by Colette
“You don’t recognize me?” says a voice close beside me.
A young woman, simply, almost poorly clad in black, is looking at me with inquiring eyes. It is hard to tell the true color of her hair under her matted-straw hat trimmed with quills; she is wearing a white collar with a neat tie, and her pearl-gray gloves are slightly soiled.
Her face is powdered, her lips are rouged, her eyelashes darkened with mascara: the indispensable makeup, but applied without due consideration, of necessity, from force of habit. I ransack my memory, when suddenly the lovely eyes, with huge pupils the shimmering dark brown of Sémiramis’s coffee, bring me the answer.
“Why, of course, you’re Gitanette!”
Her name, her absurd music-hall name, has come back to me, and with it the memory of where we met.
It must have been three or four years ago, at the time I was playing in the Empyrée Pantomime, that Gitanette occupied the dressing room next to mine. Gitanette and her girlfriend, “A Duo in Cosmopolitan Dances,” used to dress with their door open onto the passage to get more air. Gitanette took the male parts and her girlfriend—Rita, Lina, Nina?—appeared, turn by turn, as a drab, as an Italian, then in red leather Cossack boots, and finally draped in a Manila shawl, a carnation behind her ear. A nice little pair, or should I say “little couple,” for there are certain ways and looks that tell their own story and, in addition, the authority assumed by Gitanette, the tender, almost maternal care with which she would wrap a thick woolen scarf round her girlfriend’s neck. As for the friend, Nina, Rita, or Lina, I have rather forgotten her. Peroxided hair, light-colored eyes, white teeth, something about her of an appetizing but slightly vulgar young washerwoman.
They danced neither very well nor very badly, and their act was borrowed from other “Dance Numbers.” Provided they are both young and agile, with a mutual distaste for the “bar à femmes” and the “promenoir,” then’s the time for them to collect their few pennies together to pay the ballet master so much a week to arrange a special dance routine, and the dressmaker . . . Then, if they are very, very lucky, the couple starts on the round of the various establishments in Paris, the provinces, and abroad.
Gitanette and her girlfriend were “playing” the Empyrée that month. For thirty nights running they bestowed on me all the discreet, disinterested attentions, the shy, reserved courtesy which seem to thrive exclusively among music-hall people. I would be dabbing on the last touch of rouge under my eyes when they came up, lips still trembling from lack of breath and temples moist, and stopped to smile at me without at first speaking, both panting like circus ponies. When recovered a little, they gave me politely, by way of greeting, some brief and useful piece of information: “An eighteen-carat audience tonight!” or else, “They’re a lousy lot today!”
Then Gitanette, before taking off her clothes, would unlace her friend’s bodice and Nina, or Lina, at once began to laugh and swear and jabber. “You’ll have to watch your step,” she’d shout across to me, “those roller skaters have gone and cut the boards to pieces again tonight, and you’ll be darned lucky if you don’t come a cropper!” The voice of Gitanette took up the tale, more soberly. “It’s a sure sign of luck if you fall flat on your face on the stage. It means you’ll come back to the same place before three years are out. That happened to me at Les Bouffes in Bordeaux, when I caught my foot in one of the cuts . . .”
They lived out loud, quite simply, in the next room to mine with their door left wide open. They twittered like busy, affectionate birds, happy to be working together and to have the shelter of each other’s arms and their love as a protection against the barren life of the prostitute and the occasional tough customer.
My thoughts went back to those old days as Gitanette stood before me, alone and sad, and so changed . . .
“Sit down a minute, Gitanette, we’ll have a coffee together . . . And . . . where is your friend?”
She shakes her head as she sits down. “We’re not together anymore, my friend and me. You never heard what happened to me?”
“No, I’ve heard nothing. Would it be impertinent to ask?”
“Oh, good gracious, no. You see, you’re an artiste like me . . . like I was, that is, for at present I’m not even a woman anymore.”
“Are things as bad as that?”
“Things are bad, if you like to put it that way. It all depends what sort of person you are. I’m by nature the sort who becomes terribly attached, you see. I became terribly attached to Rita, she meant everything to me. It never entered my head that things could change between us . . . The year it all happened, we’d just had a real stroke of luck. We’d hardly finished dancing at the Apollo when up popped Saloman, our agent, who sent us word that we were to have a dance routine in the Empyrée Revue, a gorgeous revue, twelve hundred costumes, English girls, everything. For my part, I wasn’t so mad keen to dance in it. I’ve always been a bit afraid of these big shows with so many females in them, for it always leads to rivalries, quarrels, or mischief of some sort. At the end of a fortnight in that revue, I wanted nothing so much as to be back in the quiet little number we’d been doing before. All the more because little Rita was no longer the same with me; she’d go visiting around here and there, palling up with this girl or that, till it was the bubbly she went for in the dressing room of Lucie Desrosiers, that great roan mare, who was poisoning herself with the drink and whose stays had all their whalebones broken. Champagne at twenty-three sous a bottle! Does anyone suppose you can get hold of any decent stuff at that price? The little one was going all la-di-da; there was no holding her. Then she came back to our dressing room one evening bragging that the Commère had given her the glad eye! Now, I ask you, was that very bright on her part, or very proper to me? I got ever so low-spirited and began seeing the bad side in everything. I’d have given I don’t know how much for a good date in Hamburg, or at the Wintergarten in Berlin, or almost any place to get us out of the big revue that seemed never to be going to finish!”
Gitanette turns to look at me with her dark coffee-colored eyes, which seem to have lost all their keenness and vitality.
“I’m telling things just as they happened, you know. Don’t run away with the idea I’ve made up this or that detail about anyone, or that there’s any malice intended.”
“No, of course not, Gitanette.”
“That’s good to hear. Well, came the day when my little bitch of a pal says to me: ‘Listen, Gitanette,’ she says, ‘I need an underskirt’ (we still wore underskirts in those days) ‘and a natty one, too. I’m ashamed to put on the one I have!’ As was only proper, I was the one who kept the key of the cash box, otherwise where would our meals have come from! I simply said to her: ‘Now, about this underskirt, it will cost you how much?’—’How much, how much!’ she shouts back at me in a rage. ‘Why, you’d think I hadn’t even the right to buy myself an underskirt!’ After a start like that, I saw we were in for a scene. To cut it short, I just tell her: ‘Here’s the key, take what you want, but don’t forget we’ve got the monthly rent to pay tomorrow.’ She takes out a fifty-franc note, flings on her things helter-skelter, and off she rushes, to get to the Galeries Lafayette, supposedly, before the rush hour! Meanwhile, I stay behind to run over a couple of costumes just back from the dyers, and I stitch and I stitch, while waiting for her to come back . . . When all of a sudden I see I’ll have to replace a whole ninon underflounce in Rita’s dress, and I dash down to the nearest shop in the Place Blanche, it being already dark . . . Simply telling you the story brings it all back clear as the moment it took place! As I come out of the shop, I only just escape being squashed flat by a taxi that draws into the curb and comes to a stop, and then what do I see? Lo and behold, before my very eyes, that great Desrosiers getting out of the cab, her hair disheveled, her dress all undone, and waving goodbye to Rita, to my Rita, who is still sitting inside the taxi! I was that taken by surprise, I stood rooted to the spot, cut off at the legs, I couldn’t budge. So much so that when I t
ried to make a sign to attract Rita’s attention, the taxi was already far away, it was taking Rita back to our place in the rue Constance . . .
“I’m all in a daze when I get back home; and of course she was already there, Rita, that is. You should have seen the look on her face . . . no, you have to know her as well as I know her, to see what . . .
“There, let’s leave it at that! So I act simple and I say to her: ‘What about that underskirt of yours?’—’I never bought it.’—’And what about that fifty francs?’—’I lost it.’ She fires this off point-blank, looking me straight in the eye! Oh, you can’t imagine what it was like, you can’t imagine . . .”
Gitanette lowers her eyes and nervously stirs the spoon in her cup.
“You can’t imagine what a blow it was to me, when she came out with that. It was like I’d seen the whole thing with my own eyes: their meeting place, the taxi ride, that one’s furnished room, the champagne on the night table, everything, everything.”
She goes on repeating under her breath, “Everything, everything,” till I interrupt her. “And then what did you do?”
“Nothing. I cried my eyes out over dinner, into my mutton and beans . . . And then, a week later, she left me. Fortunately I got so ill that I almost passed out, for if I had’ve though I loved her so much, I’d have killed her . . .”
She speaks calmly of killing, or of dying, all the time turning her spoon in the cup of cold coffee. This simple girl, who lives so close to nature, knows full well that all that is required to sever the threads of misery is one single act, so easy, hardly an act of violence. A person is dead, just as a person is alive, except that death is a state that can be chosen, whereas a person is not free to choose their own life.
“Did you really want to die, Gitanette?”
“Of course I did. Only I was so ill, you understand, I wasn’t able to. And then, later, my granny came to look after me and nurse me through my convalescence. She’s an old lady, you see, I didn’t dare leave her.”
“And now, at the present time, you are less sad than you were?”
“No,” Gitanette answers, dropping her voice. “And I don’t even want to be less sad. I should be ashamed of myself if I found consolation after loving my friend the way I did. You’re sure to tell me, as so many others have told me, ‘Do something to take your mind off it. Time is the great healer.’ I’ll not deny that time does straighten things out in the long run, but there again it all depends on what sort of person you are. You see, I’ve known nobody but Rita, it just happened that way. I never had a boyfriend, I know nothing about children, I lost my parents when I was quite young, but when I used to see lovers happy together, or parents with little children on their knees, I’d say to myself, ‘I’ve got everything they’ve got, because I’ve my Rita.’ No doubt about it, my life is finished in that respect, nothing can alter it. Each time I go back to my room at Granny’s and see my pictures of Rita, the photos of us two in all our numbers, and the little dressing table we shared, it starts up all over again, the tears come . . . I cry, I call out to her . . . It does me no good, but I can’t help it. It may sound funny, but . . . I don’t believe I’d know what to do with myself if I didn’t have my sorrow. It keeps me company.”
[Translated by Anne-Marie Callimachi]
The Victim
For the first twelve months of the war, it had been a daily tour de force, for her and for us, to keep her alive, a kind of bitter game, a challenge to unhappy fate. She was so pretty that all she would have had to do for a living, good heavens, was to sit back and do nothing . . . But it was precisely this beauty, and then her standing as a little lady whose boyfriend had been killed soon after the outbreak of the war in 1914, which moved us to pity. Our intention was to look after her thin halo for her, to provide her, during her widowhood, first with bread, and then with that luxury called chastity.
A more difficult task than it might seem, for we were dealing with the peculiar sensitivity of a sentimental, working-class suburban girl and an honest businesswoman. Josette admitted that everything can be bought and sold, even a revolted breast, even an unfeeling mouth. But a gift pure and simple made her suddenly embarrassed and flushed with wounded pride.
“No, thank you, really, I don’t need . . . No, we disagree about the little bill for the jacket, I still owed you fifty sous from last week.”
To keep her from wasting away or turning gloomily back to a traffic for which she felt nothing but disgust beforehand, we were forced to make her sew, iron, cover lampshades . . .
She did not want to work anywhere but home, in the middle of nowhere, in a “room with storage closet,” furnished mainly with photographs, where, under the sad, hygienic smell of coarse soap, there hung the distinctive scent of a dark-haired, fair-skinned little girl.
During the winter of 1914, she would arrive gaily, bringing her work with her. “It’s just me! Don’t let me bother you!”
A toque, or I don’t know what, a hobble skirt which clipped her impatient steps, narrow button boots—for her little feet danced ironically in our shoes—and the shabby fur neckpiece she preferred—more “chic”—to the coat one of us had offered her. And gloves!—but of course! but always!—gloves. Her smooth beauty humbled her poverty. I have never encountered anything smoother than this child, with her sleek black hair, never curled or waved, glued to her smooth temples with an artist’s hand, and gleaming like a precious wood anointed with fine oil. Her pure and prominent eyes, her supple cheeks, her mouth and chin seemed to say to everyone: “See how, with almost no curliness, we’re able to charm.”
“I’ve brought you back the little skirt,” explained Josette. “I didn’t edge the bottom, it would have made it stronger, but it looks common. Just because there’s a war on, that’s no reason to look common, now, is it? And as for the blouse you wanted me to cut out of the evening coat, do you know what I found when I took the stitches out? A hem that big! Enough to make a big sailor collar to match!”
She would beam with joy to be kept busy and able to pay for herself, not to be a burden to anyone. She had always “had lunch before coming,” and we had to resort to subterfuge to get her to take half a pound of chocolates.
“Josette, someone gave me these chocolates and I don’t trust them. They must be drugged . . . Be an angel, try them and then tell me if they made you ill.”
She accepted a sack of coal from Pierre Wolff, because I told her that the playwright had noticed her in a crowd scene at the Folies and still had a haunting memory of her.
She almost never spoke about her “young friend,” an obscure actor killed by the enemy. But now and then she would pore over the pictures in the illustrated magazines from 1913.
“Remember that revue? It was well staged, no doubt about it . . . And can you believe my luck? The author was supposed to give me a small part in his next revue! Well, his next revue is still a long way off!”
One theater, however, half opened; then two theaters, ten theaters, and movie houses, too. Josette could not keep still any longer!
“There’s the Gobelins-Montrouge-Montparnasse, which is going to do a season of plays, did you know? And then there’s Moncey, which wants to put on a season of operettas, and Levallois too . . . Only, the problem is finding out if the artists will have the métro to take home afterward. At Levallois, there won’t be a métro or a tram, natch . . .”
She disappeared, for three weeks, and reappeared thinner, with a cold, and quite proud.
“Madame, I got an engagement! Miss Hellyett three times a week, I’ll play one of the guides and maybe even another small part, too! Three times during the week and twice on Sundays!”
“How much are you getting?”
She lowered her eyes. “Well, you know, they’re taking advantage because of the war . . . I get three francs fifty for every day of performance. The other days, of course, we’re not paid . . . And the show changes every two weeks, so we’re rehearsing every day. I just wanted to explain to you why I
haven’t had time to finish the little bloomers for you.”
“There’s no hurry . . . And how are you getting home at night?”
She laughed. “Hoofing it, natch. An hour and a half’s walk. I’ll wear out more shoes than tires. But they told me I might get a part in Les Mousquetaires au couvent . . .”
How could we hold her back? She was aglow with the freedom, energy, fatigue, and fever of life in the theater . . . She went away, for months . . .
In August 1916, I was buying a child’s toy in one of those charity bazaars where, along with bags of coffee, they sell necklaces made of dyed wooden beads, raffia baskets, and woolens, and I was waiting for an elegant customer to yield me her place at the counter.
“That there, and that one, yes, the blue sweater, and four packets of coffee, too,” she said. “That makes four separate packages, military parcels; I’ll write down the addresses for you, Mademoiselle. I’ll be taking the little baskets with me in my car . . .”
“In your car, Josette!”
“Oh, Madame! . . . What a surprise! It’s you I’m going to take with me in my car . . . Oh, yes, I am, just for a minute, just long enough to take you home.”
She had not warned me that “her” car already contained a slightly graying and well-groomed man, to whom she issued the command to fold down one of the jump seats—for himself. She sat next to me and spoke with a forced air of having forgotten about the man. He looked at her like a slave, but Josette’s black eyes did not fix on him even once. She took the glove off one of her hands, which sparkled with jeweled rings; the man trapped the fluttering hand as it passed by him and gave it a long kiss. She did not pull it away from him, but she closed her eyes and opened them again only when he had sat back up.