Claudine Married

by Colette

  ‘Somewhere else . . . let’s see . . . of course there’s . . . No, not that – it’s not good enough . . . Ah! I’ve got the very thing for you!’

  He came back to me, flung his arms round me and searched for my mouth. But, quite frigid with confusion and shyness, I turned slightly away . . .

  ‘My charming little girl, you shall have your Rézi. Rézi shall have her Claudine. Don’t worry about anything any more . . . except having to be patient for one day . . . two days at the most . . . That’s not long, is it? Kiss your faithful giant who will be blind and deaf as he keeps guard over the threshold of your room and those soft whisperings inside . . .’

  The joy, the certainty of possessing Rézi in all the glory of her scented whiteness, the relief of having confessed the ugly secret, did not prevent me from feeling another kind of unhappiness. Oh, dear Renaud, how I would have loved you for a sharp, scolding refusal!

  I had hoped that night of waiting would be happy, alternating between flutters of sweet apprehension and half-waking dreams through which Rézi drifted in a haze of golden light . . . But the very fact that I was waiting conjured up another vigil in my little bedroom in the rue Jacob. That had been a younger, more fierily impetuous Claudine . . . Would Rézi find me beautiful enough? Ardent enough, oh yes, I was sure of that . . . Weary of lying awake, I put out a slim cold foot to disturb Renaud’s light sleep so that I could huddle my body, prickling all over with nerves, in the shelter of his arm. And there, at last, I dozed off.

  Dreams succeeded each other and melted into each other in a tangled, confused blur, impossible to analyse: sometimes a young, supple figure would appear in the fog, then vanish, like the moon shining through clouds, then veiled again . . . When I called ‘Rézi,’ she turned round, showing me the gentle, rounded forehead, the velvety eyelids and full, short lips of little black-and-white Hélène. What was she doing in my dreams, that schoolgirl, glimpsed for a moment and very nearly forgotten?

  Renaud wasted no time. He arrived home for dinner last night excited, boisterous and demonstrative.

  ‘Tell Hélène to prepare!’ he said as he kissed me. ‘Bid that young witch wash and anoint herself for tomorrow’s Sabbath!’

  ‘Tomorrow? Where?’

  ‘You’ll know in due course! Tell her to meet us here; I’ll take you both with me. It’s not good for you to be seen going in by yourselves. And, besides, I’ll see you comfortably settled in.’

  This arrangement chilled me a little: I would have liked the key, the address of the room, freedom . . .

  Rézi arrived before the appointed time, looking anxious. Making an attempt to laugh, I said to her:

  ‘Will you come with me? Renaud has found us a . . . a “bachelor-girls’ flat”.’

  Her eyes danced and a golden glint came into them.

  ‘Ah! . . . So he knows that I know that he . . .’

  ‘Of course! How else would it have been possible? You yourself suggested . . . and I’m thankful now, that you were so persistent, Rézi . . . my asking Renaud’s help . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes. I did . . .’

  Her sly, caressing grey eyes became anxious and sought mine; her hand went up to her hair and kept circling round and round as she tucked in stray gold wisps on her nape.

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t love me enough, today, not enough for . . . that, Claudine!’

  Her mouth was too close as she said it; I could feel her breath and that was enough to make me clench my jaws and bring the blood to my ears . . .

  ‘I always love you enough . . . too much . . . madly, Rézi . . . Yes, I would far rather that no one in the world had authorized us or forbidden us to have an afternoon alone together, safe behind a locked door. But if in that room, wherever it is, whoever found it, I can believe for one moment that you belong to me, that I am the only one . . . I shall regret nothing.’

  She listened to the sound of my voice as if in a daydream; perhaps she did not even hear the words. When Renaud entered, we started simultaneously and, for a minute, Rézi lost a little of her self-assurance. He dissipated her embarrassment with a kindly, conspiratorial laugh, then, looking mysterious, produced a small key from his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Hist! To whom shall I entrust it?’

  ‘To me,’ I said, holding out an imperious hand.

  ‘To me!’ Rézi implored coaxingly.

  ‘How happy could I be with either,’ warbled Renaud, ‘were t’other dear charmer away.’

  At this Maugis-like joke, and the shrill laugh with which Rézi greeted it, I felt on the verge of a clumsy outburst of rage. Did Renaud divine this? He stood up:

  ‘Come along, children. The carriage is down below.’

  Sitting opposite us on the penitential, pull-down seat, he could hardly disguise his excitement over this escapade. His nose whitened and his moustache quivered when his eyes wandered over Rézi. The latter tried, uncertainly, to make conversation, gave it up and looked inquiringly at me in my sad, haughty impatience . . .

  Yes, I was eaten up with impatience! Impatience to savour all that Rézi’s urgency had promised me during this week of stress and strain; impatience above all to arrive, to end this shocking expedition as a threesome.

  What? We were stopping in the rue Goethe? So near home? It seemed to me that we had been driving for half an hour . . . The staircase of number 59 wasn’t bad. There were stables at the bottom of the courtyard. Two storeys. Renaud opened a noiseless door and, the moment one entered the hall, one was conscious of the thick, heavy air of rooms hung with material.

  While I was examining the little drawing-room with a slightly hostile eye, Rézi ran to the window and, in a prudent (I don’t want to write ‘experienced’) way, inspected the outside without raising the white net curtains. Presumably satisfied, she wandered, like myself, about the minute drawing-room, where an amateur of Louis XIII Spanish furniture had indulged his mania to the full. It was crammed with carved and gilded wood, heavy ornamental frames, crucifixes on moth-eaten velvet, hostile prie-dieus and an enormous sedan chair, ponderous and splendid, with a cornucopia of autumn fruits, apples, grapes, and pears, carved in full relief on its sides . . . This sacrilegious austerity pleased me and I relaxed my frown. A half-drawn curtain in the doorway revealed the corner of a light, English-style bedroom, the knob of a brass bedstead and a pleasant couch covered with flowered material . . .

  ‘I like the look of it. Definitely.’

  ‘Renaud, it’s charming!’ declared Rézi. ‘Whose place is this?’

  ‘Yours, fair Bilitis! Here’s the electric light switch. Here’s some tea and some lemon, here are some black grapes, and, lastly, here is my heart that throbs for both of you . . .’

  How utterly at ease he was and with what good grace he fulfilled his dubious role! I watched him bustling about, arranging the saucers with his deft, feminine hands, smiling with his blue-black eyes, holding out a bunch of grapes to Rézi that she nibbled coquettishly . . . Why was I astonished at his behaviour when he was not astonished at mine?

  . . . I was holding her against my heart, against the whole length of my body. Her cool knees touched me, her little toenails scratched me deliciously. Her crumpled chemise was nothing but a rag of muslin. My bent arm supported the precious weight of her neck, her face was half-buried in the torrent of her hair. The day was ending, the shadow was dimming the bright leaves on the hangings whose unfamiliarity galled me. Rézi’s mouth was very close to mine; from time to time a glint of light, like a sun-gleam on a river, shone on her teeth as she talked. She talked in a fever of gaiety, one bare arm raised and her forefinger drawing what she said. In the twilight, I followed that white and sinuous arm whose gestures made a rhythmic accompaniment to my languor and the adorable sadness that drugged me . . .

  I wanted her to be sad, as I was; I wanted her to be quiet and fearful at the thought of the minutes flying past; I wanted her, at least, to leave me to brood on my memory . . .

  As if the caress had wounded her, she had tu
rned a marvellous animal face towards me; eyebrows lowered, upper lip raised and snarling, an expression of frenzy and supplication . . . Then everything melted into wild surrender, into murmuring, imperious demands, into a kind of amorous fury, followed by childish ‘Thank-yous’ and great, satisfied sighs of ‘Ah!’ like a little girl who had been dreadfully thirsty and drunk everything down at a gulp, leaving her out of breath . . .

  Now she was talking, and her voice, dear as it was, disturbed the precious hour . . . She was, in fact, chattering her joy aloud, just like Renaud . . . Couldn’t they savour it in silence? There was I, sombre as that unfamiliar bedroom . . . What a bad after-love-making companion I am!

  I roused myself to life again by straining close the warm body that adapted itself to mine and flexed when I flexed; the beloved body, so fleshy in its tapering slimness that nowhere could I feel the resisting skeleton beneath . . .

  ‘Ah! Claudine, you crush me so tight in your arms! . . . Yes, I assure you that his frigidity, his outrageous jealousy justify everything.’

  She was talking of her husband! I was not listening. And what need had she of excuses? That word rang false here. With a kiss, I dammed the flow of her soft chatter . . . for a few seconds.

  ‘Claudine, I swear no one’s ever made me suffer the torture of waiting as you have. So many weeks wasted, my love! Think, it’ll soon be spring and every day is bringing us nearer the summer holidays that will separate us . . .’

  ‘I forbid you to go away!’

  ‘Yes, do forbid me something!’ she implored, invincibly tender, clinging to me. ‘Scold me, don’t leave me, I don’t want to see anyone but you . . . and Renaud.’

  ‘Ah! So Renaud finds favour with you?’

  ‘Yes, because he’s kind, because he’s got the soul of a woman, because he understands us and protects our privacy . . . Claudine, I don’t feel ashamed in front of Renaud. Isn’t that odd?’

  Odd indeed, and I envy Rézi. For I am ashamed. No, that’s not quite the right word . . . What I am rather is . . . a little . . . scandalized. That’s it. My husband shocks me.

  ‘. . . And, in my case, darling,’ she wound up, raising herself on one elbow, ‘the three of us are involved in a little adventure that’s far from commonplace!’

  ‘Far from commonplace! A little adventure!’ That babbler! If I kissed her mouth rather cruelly, didn’t she guess why? I wanted to bite off her pointed tongue; I wanted to love the mute, docile Rézi, perfect in her silence, eloquent only in look and gesture.

  I annihilated myself in my kiss, aware only of her quick, fluttering breath fanning my nostrils . . . It had grown dark but I cupped Rézi’s head in my two hands like a fruit, ruffling her hair that was so fine that I could have guessed its colour merely by the feel of it . . .

  ‘Claudine, I’m sure it’s seven o’clock.’

  She leapt out of bed, rushed over to the switch and flooded us with light.

  Left solitary and chilly, I curled up in the warm place where she had lain to keep the heat of her body a little longer, to permeate myself with the smell of her blonde skin. I had plenty of time. My husband was not anxiously expecting me home . . . quite the reverse!

  Dazed by the light, she spun round for a moment, unable to find her scattered underclothes. She bent down to pick up a stray tortoiseshell hairpin, stood up again and her chemise slid to the ground. Unembarrassed, she coiled up her hair again, with that swift, deft grace that amuses and charms me . . . The frizz of gold in the hollow of the raised arms and at the base of the youthful stomach was so pale that, in the light, my Rézi seemed as naked as a statue. But what statue would dare display those full, resilient buttocks, so bold and assertive after the slimness of the torso?

  Looking very serious, with her hair as irreproachably done as if she were going to a formal party, Rézi pinned her spring-like hat on her head and stood for a moment admiring herself in the glass, arrayed only in a toque of lilac-blossom. I laughed and thereby unfortunately spurred her to hurry. The next moment, the corset, the diaphanous knickers, the dawn-pink petticoat flung themselves on her, undoubtedly summoned by three magic words. Another minute, and the fashionable, sophisticated Rézi stood before me, furred in nutria, gloved in ivory suede, proud of her conjurer’s dexterity.

  ‘My blonde girl, it’s dark now that all your white and gold doesn’t shine brighter than the light . . . Help me to get up. I’m too weak to battle with these sheets that hold me down . . .’

  On my feet, stretching up my damp hands to ease the stiff little ache between my shoulder-blades, I studied myself in the huge well-placed mirror. I was proud of my muscular tallness, of my slender grace, more boyish and clear-cut than Rézi’s . . .

  The nape of her neck slid caressingly under my raised arm and I turned away from the two figures, one dressed, one naked, that the mirror reflected back.

  I hurried into my clothes, helped by Rézi. Close to me, she gave off a smell of love-warmed flesh and of fur . . .

  ‘Rézi dear, don’t try to teach me your magical speed! Compared to your fairy hands, I shall always look like someone dressing themselves with their feet! What, aren’t we going to have any tea?’

  ‘We haven’t time,’ demurred Rézi, smiling at me.

  ‘Just some black grapes at least? I’m so thirsty . . .’

  ‘All right, some black grapes . . . Come and take them.’

  I took them from between her lips, crushing out their juice in my parched mouth . . . I was staggering with exhaustion and desire. She escaped my arms.

  The lights were switched off, the door stood ajar on the cold, bright echoing staircase. Rézi, all warm and glowing, offered me her mouth, that tasted of black grapes, for the last time . . . And suddenly I was in the street, being elbowed by passers-by, and because of that unnatural getting dressed again, feeling shivery and faintly sick, as if I had had to get up in the middle of the night.

  ‘Darling child, come here and I’ll make you laugh!’

  It was Renaud who had come into the dressing-room and interrupted the prolonged morning curry-combing of my short hair. Wedged in the wicker armchair, he was already laughing himself.

  ‘Listen! A devoted female who’s willing to keep the rue Goethe tidy for sixty centimes an hour returned an object (found in the storm-tossed sheets) to me this morning, neatly folded in a scrap of the Petit Parisien, with the sole comment: “It’s Monsieur’s chin-strap”.’

  ‘!!! . . .’

  ‘There! You’ll promptly get the most unseemly ideas into your head! Look!’

  At the end of his fingers dangled a narrow rag of minutely-pleated linen, edged with Malines lace . . . The shoulder-strap of Rézi’s chemise! . . . I snatched it from him in mid-air . . . I shan’t give it back to him.

  ‘What’s more, I suspect that concierge of providing “gags” for our most popular music-hall comedians. Yesterday, about six, I went round there – very discreet – and a trifle anxious about my darling, who was so long coming home – to ask for news of you. She replied, full of respectful censure, “Those two ladies have been waiting nearly two whole hours for Monsieur”.’

  ‘So then?’

  ‘So then . . . I didn’t come up, Claudine. Kiss me as a reward for that.’

  Eleven

  This will no longer really be Claudine’s diary any more, because in it I can talk of nothing but Rézi. What has happened to the old, quick-witted Claudine? She is nothing but a fevered, unhappy creature drifting weakly in Rézi’s wake. The days go past without incident, except for our meetings once or twice a week in the rue Goethe. The rest of the time I follow Renaud as he performs his various duties: first nights, dinners, literary parties. I often take my mistress to the theatre, accompanied by Lambrook, just for the craven assurance that at least during those hours she cannot deceive me. I suffer from jealousy and yet . . . I do not love her.

  No, I do not love her! But I cannot deprive myself of her, and in any case I do not try to. Away from her, I can imagine, without
a tremor, her being knocked down by a motor car or killed in a railway accident. But I cannot, without my ears buzzing and my heart accelerating, say to myself: ‘At this very moment she is yielding her mouth to a lover, man or woman, with that hurried flutter of the lashes, that backward tilt of the head as if she were drinking, that I know so well.’

  What does it matter that I do not love her, I suffer as much as if I did!

  I find it hard to endure Renaud’s presence, his all-too-readiness to be involved as a third. He has refused to give me the key of the little flat, alleging, no doubt with good reason, that we must not be seen going into it alone together. And each time it means the same humiliating effort for me to say to him: ‘Renaud, tomorrow we’re going over there . . .’

  He always consents eagerly; he is invariably charming – rejoicing, no doubt, like Rézi in the ‘far from commonplace’ situation . . . That need, common to both of them, to proclaim themselves vicious and ultra-modern, disconcerts me. Yet I do what Rézi does – and even more – and I do not feel I am vicious . . .

  Nowadays, Renaud lingers when he accompanies us over there. He pours out the tea, sits down, smokes a cigarette, chats, gets up to straighten a picture-frame or flick a moth off the velvet of a prie-dieu . . . he makes it obvious that he is at home. And when he finally makes up his mind to go, pretending to apologize for staying so long, it is Rézi who protests, ‘Oh, don’t go yet . . . do stay another minute . . .’ But I say nothing.

  Their conversation leaves me out of it: gossip, back-biting, jokes that quickly turn bawdy, thinly veiled allusions to what will happen when he has gone . . . She laughs, she plays up to all this boring drivel, exerting the charm of her soft myopic gaze, of those supple twists in her neck and waist . . . I swear, yes, I swear I am so shocked by it all that I feel as embarrassed and outraged as a decent girl confronted with obscene pictures . . . Sensual delight – my form of it – has nothing to do with cosy, giggling ‘fun and games’.

  In the bright bedroom, where Renaud’s Iris and Claudine’s harsh sweet Chypre mingle in the air, in the great bed that is fragrant with our two bodies, I avenge myself silently for many a hidden, bleeding wound . . . Afterwards, curled up against me in an attitude blessedly familiar now, Rézi talks and questions me. She is irritated by the brevity and simplicity of my answers, avid to know more, incredulous when I assure her of my former virtue and the novelty of this madness of mine.