Claudine at School

by Colette

She loves me so much that she understands what I say and comes and rubs against my mouth when she hears the sound of my voice. She also loves books like an old scholar, this Fanchette, and worries me every night after dinner to remove two or three volumes of Papa’s big Larousse from their shelf. The space they make leaves a little square room in which Fanchette settles down and washes herself; I shut the glass door on her and her imprisoned purr vibrates with a noise like an incessant, muffled drum. From time to time, I look at her; then she makes me a sign with her eyebrows which she raises like a human being. Lovely Fanchette, how intelligent and understanding you are! (Much more so than Luce Lanthenay, that inferior breed of cat!) You amused me from the moment you came into the world; you’d only got one eye open when you were already attempting warlike steps in your basket, though you were still incapable of standing up on your four matchsticks. Ever since, you’ve lived joyously, making me laugh with your belly-dances in honour of cockchafers and butterflies, your clumsy calls to the birds you’re stalking, your way of quarrelling with me and giving me sharp taps that reecho on my hands. Your behaviour is quite disgraceful: two or three times a year I catch you on the garden walls, wearing a crazy, ridiculous expression, with a swarm of tom-cats round you. I even know your favourite, you perverse Fanchette – he’s a dirty-grey Tom, long and lean, with half his fur gone. He’s got ears like a rabbit’s and coarse, plebeian limbs. How can you make a mésalliance with this low-born animal, and make it so often? But, even at those demented seasons, as soon as you catch sight of me, your natural face returns for a moment; and you give me a friendly mew which says something like: ‘You see what I’m up to. Don’t despise me too much, nature has her urgent demands. But I’ll soon come home again and I’ll lick myself for ages to purify myself of this dissolute life.’ O, beautiful Fanchette, your bad behaviour is so remarkably becoming to you!

  When my cold was over, I observed that people at school were beginning to get very agitated about the approaching exams; we were now at the end of May and we ‘went up’ on the 5th of July! I was sorry not to be more moved, but the others made up for me, especially little Luce Lanthenay, who burst into floods of tears whenever she got a bad mark. As for Mademoiselle Sergent, she was busy with everything, but most of all, with the little thing with the beautiful eyes who kept her ‘on a string’. She’d blossomed out, that Aimée, in an astonishing way! Her marvellous complexion, her velvety skin and her eyes, ‘that you could strike medals out of’, as Anaïs says, make her into a spiteful and triumphant little creature. She is so much prettier than she was last year! No one would pay any more attention now to the slight crumpling of her face, to the little crease on the left of her lip when she smiles; and, anyhow, she has such white, pointed teeth! The amorous Redhead swoons at the mere sight of her and our presence no longer restrains her from yielding to her furious desire to kiss her darling every two minutes.

  On this warm afternoon, the class was murmuring a Selected Passage that we had to recite at three o’clock. I was almost dozing, oppressed by a nervous lassitude. I was incapable of any more effort, when all of a sudden I felt I wanted to scratch somebody, to give a violent stretch and to crush somebody’s hands; the somebody turned out to be Luce, my next-door neighbour. She found the nape of her neck being clutched and my nails digging into it. Luckily, she didn’t say a word. I fell back into my irritated listlessness …

  The door opened without anyone having even knocked: it was Dutertre, in a light tie, his hair flying, looking rejuvenated and pugnacious. Mademoiselle Sergent sprang to her feet, barely said good afternoon to him and gazed at him with passionate admiration, her tapestry fallen unheeded on the floor. (Does she love him more than Aimée? or Aimée more than him? Curious woman!) The class had stood up. Out of wickedness, I remained seated, with the result that, when Dutertre turned towards us, he noticed me at once.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mademoiselle. Good afternoon, little ones. You seem in a state of collapse!’

  ‘I’m floppy. I haven’t a bone left in me.’

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s the weather – general slackness.’

  ‘Come over here and let’s have a look at you.’

  Was all that going to start over again … those medical pretexts for prolonged examinations? The Headmistress launched looks of blazing indignation at me for the way I was sitting and for the way I was talking to her beloved District Superintendent. I decided to put myself out and obey. Besides, he adores these impertinent manners. I dragged myself lazily over to the window.

  ‘One can’t see here because of that green shadow from the trees. Come out into the corridor, there’s some sunlight there. You look wretched, my child.’

  Triple-distilled lie! I looked extremely well. I know myself: if it was because I had rings round my eyes that he thought I was ill, he was mistaken. It’s a good sign when I have dark circles under my eyes, it means I’m in excellent health. Luckily it was three in the afternoon, otherwise I should have been none too confident about going out, even into the glass-paned corridor, with this individual whom I mistrust like fire.

  When he had shut the door behind us, I rounded on him and said:

  ‘Now, look here, I don’t look ill. Why did you say I did?’

  ‘No? What about those eyes with dark circles right down to your lips?’

  ‘Well, it’s the colour of my skin, that’s all.’

  He had seated himself on the bench and was holding me in front of him, standing against his knees.

  ‘Shut up, you’re talking nonsense. Why do you always look as if you were cross with me?’

  ‘…?’

  ‘Oh yes, you know quite well what I mean. You know, you’ve got a nice, funny little phiz that sticks in one’s head once one’s seen it!’

  I gave an idiotic laugh. If only heaven would send me some wit, some smart repartee, for I felt terribly destitute of them!

  ‘Is it true you always go for walks all by yourself in the woods?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. Why?’

  ‘Because, you little hussy, perhaps you go to meet a lover? You’re so well chaperoned!’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘You know all the people round here as well as I do. Do you see any of them as a possible lover for me?’

  ‘True. But you might be vicious enough …’

  He gripped my arms and flashed his eyes and teeth. How hot it was here! I would have been only too pleased if he would have let me go back to the classroom.

  ‘If you’re ill, why don’t you come and consult me at my house?’

  I answered too hurriedly, ‘No! I won’t go …’ And I tried to free my arms, but he held me firmly and raised burning, mischievous eyes to mine. They were handsome eyes too, it’s true.

  ‘Oh, you little thing, you charming little thing, why are you frightened? You’re so wrong to be frightened of me! Do you think I’m a cad? You’ve absolutely nothing to fear … nothing. Oh, little Claudine, you’re so frightfully attractive with your warm brown eyes and your wild curls! You’re made like an adorable little statue, I’ll swear you are …’

  He stood up suddenly, clasped me in his arms and kissed me; I hadn’t time to escape, he was too strong and virile, and my head was in a whirl … What a situation! I no longer knew what I was saying, my brain was going round and round … Yet I couldn’t go back to the classroom, all red and shaken as I was, and I could hear him behind me … I was certain he was going to want to kiss me again … I opened the front door, rushed out into the playground and dashed up to the pump where I drank a mug of water. Ouf! … I must go back … But he must be ambushed in the passage. Ah! After all, who cares! I’d scream if he tried to do it again … It was because he’d kissed me on the corner of the mouth, which was the best he could do, that beast!

  No, he wasn’t in the corridor. What luck! I went back into the classroom and there I saw him, standing by the desk and calmly chatting to Mademoiselle Sergent. I sat down in my p
lace; he looked at me searchingly and inquired:

  ‘You didn’t drink too much water, I hope? These kids, they swallow mugfuls of cold water, it’s shockingly bad for the health.’

  I was bolder with everyone there.

  ‘No, I only drank a mouthful. That was quite enough, I shan’t take any more.’

  He laughed and looked pleased:

  ‘You’re a funny girl. But you’re not a complete idiot.’

  Mademoiselle Sergent did not understand, but the uneasiness that puckered her eyebrows gradually smoothed itself out. All that remained was her contempt for the deplorable manners I displayed towards her idol.

  Personally, I was furious with him: he was stupid! The lanky Anaïs guessed that something was up and could not restrain herself from asking me: ‘I say, did he examine you awfully close to, to make you so upset?’ But I certainly wasn’t going to tell her. ‘Don’t be an idiot! I tell you, I went out to the pump.’ Little Luce, in her turn, rubbed herself against me like a fidgety cat and ventured to question me: ‘Do tell me, Claudine darling, whatever made him take you off like that?’

  ‘To begin with I’m not “Claudine darling” to you. And, besides, it’s none of your business, you little rat. He had to consult me about the standardization of pensions. And that’s that.’

  ‘You never want to tell me anything. And I tell you all!’

  ‘All what? A fat lot of use it is to me to know that your sister doesn’t pay her board or yours either – and that Mademoiselle Olympe heaps her with presents – and that she wears silk petticoats – and that …’

  ‘Ssh! Oh, please, stop! I’d be absolutely done for if they knew I’d told you all that!’

  ‘Then, don’t ask me anything. If you’re good, I’ll give you my lovely ebony ruler, the one with the brass edges.’

  ‘Oh, you are sweet! I’d like to kiss you but that annoys you …’

  ‘That’ll do. I’ll give it you tomorrow – if I feel like it!’

  For my passion for ‘desk-furniture’ was becoming appeased, which was yet another very bad symptom. All my classmates (and I used to be just like them) were crazy about ‘school equipment’. We ruined ourselves on exercise-books of cream-laid paper bound in shimmering tinfoil with a moiré pattern, on rosewood pencils, on lacquered penholders shiny enough to see one’s face in, on olive-wood pencil-boxes, on rulers made of mahogany or of ebony, like mine, which had its four edges bound with brass and which made the boarders, who were too poor to afford one like it, green with envy. We had big satchels like lawyers’ briefcases in more-or-less crushed more-or-less Morocco. And if the girls didn’t have their school text-books sheathed in gaudy bindings for their New Year presents, and if I didn’t either, it was simply and solely because they were not our own property. They belonged to the Town Council which generously provided us with them on condition we left them at the School when we left it never to return. Moreover, we loathed those bureaucratic books; we didn’t feel they belonged to us and we played horrible tricks on them. Unforeseen and fantastic mishaps befell them: some of them had been known to catch fire at the stove, in winter; there were others over which inkpots took a particular delight in upsetting; in fact, they attracted disaster! And all the affronts put upon the dreary ‘Council Books’ were the subject of long lamentations from Mademoiselle Lanthenay and terrible lectures from Mademoiselle Sergent.

  *

  Lord, how idiotic women are! (Little girls, women, it’s all one.) Would anyone believe that, ever since that inveterate wolf Dutertre’s ‘guilty attempts’ on my person, I’ve felt what might be called a vague pride? It’s very humiliating to me, that admission. But I know why; in my heart of hearts, I tell myself: ‘If that man, who’s known heaps of women, in Paris and all over the place, finds me attractive, it must be because I’m not remarkably ugly!’ There! It was a pleasure to my vanity. I didn’t really think I was repulsive, but I like to be sure I’m not. And besides, I was pleased at having a secret that the lanky Anaïs, Marie Belhomme, Luce Lanthenay and the others didn’t suspect.

  The class was well trained now. All the girls, even down to those in the Third Division knew that, during recreation, they must never enter a classroom in which the mistresses had shut themselves up. Naturally, our education hadn’t been perfected in a day! One or other of us had gone at least fifty times into the classroom where the tender couple was hiding. But we found them so tenderly entwined, or so absorbed in their whisperings, or else Mademoiselle Sergent holding her little Aimée on her lap with such total lack of reserve that even the stupidest were nonplussed and fled as soon as the Redhead demanded: ‘What do you want now?’, terrified by the ferocious scowl of her bushy eyebrows. Like the others, I frequently burst in and sometimes even without meaning to: the first few times, when they saw it was me and they were too close together, they hastily got up or else one of them would pretend to pin up the other’s loosened hair. But they ended up by not disturbing themselves on my account. So I no longer found it entertaining.

  Rabastens doesn’t come over any more: he has declared over and over again that he is ‘too intimidated by this intimacy’ and this expression seemed to him a kind of pun which delighted him. As for them, they no longer think of anything but themselves. They dog each other’s footsteps and live in each other’s shadow: their mutual adoration is so absolute that I no longer think of tormenting them. I almost envy their delicious oblivion of everything else in the world.

  *

  There! I was sure it would happen sooner or later! A letter from little Luce that I found when I got home, in a pocket of my satchel.

  My Darling Claudine,

  I love you very much. You always look as if you didn’t know anything about it and that makes me die of misery. You are both nice and nasty to me, you don’t want to take me seriously, you treat me as if I were a little dog: you can’t imagine how that hurts me. But just think how happy we could be, the two of us; look at my sister Aimée with Mademoiselle, they’re so happy that they don’t think of anything else now. I implore you, if you’re not annoyed by this letter, not to say anything to me tomorrow morning at school, I’d be too embarrassed at that moment. I’ll know very well, just from the sort of way you talk to me during the day, whether you want to be my friend or not.

  I kiss you with all my heart, my darling Claudine and I count on you, too, to burn this letter because I know you wouldn’t want to show it so as to get me into trouble, that’s not your way. I kiss you again very lovingly and I’m longing so impatiently for it to be tomorrow!

  Your little Luce

  Good heavens no, I don’t want to! If that appealed to me, it would be with someone stronger and more intelligent than myself, someone who’d bully me a little, whom I’d obey, and not with a depraved little beast who has a certain charm, perhaps, scratching and mewing just to be stroked, but who’s too inferior. I don’t love people I can dominate. I tore up her letter straight away, charming and unmalicious as it was, and put the pieces in an envelope to return them to her.

  The next morning I saw a worried little face pressed against the window, waiting for me. Poor Luce, her green eyes were pale with anxiety! What a pity, but all the same I couldn’t, just for the sake of giving her pleasure …

  I went inside; as luck would have it, she was all alone.

  ‘Look, little Luce, here are the bits of your letter. I didn’t keep it long, you see.’

  She said nothing and took the envelope mechanically.

  ‘Crazy girl. Besides, whatever were you doing up there … I mean up there on the first floor … behind the locked doors of Mademoiselle Sergent’s room? That’s where that leads you! I can’t do anything for you.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said, prostrated.

  ‘But yes, my poor child. It isn’t from virtue, you can be sure. My virtue’s still far too small, I don’t trot it out and about yet. But you see, in my green youth I was consumed by a great love. I adored a man who died making me swear on his deathbed never to …’r />
  She interrupted me, moaning:

  ‘There, there, you’re laughing at me again. I didn’t want to write to you, you’ve no heart. Oh, how unhappy I am! Oh, how cruel you are!’

  ‘And besides, you’re deafening me! What a row! What d’you bet I give you a few kicks to bring you back to the straight and narrow path?’

  ‘Oh, what do I care? Oh, I could almost laugh!’

  ‘Take that, you little bad lot! And give me a receipt.’

  She had just been dealt a heavy slap which had the effect of promptly silencing her. She looked at me stealthily with gentle eyes and began to cry, already comforted, as she rubbed her head. How she loves to be beaten; it’s astounding.

  ‘Here come Anaïs and lots of the others, try and look more or less respectable. They’ll be coming in to class in a moment, the two turtle-doves are on their way down.’

  Only a fortnight till the Certificate! June oppresses us. We bake, half asleep, in the classrooms; we’re silent from listlessness; I’m too languid to keep my diary. And in this furnace heat, we still have to criticize the conduct of Louis XV, explain the role of the gastric juices in the process of digestion, sketch acanthus leaves, and divide the auditory apparatus into the inner ear, the middle ear, and the outer ear. There’s no justice on the earth! Louis XV did what he wanted to do, it’s nothing to do with me! Oh Lord, no! With me less than anyone!

  It was so hot that it made one lose one’s desire to make oneself look attractive – or rather, the fashion palpably changed. Now we displayed our skin. I inaugurated dresses with open square necks, something on medieval lines, with sleeves that stopped at the elbow. My arms were still rather thin, but nice all the same, and, as to my neck, I back it against anyone’s. The others imitated me; Anaïs did not wear short sleeves but she profited by mine to roll her own up to the shoulders; Marie Belhomme displayed unexpectedly plump arms above her bony hands and a fresh neck that would be fat later on. Oh Lord, what wouldn’t one display in a temperature like this! With immense secrecy, I replaced my stockings with socks. By the end of three days, they all knew it and told each other about it and implored me under their breath to pull my skirt up.