by Colette
With a face like a crumpled rose, she sternly confronted the large pallid face of her sister, whose retort was mild in the extreme.
‘What do I propose doing? How do you mean? I can’t after all, tie the child up!’ Her burdened shoulders rose on a long sigh. ‘I surely have not deserved such children as these!’
‘While you stand there wringing your hands, Lachaille has rushed away from here and in such a state that he may do something idiotic!’
‘And even without his straw hat,’ said Madame Alvarez. ‘He got into his motor bare-headed! The whole street might have seen him!’
‘If I were to be told that by this time he’s already become engaged, or is busy making it up with Liane, it would not surprise me in the least!’
‘It is a moment fraught with destiny,’ said Madame Alvarez lugubriously.
‘And afterwards, how did you speak to that little chit?’
Madame Alvarez pursed her lips.
‘Gigi may be a bit scatter-brained in certain things and backward for her age, but she’s not what you say. A young girl who has held the attention of Monsieur Lachaille is not a little chit.’
A furious shrug of the shoulders set Alicia’s black lace quivering.
‘All right, all right! With all due respect, then, how did you handle your precious princess?’
‘I talked sense to her. I spoke to her of the family. I tried to make her understand that we sink or swim together. I enumerated all the things she could do for herself and for us.’
‘And what about nonsense? Did you talk nonsense to her? Didn’t you talk to her of love, travel, moonlight, Italy? You must know how to harp on every string. Didn’t you tell her that on the other side of the world the sea is phosphorescent, that there are humming-birds in all the flowers, and that you make love under gardenias in full bloom beside a moonlit fountain?’
Madame Alvarez looked at her spirited elder sister with sadness in her eyes.
‘I couldn’t tell her all that, Alicia, because I know nothing about it. I’ve never been farther afield than Cobourg and Monte Carlo.’
‘Aren’t you capable of inventing it?’
‘No, Alicia.’
Both fell silent. Alicia, with a gesture, made up her mind.
‘Call the chit in to me. We shall see.’
When Gilberte came in, Aunt Alicia had resumed all the airs and graces of a frivolous old lady and was smelling the tea-rose pinned near her chin.
‘Good afternoon, my little Gigi.’
‘Good afternoon, Aunt Alicia.’
‘What is this Inez has been telling me? You have an admirer? And what an admirer! For your first attempt, it’s a master-stroke!’
Gilberte acquiesced with a guarded, resigned little smile. She offered to Alicia’s darting curiosity a fresh young face, to which the violet-blue shadow in her eyelids and the high colour of her mouth gave an almost artificial effect. For coolness’ sake, she had dragged back the hair off her temples with the help of two combs, and this had drawn up the corners of her eyes.
‘And it seems you have been playing the naughty girl, and tried your claws on Monsieur Lachaille! Bravo, my brave little girl!’
Gilberte raised incredulous eyes to her aunt.
‘Yes, indeed! Bravo! It will only make him all the happier when you are nice to him again.’
‘But I am nice to him, Aunt. Only, I don’t want to, that’s all.’
‘Yes, yes, we know. You’ve sent him packing to his sugar refinery; that’s perfect. But don’t send him to the Devil; he’s quite capable of going. The fact is, you don’t love him.’
Gilberte gave a little childish shrug.
‘Yes, Aunt, I’m very fond of him.’
‘Just what I said, you don’t love him. Mind you, there’s no harm in that, it leaves you free to act as you please. Ah, if you’d been head over heels in love with him, then I should have been a little anxious. Lachaille is a fine figure of a man. Well built – you’ve only to look at the photographs of him taken at Deauville in bathing costume. He’s famous for that. Yes, I should feel sorry for you, my poor Gigi. To start by having a passionate love-affair – to go away all by your two selves to the other side of the world, forgetting everything in the arms of the man who adores you, listening to the song of love in an eternal spring – surely things of that sort must touch your heart! What does all that say to you?’
‘It says to me that when eternal spring is over Monsieur Lachaille will go off with another lady. Or else that the lady – me if you like – will leave Monsieur Lachaille, and Monsieur Lachaille will hurry off to blab the whole story. And then the lady, still me if you like, will have nothing else to do but get into another gentleman’s bed. I don’t want that. I’m not changeable by nature, indeed I’m not.’
She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered slightly.
‘Grandmamma, may I have a cachet Faivre? I want to go to bed. I feel cold.’
‘You great goose!’ burst out Aunt Alicia, ‘a tuppenny-ha’penny milliner’s shop is all you deserve! Be off! Go and marry a bank clerk!’
‘If you wish it, Aunt. But I want to go to bed.’
Madame Alvarez put her hand on Gigi’s forehead.
‘Don’t you feel well?’
‘I’m all right, Grandmamma. Only I’m sad.’
She leaned her head on Madame Alvarez’ shoulder, and, for the first time in her life, closed her eyes pathetically like a grown woman. The two sisters exchanged glances.
‘You must know, my Gigi,’ said Madame Alvarez, ‘that we won’t torment you to that extent. If you say you really don’t want to –’
‘A failure is a failure,’ said Alicia caustically. ‘We can’t go on discussing it for ever.’
‘You’ll never be able to say you didn’t have good advice, and the very best at that,’ said Madame Alvarez.
‘I know, Grandmamma, but I’m sad, all the same.’
‘Why?’
A tear trickled over Gilberte’s downy cheek without wetting it, but she did not answer. A brisk peel of the door bell made her jump where she stood.
‘Oh, it must be him,’ she said. ‘It is him! Grandmamma, I don’t want to see him! Hide me, Grandmamma!’
At the low, passionate tone of her voice, Aunt Alicia raised an attentive head, and pricked an expert ear. Then she ran to open the door and came back a moment later. Gaston Lachaille, haggard, his eyes bloodshot, followed close behind her.
‘Good afternoon, Mamita. Good afternoon, Gigi!’ he said airily. ‘Please don’t move, I’ve come to retrieve my straw hat.’
None of the three women replied, and his assurance left him.
‘Well, you might at least say a word to me, even if it’s only How-d’you-do?’
Gilberte took a step towards him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve not come to retrieve your straw hat. You have another one in your hand. And you would never bother about a hat. You’ve come to make me more miserable than ever.’
‘Really!’ burst out Madame Alvarez. ‘This is more than I can stomach. How can you, Gigi! Here is a man who, out of the goodness of his generous heart –’
‘If you please, Grandmamma, just a moment, and I shall have finished.’
Instinctively she straightened her dress, adjusted the buckle of her sash, and marched up to Gaston.
‘I’ve been thinking, Gaston. In fact, I’ve been thinking a great deal –’
He interrupted her, to stop her saying what he was afraid to hear.
‘I swear to you, my darling –’
‘No, don’t swear to me. I’ve been thinking I would rather be miserable with you than without you. So . . .’
She tried twice to go on.
‘So . . . There you are. How d’you do, Gaston, how d’you do?’
She offered him her cheek, in her usual way. He held her, a little longer than usual, until he felt her relax, and become calm and gentle in his arms. Madame Alvarez seemed about to hurry forward, but Alici
a’s impatient little hand restrained her.
‘Leave well alone. Don’t meddle any more. Can’t you see she is far beyond us?’
She pointed to Gigi, who was resting a trusting head and the rich abundance of her hair on Lachaille’s shoulder.
The happy man turned to Madame Alvarez.
‘Mamita,’ he said, ‘will you do me the honour, the favour, give me the infinite joy of bestowing on me the hand . . .’
The Cat
* * *
TRANSLATED BY
Antonia White
ONE
TOWARDS TEN O’CLOCK, the family poker-players began to show signs of weariness. Camille was fighting against sleepiness as one does at nineteen. By starts she would become fresh and clear-eyed again; then she would yawn behind her clasped hands and reappear pale, her chin white and her cheeks a little black under their ochre-tinted powder, with two tiny tears in the corners of her eyes.
‘Camille, you ought to be in bed!’
‘At ten o’clock, Mummy, at ten o’clock! Who on earth goes to bed at ten o’clock?’
Her eyes appealed to her fiancé, who lay back, overcome, in the depths of an armchair.
‘Leave them alone,’ said another maternal voice. ‘They’ve still seven days to wait for each other. They’re a bit dazed at the moment. It’s very natural.’
‘Exactly. One hour more or less . . . Camille, you ought to go home to bed. So ought we.’
‘Seven days!’ cried Camille. ‘But it’s Monday today! And I hadn’t given it a thought! Alain! Wake up! Alain!’
She threw her cigarette into the garden and lit a fresh one. Then she sorted out the scattered cards, shuffled them and laid them out as fortune-tellers do.
‘To know whether we’ll get the car, that marvellous baby roadster, before the ceremony! Look, Alain! I’m not cheating! It’s coming out with a journey and an important piece of news!’
‘What’s that?’
‘The roadster, of course!’
Without raising the nape of his neck from the chair, Alain turned his head towards the open french window, through which came the sweet smell of fresh spinach and new-mown hay. The grass had been shorn during the day, and the honeysuckle, which draped a tall dead tree, added the nectar of its first flowers to the scent of the cut grass. A crystalline tinkle announced the entrance of the ten o’clock tray of soft drinks and iced water, carried by old Émile’s tremulous hands, and Camille got up to fill the glasses.
She served her fiancé last, offering him the misted tumbler with a smile of secret understanding. She watched him drink and felt a sudden pang of desire at the sight of his mouth pressing against the rim of the glass. But he felt so weary that he refused to share that pang and merely touched the white fingers with the red nails as they removed his empty tumbler.
‘Are you coming to lunch tomorrow?’ she asked him under her breath.
‘Ask the cards.’
Camille drew back quickly, and began to act the clown a little over her fortune-telling.
‘Never, never joke about twenty-four-hours! Doesn’t matter so much about crossed knives, or pennies with holes in them, or the talkies, or God the Father . . .’
‘Camille!’
‘Sorry, Mummy. But one mustn’t joke about Twenty-four-hours! He’s a good little chap, the knave of spades. A nice black express messenger, always in a hurry.’
‘In a hurry to do what?’
‘Why, to talk, of course! Just think, he brings the news of the next twenty-four hours, even of the next two days. If you put two more cards on his right and left, he foretells the coming week.’
She was talking fast, scratching at two little smudges of lipstick at the corners of her mouth with a pointed nail. Alain listened to her, not bored, but not indulgent either. He had known her for several years and classified her as a typical modern girl. He knew the way she drove a car, a little too fast and a little too well; her eye alert and her scarlet mouth always ready to swear violently at a taxi-driver. He knew that she lied unblushingly, as children and adolescents do; that she was capable of deceiving her parents so as to get out after dinner and meet him at a night-club. There they danced together, but they drank only orange-juice because Alain disliked alcohol.
Before their official engagement, she had yielded her discreetly-wiped lips to him both by daylight and in the dark. She had also yielded her impersonal breasts, always imprisoned in a lace brassière, and her very lovely legs in the flawless stockings she bought in secret; stockings ‘like Mistinguett’s, you know. Mind my stockings, Alain!’ Her stockings and her legs were the best things about her.
‘She’s pretty,’ Alain thought dispassionately, ‘because not one of her features is ugly, because she’s an out-and-out brunette. Those lustrous eyes perfectly match that sleek, glossy, frequently-washed hair that’s the colour of a new piano.’ He was also perfectly aware that she could be as violent and capricious as a mountain stream.
She was still talking about the roadster.
‘No, Daddy, no! Absolutely no question of my letting Alain take the wheel while we’re driving through Switzerland! He’s too absent-minded. And besides, he doesn’t really like driving. I know him!’
‘She knows me,’ Alain echoed in his own mind. ‘Perhaps she really thinks she does. Over and over again, I’ve said to her too: “I know you my girl.” Saha knows her too. Where is that Saha?’
His eyes searched round for the cat. Then, starting limb by limb, first one shoulder, then the other, he unglued himself from the armchair and went lazily down the five steps into the garden.
The garden was very large and surrounded by other gardens. It breathed out into the night the heavy smell of well-manured earth given over to producing flowers and constantly forced into fertility. Since Alain’s birth, the house had hardly changed at all. ‘An only son’s house,’ Camille said jeeringly. She did not hide her contempt for the high-pitched roof with the top-storey windows set in the slates and for certain modest mouldings which framed the french windows on the ground floor.
The garden, like Camille, also seemed to despise the house. Huge trees, which showered down the black, calcined twigs which fall from elms in their old age, protected it from neighbours and passers-by. A little farther on, in a property for sale and in the playground of a school, stood isolated pairs of similar old elms, relics of a princely avenue which had formed part of a park which the new Neuilly was fast destroying.
‘Where are you, Alain?’
Camille was calling him from the top of the steps but, on an impulse, he refused to answer. Deliberately, he made for the safer refuge of the shadows, feeling his way along the edge of the shaven lawn with his foot. High in the sky a hazy moon held court, looking larger than usual through the mist of the first warm days. A single tree – a poplar with newly opened glossy leaves – caught the moonlight and trickled with as many sparkles as a waterfall. A silver shadow leapt out of a clump of bushes and glided like a fish against Alain’s ankles.
‘Ah! There you are, Saha! I was looking for you. Why didn’t you appear at table tonight?’
‘Me – rrou – wa,’ answered the cat, ‘me-rrou-wa.’
‘What, me-rrou-wa? And why me-rrou-wa? Do you really mean it?’
‘Me-rrou-wa,’ insisted the cat, ‘me-rrou-wa.’
He stroked her, tenderly groping his way down the long spine that was softer than a hare’s fur. Then he felt under his hand the small, cold nostrils dilated by her violent purring. ‘She’s my cat. My very own cat.’
‘Me–rrou–wa,’ said the cat very softly. ‘R . . . rrou–wa.’
Camille called once more from the house and Saha vanished under a clipped euonymus hedge, black-green like the night.
‘Alain! We’re going!’
He ran to the steps, while Camille watched him with a welcoming smile.
‘I can see your hair running,’ she called out. ‘It’s crazy to be as fair as all that!’
He ran quicker still, strode
up the five steps in one bound, and found Camille alone in the drawing-room.
‘Where are the others?’ he asked under his breath.
‘Cloakroom,’ she whispered back. ‘Cloakroom and visit to “work in progress”. General gloom. “It’s not getting on! It’ll never be finished!” What the hell do we care! If one was smart, one could hold on to Patrick’s studio for keeps. Patrick could find himself another. I’ll fix it, if you like.’
‘But Patrick would only leave the “Wedge” as a special favour to please you.’
‘Of course. One will take advantage of that.’
Her face sparkled with that peculiarly feminine unscrupulousness which Alain could not bring himself to accept as a matter of course. But he remonstrated only on her habit of saying ‘one’ for ‘we’, and she took this as a reproach.
‘I’ll soon get into the way of saying “we”.’
So that he should want to kiss her, she turned out the ceiling light as if by accident. The one lamp left alight on a table threw a tall, sharply defined shadow behind the girl.
With her arms raised and her hands clasped on the nape of her neck, Camille gave him an inviting look. But he had eyes only for the shadow. ‘How beautiful she is on the wall! Just fine-drawn enough, just as I should like her to be.’
He sat down to compare the one with the other. Flattered, Camille arched herself, thrusting out her breasts and her hips like a nautch-girl, but the shadow was better at that game than she was. Unclasping her hands, the girl walked across the room, preceded by the ideal shadow. Arrived at the open french window, the shadow leapt on one side and fled out into the garden along the pink gravel of a path, embracing the moon-spangled poplar between its two long arms as it went. ‘What a pity!’ sighed Alain. Then he feebly reproached himself for his inclination to love in Camille herself some perfected or motionless image of Camille. This shadow, for example, or a portrait or the vivid memory she left him of certain moments, certain dresses.
‘What’s the matter with you tonight? Come and help me put on my cape, at least.’
He was shocked at what that ‘at least’ secretly implied and also because Camille, as she passed before him through the door leading to the cloakroom and pantry, had almost imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders. ‘She doesn’t need to shrug her shoulders. Nature and habit do that for her anyway. When she’s not careful, her neck makes her look dumpy. Ever, ever so slightly dumpy.’
