by Colette
He threw back his head to look up at the nacreous halo which irradiated the whole sky, and he gave a low cry, ‘It’s all gone to hell! I’m thirty years old!’
He hurried on his way back home, heaping curses on himself to the rhythm of his quickened steps. ‘Fool! The tragedy is not her age, but mine. Everything may be over for her, but, for me . . .’
He let himself in without making a sound, to find the house in silence at last; to be nauseated by the lingering stale smell of those who had dined, wined, and danced there. In the looking-glass fitted to the door in the hall he met face to face the young man who had grown so thin, whose cheeks had hardened, whose sad beautifully moulded upper lip was unshaven and blue, whose large eyes were reticent and tragic. The young man, in effect, who had ceased, inexplicably, to be twenty-four years old.
‘For me,’ Chéi completed his thought, ‘I really do believe that the last word has been said.’
‘WHAT I NEED is somewhere quiet, you understand. . . . Any little place would do. . . . A bachelor flat, a room, a corner. . . .’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ said the Pal reproachfully.
She raised disconsolate eyes towards the festoons on the ceiling: ‘A little love, of course, of course, a little kiss – something to warm a poor lonely heart. . . . You bet I understand! Any special fancy?’
Chéri frowned. ‘Fancy? For whom?’
‘You don’t understand, my pretty. . . . Fancy for any particular district?’
‘Ah! . . . No, nothing special. Just a quiet corner.’
The Pal nodded her large head in collusion. ‘I see, I see. Something after my style – like my flat. You know where I rest my bones?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, you don’t know at all. I was certain you wouldn’t write it down. Two hundred and fourteen Rue de Villiers. It’s not big, and it’s not beautiful. But you don’t want the sort of place where the whole street knows your business.’
‘No.’
‘I got mine, of course, through a little deal with my landlady. A jewel of a woman, by the way, married, or as good as. Periwinkle blue eyes, and a head like a bird; but she bears the mark of Fate on her forehead, and I already know from her cards that she can’t say no to anything, and that –’
‘Yes, yes. You were saying just now that you knew of a flat . . .’
‘Yes, but not good enough for you.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘Not for you . . . not for the two of you!’
The Pal hid a suggestive smile in her whisky, and Chéri turned from its smell – like wet harness. He put up with her quips about his imaginary conquests, for he saw, round her scraggy neck, a string of large faked pearls which he thought he recognized. Every visual reminder of his past halted him on his downward path, and, during such respites, he felt at peace.
‘Ah!’ sighed the Pal. ‘How I’d love to catch a glimpse of her! What a pair! . . . I don’t know her, of course, but I can just see you two together! . . . Of course you’ll provide everything yourself?’
‘For whom?’
‘Why, the furniture in your love-nest, of course!’
He looked at the Pal in bewilderment. Furniture . . . What furniture? He had been thinking only of one thing: a refuge of his own, with a door that opened and closed for him and no one else, safe from Edmée, Charlotte, all of them. . . .
‘Will you furnish it in period or in modern style? La belle Serrano arranged her entire ground floor with nothing but Spanish shawls, but that was a bit eccentric. You’re old enough, of course, to know your own mind. . . .’
He hardly heard her, far away in his dreams of a future home that would be secret, small, warm, and dark. At the same time, he was drinking red-currant syrup, like any young ‘miss’, in the red-and-gold, out-of-date, unchanging bar, just as it used to be when, a small boy, Chéri had come there to sip his first fizzy drink through a straw. . . . Even the barman himself had not changed, and if the woman sitting opposite Chéri was now a withered specimen, at least he had never known her beautiful, or young.
‘They all change, the whole of that set – my mother, my wife, all the people they see – and they live for change. My mother may change into a banker, Edmée into a town councillor. But I . . .’
In imagination, he quickly returned to that refuge, existing at some unknown point in space, but secret, small, warm, and . . .
‘Mine’s done up in Algerian style,’ the Pal persisted. ‘It’s no longer in the fashion, but I don’t mind – especially as the furniture is hired. You’ll be sure to recognize many of the photos I’ve put up: and then there’s the portrait of La Loupiote. . . . Come and have a look at it. Please do.’
‘I’d like to. Let’s go!’
On the threshold he hailed a taxi.
‘But d’you never have your motor? Why haven’t you got your motor? It’s really quite extraordinary how people with motors never have their motor!’
She gathered up her faded black skirts, caught the string of her lorgnette in the clasp of her bag, dropped a glove, and submitted to the stares of the passers-by with the lack of embarrassment of a Negro. Chéri, standing at her side, received several insulting smiles and the admiring condolences of a young woman, who called out: ‘Lord, what a waste of good material!’
In the taxi, patiently and half asleep, he endured the old thing’s tattle. And then some of her stories were soothing: the one about the ridiculous little dog which had held up the return from the races in 1897, and then Mère La Berche eloping with a young bride on the day of her wedding in 1893.
‘That’s it over there. This door’s stuck, Chéri, I can’t get out. I warn you, there’s not much light in the passage, nor, for that matter, is there much out here. . . . It’s only a ground-floor flat, when all’s said and done! . . . Wait where you are a second.’
He waited, standing in the semi-darkness. He heard the jingle of keys, the wheezy old creature’s gasps for breath, and then her fussy servant’s voice, ‘I’m lighting up. . . . Then you’ll find yourself in a familiar landscape. I’ve got electricity, of course. . . . There, let me introduce you to my little morning-room, which is also my large drawing-room!’
He went in, and, from kindness – hardly bothering to glance at it – praised the room; it had a low ceiling and reddish walls, kippered by the smoke of innumerable cigars and cigarettes. Instinctively, he looked all round for the window, barricaded by shutters and curtains.
‘You can’t see in here? You’re not an old night-bird like your Pal. Wait, I’ll switch on the top light.’
‘Don’t bother. . . . I’ll just come in and –’ He broke off, staring at the most brightly lit wall, covered with small frames and photographs pinned through the four corners. The Pal began to laugh.
‘What did I say about a familiar landscape! I was quite sure you’d enjoy looking at them. You haven’t got that one, have you?’
‘That one’ was a very large photographic portrait-study, touched up with water-colours now quite faded. Blue eyes, a laughing mouth, a chignon of fair hair, and a look of calm yet exultant triumph. . . . High-breasted – in a First Empire corselet, legs showing through gauze skirts, legs that never finished, rounded out at the thigh, slender at the knee, legs that . . . And a fetching hat, a hat that turned up on one side only, trimmed like a single sail to the wind.
‘She never gave you that one, not that one, I bet! It makes her a goddess, a fairy walking on clouds! And yet it’s absolutely her, of course. This big photo is the loveliest, to my way of thinking, but I’m still every bit as fond of the others. Here, for instance, look at this little one here – much more recent, of course – isn’t it a sight for sore eyes?’
A snapshot, clinging to the wall with the help of a rusty pin, showed a woman standing in the shade against a sunlit garden.
‘It’s the navy-blue dress and the hat with the seagulls,’ Chéri said to himself.
‘I’m all for flattering portraits, myself,’ the Pal
went on. ‘A portrait like this one. Come now – you must confess – isn’t it enough to make you join your hands and believe in God?’
A degraded and smarmy art, to lend glamour to the ‘portrait photograph’, had lengthened the neck line and modified those around the sitter’s mouth. But the nose, just sufficiently aquiline, the delicious nose with its ravishing nostrils, and the chaste little dimple, the velvety cleft that indented the upper lip under the nose – these were untouched, authentic, respected by even the photographer.
‘Would you believe it? She wanted to burn the lot, pretending that nobody today is the least interested in what she used to be like. My blood boiled, I shrieked like a soul in torment, and she gave me the whole collection the very same day that she made me a present of the bag with her monogram. . . .’
‘Who’s this fellow with her . . . here . . . in this one underneath?’
‘What were you saying? What’s that? Wait till I take off my hat.’
‘I’m asking you who this is – this fellow – here. Get a move on, can’t you?’
‘Heavens, don’t bustle me about so. . . . That? It’s Bacciocchi, come! Naturally, you can hardly be expected to recognize him, he dates from two turns before you.’
‘Two what?’
‘After Bacciocchi, she had Septfons – and yet no – wait . . . Septfons was earlier than that . . . Septfons, Bacciocchi, Spéleïeff, and you. Oh! do look at those check trousers! . . . How ridiculous men’s fashions used to be!’
‘And that photo over there; when was that taken?’
He drew back a step, for at his elbow the Pal’s head was craning forward, and its magpie’s nest of felted hair smelt like a wig.
‘That? That’s her costume for Auteuil in . . . in 1888, or ’89. Yes, the year of the Exhibition. In front of that one, dear boy, you should raise your hat. They don’t turn out beauties like that any more.’
‘Pooh! . . . I don’t think it so stunning.’
The Pal folded her hands. Hatless, she looked older, and her high forehead was a buttery yellow under hair dyed greenish black.
‘Not so stunning! That waist you could encircle with your ten fingers! That lily neck! And be good enough to let your eyes rest on that dress! All in frilled sky-blue chiffon, dear boy, and looped up with little pink moss-roses sewn on to the frills, and the hat to match! And the little bag to match as well – we called them alms-bags at that time. Oh! the beauty she was then! There’s been nothing since to compare with her first appearances: she was the dawn, the very sun of love.’
‘First appearances where?’
She gave Chéri a gentle dig in the ribs. ‘Get along with you . . . How you make me laugh! Ah! the trials of life must melt into thin air when you’re about the house!’
His rigid features passed unobserved. He was still facing the wall, seemingly riveted by several Léas – one smelling an artificial rose, another bending over a book with medieval hasps, her swan neck rising from a pleatless collar, a white and rounded neck like the bole of a birch-tree.
‘Well, I must be going,’ he said, like Valerie Cheniaguine.
‘What d’you mean – you must be going? What about my dining-room? And my bedroom? just glance at them, my pretty! Take a note of them for your little love-nest.’
‘Ah! yes. . . . Listen; not today, because . . .’ He glanced distrustfully towards the rampart of portraits, and lowered his voice. ‘I’ve an appointment. But I’ll come back . . . tomorrow. Probably tomorrow, before dinner.’
‘Good. Then I can go ahead?’
‘Go ahead?’
‘With the flat.’
‘Yes, that’s right. See about it. And thanks.’
‘I really begin to wonder what the world’s coming to. . . . Young or old – it’s hard to tell which are the most disgusting. . . . Two “turns” before me! . . . and “the first appearances,” said the old spider, “the dazzling first appearances.” . . . And all quite openly. No, really, what a world!’
He found that he had been keeping up the pace of a professional walker in training, and that he was out of breath. And all the more because the distant storm – which would not burst over Paris – had walled off what breeze there was behind a violet bastion, now towering straight up against the sky. Alongside the fortifications of the Boulevard Berthier, under trees stripped bare by the summer drought, a sparse crowd of Parisians in rope-soled sandals and a few half-naked children in red jerseys seemed to be waiting for a tidal wave to come rolling up from Levallois-Perret. Chéri sat down on a bench, forgetting that his strength was apt to play him tricks. He was unaware that his strength was being sapped in some mysterious manner ever since he had started to fritter it away on night vigils, and had neglected to exercise or nourish his body.
‘“Two turns!” Really! Two turns before me! And after me, how many? Add the whole lot together, myself included, and how many turns d’you get?’
Beside a blue-clad, seagull-hatted Léa, he could see a tall, broad Spéleïeff, smiling expansively. He remembered a sad Léa, red-eyed with weeping, stroking his head when he was a small boy and calling him a ‘horrid little man in the making’.
‘Léa’s lover’ . . . ‘Léa’s new pet’ . . . Traditional and meaningless words – as common on everyone’s lips as talk about the weather, the latest odds at Auteuil, or the dishonesty of servants. ‘Are you coming, kid?’ Speleïeff would say to Chéri. ‘We’ll go out and have a porto at Armenonville, while we wait for Léa to join us. Nothing would drag her out of bed this morning.’
‘She’s got a ravishing new little Bacciocchi,’ Madame Peloux had informed her son, aged fourteen or fifteen at the time.
But, a bundle of sophistication and innocence, brought up in the midst of love, yet blinded by its proximity, Chéri, at that tender age, had talked love, as children learn a language by ear, picking up words, pleasant or filthy, merely as sounds without meaning. No vivid or voluptuous vision arose behind the shadow of this huge Spéleïeff so recently risen from Léa’s bed. And was there really very much difference between this ‘ravishing little Bacciocchi’ and a ‘prize Pekingese’?
No photograph or letter, no story from the only lips that might have told him the truth, had blighted the enclosed Paradise in which Léa and Chéri had dwelt for so many years. Next to nothing in Chéri existed which dated back beyond Léa: why, then, should he bother about a man who, before his day, had brought warmth or sadness or riches to his mistress?
A fair-haired little boy with fat knees came and planted his crossed arms on the bench beside Chéri. They glared at each other with identical expressions of offended reserve, for Chéri treated all children as strangers. For some time this boy let his pale blue eyes rest on Chéri, who watched some sort of indescribable smile, full of scorn, mount up from the small anaemic mouth to the flax-blue pupils of the eyes. Then the child turned away, and, picking up his dirty toys from the dust, began to play at the foot of the bench, blotting. Chéri out of existence. Then Chéri got up and walked away.
Half an hour later, he was lying in a warm, scented bath, clouded by some milky bath essence. He lay revelling in its luxury and comfort, in the soft lather of the soap, and in the remote faint sounds about the house, as though they were the rewards of an act of great courage, or else blessings he was tasting for the last time.
His wife came into the room humming, broke off at the sight of him, and narrowly failed to disguise her speechless astonishment at finding Chéri at home and in his bath.
‘Am I in your way?’ he asked, with no irony.
‘Not in the least, Fred.’
She began to take off her day clothes with youthful abandon, with total disregard for modesty or immodesty, and Chéri was amused by her haste to be undressed and in a bath.
‘How completely I’d forgotten her,’ he thought, as he looked at the odalisque back, supple but well-covered, of the woman bending down to untie her shoelaces.
She did not speak to him, but went about her business like
a woman who believes she is safely by herself, and in front of his eyes rose the figure of the child who, not long since, had been playing in the dust at his feet, resolutely ignoring his presence.
‘Tell me . . .’
Edmée raised a surprised forehead, a soft half-naked body.
‘What would you say to our having a child?’
‘Fred! . . . What are you thinking of?’
It was almost a cry of terror, and already Edmée was clutching a wisp of lawn close to her bosom with one hand, while with the other she groped, fumbling, for the first kimono within reach. Chéri could not hold back his laughter.
‘Would you like my revolver? I’m not going to assault you.’
‘Why are you laughing?’ she asked, almost in a whisper. ‘You should never laugh.’
‘I seldom laugh. But do tell me . . . now that all is quiet and peaceful between us . . . do tell me why. Are you really so terrified at the thought that we could have had, could still have, a child?’
‘Yes,’ she said cruelly, and her unexpected frankness shocked even herself.
She never took her eyes off her husband, lying full-length in a low armchair, and she murmured distinctly enough for him to hear, ‘A child . . . who’d be sure to take after you. You twice over, you twice over in the single lifetime of one woman? No. . . . Oh, no.’
He began a gesture which she misinterpreted.
‘No, I beg of you. . . . There’s nothing more to be said. I won’t even discuss it. Let’s leave things as they are. We’ve only to be a little cautious, and go on . . . I ask nothing of you . . .’
‘That suits you?’
Her only answer was to put on a look, insulting in its misery and plaintive helplessness, a seraglio look that well suited her nakedness. Her freshly powdered cheeks, the touch of colour on her youthful lips, the light brown halo round her hazel eyes, the care bestowed on every feature of her face, were in striking contrast to the confusion of her body, bare except for the crumpled silk shift she was clasping to her breasts.
