The Collected Stories of Colette (24 page)

Once the curtain has fallen we separate hastily, somehow ashamed of being the wretched, steaming flock we are. We hurry on down to the street, yearning for the dry dusty evening, toward the illusion of coolness shed by the already high-riding moon, fully visible, yet warm and lusterless.

In the first act of the play in which we are touring he takes the part of a profligate; whereas, in the third, he is transformed by a red wig and a neat white apron into a waiter.

When the time comes to catch our train, at dawn or late at night—for this is a strenuous tour, playing thirty-three towns in thirty-three days—he never fails to arrive late and in a rush, so that all I knew of him was a slim figure with his overcoat flying, agitated beyond measure by his race against time. The manager and my companions would wave their arms and shout at him.

“Come on, Gonzalez, for God’s sake! One of these days you’ll miss it for good!”

He would float into the gaping second-class carriage as on the wings of a whirlwind, so that I never had time to see his face.

Then, the other day, at the station at Nimes, when I suddenly exclaimed, “There’s a scent of hyacinths! Who smells of hyacinths?,” with a polite, restrained little gesture he turned to offer me the nosegay that adorned his buttonhole.

Since that day I have taken more notice of him, and like the others, I raise my arms in despair when he arrives late, shouting in chorus: “Come on, Gonzalez, for God’s sake!” and I even recognize his face.

A sallow little face, so biliously pale that one imagines his foundation makeup has penetrated his skin. A face all bumps and hollows, cheekbones protruding above deep-sunk cheeks, the eyebrows too thick, the mouth thin above an obstinate chin.

But why, I wonder, does he never remove his overcoat, which is faded near the shoulders from last year’s sun and rain? A glance at his shoes provides the answer. Gonzalez exposes to the daylight, and my inspection, unspeakably shoddy footwear, the cracks and crevices of their once-gleaming patent leather only aggravated by the cheap polish of third-rate inns. His shoes lead my thoughts to his trousers, ever mysterious under the ample folds of his overcoat, and to his shirt collar, mercifully all but hidden behind an amazing black cravat wound thrice around his neck.

His clumsily mended cotton gloves refute any illusion I may have that this little comedian affects the “showing-off indifference” of a young bohemian, for they spell destitution. Once again I am confronted with genuine poverty. When, if ever, shall I cease to find it? Now I pay real attention to this boy, wait for his breathless arrival, notice that he does not smoke, carries no umbrella, that his suitcase is falling to pieces, and that he discreetly watches for the moment when he can pick up the daily paper after I have read it through and dropped it.

Warned by some bashful instinct, he in his turn now takes notice of me. He openly smiles at me, and presses in his warm skinny hand the fingers I extend toward him; yet he is careful, a moment later, to vanish and make himself as scarce as possible. He never joins us when we lunch in station buffets, and I cannot remember having seen Gonzalez at the same table as the less moneyed of our good companions for the “light meal at one franc fifty.” Once, he performed his disappearing act at Tarascon, while we were devouring an omelet cooked in oil, tepid veal, and colorless chicken. He came back when the acorn-flavored coffee was being served; he came back spare, gay, carefree—“I’ve been to have a look at the neighborhood”—a pink carnation in his mouth and croissant crumbs in the folds of his clothes.

I confess I’m worried about this boy; I don’t dare to make further inquiries. I set childish traps for him.

“Will you have some coffee, Gonzalez?”

“Thanks, but it’s forbidden me. Nerves . . . you know.”

“That’s not nice of you! The round’s on me today. You surely won’t be the only one to refuse?”

“Oh, well, if you make it a question of comradeship . . .”

Another day, at Lourdes, I bought two dozen little hot sausages.

“Come on, children, don’t let them get cold! Buck up, Gonzalez, or you’ll miss the lot! Snatch those two quickly, before Hautefeuille pounces on them: he’s quite fat enough as it is.”

I watched him eat, with the sneaking curiosity of one expecting that some movement on his part, a famished sigh, might betray his ill-satisfied hunger. Finally, I decided to put a casual question to our manager.

“How much is Martineau getting nowadays? And that thinggummy over there, young Gonzalez?”

“Martineau is paid fifteen francs, because he plays in the curtain raiser as well as the main piece. Gonzalez gets only twelve francs a night—we’re not on a Grand Duke’s tour!”

Twelve francs . . . Let’s see how I reckon his expenses! He sleeps in joints at one-fifty to two francs per night. Ten percent for valeting, a problematical
café-au-lait
, but count two meals at two-fifty for the price of one. Let’s add another franc and a half for trams and buses . . . plus the gentleman’s flowered buttonholes! Well then, this young man can live within it, he can exist quite comfortably. I felt relieved and in the evening, during the interval, I shook his hand as if he’d just inherited a fortune! Taking courage from the semidarkness and the fact that our faces were disguised by makeup, he allowed an anxious cry to escape his lips.

“It’s drawing to a close, eh! Only thirteen more days! Oh, for a tour that would last a whole lifetime! How I dream of it!”

“You like your work as much as that?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “My work, my work! Naturally, I rather like it, but it’s given me plenty of worries for my run . . . Besides, thirty-three days, it’s short . . .”

“What d’you mean, short?”

“Short for what I want to do! Now, listen . . .”

He suddenly sat down beside me, on a dusty garden bench used for the last act, began to talk, began feverishly to tell me the story of his life.

“Now listen . . . I can really talk to you, can’t I? You’ve been kind . . . a real good companion to me. I have to take back two hundred francs.”

“Take back where?”

“To Paris . . . if I want to eat during the coming month, and the one after. I can’t face going through all that I’ve endured a second time, my health won’t stand it.”

“You’ve been ill?”

“Ill, if you like. Being broke is a damned illness.”

With a professional gesture he ran his forefingers along his false mustache, which is in the habit of getting unstuck, and averted his blue-rimmed sunken eyes.

“There’s no shame in admitting it. I played the fool, left my father, who is a bookbinder, to get into the theater. That was two years ago. My father cursed me, then . . .”

“What d’you mean? Your father has . . .”

“. . . Cursed me,” Gonzalez repeated, with theatrical simplicity. “Cursed me, gave me a proper cursing. I found work with the Grenelleles-Gobelins company. That’s when I started not eating enough. When summer came, I hadn’t a sou in my pocket. For six months I lived on the twenty-five francs a month an aunt of mine let me have . . . secretly.”

“Good Lord! Twenty-five francs! How did you manage?”

He laughed, in a rather mad way, gazing straight in front of him.

“I don’t know. It was plain murder, I don’t know now how I got along. I no longer remember very clearly. My mind went blank. I remember I had a suit, one shirt, one collar, no change of anything . . . The rest I’ve forgotten.”

He was silent for a moment while he extended both legs with care, to ease his already threadbare trousers over his knees.

“Then after that I had a few weeks in the
Fantaisies Parisiennes
, at the Comédie Mondaine. But the going was bad. You need a stomach for that and I no longer have one. The pay’s so miserably small. I’ve got no name, no clothes, no craft outside the theater, no savings. I can’t see myself making old bones!”

He laughed again, just as the spotlight came on, throwing into sharp relief his fleshless head, his hard cheekbones, the dark sockets of his eyes, and the too-wide slit of his mouth, for the lips were swallowed up by the contraction of his laughter.

“So, you see, then, I have to take back two hundred and twenty francs. With that sum I’m safe for two months at least. This tour was like winning a prize in a lottery, I can tell you . . . Have I bored you stiff with my stories?”

I had no time to answer him: the stage bell started to ring above our heads, and Gonzalez, incurably late, fluttered off to his dressing room with all the lightness of a dead leaf, with the airy macabre grace of a young skeleton, dancing.

Because she is fair-haired and young, a rather skinny girl with huge blue eyes, she fulfills exactly all the requirements we expect of a “little English dancer.” She speaks some French, with all the vigor of a young duckling, and to articulate these few words of our language she expends a useless energy which brings a flush to her cheeks and makes her eyes sparkle.

When she emerges from the dressing room she shares with her companions next to mine, and walks down toward the stage, ready made-up and in costume, I can’t distinguish her from the other girls, for she strives, as is most fitting, to be just an impersonal and attractive little English dancer in a revue! When the first girl comes out, followed by the second, and the third, then the others up to the ninth, they all greet me, as they pass, with the same happy smile, a similar nod of the head that sets their pinkish-blond false curls bobbing in the same way. The nine faces are painted with identical makeup, cleverly tinted with mauve around the eyes, while the lids are burdened, on each of their lashes, with such a heavy touch of mascara that it is impossible to distinguish the true color of the pupil.

But when they leave, at ten past midnight, having hastily wiped their cheeks with the corner of a towel and repowdered them chalky white, their eyes still barbarously enlarged, or when they come to rehearse in the afternoon, punctually at one o’clock, I immediately recognize little Gloria, a genuine blonde, with two puffs of frizzy hair tied around the temples with a strip of black velvet inside her hideous hat like a bird nesting in an old basket. Her upper lip protrudes a little from two pointed canines, and this makes her look, in repose, as if she were sucking a white sugared almond.

I don’t know why I noticed her. She is not as pretty as Daisy, that dark-haired demon, always in tears or in a rage, who dances with devilish gusto and then escapes to the top of the staircase, whence she spits out objectionable English expletives. She is less attractive than the awful Edith, who exaggerates her accent to raise a laugh and, with assumed innocence, utters French indecencies, well aware of their meaning.

Yet Gloria, who is dancing for the first time in France, compels my attention. She is sweet and touching, in an anonymous way. She has never called the ballet master “damned fool,” and her name never appears on the board where the list of fines are posted. Admittedly, she shrieks when she runs up or down the two flights of steps leading to the stage; but she shrieks like the others, instinctively, and because a bunch of English girls, who change their costumes four times between nine o’clock and midnight, cannot run up and down staircases without yelling like Red Indians or singing inordinately loud. Gloria, therefore, lets her comically youthful falsetto mingle with the inevitable hubbub and she equally well holds her own in the girls’ common dressing room, separated from mine by a rickety wooden partition.

These traveling showgirls have turned their rectangular closet into a real gipsy encampment. Red and black cosmetic pencils roll all over their makeup table, covered at one end with brown paper and at the other with a tattered old towel. The slightest draft would blow away the postcards fastened to the walls with pins stuck in at a slant. The jar of rouge, the Leichner eyebrow pencil, the woolen powder puff, could all be carried away in a knotted handkerchief, and these little girls, off and away in a couple of months, will leave fewer traces of their passage here than would a troop of wandering Romanies, whose halting place is marked by round patches of singed grass and the flaky ashes of fires kindled with stolen wood.