Bedouin of the London Evening (12 page)

She married Henri de Jouvenel three months later, and had a daughter by him. She had earned her daughter, and she could afford, psychologically and financially, to make this mistake. In any case it was irresistible, and had to be. Each side misconceived the other, and recovered from previously prepared positions, but slowly, going into years.

Chéri
was published when Colette was forty-seven; and was said to be her masterpiece. It contains scenes which are of an emotional and aesthetic perfection; the marriage of symbolism and sexual experience. Yet it is static, even cold. In a large measure this is due to the central character, Chéri, who is perhaps a representation of
an elemental, or nature spirit; he is two-dimensional and has no inner life. He comes from myth, from
The Tempest
, and all serious fairy stories. He is real enough, and can be described, like fire or water, but he will not go successfully into the fabric of human relationships which constitutes a novel. Placed at the centre of a story, he petrifies the humanity, neutralises the action, and renders all moral operation irrelevant. He is an essence and is imponderable. As a concept in himself, Colette knew she had made an important discovery. What she did not realise was that the nonhuman aspects of her subject were affecting her. The aesthetician predominates and repeats herself more often in this book than in any other, as though afraid to change the imagery that furnishes it, and only daring to rechisel. There are even moments when she thinks with words; low water for so great a writer.

Many novels, stories, autobiographical writings, and occasional pieces followed on; the articles for
Le Matin
are only now available in English (
The Thousand and One Mornings
). When at last Colette married Maurice Goudeket the foundations were solid, and from her happiness a flow of practical information comes to us; it is hard news. Her daily life has been converted by her into a raw material. She reports on it, as though she is a foreigner there. Now it can happen that between the reporter and the scene reported something is transmitted – and if it is written down immediately an uncanny electric truth is obtained. Normally this is only achieved by writing fast; or by being written by the facts. Colette was able to take on the wing such a revelation by mercury. It may be found in the atmosphere of the whole piece, its “entity”, or in half a sentence which brings our whole lives into focus. To paraphrase some words from the Koran, she says what she does not know. It is the quality that lifts her work into another class – another degree, the degree of master novelists, philosophers, mystics, and other grand masons of human development.

Margaret Crosland’s new interpretation of Colette is required reading for the Hamlets of London and New York. It is as good as her first study,
Madame Colette
. She has rethought her subject,
added new facts, and filled in the Missy period between the first two marriages, and the early days with de Jouvenel. Willy emerges even more sympathetically. The book should be read on the spot, drained down to the dregs in one glance, bibliography, dates, italics, photographs, everything.

IN SEPTEMBER
the warm sea slows down. How long the pauses are …then it starts up, first to the left, then far down to the right. Shallow waves pour themselves uphill in a lemonade jelly.

A huge purple headland, with its roads and trees blotted out by the heat, is fitted weightlessly along the top of the water. Just near it, a boat seems to navigate for an eternity across the transparent mass on which it balances.

You hear the drone of an antique seaplane toiling up around the curve of the earth.

Some German tourists are swimming about in the bay. They wear hats, and their bone-dry heads stick up out of the water. As it moves, each seafaring head pulls along behind it sparkling wet folds of liquid. They talk to one another with a sharp noise like ducks quacking. Far below them in deep emerald water their limbs float down.

A local boy gets up out of this huge bath, and walks ashore. He's wringing wet, with the drops running off his nose, and a saturated pad of hair stuck down around his features. He throws himself to the ground, and hugs the beach to him. It's hotter than a human body, as hot as a cake from an oven. The breeze blows a wave of fire over his flesh.

Up at Bar Mimi, lunch has begun. Bathers move along the low whitewashed walls to find themselves wooden tables. There's a roof of cane thatch overhead, as grey as driftwood.

In the shade up there, everyone's alive. Two boys run about taking orders and writing them down in a blue sloping script with a
penna stilografica
. Bottles of yellow wine are brought, two at a time; held by the necks, they clink.

That woman quite alone, the old one, is the Signora Danielli. She's properly dressed-up for lunch at home, and no one knows what she's doing here where everyone else is young, naked, and burnt. She's brought with her a certain authority, and this being so, after a while it seems quite natural that she should be here. She takes such an interest in everything that goes on that she makes herself part of it, and looks about with her pleasant oldish face and speaks good Tuscan Italian. People soon get used to her, and even nod and say respectfully, ‘
Buon giorno. Signora
' as they pass her table. After a quarter of an hour, she's almost invisible.

Now there are two tables right at the front, facing the sea, which interest her very much. Something is going on there. At first she only glances at them from time to time, but in the last few minutes she's had the impression that things are speeding up, and she feels that at her age she can't afford to miss a second of it.

At the table on the left, a pretty young woman and an older woman in sunglasses are eating a chicken dish. They don't talk to one another, because the young woman feeds herself and her cocker spaniel, and the older one does nothing but talk to a man at the next table.

This man is at first sight nothing special. A sturdy fellow, about thirty-four years old, he's dressed in a new white American T-shirt with a circular machine-sewn badge on the chest, showing a crown above two fish-like shapes. Out of the T-shirt come red bronze forearms, a massive neck, and on top the face of a handsome char. He could be Italian, but there's not enough black in the features for a Procidian, and if he was a Neapolitan there would be those plump cheeks which droop. No: that handsome woman's face has a red-brown varnish, that's all wrong, and so are those scrupulous fingernails. The grain of his skin is so fine it looks as though it has been scoured clean by a high wind full of salt. Auburn hair, bobbed to show how thick it is, goes down to just below his cars.

An engineer, hydraulic engineering, from the Balkan states. Or a gymnast. One senses that in some way his profession is connected with water; it can be read in the tone of his flesh and in the exceptional
cleanness of his whole person. He sits lightly, as very fit people do who no longer feel the weight of their bodies.

He and the older woman have so much in common, their voices flow together. He has the mannerism of following his thoughts along with his eyes, so that he seems not to look at anything in particular, but to focus inwardly like an old-fashioned intellectual. Another surprise – he has meticulous good manners. His eating and drinking are done with the minimum of fuss. How curious to observe so much style in what is clearly an invincible body.

THE MANNERS
of the pretty young woman couldn't be worse. They're revolting. She's dressed as if she's just got up; a lilac robe with the hood thrown back. It's fastened deep down in the bosom, like a seductive dressing-gown, has trumpet sleeves and an embroidery of lilac beading on the shoulders. The colour suits her perfectly. On her brown plump throat is a chain with a shiny coin which swings and catches in the V of her wrap each time she leans backwards. Her hair is untidy; it's drab-dark with locks of white lamb's wool run through it in the current Italian fashion. She's about twenty, a woman of the world, and her small pretty arms with their white undersides play about all the time.

At this moment her fork is pointed to the heavens with a dripping hot piece of chicken skewered on it. She picks off the meat with her fingers, and dangles it over her dog. Then she laughs loudly and feeds the lump straight down into its jaws. No sooner done than she's back at her plate, getting another forkful for herself this time, and chewing it over enjoyably. And so it goes on; without a glance for anyone, she eats and drinks, wiping off her mouth on her knuckles and throwing bones on the ground, as though she was entirely alone there, and in any case didn't care a fig for anyone.

The older woman with the sunglasses is not unattractive. And with another low concentrated sentence the burnished man attends on her. He seems to need to browse over her face for the rights and wrongs of his argument.

She wants to smoke.

He's up like a monkey. That awkward gritty noise is an old flint lighter – and look at the protective brick wall he's made, it's like a fortress built over her. Off to his own table again, his sex controlled to the teeth. He tosses his head and drops back into the discussion exactly where they left it. He nags her on, they catch fire just as before, and burn furiously.

What on earth makes people talk away like that? Signora Danielli turns her ear, trying to get a few words into it…car insurance, yes of course, it's compulsory throughout Italy now, everyone knows about it. But is that really a good enough reason for him to frown, to look as deep as a dagger into himself, and to vibrate with emotion, all at the same time?… The ferry out of Naples on a rough day, and they
will
load on lorries of ten thousand kilos, when lorries over five thousand kilos are strictly forbidden. Sunglasses has suffered on account of the lorries, and the way the ferry lurches – both the talkers lurch as the ferry strikes the high seas. Well, says the burnished man, that is the fault of the syndicate; they run everything. Be philosophical! He's counselling her, with a hand in repose on each of his elastic knee-caps. He's content so long as he's free to live an uncomplicated open-air life. As an innocent low-brow, he takes a great breath of it on the spot – oh, what it must be like, what torture, to be enclosed indoors in a terrible box filled with stale air. Sunglasses has to admit that she, too, gets choked by the staleness of the air indoors. He's so satisfied by her answer, and finds her whole personality so congenial to him, that he swings his head off to the side as though he wants to relish the reply and have it to himself for a second longer. By chance this movement takes in the back view of a well-built German girl in a bikini who has just that second got up from the table behind and is now buying herself a Coca-Cola at the bar.

Sunglasses also finds that she can be choked by a bedroom full of stale air at night. He's even more delighted, and sweeps his head off in another pleasurable movement, as the German girl returns and so can now be seen from the front.

Isn't there something masculine about the way Sunglasses goes
at her cigarettes? Possibly that is what makes him feel at ease. She's so freedom-loving, a bold comrade, and as stylish as he is, puffing away there, and even swinging her head good-naturedly, to chew things over, as he does. She appears somehow to draw attention to some feminine aspects of the burnished man: too much quivering along the mouth line, it's so womanish to change it every second like that, for what would happen in a crisis? But still the tremendous flow of energy he's directing towards the table of the two women (and it never slackens),
that
is overwhelmingly masculine.

THERE ARE TWO OTHER CHAIRS
at their table, and a wicker bag on each. What a bad arrangement, for if one of the chairs was empty, why, the comrades could sit together and smoke together in harmony. Sunglasses is aware of this, and she hesitates for an instant with her arm raised – if she clears the chair beside herself, won't it seem as though she is inviting him to sit rather close? And that would be too obvious and might repel him and drive him off. Whereas if she clears the chair farther away, she is stating plainly that – that she needs the bag which is lying on it.

The curious part of it is that as she takes hold of the bag, both the lilac girl and the burnished man look away involuntarily, as if it was something they should not have seen.

Now that the set has been cleared, Signora Danielli looks at her watch; she behaves like a good director who has acted in many of her own films, and murmurs: ‘
Trenta secondi
.'

Thirty seconds. And the burnished man gives the impression that he has all day. He seems to slow down. Ah, he's bored, he's lost interest; he's
stopped talking
altogether.

Outside, over his shoulder, you can see that a launch has approached with an engine whose beat is buried in water. Driven by a man in white, it hangs from the beach by the nose, wallowing as the sea moves it from side to side, while it continues to throb.

There's a hiss – one of the waiters levers the metal cap off a bottle. It flies away and hits the ground under the legs of a spotted dog which is roaming there, and which starts back.

The burnished man is ready to leave. It's all at an end. He stands up, and takes a step forward, looking for a boy to bring his bill. No one comes, so he's forced to sit down again just before leaving – he sits down therefore in the nearest chair, which is now the one from which the bag was taken. He seems to be put out – no one likes waiting for a bill – and not entirely aware of what he is doing, because he takes a piece of bread from the bread basket as though he were still alone at his own table, filling in time. He ignores the women, frowns as usual, and goes on concentrating – on what? On his own thoughts, which have always interested him so much. Grudgingly he admits by his gestures that there are, after all, other people at the table with him. They must have moved in to his table when he got up to leave a moment ago. In any case, it is
his
table, it always has been, but courteously he offers both the women some bread from his basket so that they don't feet uneasy.

THE BURNISHED MAN
begins to talk. This time he speaks only to the lilac girl, to whom he has not previously said one word. His voice is pitched deeper. He is less of a philosopher, much less fond of the open air than he was. Sunglasses listens with interest, and waits patiently for her turn in the conversation, but it does not come. She wants to smoke; then let her smoke! No one is going to stop her. She sits where she has always sat, and although a minute or two ago she had a companion at her table and someone to talk to at the next, she now has two complete strangers, unknown persons, who ignore her and speak only to one another so rapidly that it becomes a dialect no one else can understand.

How frightful to be brushed off like that as if one was lower than the dirt. The most hardened would be sapped and dispirited. She's so low that if they were to give her one word, she could make a meal out of it, and pull herself up and move her limbs a little. It's so exhausting putting up a fight alone, the joints become rigid and fasten the body together in one position and there's no juice to unfasten it.

They will not rescue her, because they have forgotten she is
there. If she was to draw attention to herself, they would then see her, and might possibly speak to her: who knows?

Presently she makes a fierce effort: she rises to her feet and pushes back her chair. To her, it's like a bomb exploding. But no one has heard the sound. She sways, nearly off balance, and with her beach-bag walks away carefully. As though she has a scar on her face, she cannot quite manage her features, the shock seems to have given them a wrenching. But the further she removes herself from the two brutal young bodies at the table, the greater is her well-being.

She gets herself down to the beach. On the burning white sands she spreads an orange towel, and prepares herself for a sunbath and a siesta. Quite worn out by life, she drops off into unrefreshing middle-aged slumbers. As the ugliness leaves her face, it turns into one of those curious death masks which are taken from a musician or a poet who has been defeated by life and resurrected by death; smooth, peaceful faces, they become perfect examples of otherworldliness, and thus the noble face of Death itself.

And
they
? Signora Danielli watches them.

They talk with hunger and thirst; with a radiant thoughtlessness. Their bodies, already prepared by water and fire for such a meeting, sense the approaching moment of supreme carnal gratification. Beside this, nothing else matters.

They talk until they've talked themselves out. And then, each golden barbarian rests, with eyes passively turned away from the other, the feast to come. You don't look directly when you want something as much as that. They appear expressionless… almost idiotic…but above all, monstrous.