The Collected Stories of Colette (36 page)

[
Translated by Anne-Marie Callimachi
]

For the first twelve months of the war, it had been a daily
tour de force
, for her and for us, to keep her alive, a kind of bitter game, a challenge to unhappy fate. She was so pretty that all she would have had to do for a living, good heavens, was to sit back and do nothing . . . But it was precisely this beauty, and then her standing as a little lady whose boyfriend had been killed soon after the outbreak of the war in 1914, which moved us to pity. Our intention was to look after her thin halo for her, to provide her, during her widowhood, first with bread, and then with that luxury called chastity.

A more difficult task than it might seem, for we were dealing with the peculiar sensitivity of a sentimental, working-class suburban girl and an honest businesswoman. Josette admitted that everything can be bought and sold, even a revolted breast, even an unfeeling mouth. But a gift pure and simple made her suddenly embarrassed and flushed with wounded pride.

“No, thank you, really, I don’t need . . . No, we disagree about the little bill for the jacket, I still owed you fifty sous from last week.”

To keep her from wasting away or turning gloomily back to a traffic for which she felt nothing but disgust beforehand, we were forced to make her sew, iron, cover lampshades . . .

She did not want to work anywhere but home, in the middle of nowhere, in a “room with storage closet,” furnished mainly with photographs, where, under the sad, hygienic smell of coarse soap, there hung the distinctive scent of a dark-haired, fair-skinned little girl.

During the winter of 1914, she would arrive gaily, bringing her work with her. “It’s just me! Don’t let me bother you!”

A toque, or I don’t know what, a hobble skirt which clipped her impatient steps, narrow button boots—for her little feet danced ironically in our shoes—and the shabby fur neckpiece she preferred—more “chic”—to the coat one of us had offered her. And gloves!—but of course! but always!—gloves. Her smooth beauty humbled her poverty. I have never encountered anything smoother than this child, with her sleek black hair, never curled or waved, glued to her smooth temples with an artist’s hand, and gleaming like a precious wood anointed with fine oil. Her pure and prominent eyes, her supple cheeks, her mouth and chin seemed to say to everyone: “See how, with almost no curliness, we’re able to charm.”

“I’ve brought you back the little skirt,” explained Josette. “I didn’t edge the bottom, it would have made it stronger, but it looks common. Just because there’s a war on, that’s no reason to look common, now, is it? And as for the blouse you wanted me to cut out of the evening coat, do you know what I found when I took the stitches out? A hem that big! Enough to make a big sailor collar to match!”

She would beam with joy to be kept busy and able to pay for herself, not to be a burden to anyone. She had always “had lunch before coming,” and we had to resort to subterfuge to get her to take half a pound of chocolates.

“Josette, someone gave me these chocolates and I don’t trust them. They must be drugged . . . Be an angel, try them and then tell me if they made you ill.”

She accepted a sack of coal from Pierre Wolff, because I told her that the playwright had noticed her in a crowd scene at the Folies and still had a haunting memory of her.

She almost never spoke about her “young friend,” an obscure actor killed by the enemy. But now and then she would pore over the pictures in the illustrated magazines from 1913.

“Remember that revue? It was well staged, no doubt about it . . . And can you believe my luck? The author was supposed to give me a small part in his next revue! Well, his next revue is still a long way off!”

One theater, however, half opened; then two theaters, ten theaters, and movie houses, too. Josette could not keep still any longer!

“There’s the Gobelins-Montrouge-Montparnasse, which is going to do a season of plays, did you know? And then there’s Moncey, which wants to put on a season of operettas, and Levallois too . . . Only, the problem is finding out if the artists will have the métro to take home afterward. At Levallois, there won’t be a métro or a tram, natch . . .”

She disappeared, for three weeks, and reappeared thinner, with a cold, and quite proud.

“Madame, I got an engagement!
Miss Hellyett
three times a week, I’ll play one of the guides and maybe even another small part, too! Three times during the week and twice on Sundays!”

“How much are you getting?”

She lowered her eyes. “Well, you know,
they’re
taking advantage because of the war . . . I get three francs fifty for every day of performance. The other days, of course, we’re not paid . . . And the show changes every two weeks, so we’re rehearsing every day. I just wanted to explain to you why I haven’t had time to finish the little bloomers for you.”

“There’s no hurry . . . And how are you getting home at night?”

She laughed. “Hoofing it, natch. An hour and a half’s walk. I’ll wear out more shoes than tires. But they told me I might get a part in
Les Mousquetaires au couvent
 . . .”

How could we hold her back? She was aglow with the freedom, energy, fatigue, and fever of life in the theater . . . She went away, for months . . .

In August 1916, I was buying a child’s toy in one of those charity bazaars where, along with bags of coffee, they sell necklaces made of dyed wooden beads, raffia baskets, and woolens, and I was waiting for an elegant customer to yield me her place at the counter.

“That there, and that one, yes, the blue sweater, and four packets of coffee, too,” she said. “That makes four separate packages, military parcels; I’ll write down the addresses for you, Mademoiselle. I’ll be taking the little baskets with me in my car . . .”

“In your car, Josette!”

“Oh, Madame! . . . What a surprise! It’s you I’m going to take with me in my car . . . Oh, yes, I am, just for a minute, just long enough to take you home.”

She had not warned me that “her” car already contained a slightly graying and well-groomed man, to whom she issued the command to fold down one of the jump seats—for himself. She sat next to me and spoke with a forced air of having forgotten about the man. He looked at her like a slave, but Josette’s black eyes did not fix on him even once. She took the glove off one of her hands, which sparkled with jeweled rings; the man trapped the fluttering hand as it passed by him and gave it a long kiss. She did not pull it away from him, but she closed her eyes and opened them again only when he had sat back up.

After a short silence, the car drove up to my house and Josette gave the man an order: “Get out, then, can’t you see your seat is blocking the lady’s way?”

He was quick to obey, excused himself, and Josette, as she left me, promised to come see me. “As soon as rehearsals at the Edouard VII are over, I’ll come by.”

She came a few days later, dressed all in lawn and “summer furs,” with a single strand of pearls around her neck, and dangling a moiré handbag set with brilliants. But she hadn’t changed her coiffure at all, and her hair, unwaved and uncurled, still clung to her temples like a Japanese child’s.

“My little Josette, I don’t need to ask what’s happened to you.”

She shook her head. “Every disaster possible! I’ve fallen into the ranks of the nouveaux riches.”

“It looks that way. Are you in dried beans or projectiles?”

“Me? I’m not in anything—him . . . oh, he can buy and sell anything—what’s it to me, he doesn’t interest me.”

“Listen, for a war supplier, he’s very nice.”

“Yes, he is very nice. Despite everything, he’s very nice.”

Without really seeing them, she was contemplating her beautiful white suede shoes, and her face, though lit up by pearls, snow-white lawn, pale fur, and silk, seemed to have lost its glow.

“If I understand you correctly, Josette, you miss the days when . . .”

“Not at all,” she interrupted sharply. “You can’t believe that! Why should I miss the days when I was cold, when I didn’t have enough to eat, when I was running around in the filth and the snow, when without you and these ladies I’d’ve fallen ill or worse? Not at all. I’m no fool, I like what’s good. Since I don’t have anyone at the front anymore, except for a few young friends I’m looking after in Paul’s memory, why shouldn’t I be the lady with the ear and the necklace, instead of the woman downstairs? Fair is fair. Doing as much of what I do, I think I’m worth all the blue foxes and tulle chemises . . . That’s the least of it, since compared with that man, whom you’ve seen, I’m the victim!”

I said nothing. She sensed, acutely, that her words were driving me away from her and she burst out: “Madame, Madame, you don’t know . . . You think bad of me . . . I swear to you, Madame . . .”

She was near tears but controlled herself. “You saw him, Madame. You don’t have to be a genius to realize there’s not a better man than him. He is a good man. He’s refined and well-groomed, everything—which doesn’t change the fact that I’m the victim.”

“But why, my dear?”

“Why? Simply because I don’t love him and I never will love him, Madame! If he were ugly and disgusting and stingy, I could console myself, I could tell myself, ‘It’s perfectly natural I can’t stand the sight of him. He buys me, I loathe him—everything’s out in the open.’ But with this man, Madame, whom I don’t love because I don’t love him, my God, the things I could do to myself fretting over him . . .”

She was quiet a moment, searching for words, examples!

“Look, he gave me this ring the day before yesterday. And in such a nice way! So I started to cry . . . He called me ‘My sensitive little girl!’ and I cried thinking of the pleasure it would have given me to get a ring from a man I could love; it made me so furious I could have bitten him . . .”

“What a child you are, Josette.”

She struck the arm of the chair in irritation. “No, Madame, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong! One isn’t that much of a child, in Paris, at twenty-five. I know what love is, I’ve been through it. I have a very loving nature, even if it doesn’t show. That’s what makes me think of myself as his victim, and I’m jealous of him, so jealous it makes me sick.”

“Jealous?”

“Yes, envious, I envy everything he has, everything I can’t have, since he’s the one who’s in love. The other day at rehearsal the little Peloux girl said to me, ‘Your friend’s got a nice mouth, he must kiss pretty well.’ ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I say to her. And it’s true, I wouldn’t know. It’s not for me to know. It’s for the woman who finds him to her liking. I’ll die without ever knowing whether he kisses good or bad, if he makes love good or bad. When he kisses me, my mouth becomes like . . . like . . . nothing. It’s dead, it doesn’t feel anything. My body either. But him, with what little I give him—you should see his face, his eyes . . . Oh, it’s a thousand times more than all I get! Ten thousand times more!

“. . . So, of course, my nerves . . . I end up getting mean. I take my revenge, I’m cruel to him. I was so mean to him once that he cried. That was the last straw! I didn’t say another word to him, I might have gone too far. Because I know what it’s like to have someone in your life who only has to say one word to put you in heaven or hell! I’m that person for him. He has everything, Madame, he has everything. And there’s nothing he can do for me, nothing—not even make me unhappy!”

She burst into sobs, mixing her vehement tears with, “Tell me, Madame, am I wrong? Tell me . . .” But I could find nothing—and I’ve found nothing since—to say to her.

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

He is beautiful. He dresses in the fashionable colors of the day: black and white. White shirtfront and black tuxedo, a gardenia in his lapel. A white face with regular features, Roman nose, black hair reflecting the stagelights, and large, tranquil black pupils set in the huge whites of his eyes. His mouth, set off by rich, dark makeup, his teeth, his hair, and his tremendous eyes, all shine with a slick flash, as if made lustrous by some rare oil. He is beautiful.