Claudine at School

by Colette

  When Madame X received the notice of her dismissal, she cried about it for an entire day, poor woman – and so did we. This inspired me with a strong aversion for her successor. Just when the demolishers of the old school made their appearance in the playground, the new Headmistress, Mademoiselle Sergent, arrived. She was accompanied by her mother, a fat woman in a starched cap who waits on her daughter and admires her and who gives me the impression of a wily peasant who knows the price of butter but is not bad at heart. As for Mademoiselle Sergent, she seemed anything but kindly and I augured ill of that redhead. She has a good figure, with well-rounded bust and hips, but she is flagrantly ugly. Her face is puffy and permanently crimson and her nose is slightly snub between two small black eyes, deep-set and suspicious. She occupies a room in the old school which does not have to be demolished straight away and so does her assistant, the pretty Aimée Lanthenay who attracts me as much as her superior repels me. Against Mademoiselle Sergent, the intruder, I keep up a fierce and rebellious attitude. She has already tried to tame me but I’ve jibbed in an almost insolent way. After a few lively skirmishes, I have to admit that she is an unusually good Headmistress; decisive, often imperious, with a strength of purpose that would be admirably clear-sighted if it were not occasionally blinded by rage. If she had more command over herself, that woman would be admirable. But, if one resists her, her eyes blaze and her red hair becomes soaked with sweat. The day before yesterday I saw her leave the room so as not to throw an inkpot at my head.

  At recreation-time, since the damp cold of this wretched autumn doesn’t make me feel in the least inclined to play games, I talk to Mademoiselle Aimée. Our intimacy is progressing very fast. Her nature is like a demonstrative cat’s; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways. I like looking at her nice pink face, like a fair-haired little girl’s, and at her golden eyes with their curled-up lashes. Lovely eyes that only ask to smile! They make the boys turn and look after her when she goes out. Often, when we’re talking in the doorway of the little crowded classroom, Mademoiselle Sergent passes by us on the way back to her room. She doesn’t say a word but fixes us with her jealous, searching looks. Her silence makes us feel, my new friend and I, that she’s furious at seeing us ‘hit it off’ so well.

  This little Aimée – she’s nineteen and only comes up to my ears – chatters, like the schoolgirl she still was only three months ago, with a need for affection and with repressed gestures that touch me. Repressed gestures! She controls them from an instinctive fear of Mademoiselle Sergent, clutching her cold little hands tight under the imitation fur collar (poor little thing, she has no money like thousands of her kind). To make her less shy, I behave gently (it isn’t difficult) and I ask her questions, quite content just to look at her. When she talks she’s pretty, in spite of – or because of – her irregular little face. If her cheekbones are a trifle too salient, if her rather too full mouth, under the short nose, makes a funny little dint at the left side when she laughs, what marvellous golden-yellow eyes she has to make up for them! And what a complexion – one of those complexions that look so delicate but are so reliable that the cold doesn’t even turn them blue! She talks and she talks – about her father who’s a gem-cutter and her mother who was liberal with her smacks, about her sister and her three brothers, about the hard training-college in the country-town where the water froze in the jugs and where she was always dropping with sleep because they got up at five o’clock (luckily the English mistress was very nice to her), about the holidays at home where they used to force her to go back to housework, telling her she’d do better to cook than to sham the young lady. All this was unfolded in her endless chatter; all that poverty-stricken youth that she had endured with impatience and remembered with terror.

  Little Mademoiselle Lanthenay, your supple body seeks and demands an unknown satisfaction. If you were not an assistant mistress at Montigny you might be … I’d rather not say what. But how I like listening to you and looking at you – you who are four years older than I am and yet make me feel every single moment like your elder sister!

  My new confidante told me one day that she knew quite a lot of English and this inspired me with a simply marvellous idea. I asked Papa (as he takes Mama’s place) if he wouldn’t like me to get Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay to give me lessons in English grammar. Papa thought the idea a good one, like most of my ideas, and to ‘clinch the matter’, as he says, he came with me to see Mademoiselle Sergent. She received us with a stony politeness and, while Papa was explaining his idea to her, she seemed to be approving it. But I felt vaguely uneasy at not seeing her eyes while she was talking. (I’d noticed very quickly that her eyes always tell what she is thinking without her being able to disguise it and I was worried to observe that she kept them obstinately lowered.) Mademoiselle Aimée was called down and arrived eager and blushing. She kept repeating ‘Yes, Monsieur’, and ‘Certainly, Monsieur’, hardly realizing what she was saying, while I watched her, highly delighted with my ruse and rejoicing in the thought that, henceforth, I should have her with me in more privacy than on the threshold of the small classroom. Price of the lessons: fifteen francs a month and two sessions a week. For this poor little assistant mistress, who earns sixty-five francs a month and has to pay for her keep out of it, this was a windfall beyond her dreams. I believe, too, that she was pleased at the idea of being with me more often. During that visit, I barely exchanged a couple of sentences with her.

  The day of our first lesson! I waited for her after class while she collected her English books and off we went to my home! I’d arranged a comfortable corner for us in Papa’s library – a big table, pens, and exercise-books, with a good lamp that only lit the table. Mademoiselle Aimée, extremely embarrassed (why?), blushed and said with a nervous little cough:

  ‘Now then, Claudine, you know your alphabet, I think?’

  ‘Of course, Mademoiselle. I also know a little grammar. I could easily do that little bit of translation … We’re cosy here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, very cosy.’

  I asked, lowering my voice a little as I did when we were having our gossips:

  ‘Did Mademoiselle Sergent mention my lessons with you again?’

  ‘Oh, hardly at all. She told me it was a piece of luck for me – that you’d give me no trouble if you were only willing to work a little – that you could learn very quickly when you wanted to.’

  ‘Was that all? That’s not much! She must have been sure you’d repeat it to me.’

  ‘Now, now, Claudine, we’re not working. In English there is only one article … etc., etc.’

  After ten minutes of serious English, I questioned her again.

  ‘Did you notice she didn’t look at all pleased when I came with Papa to ask to have lessons with you?’

  ‘No … Yes … Well, perhaps. But we hardly spoke to each other that evening.’

  ‘Do take off your jacket, it’s always stifling in Papa’s room. How slim you are – one could snap you in two! Your eyes are awfully pretty by this light.’

  I said that because I thought it and also because it gave me pleasure to pay her compliments – more pleasure than if I had received them on my own account. I inquired:

  ‘Do you still sleep in the same room as Mademoiselle Sergent?’

  This proximity seemed odious to me but how could she do otherwise? All the rooms had already been stripped of their furniture and the men were beginning to take off the roof. The poor little thing sighed:

  ‘I have to, but it’s too tiresome for words. At nine o’clock I go to bed at once – quick, quick – and she comes up to bed later on. But it’s unpleasant all the same, when the two of us are so ill-at-ease together.’

  ‘Oh, I do feel so frightfully sorry for you! It must be maddening for you to have to dress in front of her in the morning! I should loathe to have to show myself in my chemise to people I don’t like!’

  Mademoiselle Lanthenay started as she pulled ou
t her watch.

  ‘Really, Claudine, we’re not doing a thing! We simply must work!’

  ‘Yes … Did you know they’re expecting some new assistant-masters?’

  ‘I know. Two. They’re arriving tomorrow.’

  ‘That’ll be amusing! Two admirers for you!’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, do. To begin with, all the ones I’ve seen were so stupid that I wasn’t a bit tempted. And, besides, I know the names of these two already. Such ludicrous names – Antonin Rabastens and Armand Duplessis.’

  ‘I bet those two idiots will go through our playground twenty times a day. They’ll make the excuse that the boys’ entrance is cluttered up with builder’s rubbish …’

  ‘Listen, Claudine, this is disgraceful. We haven’t done a stroke today.’

  ‘Oh, it’s always like that the first day. We’ll work much better next Friday. One has to have time to get going.’

  In spite of this convincing reasoning, Mademoiselle Lanthenay felt guilty about her own laziness and made me work seriously to the end of the hour. Afterwards, I accompanied her down to the bottom of the street. It was dark and freezing and it upset me to see this small shadow going off into that cold and that blackness to return to the Redhead with the jealous eyes.

  This week we’ve enjoyed some hours of pure bliss because they’ve been using us big ones to clear the loft and bring down all the books and the old lumber with which it was crammed. We had to hurry: the builders were waiting to pull down the first storey. There were mad gallops through the attics and up and down the stairs. At the risk of being punished we ventured, the lanky Anaïs and I, right on to the staircase leading to the masters’ rooms, in the hope of at least catching a glimpse of the two new assistants who had remained invisible since their arrival …

  Yesterday, in front of a door left ajar, Anaïs gave me a shove. I stumbled and pushed the door right open with my head. Then we burst into giggles and stood rooted to the spot on the threshold of this room, obviously a master’s and, luckily, empty of its tenant. Hastily, we inspected it. On the wall and on the mantelpiece were large chromolithographs in commonplace frames: an Italian girl with luxuriant hair, dazzling teeth, and eyes three times the size of her mouth; as a companion-piece, a swooning blonde clutching a spaniel to her blue-ribboned bodice. Above the bed of Antonin Rabastens (he had stuck his card on the door with four drawing-pins) hung entwined pennants in the French and Russian national colours. What else? A table with a washbasin, two chairs, some butterflies stuck on corks, some sentimental songs lying about the mantelpiece, and not a thing besides. We stared at all this without saying a word, then suddenly we escaped towards the loft at full speed, oppressed by an absurd fear that Antonin (one simply can’t be called Antonin!) might be coming up the stairs. Our trampling on those forbidden steps was so noisy that a door opened on the ground-floor – the door of the boys’ classroom – and someone appeared, inquiring in a funny Marseilles accent:

  ‘What on earth’s going on? For the last half-hour, have I been hearing hosses on the staircase?’

  We had just time to catch a glimpse of a tall, dark youth with healthy ruddy cheeks … Up there, safe at last, my accomplice said, panting:

  ‘Just suppose, if he knew we’d come from his room!’

  ‘Well, suppose he did? He’d be inconsolable at having missed us.’

  ‘Missed us!’ went on Anaïs with icy gravity. ‘He looks like a tough chap who couldn’t be likely to miss you.’

  ‘Go on, you great slut!’

  And we went on with the clearing-out of the loft. It was fascinating to rummage among the pile of books and periodicals to be carried down and that belonged to Mademoiselle Sergent. Of course, we had a good look through the heap before taking them down and I noticed it contained Pierre Loüys’ Aphrodite and several numbers of the Journal amusant. Anaïs and I regaled ourselves excitedly with a drawing by Gerbault entitled Whispers behind the Scenes. It showed gentlemen in black evening clothes occupied in tickling charming Opera dancers, in tights and ballet-skirts, who were twittering and gesticulating. The other pupils had gone downstairs; it was getting dark in the attic and we lingered over some pictures that made us laugh – some Albert Guillaumes that were far from suitable for young ladies.

  Suddenly, we started for someone had opened the door and was asking in a garlicky voice: ‘Hi! who’s been making this infernal row on the staircase?’

  We stood up, looking very serious, our arms loaded with books and said, very deliberately: ‘Good morning, Sir,’ fighting down an agonizing desire to laugh. It was the big assistant-master with the jolly face we’d seen just now. So then, because we’re both tall and look at least sixteen, he apologized and went away, saying: ‘A thousand pardons, young ladies.’ So we danced behind his back in silence, making devilish faces at him. We arrived downstairs late and were scolded. Mademoiselle Sergent asked me: ‘What on earth were you doing up there?’ So I ostentatiously put down the pile of books at her feet with the daring Aphrodite and the numbers of Journal amusant on top, folded back to display the pictures. She saw them at once; her red cheeks turned redder than ever but she recovered herself at once and remarked: ‘Ah! Those are the Headmaster’s books you have brought down. Everything gets so mixed up in that loft we all use. I’ll give them back to him.’ And there the sermon ended; not the least punishment for the two of us. As we went out, I nudged Anaïs whose narrow eyes were crinkled with laughter.

  ‘Hmm, the Headmaster’s got a broad back!’

  ‘Claudine, can you imagine that innocent collecting bits of dirt! I wouldn’t be surprised if he believes babies are found under gooseberry bushes!’

  For the Headmaster is a sad, colourless widower. One hardly knows he exists for he only leaves his classroom to shut himself up in his bedroom.

  The following Friday, I took my second lesson with Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay. I asked her:

  ‘Are the new masters pursuing you already?’

  ‘Oh! As it happens, Claudine, they came yesterday to “pay their respects”. The nice boy who swaggers a bit is Antonin Rabastens.’

  ‘Known as “the pearl of the Canebière”; and the other one, what’s he like?’

  ‘Slim, handsome, with an interesting face. He’s called Armand Duplessis.’

  ‘It would be a sin not to nickname him “Richelieu”.’

  She laughed.

  ‘A name that’s stick to him all through the school, you wicked Claudine! But what a savage! He doesn’t say a word except Yes and No.’

  My English mistress seemed adorable that night under the library lamp. Her cat’s eyes shone pure gold, at once malicious and caressing, and I admired them, not without reminding myself that they were neither kind nor frank nor trustworthy. But they sparkled so brilliantly in her fresh face and she seemed so utterly at ease in this warm, softly-lit room that I already felt ready to love her so much, so very much, with all my irrational heart. Yes, I’ve known perfectly well, for a long time, that I have an irrational heart. But knowing it doesn’t stop me in the least.

  ‘And she, the Redhead – doesn’t she say anything to you these days?’

  ‘No. She’s even being quite amiable. I don’t think she’s as annoyed as you think to see us getting on so well together.’

  ‘Pooh! You don’t see her eyes. They’re not as lovely as yours, but they’re more wicked … Pretty little Mademoiselle, what a darling you are!’

  She blushed deeply and said, with complete lack of conviction:

  ‘You’re a little mad, Claudine. I’m beginning to believe it, I’ve been told so so often!’

  ‘Yes, I’m quite aware that other people say so, but who cares? I like being with you. Tell me about your lovers.’

  ‘I haven’t any! You know, I think we shall see plenty of the two assistant-masters. Rabastens strikes me as very “man of the world” and Duplessis will follow in his footsteps. By the way, did you know that I shall probably get my little sister to come here as a boarder?’
/>   ‘I don’t care a fig about your sister. How old is she?’

  ‘Your age. A few months younger, just on fifteen.’

  ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘Not pretty, as you’ll see. A bit shy and wild.’

  ‘Sucks to your sister! I say, I saw Rabastens in the loft. He came up on purpose. He’s got a Marseilles accent you could cut with a knife, that hulking Antonin!’

  ‘Yes, but he’s not too ugly … Come along, Claudine, let’s get down to work. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Read that and translate it.’

  But it was no good her being indignant: work made no progress at all. I kissed her when we said good-bye.

  The next day, during recreation, Anaïs was in the act of dancing like a maniac in front of me, hoping to reduce me to pulp and keeping a perfectly straight face all the while, when suddenly Rabastens and Duplessis appeared at the playground gate.

  As we were there – Marie Belhomme, the lanky Anaïs, and myself – their lordships bowed and we replied with icy correctness. They went into the big room where the mistresses were correcting exercise-books and we saw them talking and laughing with them. At that, I discovered a sudden and urgent need to fetch my hood, which I had left behind on my desk. I burst into the classroom, pushing open the door as if I had no idea that their Lordships might be inside. Then I stopped, pretending to be confused, in the open doorway. Mademoiselle Sergent arrested my course with a ‘Control yourself, Claudine’ that would have cracked a water-jug and I tiptoed away like a cat. But I’d had time to see that Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay was laughing as she chatted to Duplessis and was setting herself out to charm him. Just you wait, my hero wrapped in Byronic gloom! Tomorrow or the day after there’ll be a song about you or some cheap puns or some nicknames. That’ll teach you to seduce Mademoiselle Aimée. But … all right, what is it? Were they calling me back? What luck? I re-entered looking very meek.

  ‘Claudine,’ said Mademoiselle by way of explanation. ‘Come and read this at sight. Monsieur Rabastens is musical but not so musical as you are.’