by Colette
How beautiful the woods were! How soft the light! How cold the dew on the edges of the grassy ditches! I had been too late to find that charming population of small, frail flowers in the fields and copses, forget-me-not and bladder campion, daffodils and spring daisies; Solomon’s seal and lily of the valley had long since shed their hanging bells. But at least I had been able to bathe my bare hands and trembling legs in thick, deep grass, sprawl my tired limbs on the dry velvet of moss and pine-needles, rest without a thought in my head, baked by the fierce, mounting sun . . . I was penetrated with sunlight, rustling with breezes, echoing with crickets and birdsong, like a room open on a garden . . .
‘That’s a nice sight, to be sure! A pretty dress like that!’ scolded Mélie.
‘Don’t care. I’ve got other ones. Oh, Mélie, I don’t think I’d have come home if I didn’t need my lunch so! . . . But I’m simply dying of hunger.’
‘That’s a good thing. The food’s all cooked . . . But I ask, where’s your sense got to, doing such a thing? And Monsieur yelling after you everywhere and rolling his eyes like a stuck pig. You’re just the same as ever. You little tramp, you!’
I had run about so much and looked at so much and loved so much that morning that I stayed in the garden all the afternoon. The kitchen garden, that I had not visited yet, presented me with warm apricots and peaches, which I ate afterwards, lying on my stomach under the big fir-trees with an old Balzac between my elbows.
How marvellously light-hearted I felt, how blissfully tired from physical exertion! Didn’t that mean I was happy again, that I had forgotten everything and recovered my joyous solitude of the old days?
I might have deceived myself into believing it, but no, Mélie was wrong; I wasn’t ‘the same as ever’. As the day declined, the wound began to throb again, the uneasiness returned, the torturing uneasiness that forced me to keep moving, to keep changing from one room, one chair, one book to another as one tries to find a cool place in a fever-tossed bed . . . I went into the kitchen and, after long hesitation – I was helping Mélie beat a mayonnaise that refused to thicken – I finally asked her, in a casual voice:
‘There weren’t any letters for me today, were there?’
‘No, my lammy; nothing came but Monsieur’s papers.’
I went to sleep so tired that my ears buzzed and the exhausted muscles of my calves went on quivering automatically. But my slumber was not pleasant; it was shot through with confused dreams, dominated by a nerve-racking sensation of waiting for something. It was so strong that I lingered on in bed this morning, between Fanchette and my cooling chocolate.
Fanchette, convinced that I have come back solely for her sake, has enjoyed perfect bliss since my return. A little too perfect, perhaps. I don’t torment her enough. She misses my constant teasing of the old days when I used to hold her upright on her hind-paws, or dangle her by her tail, or swing her to and fro, two paws gripped in either hand, crying: ‘Here’s a fine white hare, weighing eight pounds!’ Now I am always gentle. I caress her without pinching her or biting her ears . . . Really, Fanchette, one can’t have everything; look at me, for example . . .
Who was that walking up the front doorstep? The postman, surely . . . As long as Renaud hadn’t written to me!
Mélie would have brought me his letter by now . . . She wasn’t coming . . . All the same, I listened with my ears and my nostrils stretched to their utmost . . . She wasn’t coming . . . He hadn’t written . . . So much the better! Let him forget and allow me to forget!
That sigh, what did it mean? It was a sigh of relief. What else could it be? But if Claudine was reassured, why was she trembling all over? . . . Why hadn’t he written? Because I hadn’t answered him . . . Because he was frightened of making me even angrier . . . Or else he had written, and torn up his letter . . . He had missed the post . . . He was ill!
With one bound, I was out of bed, pushing away the dishevelled cat, who blinked at this rude awakening. This movement restored me to consciousness; I felt thoroughly ashamed of myself . . .
Mélie was such a dawdler . . . She would have put the letter down on a corner of the kitchen table, beside the butter they bring wrapped in two beet leaves . . . That butter would make a greasy mark on the letter. I pulled a cord that let loose a din like a convent bell.
‘Is it for your hot water, my pet?’
‘Yes, of course . . . Oh, Mélie! Didn’t the postman bring anything for me?’
‘Nothing, my lamb.’
Her faded blue eyes crinkled up with ribald affection.
‘Aha! Hankering after your man? You blessed little newlywed, you! Fair itching for him.’
She went off, chuckling very low. I turned my back to my looking-glass so as not to see the expression on my face.
Having finally recaptured my courage, I climbed up, preceded by Fanchette, to the attic where I had so often taken refuge when it rained for days on end. It is huge and dim; laundered sheets hang over the wooden rollers of the drier; a pile of half-gnawed-away books occupies an entire corner; an antique night-commode, with one foot missing, gapes open, awaiting a ghostly behind. A great wicker hamper conceals remnants of wallpapers that date back to the Restoration; plum-coloured stripes on a bilious yellow ground; imitation green trellises overgrown with strange vegetation among which fluttered improbable marrow-green birds . . . All this jumbled pell-mell with the tattered remains of an old herbarium in which I used to admire the delicate skeletons of rare plants from goodness knows where before I destroyed them . . . Some of them were still left, and I turned over the pages, inhaling the old dust with its sweetish, faintly chemist’s shop smell, and the odour of mildewed paper, dead plants and lime blossoms gathered last week, spread out to dry on a sheet . . . When I pushed up the skylight I saw the same old little landscape framed in its aperture when I raised my head; a distant, complete little landscape with a wood to the left, a sloping meadow, and a red roof in the corner . . . It was composed with care, naïve and charming.
From below came the sound of the door-bell. I listened to doors opening, indistinct voices, something like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged along . . . Poor, unhappy Claudine, how the slightest thing upsets you now! . . . I could not bear to stay up there any longer; I would rather go down to the kitchen.
‘Wherever had you got to, my pet? I looked for you; then I thought you’d gone off tramping again . . . It’s your trunk Monsieur Renaud’s sent express. Racalin’s took it to your bedroom by the back stairs . . .’
That big parchment trunk depressed and upset me as much as if it had been a piece of furniture from over there . . . One of its sides still bore a large red label with white letters: hÔtel des bergues
It dated from our honeymoon . . . I had begged for that label to be left on because it enabled the trunk to be seen a long way away at stations . . . At the Hôtel des Bergues . . . it had rained all the time, we had never gone out . . .
I pushed up the lid violently, as if I wanted to throw off the searing, beloved memory that rose up before me, wearing the face of hope.
At first sight, I did not think the maid had forgotten anything to speak of. The maid . . . I saw traces of other hands than hers here . . . It was not she who had put in, under the summer blouses and the layers of fresh, fine underlinen threaded with new ribbons, the little green leather case. Inside it, the ruby Renaud had given me shone lucent, like transparent blood, like rich, mellow wine . . . I hardly dared to touch it. No, no; let it go on sleeping in the little green case!
In the lower compartment lay my dresses, their bodices empty and their sleeves like deflated balloons; three simple dresses that I can keep here. But shall I also keep that enchanting little old silver box here, a present from him, like the ruby, like everything I possess? It had been filled with my favourite sweets, extra sugary fondants and chocolate creams . . . Renaud, wicked Renaud, if only you knew how bitter sweets taste, wetted with hot tears! . . .
I hesitated now over lifting each layer, for
the past clung to every fold and everything spoke of the tender, imploring solicitude of the man who had betrayed me . . . Everything here was full of him; he had smoothed the folded underclothes with his own hands, he had tied the ribbons of those sachets they were packed in . . .
Working slowly, my eyes misty with tears, I lingered long over the emptying of this reliquary . . .
I would have liked to linger even longer! Right at the bottom, in one of my little morocco mules, a white letter was rolled up. I knew perfectly well that I should read it . . . but how cold that sealed paper felt! How unpleasantly it crackled under my trembling fingers! I had to read it, if only to silence that odious little noise . . .
‘My poor, adored child, I am sending you all that remains to me of you, everything that still kept your scent lingering here, a little of your presence. My darling, you who believe in the soul of things, I still hope that these will speak of me without anger to you. Will you forgive me, Claudine? I am mortally lonely. Give me back – not now, later on, when you feel you can – not my wife, but just the dear little daughter you have taken away. Because my heart is bursting with grief at the thought of your pale, intense little face smiling at your father while all that remains to me is the cruel face of Marcel. I implore you to remember, when you are less unhappy, that one line from you would be as dear and blessed to me as a promise . . .’
‘Wherever be you off to now? And lunch on the table, waiting for you!’
‘It’ll have to be disappointed. I’m not having any lunch. Tell Papa . . . oh, anything you like, that I’m going to walk as far as Quail Mountain . . . I shan’t be home till this evening.’
As I spoke, I was feverishly stuffing things into a little basket, the crusty top of a cottage loaf, some windfall apples, a leg of chicken pinched from the dish ready for the table . . . Definitely I was not lunching here! To see clear into my troubled mind, I needed the sun-striped shadow and the beauty of the woods as counsellor.
In spite of the harsh sun, I did not stop once as I followed the narrow path that leads to Les Vrimes, more of a ditch than a path, hollow and sandy like a river-bed. My footsteps sent verdelles scurrying away, those big, emerald-green lizards who are so timid that I have never managed to capture one. Clouds of common butterflies, beige and brown like labourers, rose up in front of me. A Camberwell beauty zigzagged past, brushing the hedge as if it were an effort to raise its heavy brown velvet wings any higher . . . At long intervals, a shallow, undulating furrow made a hollow imprint in the sand; a snake had passed there, slate-coloured and shining. Perhaps the green legs of a frog, still kicking, had protruded from its flat little tortoise-like mouth . . .
Often I turned round, to watch the ivy-clad Saracen tower and the decrepit castle growing smaller. I wanted to go as far as the little gamekeeper’s lodge that, maybe a hundred years ago, lost the floorboards of its single storey, its windows, its door, and even its very name . . . For here it is called ‘the-little-house-where-there-are-so-many-dirty-things-written-on-the-walls’. That’s the sort of place it is. And it really is a fact that it would be impossible to see more obscenities and naïve bits of gross scatology than are carved or scrawled in charcoal there. They cover the entire length and breadth of the walls so thickly that they intertwine and they are illustrated with sketches, done with chalk or a pen-knife. But I am not concerned with the little six-sided house to which rude boys and bands of sly girls make their pilgrimage on Sundays . . . What I want is the wood it used to guard and that is never sullied by young Sunday pleasure-seekers because it is too dense, too silent, and broken by damp gulleys brimming over with ferns . . .
Ravenous, with all thought put to sleep, I ate like a woodcutter, my basket between my knees. The sheer delight of feeling a lively animal, conscious of nothing but the flavour of crisp, crunchy bread and juicy apple! The gentle landscape awakened a sensuality in me that was almost like the rapture of the hunger I was appeasing; those dark, close-knit woods smelt like the apple, this fresh bread was as gay as the pink-tiled roof that pierced them . . .
Then, lying on my back, with my arms flung out sideways, I waited for blissful torpor.
No one in the fields. What would they be doing in them? Nothing was cultivated there. The grass grew, the dead wood fell, the game walked into the snare. Little girls on holiday from school led the sheep along the slopes and everything, at this hour, was taking a siesta, like myself. A flowering briar-bush exhaled its deceptive smell of strawberries. The low branches of a stunted oak sheltered me like the porch of a house.
While I was slithering a little way to change my bed of cool grass, a crackling of crumpled paper chased away approaching sheep. Renaud’s letter palpitated inside my blouse, that imploring letter . . .
‘My poor, adored child’ . . . ‘the dear little daughter you have taken away’ . . . ‘Your pale intense little face . . .’
He had written, perhaps for the first time in his life, without weighing the words he wrote, without any attempt at literary style – he who, normally, was as shocked to see a word repeated only two lines later as to find an inkstain on his finger.
I carried that letter as engaged girls do, next to my heart. That and the other one of the day before yesterday were the only two love-letters I had ever received. For, during our brief engagement, Renaud had been with me every day, and, ever since, gaily, meekly, or indifferently I had always followed him wherever his roving, worldly temperament took him . . .
What good had I done him or myself, in eighteen months? I had rejoiced in his love, been saddened by his frivolity, shocked by his ways of thinking and behaving – all this without saying a word and deliberately avoiding discussions. And more than once I had felt resentful towards Renaud for my own silence.
There had been egotism in my suffering without trying to find a remedy; there had been obstinate pride in my silent reproaches. Yet what was there he would not have done for me? I could have obtained everything from his passionate tenderness; he loved me enough to guide me – if I had guided him first. And what had I asked him for? A place for assignations!
We must begin all over again. Thank God, it was not too late to make a fresh start. ‘My dear giant,’ I would say to him, ‘I order you to dominate me! . . .’ And I would say too . . . oh, so many other things . . .
It was growing late. The sun was dipping, delicate butterflies were emerging from the woods with a hesitant, already nocturnal flight; a shy, sociable little owl appeared too early on the fringe of the wood, blinking its dazzled eyes; as the daylight faded, the undergrowth was coming alive with a thousand uneasy rustlings and little cries. But for all these things I had only inattentive ears and absently tender eyes . . . Suddenly, I was on my feet, stretching my numbed arms and cramped calves; the next moment I was rushing away towards Montigny, spurred on by the time – the time of the post, of course! I wanted to write, to write to Renaud.
I had made my resolution . . . Ah! how little it had cost me!
Dear Renaud, I find it difficult to write to you because this is the first time. And I feel I shall never be able to say all I want to say to you before the evening post goes.
I’ve got to ask your forgiveness for having gone away and to thank you for having let me go. It has taken me four days, all alone in my house with my misery, to understand something you could have convinced me of in a few minutes . . . All the same, I think these four days have not been wasted.
You have written me all your loving tenderness, dear giant, without saying a word to me about Rézi, without telling me: ‘You did with her just what I did, with so little difference . . .’ Yet that would have been very reasonable, almost flawless as a piece of logic. But you knew that it was not the same thing . . . and I’m grateful to you for not having said it.
I don’t want ever, ever again to make you unhappy, but you must help me over this, Renaud. Yes, I am your child . . . something more than your child, an over-petted daughter whom you ought sometimes to refuse what she asks for. I wanted R
ézi and you gave her to me like a sweet . . . You’ve got to teach me that some kinds of sweets are harmful and that, if one eats them all, one must be on the lookout for bad brands . . . Don’t, dear Renaud, be afraid of making your Claudine unhappy by scolding her. I like being dependent on you and being a little frightened of a friend I love so much.
I want to tell you something else too; it’s that I shan’t come back to Paris. You have entrusted me to the country I love, so come and find me again here, keep me here, love me here. If you have to leave me sometimes, because you have to or because you want to, I will wait here faithfully and with no mistrust. There is enough beauty and sadness here in Fresnois for you to have no fear of boredom if I am with you all the time. For I am more beautiful here, more loving, more sincere.
Whatever happens, come, because I can’t go on any longer without you. I love you, I love you; it’s the first time I’ve written it to you. Come! Remember that I have just been waiting four whole long days, my dear husband, for you not to be too young for me any more . . .
Also available in Vintage
COLETTE
Claudine at School
‘A perpetual feast to the reader . . . her prose is rich, flawless, intricate, audacious and utterly beautiful’ Raymond Mortimer
Claudine is a head strong, clever and extremely mischievous schoolgirl. Along with her friends the lanky Anaïs, the cheerful Marie and the prim Joubert twins Claudine wreaks havoc on her small school. Always clever, witty and charming Claudine is more than a match for her formidable headmistress as they fight for the attention of the pretty assistant Aimee.