by Colette
‘They’re not diversions.’
‘Call them nightmares, if you like, but my remark holds good. Where have you been wandering all the morning, my bird?’
‘I’d like to go to the country,’ I said, upon reflection.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed in consternation. ‘Claudine! Just look!’
He raised the curtain; a deluge was streaming down on the roofs and overflowing gutters.
‘This morning dew whetted your appetite for it? Conjure up dirty water running all over the ground, the bottom of your skirt clinging to your ankles; think of cold drops dripping off the lobes of your ears . . .’
‘I am thinking of it. You’ve never understood the first thing about country rain, about sabots that go “sluck” when they leave their wet imprints. Or about the rough hood with a bead of water stuck on the end of every woolly hair, the pointed hood that makes a little house for your face that you snuggle into and laugh . . . Of course, the cold stings, but you warm your thighs with two pocketfuls of hot chestnuts and you wear thick, knitted gloves.’
‘Don’t go on! My teeth are on edge at the thought of woollen gloves rasping against the ends of my finger-nails! If you want to see your Montigny again, if you’ve really set your heart on it as much as all that, if it’s a “last wish”’ . . . (he sighed) . . . ‘we’ll go.’
No, we won’t go. Talking out loud, I had sincerely found myself thinking the words I was saying. But that morning, I was not tormented by regret for Fresnois; my silence was not due to homesickness. There was something else on my mind.
It was that . . . that hostilities had commenced and that, confronted with Rézi’s amorous treachery, I found myself irresolute, without any plan of defence.
I had gone to see her at five o’clock, because, at the moment, half my life is spent in her company. And this enrages me and fascinates me and I can do nothing about it.
I found her all alone, roasting herself at a fire like the fires of hell. The glare from the hearth seemed to glow right through her, turning her tousled hair into a halo of pink flames, blurring the lines of her figure to a haze of coppery red and the crimson of molten metal. She smiled at me without getting up and held out her arms to me so lovingly that I took fright and only kissed her once.
‘All alone, Rézi?’
‘No. I was with you.’
‘With me . . . and who else?’
‘With you . . . and me. I don’t want anything more. But it isn’t enough for you, I realize that.’
‘You’re wrong, darling.’
She shook her head with a swaying movement that rippled right down to her feet, tucked in under a low pouffe. And the gentle, dreamy face, where the bright flame carved two dimples of shadow at the corners of the mouth, looked long and searchingly into mine.
So, it had come to a head! And was that all I could find to say? Couldn’t I, before letting her overwhelm me and permeate herself with me, have had it out with her, clearly and explicitly? Rézi was not a Luce whom you could beat, who would leave you in peace for twenty-four hours if you smacked her. It was my fault; it was all my fault . . .
She gazed up at me sadly and thoughtfully and said, hardly above a whisper:
‘Oh, Claudine, why are you so suspicious of me? When I sit close to you, I always find a defensive leg, stiff as a chair-leg, thrust out under your skirt to stop me coming nearer. It’s unkind of me, Claudine, to think you have to put up a physical defence! Have I ever let my mouth make one of these deliberate mistakes, pretending afterwards I was in such a hurry or it was so dark I couldn’t be sure where your face was? You’ve treated me like a . . . a diseased person, like a . . . a professional, whose hands you keep watching, who makes you self-conscious about your every movement . . .’
She stopped and waited. I said nothing. She went on, with a more tender approach:
‘My dear, my dear. Is this really you, the intelligent, sensitive Claudine who’s setting these conventional limits to love? They’re so ridiculous!’
‘Ridiculous?’
‘Yes, there’s no other word. You’re my friend; you’ve only to kiss me here and here. You’re my lover; you can kiss me wherever you like.’
‘Rézi . . .’
She checked my incipient gesture.
‘Oh, don’t be frightened! There’s nothing of that sort between us. But I wish, dear, that you’d stop hurting me and setting your modesty up in arms against me, because I don’t deserve it. Be fair to me,’ she implored (she had crept closer to me without my noticing it, with an invisible, snakelike slither). ‘What is it about my fondness for you that puts you on the defensive?’
‘Your thoughts,’ I said in a low voice.
She was close to me, close enough for me to feel the warmth she had received from the fire radiating on my cheek.
‘Then I ask your forgiveness,’ she whispered, ‘for an affection too strong for me to disguise . . .’
She seemed docile, almost resigned. My breath, that I drew more slowly so that she should not guess I was in the least disturbed, brought me her smell of overheated silk and iris, a smell even sweeter because she had raised her arm to smooth the golden coil on her nape . . . What could stop me from losing my head? . . . Pride restrained me from trumping up some obvious excuse to make a diversion. Rézi sighed and stretched her arms . . . Her husband had just come in, in that silent, indiscreet way of his.
‘What, no light yet, Rézi, my dear?’ he said with apparent astonishment, after he had shaken her hands.
‘Oh, don’t ring!’ I begged, without waiting for Rézi to answer. ‘It’s the time I love, the hour between the dog and the wolf, as we say in France.’
‘It strikes me as considerably nearer the wolf than the dog,’ that insupportable man replied very quietly.
Rézi, obstinately silent, followed him with a look of black hatred. He walked away with an even tread, entered the zone of shadow in the open doorway of the great drawing-room and continued his promenade. His measured step brought him back to us, right in front of the fire that lit up his hard face and opaque eyes from below. Having come within six inches of me, he made a military half-turn and walked away again.
I remained seated, not knowing what to do.
Rézi’s eyes became diabolical; she calculated her spring . . . Rearing up with a swift, silent movement, she pounced on me, mastering me with a fantastically soft mouth and an arm round my neck. Above my own, her wide-open eyes listened to the retreating footsteps and her free hand, held high, marked the rhythm of her husband’s walk and of the quivering of her own lips that seemed to be counting my heart-beats: one, two, three, four, five . . . Like a snapped link, the embrace broke off; Lambrook turned round; Rézi was once again sitting at my feet, apparently seeing pictures in the fire.
In my indignation, my surprise, my anxiety about the real risk she had just run, I could not suppress a shuddering sigh and a cry of distress.
‘You were saying, dear lady?’
‘Why, dear sir, only that you must throw me out at once! It’s appallingly late . . . Renaud must be looking for me in the Morgue!’
‘I flatter myself that he would look for you here first.’
I could have hit that man!
‘Rézi . . . good-bye . . .’
‘See you tomorrow, darling?’
‘Yes. Till then.’
And that is why Claudine was so pensive this morning, as she cut the toenails of her right foot.
Cowardly Rézi! The expertness of her gesture; the abuse she made of my discretion, knowing she could rely on it; the unforgettable perfection of the perilous kiss, all that yesterday plunged me into deep and heavy thoughts. And Renaud thought I was depressed. Doesn’t he know then, will he never know, that in my eyes, desire, vivid and recent regret and sensual pleasure are all invariably tinged with sombre hues?
Lying Rézi! Liar! Two minutes before the assault of her kiss, her humble, sincere voice had been reassuring me, telling me how hurt she was by my unjust suspicio
n. Liar!
In my innermost self, the suddenness of her trap pleaded in her favour. This Rézi, who had complained that I might at least have appreciated her restraint, had not been afraid to reverse her decision all at once, to risk my anger and the jealousy of that hollow Colossus.
Which does she love better, danger or me?
Me, perhaps? Once again, I saw that animal spring of the loins, that thirsty gesture that flung her on my mouth . . . No, I would not go and see her today!
‘Are you going out, Renaud? Will you take me with you?’
‘With the greatest joy in the world, my charming child! Is Rézi engaged elsewhere, then?’
‘Leave Rézi out of it. I want to go out with you.’
‘A quarrel, already?’
I answered only with a gesture of fending something off and sweeping it away. He did not insist. Gracious as a loving woman, he hurried through his shopping in half an hour to rejoin me in the carriage – a hired coupé, a little shabby but well sprung – and drove me to Pépette’s to drink tea and eat cheesecakes and lettuce and herring sandwiches . . . We were sitting there all warm and cosy, saying silly things to each other like a badly behaved young married couple . . . when my appetite and gaiety vanished simultaneously. Staring at a sandwich I had just bitten into, I had run up against a tiny, already distant memory.
One day, at Rézi’s (it was barely two months ago) I had left a piece of toast, out of which I had bitten a half-moon-shaped slice . . . We were chatting and I did not notice Rézi’s hand shyly and deftly steal that nibbled toast . . . But, all at once, I saw her fiercely biting it and enlarging the crescent marked by my teeth, and she realized that I had seen her. She blushed, and tried to save the situation by saying: ‘Aren’t I shockingly greedy!’ That tiny incident, why did it rise up and trouble me at that moment? Suppose she were really unhappy because I hadn’t come?
‘Claudine! Hi, Claudine.’
‘What?’
‘But, my dear, this is a positive illness! There, there, my poor bird, the moment the fine weather comes, we’ll go spanking off to Montigny, to your noble father, to Fanchette and Mélie! . . . I don’t want to see you glooming like that, my precious child.’
I smiled at dear Renaud in an ambiguous way that did not reassure him in the least, and we returned home on foot in weather muggy after rain and with roads and pavements so greasy that horses and pedestrians staggered and slid with the same drunken unsteadiness.
At home, an express letter awaited me:
‘Claudine, I implore you, forget, forget! Come back, so that I can explain, if such a thing needs to be explained. It was a game, a bit of teasing, a wild desire to fool that person who kept on walking about so close to us and whose steps on the carpet exasperated me . . .’
What? Could I really believe my eyes? So, according to her, it was to fool ‘that person who kept on walking about’? But I was the stupid idiot who had been fooled! ‘A bit of teasing’? She would see if I could be teased in that sort of way with impunity!
My fury writhed inside me like a kitten sucking the teat; savage plans of revenge rushed through my mind . . . I refused to admit how much disappointment and jealousy there was in my rage . . . Renaud caught me unawares with the little blue letter open in my hands.
‘Aha! She’s given in? Splendid! Remember this, Claudine, it must always be the other who gives in!’
‘You have such brilliant insight!’
My tone made him realize that I was in a stormy mood and he became anxious.
‘Come now, what’s happened? Anything you can tell me? I’m not asking for details.’
‘Nothing to tell! You’re right off the track. We’ve had a quarrel and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Would you like me to go round there and try to straighten things out?’
My poor, big man! His kindness and his unawareness relaxed me and I flung my arms round his neck with a laugh that had a touch of a sob in it.
‘No, no. I’ll go tomorrow. Calm yourself!’
‘A bit of teasing!’
A remnant of common sense checked my hand as I was on the point of ringing Rézi’s doorbell. But I know that common sense, because it is my own particular brand; it allows me, precisely one minute before fatal blunders, to enjoy the lucid pleasure of telling myself: ‘This is a fatal blunder.’ Forewarned, I hurry on serenely towards disaster, steadied, like a ship well down in the water, by a reassuring load of total responsibility.
‘Is Madame at home?’
‘Madame is not very well, but she will be delighted to see Madame.’
Not very well? Hmmm! Not ill enough to stop me from saying what I intended to say! Anyway, all the better; it would make her feel worse. ‘A game!’ A game two people could play . . .
She was as white as her crêpe-de-Chine dress, her eyes ringed with a mauve border that made them look blue. Slightly startled and moved, furthermore, by her grace and the look she gave me, I stood still:
‘Rézi, are you really ill?’
‘No; not now I see you.’
I gave a rude shrug. Then I was utterly taken aback. For, seeing my sarcastic smile, she was suddenly beside herself with rage.
‘You can laugh? Get out of here, if you want to laugh!’
Knocked off my high horse by this sudden violence, I tried to get into the saddle:
‘You surprise me, my dear. I thought you had such a sense of humour, with your taste for games, for rather elaborate bits of teasing.’
‘You did? You believed what I said? It isn’t true. I lied when I wrote to you, out of pure cowardice, so as to see you again, because I can’t do without you, but . . .’
Her eagerness melted into incipient tears.
‘. . . but it wasn’t a joke, Claudine!’
She waited, fearfully, for what I would say and was frightened by my silence. She did not know that everything in me was fluttering in wild confusion, like a nest of agitated birds, and that I was flooded with joy . . . Joy at being loved and hearing myself told so, a miser’s joy at a treasure lost and recovered, victorious pride to feel I was something more than an exciting toy. It was the triumphant downfall of my feminine decency. I realized that . . . But because she loved me, I could make her suffer still more.
‘Dear Rézi . . .’
‘Ah! Claudine! . . .’
She believed I was on the verge of yielding completely; she stood up, trembling all over, and held out her arms; her hair and her eyes glittered with the same pale fire . . . Alas! how the sight of anything I love, my friend’s beauty, the soft shade of the Fresnois forests, Renaud’s desire, always arouses in me the same craving to possess and embrace! Have I really only one mode of feeling? . . .
‘Dear Rézi . . . am I to suppose, from the state you’re in, that is the first time anyone has resisted you? When I look at you, I can so well understand that you must always have found women only too delighted and willing . . .’
Her arms, raised imploringly above the white dress that wound tightly about her, its train vanishing into the shadow like a mermaid’s tail, dropped again. With her hands hanging limp, I saw her almost instantaneously recover her wits and turn angry again. She said defiantly:
‘The first time? Do you imagine that after eight years of living with that hollow brick, my husband, I haven’t tried everything? That, to kindle any spark of love in me, I haven’t searched for the sweetest, most beautiful thing in the world, a loving woman? Perhaps what you value more than anything else is the novelty, the clumsiness of a first . . . transgression. Oh, Claudine, there is something better, there is deliberately seeking and choosing . . . I have chosen you,’ she ended in a hurt voice, ‘and you have only put up with me . . .’
A last grain of prudence stopped me from going closer to her; also, from where I was, I could admire her to the full. She was using every weapon of her charm – her grace, her voice – in the service of her rejected passion. She had told me truthfully; ‘You are not the first,’ because, in th
is case, truth struck home more shrewdly than a lie. Her frankness, I could swear, had been calculated, but she loved me!
I was dreaming of her, with her standing there before me, feasting my eyes on the sight of her. A movement in her neck conjured up the familiar Rézi, half-naked, at her dressing-table . . . I gave a sudden shiver, it would be wise not to see her again like that . . .
Irritated and exhausted by my silence, she strained her eyes into the shadow, trying to make out mine.
‘Rézi . . .’ (I spoke with a great effort) . . . ‘please . . . let us give ourselves a rest today from all this and just wait for tomorrow to come . . . tomorrow that straightens out so many tangles! It isn’t that you’ve made me angry, Rézi. I’d have come yesterday, and I’d have laughed or I’d have scolded, if I weren’t so fond of you . . .’
With that alert movement of an animal on the watch, she thrust out her chin, faintly cleft with a vertical dimple.
‘. . . You must let me think, Rézi, without enveloping me so much, without casting such a net over me – a net of looks, gestures that come close without actually touching, persistent thoughts . . . You must come and sit over here near me, put your head on my knees and not say anything or move. Because, if you move, I shall go away . . .’
She sat down at my feet, laid her head on my lap with a sigh, and clasped her hands behind my waist. I could not stop my fingers from trembling as I ran them through her lovely hair, combing it into ringlets whose gleam was the only brightness left in the dark room. She did not stir. But her scent rose up from the nape of her neck, her burning cheeks warmed me and, against my knees, I could feel the shape of her breasts . . . I was terrified lest she should move. For, had she seen my face and how profoundly disturbed I was . . .
But she did not move, and, this time, too, I was able to leave her without admitting my disturbance, so painfully like her own.
Out in the sharp, cold air, I calmed my jangled nerves as best I could. In situations of that kind, one’s still undamaged ‘self-esteem’ is definitely supposed to brace one up, isn’t it? Well, all I can say personally is that I felt I had been rather a mug.