The Collected Stories of Colette

by Colette

  I could not take my eyes off those maternal hands which could so forcefully push down a small, emaciated body and persuade it to lie prone. Two big hands, red and chapped like a washerwoman’s. They disappeared to investigate something under a little blue sateen quilt, under a cretonne sheet which had obviously been changed in our honor. I forced myself to fight down my nervous terror of blood, the terror of seeing it suddenly gush out and spread from its secret channels: blood set free, with its ferruginous smell and its talent for dyeing material bright pink or cheerful red or rusty brown. Lise’s head was like a plaster cast; Carmen’s rouge showed as two purple patches on her blanched cheeks as they both stared at the bed. I kept repeating to myself: “I’m not going to faint, I’m not going to faint.” And I bit my tongue to distract from that pressure at the base of the spine so many women feel at the sight of blood or even when they hear a detailed account of an operation.

  The two hands reappeared and Madame Saure heaved a sigh of relief: “Nothing wrong . . . nothing wrong.”

  She tossed her silvery hair back from her forehead, which was gleaming with sudden sweat. Her large majestic features which recalled so many portraits of Louis XVI did not succeed in making her face sympathetic. I did not like the way she handled her daughter. It seemed to me that she did so with an expertness and an apprehension which had nothing to do with a mother’s anxiety. A great bovine creature, sagacious and agreeable but not in the least reassuring. Wiping her temples, she went off to a table pushed right up against the wall at the far end of the room. The sun had moved on and the room had grown somber: the imprisoned garden showed black under its “Tree of Heaven.” In the distance Madame Saure was washing her hands and clattering with some glasses. Because of the distance and the darkness, her forehead seemed as if, any moment, it must touch the ceiling.

  “Won’t you ladies take a little of my cordial? Biche, you’ve earned a thimbleful too, ducky. I made it myself.”

  She came back to us and filled four little glasses which did not match. The one she offered me spilled over, so that I realized her hand was shaking. Lise took hers without a word, her mouth half open and her eyes fixed on the glass. For the first time, I saw a secret terror in those eyes. Carmen said “Thank you” mechanically and then seemed to come out of her trance.

  “You know,” she said hesitantly. “You know, I don’t think she’s awfully strong yet, your daughter . . . If I were you . . . What did the doctor say, Gribiche?”

  Gribiche smiled at her with vague, still wet eyes and turned her head on the Oriental cushion. She pursed her lips to reach the greenish-gold oil of a kind of Chartreuse which was in the glass.

  “Oh well, the doctor . . .”

  She broke off and blushed. I saw how badly she blushed, in uneven patches.

  “In the case of women,” said Madame Saure, “doctors don’t always know best.”

  Carmen waited for the rest of the answer but it did not come. She swallowed half her liqueur in one gulp and gave an exaggeratedly complimentary “mmm!”

  “It’s rather sweet, but very good all the same,” said Lise.

  The warmth returned to my stomach with the peppery taste of a kind of homemade Chartreuse that resembled a syrupy cough mixture. My colleagues were sufficiently revived to make conversation.

  “Apart from that, is there any news at the theater?” inquired Gribiche.

  She had pulled her plait of fair hair over one shoulder as young girls of those days used to do at bedtime.

  “Absolutely not a scrap,” answered Carmen. “Everything would be as dead as mutton if they weren’t rehearsing the new numbers they’re putting in for the Grand Prix every day.”

  “Are you in the new numbers?”

  Lise and Carmen shook their heads serenely.

  “We’re only in the finale. We’re not complaining. We’ve got quite enough to do as it is. I’m getting sick of this show, anyway. I’ll be glad when they put on a new one. In the morning, they’re rehearsing a sort of apache sketch.”

  “Who?”

  Carmen shrugged her shoulders with supreme indifference.

  “Some straight actors and actresses. A bitch they call . . . Oh, I can’t remember. It’ll come back to me. There are quite a lot of them but they’re mainly comedians. The management wanted to get Otero but she’s going into opera.”

  “Never!” said Gribiche excitedly. “Has she got enough voice?”

  “She’s got something better than voice, she’s got it,” said Lise. “It all goes by intrigue. She’s marrying the director of the Opéra, so he can’t refuse her anything.”

  “What’s his name, the director of the Opéra?”

  “Search me, dear.”

  I half closed my eyes to hear it better, this talk which took me back into a world unhampered by truth or even verisimilitude. A dazzling world, a fairy-like bureaucracy where, in the heart of Paris, “artistes” did not know the name of Julia Bartet, where it seemed perfectly natural that the great dancer Otero, dying to sing in Faust and Les Huguenots, should buy the director of the Opéra . . . I forgot the place and the reason which had drawn me back into it.

  “Fierval’s back from Russia,” said Lise Damoiseau. “They’re giving her the lead in the Winter Revue at the Eden Concert.”

  “Did she enjoy her tour in Russia?”

  “Like anything. Just fancy, the Tsar rented a box for the whole season just to look in and see her number every night. And every single night, my dear, he sent her round presents by his own pope.”

  “His what?” asked Gribiche.

  “His pope, dear. It’s the same thing as a footman.”

  But of course! Naturally! Why not? Ah, go on . . . don’t stop! How I loved them like that, swallowing the wildest improbabilities like children the moment they drop their outer shell of tough, hardworking wage earners with a shrewd eye on every sou . . . Let’s forget everything except the absurd, the fantastic. Let’s even forget this tortured little piece of reality lying flat on her bed beneath a barred window. I hope any moment to hear at the very least that President Loubet is going to elope with Alice de Tender . . . Go on, go on! Don’t stop!

  “Mamma . . . oh, quick, Mamma.”

  The whispered call barely ruffled a silence pregnant with other sensational revelations. But, faint as it was, Madame Saure found it reason enough to rush to the bedside. Gribiche’s arm dropped slackly and the little glass which fell from her hand broke on the tiled floor.

  “Oh, God!” muttered Madame Saure.

  Her two hands dived once more under the sheets. She drew them out quickly, looked at them, and, seeing us on our feet, hid them in the pockets of her apron. Not one of us questioned her.

  “You see, Mamma,” moaned Gribiche. “I told you it was too strong. Why didn’t you listen to me? Now, you see . . .”

  Carmen made a brave suggestion: “Shall I call the concierge?”

  The tall woman with the hidden hands took a step toward us and we all fell back.

  “Quick, quick, get away from here . . . You mustn’t call anyone . . . Don’t be afraid, I’ll look after her. I’ve got all that’s needed. Don’t say anything. You’ll make bother for me. Get away, quick. Above all, not a word.”

  She pushed us back toward the door and I remember that we offered a faint resistance. But Madame Saure drew her hands out of her pockets, perhaps to drive us away. At the sight of them, Carmen started like a frightened horse, while I hustled Lise away, to avoid their contact. I don’t know whether it was Lise who opened the door of the room and then the other door. We found ourselves in the mildewed hall under the statue holding the globe, we walked stiffly past the concierge’s door, and as soon as we got outside on the pavement, Carmen shot ahead of us, almost at a run.

  “Carmen! Wait for us!”

  But Carmen did not stop till she was out of breath. Then she stood leaning her back against the wall. The green feather in her hat danced to the measure of her heartbeats. Whether from passionate desire for air,
or from sheer gratitude, I turned my face up to the sky which twilight was just beginning to fill with pink clouds and twittering swallows. Carmen laid her hand on her breast, at the place where we believe our heart lies.

  “Shall we take something to pull ourselves together?” I suggested. “Lise, a glass of brandy? Carmen, a pick-me-up?” We were just turning the corner of a street where the narrow terrace of a little wines and spirits bar displayed three iron tables. Carmen shook her head.

  “Not there. There’s a policeman.”

  “What does it matter if there is?”

  She did not answer and walked quickly on ahead of us till we came to the Place Clichy, whose bustle seemed to reassure her. We sat down under the awning of a large brasserie.

  “A coffee,” said Carmen.

  “A coffee,” said Lise. “As for my dinner tonight . . . my stomach feels as if it were full of lead.”

  We stirred our spoons round and round our cups without saying a word. Inside, in the restaurant, the electric lights went on all at once, making us suddenly aware of the blue dusk of approaching evening flooding the square. Carmen let out a great sigh of relief.

  “It’s a bit stuffy,” said Lise.

  “You’ve got hot walking,” said Carmen. “Just feel my hand. I know what I’m like. I’ll have to put lots of rouge on tonight. I’ll put on some 24.”

  “Now, I’d look a sight if I put on 24,” retorted Lise. “I’d look like a beetroot. What I need is Creole 2½ and the same ground as a man.”

  Carmen leaned politely across the table.

  “I think Colettevilli’s awfully well made up on the stage, very natural. When you’re not playing character parts, it’s very important to look natural.”

  I listened to them as if I were only half awake and overhearing a conversation which had begun while I was asleep.

  That coffee, though sugared till it was as thick as syrup, how bitter it tasted! Beside us, a flower seller was trying to get rid of her last bunch of lilacs: dark purple lilacs, cut while they were still in the bud, lying on sprays of yew.

  “‘Les Girls,’” Carmen was saying, “they’ve got special stuff they use in England. Colors that make you look pink and white like a baby.”

  “But that’s no good in character parts, is it, Colettevilli?”

  I nodded, my lips on the rim of my cup and my eyes dazzled by an arrow from the setting sun.

  Lise turned over the little watch which she pinned to the lapel of her jacket with a silver olive branch whose olives pretended to be jade.

  “It’s half past five,” she announced.

  “I don’t give a damn,” said Carmen. “I’m not going to have any dinner, anyway.”

  Half past five! What might have happened in half an hour to that girl on her soaking mattress? All we had done for her was to take her a handful of money. Lise held out her packet of cigarettes to me.

  “No, thanks, I don’t smoke. Tell me, Lise . . . isn’t there anything we can do for Gribiche?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Keep out of it. It’s a filthy business. I’ve got my people at home who’d be more upset than me to see me mixed up in anything to do with abortion.”

  “Yes. But it was only falling downstairs at the theater that brought it on.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “You’re an infant. The fall came after.”

  “After what?”

  “After what she’d taken. She fell because she was nearly crazy with whatever it was she took. Colic, giddiness, and what have you. She told Impéria all about it in their dressing room. When she came into yours, she was so far gone, she was at her wits’ end. She’d stuffed herself with cotton wool.”

  “Her old ma’s an abortionist,” said Carmen. “Gives you a dose to bring it on. She gave her daughter a lot more than a teaspoonful.”

  “Anyone can see that Ma Saure’s already had some ‘bothers,’ as she calls them.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “Because she’s so frightened. And also because they haven’t a bean—no furniture, nothing. I wonder what she can have done to be as hard up as all that.”

  “Old murderess,” muttered Carmen. “Clumsy old beast.”

  Neither of them showed any surprise. I saw that they were, both of them, thoroughly aware of and inured to such things. They could contemplate impartially certain risks and certain secret dealings of which I knew nothing. There was a type of criminality which they passively and discreetly acknowledged when confronted with the danger of having a child. They talked of the monstrous in a perfectly matter-of-fact way.

  “But what about me?” I suggested rashly. “Couldn’t I try? Leaving both of you right out of it, of course. If Gribiche could be got into a hospital! As to what people might say, I don’t care a damn. I’m absolutely on my own.”

  Lise stared at me with her great eyes.

  “’S true? As absolutely on your own as all that? You haven’t anyone at all? No one who’s close to you? Not even your family?”

  “Oh, yes, there’s my family,” I agreed hastily.

  “I thought as much,” said Lise.

  She stood up as if she considered the subject closed, put on her gloves, and snapped her fingers.

  “Excuse me if I leave you now, Colettevilli. As I’m not going to have any dinner, I’m going to take my time getting down to the theater. I’ll go by bus; it’ll do me good.”

  “Me, too,” said Carmen. “If we’re hungry, we can buy a cheese sandwich off the stage doorkeeper.”

  She hesitated a moment before inviting me to join them.

  “You coming too?”

  “I’d love to, but I’ve promised to look in at my place first.”

  “See you later then. Bye-bye.”

  They went off arm in arm across the square, which was now all pink and blue: pink with the lit-up shops and bars, blue with the dusk of the late May afternoon.

  My only longing was to get back to my little ground-floor room, to my odd scraps of salvaged furniture, to my books, to the smell of green leaves that sometimes drifted in from the Bois. Most of all I longed for the companion of my good and bad moments, my tabby cat. Once again she welcomed me, sniffing my hands and brooding thoughtfully over the hem of my skirt. Then she sat on the table and opened her golden eyes wide, staring into space at the invisible world which had no secrets for her. Neither of us ate more than a morsel or two and I went off punctually to the theater.

  When I arrived at the Eden Concert, I found Mademoiselle d’Estouteville in a grubby bathrobe, with her feet as bare as an angel’s and her cape of golden hair over her shoulders, trying to extract every detail of our visit to Gribiche from Lise and Carmen.

  “Did it go off well?”

  “Oh, yes, splendidly.”

  “Was she pleased?”

  “I expected she thought it was better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish.”

  “And how is she? Is she coming back soon?”

  Lise’s face was impenetrable. She was occupied in making herself up for her first appearance as the demon Asmodeus.

  “Oh, you know, I think it’ll be some time yet. I don’t think that girl’s awfully strong.”

  “Got a decent sort of place?”

  “Yes and no, as you might say. There’s lots of space. At least, you can breathe there. I’d get the willies, myself, living in such a huge room.”

  “Her mother looks after her well?”

  “Almost too well!”

  “What did she say about the five hundred and eighty-seven francs?”

  I took it on myself to answer so as to give Lise a little respite.

  “She said we were to thank everyone ever so much . . . everyone who’d taken an interest in her. That she was so awfully touched.”

  “How did her face look? Quite normal again?”

  “She’s got a very babyish face, but you can see she’s got much thinner. She’d got her hair tied back in a plait like a kid and a little blue bed jacket. S
he’s very sweet.”

  The door of Carmen’s dressing room banged, sharply pulled to from inside.

  “Who’s going to be late?” shouted Lise intelligently. “Colettevilli, of course. And who’ll be to blame. That pain in the neck, Toutou d’Estouteville!”

  The harsh voice of Mademoiselle d’Estouteville launched into a volley of insults, calmed down, and resolved into a laugh. Each of us went on to do what we always did: yawn, sing odd snatches of song, curse the stifling airlessness, cough, eat peppermints, and go and fill a tiny water jug at the tap in the passage.

  Toward half past eleven, I was dressed again and ready to go home. It was the moment when the heat and lack of oxygen got the better of the dead-beat chorus girls and overworked dressers. As I left my dressing room, I noticed that the door of Carmen’s dressing room was still shut and I raised my voice to call out my usual good night. The door opened and Carmen signed to me to come in. She was engaged in weeping as one weeps when one is wearing full stage makeup. Armed with a little tube of blotting paper the size of a pencil, she was pressing it first to her right eyeball, then to her left, between the lids.

  “Pay no attention. I’ve got the . . . I’m unwell.”

  “Do you feel ill with it?”

  “Oh, no. It’s just that I’m so awfully relieved. Fancy, I was six days late. I was terrified of doing what Gribiche did . . . So, I’m so relieved.”

  She put her arm on my shoulder, then clasped it around my neck, and, just for the fraction of a second, laid her head on my breast.

  I was just turning the corner of the long passage when she called out to me from the distance: “Good night! Don’t have bad dreams!”

  I had them all the same. I dreamed of anguished anxieties which had not hitherto fallen to my lot. My dream took place under the plant of ill-fame, wormwood. Unfolding its hairy, symbolic leaves one by one, the terrible age-old inducer of abortions grew in my nightmare to monstrous size, like the seed controlled by the fakir’s will.

  The next evening little Impéria came hobbling hurriedly up to us. I saw her whispering anxiously into Lise’s ear. Balanced on one leg, she was clutching the foot that hurt her most with both hands. Lise listened to her, wearing her whitest, most statuesque mask and holding one hand over her mouth. Then she removed her hand and furtively made the sign of the cross.