Claudine at School

by Colette

  ‘Simply horrid? I’ll teach you to take liberties like that with me! Try and muzzle your feelings and tell me if it’s still always Mademoiselle Griset who sleeps in the dormitory.’

  ‘No, Aimée’s slept there twice two days running.’

  ‘That makes four times. You’re a duffer; not even a duffer, a total nitwit! Do the boarders keep quieter when it’s your chaste sister who’s sleeping under the canopy?’

  ‘Not a bit. And one night even, when one of the girls was ill, we got up and opened a window … I even called out to my sister to give us some matches because we couldn’t find any, and she didn’t budge. She didn’t breathe any more than if there were no one in the bed at all! Does that mean that she’s a very heavy sleeper?’

  ‘Heavy sleeper! Heavy sleeper! What a goose you are! Good Lord, why have you allowed beings so utterly deprived of intelligence to exist on this earth? They make me weep tears of blood!’

  ‘What have I done now?’

  ‘Nothing! Oh, nothing at all! Only here come some thumps on your back to improve your heart and your wits and teach you not to believe in the virtuous Aimée’s alibis.’

  Luce squirmed over the table in mock despair, ravished at being bullied and pummelled. But I had suddenly remembered something.

  ‘Anaïs, whatever were you telling Marie Belhomme that raised such blushes that the nation’s over the Bastille pale beside them?’

  ‘What Bastille?’

  ‘Never mind. Tell me quick.’

  ‘Come a bit closer.’

  Her vicious face was sparkling; it must have been something very sordid.

  ‘All right, then. Didn’t you know? Last New Year’s Eve, the Mayor had his mistress at his house – the fair Julotte – and, besides, his secretary had brought a woman from Paris. Well, at dessert, they made them both undress … take off even their chemises, and they did the same. And they set to and danced a quadrille like that, old dear!’

  ‘Not bad! Who told you that?’

  ‘It was Papa who told Mamma. I was in bed, only they always leave my bedroom door open because I pretend I’m frightened and so I hear everything.’

  ‘Your home life must be far from dull. Does your father often tell stories like that?’

  ‘No, not always such good ones. But sometimes I roll about in my bed with laughing.’

  She told me some pretty dirty bits of gossip about our neighbourhood: her father works at the Town Hall and knows every scrap of scandal in the district. I listened to her and the time passed.

  Mademoiselle Sergent returned: we had only just time to open our books at random, but she came straight up to me without looking at what we were doing.

  ‘Claudine, could you make your classmates sing in front of Monsieur Blanchot? They know that pretty two-part song now – Dans ce doux asile.’

  ‘I’m perfectly willing. Only it makes the Inspector so sick to see me with my hair loose that he won’t listen!’

  ‘Don’t say silly things, this isn’t the day for them. Hurry up and make them sing. Monsieur Blanchot seems decidedly dissatisfied with the Second Class; I’m counting on the music to smooth him down.’

  I had no difficulty in believing that he must be decidedly dissatisfied with the Second Class: Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay occupies herself with it whenever she has nothing else to do. She gorges her girls with written work so as to be able to chat peacefully with her dear Headmistress while they’re scribbling. I was perfectly willing to make the girls sing, whatever it cost me!

  Mademoiselle Sergent brought back the odious Blanchot: I ranged our class and the first division of the Second in a semicircle and entrusted the firsts to Anaïs and the seconds to Marie Belhomme (unfortunate seconds!). I would sing both parts at once; that’s to say I’d quickly change over when I felt one side weakening. Off we went! One empty bar: one, two, three.

  Dans ce doux asile

  Les sages sont couronnés, Venez!

  Aux plaisirs tranquilles

  Ces lieux charmants sont destinés …

  What luck! That tough old pedagogue nodded his head to the rhythm of Rameau’s music (out of time, as it happened), and appeared enchanted. It was the story of the composer Orpheus taming the wild beasts all over again.

  ‘That was well sung. By whom is it? Gounod, I believe?’ (Why does he pronounce it Gounode?)

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ (Don’t let’s annoy him.)

  ‘I was sure it was. It is an extremely pretty piece.’

  (Pretty piece yourself!)

  On hearing this unexpected attribution of a melody of Rameau’s to the author of Faust, Mademoiselle Sergent compressed her lips so as not to laugh. As to Blanchot, now serene once more, he uttered a few amiable remarks and went away, after having dictated to us – as a Parthian shot – this theme for a French composition:

  ‘Explain and comment on this thought of Franklin’s: Idleness is like rust, it wears a man out more than work.’

  Off we go! Let us contrast the shining key, with its rounded contours which the hand polishes and turns in the lock twenty times a day, with the key eaten away with reddish rust. The good workman who labours joyously, having risen at dawn, whose brawny muscles, etc., etc … Let us set him against the idler, who lying languidly on oriental divans watches rare dishes, etc., etc.… succeed each other on his sumptuous table, etc., etc … dishes which vainly attempt to reawaken his appetite, etc., etc … Oh, that won’t take long to hash out!

  Nonsense, of course, that it isn’t good to laze in an armchair! Nonsense, of course, that workers who labour all their life don’t die young and exhausted! But naturally one mustn’t say so. In the ‘Examination Syllabus’ things don’t happen as they do in life.

  Little Luce was lacking in ideas and whining in a low voice for me to provide her with some. I generously let her read what I had written; she wouldn’t get much from me.

  At last it was four o’clock. We went off home. The boarders went upstairs to eat the refreshments Mademoiselle Sergent’s mother had prepared for them. I left with Anaïs and Marie Belhomme after having looked at my reflection in the window-panes to make sure that my hat wasn’t crooked.

  On the way, we shared a sugar-loaf and castigated Blanchot as if we were breaking it over his back. He bores me stiff, that old man, who wants us always to be dressed in sackcloth and wear our hair scraped back.

  ‘All the same, I don’t think he’s awfully pleased with the Second Class,’ remarked Marie Belhomme. ‘If you hadn’t wheedled him round with the music!’

  ‘What d’you expect?’ said Anaïs. ‘Mademoiselle Lanthenay doesn’t exactly over-exert herself with anxiety over the welfare of her class.’

  ‘The things you say! Come, come, she can’t do everything! Mademoiselle Sergent has attached her to her person – she’s the one who dresses her in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, that’s bunkum!’ Anaïs and Marie exclaimed both at once.

  ‘It isn’t bunkum in the least! If ever you go into the dormitory and into the mistresses’ rooms (it’s awfully easy, you’ve only to take some water up with the boarders), run your hand over the bottom of Mademoiselle Aimée’s basin. You needn’t be afraid of getting wet, there’s nothing but dust in it.’

  ‘No, that’s going a bit far, all the same!’ declared Marie Belhomme.

  The lanky Anaïs made no further comment and went away meditating; no doubt she would pass on all these charming details to the big boy with whom she was flirting that week. I knew very little about her escapades; she remained secretive and sly when I sounded her about them.

  I was bored at school; a tiresome symptom and quite a new one. Yet I wasn’t in love with anyone. (Indeed, perhaps that was the reason.) I was so apathetic that I did my schoolwork almost accurately, and I was quite unmoved as I watched our two mistresses caressing each other, billing and cooing and quarrelling for the pleasure of being more affectionate than ever when they made it up. Their words and gestures to each other were so uninhibited nowadays that Rabaste
ns, in spite of his self-possession, was taken aback by them and spluttered excitably. Then Aimée’s eyes would gleam with delight like those of a mischievous cat and Mademoiselle Sergent would laugh at seeing her laughing. Upon my word, they really were amazing! It’s fantastic, how exacting the little thing has become! The other changes countenance at the faintest sigh from her, at a pucker of her velvety eyebrows.

  Little Luce is acutely conscious of this tender intimacy: she watches every move, hot on the trail, and learns things for herself. Indeed she is learning a great deal for she seizes every opportunity of being alone with me, and brushes up against me coaxingly, her green eyes almost closed and her fresh little mouth half-open. But no, she doesn’t tempt me. Why doesn’t she transfer her attentions to the lanky Anaïs, who is also highly interested in the goings-on of the two love-birds who serve us as teachers in their spare moments and who is extremely surprised at them, for she is oddly ingenuous in some ways?

  This morning I beat little Luce to a jelly because she wanted to kiss me in the shed where they keep the watering-cans. She didn’t yell but began to cry until I comforted her by stroking her hair. I told her:

  ‘Silly, you’ll have plenty of time to work off your superfluous feelings later on, as you’re going on to the Training College!’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not going on there!’

  ‘No, thank goodness! But you won’t have been there two days before two “Third Years” will have quarrelled over you, you disgusting little beast!’

  She let herself be insulted with voluptuous pleasure and threw me grateful glances.

  Is it because they’ve changed my old school that I’m so bored in this one? I no longer have the dusty ‘nooks’ where one could hide in the passages of that rambling old building where one never knew whether one was in the staff’s quarters or in our own and where it was so natural to find oneself in a master’s room that one hardly needed to apologize on returning to the classroom.

  Is it because I’m getting older? Can I be feeling the weight of the sixteen years I’ve nearly attained? That really would be too idiotic for words.

  Perhaps it’s the spring? It’s also too fine – almost indecently fine! On Thursdays and Sundays I go off all alone to meet my First Communion partner, my little Claire, who’s heavily embarked on an absurd adventure with the Secretary at the Town Hall who doesn’t want to marry her. From all accounts, there’s an excellent reason that prevents him! It seems that, while he was still at college, he underwent an operation for some peculiar disease, one of those diseases whose ‘seat’ is never mentioned, and people say that, if he still wants girls, he can never again ‘satisfy his desires’. I don’t understand awfully well, in fact I don’t really understand at all, but I’m sick and tired of passing on to Claire what I’ve vaguely learnt. She turns up the whites of her eyes, shakes her head, and replies, with an ecstatic expression: ‘Oh, what does that matter, what does that matter? He’s so handsome, he has such a lovely moustache and, besides, the things he says to me make me quite happy enough! And then, he kisses me on the neck, he talks to me about poetry – and sunsets – whatever more d’you expect me to want?’ After all, if that satisfies her …

  When I’ve had enough of her ravings, I tell her I’m going home to Papa so that she’ll leave me on my own. But I don’t go home. I stay in the woods and I hunt out a particularly delicious corner and lie down there. Hosts of little creatures scamper over the ground under my nose (they even behave extremely badly sometimes, but they’re so tiny!) and there are so many good smells there – the smell of fresh plants warming in the sun … Oh, my dear woods!

  I arrived late at school (I find it hard to go to sleep: my thoughts start dancing in my head the moment I turn out the lamp), to find Mademoiselle Sergent at the mistress’s desk, looking dignified and scowling, and all the girls wearing suitable prim, ceremonious expressions. Whatever did all that mean? Ah, the gawky Anaïs was huddled over her desk, making such tremendous efforts to sob that her ears were blue with the exertion. I was going to have some fun! I slid in beside little Luce, who whispered in my ear: ‘My dear, they’ve found all Anaïs’s letters in a boy’s desk and the master’s just brought them over for the Headmistress to read!’

  She was, indeed, reading them, but very low, only to herself. What bad luck. Heavens, what bad luck! I’d cheerfully have given three years of Antonin Rabasten’s life to go through that correspondence. Oh! would no one inspire the Redhead to read us two or three well-chosen passages out loud? Alas, alas, Mademoiselle Sergent had come to the end … Without a word to Anaïs, who was still hunched over the table, she solemnly rose and walked over, with deliberate steps, to the stove beside me. She opened it, deposited the scandalous papers, folded in four, inside; then she struck a match, applied it to the letters, and closed the little door. As she stood up again, she said to the culprit:

  ‘My compliments, Anaïs, you know more about these things than many grown-up people do. I shall keep you here until the exam, since your name is entered for it, but I shall tell your parents that I absolve myself from all responsibility for you. Copy out your problems, girls, and pay no more attention to this person who is not worth bothering about.’

  Incapable of enduring the torture of having Anaïs’s effusions burn, I had taken out the flat ruler I use for drawing while the Headmistress was majestically declaiming. I slipped the ruler under my table and, at the risk of getting caught, I used it to push the little handle that moved the damper. No one saw a thing: perhaps the flame, thus stifled of draught, would not burn everything up. I should know when class was over. I listened; the stove stopped roaring after a few seconds. Wouldn’t it soon strike eleven? I could hardly keep my mind on what I was copying, on the ‘two pieces of linen which, after being washed, shrank 1/19 – in length and 1/22 – in breadth; they could have shrunk considerably more without my being interested.

  Mademoiselle Sergent left us and went off to Aimée’s classroom, no doubt to tell her the good story and laugh over it with her. As soon as she had disappeared, Anaïs raised her head. We stared at her avidly: her cheeks were blotched and her eyes were swollen from having been violently rubbed, but she kept her eyes obstinately fixed on her exercise-book. Marie Belhomme leant over to her and said with vehement sympathy: ‘I say, old thing, I bet you’ll get a fearful wigging at home. Did you say lots of awful things in your letters?’ Anaïs did not raise her eyes but said out loud so that we should all hear: ‘I don’t care a fig, the letters weren’t mine.’ The girls exchanged indignant looks: ‘My dear, would you believe it! My dear, what a liar that girl is!’

  At last, the hour struck. Never had break been so long in coming! I dawdled over tidying my desk so as to be the last one left behind. Outside, after having walked fifty yards or so, I pretended I’d forgotten my atlas and I left Anaïs in order to fly back to school: ‘Wait for me, will you?’

  I dashed silently into the empty classroom and opened the stove: I found a handful of half-burnt papers in it which I drew out with the most tender precautions. What luck! the top and bottom ones had gone but the thick wad in the middle was almost intact; it was definitely Anaïs’s writing. I took the packet away in my satchel so as to read them at home at leisure, and I rejoined Anaïs, who was quite calm, and strolling about while she waited for me. We set off again together: she stared at me surreptitiously. Suddenly, she stopped dead and gave an agonized sigh … I saw her gaze anxiously fixed on my hands and then I noticed they were black from the burnt papers I had touched. I wasn’t going to lie to her – certainly not. I took the offensive:

  ‘Well, what’s the matter?’

  ‘So you went and searched in the stove, eh?’

  ‘Certainly I did! No danger of my losing a chance like that of reading your letters!’

  ‘Are they burnt?’

  ‘No, luckily: here, look inside.’

  I showed her the papers, keeping a firm hold on them. She darted positively murderous looks at me but did not dare pounc
e on my satchel, she was too sure I’d thrash her! I decided to comfort her a little; she made me feel almost sorry for her.

  ‘Listen, I’m going to read what isn’t burnt – because I just can’t bear not to – and then I’ll bring you the whole lot back this afternoon. So I’m not such a beast after all, am I?’

  She was highly mistrustful.

  ‘Word of honour! I’ll give you them back at recreation before we go into class.’

  She went off, helpless and uneasy, looking even longer and yellower than usual.

  At home, I went through those letters at last. Immense disappointment! They weren’t a bit what I’d imagined. A mixture of silly sentimentalities and practical directions: ‘I always think of you when there’s moonlight … Do make sure, on Thursday, to bring the corn-sack you took last time, to Vrimes’ field; Mama would kick up a shindy if she saw grass-stains on my frock!’ Then there were obscure allusions which must have reminded young Gangneau of various smutty episodes … In short, yes, a disappointment. I would give her back her letters which were far less amusing than her cold, whimsical, humorous self.

  I gave them back to her; she could not believe her own eyes. She was so overjoyed at seeing them that she couldn’t resist making fun of me for having read them. Once she’d run and thrown them down the lavatory, she resumed her shut, impenetrable face, without the faintest trace of humiliation. Happy disposition!

  Bother, I’ve caught a cold! I stay in Papa’s library, reading Michelet’s absurd History of France, written in alexandrines. (Am I exaggerating a bit?) I’m not in the least bored, curled up in this big armchair, surrounded by books, with my beautiful Fanchette for company. She’s the most intelligent cat in the world and she loves me disinterestedly in spite of the miseries I inflict on her, biting her in her pink ears and making her go through the most complicated training.