by Colette
‘Yes; gay, isn’t it? Something’s gone wrong with the electricity. Apparently they can’t fix it till tomorrow morning. Naturally, we’ve got nothing here to use instead. The maid was actually talking of sticking candles in the bottles on my dressing-table! . . .’
‘Well, wouldn’t that look rather attractive?’
‘Thanks! . . . You always side with evil Fate against me . . . Candles! I’d feel I was lying on my bier! They’re too funereal for words. Instead of coming and consoling me, you stand over there all by yourself, laughing. I can hear you laughing! Come and sit with me in the big armchair, Claudine darling . . .’
I did not hesitate for a second. Huddled in the big chair, with my arms around her waist, I could feel her body warm and untrammelled under a loose dress, and her sent rose up in my nostrils.
‘Rézi, you’re like the white tobacco flower that waits for the dark to release all its scent . . . Once evening comes, you can’t smell anything else; it puts the roses to shame.’
‘Do I really wait for the dark before I give off my scent?’
She let her head fall on my shoulder. I held her close, feeling her living warmth throbbing under my hands, like a trapped partridge.
‘Is your husband going to rise up out of the shadows again like an Anglo-Indian Satan?’ I asked in a muffled voice.
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘He’s taking some compatriots round Paris.’
‘Indians?’
‘Englishmen.’
Neither she nor I were paying any attention to what we said. The darkness covered us. I did not dare loosen my arms and besides I did not want to.
‘Claudine, I love you . . .’
‘Why say it?’
‘Why not say it? For your sake, I’ve given up everything, even the flirtations that were the only thing that relieved my boredom. Can you ask me to be more restrained? Don’t I torture myself because I’m afraid of making you angry?’
‘Torture yourself? Oh, Rézi . . .’
‘It’s the only word. It is torture to love and desire unappeasably; you know it is.’
Yes, I knew it . . . How well I knew it . . . What was I doing at that moment except delighting in that useless pain?
With an imperceptible movement, she had turned still more towards me, clinging close against me from shoulder to knee. I had hardly felt her move; she seemed to have swivelled round inside her dress.
‘Rézi, don’t talk to me any more. I’m in a trance of laziness and well-being. Don’t force me to get up from here . . . Imagine that it’s night and we’re travelling . . . Imagine the wind in your hair . . . bend down, that low branch might wet your forehead! . . . Squeeze close against me – mind out, the water in the deep ruts is splashing up under the wheels . . .’
All her supple body followed my game with a treacherous compliance. Her hair, tossed back from the head that lay on my shoulder, brushed against my face like the twigs I had invented to distract me from inner turmoil.
‘I’m travelling,’ she murmured.
‘But shall we arrive?’
Her two hands nervously gripped my free one.
‘Yes, Claudine. We shall arrive.’
‘Where?’
‘Bend down, and I’ll whisper it to you.’
Credulously, I obeyed. And it was her mouth that I encountered. I listened for a long time to what her mouth told mine . . . She had not lied; we were arriving . . . My haste equalled her own, then surpassed and outstripped it. In a revelation of self-knowledge, I thrust away Rézi’s caressing hands. She understood, trembled all over, struggled for a brief second, then lay back, her arms hanging limp.
The dull thud of a distant street-door brought me to my feet. Rézi’s warm lips were pressed to my wrist; all I could make out was the pale blur of her seated figure. With one arm round her waist, I pulled her up and crushed her whole body against me, bending her back, and kissing her at random on her eyes, on her dishevelled hair, on her moist nape . . .
‘Tomorrow!’
‘Tomorrow . . . I love you.’
I ran down the street, with my head buzzing. My fingers still tingled from the slight scratchiness of lace, still seemed to be slithering on the satin of an untied ribbon, still felt the velvet of a peerless skin. And the evening air hurt me like a knife, tearing the veil of perfume she had woven all about me.
‘Claudine, if even aubergines with parmesan leave you cold . . . I know where to look for the reason!’
I started at the sound of Renaud’s voice; I had been a very long way away. It was true I was not eating. But I was so thirsty!
‘Darling, isn’t there something you want to tell me?’
This husband of mine is certainly not like other husbands! Vexed by his persistence, I implored him:
‘Renaud, don’t tease me . . . I’m tired, I’m nervous, I’m embarrassed in front of you . . . Let’s get the night over, and for heaven’s sake, don’t imagine so many things!’
He said no more. But, after dinner, he kept watching the clock and, at half past ten, insisted that he was shockingly sleepy, a thing that he never admits. And, once we were in our great bed, he lost not a moment before seeking in my hair, on my hands, on my mouth the truth I did not want to tell him!
‘Tomorrow!’ Rézi had implored. ‘Tomorrow!’ I had consented. Alas! this Tomorrow did not come. I hurried round to her, sure of a longer, more perfectly savoured bliss now that there would be a light again to show me this marvellous, vanquished Rézi . . . But I had completely forgotten her husband! He disturbed us twice, the fiend; twice, by an abrupt entrance, he made our timid hungry hands fly apart! We stared at each other, Rézi and I, she on the verge of tears, I in such a furious rage, that had there been a third intrusion, it would have been all I could do not to throw my glass of orangeade in the face of that stiff, suspicious, polite husband . . . And that throbbing ‘Good-bye,’ those stolen kisses, those furtive pressures of our fingers are no longer enough to satisfy us now . . .
What can we do?
I came home, alternately building up and sweeping away impossible plans. It was hopeless!
Today I went back to Rézi’s flat to tell her of my utter helplessness, to see her, to breathe in her sweetness.
She rushed to meet me, as anxious as I was myself.
‘Well, darling?’
‘I haven’t found any solution. Are you angry with me?’
Her eyes caressed the curve of my mouth as I spoke and her lips trembled and parted . . . I caught the infection of her desire and my whole being was hungry for her. Was I going to seize her then and there in that smug drawing-room and kiss her to death?
She guessed what I was thinking and drew back a step. ‘No,’ she said in a low, hurried voice, pointing to the door.
‘Then in my flat, Rézi?’
‘In yours, if you like . . .’
I smiled; then I shook my head.
‘No! The bell keeps ringing all the time; Renaud is always in and out; the doors bang . . . Oh, no!’
She wrung her white hands in a little gesture of despair.
‘Then it’s to be never again? Do you imagine I can live for a month on the memory of yesterday? It ought never to have happened,’ she ended, turning away her head. ‘If you can’t quench my thirst for you every day . . .’
Tenderly sulky, she went over and collapsed in the big armchair, the same one . . . And though today she was sheathed in a tight-fitting wool street-dress, honey-pale as her hair, I recognized only too well the curve of her half-reclining hips and the tapering line of her legs that were silvered with almost invisible velvet down.
‘Oh, Rézi!’
‘What?’
‘The carriage?’
‘The carriage? Jolts, starts, cricks in the neck . . . curious faces suddenly glued to the window, a horse falling, a zealous policeman opening the door, the driver discreetly tapping with the handle of his whip: “Madame, the road’s blocked. Should I turn back?” No, Claudine, definitely not the carriage!’
‘Then, my dear, find somewhere possible for us yourself . . . up to now you’ve found nothing but objections!’
Swift as a snake when you touch it, she reared up her golden head and darted me looks full of tearful reproach.
‘Is that all your love amounts to? You wouldn’t dream of being offended if you loved me as much as I love you!’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Then why keep putting up all these barriers? The carriage paralyses you, this drawing-room bristles with matrimonial traps . . . have we got to take in the Saturday Journal and look for a shelter you hire by the day?’
‘I’d do that gladly,’ she sighed ingenuously, ‘but all those places are watched by the police so . . . so somebody told me.’
‘I don’t care a fig about the police.’
‘You don’t have to, thanks to the sort of husband you have, thanks to Renaud . . .’
Her voice changed.
‘Claudine,’ she said slowly and thoughtfully, ‘Renaud – Renaud’s the only person who can . . .’
I stared at her, dumbfounded, without finding any reply. She was thinking very earnestly, sitting there, slim in her honey-coloured dress, her fists under her childish chin.
‘Yes, Claudine, our peace of mind depends on him . . . and on you.’
She held out her arms, and her impenetrable, tender face appealed to me.
‘Our peace of mind, oh! my dear, our happiness, call it what you like. Only realize that I can’t bear to wait, now that I have felt your strength, now that Rézi is yours, with all her passion and all her weakness!’
I slipped into her arms, and bent over her lips, prepared to resign myself to tight, hampering garments, prepared to ruin our delight by over-haste.
She wrenched herself out of my hands: ‘Sshh! I heard footsteps.’
How terrified she was! Her whiteness had gone whiter still; she was listening, bending forward, her pupils dilated . . . Oh, if only a chimney would fall and flatten out that accursed Lambrook and deliver us from him!
‘Rézi, my golden, why do you think that Renaud . . .?’
‘Yes, Renaud! He’s an intelligent husband and he adores you. You must tell him . . . well, almost everything. He’s so fond of you and so clever, he must arrange a “hide-out” for us.’
‘You aren’t afraid of my husband being jealous?’
‘No.’
Curious, that little smile of hers! . . . A crazy confidence in her had been growing almost as fast as my desires, why did she have to check it by an ambiguous gesture, a sly inflexion of the mouth? But it was the merest shadow, and if I were to have no more of her than her sincere sensuality, the double softness of her skin and her voice, her glorious hair and her enthralling mouth . . . was not that more than enough? Whatever it cost me, I would ask help – not now, a little later, I wanted to go on searching on my own! – I would ask help from Renaud. For her sake, I would humble my fierce modesty and the loving pride I should have put into discovering a safe haven for our passion entirely on my own.
Enervating sulks, angry tears, tender reconciliations, electric hours when the mere contact of our hands maddened us . . . that is the summary of this last week. I haven’t spoken to Renaud. It would cost me so much to do that! And Rézi is resentful because I haven’t. I haven’t even admitted to my dear giant that Rézi’s feeling for me and mine for Rézi is becoming clearer than words can say . . . But he knows almost everything, apart from details, and this certainly induces a strange fever in him. What fantastic, loving panderism leads him to keep urging me to go and see Rézi, to make sure I look my best for her? At four o’clock, when I throw down the book with which I was cheating the time of waiting, Renaud gets up, if he is in the room, and becomes agitated: ‘You’re going over there? – Yes?’ He runs his deft fingers through my hair to fluff up my curls, bends his great moustache down close to me to re-knot my thick knitted silk tie and verify the spotlessness of my boyish collar. Standing behind me, he makes sure that my fur turban is firm and straight, then holds out the sleeves of my sable coat . . . And, finally, it is he who slips into my dazed hands a bunch of dark, red, almost black roses, my friend’s favourite flower! I admit that I would never have thought of that!
And then comes a big, affectionate kiss.
‘Run along, my little girl. Be very good. Be proud, not too humbly loving, make yourself desired . . .’
‘Make yourself desired . . .’ I am desired, alas! . . . but not as a result of my strategy.
Ten
When it is Rézi who comes to see me, the strain on my nerves is even worse. There she is in my bedroom – which is simply our bedroom, Renaud’s and mine – one turn of the key and we should be alone . . . But I don’t want to lock us in. Above all I hate the idea of my husband’s maid (a taciturn girl with a silent tread who sews such slack stitches with her flabby hands) knocking and exclaiming in a hushed voice through the closed door: ‘It’s Madame’s blouse . . . I want it to repair the armholes.’ I dread the spying of Ernest the manservant with a face like a bad priest’s. Those servants of his don’t belong to me; I employ them with caution and repugnance. To tell the whole truth, there is something I dread even more – Renaud’s curiosity . . .
And that is why all I let Rézi do in my bedroom is weave her most seductive spirals and put on every shade of reproachful expression.
‘You haven’t found anything for us, Claudine?’
‘No.’
‘You haven’t asked Renaud yet?’
‘No.’
‘It’s cruel . . .’
At that word, sighed almost in a whisper, with her eyes suddenly lowered, I felt my will collapse. But Renaud came and knocked with little cautious taps and received a ‘Come in’ ruder than a brick in his face, in reply.
I don’t at all like the suppliant charm Rézi puts on with Renaud, nor that way he has of trying to find out what we are hiding from him by sniffing at her hair and her dress as if to detect the fragrance left by my kisses.
He did it again today, in front of me . . . He kissed both her hands when he came in, for the pleasure of saying:
‘So you’ve taken to using Claudine’s scent, that sweet, dusky Chypre?’
‘Why, no,’ she replied innocently.
‘Funny, I thought you had.’
Renaud switched his gaze on me with a knowing, flattering look. My whole soul flared up with rage. I was so exasperated, I wondered should I tug the ends of his big moustache with all my might till he screamed, till he beat me? . . . No. I managed to contain myself; I preserved the stiff, correct calm of a husband whose wife is being kissed during some innocent party game. To make matters even worse, he was about to make his exit with the insulting discretion of a waiter serving a couple in a private room. I stopped him:
‘Do stay, Renaud . . .’
‘Not on your life! Rézi would tear my eyes out.’
‘Why?’
‘My little curly shepherd, I know only too well how precious a tête-à-tête with you is.’
An ugly fear poisoned me: suppose Rézi, with her fluctuating, untruthful nature, took to preferring Renaud! He was particularly handsome today, in a long jacket that suited him and drew attention to his broad shoulders and small feet . . . And there was that Rézi, the source of all my trouble, furred in nutria the colour of rye and wearing a prematurely summery hat of lilacs and green leaves . . . I was aware of an old feeling surging up in me again, the brutality that had made me beat and scratch Luce . . . How poignantly sweet Rézi’s tears would be to my torment!
She looked at me in silence, putting all her words into her eyes . . . I was going to yield . . . I yielded.
‘Renaud, dear, are you going out before dinner?’
‘No, little girl, why?’
‘I want to talk to you . . . to ask you to do something for me.’
Rézi sprang up from her chair and settled her hat, all gaiety and confusion . . . she had understood.
‘I must fly . . .
Yes, literally, I can’t stay another moment . . . But tomorrow I’ll see you for a long time, Claudine. Ah! Renaud, how one ought to envy you this child of yours!’
She disappeared with the rustling of her dress, leaving Renaud confounded.
‘She’s mad, I take it? Whatever’s come over the two of you?’
Oh, heavens! Could I really say it? How hard it was! . . .
‘Renaud . . . I . . . you . . .’
‘What is it, little one? You’ve gone all pale!’
He drew me on his knees. Perhaps it would be easier there . . .
‘The fact is . . . Rézi’s husband’s an awful nuisance.’
‘He certainly is . . . especially to her!’
‘To me too.’
‘The devil he is! . . . You mean he’s had the impertinence to try something on?’
‘No. Don’t move; keep me in your arms. Only this wretched Lambrook is always on our backs.’
‘Ah! I see.’
Of course, I ought to know by now that Renaud is anything but a fool. He understands at the first hint.
‘My dear little amorous pussy-cat! So you’re being tormented, you and your Rézi? What’s to be done about it. You’re quite aware that your old husband loves you enough not to deprive you of a little pleasure . . . She’s charming, your fair-haired friend. She loves you so tremendously!’
‘Does she? Do you really think so?’
‘I’m certain of it! And you two beauties complement each other. Your amber can hold its own against her dazzling whiteness . . .’
His arms had trembled . . . I knew what he was imagining. Nevertheless I relaxed at the sound of his voice; overflowing with tenderness, genuine tenderness.
‘What do you want me to do, my darling bird? Leave this flat empty the whole of the afternoon?’
‘Oh! no . . .’
I added, after an embarrassed silence:
‘. . . If we could . . . somewhere else . . .’
‘Somewhere else? Why, nothing easier!’
He rose to his feet with one bound, set me on the floor and walked up and down with long, very youthful strides . . .