by Colette
“The things he said, the things he said! I didn’t budge, I looked at him, I was cold . . . And you know, I didn’t cry! Not in front of him.”
“It was very wise of you, my dear, and very brave.”
“Very brave,” she repeated, lowering her head. “As soon as I could move, I got out. I heard terrible things about women, about all women; about the ‘prodigious unconsciousness of women, their improvident pride, their animal pride which, deep down, always thinks it will be enough for the man . . .’ What would you have said?”
“Nothing.”
Nothing, it’s true. What is there to say? I’m not far from agreeing with him, a crude man pushed to the limit. He’s almost right. It’s always good enough for the man! Women have no excuses. They’ve given men every reason to run away, to cheat, to hate, to change. Ever since the world began, they’ve been inflicting men, behind the bed curtains, with a creature inferior to the one he desired. They rob him with effrontery nowadays, when reinforced hair and rigged corsets turn any ugly, saucy little woman into “a striking little lady.”
I listen to my other friends talk, I look at them, and I sit there, embarrassed for them . . . Lily, the charmer, the page with short, frizzy hair, imposes on her lovers, from the first night on, the nakedness of her head, bumpy with brown snails, the fat and hideous hairpin snail! Clarissa preserves her complexion while she sleeps with a layer of cucumber cream, and Annie pulls all her hair back Chinese-style, tied with a ribbon! Suzanne coats her delicate neck with lanolin and swaddles it in old worn-out linen; Minna never goes to sleep without her chin strap on, the purpose of which is to stave off the fattening of her cheeks and chin, and she glues a little paraffin star on each temple.
If I get indignant, Suzanne raises her fat shoulders and says: “Do you think I’m going to ruin my skin for a man? I don’t have a change of skin. If he doesn’t like lanolin, he can leave. I’m not forcing anyone.” And Lily declares impetuously: “In the first place, I am not ugly in my curlers! They make me look like a little frizzy-headed schoolgirl at an awards ceremony.” When Minna’s “friend” complains about her chin strap, her response is: “Darling, don’t be a bore. You’re quite happy at the races if someone behind you says: ‘That Minna, she still has the oval face of a virgin!’” And Jeannine, who wears a reducing belt at night! And Marguerite, who . . . no, I can’t write that . . . !
My little friend, grown plain and sad, was listening to my obscure thoughts, and her guess was that I did not pity her enough. She stood up . . .
“That’s all you have to say to me?”
“My poor dear, what do you want me to say to you? What I think is that nothing is lost, and that your painter-lover will be scratching on your door tomorrow, maybe even this evening . . .”
“Do you think he might have telephoned? He’s not basically a mean person. He’s a little crazy, it’s just a passing thing, isn’t it?”
She was already on her feet, bright with hope.
I say “yes” to everything, full of goodwill and the desire to satisfy her . . . And I watch her hurry down the sidewalk, her steps shortened by her high heels. Maybe he really does love her. And if he does, the time will come again when, despite all the embellishments and all the frauds, she will once again become for him, with the shadows’ help, the faun with freely flowing hair, the nymph with unblemished feet, the beautiful slave with flawless flanks, naked as love itself . . .
What Must We Look Like?
“What are you doing Sunday, tomorrow?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh, no reason . . .”
My friend Valentine, in order to inquire as to how I will spend my Sunday, has assumed too indifferent an air.
I insist: “No reason? Are you sure? Come on, out with it . . . You need me!”
She slips away gracefully, the clever thing, and answers sweetly, “My dear, I always need you.”
Oh, that smile! I am always left at a loss, whenever I’m taken in by her petty, sophisticated duplicity. I’d rather give in right away.
“Oh, Sunday, Valentine, I go to the concert, or else I go to bed. I’ve been going to bed quite a lot this year, because Chevillard has poor accommodations and because the Colonne concerts, which come after, are all alike.”
“Oh! You think so?”
“Yes, I do. If you’ve gone to Bayreuth in the past, quite faithfully, if you’ve enjoyed Van Rooy as Wotan and suffered through Burgstaller as Siegfried, you get no pleasure, none whatsoever, in finding him at Colonne’s, in civilian clothes, with the awkward gait of a frenetic sacristan crowned with childish ringlets, the knees of an old ballerina, and the mawkishness of a seminarian. An unkind coincidence brought us together, at the Châtelet, him on stage, me in the audience, a few weeks ago, and I had to listen to him bellow—twice—an “Ich grolle nicht” which Madame de Maupeou wouldn’t dare serve to her relatives from the provinces! I fled before the concert was over, to the great relief of my neighbor to my right, the “lady companion” of a Paris city councillor, my dear!”
“Were you bothering her?”
“I was making her uncomfortable. She doesn’t know me anymore, since our separation and division of property changed me so much. She trembled every time I batter an eyelash, for fear I might kiss her.”
“Oh, I understand!”
She understands! Eyes lowered, my friend Valentine taps on the clasp of her gold purse. She is wearing—but I’ve already told you all about it—a huge, high hat, beneath which is an abundance of ruinously expensive blond hair. Her Japanese-style sleeves make her arms look like a penguin’s, her skirt, long and heavy, covers her pointed feet, and it requires a terrible single-mindedness to appear charming under so many horrors.
She had just said, as if despite herself: “I understand . . .”
“Yes, you understand. I’m sure you do. You must understand that . . . My dear, shouldn’t you be going home? It’s late, and your husband . . .”
“Oh, that’s not very nice of you . . .”
Her blue-gray-green-brown eyes beg me, humbly, and I repent immediately.
“I was only joking, silly! Come on now, what is it you wanted to do with my Sunday?”
My friend Valentine opens her little penguin arms comically and says, “Well, that’s just it, it’s almost as if it was on purpose . . . Imagine, tomorrow afternoon I’ll be all alone, all alone . . .”
“And you’re complaining.”
The word just slipped out. I feel her almost sad, this young doll. Her husband away; her lover . . . busy; her friends—her real friends—celebrating the Lord behind closed doors, or going off in their cars . . .
“You wanted to come here tomorrow, my dear? Well then, come! It’s a very good idea.”
I don’t believe a word of it, but she thanks me, with that little-lost-dog look, exactly the sort of thing I find touching, and off she goes, quickly, in a rush, as if she really did have something to do.
SUNDAY. My dear Sunday, day for idleness and my warm bed, my Sunday—for eating like a glutton, sleeping, reading—lost, ruined, and for whom? For an uncertain friend I feel vaguely sorry for.
Don’t go to sleep, my gray contented pussycat, for my friend Valentine will soon ring the bell, make her entrance, swish about, and carry on. She will run her gloved hand over your back, and your spine will shudder as you look at her with murderous eyes. You know she really doesn’t like you very much, my short-haired country girl; she goes into ecstasies over Angoras, which have capes like collies and whiskers like Chauchard. Ever since you scratched her that day, she keeps her distance; she knows nothing about your violent little soul, delicate and vindictive, the soul of a bohemian cat. As soon as she comes, turn your striped back to her, roll yourself up into a turban at my feet, on the satin scratched by your curved claws shaped like the thorns of a wild rosebush.
Shhh! she rang . . . here she is! She shivers and haphazardly plants her icy little nose on my face—she kisses so poorly!
“
Lord, your nose has lost consciousness, my dear. Sit down in the fire, for heaven’s sake.”
“Don’t laugh, it’s terrible out there! All the same, you’re lucky you’re in bed! Twenty-five degrees; we’ll all die.”
In fact, my friend’s face had turned lilac, the somewhat greenish lilac of plums just beginning to ripen.
A splendid tailored suit, made of mousy brown velvet, hugs her, clings to her, from collar to feet. Especially the jacket, oh, the jacket! tight at the top, flared at the bottom, the embroidered peplum hitting the knees, like a little overskirt . . . And thrown over that, in twenty-five-degree weather, a sable stole, an expensive scrap of useless fur—and here she is dying of cold with her nose turning purple.
“You little dodo! Couldn’t you at least have put on your broadtail coat?”
She turns halfway around, hands on her hat, looking lost behind its veil.
“Well no, I couldn’t! With this style of long jacket, the peplum shows under my broadtail coat, and I ask you now, what would that look like?”
“You should have lengthened the broadtail.”
“Thank you! and what next! Max is very chic, and not all that expensive, but still . . .”
“You should have . . . bought a bigger sable . . .”
My friend turns on me, as if about to bite me. “A . . . a bigger sable!!! I’m not Rothschild!”
Me either. Or else . . . wait . . . you should have had a serious coat made of a less expensive fur, that wasn’t sable . . .”
Disentangled from her veil, my friend lets her tired arms fall. “A different fur! There is no truly chic, no truly dressy fur, besides sable . . . A chic woman without sable, seriously, my dear, what must that look like?”
What, in fact, does it look like? I really don’t know. I feel around with my toes, at the foot of the bed, for my hot-water bottle.
The fire crackles and hisses, a shameless country fire, which spits and shoots out little glowing embers.
“Valentine, be a sweetheart and take care of the chores. Pull the tea table up next to the bed. There’s boiling water by the fire; the sandwiches, the wine, everything’s there . . . you won’t have to ring for Francine and I won’t be forced to get up; we’ll be quiet, lazy gluttons. Take off your hat, you can lean your head against the cushions . . . over there.”
She looks sweet without her hat. A little like a hatmaker, a little like a mannequin, but sweet. A beautiful roll of golden hair billows down to her brown eyebrows and holds up a large, flowing wave; above it there is another, smaller wave, and still another above that, and in the back, curls, curls, curls . . . It’s alluring, clean-looking, frothy and neat at the same time, as complicated as a side dish at a wedding feast.
The lamp—I’ve shut the blinds and drawn the curtains—casts a pink wash on my friend’s face, but despite the even, velvety layer of face powder, despite the red lipstick, the drawn features, the stiff smile . . . she leans back against the cushions, with a long sigh of weariness . . .
“Dead?”
“Completely dead.”
“Love . . . ?”
Movement in the shoulders. “Love? Oh, no . . . No time. With all the openings, the dinners, the suppers, driving here and there to lunch, the exhibitions and the teas . . . this is a terrible month!”
“So you get to bed late, huh?”
“Alas . . .”
“Get up late. Or you’ll lose your beauty, my dear.”
She looks at me, astonished. “Get up late? That’s easy for you to say. What about the house? And the orders to give? And the bills to pay? And everything, everything! And the maid who knocks on my door twenty-five times!”
“Unlock the door and say you’re not to be disturbed.”
“But I can’t! Nothing would get done; it would be a disaster, organized theft . . . unlock the door! I can imagine what kind of a face there’d be on the other side, on my fat headwaiter who looks like Jean de Bonnefin . . . Now what would I look like then?”
“I really don’t know . . . Like a woman who’s getting some rest . . .”
“Easy to say . . .” She sighs with a nervous yawn. “You can treat yourselves to it, you people who are . . . who are . . .”
“On the fringes of society . . .”
She laughs with all her heart, suddenly rejuvenated. Then melancholy: “Yes, you can. We others aren’t allowed to.”
We others . . . The mysterious plural, the strict imposing freemasonry of those whom the world hypnotizes, overworks, and disciplines. An abyss separates this young woman sitting there in her tailored brown suit from this other woman lying on her stomach, her chin resting on her fists. Silently, I savor my enviable inferiority.
To myself, I muse: “You others cannot live however you like . . . that is your torment, your pride, and your loss. You have husbands who take you out to supper after the theater—but you also have children and maids dragging you out of bed in the morning. You have supper at the Café de Paris, next to Mademoiselle Xaverine de Choisy, and you leave the restaurant at the same time she does, both of you a little tipsy, a little amorous, your nerves tingling . . . but once home, Mademoiselle de Choisy sleeps if she feels like it, loves if she feels up to it, and as she falls asleep she calls out to her faithful chambermaid: ‘I’m going to sleep until two in the afternoon, and I don’t want anyone bothering me before that or I’ll send you all home for a week!’ Having gotten nine hours of well-deserved rest, Mademoiselle de Choisy wakes refreshed, has her breakfast, and dashes down the rue de la Paix, where she runs into you, Valentine, all you Valentines, you my friend, on your feet since eight-thirty in the morning, already worn out, pale-looking, with dark circles under your eyes . . . And Mademoiselle de Choisy says aside to her fitter: ‘Little Madame Valentine What’s-her-name doesn’t look well at all! She must be keeping late hours!’ And your husband and your lover, at supper later, will also compare in petto Mademoiselle de Choisy’s well-rested freshness to your obvious fatigue. You will think, furious and ill-considered: ‘Women like that are made of steel!’ Not at all, my friend! They get more rest than you. What demimondaine could withstand the daily hustle and bustle of certain women of the world or even of certain women with families?”
My young friend has brewed the tea, and is filling the cups with a deft hand. I admire her somewhat deliberate elegance, her precise gestures; I appreciate the fact that she is walking noiselessly as her long skirt both precedes and follows her, in an obedient, moiré stream . . . I appreciate the fact that she confides in me, that she comes back at the risk of compromising her position as a woman with a husband and a lover, for coming back here to see me with an affectionate persistence which verges on heroism.
When she hears the tinkling of the spoons, my gray cat opens her serpent-like eyes.
She is hungry. But she does not get up right away, out of pure cant. To beg, like a plaintive and wheedling Angora, in a minor threnody, bah! What would that look like, as Valentine says. I offer her a burned corner of toast, which crackles between her little teeth made of bluish-white silex, and her pearly purring doubles that of the kettle. For a long moment, a quasi-provincial silence settles on us. My friend is resting, arms at her sides . . .
“You can’t hear a thing,” she whispers cautiously.
I answer with my eyes, without speaking, glowing with warmth and idleness. It feels so nice . . . But wouldn’t it be even nicer if my friend weren’t here? She’s going to start talking, it’s inevitable. She’s going to say, “What must we look like?” It’s not her fault she was raised that way. If she had children, she would forbid them to eat their meat without bread, or to hold their spoon with their left hand: “John, behave yourself! What must you look like?”
Shhh! She isn’t talking. Her eyelids are drooping and her eyes look as if they’re fading away. I have in front of me an almost unknown face, the face of a young woman drunk with drowsiness who falls asleep before her eyelids are closed. The studied smile fades away, the lip pouts, and the littl
e round chin crushes down on the collar of silver embroidery.
She’s sleeping soundly now. When she wakes with a start, she’ll apologize and exclaim: “Falling asleep during a visit, in an armchair! What must that look like?”
My friend Valentine, you look like a young woman left there like a poor but graceful rag. Sleep between me and the fire, to the purring of the cat and the faint rustling of the pages of the book I’m going to read now. No one will come in before you wake up; no one will cry out, staring at your sulky sleep and my unmade bed: “Oh, what must this look like!,” for you might die of chagrin. I am keeping watch over you, with a mild, a kindly pity; I am keeping watch over your vigilant and virtuous concern for what it is we must look like . . .
The Cure
The gray cat is delighted that I am on the stage. Theater or music hall, she shows no preference. What matters is that I disappear every evening, after swallowing down my cutlet, in order to reappear around half past midnight, and that once again we sit ourselves down at the table, in front of a chicken leg or some pink ham . . . Three meals a day instead of two! She no longer thinks of concealing her elation past midnight. Seated on the tablecloth, she smiles without dissimulation, the corners of her mouth turned up, and her eyes, spangled with scintillating sand, fixed wide open and confident on mine. She has waited all night for this precious hour, she savors it with a triumphant and egoistic joy which brings her closer to me.
O cat of ashen coat! To the uninitiated you look like every other gray cat on earth, lazy, oblivious, morose, somewhat listless, neuter, bored . . . but I know you to be wildly tender, and whimsical, jealous to the point of starving yourself, talkative, paradoxically awkward, and, on occasion, as tough as a young mastiff.
Now it is June and I am no longer in Flesh and my run in Claudine is over. Over, too, our late-night suppers together! Do you miss the quiet hour when, ravenous and somewhat dazed, I used to scratch that flat little skull of yours, the skull of a cruel beast, thinking vaguely, “It went well tonight . . .” Here we are alone, homebodies once again, unsociable, strangers to almost everything, indifferent to almost everyone. We are going to see our friend Valentine again, our “respectable acquaintance,” and listen to her hold forth about a world of people, strange, little known to us, full of pitfalls, duties, prohibitions, a formidable world, or so she says, but so far from me that I can scarcely conceive of it.