outdoor shoes and she looked, automatically, at the time. He came in again, carrying Saha in a bulging basket which Mme Buque used
for shopping. Hurriedly dressed, with his hair dishevelled and a scarf round his neck, his untidiness so much suggested that of a lover that Camille’s eyelids pricked. But she heard Saha moving in the basket and tightened her lips.
‘As you see, I’m going away,’ repeated Alain. He lowered his eyes, lifted the basket a trifle, and corrected himself with calculated cruelty. ‘We’re going away.’
He secured the wicker lid, explaining as he did so: ‘This was all I could find in the kitchen.’
‘You’re going to your home?’ inquired Camille, forcing herself to imitate Alain’s calm.
‘But of course.’
‘Are you . . . can I count on seeing you during the next few days?’
‘Why, certainly.’
Surprise made her weaken again. She had to make an immense effort not to plead, not to weep.
‘What about you?’ said Alain. ‘Will you stay here alone tonight? You won’t be frightened? If you insisted, I’d stay, but . . .’
He turned his head towards the balcony.
‘But, frankly, I’m not keen on it. What do you propose to say to your family?’
Hurt at his sending her, by implication, home to her people, Camille pulled herself together.
‘I’ve nothing to say to them. These are things which only concern me, I presume. I’ve no inclination for family councils.’
‘I entirely agree with you . . . provisionally.’
‘Anyway, we can decide as from tomorrow.’
He raised his free hand to ward off this threat of a future.
‘No. Not tomorrow. Today there isn’t any tomorrow.’
In the doorway, he turned back.
‘In the bathroom, you’ll find my key and all the money we’ve got here.’
She interrupted with irony: ‘Why not a hamper of provisions and a compass?’
She was putting on a brave act and surveyed him with one hand on her hip and her head erect on her handsome neck. ‘She’s building up my exit,’ thought Alain. He wanted to reply with some similar last-minute coquetry, to toss his hair over his forehead and give her that narrowed look between his lashes which seemed to disdain what it rested on. But he renounced a pantomime which would look absurd when he was carrying a shopping-basket and confined himself to a vague bow in Camille’s direction.
She kept up her expression of bravado and her theatrical stance. But before he went out, he could see more clearly, at a distance, the dark circles round her eyes and the moisture which covered her temples and her smooth, unlined neck.
Downstairs, he crossed the street automatically, the key of the garage in his hand. ‘I can’t do that,’ he thought and he retraced his steps towards the avenue some way off where cruising taxis could be picked up at night. Saha mewed two or three times and he calmed her with his voice. ‘I can’t do that. But it really would be much pleasanter to take the car. Neuilly is impossible at night.’ He was surprised, having counted on a blessed sense of release, to find himself losing his composure as soon as he was alone. Walking did not restore his calm. When, at last, he found a stray taxi, the five-minute drive seemed almost interminable.
He shivered in the warm night under the gas-jet, waiting for the gate to be opened. Saha, who had recognized the smell of the garden, was giving short sharp mews in the basket which he had put down on the pavement.
The scent of the wistarias in their second flowering came across the air and Alain shivered more violently, stamping from one foot to the other as if it were bitterly cold. He rang again but the house gave no sign of life in spite of the solemn, scandalous clamour of the big bell. At last a light appeared in the little buildings by the garage and he heard old Émile’s dragging feet on the gravel.
‘It’s me, Émile,’ he said when the colourless face of the old valet peered through the bars.
‘Monsieur Alain?’ said Émile, exaggerating his quavering voice. ‘Monsieur Alain’s young lady isn’t indisposed? The summer is so treacherous. Monsieur Alain has some luggage, I see.’
‘No, it’s Saha. Leave her, I’ll carry her. No, don’t turn up the gas-lamps, the light might wake Madame. Just open the front door for me and go back to bed.’
‘Madame is awake – it was she who rang for me. I hadn’t heard the big bell. In my first sleep, you see.’
Alain hurried ahead to escape Émile’s chatter and the sound of his shaky footsteps following him. He did not stumble at the turnings of the paths though there was no moon that night. The great lawn, paler than the flowerbeds, guided him. The dead, draped tree in the middle of the grass looked like a huge standing man with his coat over his arm. The smell of watered geraniums made Alain’s throat tighten and he stopped. He bent down, opened the basket with groping fingers, and released the cat.
‘Saha, our garden.’
He felt her glide out of the basket and, from pure tenderness, took no more notice of her. Like an offering, he gave her back the night, her liberty, the soft spongy earth, the wakeful insects, and the sleeping birds.
Behind the shutters on the ground floor, a lighted lamp was waiting and Alain’s spirits fell again. ‘To have to talk again, to have to explain to my mother . . . explain what? It’s so simple. It’s so difficult.’
All he longed for was silence, the room with the faded flowers on the wallpaper, his bed, and, above all, for vehement tears; great sobs as raucous as coughs that would be his secret, guilty compensation.
‘Come in, darling, come in.’
He seldom went into his mother’s room. His selfish aversion to medicine bottles and droppers, boxes of digitalis pills and homoeopathic remedies dated from childhood and was as acute as ever. But he could not resist the sight of the narrow, unadorned bed and of the woman with the thick white hair who was heaving herself up on her wrists.
‘You know, Mother, there’s nothing extraordinary about all this.’
He accompanied this idiotic statement with a smile of which he was promptly ashamed; a horizontal, stiff-cheeked smile. His tiredness had overwhelmed him in the sudden rush, making him do and say the exact opposite of what he meant to. He sat down by his mother’s bedside and loosened his scarf.
‘Forgive my appearance. I came just as I was. I arrive at preposterous times without giving you warning.’
‘But you did give me warning,’ said Mme Amparat.
She glanced at Alain’s dusty shoes.
‘Your shoes look like a tramp’s.’
‘I’ve only come from my place, Mother. But it was a long time before I could find a taxi. I was carrying the cat.’
‘Ah,’ said Mme Amparat, with an understanding look. ‘You’ve brought back the cat?’
‘Yes, of course. If you knew . . .’
He stopped, restrained by an odd discretion. ‘These are things one doesn’t tell. These stories aren’t for parents.’
‘Camille’s not very fond of Saha, Mother.’
‘I know,’ said Mme Amparat.
She forced herself to smile and shook her wavy hair.
‘That’s extremely serious!’
‘Yes. For Camille,’ said Alain spitefully.
He got up and paced about among the furniture. It had white covers on it for the summer like the furniture in houses in the provinces. Having made up his mind not to denounce Camille, he could find nothing more to say.
‘You know, Mother, there haven’t been any screams or smashing of crockery. The glass dressing-table’s still intact and the neighbours haven’t come rushing up. Only I just need a little . . . a little time to be by myself . . . to rest. I won’t hide it from you. I’m at the end of my tether,’ he said, seating himself on the bed.
‘No. You don’t hide it from me,’ said Mme Amparat. She laid a hand on Alain’s forehead, turning up the young face, on which the pale stubble was beginning to show, towards the light. He complained, turning his changeable eyes away, and succeeded in holding off a little longer the storm of tears he had promised himself.
‘If there aren’t any sheets
on my old bed, Mother, I’ll wrap myself up in any old thing.’
‘There are sheets on your bed,’ said Mme Amparat.
At that, he threw his arms round his mother and kissed her blindly on her eyes and cheeks and hair. He thrust his face into her neck, stammered ‘Good-night’ and went out of the room, sniffing.
In the hall, he pulled himself together and did not go upstairs at once. The night which was ending called to him and so did Saha. But he did not go far. The steps down into the garden were far enough. He sat down on one of them in the darkness and his outstretched hand encountered the fur, the sensitive antennae-like whiskers, and the cool nostrils of Saha.
She turned round and round on one spot according to the ritual of wild creatures when they caress. She seemed very small to him and light as a kitten. Because he was hungry himself, he thought she must be needing food.
“We’ll eat tomorrow . . . quite soon now . . . it’s almost daylight.’
Already she smelt of mint and geranium and box. He held her there, trusting and perishable, promised, perhaps, ten years of life. And he suffered at the thought of the briefness of so great a love.
‘After you, probably anyone can have me who wants me. A woman, many women. But never another cat.’
A blackbird whistled four notes that rang through the whole garden. But the sparrows had heard it and answered. On the lawn and the massed flowerbeds, faint ghosts of colour began to appear. Alain could make out a sickly white, a dull red more melancholy than black itself, a yellow smeared on the surrounding green, a round yellow flower which began to revolve and become more yellow and was followed by eyes and moons. Staggering, dropping with sleep, Alain reached his room, threw off his clothes, uncovered the bed, and was unconscious almost as soon as he had slipped between the cool sheets.
Lying on his back with one arm flung out and the cat, silent and concentrated, kneading his shoulder, he was falling straight like a plummet into the very depths of sleep when a start brought him back to the daylight, the swaying of the awakened trees, and the blessed clanging of the distant trams.