by Colette
‘Really, Marthe, you needn’t be so cutting! In the first place there aren’t any cheap little restaurants . . .’
Marthe’s nerves were thoroughly on edge. She gave a sarcastic laugh.
‘No one like Léon for summing up a situation in a few well-chosen words! . . . Now, now, Annie, stop looking like a martyr . . . It’s this chicken with pears that’s driven me frantic . . . Are you two coming? I’m fed up, I’m going home.’
With a peevish gesture, she gathered up her fleecy, tailing skirt and, sweeping the terrace with a contemptuous gaze, observed:
‘Never mind, one day we’ll have a little Bayreuth in Paris. And that, my children, would be far more chic . . . and far more sought after!’
This first night has been so appalling, it would be better not even to mention it. Wedged in the middle of the hard mattress, scratched by the coarse cotton sheets, I cautiously breathed in the – imaginary . . .? smell of cabbage that filtered through the windows, under the doors, though the walls. In the end I sprayed an entire bottle of White Carnation over my bed and fell into a sleep filled with absurd voluptuous dreams. It was like looking at slightly caricatured illustrations in a dirty book . . . a debauch in Louis-Philippe costume. Alain in nankeen, and more enterprising than he had even been; myself in organdie, more revolted than I had ever dreamed . . . But, in any case, those voluminous trousers rendered any consent impossible.
SEVEN
OWING TO OUR having booked our seats almost at the last moment, I could not sit with Marthe and Léon. Secretly I was glad to be on my own, away from them. Standing up, in the dim light of the round lamps that encircled the auditorium like a broken necklace, I cautiously analysed the odour of burnt rubber and mildewed cellars. I was not shocked by the grey ugliness of the sacred fane. Everything, including the low stage and the black gulf out of which the music would rise, had been so over-described to me that it hardly came as anything new. I waited. Outside, the second fanfare sounded (I think it was Donner’s call). Some foreign women removed their hatpins with a bored, accustomed gesture. I did the same. Like them, I stared vaguely at the Fürstenloge, where I could see black shadows moving about and large bare foreheads titled forward . . . There was no interest to be found there. I had to wait a little longer, for the last padded door to be opened for the last time, showing a patch of blue sky in the aperture, for the last old lady to have finished coughing once and for all, before finally the E flat rose from the abyss and growled like a hidden beast.
‘Obviously, it’s very fine,’ decreed Marthe. ‘But it doesn’t have any intervals.’
I was still throbbing, but I concealed my emotion like a sensual desire. I merely replied that it had not seemed long to me. But my sister-in-law who was wasting a new orange dress, the same shade as her hair, thought poorly of this ‘fairy-prologue’.
‘My dear, the intervals here are part of the performance. They’re something one simply must see . . . ask any of the regular habitués. You eat during them, you meet your friends, you exchange impressions at length . . . The spectacle’s almost unique. Isn’t it, Maugis?’
The great boor imperceptibly raised his shoulders.
‘“Unique”, that was the word I was looking for. Nevertheless, in here, at least they don’t have the cheek to serve that f . . . filthy dish-water tasting of furniture-polish instead of decent beer. To come to Bayreuth to drink that muck makes one wonder how people can be such fatheads!’
He looked as slovenly and dissipated as ever: I searched in vain for some trace of fanatical enthusiasm that might have rehabilitated him in my eyes. For Maugis is one of those who ‘discovered’ Wagner in France. He has stubbornly imposed him on the French year after year in articles which are an extraordinary mixture of bald scepticism and drunkenly lyrical fervour. I know that Léon despises his flatulent slangy style and that Maugis calls Léon ‘a society scribbler’ . . . In every other respect, they get on marvellously . . . especially these last two months.
I felt so lost in the theatre’s huge restaurant, so far away . . . no, more than that, so cut off from everything. I was still inhabited by the demon of the music, the lament of the Rhine maidens was still wailing in my head and conflicting with the deafening clatter of crockery and knives and forks. Frenzied waiters, their black dinner-jackets positively stiff with grease, dashed about, their hands loaded, and the pinkish froth of the beer spilled over into the gravy . . .
‘As if we hadn’t enough of their beastly gemischtes-compote,’ grumbled Marthe with extreme resentment. ‘That Logi was particularly poor, wasn’t he, Maugis?’
‘Oh no, not particularly,’ he retorted, with an expression of mock indulgence. ‘I heard him seventeen years ago in the same part and I thought him undeniably better today.’
Marthe was not listening. She had turned, first her eyes, then her lorgnette, towards the far end of the room.
‘But it is . . . it really is her.’
‘Is who?’
‘Why, the Chessenet! With people I don’t know. There, right at the end, at the table against the wall.’
Feeling horribly shaken, as if I had suddenly been dragged back to my old life, I nervously explored the vast chessboard of tables. Yes, that pinkish-flaxen chignon was undoubtedly Valentine Chessenet’s.
‘Lord, what a bore!’ I sighed dejectedly.
Marthe lowered her lorgnette to scrutinize my face.
‘Why should it worry you? You can hardly be afraid – here – of her nabbing your Alain again!’
I gave a slight start.
‘Again? I wasn’t aware . . .’
Maugis, obviously meaning well, broke in with an idiotic, irrelevant remark that silenced Marthe. She tightened her lips, but she watched me out of the corner of her eye. My fork was trembling a little in my hand. Léon gnawed his gold pencil and looked about him with a reporter’s eye. Quite suddenly I had a violent desire to take that mollusc by the scruff of his neck and bang his pretty, lifeless face against the table . . . Then my rush of hot blood subsided and I was left amazed at my absurd burst of feeling . . . I think music must have a bad effect on me. The sight of that Chessenet woman had brought Alain back to me and, for one brief instantaneous flash, I saw him lying asleep, unconscious and white as a corpse.
My husband’s mistress! Suppose she had been my husband’s mistress! . . . For two hours, I have been saying this over and over to myself without its conveying any clear picture . . . I cannot evoke any image of Madame Chessenet except in full evening dress or in an elegant afternoon outfit, wearing one of those absurdly small hats with which she tries to create a style peculiarly her own . . . the Chessenet style! Yet if she had been his mistress, she must have taken off that tight dress, delicately removed that absurd little hat . . . But my weary head cannot imagine further than that . . . Besides, neither can I see Alain ardently wooing a woman. He never wooed me. He was never imploring, pressing, anxious, jealous . . . All he ever gave me was . . . a cage. I was contented with that for so long . . .
His mistress! Why doesn’t that idea make me feel more heartbroken resentment against my husband? Don’t I love him at all any more?
I can’t think any longer, I’m exhausted. Let’s put it all aside. Think, instead, Annie, that now you’re alone and free . . . that you’ve still many more weeks of freedom . . . Free! it’s a strange word . . . there are birds who think they are free because they are hopping about outside their cage. Only – their wings are clipped.
‘Good gracious, aren’t you even up yet?’
This morning, all ready dressed to go out, I went into Marthe’s room to ask her to come and explore Bayreuth a little with me. I found her still in bed, her red hair loose and dishevelled about her dimpled white shoulders. As I entered, she gave a leap like a carp and turned her plump behind over under the sheets. She yawned and stretched – she goes to bed with her rings on – then she threw me a rapid grey glance from under frowning eyebrows:
‘You’ve already got your outdoor things o
n! Where are you off to?’
‘Nowhere special. I’m just going for a walk. Are you feeling ill?’
‘Bad night, headache, feeling lazy . . .’
‘What a pity! Now I’ll have to go all alone.’
I went out, after shaking hands with poor old Léon who did not get up from his mahogany table – every bit as ugly as mine – where he was despatching his sixty lines before luncheon.
I felt diffident, all alone in the street. I would not have the courage to buy anything – I spoke German too badly – I would simply look round. The next minute I was gazing into a ‘modern-style’ shop that was a world in itself – a Wagnerian world. There was a photograph of the Rhine Maidens with their arms twined round each other’s shoulders; three hideous stout women, one of whom squinted, wearing flowered headdresses like the one my Luxemburger cook wears on her day out . . . round the poker-work frame writhed seaweed – or earthworms. Price complete with frame? Ten marks. I paid it.
Why so many portraits of Siegfried Wagner? And why only him? Yet other children of ‘Cosima’s late’ as Maugis calls him are certainly no uglier than this young man with a caricature of a nose. The fact that Siegfried conducts the orchestra – and incidentally conducts it rather badly – hardly seems a sufficient excuse . . . Everywhere, there was that persistent smell of cabbage . . . None of these streets had any character, and, at the end of the Opernstrasse, I hesitated whether to turn right or left.
‘The poor lost child, abandoned by its mother,
Even finds refuge in the holy place,’
said a cheeky, birdlike voice behind me.
‘Claudine! . . . Yes, I don’t know which way to go. I’m so unused to going out by myself.’
‘Unlike me. At twelve, I used to scamper about like a little rabbit . . . incidentally I had a white behind too.’
The . . . posterior . . . really occupies an excessive place in Claudine’s conversation. Nevertheless, I find her entirely delightful.
I reflected, as I walked beside this free creature, that it was odd Alain should have allowed me to visit women of dubious – not even dubious – reputation like that Chessenet female and the Cabbage-Rose, who makes sure beforehand that her lovers are expert, and yet forbidden me to see Claudine, who is charming and who makes no secret of the fact that she adores her husband. Weren’t those other women far more dangerous for me to frequent than this one?
‘I must say, Claudine, I’m surprised to meet you without either Renaud or Fanchette.’
‘Fanchette’s asleep and, anyway, the coal-dust dirties her paws. My Renaud’s working at his Diplomatic Review in which he’s abusing Delcassé as a stinker. So I’ve come out so as not to disturb him. And moreover, I’ve got maggots in my brain this morning.’
‘You’ve got . . .?’
‘Yes, maggots. But what about you, Annie? What does this mean, you independent little thing, running about alone in a foreign city, without your governess! And where’s your leather satchel? And your drawing-book?’
She stood there teasing me, a quaint figure in her abbreviated skirt, her coarse straw boater tilted over her nose, her curly short hair and her triangular face quite brown above the white silk blouse. Her beautiful almost yellow eyes seemed to light up her whole person, like fires blazing in an open field.
‘Marthe’s resting,’ I replied at last. ‘She’s tired.’
‘Tired of what? Of being pawed by Maugis? Oh! Whatever have I said?’ she corrected herself, hypocritically putting her hand over her mouth as if to crush back the impudent words . . .
‘You think? . . . You think she does . . . that he does what you just said?’
I could not keep the tremor out of my voice. Fool that I was! I knew Claudine would tell me nothing now. She shrugged her shoulders and spun round on one foot.
‘Oh, if you listen to everything I say! . . . Marthe is like heaps of women I know . . . it amuses her to be raped a little in front of everybody. Alone with a man, it’s a different story, somehow, it doesn’t make them any less respectable.’ I walked pensively beside Claudine. We met Englishwomen – still more of them! – and Americans in silk and lace at ten o’clock in the morning. My companion received a great many glances. She became conscious of this and returned stare for stare with cool self-possession. Only once did she turn round excitedly and pull me by the sleeve.
‘What a pretty woman! Did you see her? That blonde with eyes like black coffee?’
‘No, I didn’t notice.’
‘Little fathead! Where are we going?’
‘I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to see a little of the town.’
‘The town? Not worth the trouble. It’s nothing but postcards and all the rest is hotels. Come along, I know a pretty garden; we can sit down on the grass.’
I had no strength to resist her turbulent will: I adapted my steps to her long, quick stride. We walked down an ugly street, and then, some way beyond the Schwarzes Ross, we found ourselves in a great empty square, one of those pleasant, melancholy squares, full of lime-trees and statues, so typical of provincial towns.
‘What is this square, Claudine?’
‘This? I’ve no idea. Margravine’s Square. When in doubt here, I christen everything Margravine’s. Come along, Annie, we’re nearly there.’
A little gate in the corner of the big square led us into a trim flower-garden that soon expanded into a park, a slightly neglected park that might have belonged to some cool, sleepy château in provincial France.
‘This park is . . . what?’
‘The Margravine’s park!’ asserted Claudine confidently. ‘And here we have one of the Margravine’s benches, one of the Margravine’s soldiers, one of the Margravine’s nannies . . . Green, isn’t it? It’s restful. You could almost imagine you were in Montigny . . . except it’s not nearly, nearly so good.’
We sat down side by side on the soft, crumbling stone of an old bench.
‘You live in Montigny, don’t you? Is it beautiful country?’
‘Beautiful country? I’m as happy there as a plant in a hedge, as a lizard on its wall, as . . . I don’t know. There are days when I don’t come home from morning to night – when we don’t come home,’ she corrected herself. ‘I’ve taught Renaud to realize how beautiful that country is. When I go there now, he comes too.’
Once again, her intense love for her husband brought on that depression that almost makes me want to cry.
‘He follows you everywhere . . . in everything . . . wherever you go, whatever you do.’
‘But I follow him too,’ said Claudine, surprised. ‘That’s how we go on . . . We follow each other . . . without being like each other.’
I bent my head and scratched the sand with the tip of my umbrella.
‘How you love each other!’
‘Yes,’ she answered simply. ‘It’s like a disease.’ She stared into space for a moment, then turned her eyes back to me.
‘And you?’ she asked abruptly.
I started.
‘Me? . . . What about me?’
‘You don’t love your husband?’
‘Alain? Why, yes, naturally . . .’
I drew back, uneasy. Claudine moved closer and burst our impetuously:
‘Ah! “Naturally”. Right, if you love him naturally, I know what that means. What’s more . . .’
I wanted to stop her, but it would have been easier to stop a run-away pony!
‘What’s more, I’ve often seen you together. He looks like a stick and you look like a wet handkerchief. He’s a clumsy idiot, a booby, a brute . . .’
I flinched at her gesture as if she had raised her fist at me . . .
‘Yes, a brute! That carrot-headed fool has been given a wife, but not the faintest glimmering of how to treat her . . . Why, it would be glaringly obvious to a seven-months-old baby! “Annie, you can’t do this . . . Annie, you can’t do that . . . it simply isn’t done!” The third time he said that to me, I should have answered: “And suppose I make you
a cuckold . . . would that be considered correct?”’
She brought it out with such comical fury that I burst into simultaneous laughter and tears. The extraordinary creature! She was so heated that she had actually pulled off her hat and was tossing her short hair as if to cool herself.
I did not know how to control myself. I still wanted to cry but most of all I wanted to laugh. Claudine turned to me with a severe face that made her look like her cat.
‘There’s nothing to laugh about! Nothing to cry about either! You’re a softy, a pretty little scrap of chiffon, a crumpled bit of silk and you’ve no excuse because you don’t love your husband.’
‘I don’t love my . . .’
‘No, you don’t love anyone!’
Her expression changed. She became more serious.
‘For you haven’t got a love. Love . . . even a forbidden love . . . would have made you blossom, you supple, barren branch . . . Your husband! Why, if you’d loved him in the real sense of the word, loved as I love!’ she said, clasping her delicate hands over her breast in a strangely proud, firm gesture, ‘you’d have followed him over land and sea, whether he kissed you or beat you, you’d have followed him like his shadow and like his soul! . . . When one loves in a certain way,’ she went on in a lower voice, ‘even betrayals become unimportant . . .’
I listened, straining towards her, straining to catch what she was uttering like a prophetess revealing strange truths. I listened with a passionate sense of desolation, never taking my eyes off hers that were staring into the distance. Then she calmed herself and smiled at me as if she had only just noticed my presence.
‘Annie, in our fields at home, there’s a fragile grass that looks like you . . . a grass with a slender stalk and a heavy head of seed-pods that weighs it down. It has a pretty name that I give you whenever I think of you – “Drooping Melic”. It shivers in the wind, as if it were frightened . . . and it only stands up straight when all its seed-pods are empty . . .’
She threw an affectionate arm round my neck.
‘Drooping Melic, how charming you are, more’s the pity! I haven’t seen a woman since . . . for a long time . . . who was so appealing. Look at me, chicory flowers, eyes fringed like a pool among black rushes, Annie who smells like a rose . . .’
