The Collected Stories of Colette

  During my training in pantomime and acting, my friend Valentine disappeared from my life, discreet, alarmed, modest. This is her polite way of showing her disapproval of my sort of existence. I’m not offended by it. I tell myself that she has a husband in automobiles, a society-painter lover, a salon, weekly teas, and twice-monthly dinners. Can you just see me, performing Flesh or The Faun at one of Valentine’s soirees or dancing The Blue Serpent for her guests? I put up with it. I wait. I know that my more respectable friend will come back, sweet and embarrassed, one of these days. A little or a lot, she cares about me and proves it to me, and that is enough to make me indebted to her.

  Here she is. I recognize the short and precise way she rings the bell, the ring of well-bred company.

  “At last, Valentine! It’s been such a long time . . .”

  Something in her eyes, in her entire face, stops me. I cannot say just how my friend has changed. Is she sick? No, she never looks sick, under the evenly spread, velvety powder and the pink smear on her cheeks. She always has the air of an elegant mannequin, small-waisted, slim-hipped beneath her skirt of pale gold tussore. She has fresh blue-gray-green-brown eyes blossoming between the double fringe of her blackened lashes, and a mass, a beautiful mass of Swedish blond hair . . . What’s wrong? A tarnish on all that, a new fixity in her gaze, a moral discoloration, if I may put it that way, which disconcerts, which stops the banalities of welcome on my lips. Nevertheless, she sits down, turning deftly in her long dress, smoothing out her linen jabot with a pat, and smiles and talks and talks until I undiplomatically interrupt her.

  “Valentine, what’s the matter?”

  She is not surprised and answers simply: “Nothing. Almost nothing, really. He’s left me.”

  “What? Henri . . . your . . . your lover’s left you?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Exactly three weeks ago today.”

  Her voice is so soft, so cool, that I am reassured.

  “Oh! Was it . . . was it painful?”

  “No,” she says, with the same softness. “It was not; it is.”

  Her eyes grow wider and wider, questioning mine with sudden rawness.

  “Yes, I’m in pain. Oh, I am! Tell me, is it going to go on like this? How long am I going to suffer? Don’t you know of any way . . . I can’t get used to it . . . What am I going to do?”

  The poor child! She is stunned by suffering, she who didn’t believe herself capable of it.

  “What about your husband, Valentine . . . he didn’t know anything?”

  “No,” she says impatiently, “he didn’t know anything. It’s not a question of that. What can I do? Don’t you have any ideas? For two weeks I’ve been asking myself what I should do.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  She hesitates: “I don’t know . . . I’m terribly angry with him, because he doesn’t love me anymore and because he’s left me . . . I don’t know. All I know is that this is unbearable, unbearable, this loneliness, this giving up of everything you’ve loved, this emptiness, this . . .”

  She has stood up at the word “unbearable” and is walking around the room as if a burn caused her to run off, to find the coolest place . . .

  “You don’t seem to understand. You don’t know what it is . . .”

  I shut my eyes, I hold back a pitying smile, in the presence of the naïve vanity of suffering, of suffering more and better than others’.

  “Child, you’ll wear yourself out. Don’t walk around like that. Come sit down. Would you like to take your hat off and have a little cry?”

  With an outraged denial, she sets the smoke-colored plumes on her head dancing.

  “Certainly not. I would get no pleasure whatsoever out of crying, thank you! So I can ruin my entire face? And where would it get me, I ask you now. I have no desire to cry, my dear, it makes my blood boil, that’s all.”

  She sits back down, and throws her parasol on the table. Her little, hardened face is not without real beauty at this moment. I think of the fact that every day for three weeks she has been putting on all her finery as usual, meticulously constructing her fragile castle of hair . . . for three weeks—twenty-one days!—she has been holding back accusatory tears, blackening her blond eyelashes with a steady hand, going out, receiving guests, gossiping, eating . . . The heroism of a doll, but heroism just the same.

  Maybe I should seize her, with a great sisterly rush, wrap her in my arms, and melt this hardened, unbending little creature, enraged against her own grief, in my warm embrace. She would break down and sob, she would calm her nerves, which must not have relaxed for the past three weeks . . . I do not dare. Valentine and I are not that intimate, and her sudden confidence is not enough to make up for two months of separation.

  Besides, what need is there to soften, with the coddling of a wet-nurse, this haughty strength which sustains my friend? “Tears will do you good,” yes, yes, I know the old cliché. I also know the danger, the intoxication of lonely, endless tears—you cry because you’ve just cried, and you start in again—you continue by force of habit, to the point of choking, to the point of nervous exhaustion and drunken sleep from which you wake puffy, blotched, distraught, ashamed of yourself, and sadder than before. No tears, no tears! I feel like applauding, like congratulating my friend, who is still sitting there in front of me, wide-eyed and tearless, crowned with hair and feathers, with the stiff grace of young women who wear corsets that are too long.

  “You’re right, my dear,” I say at last.

  I am careful to speak without warmth, as if I were complimenting her on her choice of hat.

  “You’re right. Go on just as you are, if there isn’t any remedy, any reconciliation possible . . .”

  “There isn’t,” she says coldly, like me.

  “No? . . . Then you just have to wait . . .”

  “Wait? Wait for what?”

  What a sudden awakening, what mad hope!

  “Wait for the cure, for the love to end. You’re suffering a lot, but worse is on the way. There will come a time—a month from now, three months, I don’t know when—when you’ll start to suffer intermittently. There will be respites, moments of animal oblivion which occur, for whatever reason, because it’s beautiful outside, because you’ve slept well, or because you’re a little ill . . . Oh, my dear! The recurrent pain is so terrible! It strikes you down without warning, without sparing anything. At some innocent and frivolous moment, some sweet, light moment, in the middle of a gesture or a burst of laughter, the idea, the crushing memory of the terrible loss silences your laughter, stops the hand bringing the teacup to your lips, and you sit there, terrified, wishing you were dead with the naïve conviction that you cannot suffer so much without dying . . . but you won’t die! . . . not you either. Relief will come, irregularly, unpredictably, capriciously . . . it will be awful . . . truly awful . . . But . . .”

  “But?”

  My friend is listening to me, less defiant now, less hostile . . .

  “But it gets even worse!”

  I wasn’t watching my voice carefully enough . . . With a movement from my friend, I lower my tone.

  “Even worse. The time will come when you will hardly be suffering at all. Yes! Nearly cured, and that is when you become ‘a lost soul,’ one who wanders about, seeking she knows not what, she doesn’t want to tell herself what . . . By that time, the recurrent pain is benign, and through a strange form of compensation, the periods of respite become abominable, with a dizzying, sickly emptiness which overwhelms the heart. That’s the period of stupefaction and imbalance. Your heart feels drained, shriveled, adrift in a breast swollen at times with tremulous sighs which are not even sad. You go out with no place to go, you walk without purpose, you stop to rest without being tired . . . You dig at the place of your recent suffering with an animal’s avidity, without being able to draw a single drop of living, fresh blood—you dig away at a half-dried scar, you miss—I swear!—you miss the sharp, searing pain. That’s the arid, aimless period made mo
re bitter still by regret. Oh, yes, regret! Regret over having lost the impassioned, trembling, despotic beauty of desperation . . . You feel diminished, blighted, inferior to the most mediocre creatures. You too will say to yourself, ‘What? That’s all I was, all I am? Not even the equal of some lovesick errand girl who throws herself into the Seine?’ Oh, Valentine! You will blush at yourself in secret, until . . .”

  “Until?”

  God, what hope she has! I will never see her amber-colored eyes as beautiful or as big, her mouth as anguished.

  “Until the cure, my friend, the real cure. It comes . . . mysteriously. You don’t feel it right away. But it is like the gradual reward for so much pain. Believe me! It will come, I don’t know when. One sweet spring day, or one wet autumn morning, maybe one moonlit night, you’ll feel something inexpressible and alive expanding voluptuously in your heart—a happy snake growing longer and longer—a velvet caterpillar unrolling itself—a releasing, an opening, silky and salutary, like an iris unfurling. At that moment, without knowing why, you will put your hands behind your head, with an inexplicable smile . . . You will discover, with recaptured wonder, that the light coming through the lace curtains is pink, and that under your feet the rug is soft—that the fragrance of the flowers and the smell of the ripe fruit is exhilarating instead of stifling. You will experience a timid happiness, free of all desire, delicate, a little bashful, self-centered and self-concerned . . .”

  My friend grabs me by the hands. “More! More! Tell me more!”

  Alas, what more does she want? Haven’t I promised enough by promising her the cure? I smile as I stroke her warm little hands.

  “More! But that’s all there is, my dear. What more do you want?”

  “What more do I want? Why . . . love, of course, love!”

  My hands let go of hers. “Ah, yes! Another love . . . You want another love . . .”

  It’s true . . . I hadn’t thought of another love . . . I look at her pretty, anxious face up close, at her graceful body, studied and tidy, her stubborn, plain-looking forehead . . . She is already hoping for another love, one better, or worse, or no different than the one that has just killed her . . .

  Without irony, but without pity either, I reassure her: “Yes, my dear, yes. You will have another love . . . I promise you.”

  [Translated by Matthew Ward]

  Sleepless Nights

  In our house there is only one bed, too big for you, a little narrow for us both. It is chaste, white, completely exposed; no drapery veils its honest candor in the light of day. People who come to see us survey it calmly and do not tactfully look aside, for it is marked, in the middle, with but one soft valley, like the bed of a young girl who sleeps alone.

  They do not know, those who enter here, that every night the weight of our two united bodies hollows out a little more, beneath its voluptuous winding sheet, that valley no wider than a tomb.

  O our bed, completely bare! A dazzling lamp, slanted above it, denudes it even more. We do not find there, at twilight, the well-devised shade of a lace canopy or the rosy shell-like glow of a night lamp. Fixed star, never rising or setting, our bed never ceases to gleam except when submerged in the velvety depths of night.

  Rigid and white, like the body of a dear departed, it is haloed with a perfume, a complicated scent that astounds, that one inhales attentively, in an effort to distinguish the blond essence of your favorite tobacco from the still lighter aroma of your extraordinarily white skin, and the scent of sandalwood that I give off; but that wild odor of crushed grasses, who can tell if it is mine or thine?

  Receive us tonight, O our bed, and let your fresh valley deepen a little more beneath the feverish torpor caused by a thrilling spring day spent in the garden and in the woods.

  I lie motionless, my head on your gentle shoulder. Surely, until tomorrow, I will sink into the depths of a dark sleep, a sleep so stubborn, so shut off from the world, that the wings of dream will come to beat in vain. I am going to sleep . . . Wait only until I find, for the soles of my feet that are tingling and burning, a cool place . . . You have not budged. You draw in long drafts of air, but I feel your shoulder still awake and careful to provide a hollow for my cheek . . . Let us sleep. . . . The nights of May are so brief. Despite the blue obscurity that bathes us, my eyelids are still full of sunshine, and I contemplate the day that has passed with closed eyes, as one peers, from behind the shelter of a Persian blind, into a dazzling summer garden . . .

  How my heart throbs! I can also hear yours throb beneath my ear. You’re not asleep? I raise my head slightly and sense rather than see the pallor of your upturned face, the tawny shadow of your short hair. Your knees are like two cool oranges . . . Turn toward me, so that mine can steal some of that smooth freshness.

  Oh, let us sleep! . . . My skin is tingling, there is a throbbing in the muscles of my calves and in my ears, and surely our soft bed, tonight, is strewn with pine needles! Let us sleep! I command sleep to come.

  I cannot sleep. My insomnia is a kind of gay and lively palpitation, and I sense in your immobility the same quivering exhaustion. You do not budge. You hope I am asleep. Your arm tightens at times around me, out of tender habit, and your charming feet clasp mine between them . . . Sleep approaches, grazes me, and flees . . . I can see it! Sleep is exactly like that heavy velvety butterfly I pursued in the garden aflame with iris. Do you remember? What youthful impatience glorified this entire sunlit day! A keen and insistent breeze flung over the sun a smoke screen of rapid clouds and withered the too-tender leaves of the linden trees; the flowers of the butternut tree fell like brownish caterpillars upon our hair, with the flowers of the catalpas, their color the rainy mauve of the Parisian sky. The shoots of the black-currant bush that you brushed against, the wild sorrel dotting the grass with its rosettes, the fresh young mint, still brown, the sage as downy as a hare’s ear—everything overflowed with a powerful and spicy sap which became on my lips mingled with the taste of alcohol and citronella.

  I could only shout and laugh, as I trod the long juicy grass that stained my frock . . . With tranquil pleasure you regarded my wild behavior, and when I stretched out my hand to reach those wild roses—you remember, the ones of such a tender pink—your hand broke the branch before I could, and you took off, one by one, the curved little thorns, coral-hued, claw-shaped . . . And then you gave me the flowers, disarmed . . .

  You gave me the flowers, disarmed . . . You gave me, so I could rest my panting self, the best place in the shade, under the Persian lilacs with their ripe bunches of flowers. You picked the big cornflowers in the round flower beds, enchanted flowers whose hairy centers smell of apricot . . . You gave me the cream in the small jug of milk, at teatime, when my ravenous appetite made you smile . . . You gave me the bread with the most golden crust, and I can still see your translucent hand in the sunshine raised to shoo away the wasp that sizzled, entangled in my curls . . . You threw over my shoulders a light mantle when a cloud longer than usual slowly passed, toward the end of the day, when I shivered, in a cold sweat, intoxicated with the pleasure that is nameless among mankind, the innocent pleasure of happy animals in the springtime . . . You told me: “Come back . . . Stop . . . We must go in!” You told me . . .

  Oh, if I think of you, then it’s goodbye to sleep. What hour struck just then? Now the windows are growing blue. I hear a murmuring in my blood, or else it is the murmur of the gardens down there . . . Are you asleep? No. If I put my cheek against yours, I feel your eyelashes flutter like the wings of a captive fly . . . You are not asleep. You are spying on my excitement. You protect me against bad dreams; you are thinking of me as I am thinking of you, and we both feign, out of a strange sentimental shyness, a peaceful sleep. All my body yields itself up to sleep, relaxed, and my neck weighs heavily on your gentle shoulder; but our thoughts unite in love discreetly across this blue dawn, so soon increasing.

  In a short while the luminous bar between the curtains will brighten, redden . . . In a few more mi
nutes I will be able to read, on your lovely forehead, your delicate chin, your sad mouth, and closed eyelids, the determination to appear to be sleeping . . . It is the hour when my fatigue, my nervous insomnia can no longer remain mute, when I will throw my arms outside this feverish bed, and my naughty heels are already preparing to give a mischievous kick.

  Then you will pretend to wake up! Then I shall be able to take refuge in you, with confused and unjust complaints, exasperated sighs, with clenched hands cursing the daylight that has already come, the night so soon over, the noises in the street . . . For I know quite well that you will then tighten your arms about me and that, if the cradling of your arms is not enough to soothe me, your kiss will become more clinging, your hands more amorous, and that you will accord me the sensual satisfaction that is the surcease of love, like a sovereign exorcism that will drive out of me the demons of fever, anger, restlessness . . . You will accord me sensual pleasure, bending over me voluptuously, maternally, you who seek in your impassioned loved one the child you never had.

  [Translated by Herma Briffault]

  Gray Days

  Leave me alone. I’m sick and cranky, like the sea. Tuck this tartan around my legs, but take away this steaming cup, with its bouquet of wet hay, lime blossom, stale violet . . . I don’t want anything, I just want to turn my head away, and not see the sea anymore, nor the wind which runs, visible, in flurries on the sand, in spray on the sea. Sometimes it hums, patient and restrained, crouched down behind the dune, hidden beyond the horizon . . . Then it rushes out with a war cry, humanly rattling the shutters, pushing in under the door, in an impalpable fringe, the dust of its eternal tread . . .