The Collected Stories of Colette (47 page)

“The flu’s going around,” continued Madame de la Hournerie uneasily . . . “You be careful in the kitchen . . . Henrietta was complaining of aches this morning. Take this soufflé away, the shrimp are dried up . . . You don’t seem to have your mind on your work tonight . . .”

“It
is
flu season,” said the same uncertain voice.

But Marien’s black eyes, merciless and truthful, cried out between each course to Madame de la Hournerie: “No, it’s not the flu! It’s this shocking forehead, this pale steppe, this too-small skull, this heavy fruit: an old woman’s head stripped of foliage where I was used to seeing it blossom! It’s the indignation I feel as an honest thief of a servant, but one attached to the domicile I exploit and care for; it’s the stupefaction of a former little valet who served a beautiful mistress, of a little cowherd devoted to a dazzling memory. It’s just not done, good God, it’s just not done!”

The chocolate trifle, swimming in its thick vanilla cream, was hardly more successful than the lamb chop or the artichoke hearts. Completely exasperated, Madame de la Hournerie wanted to lash out against the importunate and silent disapprobation; a trace of red powder left on the chasing of a fork, a lampshade singed at the edges, gave her the opportunity. But paralyzed by cowardice before she could utter the words of reprimand, she left the table, ordering sharply, “You will send Henrietta up to me,” then ran to her bedroom and sat down in front of the triple mirror . . .

“Is that you, Henrietta? Tomorrow morning, as early as possible, you will telephone Anthelme, yes, the hairdresser . . . I want an appointment before lunch, do you hear? Before lunch.”

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

The singing of a bird insinuated itself, with a grotesque sweetness, into the dream—trains in the night, revolving platforms, and red signal lights—which was bouncing Pierre Lasnier along on poorly tied rails. The pearly song contended with the whistling of locomotives and, victorious, woke the sleeper, lying on his back, in whose half-open eyes was the image, set against a background of dazzling sky, the inadmissible image of a slender branch on which a small bird was singing. Shocked, Pierre Lasnier closed his eyes again and covered them with his right forearm, which felt cold and damp. A bird . . . his cold, damp arm . . . He sat up and recognized his arm, the strong, tanned arm of a tennis player, bare to the elbow, coming out of a rolled-up shirt sleeve. Overhead, the slender branch which the bird had just left was still bobbing up and down . . . Then the delicious odor of half-dried hay caught his attention. Pierre Lasnier had just woken up, not at home in the rue d’Aumale, but up against a hedge in a meadow still marked by the soft parallel waves made at haymaking time. He yawned, stretched his arms out behind him according to the Muller method, peeled his shirt from his back, soaked with the abundant dew of the early June morning, ran his fingers through his hair, and smiled vaguely at the clouds, still pink, in a sky the color of bluish milk. A fiery red shaft pierced through the hedge, across the ground, the first sign of sunrise.

“How beautiful!”

Thoughtfully, he put his hand to his cheek and gave a start at the feel of his five-day-old beard . . . no, four . . . Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday . . . his five-day-old beard. For five days, the body of a woman, knocked down on the rug and looking as if broken in the middle, had been lying there motionless, in his apartment, rue d’Aumale . . .

He stretched out his legs. His tennis shoes, stained with dirt, water marks, and cow dung, had grown old in four days, and one of the rubber soles had split. In just four days the light-gray flannel pants, the white socks and linen shirt, the whole sporting outfit, looked like old castoffs, splattered with stains and streaked a vegetable green. His jacket, rolled up in a ball and tied with a string, doubled as a pillow at night, and held several hundred francs—the money Pierre Lasnier had in his pocket at the time of the crime—and a watch.

Fettered horses jangled their leg chains and whinnied off toward some invisible farm. Swallows darted out from some hidden and inexhaustible place, draping the meadow with a curtain of long, whistling cries. The wind carried the mooing of cattle and another, steady, pleasant noise which must have been a waterfall; in the distance a little herdboy sang like a muezzin and the bright light of daybreak rose a shade toward yellow.

Pierre Lasnier, a city dweller, let himself be taken in by it all, indulging himself in it.

“Ah, the country . . . It’s a beautiful life!”

He caught himself mentally and said, “It was a beautiful life . . .” and realized that he was speaking of everything in the past now.

“I could just as well have let the poor thing live, but in Paris you get so nervous . . . And the truth is, she’d been getting on my nerves for too long.”

He lowered his head, the memory of his insufferable mistress casting a shadow over him, still deafened as he was by all the threats, all the jealousy, the insults and recriminations, by all the insectlike maliciousness which knew neither fear nor rest. It all came back to him, the gesture which had changed his frantic hands into criminal hands, the body doubled over on the rug; waiting there in the apartment with the shutters closed; escaping at just the right time, when the second-floor maid asked the concierge to open the front door and stole out with a handsome young man, going with him as far as the sidewalk across the street.

“I’ve been stupid,” thought Pierre Lasnier. “I should have gone right to the police and told them, ‘There she is. She had such a horrible temper . . . We fought for the thousandth time. I’m not guilty of premeditation, or of . . . of . . . I’m not a bad person. I gave her two thousand francs a month. And the day it happened we’d only come back from the country to look for some tennis rackets in my apartment’ . . . That’s what I should have done . . . but they’ve found her by now.”

He thought back over his four days as a tramp, and no longer dared congratulate himself for not having run into any rural police, for four days. “What does that prove? Four days—it’s nothing. Now what?” He forced himself to imagine some sort of future and could only make out a kind of pale speck, whose pallor made him physically nauseous.

“But I’m starving. That’s what’s wrong. That’s what’s getting me down.”

He stood up, grabbed the staff he had cut the night before and which completed his vagabond’s outfit. Last night’s dinner—cold meat and bread, eaten on the road—left him with the wild hunger of a healthy man. He strode across the ditch, and set off down the white road, which cried out for rain and crunched under his feet like broken glass.

“Why did I eat that meat and bread on the road? Who was stopping me from going to an inn and ordering some meat and coffee and eggs?”

He shrugged his shoulders and lengthened his stride. The thought of hot coffee and an omelette sizzling in the pan made his mouth water. Nonetheless, he wisely passed up the isolated farmhouses, bright with chickens, the farmers’ wives in white bonnets, and the red fireplaces where the cooking pot hung from the hook of the hearth crane. Around seven o’clock he passed through a large village and stopped at the last house where
COEUVRE, RETAILER
lodged travelers on foot or horseback and offered to cook “the best food in the world.” On seeing him, a young woman, with her hair in a braided bun, set her child down on the ground and wiped her hands. Pierre Lasnier sat down.

“I suppose you want a bottle of wine. White or red?”

Pierre Lasnier pounded the table, as he had seen the peasants in the movies do.

“White! Do you have any bacon?”

“Bacon? Yes.”

“And eggs?”

“I haven’t been out to gather them yet,” she said, annoyed. “And at the price . . .”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got money. Enough to treat myself to a nice big omelette!”

The young woman brought a bottle of wine, a dull little glass with thick sides, and inspected Pierre Lasnier uncertainly. He was dirty, but refined, and his overall appearance lacked the aggressive mystery, the unbreachable indifference which marks the true vagabond.

“An omelette? How many eggs?”

Pierre Lasnier joked mockingly: “How many eggs . . . How should I know? An omelette of six, eight . . . Yes! A nice big omelette of six to eight eggs!”

The young woman opened her mouth and eyes wide in singular fashion, didn’t say a word, took her child back up in her arms, and left the room. To kill time Pierre Lasnier filled and emptied his crude little glass three times, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and struck a match. But for no apparent reason he let the flaming match fall, then turned around and saw standing in the doorway, behind the blue shoulders of two policemen, the suspicious face, white with fear, of the young woman with braided hair.

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

“Table for two? This way, Monsieur, Madame, there is still a table next to the window, if Madame and Monsieur would like a view of the bay.”

Alice followed the maitre d’.

“Oh, yes. Come on, Marc, it’ll be like having lunch on a boat on the water . . .”

Her husband caught her by passing his arm under hers. “We’ll be more comfortable over there.”

“There? In the middle of all those people? I’d much rather . . .”

“Alice, please.”

He tightened his grip in such a meaningful way that she turned around. “What’s the matter?”

“Shh . . .” he said softly, looking at her intently, and led her toward the table in the middle.

“What is it, Marc?”

“I’ll tell you, darling. Let me order lunch first. Would you like the shrimp? Or the eggs in aspic?”

“Whatever you like, you know that.”

They smiled at one another, wasting the precious time of an overworked maître d’, stricken with a kind of nervous dance, who was standing next to them, perspiring.

“The shrimp,” said Marc. “Then the eggs and bacon. And the cold chicken with a romaine salad.
Fromage blanc
? The house specialty? We’ll go with the specialty. Two strong coffees. My chauffeur will be having lunch also, we’ll be leaving again at two o’clock. Some cider? No, I don’t trust it . . . Dry champagne.”

He sighed as if he had just moved an armoire, gazed at the colorless midday sea, at the pearly white sky, then at his wife, whom he found lovely in her little Mercury hat with its large, hanging veil.

“You’re looking well, darling. And all this blue water makes your eyes look green, imagine that! And you’ve put on weight since you’ve been traveling . . . It’s nice up to a point, but only up to a point!”

Her firm, round breasts rose proudly as she leaned over the table.

“Why did you keep me from taking that place next to the window?”

Marc Seguy never considered lying. “Because you were about to sit next to someone I know.”

“Someone I don’t know?”

“My ex-wife.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say and opened her blue eyes wider.

“So what, darling? It’ll happen again. It’s not important.”

The words came back to Alice and she asked, in order, the inevitable questions. “Did she see you? Could she see that you saw her? Will you point her out to me?”

“Don’t look now, please, she must be watching us . . . The lady with brown hair, no hat, she must be staying in this hotel. By herself, behind those children in red . . .”

“Yes. I see.”

Hidden behind some broad-brimmed beach hats, Alice was able to look at the woman who, fifteen months ago, had still been her husband’s wife.

“Incompatibility,” Marc said. “Oh, I mean . . . total incompatibility! We divorced like well-bred people, almost like friends, quietly, quickly. And then I fell in love with you, and you really wanted to be happy with me. How lucky we are that our happiness doesn’t involve any guilty parties or victims!”