The Collected Stories of Colette

  Bernard made no retort. The noonday hour, while depressing his two weary companions, was making him turn ferocious. He stared at the sea, which seemed to be going down along with them, sinking back into its depths behind the tufted hills, the empty spring fields, and the silent little gardens where everything was in flower. “This is no time to be trailing around outdoors! And these two women! One teeters along, stumbling over everything, and the other’s limping. As to their conversation, one’s is as idiotic as the other’s. I wonder what the hell I’m doing here!”

  Since he knew very well what he was doing there, he forced himself to be less cantankerous and managed to take a little pleasure in the swallows, which were scything the air just above the ground and turning short with a whistle of wings.

  The plaster-strewn enclosure, which the Mirador Hotel intended shortly to convert into an Arab garden with formal pools, boasted no more than a yellow patio. Its squat archways threw back blinding reflections of various shades of yellow. A tuft of wild oats made one of these look almost green: some red geraniums turned another to the fleshy pink of watermelons. An Ali Baba jar of blue cinerarias threw a blue halo on the yellow wall, a kind of azure mirage. The strangled painter revived in the depths of Bernard Bonnemains.

  “What light! Why not let myself be tempted by a long, uneventful life here . . . No, farther away than this . . . I’d have a little concubine, or two . . .” He pulled himself up out of decency. “Or Rose, of course. But with Rose it wouldn’t be possible. And it wouldn’t be the same.”

  A smell of anis whetted his desire for a drink. He turned his head and saw Bessier Senior sitting at one of the little tables, writing.

  “So there you are, Cyril!” cried Odette. “I bet you’ve only just come down!”

  But Bonnemains had already noticed that there were three glasses on the table and that on an adjoining one, among squeezed lemons, siphons, and tumblers, lay several bluish pages torn from the pad Bessier used for making notes. He took in all these details at one glance, with a professional jealousy as swift as a woman’s suspicion and far more intelligent.

  “You’re wrong,” answered Bessier laconically. “You three had a good walk?”

  For a moment he raised his eyes toward the newcomers, the eyes of a fair man who had once been handsome. Then he went on writing. His hair was still thick, though its gold had faded. He affected a prewar coquetry. He liked clothes which were almost white, let one silver lock fall over his forehead, and made considerable play with his pale lashes and his shortsighted eyes.

  “I find him as embarrassing as a faded beauty,” thought Bernard. “I’ve nothing against him except that he’s Rose’s brother-in-law.”

  Accustomed to keeping quiet when Bessier was working, the two women sat down and waited, their hats on their knees. Rose slipped Bernard a faintly imploring smile, which revived his sense of the power he had over her. “After all, a real blonde, a hundred percent blonde, is pretty rare.” As Odette so charmingly put it: “Pink cheeks at twenty-five; blotches and broken veins at forty-five.” He followed the crimson play of light on Rose’s bare neck and under her chin and in her nostrils, and felt an immense desire to paint her. Misunderstanding his look, she lowered her eyes.

  “I’ve finished,” said Bessier. “But there’s a post out this afternoon . . . Have you three only come back to eat? Bonnemains, you look disappointed. Purple in the face, but disappointed. Wasn’t it worth the effort?”

  He dabbed his prominent, sensitive eyes with the tips of his fingers and smiled with automatic condescension.

  “Oh, yes . . . quite,” said Bernard uncertainly.

  “Oh, yes!” cried Rose. “It’s adorable. And we haven’t seen more than a quarter of it! You should have come, Cyril. Such greenery everywhere! And the oranges! I’ve eaten twenty if I’ve eaten one! And the flowers! It’s crazy!”

  Bernard stared at her in surprise. His private Rose bore no resemblance to this pretty, voluble little bourgeoise. Then he remembered that the Rose who belonged to the Bessier brothers was expected to behave childishly, to blush frequently and drop an occasional brick to the accompaniment of tender, indulgent laughs. He clenched his jaws. “Spare us any more, Rose!”

  “And the villa?” asked Bessier. “What’s the villa like? As hideous as they say?”

  “The villa?”

  “There’s no more a villa than there’s a . . .” said Odette.

  “Perhaps it was the way up to the villa,” interrupted Bernard, “that Ahmed was pointing out near the top of the hill. These women weren’t interested in finding out anything. And as Ahmed doesn’t speak French . . .”

  Bessier raised his eyebrows.

  “He doesn’t speak French?”

  “So he says,” insinuated Odette. “Personally, I’ve my own ideas about that.”

  Bessier turned to Bernard and spoke to him as if he were a child of eight. “My dear little Bonnemains, don’t bother yourself about the villa. I’ve got it all here.”

  “You’ve got it all? All what?”

  Bessier pushed two or three leaves of his notebook, a creased yellow plan, and an old photograph across the iron table.

  “There!” he said theatrically. “While you were having a good time, I . . .”

  Rose had stood up and her crisp, curly hair brushed Bernard’s ear as she bent over the photograph. But Bernard, tense and absorbed, was not giving Rose a thought. The faded old photograph occupied his whole attention.

  “The villa,” explained Bessier, “here they call it the palace—that’s this huge black smudge.”

  “Mh’m,” nodded Bernard. “I see. I see. What else?”

  “Well,” said Bessier, “I’ve had some fellows here this morning. One called Dankali. One called Ben Salem, one called—eh—Farrhar with an ‘h’—who’s got power of attorney. Odette and Rose, let my anis alone, will you? If you want some, make it yourself, as Marius says. Farrhar even told me that he’d once started studying architecture in Paris, so he felt as if he were a sort of colleague of mine. Too honored! Architecture leads to everything, provided you get out of it. He’s extremely elegant. A pearl tiepin and a blue diamond on his finger.”

  “Blue?” squealed Rose.

  “How big?” asked Odette greedily.

  “Big as my fist. Once and for all, have you finished sucking at my anis? I’ve a horror of people drinking through my straws. It absolutely revolts me. You know that perfectly well!”

  “Me too,” thought Bernard. The sight of Odette and Rose bending over Cyril’s tumbler, each with a straw between her lips, made him pinch his lips wryly and swallow his saliva as he did every time anything showed him Rose in familiar intimacy with the two Bessiers. He loathed it when Bessier lit Rose’s cigarette or lent her a handkerchief to wipe her lips or her fingers; when he put a spoon to her mouth with a lump of sugar soaked in coffee.

  “. . . those three chaps were well worth seeing,” Bessier went on. “Dankali is the contractor . . .”

  “I know,” said Bernard.

  Bessier did not conceal his surprise. “But how do you know?”

  “All the trucks and timberyards and fences and houses under construction are plastered with DANKALI AND SONS,” said Bernard. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  “I haven’t, by Jove. But I’ll certainly remember it in the future.”

  He paused awhile, gently tapping his prominent eyeballs.

  “It’s a big job. They’re razing the villa to its foundations and starting all over again. The pasha’s made up his mind.”

  “Bravo!” said Bernard. “Isn’t that going to mean your staying out here longer?”

  “On the contrary. Of course I shall have to come back in September with the plans of the whole thing on paper.”

  “Ah yes. Quite.”

  Bessier looked dreamy and appeared to have no more to say.

  “He said, ‘I shall come back.’ He didn’t say, ‘We shall come back,’” thought Bernard. “So much for you, you thorough
going swine.”

  The two women, used to keeping silence while professional discussions were taking place, sat idle on a bench. “If I were to ask him how he got the job, he might tell me,” thought Bernard. “But where would that get me?”

  He reproached himself for the little shiver which dried his light sweat and for the terrible professional jealousy which was ruining his day.

  “I’ll swallow that like all the rest. But shall I swallow it? I’ve had my back up ever since I came out. The fact is that, except for Rose, I can’t bear the sight of these people anymore.” He looked about him and his eyes came to rest on two hard brown hands, two forearms the color of oak which, a few steps away, were turning over and pressing down the damp earth at the foot of the daturas under the arcade. On the kitchen doorstep, a small roly-poly child with a fez on its head tottered, fell on the ground, and laughed. Above the whistling of the gray swifts, which were drinking on the wing from the newly made fountain, rose a quavering song which trailed its long notes and its intervals of augmented seconds in the air and relaxed Bernard Bonnemains’s contracted heart. “I’d like to live among them, among the people here. It’s true that most of them don’t belong here.” His eyes returned to Rose. Her cheeks were scarlet and her hair tumbled: he could see that she was worried about him. “That girl’s going to pay for the others! I swear that she’s going through with it tonight, and how! And if she gets caught, if we both get caught, very well then! I can’t see that it matters.” He could not stop himself from admiring the attitude of the Fiji Islander. At the mention of the “big job,” she had manifested her greed and delight only by a brief flicker in her eye. Now she was combing her fringe and her hair gleamed as blue as a Chinese girl’s in the sun. “She keeps all the ‘how, why, and when?’ for when they’re alone together. She’s an admirable female in her own way.” He turned again to Rose, who was disentangling her rough golden curls in imitation and humming as she did so. “As for her . . . The time it takes her to grasp anything! But she’s entirely made—admirably made too—to be enjoyed.” His desire gripped him again. It disturbed him yet, at the same time, it revived his awareness of the African spring, of his own strength, of the agreeable present moment. He leaped to his feet and cried: “Food! Food! Let’s eat or I’ll not be responsible for my actions!”

  Then he rushed, gesticulating, up the steps. Behind him there burst out shrill cries of terror. He realized that they came from the little dimpled child in its miniature fez and he regretted having behaved like a maniac.

  A few minutes later, the four of them sat at a table eating large, stringy shrimps, stuffed artichokes, and baby lamb. Bessier Senior, a rose in his buttonhole, tried vainly to steer the conversation back to the business of the villa.

  “What’s your opinion, Bonnemains? Farrhar made no secret of the fact that the pasha, after spending a summer at Deauville, has developed a passion for Norman buildings with crossbeams and all that. A Norman cottage in Tangiers, no, that’s really too much! Bonnemains, my dear chap, I’m talking to you, d’you hear?”

  Far less deferential than usual, Bonnemains laughed in his face, displaying his splendid teeth to tempt Rose.

  “I hear perfectly, my dear fellow, I hear perfectly. But in the first place, I’m a little drunk with this sun and this country and this heavy white wine that glues one’s tongue. And in the second place, I’ve a horror of meddling in other people’s affairs. Didn’t you know that?”

  Bessier Senior raised his fair eyelashes and, for no apparent reason, laid his hand on Rose’s forearm.

  “No, dear boy, I didn’t know anything of the kind. Rose, fish me a bit of ice out of the pail. Thank you. I prefer your hand to the Spanish waiter’s.”

  He took his time to drink before adding, with too emphatic graciousness: “My affairs won’t always be ‘other people’s affairs’ to you, Bernard. At least, so I dare to hope.”

  “Yes, yes. Always these Old World courtesies,” thought Bernard. “He doesn’t give a damn for me, yet I still owe him some thanks. What can I say to him? He’s obviously expecting some polite formula of gratitude.”

  “My dear Cyril, no one’s clumsier than I am at showing a gratitude which . . . I should so much like, particularly for your sake, to prove myself before you give me your official confidence . . .”

  At the word “official,” Bessier once more unveiled his bluish eyes and fixed them for a moment on Bernard. He smiled into space, took the tea rose out of his buttonhole, and inhaled it at length, using the rose and the pale hand as a screen between himself and Bernard. Bernard had to be content with this coquettish gesture which implied: “All in good time,” or “That’s understood.”

  Odette, who was smoking discreetly, had allowed herself neither an allusive smile nor a meaningful look. “Well trained,” thought Bernard. “I’ll never get such good results with Rose. Unless by great kicks in the . . .” He laughed and became once more the Bernard Bonnemains whom he himself believed to be the authentic one. This Bernard was a strong, likable young man, rather an optimistic character, who used anger as a defense against his fundamental shyness and who was inclined to covet his neighbor’s goods when they were flourished under his nose.

  Some black, bitter coffee kept the two couples sitting on at the table. The hot air rose up from the gravel and a cool salt breeze smelling of cedarwood stirred over their heads. Caught by the sun which had moved around, Bessier folded a newspaper into a hat and put it on. It gave him an intolerable resemblance to a portrait of a middle-aged woman by Renoir. Suddenly Bernard could stand no more and he stood up, knocking his chair over on the gravel.

  “If I die of heart failure,” scolded Odette, “I know who’ll be responsible.”

  “Oh, come now . . . come . . .” Rose began plaintively.

  “A little touch of colic, dear friend?” simpered Bessier under his wide-brimmed printed hat.

  “Oh, Cyril!” said Rose reproachfully.

  “I might have replied,” thought Bernard, as he reached his room, “that I actually was suffering from violent indigestion. Each one of those three said exactly what I knew they would say. Life is becoming impossible.”

  He locked his door, pulled down the blinds, and flung himself on his bed. The half-open window let in noises, not one of which was African: banging crockery, telephone bells, someone languidly dragging a rake. A ship’s siren filled the air, drowning all other sounds, and Bernard, relaxed almost to the point of tears, shut his eyes and opened his clenched fists.

  “What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with me? The need to make love, obviously. My Rose, my little Rose . . . Rose of my life . . .”

  He turned over with a leap like a fish. “Those names sound as silly for her as they do for me to say them. She’s my Rose, my delicious little blond slavey, my pretty goldilocks of a washerwoman?” He broke off with a kind of sob of impatience, which he managed to choke down and which had nothing to do with tenderness. “Enough of all this gush! Tonight we’re going for a walk, Rose and I.”

  On the wooden slats of the blinds, he conjured up the old pond in the deserted park, overgrown with delicate wild grasses, the trickle of water diverted from the dried-up lion’s mouth, and Rose lying on her back. But a kind of ill will spoiled his pleasure and his hope, and he refused to be taken in by himself. “Yes, I know perfectly well that all this story would be much prettier if Rose were poor. But if she were poor, I shouldn’t be thinking of marrying her.”

  Sleep fell on him so suddenly that he had no time to settle himself in a comfortable position. He slept, lying sprawled across the bed, one arm bent and the back of his neck pressing against the feather pillow. When he woke up, which was not till the sun had moved to another window, he was stiff all over. Before raising his perspiring head, he caught sight of the corner of an envelope under the door. “What’s the trouble now?”

  We’re going out, Rose had written. Dear Bernard, we didn’t want to disturb your rest . . .

  “We, we .
. . who the hell are ‘we’? I’ll give her a lesson in family solidarity!” In the glass, he saw his untidy image; his shirt rucked up, his trousers unbelted, and his hair on end, and thought he looked ugly.

  Cyril has an awful migraine and asks us, as a favor, to have dinner at the hotel and go to bed early. As usual, Odette, as a model wife, entirely agrees with Cyril. But I admit that I myself . . .

  Bernard ran to the window, pulled up the blinds, and leaned over the cooling patio. From now until tomorrow it would be bathed in shadow and spray from the fountain. The jet of water, shooting up straight from its basin, quivered in the breeze. Beyond the arcades lay the chalky African soil with its ubiquitous riot of pulpy white arum lilies.

  He waited, naked, for his bath to fill. His young, slightly heavy body, without scar or blemish, pleased him. The thought of Rose gave him one of those moments of magical anguish such as he had felt when he was fifteen, moments when desire is so fierce that it almost consumes its object, then forgets it.

  Freshly bathed and shaved, dressed in light clothes and smelling good, he went down and stood at the edge of the garden. He was rash enough to let his pleasure show on his face.

  “You look like a First Communicant,” said the voice of Bessier.

  “I can smell you from here,” said Odette. “You’ve put it on with rather a heavy hand. That Counterattack of yours . . . I’ve always said it wasn’t a man’s toilet water.”

  “On the other hand, I adore his white woolen socks,” said Bessier.

  “Personally,” went on Odette, “I’d have preferred not quite such a blue tie. With a gray suit, a really blue tie looks as silly as a bunch of cornflowers in one’s buttonhole.”

  She was sitting so close to her husband that their shoulders touched. United in their spite, they were summing him up as if he were a horse. It was their unity which struck Bernard as even more offensive than their insolence.

  “Have you quite finished?” he said roughly.

  “Now then, you! Come off it!” cried Odette.