The Collected Stories of Colette (76 page)

“Her expression changed and she shot me an angry look.

“‘You’re not another of those people who want to buy it from us?’

“‘Who waänt to buy-ee it?’ Her accent, stressed on certain words, did not displease me, on the contrary. I reassured her.

“‘No, no, Louisette. I’m on holiday at ——, staying with the new owner. I don’t want to take your spring away from you. But I think I could drink it all up, I’m so thirsty.’

“She spread out her hands in a gesture of helpless regret.

“‘Oh dear, I can’t take you there to drink. Mamma would think it queer for me to be talking to someone she doesn’t know. Unless we went around outside by the back way.’

“‘And which is the back way?’

“She answered me by jerking her eyebrows, winking, and pursing her lips, a sign language of complicity I had not hoped for and that enchanted me. I saw she was ripe for dissimulation, for forbidden collusion, in other words, for sin. I replied as best I could by making the same sort of faces and we walked back, she in front and I following her, down the sheltered path at the edge of the wood, the whole length of the low, half-collapsed wall the goat had jumped to ‘chaäse’ me.

“‘Where’s my enemy the goat, Mademoiselle Louisette?’

“‘She’s out in the fields. We’ve got three. But that one’s the nicest.’

“Louisette answered me without turning her head and I was more than content to have a good chance to study the nape of her neck revealed by her high-pinned bun, the small, ardently pink ears, the flat, well-placed shoulder blades, and the faint swell of the springy hips below the tight leather belt . . . I assure you, a work of art with no hint of angularity or awkwardness, but with nothing noble about it except its precocious perfection. A young creature so frankly inviting one definite thing that an imbecile might have thought her cynical. But I am not an imbecile, my dear. I need to tell you this in so many words because, very late in the day, I’m now introducing you to an unknown Chaveriat who for a long time made a point of remaining unknown. For I have never been vain about my vices, if vices they are.

“Well, I followed this little thing, admiring her. I was trying to find some definite classification for her based on her inborn effrontery, her craving to satisfy my curiosity and to deceive her mother’s watchful eye. Already, I mentally called her ‘the prettiest little servant girl in France.’ Anyone can make a mistake.

“At the elbow of the crumbling wall, we left the undergrowth. The path was now no more than a track that descended fairly steeply, so that the wall loomed up higher and hid the ‘château’ from us. An old wall, as flowery as a herbaceous border. Scabiosas, the last foxgloves, valerians that I’ve noticed are always very red in Franche-Comté, and begonias slightly choked by ivy.

“‘What a beautiful wall!’ I said to Louisette.

“She replied only by a sign and I presumed she preferred her voice not to be heard associated with a stranger’s. The enclosing wall bent again at a right angle, revealing, at the same time, the other side of the hill and the entrance to the grounds of the house. The entrance, however, had been reduced to two pillars crowned with little stone lions, so worn by time that their faces looked more like those of sheep. An avenue of rowan trees, thick with berries and birds, led to the ‘château,’ whose coat of ivy disguised its dilapidation. If you’ve lived in Franche-Comté . . . yes, you have lived there. Then you know those solid country houses, built to withstand the weight of heavy snow in winter. But this one really was in a bad state. From a distance, it produced an illusion and dominated a valley that, even at midday, was still veiled in blue haze because the spring, now running underground, now enclosed in the bed it hollowed out for itself, filled it with mist.

“Louisette stopped abruptly before she reached the first pillar, so abruptly that I bumped up against her charming back, her red-gold nape, and her whole person, as plump and hard as a wall peach.

“‘We mustn’t go any farther,’ she said. ‘Can you see the spring?’

“I could only half see it, that is to say, in a stone niche at the end of the rowan avenue, I caught a glimpse of a wild leaping. It was as if the niche, all overhung with plants that love shade and water, was frequented by great silver fish. I could also see that a liquid curtain flowed over the margin and probably ran down into a basin below . . . But I saw no means of quenching my thirst without crossing the barrier of the sheep-like lions. Louisette went in without saying a word and came back carrying a small, brimming watering can with a long spout.

“‘Drink before I do, Louisette.’

“And I added, without shame: ‘Then I shall know your thoughts.’

“But she replied with a very curt refusal: ‘I’m not thuúrsty.’ There’s no drink to compare with water when it springs, mysteriously cold, straight out of the earth.

“‘Go down again the same way,’ Louisette commanded me. ‘This is the real entrance, but you might be seen from the house if you went down by the main road.’

“I obeyed without a word. At the spot where the wall overtopped the path by some twelve or fifteen feet, I received a small pebble on my head. Louisette, perched up there, was watching my departure. I waved my hand and blew her a kiss without her smiling or pretending to be embarrassed. The sight of a golden head, motionless and watchful between tufts of scabiosas and yellow stonecrop, that was all I got from her that day. I remember that, walking back down the hill toward the chemist’s domain, I said to myself: ‘All the same, she might have thrown me a flower instead of a pebble!’ and in my heart of hearts, I reproached that little girl for her lack of poetry.

“I’m not going to bore you, my dear, with the details of our lovers’ meetings that first week. In any case, Louisette and I didn’t have any lovers’ meetings, properly speaking. I used to climb the little hill around the really scorching hour, eleven or half past. The drought was making the leaves fall early. Up at the big house, my host’s shooting guests brought bad reports of game grown lean and haggard. But I never listened to them. My own private game was always to be found, now here, now there, fresh, not in the least exhausted by the heat, and plump as ever. The strange thing was that my tentative affair, which was proving pleasant rather than amusing, was making no progress. Louisette, though she laughed easily, showed no fundamental gaiety. Being fifteen and a half and living in extreme and dangerous solitude, probably on the verge of poverty, is not, admittedly, conducive to a very gay life . . . Her answers to my questions never went beyond the strictly necessary.

“For example, when I asked her: ‘Do you live very much alone?’

“‘Oh, yes,’ she answered.

“‘Don’t you find that rather dreary?’

“‘Oh, no. We have visitors on Sundays. People we know.’ She added: ‘Not every Sunday. That would be a lot.’

“Her little hands, dimpled at the base of each finger, told me more than she did about the heavy household chores imposed on them. Idle, they would have been very pretty and like Louisette herself: rather short, dimpled, with fingers that turned up at the tips. As she walked beside me, she picked a pointed twig and used it as an orange stick to clean her nails.

“Another time I said to her: ‘Do you read a great deal?’

“She nodded twice, with the air of an expert.

“‘Papa left us a big library.’

“‘Are you fond of novels? Would you like me to give you some books?’

“‘No, thanks.’

“The refusal was always very definite. I could not make her accept either books or a bottle of scent or a suede belt or a trumpery bracelet or a lawn handkerchief . . . Nothing, do you understand? As she said herself: ‘Not the leastest thing.’ This inflexibility never yielded an inch. ‘And what would Mamma say?’ She invariably floored me with that one argument, produced in severe, triumphant tones. ‘You must have a terrible mother,’ I risked saying one day.

“Louisette shot me the same nasty look she had given me when she spoke of selling the spring.

“‘No, I haven’t. She never does anything wrong, she doesn’t. If she knew I talked to you, she’d be very upset. So, as I’ve got to keep it a secret from her that I do talk to you, I mustn’t do
anything
to give it away. I think that’s the least I can do for her, take pains to stop her knowing.’

“And in such a tone! The young lady was instructing me in her personal morality and it was I who was being given lessons! To mollify her and flatter her, I listened with an air of being much impressed. She was watching me covertly, as if she expected something from me and I did not know what it was she wanted or did not want. We men who fall in love with young girls, we don’t take any risks till we’re sure of success. The one thing that disconcerts us and holds us back is simplicity, firstly because we don’t believe in it, secondly because our success depends on choosing the right moment. Those interviews, with the light beating down on us and Louisette always with one eye or one ear cocked in the direction of her mother, left me nervy and exhausted by so much sunshine. When I returned to —— I found a definite charm in playing bridge on a shady terrace, in reading the illustrated papers with the cool six o’clock wind ruffling their pages. Until the day, when that week had gone by, that I had the idea of telling Louisette, ‘I’ve only got ten more days here.’ The corners of her mouth quivered, but all she said was: ‘Oh!’

“‘Yes, alas. And tomorrow the owner of —— is organizing a series of motor expeditions and picnics in the local beauty spots. I can’t always go off on my own, and be unsociable. But if, instead of getting myself roasted up here, I came and took a breath of fresh air on this little mountain in the evening, mightn’t I possibly happen to meet you?’

“I assure you I gave a quite marvelous imitation of shyness and I did not even hold her hand. I had the surprise of seeing her begin to fidget, biting one of her nails, and thrusting and rethrusting the hideous japanned hairpins into her bun from which the little tendrils escaped like a haze of fire. She looked all around her, then said hurriedly: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know . . .’ and as she raised her arms, I caught a drift of feminine odor. I pretended to hesitate, then to lose my head, and I seized Louisette by that slim waist so many plump little things have. I whispered into her hair, under her ear: ‘This evening? . . . Six o’clock?’ and I refrained from kissing her on the lips before going off with long, hurried strides. I went down quickly through the undergrowth so as to give her no time to think of calling me back, and when I had already left her far behind, I realized we had not uttered one word that implied tenderness, desire, or friendliness.

“My dear, it isn’t only to drink up this glass of water that I’m breaking off. No, thank you, I’m not tired. When one’s talking about oneself, one doesn’t feel tired till one’s finished. But I observe you’re looking apprehensive, not to say disapproving. Why? Because my heroine is only aged sixteen minus three months? Because I’ve fastened my covetous gaze on too young a blossom? Don’t be in too much of a hurry to judge me and, above all, to pity the tender ewe lamb. At fifteen, or even less, they threw a princess to an heir-apparent, probably an innocuous young man. Queens were married at thirteen. To search even higher than thrones for my justification, do I have to remind you what Juliet meant, at fifteen, by ‘hearing the nightingale’? If my memory does not deceive me, didn’t you tell me that, at sixteen, you yourself fell madly in love with a bald man of forty who looked twice that age? I think I’m using your very words. Old boughs for tender shoots, as our fathers used to say with genial lechery. I claim indulgence, at least
your
indulgence, considering that, with a few exceptions, I’ve been mad about tender shoots nearly all my life without withering one of them or making her produce another shoot. So I will now continue a story you brought on yourself and I shall lower neither my eyes nor my voice.

“Well, I had solicited a meeting at dusk, but because of my deliberate flight, I was not sure whether Louisette would turn up. I did find her there, however, and in a setting that seemed quite new at that late hour, among long shadows that marked the divisions between the little mountains and made them look higher. You know that country, you know how, as the light goes, valleys take on quite a different color from the blue of midday. That periwinkle, almost lilac blue, barred with pale yellow and dark green, the humpbacked, complex landscape, hitherto blotted out by the ferocious noonday sun, the smell of wood fires lit for the evening meal, it was all so enchanting that I was not in the least bored as I waited for Louisette. Frankly, I was already consoling myself for not seeing her when she arrived, running, and flung herself, as if in play, into my arms, where she was very well received. I admired her at once for having avoided, by an impetuous rush, the usual ‘It’s you at last!’ or ‘How sweet of you to come!’ Whatever her social level, the female creature does not leave us a wide choice of phrases to greet her arrival. As I say, Louisette flung herself, breathless, into my arms as if she were playing Wolf and had reached ‘home.’ She laughed, unable to speak, or at least apparently unable to speak. Her ugly metal hairpins dropped out of her pretentious little bun and her hair hung about her head, not very long, but so frizzy that it stood out in a thick, fiery bush. As to her palpitation, I assured myself, with one cupped hand, that it was genuine. Our physical intimacy was established in one moment in an unhoped-for way and on entirely new ground. I say physical, because I can’t say plain intimacy. I think an ordinary man, I mean an ordinary lover, would have thought that, in Louisette, he’d met the most shameless of semi-peasant girls. But I was not an ordinary lover.

“I gave Louisette time to calm down before kissing her. When I did, she received my kisses so naturally, so eagerly . . . Don’t raise your eyebrows like that, my dear, do I surprise you as much as all that? Yes, with an eagerness that would have been the ruin of a lover who was both careless and in a hurry, as they nearly all are. But I was not a careless lover. So Louisette gave herself up to the pleasure of being kissed, and in the intervals, she smiled at me and looked at me with wonderfully clear, radiant eyes, as if she were delighted to have found the real way to talk to me and not to have to be bored anymore with a stranger. The twilight had already fallen, and high in the sky, it was barred by a long cloud, still rosy with the setting sun. And, looking up from my supporting arm, I saw a happy face, exuberant hair, eyes no longer bashfully drooped but wide open, all echoing the color of the cloud. It was very lovely and, I assure you, I did not miss one iota of it. A cry broke out from the direction of the house and Louisette wrenched away from me everything I was holding fast; her hard little mouth, her slim, rounded torso, her feet I had gripped between mine. She listened, waited for a second cry, her eyes and ears on the alert to decide exactly where the cry came from, then fled full speed, with no goodbye beyond a little wave.