The Collected Stories of Colette

by Colette

  Oh, how it hurts me! I no longer have one secret place left in me, not one sheltered corner, and my hands pressed flat against my ears do not keep the wind from getting through and chilling my brain . . . Naked, swept aside, routed, I tighten the tatters of my thoughts in vain; they escape me, beating, like a coat torn halfway off, like a gull held by its feet which frees itself by flapping its wings . . .

  Leave me alone, you who come gently, pitiably, to place your hands on my forehead. I hate everything, and most of all the sea! Go and look at it, you who like it! It thrashes the terrace, it ferments, it shoots up in yellow foam, it glistens, the color of dead fish, it fills the air with a smell of iodine and fertile decay. Below the leaden waves, I can make out the abominable populace of feetless beasts, flat, slippery, icy . . . So you don’t smell the flood and the wind carrying, as far as this room, the odor of rotting shellfish? . . . Oh, come back, you who can do almost everything for me! Don’t leave me alone! Hold, beneath my nostrils, pinched and discolored by disgust, hold your perfumed hands, hold your fingers, dry and warm and delicate as mountain lavender . . . Come back! Stay close to me, order the sea to go away, make a sign to the wind, so that it will lie down on the sand, and play there in circles with the shells . . . Make a sign: it will sit down on the dune, gently, and amuse itself, with a puff, by changing the shape of the moving . . .

  Ah, you’re shaking your head . . . You don’t want to—you can’t. Well then, go away, leave me helpless in the tempest, and let it knock down the wall and come and carry me off! Leave the room, so that I don’t hear the useless sound of your footsteps anymore. Oh no, no caresses! Your magician’s hands and your overwhelming gaze, and your mouth, which dissolves the memory of other mouths, would be powerless today. Today I long for someone who possessed me before all others, before you, before I was a woman.

  I belong to a country which I have left. You cannot change the fact that there, at this moment, a whole canopy fragrant with forests is opening up to the sun. Nothing can change the fact that at this moment the deep grass there laps the foot of the trees, with a delicious and soothing green for which my soul thirsts . . . Come, you who do not know it, come let me tell you in a whisper: the fragrance of the woods in my country equals the strawberry and the rose! You would swear, when the bramble patches there are in bloom, that a fruit is ripening somewhere, over there, here, close by, an elusive fruit one inhales through wide-open nostrils. You would swear, when autumn penetrates and bruises the fallen foliage, that an overripe apple had just fallen, and you search for it and you smell it, here, over there, close by . . .

  And if, in June, you passed between the new-mowed meadows, at the hour when the moon streams down on the round haystacks which are my country’s dunes, you would feel, with the first whiff of that fragrance, your heart unfold. You would close your eyes, with that grave pride with which you veil your sensuousness, and you would let your head fall, with a muted sigh . . .

  And if, one summer’s day, you were to arrive in my country, at the back of a garden I know, a garden black with greenery and without flowers, and if you would see, off in the distance, a round mountain turn blue where the rocks, the butterflies, and the thistles are tinted with the same mauve and dusty azure, you would forget me, and you would sit down, never to move from there again till the end of your days.

  There is also, in my country, a valley narrow as a cradle where in the evenings there stretches out and floats a stream of mist, a fine, white, living mist, a graceful specter of fog lying on the humid air . . . Enlivened by a gentle undulation, it melts into itself and becomes, by turns, a cloud, a sleeping woman, a languorous snake, a horse with a neck like a chimera’s . . . If you stay too late, leaning toward it over the narrow valley, to drink in the cold air which carries this loving mist like a soul, a shudder will seize you, and all night your dreams will be mad . . .

  One thing more, put your hand in mine: if you were to follow, in my country, a little path I know of, yellow and bordered with burning pink foxglove, you would think you were climbing the enchanted path which leads away from life . . . The bounding song of the velvet-furred hornets leads you to it and beat in your ears like the very blood of your heart, as far as the forest, up there, where the world ends . . . It is an ancient forest, forgotten by men, and exactly like paradise, listen now, for . . .

  How pale you are and with such big eyes! What did I say to you? I don’t know anymore . . . I was speaking, I was speaking about my country, in order to forget the sea and the wind . . . And here you are pale, with jealous eyes . . . You call me back to you, you can feel how far away I am . . . I must retrace my steps, I must once more tear up, all my roots, which bleed . . .

  Here I am! Once again I belong to you. I wanted only to forget the wind and the sea. I spoke in a dream . . . What did I say to you? Don’t believe it! No doubt I told you of a country of wonders, where the savor of the air intoxicates? . . . Don’t believe it! Don’t go there: you would search for it in vain. You would see only a rather sad countryside, darkened by the forests, a poor and peaceful village, a humid valley, a bluish and bare mountain which cannot feed even the goats . . .

  Take me back! I’ve come back. Where did the wind go, while I was away? In what hollow of the dunes is it sulking, wearily? A sharp ray of light, squeezed between two clouds, pricks the sea and ricochets off here, into this flask where it does its cramped dance . . .

  Throw aside this tartan, it’s suffocating me; look! the sea is already turning green . . . Open the window and the door, and let us run toward the gilded end of this gray day, for I want to gather on the beach the flowers of your country brought here by the waves, imperishable flowers strewn about like petals of pink mother-of-pearl, O shells . . .

  [Translated by Matthew Ward]

  The Last Fire

  Kindle, in the hearth, the last fire of the year! The sun and the flame together will illuminate your face. Beneath your gesture, an ardent bouquet shoots up, ribboned with smoke, but I no longer recognize our winter fire, our arrogant and chatty fire, fed with bundles of dry wood and splendid stumps. That is because a more powerful star, having entered with a flash through the open window, has been living as master of our room since this morning . . .

  Look, the sun cannot possibly favor other gardens as much as ours! Look closely! For nothing here compares to our garden of last year, and this year, still young and shivering, is already busy changing the decor of our sweet, secluded life . . . It is lengthening each branch of our pear trees with a horned and glossy bud, each lilac bush with a tuft of pointed leaves . . .

  Oh, look how big they’re getting, especially the lilacs! Come May, you will not be able to smell their flowers, which last year you kissed as you passed, except by rising up on the tips of your toes, you will have to lift your hands to lower their clusters toward your mouth . . . Look closely at the shadow, on the sand of the path, drawn by the delicate skeleton of the tamarisk: next year, you will not recognize it anymore . . .

  And the violets themselves, budding as if by magic tonight, do you recognize them? You lean over, and like me, you are astonished; aren’t they bluer this spring? No, no, you’re mistaken, last year they looked less dark to me, an azured mauve, don’t you remember? . . . You protest, you shake your head with your serious laughter, the green of the new grass lightens the lustrous bronze water of your gaze . . . More mauves . . . no, more blues . . . Stop this teasing! Rather carry to your nose the unchanging fragrance of these changing violets and watch, while inhaling the philter which dispels the years, watch like me the springs of your childhood rise up and quicken before you . . .

  More mauves . . . no, more blues . . . I can see meadows, deep woods, which the first outburst of buds mists over with an elusive green, cold streams, forgotten springs drunk up by the sand as soon as they are born, Easter primroses, daffodils with the saffron-colored heart, and violets, violets, violets . . . I can see a silent little girl whom spring had already enchanted with a wild happiness, with a bi
ttersweet and mysterious joy . . . A little girl imprisoned by day in a schoolhouse, and who exchanged toys and pictures for the first bouquets of violets from the woods, tied with a red cotton thread, brought by the little shepherdesses from the surrounding farms . . . Short-stemmed violets, white violets and blue violets, and white-blue violets veined with mauve mother-of-pearl, big anemic cowslip violets, which raise their pale, odorless corollas on long stems . . . February violets, blooming beneath the snow, ragged-edged, burned with frost, ugly, poor fragrant little things . . . O violets of my childhood! You rise up before me, all of you, you lattice the milky April sky, and the quivering of your countless little faces intoxicates me . . .

  What are you thinking about, with your head tilted back? Your tranquil eyes are lifted toward the sun which they brave . . . Why, it is only to follow the flight of the first bee, sluggish, lost, in search of a honeyed peach-tree blossom . . . Chase it away! it will get stuck in the sap of that bud on the chestnut tree! No, it is lost in the blue air, the color of periwinkle milk, in this misty yet pure sky, which dazzles you . . . O you, who perhaps were satisfied with this little strip of azure, this rag of sky hemmed in by the walls of our narrow garden, dream that, somewhere in the world, there is an envied place where one discovers the whole sky! Dream, as you would dream of an unreachable kingdom, dream of the borders of the horizon, of how exquisitely pale the sky grows as it meets the earth . . . On this hesitant spring day, I can make out, over there, beyond the walls, the poignant line, slightly wavy, of what, as a child, I named land’s end. It turns pink, then blue, in a gold sweeter at the heart than the sweet juice of a fruit . . . Do not feel sorry for me, beautiful pathetic eyes, for evoking so vividly what I long for! My voracious longing creates what it is missing and feeds on it. I am the one who smiles kindly at your idle hands, empty of flowers. Too soon, too soon! We and the bee and the peach-tree blossom are looking for spring too soon . . .

  The iris is sleeping, furled into a little cornet under a triple greenish silk, the peony pierces the earth with a stiff branch of bright coral pink, and the rosebush still dares put out only suckers of a pink maroon, the bright color of an earthworm. Nevertheless, gather the brown gillyflower, ruddy, uncouth, and clad in solid velvet like a digger wasp, presaging the tulip . . . Do not look for the lily of the valley yet; between two valves of leaves, shaped like elongated mussel shells from which the sovereign odor will soon flow, its green Orient pearls mysteriously grow round . . .

  The sun has walked on the sand. An icy breath, which feels like hail, is rising from the purple-and-blue east. The peach blossoms fly off horizontally. I’m so cold! The Siamese cat, a few minutes ago dead with ease on the mild warmth of the wall, suddenly opens her sapphire eyes set in her dark velvet mask . . . Crouched down, belly to the ground, she creeps off toward the house, her sensitive ears folded back on her head against the cold. Let’s go now! I’m afraid of that violet, copper-edged cloud menacing the setting sun . . . The fire you lit a few minutes ago is dancing in the room, like a joyful, imprisoned animal watching for our return.

  O last fire of the year! The last, the most lovely! Your peony pink, disheveled, fills the hearth with an endlessly blossoming shower of sparks. Let us lean toward it, offer it our hands, which its glow penetrates and bloodies. There is not one flower in our garden more beautiful than it, a tree more complicated, a grass more full of motion, a creeper so treacherous, so imperious! Let us stay here, let us cherish this changing god who makes a smile dance in your melancholy eyes . . . Later on, when I take off my dress, you will see me all pink like a painted statue. I will stand motionless before it, and in the panting glow my skin will seem to quicken, to tremble and move as in the hours when love, with an inevitable wing, swoops down on me . . . Let’s stay! The last fire of the year invites us to silence, idleness, and tender repose. With my head on your breast, I can hear the wind, the flames, and your heart all beating, while at the black windowpane a branch of the pink peach tree taps incessantly, half unleaved, terrified, and undone like a bird in a storm . . .

  [Translated by Matthew Ward]

  A Fable: The Tendrils of the Vine

  In bygone times the nightingale did not sing at night. He had a sweet little thread of voice that he skillfully employed from morn to night with the coming of spring. He awoke with his comrades in the blue-gray dawn, and their flustered awakening startled the cockchafers sleeping on the underside of the lilac leaves.

  He went to bed promptly at seven o’clock or half past seven, no matter where, often in the flowering grapevines that smelled of mignonette, and slept solidly until morning.

  One night in the springtime he went to sleep while perched on a young vine shoot, his jabot fluffed up and his head bowed, as if afflicted with a graceful torticollis. While he slept, the vine’s gimlet feelers—those imperious and clinging tendrils whose sharp taste, like that of fresh sorrel, acts as a stimulant and slakes the thirst—began to grow so thickly during the night that the bird woke up to find himself bound fast, his feet hobbled in strong withes, his wings powerless . . .

  He thought he would die, but by struggling he managed after a great effort to liberate himself, and throughout the spring he swore never to sleep again, not until the tendrils of the vine had stopped growing.

  From the next night onward he sang, to keep himself awake:

  As long as the vine shoots grow, grow, grow,

  I will sleep no more!

  As long as the vine shoots grow, grow, grow,

  I will sleep no more!

  He varied his theme, embellishing it with vocalizations, became infatuated with his voice, became that wildly passionate and palpitating songster that one listens to with the unbearable longing to see him sing.

  I have seen a nightingale singing in the moonlight, a free nightingale that did not know he was being spied upon. He interrupts himself at times, his head inclined, as if listening within himself to the prolongation of a note that has died down . . . Then, swelling his throat, he takes up his song again with all his might, his head thrown back, the picture of amorous despair. He sings just to sing, he sings such lovely things that he does not know anymore what they were meant to say. But I, I can still hear, through the golden notes, the melancholy piping of a flute, the quivering and crystalline trills, the clear and vigorous cries, I can still hear the first innocent and frightened song of the nightingale caught in the tendrils of the vine:

  As long as the vine shoots grow, grow, grow . . .

  Imperious, clinging, the tendrils of a bitter vine shackled me in my springtime while I slept a happy sleep, without misgivings. But with a frightened lunge I broke all those twisted threads that were already imbedded in my flesh, and I fled . . . When the torpor of a new night of honey weighed on my eyelids, I feared the tendrils of the vine and I uttered a loud lament that revealed my voice to me.

  All alone, after a wakeful night, I now observe the morose and voluptuous morning star rise before me . . . And to keep from falling again into a happy sleep, in the treacherous springtime when blossoms the gnarled vine, I listen to the sound of my voice. Sometimes I feverishly cry out what one customarily suppresses or whispers very low—then my voice dies down to a murmur, because I dare not go on . . .

  I want to tell, tell, tell everything I know, all my thoughts, all my surmises, everything that enchants or hurts or astounds me; but always, toward the dawn of this resonant night, a wise cool hand is laid across my mouth, and my cry, which had been passionately raised, subsides into moderate verbiage, the loquacity of the child who talks aloud to reassure himself and allay his fears.

  I no longer enjoy a happy sleep, but I no longer fear the tendrils of the vine . . .

  [Translated by Herma Briffault]

  PART II

  Backstage at the Music Hall

  Was I, in those days, too susceptible to the convention of work, glittering display, empty-headedness, punctuality, and rigid probity which reigns over the music hall? Did it inspire me to describe it
over and over again with a violent and superficial love with all its accompaniment of commonplace poetry? Very possibly.

  ON TOUR

  The Halt

  Here we are at Flers . . . A bumpy, sluggish train has just deposited our sleepy troupe and abandoned us, yawning and disgruntled, on a fine spring afternoon, the air sharpened by a breeze blowing from the east, across a blue sky streaked with light cloud and scented with lilac just bursting into bloom.

  Its freshness stings our cheeks, and we screw up our smarting eyes like convalescents prematurely allowed out. We have a two-and-a-half-hour wait before the train that is to take us on.

  “Two and a half hours! What shall we do with ourselves?”

  “We can send off picture postcards . . .”

  “We can have some coffee . . .”

  “We might play a game of piquet . . .”

  “We could look at the town . . .”

  The manager of our Touring Company suggests a visit to the park. That will give him time for forty winks in the buffet, nose buried in his turned-up collar, heedless of his peevish flock bleating around him.

  “Let’s go and see the park!”

  Now we are outside the station, and the hostile curiosity of this small town escorts us on our way.

  “These people here have never seen a thing,” mutters the ingenue, in aggressive mood. “Anyhow, the towns where we don’t perform are always filled with ‘bystanders.’”

  “And so are those where we do,” observes the disillusioned duenna.

  We are an ugly lot, graceless and lacking humility: pale from too-hard work, or flushed after a hastily snatched lunch. The rain at Douai, the sun at Nìmes, the salty breezes at Biarritz have added a green or rusty tarnish to our lamentable touring “outer garments,” ample misery-hiding cloaks which still pretentiously boast an “English style.” Trailing over the length and breadth of France, we have slept in our crumpled bonnets, all of us except the grande coquette, above whose head wave pompously—stuck on the top of a dusty black velvet tray—three funereal ostrich plumes.