Gigi and the Cat

by Colette

  They exchanged a glance of sheer mutual investigation and Camille did not say a word to Saha. Propped on her elbows, she leant over as if to count the storeys by the orange awnings that flapped from top to bottom of the dizzy façade, she brushed against the cat who got up to make room for her, stretched, and lay down a little farther off.

  When Camille was alone, she looked very much like the little girl who did not want to say ‘how d’you do?’ Her face returned to childhood because it wore that expression of inhuman innocence, of angelic hardness which ennobles children’s faces. Her gaze wandered over Paris, over the sky from which the light drained a little earlier each day, with an impartial severity which possibly condemned nothing. She yawned nervously, stood upright, and took a few absent-minded steps. Then she leant over again, forcing the cat to jump down. Saha stalked away with dignity and would have preferred to go back into the room. But the door in the hypotenuse had been shut and Saha patiently sat down. The next moment she had to get out of Camille’s way for she was pacing from one partition to the other with long, jerky strides. The cat jumped back on to the parapet. As if in play, Camille dislodged her as she leant on her elbows and once again Saha took refuge against the closed door.

  Motionless, her eyes far away, Camille stood with her back to her. Nevertheless the cat was looking at Camille’s back and her breath came faster. She got up, turned two or three times on her own axis and looked questioningly at the closed door. Camille had not moved. Saha inflated her nostrils and showed a distress which was almost like nausea. A long, desolate mew escaped from her, the wretched reply to a silent imminent threat. Camille faced round abruptly.

  She was a trifle pale; that is to say, her rouge stood out in two oval moons on her cheeks. She affected an air of absent-mindedness as she would if a human eye had been staring at her. She even began to sing under her breath and resumed her pacing from one partition to the other, pacing to the rhythm of her song, but her voice failed her. She forced the cat, whom her foot was about to kick, to regain her narrow observation post with one bound, then to flatten herself against the door.

  Saha had regained her self-control and would have died rather than utter a second cry. Tracking the cat down, without appearing to see her, Camille paced to and fro in silence. Saha did not jump on the parapet till Camille’s feet were right on top of her and she only leapt down again on to the floor of the balcony to avoid the outstretched arm which would have hurled her from the height of the nine storeys.

  She fled methodically and jumped carefully, keeping her eyes fixed on her adversary and condescending neither to fury nor to supplication. The most violent emotion of all, the terror of dying, soaked the sensitive soles of her paws with sweat so that they left flower-like prints on the stucco balcony.

  Camille seemed the first to weaken and to lose her criminal strength. She made the mistake of noticing that the sun was going down, gave a glance at her wrist watch, and was aware of the clink of glasses inside. A moment or two more and her resolution would have deserted her as sleep deserts the somnambulist, leaving her guiltless and exhausted. Saha felt her enemy’s firmness waver, hesitated on the parapet and Camille, stretching out both arms, pushed her into space.

  She had time to hear the grating of claws on the rough-cast wall, to see Saha’s blue body, twisted into an S, clutching the air with the force of a rising trout; then she shrank away, with her back to the wall.

  She felt no temptation to look down into the little kitchen garden edged with new rubble. Back in the room, she put her hands over her ears, withdrew them, and shook her head as if she could hear the hum of a mosquito. Then she sat down and nearly fell asleep. But the oncoming night brought her to her feet again. She drove away the twilight by lighting up glass bricks, luminous tubes, and blinding mushrooms of lamps. She also lit up the long chromium eye which poured the opaline beam of its glance across the bed.

  She walked about with supple movements, handling objects with light, adroit, dreaming hands.

  ‘It’s as if I’d got thinner,’ she said out loud.

  She changed her clothes and dressed herself in white.

  ‘My fly in the milk,’ she said, imitating Alain’s voice. Her cheeks regained their colour at a sudden sensual memory which brought her back to reality and she waited for Alain’s arrival.

  She bent her head in the direction of the buzzing lift and shivered at every noise; those dull knockings, those metallic clangs, those sounds as of a boat grinding at anchor, those muffled bursts of music, which echo the discordant life of a new block of flats. But she was not surprised when the hollow tinkle of the bell in the hall replaced the fumbling of a key in the lock. She ran and opened the door herself.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Alain ordered. ‘I must see first of all whether she hasn’t hurt herself. Come and hold the lamp for me.’

  He carried Saha alive in his arms. He went straight to the bedroom, pushed aside the things on the invisible dressing-table, and gently put the cat on the slab of glass. She held herself upright and firm on her paws but her deep-set eyes wandered all about her as they would have done in a strange house.

  ‘Saha I’ called Alain in a whisper. ‘If there’s nothing the matter with her, it’s a miracle. Saha!’

  She raised her head, as if to reassure her friend, and leant her cheek against his hand.

  ‘Walk a little, Saha. Look, she’s walking! Good Lord! Falling six storeys. It was the awning of the chap on the second floor that broke the fall. From there she bounced off on to the concierge’s little lawn – the concierge saw her pass in the air. He said: “I thought it was an umbrella falling.” What’s she got on her ear? No, it’s some white off the wall. Wait till I listen to her heart.’

  He laid the cat on her side and listened to the beating ribs, the tiny disordered mechanism. With his fair hair spread out and his eyes closed, he seemed to be sleeping on Saha’s flank and to wake with a sigh only to see Camille standing there silent and apart, watching the close-knit group they made.

  ‘Can you believe it? There’s nothing wrong. At least I can’t find anything wrong with her except a terribly agitated heart. But a cat’s heart is usually agitated. But however could it have happened! I’m asking you as if you could possibly know, my poor pet! She fell from this side,’ he said, looking at the open french window. ‘Jump down on the ground, Saha, if you can.’

  After hesitating, she jumped but lay down again on the carpet. She was breathing fast and went on looking all round the room with the same uncertain look.

  ‘I think I’ll phone Chéron. Still, look, she’s washing herself. She wouldn’t wash herself if she’d been injured internally. Oh, good Lord!’

  He stretched, threw his jacket on the bed, and came over to Camille.

  ‘What a fright. How pretty you look, all in white. Kiss me, my fly in the milk!’

  She let herself fall into the arms which had remembered her at last and could not hold back some broken sobs.

  ‘No? You’re actually crying?’

  He was upset himself and hid his forehead in the soft, black hair.

  ‘I . . . I didn’t know that you were kind.’

  She had the courage not to draw away from him at that. However, Alain quickly returned to Saha whom he wanted to take out on the balcony because of the heat. But the cat resisted and contented herself with lying near the open door, turned towards the evening, blue as herself. From time to time, she gave a brief shudder and looked anxiously into the triangular room behind her.

  ‘It’s the shock,’ explained Alain. ‘I wanted her to go and sit outside.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Camille faintly, ‘since she doesn’t want to.’

  ‘Her wishes are orders. Today, of all days! Is there likely to be anything eatable left over at this hour? It’s half-past nine!’

  Mother Buque wheeled the table out on to the balcony and they dined looking over the east side of Paris where the most lights glimmered. Alain talked a lot, drank water with a little
wine in it, and accused Saha of clumsiness, impudence, and ‘cat’s sins’.

  ‘“Cat’s sins” are the kind of playful mistakes and lapses of judgement which can be put down to their having been civilized and domesticated. They’ve nothing in common with the clumsiness and carelessness that are almost deliberate.’

  But Camille no longer asked him: ‘How do you know that?’ After dinner, he carried Saha and drew Camille into the studio where the cat consented to drink the milk she had refused. As she drank, she shivered all over as cats do when they are given something too cold to drink.

  ‘It’s the shock,’ Alain repeated. ‘All the same, I shall ask Chéron to look in and see her tomorrow morning. Oh, I’m forgetting everything!’ he cried gaily. ‘Will you phone the concierge? I’ve left that roll of plans down in his lodge. The one that Massart, our precious furnishing chap, deposited there.’

  Camille obeyed while Alain, tired and relaxed after the strain, dropped into one of the scattered armchairs and closed his eyes.

  ‘Hallo!’ said Camille at the telephone. ‘Yes . . . That must be it. A big roll . . . Thanks so much’

  He laughed with his eyes still closed. She had returned to his side and stood there, watching him laugh.

  ‘That absurd little voice you put on! What is this new little voice? “A big roll . . . Thanks so much”,’ he mimicked. ‘Do you keep that extremely small voice for the concierge? Come here, it needs the two of us to face Massart’s latest creations.’

  He unrolled a sheet of thick drawing-paper, on the ebony table. Saha, who loved all kinds of paper, promptly leapt on the tinted drawing.

  ‘Isn’t she sweet!’ exclaimed Alain. ‘It’s to show me she’s not in the least hurt. O my miraculously escaped one! Hasn’t she a bump on her head? Camille, feel her head. No, she hasn’t a bump. Feel her head all the same, Camille.’

  A poor little murderess meekly tried to emerge from her banishment, stretched out her hand, and touched the cat’s head with humble hatred.

  Her gesture was received with the most savage snarl, a scream, and an epileptic leap. Camille shrieked ‘Ha!’ as if she had been burned. Standing on the unrolled drawing the cat covered the young woman with a flaming stare of accusation, the fur on her back erect, her teeth bared, and the dry red of her open jaw showing.

  Alain had sprang up, ready to protect Saha and Camille from each other.

  ‘Take care! She’s . . . perhaps she’s mad . . . Saha!’

  She stared at him angrily but with a lucidity that proved she had not lost her reason.

  ‘What happened? Where did you touch her?’

  ‘I didn’t touch her at all.’

  They were both speaking low, hardly moving their lips.

  ‘Then, why this?’ said Alain. ‘I don’t understand. Put your hand out again.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to!’ protested Camille. ‘Perhaps she’s gone wild,’ she added.

  Alain took the risk of stroking Saha. She flattened her erect fur and yielded to the friendly palm but glared once more at Camille with brilliant, accusing eyes.

  ‘Why this?’ Alain repeated slowly. ‘Look, she’s got a scratch on her nose. I hadn’t seen it. It’s dried blood. Saha, Saha, good now,’ he said, seeing the fury growing in the yellow eyes.

  Because her cheeks were swelled out and her whiskers stiffly thrust forward as if she were hunting, the furious cat seemed to be laughing. The joy of battle stretched the mauve corners of her mouth and tautened the mobile, muscular chin. The whole of her feline face was striving towards a universal language, towards a word forgotten by men.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ said Alain suddenly.

  ‘Whatever’s What?’

  Under the cat’s stare Camille was recovering her courage and the instinct of self-defence. Leaning over the drawing, Alain could make out damp prints in groups of four little spots round a central, irregular patch.

  ‘Her paws . . . wet?’ muttered Alain.

  ‘She must have walked in some water,’ said Camille. ‘You’re making a fuss about nothing.’

  Alain raised her head towards the dry blue night.

  ‘In water? What water?’

  He turned again to his wife. He looked at her with round eyes which made him look suddenly extraordinarily ugly.

  ‘Don’t you know what those footprints mean?’ he said harshly. ‘No, you wouldn’t know. Fear, d’you understand, fear. The sweat of fear. Cat’s sweat, the only time cats do sweat. So she was frightened.’

  Delicately, he lifted one of Saha’s front paws and dried the sweat on the fleshy pad. Then he pulled back the living white sheath into which the claws had been drawn back.

  ‘She’s got all her claws broken,’ he said, talking to himself. ‘She must have held on . . . clutching. She scratched the stone trying to save herself. She . . .’

  He broke off his monologue and, without another word, took the cat under his arm and carried her off to the bathroom

  Alone, unmoving, Camille strained her ears. She kept her hands knotted together; free as she was, she seemed to be loaded with fetters.

  ‘Madame Buque,’ said Alain’s voice, ‘have you any milk?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. In the ‘fridge.’

  ‘Then it’s ice-cold?’

  ‘But I can warm it on the stove. It won’t take a second. It is for the cat? She’s not ill, is she?’

  ‘No, she’s . . .’

  Alain’s voice stopped short and changed its tone: ‘She’s a little off meat in this heat. Thank you, Madame Buque. Yes, you can go now. See you in the morning.’

  Camille heard her husband moving to and fro and turning on a tap. She knew that he was giving the cat food and fresh water. A diffused shadow, above the metal lampshade, came up as high as her face which was as still as a mask except for the slow movement of the great eyes.

  Alain returned, carelessly tightening his leather belt, and sat down again at the ebony table. But he did not summon Camille back to sit beside him and she was forced to speak first.

  ‘You’ve sent old Mother Buque off?’

  ‘Yes. Shouldn’t I have?’

  He lit a cigarette and squinted at the flame of the lighter.

  ‘I wanted her to bring something tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter a bit . . . don’t apologize.’

  ‘But I’m not apologizing. Though, actually, I ought to.’

  He went over to the open bay window, drawn by the blue of the night. He was studying a certain tremor in himself, a tremor which did not come from his recent emotion, but which was more like the tremolo of an orchestra, muffled and foreboding. From the Folie-Saint-James a rocket shot up, burst into luminous petals that withered one by one as they fell, and the blue of the night recovered its peace and its powdery depth. In the amusement park, a grotto, a colonnade, and a waterfall were suddenly lit up with incandescent white; Camille came nearer to him.

  ‘Are they having a gala night? Let’s wait for the fireworks. Do you hear the guitars?’

  Absorbed in his inner tremor, he did not answer her. His wrists and hands were tingling, his loins were weak and felt as if a thousand insects were crawling over them. His state reminded him of the hateful lassitude, the fatigue he used to feel after the school sports. After running and rowing he would emerge vindictive, throbbing and exhausted and equally contemptuous of his victory or defeat. Now, he was at peace only in that part of himself which was no longer anxious about Saha. For several minutes – or perhaps for very few – ever since the discovery of the broken claws, ever since Saha’s furious terror, he had lost all sense of time.

  ‘It’s not fireworks,’ he said. ‘Probably just some dances.’

  From the movement Camille made beside him in the shadow, he realized that she had given up expecting him to answer her. He felt her coming closer without apprehension. He saw the outline of the white dress; a bare arm; a half face lit by the yellow light from the lamps indoors and a half face that shadowed blue in the clear
night. The two halves were divided by the small straight nose and each was provided with a large, almost unblinking eye.

  ‘Yes, of course, it’s dances,’ she agreed. ‘They’re mandolines, not guitars. Listen . . . “Les donneurs . . . de sé-é-réna . . . des, Et les bel-les é-écou-teu . . .’

  Her voice cracked on the highest note and she coughed to excuse her failure.

  ‘But what a tiny voice . . .’ thought Alain, astonished. ‘What has she done with her voice that’s as big and open as her eyes? She’s singing in a little girl’s voice. Hoarse, too.’

  The mandolines stopped and the breeze brought a faint human noise of clapping and applause. A moment later, a rocket shot up, burst into an umbrella of mauve rays in which hung tears of living fire.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Camille.

  Both of them had emerged from the darkness like two statues; Camille in lilac marble; Alain whiter, with his hair greenish and his eyes almost colourless. When the rocket had gone out, Camille sighed.

  ‘It never lasts long enough,’ she said plaintively.

  The distant music started again. But the capricious wind deadened the sound of the stringed instruments into a vague shrill buzzing and carried the blasts of the accompanying brass, on two notes, loudly and insistently right into their ears.

  ‘What a shame,’ said Camille. ‘They’ve probably got a frightfully good jazz band. That’s Love in the Night they’re playing.’

  She hummed the tune in a high, shaky, almost inaudible voice, as if she had just been crying. This new voice of hers acutely increased Alain’s disquiet. It induced in him a need for revelation, a desire to break down whatever it was that – a long time ago or only a moment ago? – had risen between himself and Camille. It was something to which he could not yet give a name but which was growing fast; something which prevented him from putting his arm round her neck like a boy; something which kept him motionless at her side, alert and expectant, against the wall still warm from the heat of the day. Turning impatient, he said, ‘Go on singing.’

  A long red, white, and blue shower, falling like the branches of a weeping willow, streaked the sky over the park and showed Alain a Camille startled and already defiant: ‘Singing what?’