by Colette
“You’re not overtaxing your strength, Madame Armand?”
She was walking to and fro on her jet-and-satin-shod feet, those feet that had been modest even in death. She poured out the pseudo-port, pulled an awning over the ceiling skylight, displaying a briskness that was not without grace, as if she had grown lighter. A likable woman, in fact, whose thirty-six years had left few traces. A woman who had wanted to die.
She switched on a second pink lamp. The room, extraordinary by its very ordinariness, exuded the false cheerfulness of well-kept hotel bedrooms.
My hostess came and picked up the chair abandoned by Mademoiselle Devoidy and planted it firmly beside me.
“No, Madame, I won’t allow people to believe that I killed myself out of neurasthenia.”
“But,” I said, “I’ve never thought . . . Nothing gave me any reason to believe . . .”
I was surprised to hear Madame Armand refer to her failed attempt as an accomplished fact. Her eyes were frankly presented to me, wide open and looking straight into mine, but their extreme brightness and blackness revealed hardly anything. Her small, smooth, sensible forehead, under the curled fringe, really did look as if it had never harbored the regrettable disorder called neurasthenia between the two fine eyebrows. Before she sat down, she straightened the violets in the vase with her unsure hands; I saw their stalks tremble between her fingers. “Nerves, you know.” Hands that were too clumsy even to measure out an effective dose of poison.
“Madame,” she said, “I must tell you first of all that I have always had a very trivial life.”
Such a prelude threatened me with a long recital. Nevertheless, I stayed where I was.
It is easy to relate what is of no importance. My memory has not failed to register the idle words and the mild absurdities of these two opposite neighbors and I have tried to reproduce them faithfully. But beginning with the words: “I have always had a very trivial life . . .” I feel absolved from the tiresome meticulousness imposed on a writer, such as carefully noting the overmany reiterations of “in one way” and “what poor creatures we are” that rose like bubbles to the surface of Madame Armand’s story. Though they helped her to tell it, it is for me to remove them. It is my duty as a writer to abridge our conversation and also to suppress my own unimportant contribution to it.
“A very trivial life. I married such a good man. A man as perfect and hardworking and devoted as all that really oughtn’t to exist. Now could you imagine anything unexpected happening to a man as perfect as that? And we didn’t have a child. To tell you the honest truth, I don’t think I minded much.
“Once, a young man in the neighborhood . . . Oh, no, it’s not what you’re expecting. A young man who had the cheek to accost me on the staircase, because it was dark there. Handsome, I have to admit he was handsome. Naturally, he promised me the moon and the stars. He told me: ‘I’m not going to take you under false pretenses. With me, you’ll see life in the raw. You can reckon I’m quite as likely to make you die of misery as of joy. Things will go my way, not yours.’ And so on, and so on. One day he said to me: ‘Let me have a look at your little wrist.’ I wouldn’t give it to him, he grabbed hold of it and twisted it. For more than ten days I couldn’t use my hand and it was my little Exo who did it up for me. At night, after he’d put a clean crepe bandage on my wrist—I’d told him I’d had a fall—he would stare for a long time at that bandaged wrist. I was ashamed. I felt like a dog who’s come home with a collar no one’s ever seen it wearing and they say to it: ‘But where on earth did you get a collar like that?’ That shows the least evil-minded people can be sharp in their way.
“With this young man, it was all over before it began. Do you know what I couldn’t abide? It was this gentleman I’d never spoken three words to daring to call me ‘tu.’ He just sprang up before my feet as if he’d risen out of the earth. Well, he vanished back into it again.
“Since then? Why, nothing. Nothing worth mentioning. There’s nothing to surprise you in that. Plenty of women, and not the ugliest ones either, would be in my state if they didn’t lend a helping hand. You mustn’t believe men throw themselves on women like cannibals. Certainly not, Madame. It’s women who spread that idea about. Men are much too anxious not to have their peace upset. But lots of women can’t stand a man behaving decently. I know what I’m talking about.
“Personally, I’m not the kind that thinks much about men. It’s not my temperament. In one way, it might have been better for me if I had thought of them. Instead of that, whatever do you think came into my head one morning when I was cutting up some breast of veal? I said to myself: ‘I did breast of veal with green peas only last Saturday, all very nice, but one mustn’t overdo it, a week goes by so fast. It’s eleven already, my husband’s got a christening group coming to pose at half past one, I must get my washing up done before the clients arrive, my husband doesn’t like to hear me through the wall rattling crockery or poking the stove when clients are in the studio . . . And after that I must go out, there’s that cleaner who still hasn’t finished taking the shine off my husband’s black suit, I’ll have to have a sharp word with her. If I get back to do my ironing before dark, I’ll be lucky; never mind, I’ll damp my net window curtains down again and I’ll iron them tomorrow, sooner than scorch them today. After that, I’ve nothing to do but the dinner to get ready and two or three odds and ends to see to and it’ll be finished.’
“And instead of adding, as I often did: ‘Finished . . . And none too soon,’ I went on: ‘Finished? How d’you mean, finished? Is that all? Is that the whole of my day, today, yesterday, tomorrow?’ That night, when I was in bed, I was still going over and over all my idiotic thoughts. The next day, I felt better and I had to make some jam and pickle some gherkins, so you can imagine I sent Mademoiselle Devoidy out to do the shopping—it was well and truly her turn—so as to give all my time to hulling my strawberries and rubbing my gherkins in salt. I was deep in my work, when suddenly it came over me again: ‘The events of my life, so today’s jam-making day? Be careful about the copper preserving pan, it’s got a rounded bottom, if it tips over on the hole of the cooking range, what a catastrophe! And I haven’t got enough glass jam jars, I’ll have to borrow the two jars Madame Gâteroy uses for her potted goose if she can spare them. And when I’ve finished my jam, what will come along in the way of a sensational event?’ At last you can see the picture.
“It wasn’t five o’clock by the time my jam was done. Done and very badly done. The worst failure I’d ever had, all the sugar burned to caramel. Luckily, the strawberries cost next to nothing. And there, off I went again: ‘Tomorrow, let’s see, tomorrow . . . Tomorrow we’ve got that lady who comes to mount the proofs on fiberboard.’ Fiberboard was a novelty imitation felt that made a lovely background for sports photos. But it needed a special knack and special kind of glue. So once a week this lady used to come and I used to keep her to lunch, it made a change for me. We didn’t lose by it, she made good use of her time and it was better for her than running around to the little eating house. I added something special in the way of a sweet, or something good from the pork butcher’s.
“But this day I’m telling you about, I felt that everything was all one and the same to me, or rather, that nothing satisfied me. And the following days . . . I pass them over in silence.
“What did you say? Oh, no! Oh, you’re quite wrong, I didn’t despise my occupations; on the contrary. I’ve never put my mind to them so much. Nothing went amiss. Except that I found the time long and at the same time I kept looking about for something I could do to fill it up. Reading? Yes. You’re certainly right. Reading makes a good distraction. But I’ve got such a twisted character that everything I tried to read seemed to me . . . a little thin, sort of poor. Always this mania for something big. When I’d done my housework and finished the day’s jobs, I used to go out and take a few breaths on the landing—as if I’d be able to see farther from there. But landing or no landing, I’d had enough and m
ore than enough.
“Pardon? Ah! you’ve put your finger right on the trouble. Enough of what, precisely? Such a happy woman, as Madame Gâteroy used to say when she talked about me. Such a happy woman, why exactly, that’s what I would have been if, here and there, in my trivial little life, I’d had something great. What do I call great? But I’ve no idea, Madame, because I’ve never had it! If I’d had it even once, I guarantee I’d have realized straightaway, without a shadow of doubt, that it was great!”
She rose from her chair, sat down on the bed, rested her elbows on her knees, and propped up her chin. Like that, she was facing me directly. With a wrinkle incised between her eyebrows and one eye nervously screwed up, she did not appear uglier to me; on the contrary.
“What queer things presentiments are, Madame! Not mine, I’m talking of my husband’s. Just about that time, he said to me point-blank: ‘If you like, in July we’ll go off for a month to Yport, as we did two years ago, that’ll do you good.’ Yport? Yes, it’s not bad, mainly a family holiday place, but quite a lot of Paris celebrities go there. Fancy, when we were there before, we saw Guirand de Scevola, the painter who’s become so famous, every single day. He was painting the sea in anger, from nature, with the legs of his easel in the foam of the waves. It was a real sight. Everyone used to stare at him. Naturally, I said to my little Exo: ‘You’re choosing a nice time to go and squander what little money we have at the seaside!’ —‘When it is a question of you,’ he answered, ‘nothing else counts.’ That day and many days after, I absolutely swore to myself never to do anything to hurt a man like that. Anyway, it wasn’t going to Yport that would have brought something great into my life. Unless saving a child who was drowning . . . But I can’t swim.
“Little by little, I admit I made myself very unhappy. In the end, what did I go and imagine? I went and imagined that this thing life couldn’t do for me, I’d find it in death. I told myself that when death is approaching, not too fast, not too violently, you must have sublime moments, that your thoughts would be lofty, that you’d leave behind everything that’s petty, everything that cramps you, nights of bad sleep, bodily miseries. Ah! what a wonderful compensation I invented for myself! I pinned all my hopes on those last moments, you see.
“Oh! But yes indeed, Madame, I did think of my husband! For days and days, for nights and nights. And about his unhappiness. Do me the honor of believing that I weighed it all up and envisaged this, that, and the other before setting out on the road. But once I had set out, I was already far on my way.”
Madame Armand looked down at her hands, which she had clasped, and gave an unexpected smile.
“Madame, people very seldom die because they’ve lost someone. I believe they die more often because they haven’t had someone. But you think that, by killing myself, I was cruelly deserting my husband? Well, if the worse came to the worst, my beloved Geo could always have followed me, if it had been too much for him to bear . . . Give me credit for this, before I set out on my way, I worked everything out to the smallest detail. It may seem nothing, but I had all sorts of complications. One thinks it’s ever so simple, just to lie down on one’s bed, swallow some horrible thing or other, and goodbye! Just to procure this drug, goodness knows what trouble I had and what fibs I had to tell! I had to make up my mind on the spur of the moment one day when I got the chance . . . there’d been an accident to the red light in the darkroom, which meant my husband had to go out immediately after lunch. For two pins I’d have chucked the whole thing. But I recovered my nerve, I was sustained by my idea, by the thought of this . . . this kind of . . .”
I risked suggesting a word which Madame Armand pounced on eagerly.
“Yes, Madame, apotheosis! That’s exactly it, apotheosis! That particular day I was uneasy, I kept wondering what other hitch might still occur. Well, the morning slipped by as easy as slipping a letter in the mailbox. Instead of lunch, I took some herb tea. The embroidered sheets on the bed, all the housework properly done, the letter to my husband sealed up, my husband in a hurry to go out. I called him back to give him his lightweight overcoat and I thought he’d gone when really he was still there, he’d broken the bottle of hyposulphite, you remember?
“I think I’m alone at last, I lock the door, and I get myself settled. Yes, here, but inside the bed, the embroidered pillows behind my back, everything all fresh and clean. Right! I’d hardly lain down when I remembered the washerwoman. I get up. I scribble a word on a slip of paper, and I lie down again. First of all, I swallowed a pill to stop stomach spasms, and I waited ten minutes, as I’d been told to do. And then I swallowed the drug, all at one go. And believe me”—Madame Armand twisted her mouth a little—“it was anything but delicious.
“And then? And then I wait. No, not for death, but for what I’d promised myself before it. It was as if I were on a quay, waiting to embark. No, no, I wasn’t in pain but I could feel myself getting old. The last straw was that my feet—I’d got my shoes on—were getting hot at the bottom of the bed and hurt like fury wherever I’d got a bad place. Even worse than that, I imagine I hear the doorbell ring! I think: ‘It’s happened on purpose, I’ll never get through.’ I sit up and try and remember if someone’s made an appointment for a sitting. I listen hard. But I think it was the buzzings in my ears beginning. I lie down again and I say a little prayer, though I’m not particularly religious: ‘My God, in your infinite goodness, take pity on an unhappy and guilty soul . . .’ Impossible to remember the rest, on my word. But that might have been enough, mightn’t it?
“And I went on waiting. I was waiting for my reward, my great arrival of beautiful thoughts, a great pair of wings to carry me away, to sweep me right away from being myself anymore. My head was going round and round, I thought I saw great circles all around me. For a second it was like when you dream you’re falling from the top of a tower, but that was all. Nothing else, would you believe it, but all my everyday thoughts and fidgets, including that very day’s? For example, I kept worrying like anything that my little Exo would only have cold meat and salad and warmed-up soup when he came in that night. At the same time, I thought: ‘Even that will be too much, he’ll be so upset over my death, it’ll put him off his food. Everyone in the house will be so kind to him. My God, take pity on an unhappy and guilty soul . . .’ I’d never have believed that, when I was dying, it would be my feet that I suffered from most.
“The buzzings and the circles went on going round and round me, but I still kept on waiting. I waited lying down, as good as gold.” She slid toward the middle of the bed, resumed the attitude and the stillness of her postponed death, and closed her eyes so that I could see nothing of them but the feathery black line of the lashes.
“I didn’t lose my head, I listened to all the noises, I went over everything that I had forgotten, everything I had left in a muddle on the other side, I meant the side I was leaving. I reproached myself for those evening walks I used to take without bothering whether my husband might be bored all alone, when his day’s work was over. Trifles, petty little things, uninteresting thoughts that floated on the top of the buzzings and the circles. I remember vaguely that I wanted to put my hands over my face and cry and that I couldn’t, it was as if I hadn’t any arms, I said to myself: ‘This is the end. How sad it is that I haven’t had what I wanted in life even in my death.’
“Yes, I think that’s all, Madame. A terrible icy cold came and cut off the thread of my thoughts and yet I’m not sure even of that. What I am sure of is that never, never again will I commit suicide. I know now that suicide can’t be the slightest use to me, I’m staying here. But without wanting to offend Mademoiselle Devoidy, you can see for yourself that I’m in my right mind and that a neurotic woman and myself are two utterly different things.”
With a jerk, Madame Armand sat up. Her story had left her with a feverish flush that animated her pale skin. Our conversation ended in “Goodbye, see you soon!” as if we were on a station platform, and after exclamations about the �
�shocking lateness” we parted for a very long time. She held the door of the flat open behind me, so that the light in the studio should illuminate the landing for me. I left the photographer’s wife in her doorway, slender and solitary, but not wavering. I am sure she did not stumble a second time. Whenever I think of her, I always see her shored up by those scruples she modestly called fidgets and sustained by the sheer force of humble, everyday feminine greatness; that unrecognized greatness she had misnamed “a very trivial life.”
[Translated by Antonia White]
Bella-Vista
PREFACE
No real place served as model for Bella-Vista, a small Provençale inn, which I painted to resemble twenty imitation farmhouses planted on a notch on the Mediterranean, draped, in one season, with plumbago, passion flower, and those convolvulus, bluer than the day, whose teeming avidity I measured against pink walls. Bella-Vista is any chimera of those who, leaving the heart of a dense and exhausting city, demand daily sun, undisturbed good weather, and constant heat. Until I found out for myself that good weather is another chimera and another kind of exhaustion, the region around St.-Tropez gave me all I asked for in the way of daily splendor. I was only just discovering it at the time I was writing “Bella-Vista.” With no domain of my own on its shore, I clung to this or that auberge, some Gulf hotel; I didn’t realize that the little port into which the dog, the cock, and the saint sailed had, strangely enough, but one access road, a single entrance, like a lobster pot. So that, fifteen years later, I was still moored to this little peninsula jutting out into the sea. At twilight it appears suspended there, the color of lilacs, looking like new steel beneath the full moon; dawn makes all the walls that face east blush briefly with a powdery pink, whereas, before sunrise, the thick vineyard is but a crimped blackness.