The Collected Stories of Colette (101 page)

I took into the dining room one of those stout notebooks in which we mean to write down what positively must not be put off or forgotten. I meant to start “bullying the workmen” the very next day. Lucie ladled me out a large bowl of fish soup with spaghetti floating in it and inquired whether I had anything against “eggs . . . you know, dropped in the dish and the cheese put on top” and half a guinea fowl before the
crème caramel
.

By the end of dinner, all I had entered in the new notebook was “Buy a folding rule.” But I had done honor to the excellent meal. My dog, stimulated by it, sparkled with gaiety. She smiled at Madame Ruby, alone at her table at the far end of the room, and pretended to ignore the presence of Monsieur Daste. Either the young mother or the old daughter was coughing behind me. The two athletic boys were overcome by the weariness which rewarded their energetic effort. “Just think,” Lucie confided to me, “they’ve walked right around the headland. Twenty miles, they’ve done!” From where I sat, I could smell the eau de Cologne of which they both reeked. Planning to shorten my stay, I wrote in the big notebook: “Buy a small notebook.”

“You is seen the drawing room, Madame Colette?”

“Not yet, Madame Ruby. But tonight, I have to admit that . . .”

“You’d like Lucie to bring you a hot drink in the drawing room?”

I gave in, especially as Madame Ruby was already holding my dear little yellow dog under her arm and Pati was surreptitiously licking her ear, hoping I did not notice. The drawing room looked out on the sea and contained an upright piano, cane furniture, and comfortable imitations of English armchairs. Remembering that my room was almost next door, I eyed the piano apprehensively. Madame Ruby winked.

“You likes music?”

Her quick deft hands lifted the lid of the piano, opened its front, and disclosed bottles and cocktail shakers.

“My idea. I did it all by myself. Gutted the piano like a chicken. You likes some drink? No?”

She poured herself out a glass of brandy and swallowed it carelessly, as if in a hurry. Lucie brought me one of those
tisanes
which will never convince me that they deserve their reputation for being soothing or digestive.

“Where is Madame Suzanne?” Madame Ruby asked Lucie in a restrained voice.

“Madame Suzanne is finishing the
boef à la mode
for tomorrow. She’s just straining out the juice.”

“O.K. Leave the tray. And give me an ashtray. You is too much bits of hair on your neck, my girl!”

Her big, energetic hand brushed the black bush of hair which frizzed on Lucie’s nape. The girl trembled, nearly knocked over my full cup, and hurried out of the room.

Far from avoiding my look, Madame Ruby’s own took on a victorious malice which drew attention to Lucie’s distress so indiscreetly that, for the moment, I ceased to find the boyish woman sympathetic. I am eccentric enough to be repelled when love, whether abnormal or normal, imposes itself on the onlooker’s attention or imagination. Madame Ruby was wise enough not to insist further and went over to the two worn-out boys to ask them if they wanted a liqueur. Her manly ease must have terrified them, for they beat a hasty retreat after having asked whether they could do “a spot of canoeing” the next day.

“Canoe? . . . I told them: ‘We is not a Suicides’ Club here!’”

She lifted the net curtain from the black windowpane. But in the darkness, only the bark of the mulberry trees and their sparse, luminously green new leaves showed in the beam of light from the room.

“By the way, Madame Ruby . . . When you’re shopping tomorrow, will you go to Sixte’s and get us some more breakfast cups? The same kind, the red-and-white ones.”

Madame Suzanne was behind us, still hot from coping with the dinner and the
boeuf à la mode
, but neat, dressed in white linen, freshly powdered, and smelling almost too good. I found her pleasing from head to foot. She felt my cordiality and returned me smile for smile.

“Are you having a good rest, Madame Colette? I’m almost invisible, you know. Tomorrow I shan’t have quite so much to do: my beef stew is in the cellar and the noodle paste’s in a cool place, wrapped up in a cloth. Madame Ruby, you must bring me back twelve cups and saucers; that clumsy fool of a Lucie has brought off a double again. For an idiot, there’s no one to touch that girl! Now,
you
 . . . have you been at the brandy? Not more than one glass, I hope.”

As she spoke, she searched Madame Ruby’s face. But the latter kept her head slightly downcast and her gray eyes half closed to avoid the accusing glance. Suddenly the suspicious one gave up and sat down heavily.

“You’re just an old soak . . . Oh, my legs!”

“You is needing rest,” suggested Madame Ruby.

“Easy enough to say. My best kitchen maid’s coming back tomorrow,” explained Madame Suzanne. “After tomorrow I’m a lady of leisure.”

She yawned and stretched.

“At this time of night, I’ve no thought beyond my bath and my bed. Madame Ruby, will you try and shut the rabbit in? The parakeets are all behind the screen and covered up. Are you taking Slough in with you? Oh, and then tomorrow morning, while I think of it . . .”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” broke in Madame Ruby, almost beside herself. “Go to bed.”

“Really, who do you think you’re talking to?”

Madame Suzanne wished us good night with offended dignity. I let the little dog out in the courtyard for a minute while Madame Ruby whistled in vain for Baptiste the rabbit. The night was murmurous and warmer than the day. Three or four lighted windows, the clouded sky patched here and there with stars, the cry of some night bird over this unfamiliar place made my throat tighten with anguish. It was an anguish without depth; a longing to weep which I could master as soon as I felt it rise. I was glad of it because it proved that I could still savor the special taste of loneliness.

The next morning, there was a fine drizzle. Under her folded blanket, Pati lay awake and motionless. Her wide-open eyes said, “I know it’s raining. There’s nothing to hurry for.” Through my open window I could feel the dampness, which I find friendly, and I could hear the soft chatter of the parakeets. Their aviary was luxuriously mounted on wheels and had been placed under the shelter of the tiled roof.

Promptly renouncing the idea of “bullying” the workmen who, forty miles away, were digging my soil, painting my wall, and installing my septic tank, I rang for my coffee and slipped on my dressing gown.

Out in the courtyard, Madame Ruby, wearing a mackintosh, gloves, and a little white cap, was loading hampers and empty bottles into her car. She was agile, without an ounce of superfluous flesh. The beautiful, ambiguous rhythm of her movements and the sexless strength which directed them inclined me to excuse her gesture of the night before. Could I have admitted that a man might desire Miss Cooney? Would I have thought it decent for Miss Cooney to fall in love with a man?

The half-bred greyhound took its place beside her. Just as the rough, battered old car was starting up, Monsieur Daste ran up in his dressing gown and gave Madame Ruby his letters to post. When she had gone, he crossed the courtyard cautiously, wrinkling up his nose under the rain. He lost one of his slippers and shook his bare foot in a comic, old-maidish way. Lucie, who had just come in behind my back, saw me laughing.

“Monsieur Daste doesn’t like the rain, does he, Lucie?”

“No, he simply can’t stand it. Good morning, Madame. When it’s raining, he stays indoors. He plays
belote
with those two ladies and he always wins. Will Madame have her breakfast in bed or at the table?”

“I’d rather have it at the table.”

She pushed my books and papers to one side and arranged the coffeepot and its satellites. She was very gentle and very concentrated as she slowly and carefully performed these duties. Her skin was smooth and amber-colored, and her eyelashes, like her hair, thick and curling. She seemed to be rather timid. By the side of the big cup she laid a rain-wet rose.

“What a pretty rose! Thank you, Lucie.”

“It’s not me, it’s Madame Ruby.”

She blushed fierily, not daring to raise her eyes. I pitied her secretly for being the victim of a disturbance which she must find surprising and vaguely painful.

The flying, almost invisible rain, so much more springlike than yesterday’s parched sunshine, beckoned me outdoors. My loyal dog was willing to admit that this fine, powdery rain not only did not wet one but made smells more exciting and was propitious to sneezing.

Under the eaves, Monsieur Daste was taking a chilly little walk. Shivering slightly, he was walking thirty paces to and fro without putting a foot outside the narrow dry strip.

“It’s raining!” he shouted at me as if I were deaf.

“But so little . . .”

I stopped close behind him to admire the sheltered parakeets with their tiny, thoughtful foreheads and their wide-set eyes. To my great surprise, they had all fallen silent.

“Are they as frightened of rain as all that?”

“No,” said Monsieur Daste. “It’s because I’m here. You don’t believe me?”

He went closer to the cage. Some of the parakeets flew away and pressed themselves against the bars.

“Whatever have you done to them?”

“Nothing.”

He was laughing all over his face and enjoying my astonishment.

“
Nothing?
”

“Absolutely nothing. That’s just what’s so interesting.”

“Then you must go away.”

“Not till it stops raining. Look at that one on the lowest perch.”

He slid his manicured forefinger between two bars of the aviary and there was a great fluttering of wings inside.

“Which? There are three all alike.”

“Alike to you, perhaps. But not to me. I can pick it out at once. It’s the most cowardly one.”

One of the parakeets—I think it was the one he was pointing at—gave a scream. Almost involuntarily, I hit Monsieur Daste on the arm and he stepped back, shaking his hand. He was astonished, but decided to laugh.

“You’ve only got to leave those parakeets in peace,” I said angrily. “Stop tormenting them.”

His gaze wandered from the birds to me and back again. I could read nothing in that pleasant neutral face, as far removed from ugliness as it was from beauty, but unresentful surprise and a gaiety that I found extremely ill timed.

“I’m not tormenting them,” he protested. “But they know me.”

“So does the dog,” I thought, seeing Pati’s hackles stiffen all along her back. The idea that I might have to spend three weeks in the company of a maniac, possibly an enemy of all animals, profoundly depressed me. At that very moment, Monsieur Daste produced his “huisipisi” for Pati’s benefit. She attacked him with all her might and he fled with a comic agility, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up. I stood perfectly still while she chased him around me. But the chase turned into a game and when Monsieur Daste stopped, out of breath, the dog counted the truce as a victory. She insisted on my congratulating her and looked graciously on her adversary.

During the following days she accepted that irritating “huisipisi” as the signal for a game. But she growled when Monsieur Daste pointed at her or teased her with that tapering, aggressive, minatory forefinger. Comfortably wedged on my forearm with her chest expanded and her eyes bulging, she sniffed the soft dampness with delight.

“She looks like an owl,” said Monsieur Daste dreamily.

“Do you frighten owls too?”

To protest his innocence more effectively, Monsieur Daste drew his white, naked hands out of his pockets.

“Good heavens, no, Madame! They interest me . . . certainly they interest me. But . . . I keep away. I must admit I keep well away from them.”

He hunched his shoulders up to his ears and scrutinized the sky, where a diffused yellow glow and pale blue patches that promised fine weather were beginning to appear between the clouds. I went off to explore with my dog.

The well-being that rewards me when I exchange my town flat for a hotel does not last very long. Not only do the obligation to work and my usual everyday worries soon take the edge off it but I know all too well the dangers of hotel life. Unless that drifting, irresponsible existence is either completely carefree or organized according to a strict timetable, it always tends to become demoralizing. The main reason for this is that people who really mean nothing to us acquire an artificial importance. At Bella-Vista I had no choice except between the seclusion of a convalescent and the sociability of a passenger on a liner. Naturally, I chose the sociability. I was all the more inclined for it after my first visit to the little house I had bought. I returned from it so disillusioned about landed property that I went and confided my disappointment to Madame Suzanne. I made no secret of the fact that I would be only too glad to sell my bit of land again. She listened earnestly and asked me detailed questions.

“How many square yards did you say you had?”

“Square yards? It comes to five acres. Very nearly.”

“But come, that’s quite a decent size! What’s wrong with it, then?”

“Oh, everything! You should see the state it’s in!”

“How many rooms?”

“Five, if you count the kitchen.”

“Count it. It sounds more impressive. And you’ve got the sea?”

“It’s practically
in
it.”

She pushed away her account book and rubbed her polished nails on her palm.

“In your place, I’d . . . But I’m not in your place.”

“Do say what you were going to say, Madame Suzanne.”

“
I
should see it as a place where people could stop off. An exclusive little snack bar, a snug little dance floor under the pines. With your name, why, my dear, it’s a gold mine!”

“Madame Suzanne, it’s not gold I’m wanting. What I want is a little house and some peace.”