by Colette
‘Certainly not,’ Charlotte protested, with the simplicity of a child. ‘But, you know, there’s a right time for everything.’
‘Yes . . .’ He sighed deeply, looking out towards a sky masked by cloud and rain. ‘There’s a time to be young, and there’s a time to be less young. There’s a time to be happy . . . d’you think it needed you to make me aware of that?’
She seemed suddenly to be upset, and walked up and down the room, her round behind tightly moulded by her dress, as plump and brisk as a little fat bitch. She came back and planted herself in front of her son.
‘Well, darling, I’m afraid you’re heading for some act of madness.’
‘What?’
‘Oh! there aren’t so many. A monastery. Or a desert island. Or love.’
Chéri smiled in astonishment. ‘Love? You want me . . . in love with . . .’ He jerked his chin in the direction of Edmée’s boudoir, and Charlotte’s eyes sparkled.
‘Who mentioned her?’
He laughed, and from an instinct of self-preservation became offensive again.
‘You did, and in a moment you’ll be offering me one of your American pieces.’
She gave a theatrical start. ‘An American piece? Really? And why not a rubber substitute as provided for sailors into the bargain?’
He was pleased with her jingoistic and expert disdain. Since childhood he had had it dinned into him that a French woman demeans herself by living with a foreigner, unless, of course, she exploits him, or he ruins her. And he could reel off a list of outrageous epithets with which a native Parisian courtesan would brand a dissolute foreign woman. But he refused the offer, without irony. Charlotte threw out her short arms and protruded her lower lip, like a doctor confessing his helplessness.
‘I don’t suggest that you should work . . .’ she risked shamefacedly.
Chéri dismissed this importunate suggestion with a shrug of the shoulders.
‘Work,’ he repeated . . . ‘work, what you mean by that is hobnobbing with fellows. You can’t work alone, short of painting picture postcards or taking in sewing. My poor mother, you fail to realize that, if fellows get my goat, women can hardly be said to inspire me either. The truth is, that I have no further use for women at all,’ he finished courageously.
‘Good heavens!’ Charlotte caterwauled. She wrung her hands as though a horse had slipped and fallen at her feet; but harshly her son enjoined silence with a single gesture, and she was forced to admire the virile authority of this handsome young man, who had just owned up to his own particular brand of impotence.
‘Chéri! . . . my little boy! . . .’
He turned to her with a gentle, empty, and vaguely pleading look in his eyes.
She gazed into the large eyes that shone with an exaggerated brilliance, due, perhaps, to their unblemished white, their long lashes, and the secret emotion behind them. She longed to enter through these magnificent portals and reach down to the shadowed heart which had first started to beat so close to her own. Chéri appeared to be putting up no defence and to enjoy being balked, as if under hypnosis. Charlotte had, in the past, known her son to be ill, irritable, sly; she had never known him unhappy. She felt, therefore, a strange kind of excitement, the ecstasy that casts a woman at a man’s feet at the moment when she dreams of changing a despairing stranger into an inferior stranger – that is to say, of making him rid himself of his despair.
‘Listen, Chéri,’ she murmured very softly. ‘Listen. . . . You must . . . No, no, wait! At least let me speak. . . .’
He interrupted her with a furious shake of the head, and she saw it was useless to insist. It was she who broke their long exchange of looks, by putting on her coat again and her little leather hat, making towards the door. But as she passed the table, she stopped, and casually put her hand out towards the telephone.
‘Do you mind, Chéri?’
He nodded his consent, and she began in a high-pitched nasal shrill like a clarinet. ‘Hullo . . . Hullo . . . Hullo . . . Passy, two nine, two nine. Hullo . . . Is that you, Léa? But of course it’s me. What weather, eh! . . . Don’t speak of it. Yes, very well. Everyone’s very well. What are you doing today? Not budging an inch! Ah, that’s so like you, you self-indulgent creature! Oh, you know, I’m no longer my own mistress. . . . Oh no, not on that account. Something altogether different. A vast undertaking. . . . Oh, no, not on the telephone. . . . You’ll be in all day then? Good. That’s very convenient. Thank you. Goodbye, Léa darling!’
She put back the receiver, showing nothing but the curve of her back. As she moved away, she inhaled and exhaled puffs of blue smoke, and vanished in the midst of her cloud like a magician whose task is accomplished.
WITHOUT HURRYING, HE climbed the single flight of stairs up to Léa’s flat. At six in the evening, after the rain, the Rue Raynouard re-echoed, like the garden of a boarding-school, with the chirrup of birds and the cries of small children. He glanced quickly, coldly, at everything, refusing to be surprised at the heavy looking-glasses in the entrance-hall, the polished steps, the blue carpet, or the lift-cage lavishly splashed with as much lacquer and gold as a sedan-chair. On the landing he experienced, for a moment, the deceptive sense of detachment and freedom from pain felt by a sufferer on the dentist’s doorstep. He nearly turned away, but, guessing that he might feel compelled to return later, he pressed the bell with a determined finger. The maid, who had taken her time in coming to the door, was young and dark, with a butterfly cap of fine lawn on her bobbed hair: her unfamiliar face took from Chéri his last chance of feeling moved.
‘Is Madame at home?’
The young servant, apparently lost in admiration of him, could not make up her mind.
‘I do not know, Monsieur. Is Monsieur expected?’
‘Of course,’ he said, with a return of his old harshness.
She left him standing there, and disappeared. In the half-light, he was quick to take in his surroundings, with eyes blurred by the gloom, and alert sensitive nostrils. There was nowhere a vestige of that light golden scent, and some ordinary pine essence sputtered in an electric scent-burner. Chéri felt put out, like someone who discovers that he is on the wrong floor. But a great peal of girlish laughter rang out, its notes running down a deep descending scale. It was muffled by some curtain or other, but at once the intruder was cast into a whirlpool of memories.
‘Will Monsieur please come to the drawing-room.’
He followed the white butterfly, saying over to himself as he went: ‘Léa’s not alone. She’s laughing. She can’t be alone. So long as it’s not my mother.’ Beyond an open door, he was being welcomed by rosy pink daylight and he waited, standing there, for the rebirth of the world heralded by this dawn.
A woman was writing at a small table, facing away from him. Chéri was able to distinguish a broad back and the padded cushion of a fat neck beneath a head of thick grey vigorous hair, cut short like his mother’s. ‘So I was right, she’s not alone. But who on earth can this good woman be?’
‘And, at the same time, write down your masseur’s address for me, Léa, and his name. You know what I’m like about names. . . .’
These words came from a woman dressed in black, also seated, and Chéri felt a preliminary tremor of expectation running through him: ‘Then . . . where is Léa?’
The grey-haired lady turned round, and Chéri received the full impact of her blue eyes.
‘Oh, good heavens, child – it’s you!’
He went forward as in a dream, and kissed an outstretched hand.
‘Monsieur Frédéric Peloux – Princess Cheniaguine.’
Chéri bent over and kissed another hand, then took a seat.
‘Is he your . . .?’ queried the lady in black, referring to him with as much freedom as if he had been a deaf-mute.
Once again the great peal of girlish laughter rang out, and Chéri sought for the source of this laugh here, there, and everywhere – anywhere but in the throat of the grey-haired woman.
‘No, no, he isn’t! Or rather, he isn’t any longer, I should say. Valerie, come now, what are you thinking of?’
She was not monstrous, but huge, and loaded with exuberant buttresses of fat in every part of her body. Her arms, like rounded thighs, stood out from her hips on plump cushions of flesh just below her armpits. The plain skirt and the nondescript long jacket, opening on a linen blouse with a jabot, proclaimed that the wearer had abdicated, was no longer concerned to be a woman, and had acquired a kind of sexless dignity.
Léa was now standing between Chéri and the window, and he was not horrified at first by her firm, massive, almost cubic, bulk. When she moved to reach a chair, her features were revealed, and he began to implore her with silent entreaties, as though faced with an armed lunatic. Her cheeks were red and looked over-ripe, for she now disdained the use of powder, and when she laughed her mouth was packed with gold. A healthy old woman, in short, with sagging cheeks and a double chin, well able to carry her burden of flesh and freed from restraining stays.
‘Tell me, child, where have you sprung from? I can’t say I think you’re looking particularly well.’
She held out a box of cigarettes to Chéri, smiling at him from blue eyes which had grown smaller, and he was frightened to find her so direct in her approach, and as jovial as an old gentleman. She called him ‘child’, and he turned away his eyes, as though she had let slip an indecent word. But he exhorted himself to be patient, in the vague hope that this first picture would give place to a shining transfiguration.
The two women looked him over calmly, sparing him neither goodwill nor curiosity.
‘He’s got rather a look of Hernandez . . .’ said Valerie Cheniaguine.
‘Oh, I don’t see that at all,’ Léa protested. ‘Ten years ago perhaps . . . and, anyhow, Hernandez had a much more pronounced jaw!’
‘Who’s that?’ Chéri asked, with something of an effort.
‘A Peruvian who was killed in a motor accident about six months ago,’ said Léa. ‘He was living with Maximilienne. It made her very unhappy.’
‘Didn’t prevent her finding consolation,’ said Valérie.
‘Like anyone else,’ Léa said. ‘You wouldn’t have wished her to die of it, surely?’
She laughed afresh, and her merry blue eyes disappeared, lost behind wide cheeks bulging with laughter. Chéri turned away his head and looked at the woman in black. She had brown hair and an ample figure, vulgar and feline like thousands and thousands of women from the south. She seemed in disguise, so very carefully was she dressed as a woman in good society. Valerie was wearing what had long been the uniform of foreign princesses and their ladies – a black tailor-made of undistinguished cut, tight in the sleeve, with a blouse of extremely fine white batiste, showing signs of strain at the breast. The pearl buttons, the famous necklace, the high stiff whalebone collar, everything about Valerie was as royal as the name she legitimately bore. Like royalty, too, she wore stockings of medium quality, flat-heeled walking shoes, and expensive gloves, embroidered in black and white.
From the cold and calculating way she looked him over, Chéri might have been a piece of furniture. She went on with her criticisms and comparisons at the top of her voice.
‘Yes, yes, there is something of Hernandez, I promise you. But, to hear Maximilienne today, Hernandez might never have existed . . . now that she has made quite certain of her famous Amerigo. And yet! And yet! I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen him, her precious Amerigo. I’m just back from Deauville. I saw the pair of them!’
‘No! Do tell us!’
Léa sat down, overflowing the whole armchair. She had acquired a new trick of tossing back her thick grey hair; and at each shake of the head, Chéri saw a quivering of the lower part of her face, which looked like Louis XVI’s. Ostensibly, she was giving Valerie her full attention, but several times Chéri noticed a mischievous faltering in one of the little shrunk blue eyes, as they sought to catch those of the unexpected visitor.
‘Well, then,’ Valerie started on her story, ‘she had hidden him in a villa miles outside Deauville, at the back of beyond. But that did not suit Amerigo at all – as you will readily understand, Monsieur! – and he grumbled at Maximilienne. She was cross, and said: “Ah! that’s what the matter is – you want to be on view to the world and his wife, and so you shall be!” So she telephoned to reserve a table at the Normandy for the following evening. Everyone knew this an hour later, and so I booked a table as well, with Becq d’Ambez and Zahita. And we said to ourselves: “We’re going to be allowed to see this marvel at last!” On the stroke of nine there was Maximilienne, all in white and pearls, and Amerigo. . . . Oh, my dear, what a disappointment! Tall, yes, that goes without saying . . . in point of fact, rather too tall. You know what I always say about men who are too tall. I’m still waiting to be shown one, just one, who is well put together. Eyes, yes, eyes, I’ve got nothing to say against his eyes. But – from here to there, don’t you see’ (she was pointing to her own face), ‘from here to there, something about the cheeks which is too rounded, too soft, and the ears set too low. . . . Oh, a very great disappointment. And holding himself as stiff as a poker.’
‘You’re exaggerating,’ said Léa. ‘The cheeks – well, what about cheeks? – they aren’t so very important. And, from here to there, well really it’s beautiful, it’s noble; the eyelashes, the bridge of the nose, the eyes, the whole thing is really too beautiful! I’ll grant you the chin: that will quickly run to flesh. And the feet are too small, which is ridiculous in a boy of that height.’
‘No, there I don’t agree with you. But I certainly noticed that the thigh was far too long in proportion to the leg, from here to there.’
They went on to thrash out the question, weighing up, with a wealth of detail and point by point, every portion of the fore and hind quarters of this expensive animal.
‘Judges of pedigree fat cattle,’ Chéri thought. ‘The right place for them is the Commissariats.’
‘Speaking of proportions,’ Léa continued, ‘you’ll never come across anything to touch Chéri. . . . You see, Chéri, you’ve come at just the right moment You ought to blush. Valerie, if you can remember what Chéri was like only six, or say seven, years ago . . .’
‘But certainly, of course I remember clearly. And Monsieur has not changed so very much, after all. . . . And you were so proud of him!’
‘No,’ said Léa.
‘You weren’t proud of him?’
‘No,’ said Léa with perfect calm, ‘I was in love with him.’
She manoeuvred the whole of her considerable body in his direction, and let her gay glance rest upon Chéri, quite innocently. ‘It’s true I was in love with you, very much in love, too.’
He lowered his eyes, stupidly abashed before these two women, the stouter of whom had just proclaimed so serenely that she and he had been lovers. Yet at the same time the voluptuous and almost masculine tone of Léa’s voice besieged his memory, torturing him unbearably.
‘You see, Valerie, how foolish a man can look when reminded of a love which no longer exists? Silly boy, it doesn’t upset me in the least to think about it. I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer. Am I wrong, child?’
He uttered a cry, almost as if someone had trodden on his big toe. ‘No, no, of course not! The very reverse!’
‘It’s charming to think you have remained such good friends,’ said Valérie.
Chéri waited for Léa to explain that this was his first visit to her for five years, but she just gave a good-humoured laugh and winked with a knowing air. He felt more and more upset. He did not know how to protest, how to shout out loud that he laid no claim to the friendship of this colossal woman, with the cropped hair of an elderly cellist – that, had he but known, he would never have come upstairs, never crossed her threshold, set foot on her carpet, never collapsed in the cushioned armchair, in the depths of which he now lay defenceless
and dumb.
‘Well, I must be going,’ Valerie said. ‘I don’t mean to wait for crush-hour in the Metro, I can tell you.’
She rose to face the strong light, and it was kind to her Roman features. They were so solidly constructed that the approach of her sixtieth year had left them unharmed: the cheeks were touched up in the old-fashioned way, with an even layer of white powder, and the lips with a red that was almost black and looked oily.
‘Are you going home?’ Léa asked.
‘Of course I am. What d’you suppose my little skivvy would get up to if left to herself!’
‘Are you still pleased with your new flat?’
‘It’s a dream! Especially since the iron bars were put across the windows. And I’ve had a steel grid fixed over the pantry fanlight, which I had forgotten about. With my electric bells and my burglar-alarms . . . Ouf! It’s been long enough before I could feel at all safe!’
‘And your old house?’
‘Bolted and barred. Up for sale. And the pictures in store. My little entresol flat is a gem for the eighteen hundred francs it cost me. And no more servants looking like hired assassins. You remember those two footmen? The thought of them still gives me the creeps!’
‘You took much too black a view, my dear.’
‘You can’t realize, my poor friend, without having been through it all. Monsieur, delighted to have met you. . . . No, don’t you move, Léa.’
She enfolded them both in her velvety barbaric gaze, and was gone. Chéri followed her with his eyes until she reached the door, yet he lacked the courage to follow her example. He remained where he was, all but snuffed out by the conversation of these two women who had been speaking of him in the past tense, as though he were dead. But now Léa was coming back into the room, bursting with laughter. ‘Princess Cheniaguine! Sixty millions! and a widow! – and she’s not in the least bit happy. If that can be called enjoying life, it’s not my idea of it, you know!’
She clapped her hand on her thigh as if it were a horse’s crupper.