The Collected Stories of Colette (37 page)

As he appears, introduced by the plaintive harmony of the violins, and stops directly in the center of the stage, only the claque applaud him. But I would swear that if the music and the bravos were silenced, one would hear a discreet, strictly feminine murmuring: sighs of pleasure and desire, a rustling of dresses as one settles down and leans forward, and whisperings which would be the hissing of the
s’s
in his name.

He sings the waltzes demanded by the current vogue and gives a precise rendition of a sentimental ballad in which a heroic gigolette dies to save the young man who has made her a mother—all in a lovely, easy voice, which he uses carefully, for the smoke and dust of the music hall make a tenor’s glory brief. He is no less careful with his gestures and leaves it to his eyes to do the seducing. As he sings, his black-and-white eyes survey the boxes, slowly, confidently, veiled with sensual disdain, and then, in the same way, they caress the orchestra seats. Now and then, his gaze stops, fixes on a precise spot, where one is sure to see a woman lower her lorgnette and lean back suddenly in her seat, as if drawing away from an overly strong fire. It is only for an instant: the eyes have already resumed their professional stroll; regardless of any sentimental waltz, any love song, I would swear they seem oblivious to the fact that the tenor is singing . . .

Having acknowledged the applause, heels together, one hand resting on some bush made of flowering canvas and wood, he joins us in the wings and strolls around a bit. The clock has just struck ten, and the tenor yawns at the prospect of half an evening yet to kill. A chipped and frameless mirror hangs on the wall: the tenor looks at his teeth, at his clean-shaven chin powdered to mask the blue of his heavy beard. He checks the callboard, yawns again, and says out loud, to no one in particular: “Good house tonight.”

He coughs and adds: “I don’t know what this is I’ve had in my throat since this morning.”

The prostrate comedian comes up with some trite response, or maybe it’s the unappreciated
diseuse
who is about to distill the “Lovely Songs of France,” or maybe it’s me . . .

And still the tenor remains. He lingers in the sinister half-darkness, the strange silence, disturbed only by the orchestra, in the wings of a “caf’ conc’.” Occasionally, the young messenger boy hands him a letter, which he opens slowly with an indiscreet smile.

But I see no sign of haste, or excitement, and this “heartbreaker” never seems to behave like a man for whom someone is waiting . . . He is a very quiet colleague and I would swear him incapable of selling his charms except on stage. The thought never enters the tenor’s mind. Each glance in the mirror repays him: no matter what is said by the duenna, who lovingly calls him “gorgeous,” or by the puny comedian who mutters “pimp” as he passes by, I would call him neither Don Juan nor Alphonse, but Narcissus.

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

I hear her dancing, I cannot see her from the wings, for she dances on a closed set, one of those strange sets found only in a music hall. This one represents a unique place, painted in a putrid pink color with gold highlights, bringing together a mantelpiece loaded with candelabra, a staircase of blue-veined marble imitating a bar of soap, a Persian portico entwined with rare flowers, and two large blue vases, both empty. A curtain of glass beads closes off the back of the stage; that is where the “cosmopolitan, dancing quick-change artist” disappears and reappears, dressed each time in a new costume.

I see only her in the wings, where each of her disappearances takes her. I remain in the background behind the long table on which her costumes are laid out in neat little piles. Dresses, hats, wigs, promise the audience a new idol every two minutes; I make myself inconspicuous, so as not to bother her, but she seems totally unaware of my presence anyway . . .

The end of a cakewalk hurls back at me, from between the tinkling beaded curtain, a slender Greenaway doll in blue tulle, breathing heavily. With a rough slap to her forehead, the English doll tears off her hat and wig, as the faded blue lampshade serving as a skirt falls. Before I can get a good look at her face—violet makeup under the lunar light from a row of blue electric bulbs—a silent, black, kneeling specter is fastening the hooks of a Spanish dress. In the orchestra, the pizzicati and the Sevillian tambourines are quivering, and the dancer groans with impatience: quick, the black wig with the red rose, shawl across the shoulders, the castanets . . . With a leap, she opens the beaded curtains and I hear, mingled with the sounds from the orchestra, the rhythmic language of her clever feet . . .

Two minutes: here she is again. She’s breathing harder and she leans back for a moment against the wooden framework to take off her skirt with the chenille balls, head thrown back . . . The ritornell, longer than a tarantella, gives me time to look at her: it’s an Italian face, with somewhat thick but regular features and heavy eyelids, looking drunk with exhaustion. My eyes, by now accustomed to the darkness, can make out the slight brown shoulders, the bare breasts, young and tired, not quite filled out enough, above a frayed corset belt of gray twill . . . A Neapolitan fisherman’s castoffs—silk skirt, fringed sash, cap tilted over one ear—hide all that, as if by magic. The haggard face revives, and a Neapolitan fisherman shaking a tambourine steps out on stage.

During the tarantella, I count the number of costumes left on the table; the silent attendant, preparing the Egyptian dancing girl’s veils, follows my gaze and shakes her head . . . Almost instantly, the Neapolitan fisherman falls into her arms, breathless. The dancer’s forehead bears the sweat and pallor of someone being suffocated by his own heart. I want to say something, to help somehow, but there is something tragic about the two women’s haste: one must, despite the trembling hands and the heaving sides, one must go on to the end . . .

Helpless, I witness the final “transformations”: I see pass before me a Plains Indian, bristling with feathers, who has just had a lemon pressed into her mouth the way boxers do, then a reeling Egyptian dancing girl, who lets up an “ululu,” then a muzhik in a red shirt, sobbing nervously, weeping big round tears because her legs are going to give out on her, then finally, finally, there is nothing more left in front of me, in that cold blue moonlight, at that inert hour, except the frame for all those costumes: the body of an exhausted young girl, half naked against the back of the set, who, seeking a breath of air, lifts her breast, as St. Sebastian offered his, to the arrows.

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

“Why a juggler, Arsène? Will a juggler go over?”

“What can I do? You don’t want a singer, do you? Or a dancer? I have an empty spot in my revue. I have to fill it.”

“Yeh,” said Florie thoughtfully, “yeh . . .”

When she was preoccupied, she would revert to the familiar accent of the working-class district she grew up in.

“How’s that guy who fell, Arsène?”

“Jackie? He’s all right, if you can believe what they say at the hospital. Fractured kneecap, occupational hazard. It happens . . .”

Florie stroked her knee, her own leg’s precious joint, superstitiously.

“Well, I hope it never happens to me . . .”

“So,” Sutter continued, “I’ll give this juggler a try. His work is different. And he’ll always bring women around, seeing as how he’s a good-looking kid.”

“Do what you want,” said Florie indifferently.

Arsène Sutter and the ever-popular Florie, looking greenish and drowned beneath a blue running light, leaned against each other, squeezed between two flats in the wings. Director and star, shoulder to shoulder, exchanged few words, professionally accustomed as they were to resting on their feet and waiting. Sutter nevertheless turned toward Florie.

“You want to sit down?”

“On what?” asked Florie ironically.

Above them, atop a strange pyramid made of flounced skirts of rose muslin, sat a motionless figurante buried waist-deep in ruffles. She was waiting to portray the part of “Crinoline” in the tableau called “Fashions of the Second Empire.” Because of the congestion in the wings, she was hoisted up every night twelve feet in the air and stayed planted up there, isolated from the world, for twenty-five minutes.

“I’m not tired,” Florie added.

Sutter slipped her a look of affectionate and commercial regard. For close to thirty years, Florie had endured three hundred evening performances, two matinees on holidays, three months of rehearsals, costume changes, and sketches danced and sung without any lessening of either her vitality or her beauty.

“The juggler’s on next,” said Sutter.

“What’s his name, anyway?” asked Florie.

“Lola.”

“Lola? Another androgyne bit?”

“Hardly,” said Sutter. “Lola is a man’s name in Russian, or so he says.”

Florie burst out laughing. A blue spark alighted on each of her flawless teeth, and two blue sparks danced in her periwinkle eyes.

“She’s incredible,” thought Sutter admiringly. Thick makeup, sticky and smooth, revealed little of the real Florie. She held her head high, out of habit, and so as to smooth out the wrinkles in her neck. But up close, Sutter could make out, beneath the star’s ear and chin, the tendons lengthwise, the “necklaces” crosswise, a whole play of loosening skin and slackening muscles. The cheeks held up well, thanks to their high cheekbones and a magnificent rouge of gay, bright red, above which the eyelids were all lashes in diverging rays, a deftly muted purplish color, and the dark blue eyebrows, straight-edged and severely horizontal. Arsène Sutter placed a heavy and careful hand on Florie’s bare shoulder, as if he were touching a costly and unbeatable racehorse. The stage crew revolved around them discreetly, on old, worn-out shoes and frayed espadrilles, with the respect due a couple from whom could rain a shower of abuse or praise.

“Here’s Lola,” prompted Sutter. “He enters stage right and exits stage left.”

Florie followed the juggler through his act with serious scrutiny as he tossed a bizarre variety of light objects into the air, interspersed with heavy gold balls. Paper rose petals, plumes, little feathered arrows which soared up, then dived point first toward the ground, ribbons, and cellophane butterflies all floated slowly between the speeding balls and seemed tamed by the juggler’s hands.

“That’s really funny,” Florie decided.

Lola finished with a release of boomerangs and withdrew as he had entered, nonchalantly. He seemed neither surprised nor moved to hear himself called back five times. While acknowledging the applause, his eyes swept the house, from left to right, from right to left, giving the audience a chance to appreciate the fact that Lola had bright eyes, gray or green, beneath a head of jet-black hair whose waves resisted all creams and waxes. Altogether a very handsome boy, narrow here, broad there, whose attractiveness would have appeared suspect if in the wide gray eyes there did not burn a watchful gravity, the infallibly steady gaze his profession demanded.

Sutter consulted Florie.

“O.K.?”

“O.K.,” said Florie, stepping over the rubber-encased electric cables.

“And good-looking too, which doesn’t hurt any,” she added.

During the next day’s afternoon performance, the juggler made a mistake, and then exited stage left, almost knocking down Florie, who was standing behind the wing under the blue light.

“Oh, excuse me, Madame Florie . . . I just came from doing my act in Brussels, where I had to enter and exit on the same side, so . . .”

“They’re calling for you,” interrupted Florie. “Go take a bow.”

When the curtains closed again, Florie had left her post. On the summit of the edifice of rose muslin, the stylistic figurante considered all things human with the serenity of a sad angel, and the assistant stage manager yelled out: “Madame Florie, you’re on!” just as the juggler was walking off.