The Collected Stories of Colette (77 page)

“That night, I made mistake after mistake at bridge. Away from Louisette, it was easier to admit that I was disconcerted. In her presence—as you can well imagine, I met her again the next day and every day after—I let myself be guided not only by my own experience but also by Louisette herself. Without going into a lot of details that would embarrass us both, I admit I have never met anyone like Louisette either in her simplicity or in her baffling mystery. To make myself clear, I believe that the sensuality of any grown-up woman who behaved like Louisette would have revolted me. Louisette was avid in the way children are, she was vicious with grace, with majesty. Physical confidence is always admirable. Louisette’s preserved her from certain dangers, it is true, but it must also be said she was lucky to chance on me and not another man. She treated sensual pleasure as a lawful right, but nothing gave me reason to think that she had had any previous experience. This strange affair lasted longer than the fine weather and kept me staying on, rather inconveniently, with my friend the ostentatious retired chemist.

“At the end of a fortnight, I told myself quite sincerely: ‘You’ve had enough of this. Any more would be too much.’ Perhaps, in my heart, I was . . . how can I put it? I was shocked, I was . . . well . . . a little scandalized that this wild pony caught in the fields didn’t show me a little . . . hang it all, a little affection, a little . . .

“What’s that, my dear? Begging your pardon, I am
not
a brute—I proved that at least once every twenty-four hours—and I did not think it was asking too much to hope that Louisette, softened and satisfied, would come to treat her unselfish lover as a friend. So much so that, when my nerves were on edge, for very obvious reasons, it was I who said to Louisette, bending over her little shell-like ear: ‘You won’t quite forget your old friend when he’s far away?’ I was sitting on a granite boulder, coated with dry lichen that made it less hard. Louisette, sitting lower down, was leaning her head against my ribs. She turned up a face like a ripe peach—raised her eyes, which at that moment were very bright under their chestnut flecks, and I thought that, for the first time I was going to hear . . . a gentle word, a childish avowal, perhaps just a sigh. She merely said ‘Oh, no!’ exactly like a child answering an imbecile parent who has asked the imbecile question: ‘You don’t love Mamma more than Papa, do you?’ And I left her that day earlier than usual without her appearing to notice it in the very slightest. We talked so little. She listened to me, certainly. But she was also listening to many other sounds I did not hear and now and then would sign to me, sometimes rather rudely, to be quiet. I was in the process of telling her something or other, goodness knows what, to make myself believe we enjoyed talking together, and seeing the fixed gaze of her beautiful flecked eyes, and her parted lips whose color I had just warmed to a rich glow, I felt flattered by her attentiveness. She was lying, leaning on her elbow, and we were in one of those tiny clearings that make bare patches among the tall heather. I was sitting, leaning over her, when she suddenly began to flutter her eyelids, overcome by a lassitude that pleased my vanity. One of Louisette’s charms was to exclaim suddenly: ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I’m sleepy,’ to yawn with hunger or suddenly to fall asleep for a few moments. As I say, she was fluttering her lids, and at every blink, her red eyelashes glinted like fire, when suddenly she opened her eyes wide, sat up, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pushed me over on the ground, where she held me down by main force. I tried to get up, but she threatened me with her fist, and her child’s face became quite terrifying. All this lasted about the space of ten heartbeats. Then Louisette let me go, her cheeks and lips went white, and she collapsed, quite limp, on the grass.

“When her color returned, she explained: ‘Your head was showing. There was someone on the path.’

“‘Who?’ I asked.

“‘Someone who lives around here.’

“I think she had recognized her mother’s footsteps. Without any embarrassment, she fastened her open blouse. Everything she allowed me to see of herself would have rejoiced what one calls a gay dog. Quite unlike a gay dog and a Don Juan, it made me feel solemn to see how much childhood and newly achieved womanhood can have in common. So much beauty, with no adornments except cotton underclothes, a little blue ribbon, and cheap, coarse stockings. No scent except the slightly russet fragrance of the hair. When she was violently excited I could breathe in the smell of that plant . . . what
is
its name? . . . one of the pea family, with pink flowers . . . that blondes give out when they sweat. Restharrow, that’s right, thanks. When I was away from Louisette, I used to think what she might have been, which is always a stupid thing to do. I used to imagine her as a nymph, leaning over the spring, naked as she was worthy to be. We never rise to great heights when we try to mingle art and literature with the religious feeling inspired by a beautiful body.

“After a few days Louisette changed the time of our meetings, and for my host’s benefit, I had to assume the role of poet and night walker, so as to be able to climb up to the ‘château’ around ten at night. ‘Why so late?’ I asked my little sweetheart.

“‘Because Mamma goes to bed at nine. She gets up before five all the year round. At half past eight, I’ve just finished washing up the supper things and putting them away. After that, I can do as I like, as long as I’m very careful.’

“‘You don’t sleep near your mother, then?’

“She lowered her red-gold eyebrows.

“‘Fairly near. Look, I’ll show you.’

“She led me as far as the lion-guarded entrance, walking along the narrow path as if it were broad daylight.

“‘That square tower, behind the spring. There’s only one room on each floor. Mamma has the top one, she’s given me the other one because it’s nicer. But as soon as it gets cold, Mamma brings her bed down into my room where it’s warmer. The cold weather comes early up here.’

“She fell silent. I could hear the spring and its imaginary fishes leaping in their basin.

“‘But, Louisette, darling,’ I said, ‘it’s dangerous for you, going out at night.’

“‘Yes,’ she said.

“That considered, almost gloomy ‘yes’ was so far removed from the cry of a girl in love flinging herself recklessly in the path of danger that I did not express my gratitude. A ‘yes’ that did not even seem to have any concern with me. She was staring vaguely at the square gable and the silver leaps of the spring at the end of the avenue. The moon was blurred that night, showing pink through its surrounding haze. So near the main gate, we might easily have been seen. But I trusted entirely to my little companion, who knew how to make us invisible at the right moment, making me walk in the dark at the foot of the garden wall, pushing me into the thick shadow of a laurel bush that left its fragrance on her hands. We only met stray ramblers she could trust not to betray us; a silent dog, guilty of going off hunting on his own; the white horse belonging to the ‘château,’ who was trailing his chain slackly behind him and taking advantage of the warmth of the night. The clouded moon threw few strong shadows, but from time to time, she emerged from her halo and I could see my long shadow welded to a shorter one, moving ahead of us.

“Don’t you get the impression that I’m telling you rather a sad story? Curious, so do I. Yet the story of Louisette starts off as something rather charming, doesn’t it? But tonight I’m feeling sentimental. In any case, it’s the nature of affairs of this type to get tiresome very soon, to lose their freshness. Otherwise, the only thing that keeps the edge on them for those of us who are addicted to a particular type of woman is when we find ourselves coming to grips with young demons. Oh, they exist all right, there are more of them than you think. Louisette was nothing more than a young girl whose whole body had burst into blossom, a young girl whom I was relieving of her boredom, for I was not fatuous enough to think I was relieving her of her innocence. In country girls, there is no such thing as physical innocence. Louisette accepted, she even fixed the character of our relationship. She hardly ever used my Christian name; when she called me ‘Albin,’ she sounded self-conscious. I’ve always thought she had to restrain herself from calling me ‘Monsieur,’ and I should not have been offended if she had. On the contrary. This reserve redoubled the astonishment—I may also say the desire—that Louisette aroused in me.

“One day, I brought her a little ring, made of diamond chips, a jewel for a child, and taking her by surprise, I slipped it on her finger. She turned red as . . . as a nectarine, as a dahlia, as the most divinely red thing in the world. But it was with rage, you must understand. She tore the ring off her finger and brutally flung it back at me. ‘I’ve already commanded you (she said
commanded
!) not to give me anything.’ When I had sheepishly taken back my humble jewel, she made sure that the little cardboard box, the tissue paper, and the blue tinsel ribbon were not still lying about on our chair of rocks and lichen. Odd, wasn’t it?

“But otherwise I had no cause but to rejoice in an idyll so exciting and so ideally suited to my natural bent. If Louisette’s mutism was merely want of intelligence, I had met other stupid girls and less pleasing ones. All the same, at moments, I could feel something emanating from her that resembled sadness. I felt sorry for anyone whose destiny was as uncertain as Louisette’s. And, besides, my holiday, what with consuming heat and consuming passion, was reducing me to something like exhaustion. I was getting impatient at being completely unable to understand a girl who roamed the woods at night, with me, but sprang up as if she had been shot, turned pale, and trembled at the knees if she heard the step or the voice of her mother.

“All that, my dear, belongs to the past. But to a past that has remained buried in silence. I am throwing fresh light on it by telling you about it because, looking back on it now, it seems, quite definitely, not to have been such a gay adventure as I thought. At the time, I used to wonder now and then whether Louisette was not exploiting me like a lecherous man who’s found a willing girl. This ridiculous notion irritated me to such a point that I had a most unexpected little access of rage. No, not in front of her, but at bridge, in my host’s house, one night when I had not arranged to meet Louisette. No one noticed anything, except that I played very badly. I was listening to the noise of the wind which, for the first time since my arrival, was sobbing under the doors and bringing us through the open windows—it was very mild—a poignant smell from the terrace outside—the smell of dampness before rain, of flowers when the season of flowers is over. The song of the wind, the scent of autumn, I knew that they both spoke of my return to Paris and I found myself quite astonishingly upset at the prospect. I thought of my departure, of what the life of two women must be like in winter, in the dilapidated ‘château.’ I forced myself to imagine the rowan trees without their leaves, green on one side and silvery on the other, without their umbels of red berries; the spring sealed up by the cold, its living water imprisoned between great bars of limpid ice.

“I went to bed early, and the rest, which I badly needed, put everything more or less right. The next morning I allowed myself a long lazy morning in a rocking chair on the terrace, making idle conversation with the other guests. I found I had got rid of that anxious, indiscreet feeling that made me want to know more about Louisette’s private life. Indiscreet is the right word. Didn’t she consider it so herself, since, after a whole month of daily meetings, I was still waiting for her to make me any sort of confidence? It gave me a definite pleasure to watch and listen to the people around me, and privately to regard my fellow quinquagenarians as old men because they were married and getting potbellied. The day passed quickly—it was warm, but free of the recent tremendous heat—and in such calm that I hardly thought at all about Louisette. But you know how dangerous the habit of making love is; it is exactly like being addicted to smoking or taking drugs. When the hand of the clock (a Louis XIV clock, I need hardly say) jerked its embossed point toward a tortoiseshell figure X, I could bear it no longer, and I got up from my chair.

“‘What, again, Chaveriat!’ exclaimed my host. ‘Even tomcats don’t go out when their bellies are full.’

“‘I am not a tomcat,’ I replied. ‘I am a martyr to hygiene and vanity. If I didn’t take at least an hour’s exercise after my meals, I should ruin my waistline and my digestion.’

“‘Look out then, the weather’s going to change any moment.’

“‘With a full moon? Nothing could be less likely. After my defeat last night, you can find another victim.’

“All the same, I took a mackintosh and my flashlight, which Louisette always forbade me to use as soon as I came anywhere near her ‘château.’ A Gustave Doré moon seemed to be leaping from cloud to cloud, plunging behind cumuli rimmed with fire and emerging naked, dazzling, and a little hunchbacked. These games of the moon and the flying clouds made me realize the wind had risen and I promised myself I would only spend a moment with Louisette. It was a wise resolution. Just as I had reached the spot where the garden wall overhung the path and gave it deepest shelter—that was where my sweetheart always waited for me—just as my arms had closed around an adored body, as lovely standing up as lying down, but never freely seen or enjoyed, just as the first kiss had assured me, in the darkness, that nothing had ever rivaled that elastic firmness, utterly surrendered to my honor, the wind rose in a fierce gust. I only held my companion all the tighter. From her invisible hair and her mouth that tasted of raspberries, from the smell that came from her already bared bosom which assured me I was crushing a woman, not a child, against me, I could have guessed all her rose and russet tints. My vague remorse for my day of indifference increased my ardor. Heaven knows where remorse of that kind may lead us! . . . Don’t be alarmed, my dear, that last remark is not going to start me off on a digression. I only made it to indicate that, that night, I was on the very verge of behaving like a straightforward normal animal, like a man who knows only one way to possess the woman he desires. And I am not sure that Louisette, who was as frenzied as I was, would have stopped me.