The Collected Stories of Colette (100 page)

“You take a hand in the kitchen every day, Madame Suzanne?”

“Oh, I like it, you know. In Paris I kept a little restaurant. You never came and ate my chicken with rice on a Saturday night in the rue Lepic? I’ll make one for you. But what a bloody hell of a place—excuse my language—this part of France is for provisions.”

“What about the early vegetables?”

“Early vegetables! Don’t make me laugh. Everything’s later here than it is in Brittany. Some little lettuces you can hardly see . . . a few beans. The artichokes are hardly beginning. No tomatoes before June except the Spanish and Italian ones. In winter, except for their rotten oranges, almonds, raisins, nuts, and figs are all we get in the way of fruit. As to new-laid eggs, you’ve got to fight for them. And when it comes to fish! . . . The weekly boarders in hotels are the luckiest. At least they pay a fixed price and know where they are.”

She laughed and rubbed her hands together; those hands which had been tried and proven by every sort and kind of work.

“I love the kitchen stove. I’m not like Madame Ruby. Lucie!” she called toward the hatch. “Bring me the pork and a little of the pears! Madame Ruby,” she went on, with ironic respect, “cooking’s not
her
affair. Oh dear, no! Nor is managing things and doing the accounts. Oh dear, no!”

She dropped the mockery and emphasized the respect.

“No, her affair is
chic
, manners and so on. Furnishing a room, arranging a table, receiving a guest—she’s a born genius at all that. I admit it and I appreciate it. I really do appreciate it. But . . .”

An angry little spark animated Madame Suzanne’s blue eyes.

“But I can’t stand seeing her wandering all over the kitchen, lifting up the saucepan lids and throwing her weight about. ‘Madame Suzanne, do you know you is made coffee like dishwater this morning? Lucie, you is not forgotten to fill the ice trays in the refrigerator?’ No, that’s really
too
much!”

She imitated to perfection her friend’s voice and her peculiar grammar. Flushed with an apparently childish jealousy and irritation, she seemed not to mind in the least revealing or underlining what people call the “strange intimacy” which bound her to her partner. She changed her tone as she saw Lucie approaching. Lucie had a succulent, foolish mouth and a great mass of turbulent black hair which curled at the nape of her neck.

“Madame Colette, I’m making a special
crème caramel
tonight for Monsieur Daste. I’ll make a little extra if you’d like it. Monsieur Daste only likes sweet things and red meat.”

“And who is Monsieur Daste?”

“A very nice man . . . I believe what I see. It’s the best way, don’t you think? He’s all on his own, for one thing. So he’s almost certainly a bachelor. Have you seen him, by the way?”

“Only a glimpse.”

“He’s a man who plays bridge and poker. And he’s awfully well educated, you know.”

“Is this an insidious proposal of marriage, Madame Suzanne?”

She got up and slapped me on the shoulder.

“Ah, anyone can see you’re artistic. You still talk the way artistic people do. I’m going up to have half an hour’s nap. You see
I
get up every morning at half past five.”

“You’ve hardly eaten anything, Madame Suzanne.”

“It’ll make me slimmer.”

She frowned, yawned, and then lifted one of the coarse red net curtains.

“Where’s that Ruby run off to now? Will you excuse me, Madame Colette? If I’m not everywhere at once . . .”

She left me planted there and I invited my dog to come for a walk around the hotel. A sharp wind enveloped us as soon as we set foot on the terrace but the sun was still on the little flight of steps leading up to my french window and on the aviary of parakeets. The birds were billing and cooing in couples and playing hide-and-seek in their still empty birchbark nests. At the foot of the aviary, a white rabbit was sunning himself. He did not run away and gave my griffon such a warlike glance with his red eye that she went some way off and relieved herself to keep herself in countenance.

Beyond the walls of the courtyard, the wind was having everything its own way. Pati flattened her ears and I should have gone back to my room if, quite close, shut in between two hillocks of forest, I had not caught sight of the Mediterranean.

At that time I had only a rudimentary acquaintance with the Mediterranean. Compared to the low tides of Brittany and that damp, pungent air, this bluest and saltiest of seas, so decorative and so unchangeable, meant little to me. But merely sniffing it from afar made the griffon’s snub nose turn moist and there was nothing for it but to follow Pati to the foot of a little scarp covered with evergreens. There was no beach; only some flat rocks between which seaweed, with spreading branches like a peacock’s tail, waved gently just below the surface of the water.

The valorous griffon wet her paws, tested the water, approved of it, sneezed several times, and began to hunt for her Breton crabs. But no waves provide less game than those which wash the southern coast and she had to restrict herself to the pleasure of exploring. She ran from tamarisk to lentiscus, from agave to myrtle, till she came on a man sitting under some low branches. As she growled insultingly at him, I guessed that it must be Monsieur Daste. He was laughing at her, wagging his forefinger, and saying: “Huisipisi”—doing everything, in fact, calculated to offend a very small, arrogant dog who was eager for admiring attention.

When I had called her back, Monsieur Daste made an apologetic gesture for not standing up and silently pointed to a treetop. I jerked my chin up questioningly.

“Wood pigeons,” he said. “I think they’re going to build their nest there. And there’s another pair at the end of the kitchen garden at Bella-Vista.”

“You’re not thinking of shooting them, are you?”

He threw up his hands in protest.

“Shooting? Me? Good Lord! You’ll never see
me
carrying a gun. But I watch them. I listen to them.”

He shut his eyes amorously like a music fiend at a concert. I took advantage of this to have a good look at him. He was neither ugly nor deformed; only rather mediocre. He seemed to have been made to attract as little attention as possible. His hair was thick and white and was as plentifully and evenly sprinkled among brown as in a roan horse’s hide. His features were decidedly small; he had a stingy face which looked all the more stingy when the long eyelids were closed. If I observed Monsieur Daste more carefully than he deserved, it was because I am always terrified, when chance throws me among unknown people, of discovering some monstrosity in them. I search them to the core with a sharp, distasteful eye as one does a dressing-table drawer in a hotel bedroom. No old dressings? No hairpins, no broken buttons, no crumbs of tobacco? Then I breathe again and don’t give it another thought.

In the pitiless light of two in the afternoon, Monsieur Daste, medium-sized, clean, and slightly desiccated, showed no visible signs of lupus or eczema. I could hardly hold it against him that he wore a soft white shirt and a neat tie instead of a pullover. I became affable.

“Pati, say how d’you do to Monsieur Daste.”

I lifted the dog by her superfluous skin—nature provides the thoroughbred griffon with enough skin to clothe about a dog and a half—and held her over my arm for Monsieur Daste to appreciate the little squashed muzzle, the blackish-brown mask, and the beautiful prominent gold-flecked eyes. Pati did not try to bite Monsieur Daste, but I was surprised to feel her stiffen slightly.

“Pati, give your paw to Monsieur Daste.”

She obeyed, but with her eyes elsewhere. She held out a limp, expressionless paw which Monsieur Daste shook in a sophisticated way.

“Are you in this part of the world for some time, Madame?”

As he had a pleasant voice, I gave Monsieur Daste some brief scraps of information.

“We wretched bureaucrats,” he rejoined, “have the choice between three weeks’ holiday at Easter or three in July. I need warmth. Bella-Vista is sheltered from the cold winds. But I find the very bright light distressing.”

“Madame Suzanne is making you a
crème caramel
for tonight. You see what a lot of things I know already!”

Monsieur Daste closed his eyes.

“Madame Suzanne has all the virtues—even though appearances might lead one to suppose just the opposite.”

“Really?”

“I can’t help laughing,” said Monsieur Daste. “Even if Madame Suzanne practices virtue, she hasn’t any respect for it.”

I thought he was going to run down our hostesses. I waited for the “They’re impossible” I had heard
ad nauseam
in Paris to put an end to our conversation. But he merely raised his small hand like a preacher and remarked: “What are appearances, Madame, what are appearances?”

His chestnut-colored eyes stared thoughtfully at the empty sea, over which the shadows of the white clouds skimmed in dark green patches. I sat down on the dried seaweed that had been torn from the sea and piled up in heaps by the last gales of the equinox and my dog nestled quietly against my skirt. The sulphurous smell of the seaweed, the broken shells, the feeble waves which rose and fell without advancing or retreating gave me a sudden terrible longing for Brittany. I longed for its tides, for the great rollers off St.-Malo which rush in from the ocean, imprisoning constellations of starfish and jellyfish and hermit crabs in the heart of each greenish wave. I longed for the swift incoming tide with its plumes of spray; the tide which revived the thirsty mussels and the little rock oysters and reopened the cups of the sea anemones. The Mediterranean is not the sea.

A sharp gesture from Monsieur Daste distracted me from my homesickness.

“What is it?”

“Bird,” said Monsieur Daste laconically.

“What bird?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I didn’t have time to make it out. But it was a big bird.”

“And where are your wood pigeons?”

“My wood pigeons? Not
mine
, alas,” he said regretfully.

He pointed to the little wood behind us.

“They were over there. They’ll come back. So shall I. That slate-blue, that delicate fawn of their feathers when they spread them out in flight like a fan . . . Coo . . . croo-oo-oo . . . Coo . . . croo-oo-oo,” he cooed, puffing out his chest and half closing his eyes.

“You are a poet, Monsieur Daste.”

He opened his eyes, surprised.

“A poet . . .” he repeated. “Yes . . . a poet. That’s exactly what I am, Madame. I must be, if
you
say so.”

A few moments later Monsieur Daste left me, with obvious tact, on the pretext of “some letters to write.” He set off in the direction of Bella-Vista with the short, light step of a good walker. Before he went, he did not omit to stick out his forefinger at Pati and to hiss “Huisipisi” at her. But she seemed to expect this teasing and did not utter a sound.

The two of us wandered alone along a beaten track which ran beside the sea at the edge of the forest which was thick with pines, lentiscus, and cork oaks. While I was scratching my fingers trying to pick some long-thorned broom and blue salvia and limp-petaled rock roses for my room, I was suddenly overcome with irresistible sleepiness. The sunshine became a burden and we hurried back up the green scarp.

Three beautiful old mulberry trees, long since tamed and cut into umbrella shapes, did not yet hide the back side of Bella-Vista. Mulberry leaves grow fast but they take a long time to pierce the seamed bark. The trees and the façade looked to me crabbed and harsh; there is a certain time in the afternoon when everything seems repellent to me. All that I longed to do was to shut myself away as soon as possible and the dog felt the same.

Already I no longer liked my room, although it was predominantly pink and red. Where could I plug in a lamp to light the table where I meant to work? I rang for the dark-haired Lucie, who brought me a bunch of white pinks which smelled slightly of creosote. She did not fix anything but went off to find Madame Ruby in person. The American winked one of her gray eyes, summed up the situation, and disappeared. When she returned, she was carrying a lamp with a green china shade, some cord, and a collection of tools. She sat sideways on the edge of the table and set to work with the utmost expertise, her cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth. I watched her large, deft hands, her brisk, efficient movements, and the beautiful shape of her head, hardly spoiled by the thickening nape, under the faded red hair.

“Madame Ruby, you must be amazingly good with your hands.”

She winked at me through the smoke.

“Have you traveled a lot?”

“All over the place . . . Excuse my cigarette.”

She jumped down and tested the switch of the lamp.

“There. Is light for you to work?”

“Perfect! Bravo, the electrician!”

“The electrician’s an old jack-of-all-trades. Will you sign one of your books for me?”

“Whenever you like. For . . . ?”

“For Miss Ruby Cooney. C . . . double o-n-e-y. Thank you.”

I would gladly have stopped her going but I dared not display my curiosity. She rolled up her little tool kit, swept a few iron filings off the table with her hand, and went out, raising two fingers to the level of her ear with the careless ease of a mechanic.

Sleep is good at any time but not waking. A late March twilight, a hotel bedroom that I had forgotten while I slept, two gaping suitcases still unpacked. “Suppose I went away?” . . . The noise a bent finger makes rapping three times on a thin door is neither pleasant nor reassuring.

“Come in!”

But it was only a telegram: a few secret, affectionate words in the code a tender friendship had invented. Everything was all right. There was nothing to worry about. Pati was tearing up the blue telegram; the suitcases would only take a quarter of an hour to unpack; the water was hot; the bath filled quite quickly.