by Colette
“Ahmed! Who did this to you?”
Ahmed’s mouth trembled and said nothing. Then it trembled again and murmured: “Ben Kacem.”
“Quarrel?”
“Fatima.”
“Fatima? Isn’t that the pretty little girl down there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now I think I see.”
“What did he say?” asked Rose from far away.
“Nothing that would interest you. Ahmed, can you rest your weight on your hands for a moment? No? All right, don’t move, then. I knew very well that you spoke French.”
He pulled the slit sleeve toward him. Split into three, it made a bandage long enough for his purpose.
Seized with a sudden lightheartedness, he worked fast, repressing his desire to sing under his breath and whistle. He reckoned that the bandage, passing under the armpit and over the shoulder and tightly wound, would have a reasonable hope of staunching the flow of blood, which was already tending to stop of its own accord. Ahmed made no movement. Bernard could feel him watching his hands.
“The flashlight!” cried Rose.
The bulb of one of the flashlights was reddening, preparatory to fading. “Hmm, that’s not so funny.”
“Stay sitting down,” he said to Ahmed. “Try to keep quite still while I put on the bandage. Am I hurting you? Sorry, old chap, it can’t be helped. The girl might have helped us, but just you try and make her understand.”
His sweat dripped down on his work, and in wiping his forehead, he smeared it with red.
“Talk of antisepsis! By Jove, was it for Fatima you’ve perfumed yourself so magnificently? You fairly reek of sandalwood. There . . . now you’re fine.”
He caught Ahmed around the waist, sat him up, and brought the light nearer to the faultless face. The lips, from which the crimson had vanished, the eyes circled with brown and olive, gave a ghost of a smile. Bonnemains, invisible behind the flashlight, answered with a smile which twisted into a grimace as he suddenly found himself wanting to cry.
“D’you want to drink? Just think, I’d forgotten all about this water.”
“No, it’s the water that comes from the oleanders. It’s bad.”
He spoke French without an accent, rolling his r’s.
“Cigarette?”
The thumb and forefinger, yellow-stained with nicotine, came forward to accept. Bernard wiped his hands on his stained handkerchief, groped in his pocket without a thought that he was smearing his jacket with blood, and stuck a lighted cigarette between Ahmed’s lips. The delight of the first puffs made them both silent. Neither of them moved except to make identical gestures. The smoke showed faintly iridescent, seeming to break off as it touched the edges of the halo of light and reappearing higher up in whorls under the spreading branches of the blue cedar.
A burst of coughing disturbed the repose of the two young men. Bernard turned his head.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m cold,” said Rose plaintively.
“You wouldn’t be cold if you’d helped us. Here, catch your coat, I didn’t use it. Ahmed, my boy, we’ve got to get down from here somehow. What I’ve done in the way of a dressing is almost less than nothing. Let’s see—what’s the time?”
Bonnemains scratched away the blood that was drying on the face of his wristwatch and exclaimed in astonishment: “Quarter to three! Impossible.”
“It was after one when we left the hotel,” came the sulky voice.
He strode over the coping and ran up to Rose.
“Rose, look, here’s what we’re going to do . . .”
She shrank back.
“Don’t touch me, you’re covered with blood!”
“I’m quite aware of that! Rose, can you give him your shoulder to get down to the bottom? I’ll hold him up on the other side. With stops, it’ll take a good half hour. Or, wait a moment . . . Suppose you take the flashlight and go by yourself to the hotel or to the caretaker’s house and send help? How about that?”
She did not answer at once and he became insistent.
“Tell me! Don’t you think it would be better if you went down by yourself?”
“What do I think? I think you’re mad,” said Rose deliberately. “Whether I go down with you, with a wounded Arab between us, or whether I go by myself to rouse the entire population—it’s as broad as it’s long. Either way, the Bessiers will know I’ve been rambling about in the woods with you. Don’t you see my point?”
“Yes, but I don’t care a damn for the Bessiers.”
“But I do. When one can avoid trouble with one’s family . . .”
“Well? What solution do you propose?”
“Leave this—this wounded man here. Then we’ll go down and you must wait till I’ve got back to my room to call for help. By then, the night will be over. A pretty night, I’ve had! So’ve you!”
“Don’t pity me,” he said shortly. “Mine’s been all right.”
“Charming!” snapped Rose in a low, savage voice. “If anyone had told me . . .”
“Shut up! Suppose I take Ahmed on my shoulders and that you light the path?”
“. . . And that down there, they’re already looking for him, and they see the light and come up, how do you expect me to explain?”
“Well? I presume you’re of age, aren’t you? Are you as ashamed of me as all that?”
He could sense her impatient gesture.
“But no, Bernard, there’s no question of that. What’s the good of putting people’s backs up? You’ve no idea what the Bessiers have been to me ever since . . .”
“Hell!” Bernard interrupted. “You can go off. I’ll manage alone.”
“But, Bernard, look!”
“Get out. Go back and have your bottom pinched by Bessier. And drink out of his glass. And all the rest of it.”
“What? What on earth? Whatever do you . . .”
“I know what I’m talking about. Be off with you! We’re through. Pfft! None too soon, either.”
He passed his hand over his wet face. With a quick glance, he made sure that Ahmed, who had not moved, had not fainted and was still smoking. His eyes were half closed and he seemed not even to hear the altercation.
“Bernard!” implored a small voice that had grown soft again. “You can’t mean it! Bernard—I assure you . . .”
“What do you assure me? That Bessier has never pinched your behind? That Bessier is just a brother to you?”
“Bernard, if you’ve come to believe spiteful gossip—”
“No question of gossip!” he broke in violently. “No need for any gossip! Go back and make yourself charming to Bessier! Go back and sit on one of his knees! Go back to everything that suits a selfish little bourgeoise, not very clever but so hard that she’s a positive marvel!”
She reacted to each attack with a little gasp of “Oh!” but could find no retort. When he paused for breath, she said at last: “But what are you driving at? Bernard, I’m certain that tomorrow . . .”
He sliced the air between them with his bloodstained hand. “Nothing! Tomorrow, I’ll change my hotel. Or I take the boat. Unless I’m needed”—he indicated Ahmed—“as witness.”
He drew back as if to let Rose pass.
“You can say exactly what you like to your Bessiers. That I’m the most loathsome of swine. And even that I’ve got disgusting manners. That I’m sick to death of the lot of you. Anything you like.”
They were silent for a moment. Bonnemains’s eyes, which were getting used to the darkness, made out Rose’s face and her aureole of curly hair. He could see a strip of her light dress between the flaps of her open coat.
“And all for this black boy who’s too tough to kill!” she flung at him furiously.
Bonnemains shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, you know, if there hadn’t been this little news item, there’d have been something else.”
He picked up the one working flashlight and thrust it by force into Rose’s hand. She clenched her
fingers and pushed him away.
“What’s the matter? It’s blood, it’s not dirty. I can’t help it, it’s blood. Blood that you didn’t deign to stop flowing. And now, pleasant journey, Rose!”
As she did not move he put his finger on her shoulder and gave her a push.
“On your way. A bit quicker. Or, I promise you, I’ll make you run.”
She turned the little bull’s-eye of the flashlight on him. His forehead and one cheek were smeared with blood and his eyes were almost yellow. The beam shone into his open mouth, lighting up both rows of his big teeth. She lowered the flashlight and went off hurriedly.
Bernard went back and sat down by Ahmed. He watched the tunnel of light going down the hill, slowly pushing back the darkness in the avenue. He laid his hand on Ahmed’s unhurt shoulder.
“All right? You don’t think you’re bleeding?”
“No, Monsieur.”
The voice was so much firmer that Bernard was delighted. But it surprised him that Ahmed should call him Monsieur. “Still, after all, what could he call me?”
A bird squawked discordantly. From the height of the cedars there fell, by degrees, a glimmer that was still nocturnal.
“But we can see!” exclaimed Bernard joyfully.
“It’ll soon be day,” said Ahmed.
“What luck! How are you feeling?”
“All right, thank you, Monsieur.”
A slender icy hand slid against Bernard’s and stayed there. “He’s cold. All that blood he’s lost . . .”
“Listen, my dear boy. If I try and take you on my back, that rotten dressing of mine will come unstuck. And if I fall while I’m carrying you, that’s another big risk for you. On the other hand . . .”
“I can wait for the day, Monsieur. I know myself. If you’d just give me a cigarette. Aziz comes down every day with his donkey for the watering, he passes this way. He won’t be long now.”
Reassured, Bonnemains smoked to deaden the hunger and thirst which were beginning to torment him. A cock crowed, other cocks followed its example; the breeze rose, bringing out the accumulated scent of the cedars and the fragrance of the wisterias; gradually the color of the sky appeared between the trees. Bernard shivered in his shirt, which was cold with sweat. From time to time, he touched his companion’s wrist, counting the pulse beats.
“Are you asleep, Ahmed? Don’t go to sleep. That Kacem who did this, is he far away?”
He followed the progress of the dawning light on Ahmed’s face. The black circles around the eyes, the cheeks shadowed by something other than the first beginnings of a beard, alarmed him.
“Tell me, has he gone? Did you see him run away?”
“Not far,” said Ahmed. “I know . . .”
His free hand dropped, without letting go of the cigarette, and his eyes closed. Bernard had time to raise the head which had fallen forward: he felt the wounded shoulder. But no warm moisture came through the linen, and the deep breathing of sleep fell rhythmically and reassuringly on Bonnemains’s straining ears. He pushed his knee forward to support the sleeping head, took away the fag end of the cigarette from the fingers which could no longer feel it, and stayed perfectly still. With his head raised, he watched the morning dawn and tasted a contentment, a surprise as fresh as love but less restricted and totally detached from sex. “He sleeps, I watch. He sleeps, I watch . . .”
The color and abundance of the spilled blood blackened the trampled grass. Ahmed was talking in his sleep in guttural Arabic and Bonnemains laid his hand on his head to drive away the nightmare.
“Rose has got back by now. She’ll be in bed. Poor Rose . . .” That was over quickly. “She was my woman but this one here is my counterpart. It’s queer that I had to come all the way to Tangiers to find my counterpart, the only person who could make me proud of him and proud of myself. With a woman it’s so easy to be a little ashamed, either of her or of oneself. My wonderful counterpart! He only had to appear . . .”
Without the faintest sense of disgust, he contemplated his hands, his nails streaked with brown, the lines on his palms etched in red, his forearms marked with dried rivulets of blood.
“They say children and adolescents soon make up what they’ve lost. This boy must be an only son or the oldest one who’ll be well looked after. A young male has his value in this country. He’s handsome, he’s already loved, he’s already got a rival. The fact remains that, but for me . . .”
He swelled out his chest and smiled with pleasure at everything about him.
“Women! I know in advance pretty well what I’ll do to them and they’ll do to me. I’ll find another Rose. A better Rose or a worse one. But one doesn’t easily find a child in the shape of a man, hurt enough, unknown enough, precious enough to sacrifice some hours of one’s life to him, not to mention the jacket of a suit and a night of love. Obviously it was decreed that I should never know whether Rose’s breasts are rosier than her heels or her belly as pearly as her thighs. Mektoub, Ahmed would say!”
At the end of the long sloping avenue appeared a pink gleam which showed the place where the sun would rise over the sea: the shattering bray of a donkey and the tinkle of a little bell sounded from the top of the hill.
Before lifting Ahmed, Bonnemains tested the knots of his amateur dressing. Then he wrapped his arms around the sleeping boy, inhaled the sandalwood scent of his black hair, and clumsily kissed his cheek, which was already virile and rough. He estimated the young man’s weight as he might have done that of a child of his own flesh or that of a quarry one kills only once in a lifetime.
“Wake up, dear boy. Here comes Aziz.”
[Translated by Antonia White]
The Kepi
If I remember rightly, I have now and then mentioned Paul Masson, known as Lemice-Térieux on account of his delight—and his dangerous efficiency—in creating mysteries. As ex-president of the Law Courts of Pondichéry, he was attached to the cataloguing section of the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was through him and through the library that I came to know the woman, the story of whose one and only romantic adventure I am about to tell.
This middle-aged man, Paul Masson, and the very young woman I then was, established a fairly solid friendship that lasted some eight years. Without being cheerful himself, Paul Masson devoted himself to cheering me up. I think, seeing how very lonely and housebound I was, he was sorry for me, though he concealed the fact. I think, too, that he was proud of being so easily able to make me laugh. The two of us often dined together in the little third-floor flat in the rue Jacob, myself in a dressing gown hopefully intended to suggest Botticelli draperies, he invariably in dusty, correct black. His little pointed beard, slightly reddish, his faded skin and drooping eyelids, his absence of any special distinguishing marks attracted attention like a deliberate disguise. Familiar as he was with me, he avoided using the intimate “tu,” and every time he emerged from his guarded impersonality, he gave every sign of having been extremely well brought up. Never, when we were alone, did he sit down to write at the desk of the man whom I refer to as “Monsieur Willy” and I cannot remember, over a period of several years, his ever asking me one indiscreet question.
Moreover, I was fascinated by his caustic wit. I admired the way he attacked people on the least provocation, but always in extremely restrained language and without a trace of heat. And he brought up to my third story, not only all the latest Paris gossip, but a series of ingenious lies that I enjoyed as fantastic stories. If he ran into Marcel Schwob, my luck was really in! The two men pretended to hate each other and played a game of insulting each other politely under their breath. The s’s hissed between Schwob’s clenched teeth; Masson gave little coughs and exuded venom like a malicious old lady. Then they would declare a truce and talk at immense length, and I was stimulated and excited by the battle of wits between those two subtle, insincere minds.
The time off that the Bibliothèque Nationale allowed Paul Masson assured me of an almost daily visit from him but the phosphores
cent conversation of Marcel Schwob was a rarer treat. Alone with the cat and Masson, I did not have to talk and this prematurely aged man could relax in silence. He frequently made notes—heaven knows what about—on the pages of a notebook bound in black imitation leather. The fumes from the slow-burning stove lulled us into a torpor; we listened drowsily to the reverberating bang of the street door. Then I would rouse myself to eat sweets or salted nuts and I would order my guest, who, though he would not admit it to himself, was probably the most devoted of all my friends, to make me laugh. I was twenty-two, with a face like an anemic cat’s, and more than a yard and a half of hair that, when I was at home, I let down in a wavy mass that reached to my feet.
“Paul, tell me some lies.”
“Which particular ones?”
“Oh, any old lies. How’s your family?”
“Madame, you forget that I’m a bachelor.”
“But you told me . . .”
“Ah yes, I remember. My illegitimate daughter is well. I took her out to lunch on Sunday. In a suburban garden. The rain had plastered big yellow lime leaves on the iron table. She enjoyed herself enormously pulling them off and we ate tepid fried potatoes, with our feet on the soaked gravel . . .”
“No, no, not that, it’s too sad. I like the lady of the library better.”
“What lady? We don’t employ any.”
“The one who’s working on a novel about India, according to you.”
“She’s still laboring over her novelette. Today I’ve been princely and generous. I’ve made her a present of baobabs and latonia palms painted from life and thrown in magical incantations, mahrattas, screaming monkeys, Sikhs, saris, and lakhs of rupees.”
Rubbing his dry hands against each other, he added: “She gets a sou a line.”
“A sou!” I exclaimed. “Why a sou?”
“Because she works for a chap who gets two sous a line who works for a chap who gets four sous a line, who works for a chap who gets ten sous a line.”
“But what you’re telling me isn’t a lie, then?”