by Colette
“My idea. I did it all by myself. Gutted the piano like a chicken. You likes some drink? No?”
She poured herself out a glass of brandy and swallowed it carelessly, as if in a hurry. Lucie brought me one of those tisanes which will never convince me that they deserve their reputation for being soothing or digestive.
“Where is Madame Suzanne?” Madame Ruby asked Lucie in a restrained voice.
“Madame Suzanne is finishing the boef à la mode for tomorrow. She’s just straining out the juice.”
“O.K. Leave the tray. And give me an ashtray. You is too much bits of hair on your neck, my girl!”
Her big, energetic hand brushed the black bush of hair which frizzed on Lucie’s nape. The girl trembled, nearly knocked over my full cup, and hurried out of the room.
Far from avoiding my look, Madame Ruby’s own took on a victorious malice which drew attention to Lucie’s distress so indiscreetly that, for the moment, I ceased to find the boyish woman sympathetic. I am eccentric enough to be repelled when love, whether abnormal or normal, imposes itself on the onlooker’s attention or imagination. Madame Ruby was wise enough not to insist further and went over to the two worn-out boys to ask them if they wanted a liqueur. Her manly ease must have terrified them, for they beat a hasty retreat after having asked whether they could do “a spot of canoeing” the next day.
“Canoe? . . . I told them: ‘We is not a Suicides’ Club here!’”
She lifted the net curtain from the black windowpane. But in the darkness, only the bark of the mulberry trees and their sparse, luminously green new leaves showed in the beam of light from the room.
“By the way, Madame Ruby . . . When you’re shopping tomorrow, will you go to Sixte’s and get us some more breakfast cups? The same kind, the red-and-white ones.”
Madame Suzanne was behind us, still hot from coping with the dinner and the boeuf à la mode, but neat, dressed in white linen, freshly powdered, and smelling almost too good. I found her pleasing from head to foot. She felt my cordiality and returned me smile for smile.
“Are you having a good rest, Madame Colette? I’m almost invisible, you know. Tomorrow I shan’t have quite so much to do: my beef stew is in the cellar and the noodle paste’s in a cool place, wrapped up in a cloth. Madame Ruby, you must bring me back twelve cups and saucers; that clumsy fool of a Lucie has brought off a double again. For an idiot, there’s no one to touch that girl! Now, you . . . have you been at the brandy? Not more than one glass, I hope.”
As she spoke, she searched Madame Ruby’s face. But the latter kept her head slightly downcast and her gray eyes half closed to avoid the accusing glance. Suddenly the suspicious one gave up and sat down heavily.
“You’re just an old soak . . . Oh, my legs!”
“You is needing rest,” suggested Madame Ruby.
“Easy enough to say. My best kitchen maid’s coming back tomorrow,” explained Madame Suzanne. “After tomorrow I’m a lady of leisure.”
She yawned and stretched.
“At this time of night, I’ve no thought beyond my bath and my bed. Madame Ruby, will you try and shut the rabbit in? The parakeets are all behind the screen and covered up. Are you taking Slough in with you? Oh, and then tomorrow morning, while I think of it . . .”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” broke in Madame Ruby, almost beside herself. “Go to bed.”
“Really, who do you think you’re talking to?”
Madame Suzanne wished us good night with offended dignity. I let the little dog out in the courtyard for a minute while Madame Ruby whistled in vain for Baptiste the rabbit. The night was murmurous and warmer than the day. Three or four lighted windows, the clouded sky patched here and there with stars, the cry of some night bird over this unfamiliar place made my throat tighten with anguish. It was an anguish without depth; a longing to weep which I could master as soon as I felt it rise. I was glad of it because it proved that I could still savor the special taste of loneliness.
The next morning, there was a fine drizzle. Under her folded blanket, Pati lay awake and motionless. Her wide-open eyes said, “I know it’s raining. There’s nothing to hurry for.” Through my open window I could feel the dampness, which I find friendly, and I could hear the soft chatter of the parakeets. Their aviary was luxuriously mounted on wheels and had been placed under the shelter of the tiled roof.
Promptly renouncing the idea of “bullying” the workmen who, forty miles away, were digging my soil, painting my wall, and installing my septic tank, I rang for my coffee and slipped on my dressing gown.
Out in the courtyard, Madame Ruby, wearing a mackintosh, gloves, and a little white cap, was loading hampers and empty bottles into her car. She was agile, without an ounce of superfluous flesh. The beautiful, ambiguous rhythm of her movements and the sexless strength which directed them inclined me to excuse her gesture of the night before. Could I have admitted that a man might desire Miss Cooney? Would I have thought it decent for Miss Cooney to fall in love with a man?
The half-bred greyhound took its place beside her. Just as the rough, battered old car was starting up, Monsieur Daste ran up in his dressing gown and gave Madame Ruby his letters to post. When she had gone, he crossed the courtyard cautiously, wrinkling up his nose under the rain. He lost one of his slippers and shook his bare foot in a comic, old-maidish way. Lucie, who had just come in behind my back, saw me laughing.
“Monsieur Daste doesn’t like the rain, does he, Lucie?”
“No, he simply can’t stand it. Good morning, Madame. When it’s raining, he stays indoors. He plays belote with those two ladies and he always wins. Will Madame have her breakfast in bed or at the table?”
“I’d rather have it at the table.”
She pushed my books and papers to one side and arranged the coffeepot and its satellites. She was very gentle and very concentrated as she slowly and carefully performed these duties. Her skin was smooth and amber-colored, and her eyelashes, like her hair, thick and curling. She seemed to be rather timid. By the side of the big cup she laid a rain-wet rose.
“What a pretty rose! Thank you, Lucie.”
“It’s not me, it’s Madame Ruby.”
She blushed fierily, not daring to raise her eyes. I pitied her secretly for being the victim of a disturbance which she must find surprising and vaguely painful.
The flying, almost invisible rain, so much more springlike than yesterday’s parched sunshine, beckoned me outdoors. My loyal dog was willing to admit that this fine, powdery rain not only did not wet one but made smells more exciting and was propitious to sneezing.
Under the eaves, Monsieur Daste was taking a chilly little walk. Shivering slightly, he was walking thirty paces to and fro without putting a foot outside the narrow dry strip.
“It’s raining!” he shouted at me as if I were deaf.
“But so little . . .”
I stopped close behind him to admire the sheltered parakeets with their tiny, thoughtful foreheads and their wide-set eyes. To my great surprise, they had all fallen silent.
“Are they as frightened of rain as all that?”
“No,” said Monsieur Daste. “It’s because I’m here. You don’t believe me?”
He went closer to the cage. Some of the parakeets flew away and pressed themselves against the bars.
“Whatever have you done to them?”
“Nothing.”
He was laughing all over his face and enjoying my astonishment.
“Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing. That’s just what’s so interesting.”
“Then you must go away.”
“Not till it stops raining. Look at that one on the lowest perch.”
He slid his manicured forefinger between two bars of the aviary and there was a great fluttering of wings inside.
“Which? There are three all alike.”
“Alike to you, perhaps. But not to me. I can pick it out at once. It’s the most cowardly one.”
One of the parake
ets—I think it was the one he was pointing at—gave a scream. Almost involuntarily, I hit Monsieur Daste on the arm and he stepped back, shaking his hand. He was astonished, but decided to laugh.
“You’ve only got to leave those parakeets in peace,” I said angrily. “Stop tormenting them.”
His gaze wandered from the birds to me and back again. I could read nothing in that pleasant neutral face, as far removed from ugliness as it was from beauty, but unresentful surprise and a gaiety that I found extremely ill timed.
“I’m not tormenting them,” he protested. “But they know me.”
“So does the dog,” I thought, seeing Pati’s hackles stiffen all along her back. The idea that I might have to spend three weeks in the company of a maniac, possibly an enemy of all animals, profoundly depressed me. At that very moment, Monsieur Daste produced his “huisipisi” for Pati’s benefit. She attacked him with all her might and he fled with a comic agility, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up. I stood perfectly still while she chased him around me. But the chase turned into a game and when Monsieur Daste stopped, out of breath, the dog counted the truce as a victory. She insisted on my congratulating her and looked graciously on her adversary.
During the following days she accepted that irritating “huisipisi” as the signal for a game. But she growled when Monsieur Daste pointed at her or teased her with that tapering, aggressive, minatory forefinger. Comfortably wedged on my forearm with her chest expanded and her eyes bulging, she sniffed the soft dampness with delight.
“She looks like an owl,” said Monsieur Daste dreamily.
“Do you frighten owls too?”
To protest his innocence more effectively, Monsieur Daste drew his white, naked hands out of his pockets.
“Good heavens, no, Madame! They interest me . . . certainly they interest me. But . . . I keep away. I must admit I keep well away from them.”
He hunched his shoulders up to his ears and scrutinized the sky, where a diffused yellow glow and pale blue patches that promised fine weather were beginning to appear between the clouds. I went off to explore with my dog.
The well-being that rewards me when I exchange my town flat for a hotel does not last very long. Not only do the obligation to work and my usual everyday worries soon take the edge off it but I know all too well the dangers of hotel life. Unless that drifting, irresponsible existence is either completely carefree or organized according to a strict timetable, it always tends to become demoralizing. The main reason for this is that people who really mean nothing to us acquire an artificial importance. At Bella-Vista I had no choice except between the seclusion of a convalescent and the sociability of a passenger on a liner. Naturally, I chose the sociability. I was all the more inclined for it after my first visit to the little house I had bought. I returned from it so disillusioned about landed property that I went and confided my disappointment to Madame Suzanne. I made no secret of the fact that I would be only too glad to sell my bit of land again. She listened earnestly and asked me detailed questions.
“How many square yards did you say you had?”
“Square yards? It comes to five acres. Very nearly.”
“But come, that’s quite a decent size! What’s wrong with it, then?”
“Oh, everything! You should see the state it’s in!”
“How many rooms?”
“Five, if you count the kitchen.”
“Count it. It sounds more impressive. And you’ve got the sea?”
“It’s practically in it.”
She pushed away her account book and rubbed her polished nails on her palm.
“In your place, I’d . . . But I’m not in your place.”
“Do say what you were going to say, Madame Suzanne.”
“I should see it as a place where people could stop off. An exclusive little snack bar, a snug little dance floor under the pines. With your name, why, my dear, it’s a gold mine!”
“Madame Suzanne, it’s not gold I’m wanting. What I want is a little house and some peace.”
“You’re talking like a child. As if one could have any peace without money! I know what I’m talking about. So it’s not getting on as fast as you think it should, your cottage?”
“I can’t quite make out. The builders play bowls in the alley under the trees. And they’ve made a charming little camping ground by the well. Open-air fire, fish soup . . . grilled sausages, bottles of vin rosé too: they offered me a glass.”
Madame Suzanne was so amused that she flung herself back in her chair and slapped her thighs.
“Madame Ruby! Come and listen to this!”
Her partner came over to us, with a napkin over one hand and the middle finger of the other capped with a thimble. For the first time, I saw her occupied in a thoroughly feminine way and wearing round spectacles with transparent frames. She went on gravely embroidering drawn threadwork while Madame Suzanne went over “the misfortunes of Madame Colette.”
“You look like a boy sewing, Madame Ruby!”
As if offended, Madame Suzanne took the napkin from her friend’s hands and held it under my nose.
“It’s true that embroidering suits her about as well as sticking a feather in her behind. But look at the work itself! Isn’t it exquisite?”
I admired the tiny regular lattices and Madame Suzanne ordered tea for the three of us. An intermittent mistral was blowing. It would be silent for some moments, then give a great shriek and send columns of white sand whirling across the courtyard, half burying the anemones and the pansies. Then it would crouch behind the wall, waiting to spring again.
During this first week, I had not enjoyed one entire warm spring day. We had not had one single day of that real spring weather which soothes one’s body and blessedly relaxes one’s brain. The departure of the two boys, followed by that of the lady in black and her withered daughter, gave the partners plenty of free time. My only idea was to get away, yet, against my will, I was growing used to the place. That mysterious attraction of what we do not like is always dangerous. It is fatally easy to go on staying in a place which has no soul, provided that every morning offers us the chance to escape.
I knew the timetable of the buses which passed along the main road, three miles away, and which would have put me down at a station. But my daily mail quenched my thirst for Paris. Every afternoon at teatime, I left my work, which was sticking badly, and joined “those women” in a little room off the drawing room which they called their boudoir. I would hear the light step of Monsieur Daste on the wooden staircase as he came down eager for tea and one of his favorite delicacies. This consisted of two deliciously light pieces of flaky pastry sandwiched together with cheese or jam and served piping hot. After dinner I made a fourth at poker or belote and reproached myself for doing so. There is always something suspect about things which are as easy as all that.
My griffon bitch, at least, was happy. She was enjoying all the pleasures of a concierge’s dog. In the evenings, she left her nest in the woolen hood to sit on Madame Ruby’s lap. She noted and listed these new patterns of behavior, keeping her ears open for gossip and her nose alert for smells. She continued to react against Monsieur Daste, but as a wary, intelligent dog rather than as his born enemy.
“Madame Suzanne, what does one do in this part of the world to make workmen get on with the job?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Offer them a bonus. I know I wouldn’t offer one.”
“Isn’t you better give your camping builders a kick in the pants?” suggested Madame Ruby.
She jabbed the air with her needle.
“Tsk, tsk!” said Madame Suzanne reprovingly. “Pour us out some tea and don’t be naughty. Drink it hot, Madame Colette. I heard you coughing again this morning when I was getting up at six.”
“Did I make as much noise as all that?”
“No, but we’re next door. And your hanging cupboard is in a recess so that it juts out right at the back of our . . .”
She stopped short and blushed as violently as an awkward child.
“Our apartment,” Madame Ruby suggested lamely.
“That’s right. Our apartment.”
She put down her cup and threw her arm around Madame Ruby’s shoulders with an indescribable look—a look from which all constraint had vanished.
“Don’t worry, my poor old darling. When you’ve said a thing, you’ve said it. Ten years of friendship—that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a long-term agreement.”
The tweed-jacketed embroidress gave her an understanding glance over her spectacles.
“Of course, I wouldn’t talk of such things in front of old Daddy Daste . . . He’ll be back soon, won’t he?”
“He wasn’t at lunch today,” I observed.
I was promptly ashamed of having noticed his absence. Petty observations, petty kindnesses, petty pieces of spite—indications, all of them, that my awareness was becoming sharper, yet deteriorating too. One begins by noticing the absence of a Monsieur Daste and soon one descends to “The lady at table 6 took three helpings of French beans . . .” Horrors, petty horrors.
“No,” said Madame Suzanne. “He went off early to fetch his car from Nice.”
“I didn’t know Monsieur Daste had a car.”
“Good gracious, yes,” said Madame Ruby. “He came here by car and by accident. The car in the ditch and Daddy Daste slightly stunned, with a nest beside him.”
“Yes, a nest. I expect the shock is made the nest fall off a tree.”
“Wasn’t it a scream?” said Madame Suzanne. “A nest! Can’t you just see it!”
“Do you like Monsieur Daste, Madame Suzanne?”
She half closed her blue eyes and blew smoke from her painted mouth and her nostrils.
“I like him very much in one way. He’s a good client. Tidy, pleasant, and all that. But in another way, I can’t stand him. Yet I’ve not a word to say against him.”
“A nest . . .” I said again.
“Ah, that strikes you, doesn’t it? There were even three young ones lying dead around the nest.”