BY ANGELA GERST
Oh no, I’m not working…. I do my tapestry and play cards….
—COLETTE, IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND
Colette set aside the Parker pen she’d bought twelve years and a lifetime ago when she could still walk and even dance a few slow steps. Before she reconstructed her story, every event that preceded the murder must be replayed in her mind, starting with that first cold rain.
Paris rain sent signals. Sometimes it sounded like the radio hissing in code, or scratching fingers, or furtive pebbles thrown against a window. That day it had whispered like a ghost with a secret. Ignoring the pain, she’d dragged herself across the divan and opened the glass doors to the balustrade. From the gardens rose a mixed essence of iron and hyacinth, flor-metallica, the kernel of spring. She could almost taste it. Something stirred along her knotted spine, something light and quick.
Far below, umbrellas were popping open all over the Palais Royal. There was the countess Liane unfurling her chartreuse lampshade, fringed no less. Two steps behind, Liane’s dull young husband scuttled after her Pekingese. Hah, the purse, the prince, and the pooch. But Colette’s dry little smile faded when she spotted Jules Roland zagging toward the arcade. A parcel teetered on his palm. Oh, Lord, he’s bringing me lunch. “Quick, Pauline! Roland is coming!”
Her housekeeper appeared in the doorway, thick gray hair slipping from its pins, one cheek slightly puffed, as if a toothache had blossomed. In her hand was the ice pack Colette had insisted she use to keep the swelling down.
The doorbell rang.
“Fast, isn’t he, for an overblown chef?” Colette’s laugh was brightly malicious. “Tell him I’m away, on the high seas with Maurice.”
“But, Madame, you agreed to see him. He telephoned yesterday from the Petit Corsair.”
“Always his restaurant. I may be forgetful, but there’s a sameness about his talk. He condemns his rivals. He denounces the black market. Two notes, both flat.” She reached for her tapestry. “And his madeleines! I’d rather dunk shoes in my coffee. Accept his gift if it looks good, then show him the back of your hand.”
“Eat my supper, sing my song.” Pauline pressed the ice pack to her cheek. “The concierge adores him.”
“Because he feeds her, too.”
The bell rang more sharply this time.
“Madame!”
“All right, bring him in, the fat old bore.” Her laughter erupted again, coarse as a crow’s. Colette had always admired those intelligent birds. “And I’m sure he says the same about me.”
“No one could call you a bore, Madame.”
“Ortolans! In April! You are too kind.”
“No, no. It is you who are kind.” Still in his damp coat, Roland arranged five grilled songbirds on the tray Pauline had set out.
“Cover them. I won’t lunch for an hour yet.” Roland could have his fifteen minutes, but she was damned if she would eat with him. He reeked of mothballs. And that moustache! It made him look like a pimp. She caught his irritated glance. A peevish pimp, with razor scrapes on his neck.
Soundlessly he placed a dome over the birds, his pulpy fingers leaving smears on the silver. Colette tried to imagine those hands caressing her, and from the depths of her soul she, who had savored all that the body offers, shuddered.
“The only ortolans in Paris,” Roland was saying. “Yesterday I bought twenty off a hunter at an outrageous price.” But I bring the best to you, said the silky smile. “I spend Sundays in the country—Barimonde.”
Was that appalling grin an allusion to the well-known fact that she hailed from Saint-Sauveur, a stone’s throw from Barimonde? Were they, God help her, compatriots? From her raft, as she called the divan, she pulled the table closer and picked up her wine. A speck of politeness forced her to offer Roland a glass, too.
He settled into a chair and unbuttoned the coat she had no intention of proposing he remove. “I beg pardon for disturbing you, but I have a favor to ask.” Implicit were the words: And I have been sending you truffles and foie gras and raspberries all through the war and these two years after.
Yes, she thought, Pauline is right. I have indeed eaten Roland’s supper. “If I can help you, I will.”
“Oh, Madame, you’ll be the making of me!” His hands clutched each other—red kitchen scars, larval whiteness. “Raymond Oliver will twist in the wind.”
“If you expect me to injure the greatest chef—”
“I express myself badly. Certainly Oliver is a genius. But the Palais Royal can support two chefs of genius.”
“What do you want from me, Monsieur Roland?”
“Come to my wedding on Saturday.”
Astonishment froze her tongue. Who would marry that moustache? Whoever the woman, Colette knew she herself would be the prize, flaunted like spoils of war. Her name would be yoked to Roland and his restaurant, and Colette well understood the power of her name. The princes of Monaco worshipped her brilliance. Sartre sat at her feet. The press would erupt. Crowds would rush to dine at Petit Corsair. Raymond Oliver would never forgive her.
A stark image cut through her thoughts: her wheelchair. “I leave my apartment only for literary occasions. Ask something else.”
There was no disappointment in Roland’s face. The pimp had anticipated her refusal. “Then may I name my new dessert after you? And, as I am a photographer, may I take a picture of you?”
“Photography, too? Bravo!”
He coughed delicately. “Perhaps eating it?”
His sly eagerness offended her more than his enterprise. Still, one session and it would be over. No public appearance. No wheelchair. And afterward, no more gifts. She would insist on Cartier-Bresson. An amateur’s snapshot must not distort the careful image she presented to the world: wisdom shining from ancient eyes that said, Even wisdom isn’t the end of me.
“Your dessert must have marzipan and meringue,” she improvised. “And cherries.”
“Certainly.” His spongy fingers smoothed that despicable moustache. “One more thing—my bride. May I bring her to meet you? She would be gratified that a woman of such grandeur is my friend.”
The only answer to this was a rude noise. Colette chose silence.
“Gisele is young,” Roland went on in a gluey voice.
“How young?”
“She’ll be eighteen in October.”
“Seventeen, then.”
“But she’s a real woman, tall, intelligent. She has read all your books.”
“All?”
He frowned as if so many questions threatened him.
“How do you know this clever young woman?”
“Her parents are suppliers of mine. The war was hard on them, both sons lost, barns destroyed. Recently I loaned them enough to keep their farms going—no interest until they’re back on their feet. They agree I have much to offer their little Gisele.”
“And little Gisele? How does she feel about marrying her grandfather?”
“Madame! I am only forty-seven! And it’s all the same to Gisele, she said so herself.”
“Well, then. By all means, bring me your bride.”
A satisfied Roland buttoned his coat. As soon as the door hit his heels, Colette lifted the dome and, with a few passes of her knife and fork and her remaining teeth, crunched down the ortolans. Not superb, but quite good, really. And for once Roland hadn’t bored her. After coffee, she settled back with her papers and pen. Tapestry could wait until tomorrow or, if she captured her story, the day after.
Monday ended as it began, on her raft in the rain, her blue lamp burning a hole in the dark. Tuesday washed into Wednesday. The sun came out. All week Colette’s fingers roamed restlessly between her needle and her pen. On Friday Maurice’s telegram arrived at breakfast, which Pauline served with a scarf tied around her swollen face.
“He’ll be home in seven weeks.” Colette passed her the telegram, but Pauline was in too much pain to read it. “And if you don’t get to the dentist I’ll pul
l that tooth myself.” She clacked the sugar tongs at Pauline.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Idiot! Today the abscess bursts and tomorrow you’re dead of blood poisoning.” Colette snatched up the telephone and arranged for Dr. Delibert to see Pauline at eleven.
“But your lunch—”
“Ask Madame Boyer to bring me some little thing. She can take care of dinner, too. By the time Delibert gets through with you, you’ll need a month in the country.”
“Oh, please stop!”
“Just teasing, my dear. Delibert is an artist.”
Madame Boyer poked her frizzy orange head around the door. “I’ve brought you an omelet and a few early radishes.” Although the concierge insisted she couldn’t linger, she accepted a glass of wine.
Colette ate quickly, running bread around her plate to capture whatever her fork had missed. “Wonderful! You’re a subtler cook than most professionals—Roland, for example.” Her praise was meant to inspire. She didn’t want another omelet for supper.
“Roland is an assassin.”
“True, his coulibiac smacks of murder.” Colette recalled Roland’s attempt, as soggy as a wet sock. “But when he cooks simply—baked foie gras, grilled ortolans—the goodness comes through. Roland knows what’s good, give him that. When he finds it he twitches like a divining rod. That child bride had better—”
Madame Boyer stood up. “I can’t stay.”
“Finish your wine. Nobody expects you to be on duty every minute.”
“Nobody expects anything of me.” She dropped back into the chair, her eyes too bright for that little bit of wine she’d dipped her beak in.
“A man?”
Boyer nodded.
“Not…”
“Roland. Yes. We were to be married when I’d saved enough to invest in his restaurant. He’s expanding. I was to take charge of his staff.” She began to moan. “And now he’s thrown me over for a—a pissant!”
“Pull yourself together! You’re not the first woman tossed aside by a man. Have you given him money?”
The orange head jerked up. “Are you mad?”
“It’s purely an affair of the heart?”
This triggered an explosion of sobs, so unbecoming in a woman Boyer’s age, at least forty, and a widow to boot. Colette herself had never shed a public tear. Not when Willy left. Not when he sold her rights to the Claudines. For a sou. Not when her mother died. She topped up Boyer’s glass. There was no wine for omelets or broken dreams. This soft Vouvray would have to do. “Tell me about it,” she said, indulging her avidity, her fever to know, which still raged after seventy-four years of probing the universe. Perhaps Boyer had something new to add to the annals of inconstant love.
It took half an hour, but in the end, out came the same old story: Who gives most is drained and abandoned. Colette stifled her yawn. The ardent concierge would survive, even thrive; she was already planning her own bistro on the cheaper side of the Palais.
By Sunday afternoon Pauline had recovered enough to serve coffee and those incomparable napoleons when the countess dropped by with her Pekingese. At sixty-five, her years eased by couture, spas, balms, Liane was the youngest and richest of Colette’s friends from her music hall days.
“Where’s Henri?” Colette inquired.
“Communing with his horse. Day and night he rides in the Bois. Alone. My spine can’t take it anymore.” Boredom filled every powdered line in Liane’s face. Only the jewels on her fingers winked with life.
“Spend more time on your back,” Colette advised. “In the old days how you loved the jab of a man’s spur.”
“Pain, joy. Who can tell them apart? Right, Topaz?” The countess leaned toward the dog at her feet and stroked his throat until his liquid eyes drooped.
If age sat lightly on Liane, Colette’s years were impossible to hide. Passive resistance was all she could muster: scarves, lipstick, the warmth of her intelligent eyes. Not that time had diminished her essence. Her grip was strong, her hair as lively as bedsprings. And, as she had informed Marcel Proust fifty years ago, her soul was stuffed with red beans and bacon rind.
“Now, this is joy.” Liane dug into the golden crust. “Roland is a genius.”
“Wrong.” Colette loved to contradict countesses. “Raymond Oliver made the napoleons.” As any gastronome could tell. But Liane’s forte was jewelry. In food as in men she had no taste at all.
“Those two. Always sending me treats.” Pastry cream clung to Liane’s lips. “Though I prefer Roland’s. He’s better looking than Oliver.”
“With that moustache? Ugh. He got married yesterday, poor girl.”
“Married? The rascal never said a word!” Liane waved a hand, airy as a silk scarf, and her sleeve fell back, exposing a gold bracelet six inches wide and studded with rubies.
Colette couldn’t tear her eyes away. “What a glorious cuff! It has a sado-maso quality I adore. Let me try it on.”
Liane’s arm stayed just out of Colette’s reach. “It brings bad luck. It belonged to a Gypsy, who sold it to a princess, who sold it to me. Only the owner can wear it.”
“That magnificent clasp! A fish?”
“Mermaid, and put down your hand. Even a touch brings grief. Speaking of which”—Liane covered her arm—“how long will your dear husband be away?”
“Too long.” Colette explained that Maurice was promoting her books in the world’s richest land, “now that Europe has again reduced itself to ashes.”
“My darling Colette”—Liane helped herself to more coffee—“nobody reads in America.”
“Oh, but there are so many of them, even nobody is ten thousand.”
Nights, Colette worked on her story, writing and rewriting, never closing on the end. Like her long-ago cats, she slept in snatches. Every morning from her window she watched the day break, earlier and earlier as the equinox drew near. She could set her clock by who was moving below: the dairyman at five-thirty, followed twenty minutes later by Madame Boyer with her market basket. At an unfashionable seven, Liane’s Henri left for the Bois in his riding clothes. At eight, around the time the concierge staggered home under the weight of those endless cabbages, Colette had her first cup of coffee and a slice of bread. Page by page, the days passed. Outside, the gardens grew tender and hazy, with shoots of penstemon rising like dark green exclamation points at the ends of pastel sentences.
Three weeks after his ortolan visit, Roland introduced the bride to the monument. “My wife is a compatriot of yours, Madame.”
Gisele was taller than her husband and self-conscious in her blue and white Sunday best. A rash on her chin marred her prettiness, but cornflower eyes lay shyly in her oval face, and when she said, “Proud to meet you, I’m sure,” her rolling rs were pure Burgundy.
Colette used her tenderest voice. “What village, my dear?”
“Barimonde.” In Gisele’s mouth, the word sounded as final as death.
“Ah, yes. Me, I left Saint-Sauveur half a century ago. For this!” Colette swept an arm toward the glass doors. “Tell me, Gisele, does Paris please you?”
Shrug.
“The gardens?”
“Very small.”
“You like animals?” Not many farm girls did.
Shrug.
“But you’ve read my Barks and Purrs?”
“It was required at school.”
At her nape, held there by tiny combs, Gisele wore a twisted braid thick enough to uncoil to her heels, exactly like Colette’s when she first came to Paris, a barely fledged country bride on the arm of potbellied, middle-aged Willy.
It was the braid that decided her. She would win over this raw young compatriot, who couldn’t possibly love her husband. Perhaps she could smooth the girl’s way, help her discover that love wasn’t everything, or even necessary. Although at twenty, hadn’t she been deeply in love with Willy? Love was important starting out. Love launched one. Well, she would do what she could.
“Never mind tea,” she sai
d to Pauline, who had rattled in with a tray. “We want chocolates and champagne. Use the etched glasses.”
Vintage Clicquot and sweets lightened Roland at least. He devoured nougatines and proposed endless toasts: to his magnificent friend, to his obedient bride, to his new dessert, to his restaurant. By the time he reached la France! his cheeks had pinked up. A jolly pimp today.
They discussed Cerises Colette, the fabled dessert, and Colette laid down conditions—a new dress for herself, a travel allowance for Cartier-Bresson—and while they settled the details, Gisele munched handfuls of hazelnut brittle and guzzled champagne. Later Colette played piano, music hall tunes easy on her fingers. To her surprise, the country bride played, too, a few pieces by Schumann.
When long shadows filled the gardens and the fountain lights flickered on, Pauline brought the coats.
“Will you visit me again?” Colette asked.
Roland beamed. “With pleasure.”
“Not you. Your wife, when you’re busy in your restaurant. She’ll be lonely then.”
“I’m supposed to help in the kitchen,” Gisele said.
Colette turned a hard eye on Roland, who was sliding Gisele’s coat over her shoulders. “Monsieur Roland! Your wife is not a galley slave. Her music needs work. And books! This is Paris. She must keep up. I myself will be happy to read with her of an afternoon.”
Gisele frowned. “I don’t want—”
Roland squeezed her elbow so tightly she gasped. The scars on his hand burned red at the bone. “My wife will be pleased to visit whenever you call.”
Twice that week Colette and Gisele met over coffee and chocolates. Gisele stuffed herself but refused to play the piano again because “it makes me sad.”
When Colette talked about Willy or her famous friends, Gisele listened with unfeigned interest, but if books were brought out, or even the newspaper, she stared at the windows. “I have never enjoyed reading,” she said blithely to the only woman ever elected to the Academy Goncourt.
“You must read more. Reading leads to reading. There’s a novel you’d enjoy—The Irish Harp by Germaine Beaumont. It’s a grand Gothic romance of the sort I would write if only I could. On the second shelf.”
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