The Collected Stories of Colette (7 page)

“Nounoune!”

Léa gets up, accustomed to the trepidation of a child wakened by a bad dream.

“There, there . . . Sleep, I’m right here next to you.”

He rests his neck back down on the cushions, but his hand hangs on to the long strand of pearls that encircles Léa’s neck three times before descending to her knees. Half asleep he plays with the luminous beads, whose slightest imperfections are detected by his sensitive fingers. He likes their roundness, their vibrant warmth, their soapy softness . . .

His heavy, thoughtless gaze moves from his friend to the bright bay window opening onto a garden of palm and orange trees. A dry hand, the color of toasted bread, has just set down on the low table two steaming cups, white and transparent like two halves of an eggshell. Onto the cushions next to Chéri, another hand, this one a black purple color, slips a bouquet of moist white carnations, which gives off the active fragrance of pepper and vanilla . . .

Chéri smiles with contentment and fingers the pearls as if saying the rosary. Each one harbors beneath its silky skin the glinting, veiled colors of an elusive rainbow. This one is the most beautiful . . . But this one is even more beautiful. And higher up those lying on the full, somewhat heavy breast . . . Oh, those . . . But the biggest, the purest, are wound into a triple strand around Léa’s neck.

It is on this neck that Chéri’s eyes settle, fixed, as if he were seeing it for the first time. His friend is reading, seated, her head tilted forward. Under her chin she has two folds of slightly yellow skin and her neck is covered with loose skin, also yellow, more yellow because of the pearls, and grainy below the ear . . . “The skin of an old hen,” thinks Chéri fiercely. He cannot take his eyes off the neck or the pearls. He can sense an image, a memory taking shape, coming to him, still hazy, from the depths of his indolent memory. He suffers vaguely; something grows within him painfully. He would like to turn his eyes away or close them. This withered skin, these pearls . . . “What is it?” he asks himself impatiently.

His eyelids close suddenly and his entire body relaxes, as if allowed to rest. The dread image is coming to life, and in place of Léa’s neck, in place of the triple, iridescent chain, Chéri can see a young, amber-colored neck, smooth, bent in sadness, adorned with a thin strand of pearls. And the nape of the neck, the necklace, the soft cascading hair, undone, all shudder to the rhythms of impassioned sobs . . .

The image, the whispering of the sobs accompany Chéri, descend with him to sleep, where a dream timid with tenderness and remorse sketches itself out, a dream in which his hand, protective for the first time, touches the necklace it has fastened there, on the silky young neck, the thin necklace of tiny little pearls . . .

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

DIALOGUES FOR ONE VOICE

“Godmother?”

“. . .”

“What are you doing, Godmother? A story for the papers? Is it a sad story?”

“. . . ?”

“Because you look so unhappy!”

“. . .”

“Ah, it’s because you’re late? It’s like a composition: you have to turn in your work on the day they tell you to? . . . What would they say if you turned in your notebook without anything in it?”

“. . . ?”

“The men who judge it at the paper!”

“. . .”

“They wouldn’t pay you? That’s so boring. It’s the same thing for me; but Mama only gives me two sous for each composition. She says I’m mercenary. Well, work hard. Can I see your page? That’s all you have? You’ll never be ready!”

“. . . !”

“What! you don’t have a subject? Don’t they give you an outline, like us at school, for French composition? That way at least you have a chance!”

“. . .”

“What I’d like is for Mademoiselle to let us write whatever comes into our heads. Oh boy, if I was a writer!”

“. . . ?”

“What would I do? I’d write a hundred thousand million things, and stories for children.”

“. . .”

“I
know
there’s lots of them; but they’re enough to make you sick of being a child. How many more am I going to get as presents? You know, too many people take us for idiots! When I see in a catalogue: ‘For Young Readers,’ I say to myself, ‘Well, that’s just great! more grownups knocking themselves out to come down to our level, as they say!’ I don’t know why grownups use a special tone to come down to our level. Do we children get to write books for grownups?”

“. . .”

“That’s fair, isn’t it? I’m for what’s fair. For example, I want a book for teaching you things to be a book for teaching you things, and a book for fun, I want it to be fun. I don’t want them mixed up. For years, you saw, in children’s books, a car drive up, and there was always a man in the story to pass along to you his opinion about the progress of machines . . . Now you’re sure to see a dashing aviator descend from the sky, but he talks about the conquest of the air . . . and of the . . . the glorious dead who lead the way. You see, there are constantly things breaking in on the story in children’s books, things that smell of a grownup giving a lesson. It’s no use for Papa to repeat, ‘A child must understand everything he reads . . .’ I think that’s grotexque . . .”

“. . .”

“Grotesque? Are you sure? Grotexque is prettier.”

“. . . ?”

“I think it’s grotexque because grownups never seem to remember about when they were little. I think things that I don’t understand everything about are terrific. I like beautiful words that sound pretty, words you don’t use in talking. I never ask what they mean, because I would rather think about them and look at them until they make me a little scared. And I like books without pictures too.”

“. . . ?”

“Yes, you see, Godmother, when they say, for example, in the history book I’m reading, ‘There once was a beautiful young girl in a castle, on the edge of a lake . . .’ I turn the page, and I see a drawing of the castle, and the young girl and the lake. Oh brother!”

“. . . ?”

“I can’t really explain, but it never, never looks like my young girl, or my castle or my lake . . . I can’t put it in words. If I knew how to paint . . . That’s why I prefer your books, your yellow books without any pictures. You understand me, Godmother?”

“. . .”

“You say ‘yes’ but I’m not sure . . . And also, they don’t talk enough about love in books for children.”

“. . . !”

“What did I say now? Is love a bad word?”

“. . .”

“On top of that, I don’t know what it is! I’m very much in love.”

“. . . ?”

“Nobody. I know I’m only ten and that it would be ridiculous to be in love with somebody, at my age. But I am in love, that’s all, just like that. I’m waiting. That’s why I like love stories so much, terrifying stories, but that end happy.”

“. . .”

“Because with stories that end sad, you go on feeling sad afterward, you’re not hungry, you think about it for a long time, and when you look at the book’s cover, you say to yourself, ‘They just go on being unhappy in there . . .’ You think about what you could do to make things right, you imagine writing the next story where everything would work out . . . I like it so much when people get married!”

“. . . ?”

“Yes, but only after they’ve been very unhappy before, each in his own way. It isn’t that I like it, all the unhappiness, but it’s necessary.”

“. . . ?”

“For there to be a beginning, a middle, and an end. And also because love, the way I see it, is being very sad at first, and then very happy after.”

“. . .”

“No, no, not at all, it’s not often the opposite! Who’s asking you that? Don’t bother me with your grown-up opinions! And now try to write a beautiful story in your newspaper, a story for
me
, not for children. A story where people cry and adore each other and get married . . . And put words I like in it, too, yes, like ‘foment,’ ‘surreptitious,’ and ‘pro rata’ and ‘corroborate’ and ‘premonitory’ . . . And then when you start a new paragraph you’ll say, ‘At this juncture . . .’”

“. . . ?”

“I don’t know exactly what it means, but I think it makes it very elegant.”

“Is it you who’s calling me, Godmother? I’m here, under the stairs.”

“. . . ?”

“No, Godmother, I’m not sulking.”

“. . . ?”

“No, Godmother, I’m not crying anymore. I’m done now. But I’m very discouraged.”

“. . . ?”

“Oh, it’s always the same thing, for a change. I’m mad at Mama. And she’s mad at me, too.”

“. . . !”

“Why ‘naturally’? No, not ‘naturally’ at all! There are times when she’s mad without me being mad back—it depends on if she’s right.”

“. . . !”

“Oh, please, Godmother, not today! You can tell this to me another day. There are plenty of days when I’m in a good mood and when you can make me lay back my ears . . .”

“. . .”

“No, not lay
down
, lay
back
! When you scold the dog, what does he do? he lays back his ears. Me too, I’ve laid my ears back since lunch. So, I’ll start over; you can lay back my ears about my parents, and the fairness of parents, and how a child shouldn’t judge his parents, and this and that . . . But it’s no use today.”

“. . . ?”

“What’s the matter? The matter is that Mama discourages me. Come here, so I can tell you about it. You’re still the one I tell the most, because you don’t have any children. You understand better.”

“. . . !”

Yes, it does make sense! You don’t have any children, you still have a mama, you get scolded, you storm, you rage, and you have the reputation of being unreasonable: Mama shrugs her shoulders when she talks about you, like with me . . . That pleases me. That gives me confidence.”

“. . .”

“There’s no need to apologize, I don’t do it on purpose . . . Come on, we’ll go sit by the fire: I’ve had enough of sitting under these stairs, too! There, now. Mama discourages me. I can’t seem to make her understand certain things.”

“. . . ?”

“Serious things, things about life. Can you believe she just bought me a hat to go to school in! . . . Oh, yes, it’s true, you don’t know, you’re not from the country . . . In Montigny, the girls in the public school
never
wear hats, except in the summer for the sun, and I’m only telling you this under the ceiling of secrecy . . .”

“. . . !”

“The
ceiling
, I’m telling you! The proof is that you don’t say it in another room . . . So, I’m telling you under the ceiling of secrecy that we go ‘Boo!’ in the street at the students of the nuns, because they wear hats to school. No repeating?”

“. . . !”

“Good. So then Mama buys me a hat. And so I make a face at the hat! Naturally, Mama starts a two-hour lecture, which has nothing to do with the point: that I’m more than ten years old, and that I’m almost a young lady, and that I should set the example of an irreproachable appearance . . . She finally ended up upsetting me. I lost my patience, I told her that it didn’t concern her, that my life at school was a special life which parents don’t understand anything about, et cetera . . . ‘Tell me, Mama,’ I said to her, ‘do you tell Papa what he should do at his office? It’s the same thing with me at school. I have a very noticeable position at school, a very delicate position, because I have personality, as Mademoiselle says. To hear you, Mama, I should only concern myself with my family! You send me to school, I spend half my life there. Well, that counts, half of my life . . . School’s like another world, you don’t talk about it the same: what’s appropriate here isn’t at school, and if I tell you I shouldn’t go to class in the winter with a hat, it’s because I shouldn’t wear a hat! You see, Mama, there are things you sense, there are nuances!’ I spelled this all out to her very calmly, all at once, so that she didn’t have the time to get a word in edgewise, because you know how mamas are, don’t you? They fly off the handle, and besides, they don’t have a sense of proportion.”