“. . . ?”
“The great hat principle is that when you meet a woman on the street and her hat allows you to see whether she’s a brunette, a blond, or a redhead, the woman in question is not wearing a chic hat. There! . . . Notice I’m not saying anything, I’ll let you make up your own mind. Well?”
“. . .”
“You prefer the navy-blue one? That one there, on the mushroom? Yes? . . . Well, really!”
“. . .”
“No, no, it’s not sold.”
“. . . ?”
“Why no, Madame, I don’t want to keep you from buying it! I wasn’t suggesting it to you because I didn’t think I was talented enough to sell hats like that one. But it’s true, it does seem to go with your face. Ah, you really know what it is you want! Like I always say: there are only two categories of clients whose minds can’t be changed: artists and lower-middle-class women.”
“ . . .”
“You’re not an artist, but you still have a very independent sense of judgment. Try on this one here, just for me. It’s not at all excessive, but I think it’s both rich and discreet, because of this polished cotton fantasia which gives it all its cachet . . . No? Ah, I’m not having any luck at all, you’re just trying to mortify me. If your two sons have your personality, they’ll be terrible men! Are those two big boys doing all right?”
“ . . .”
“Already? How time flies, my Lord! And still good-looking, I’m sure. Well, there’s nothing surprising about that.”
“. . . !”
“No, Madame, there’s no flattery intended at all; anyway, everybody in the shop agrees with me, it’s just what everybody says about the presence, the charm, the intelligence of your husband . . . and everyone knows that your two gorgeous children also inherited your beautiful health! What a shame they’re not daughters! I’d already be fitting them for hats, and spoiling them as much as you. So, nothing more today, except the little blue hat? Shall I have it sent down to you in your car?”
“ . . .”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry, I give the description of the car to the messenger boy myself. You think I don’t know the brown sedan you’ve had for six years? Goodbye, Madame, and thank you for your lovely visit, don’t go so long without coming to see your faithful saleswoman; I enjoy seeing you so much . . . it gives me a rest from our American clientele: all I feel like telling those women are disagreeable things.”
An Interview
“I’m afraid so, dear lady, it’s me! Curse fate, it’s me again! You haven’t forgotten our last interview, have you? You treated me so poorly! I can still see you at the conclusion of your talk, backstage at the public university. ‘What’s he doing here?’ You muttered between your teeth. Oh, yes, don’t deny it, I understood perfectly! The fact is, my evening clothes were singularly out of place in a working-class milieu . . .”
“. . .”
“You’re right, it’s not a working-class milieu, it’s . . . help me out . . . it’s . . . popular! That’s it: a popular milieu! And now, let’s talk seriously. This time I’m taking the chair you’re not offering me, and setting in—oh, excuse me, digging in! Our old camaraderie gives me rights, and no one’s going to have a nice little article about your new book before me. You understand that what I would like is something which would get between her police dog and her Siamese cat . . .’ Just between you and me, people have had enough of your animals! I want to present our us away from the eternal ‘We found this unique artist at her worktable, readers with the real ‘you,’ a more detailed ‘you’, more in depth, more . . . Notice, I have a pencil and a note pad! It amuses me quite a bit to play the reporter who chases down dogs who have been run over and potholes in the street. It’s not like me at all to run around with the paraphernalia of a journaler . . .”
“. . .”
“Yes, yes, of a journaler, I like the word, whose discouraged ending bespeaks quite well the sadness, the meanness, the spinelessness of a profession which isn’t a profession. That surprises you, admit it, to hear me melancholize in this way. But I’ve just gone through, I’ve barely managed to pull through a nasty period . . .”
“. . .”
“Bah! . . . everything and nothing . . . Neurasthenia. A vague word which contains so many precise miseries. It’s at the point where I’m still asking myself: Let me see now, do I exile myself to the country, with the few sous left me by my father, so I can plant my cabbage, live obscurely and . . . how shall I say? monastically . . . ? There perhaps is where wisdom lies. And too bad for all the blackened pages, for the useless offspring of my thought!”
“. . . ?”
“Yes . . . I’ve undertaken a . . . how shall I say? a study, a fantastic ‘study of man’—I rather like the title, which is a counterpart to Balzac’s Studies of Women . . . I’m going to speak to you like a colleague, with perfect frankness: is my book finished—or isn’t it? At each moment, I lean over my hero as over an abyss, and I cry out, ‘But I didn’t know him!—I only catch glimpses of him!’ It is this exhausting task which has brought me to the point: neurasthenia, loss of sleep, fickle appetite, migraines, etc. And the profession, during this time, the terrible profession which does not wait, which forces itself on you, which pushes you: Go, the Queen of St. Marguerite’s Market is calling you, the dramatist whose play is being performed tomorrow hopes for you! So the exasperated body rebels, your nerves get the better of you, you collapse in midstream! You know all this, you’ve suffered it all, naturally . . .”
“. . .”
“Go on, go on, there’s no use denying it, we’re talking heart to heart, to listen to you, it seems to me that your soul reflects mine some what, I am so happy, so honored that our impressions are so similar! What did you do to triumph over the crisis?”
“ . . . ?”
“For me, at first, I was taken by a—how shall I say—by a phobia about noise and light, I was at the point of going through the childishness of doubling my shutters, of covering my walls with cork. I’ve been—it’s laughably pitiful—at the point of proposing to my upstairs neighbors that I buy them a carpet . . . I lived a prisoner’s life, illuminated by a single lamp: anemia—I take the word out of your mouth—wasting no time settling in; thus began the painstaking treatments intended as a tonic for an unfortunate organism, young and yet exhausted. I underwent cold hydrotherapy, raw horsemeat, the spa—ah, what a book, if I had had the strength for it, that season at the spa would have made!—and for illusory results, purely illusory . . . So, what do you think I did?”
“ . . .”
“Yes, yes, you sensed it! I said to myself, You will forget your pain, by reaching out to the suffering of others, you will humbly see your reflection in their pettinesses, in their ambitions, you will confess what they hide: in a word, you will be a reporter! But a reporter in the way one is a doctor, somewhat, or a detective; you will not mingle with the masses of those who content themselves with the role of phonograph or camera, no! You’ll turn an imprudent word into an anecdote; a smile or a gesture into a little novel. A peaceful novel, unquestionably, one which could take wing between the walls and beneath the foliage of this garden . . . don’t you think? . . . Ah, it’s wonderful. This provincial corner, this air which smells of lime trees. This is what my unfortunate nerves needed, but . . . I don’t mean to be indiscreet, but how much is your rent?”
“. . .”
“Now! now! . . . Paradise is worth paying for. Paradise without heat? . . . No? with heat? Good. And do you think that in the neighborhood I could find . . .”
“. . .”
“Oh, you’re just saying that. Deep down, you’d really like to entice your colleague and comrade to live nearby. Just the same, in a maisonette like this, one could create a charming place, done in nothing but horrible Restoration furniture, vanity dressers, overly small washbasins made of flowered porcelain . . . I have a genius for decorating, you know. Now that’s all I’m going to think about! It’s all your fault, but yo
u’ll pay for it!”
“. . . ?”
“Ah, hah! . . . who is it who’s going to find herself in L’Heure tomorrow, sketched out from top to bottom, with her acute femininity and her hyperaestheticized sensibility? You, my dear friend, you!”
“. . . !”
“What do you mean, you haven’t opened your mouth? Oh, that’s just like a woman, that expression, just like a woman! Except that in that expression there are a hundred lines of psychology! Isn’t a woman entirely in what she doesn’t say? I’d better be off, you’d scratch out my eyes, for a woman forgives a man—even a reporter—everything except insight. And I’m stealing a rose from you—I have a passion for flowers. If today I had not been exclusively the slave of my profession—and of a sense of curiosity made up of sympathy and admiration—I would have told you how this cultish devotion to flowers came to me, it really is the strangest case . . . But today, first things first! Dear Madame and friend, the journaler kisses your hands and runs to his factory—but the friend remains in thought at your feet, on this lawn which they only skim . . .”
[Translated by Matthew Ward]
MY FRIEND VALENTINE
A Letter
My Dear Valentine,
I received your postcard. I was able to make out—from the few lines covering the view of the Lac du Bourget like a network of fine hairs—what faithful friendliness and affectionate concern there is in it.
We parted somewhat coolly, and you write to me, circumspect: “Abominable weather, impossible excursions, we’re thinking of going back home . . . And what about you, what are you doing?”
That’s enough; it’s not hard to translate: “I’m afraid I’ve made you very angry . . . Don’t forget me, don’t hold it against me; we don’t share two ideas in common, but I’m very fond of you, I don’t know why; I like you just as you are, with all your faults. I’m upset about you: put my mind at ease.”
Don’t blush, my friend Valentine—it’ll make your face powder cake!—and understand right away that I am still your friend.
I’ve followed your travels in the newspapers. Figaro assured me of your presence in Trouville, and I don’t know which fashionable women’s paper it was that depicted you in the most surprising terms: you were attributed with an “impeccable navy-blue Louis XV suit, with a twisted Guayaquil pompadour . . .” A twisted Guayaquil pompadour! Really! As a friend by the name of Claudine used to say to me, “I don’t know what it is, but it must be beautiful!”
Because I’m living in a desert of golden sand—sixty square kilometers of beach, without a single strand of greenery, without one bald pebble—I am surprised, honestly, that there still are ladies who wear hats, tight-fitting dresses, boned collars, long corsets, and perilously high heels. How can I admit to you that, for the season, I have put away my dresses and shoes, and that beneath the indifferent and calloused soles of my feet I walk on the varnished seaweed, the sharp-edged shells, and the gray, salty furze that breaks through the sand? How dare I paint myself to you, dark as I am, my nose peeling a little from too much sun, my arms gloved in a deep shade of reddish brown? Thank God, the gulls and the delightful curlews are the only ones frightened by my riding outfit: knickers which at one time were blue, and a coarse knitted jersey. Add to that blue cycling stockings, rubber shoes, a soft cap, and the whole thing perched on top of a big nag of a bay horse—and you’ll haye a little equestrian group you wouldn’t want to run into in the Bois de Boulogne.
At least let me congratulate you! Femina prints a picture of you, in your tennis clothes, among those of the “best rackets” in Deauville . . . this Joan of Arc cuirass of white serge, which cuts across the pleated skirt at mid-thigh, is charming. You look like a little warrior in it, not the least bit athletic, but so endearing!
You see, we’re not angry with each other at all. You’re so unbearable, Valentine my friend! And I’m so impossible! I can still see us, very dignified, exchanging courteous and theatrical goodbyes. You had asked me what I was doing this summer and I’d answered, “Well . . . first of all I’m going to do ‘Flesh’ in Marseille.” To which you said, “Again!”
Me: “What do you mean ‘again’?”
You: “That horrid thing again!”
Me: “It’s not horrid, it’s a ‘sensational mime-drama’!”
You: “It’s perfectly horrid! Isn’t that the one where you tear off your dress and appear . . .”
Me: “Undressed, precisely.”
You: “And it doesn’t matter to you?”
Me: “What do you mean, ‘it’?”
You: “To show yourself off in public in an outfit, in a costume . . . well . . . It’s beyond me! When I think that you stand there, in front of the whole world . . . oh . . . !”
Seized by an irresistible shudder of modesty, you covered your face with your hands and your whole body cringed, so that your dress, clinging to you, outlined you for an instant worse than naked: your little breasts crushed by the maillot corset, your stomach elongated and flat, ending in a mysterious fold, your round thighs pressed together, your delicate knees, bent slightly, every detail of your graceful body appeared to me so clearly beneath the crepe de Chine that it embarrassed me.
But you were already uncovering your incensed eyes.
“I have never seen . . . recklessness like yours, Colette!”
To which I responded, with witless rudeness, “My dear, you bore me. You’re neither my mother nor my lover: therefore . . .”
An exasperated sigh, a stiff handshake, that’s all there was to our goodbye. Now, alone, I laugh to myself when I think of your special modesty, which shelters a slight body beneath vast, high hats, a body whose every step reveals, underneath a short, tight tunic, the movement of the hips, the protruding and rolling of the tight buttocks, and even the pink and amber color of your arms, shoulders, and back beneath the lace of the sleeves and the bodice. I’d really like to give you a good dressing down . . . you who—not content to appear in the light of day in this getup that a little Tanagra nymph would have found just barely adequate—come out of the water at Trouville with your nipples showing under your tight silk bathing suit glistening like a wet fish . . .
There’s one thing, Valentine my friend, that you will never teach me, and that is that the skin on my lower back or my hips can be more tempting and more secret than the skin on my hand or my calf, and it’s this “recklessness,” as you call it, this savage serenity, which makes all your indignation, your whole display of petty—do I dare say—local virtue, of your modesty by the square centimeter, pointless.
Do you remember the legal proceedings, still notorious, against nudity in the music hall? One little walk-on was cruelly upset at the time. She was playing two roles in a year-end review: in one she appeared nude, chaste, and silent, motionless on a cardboard cloud, with a bow in her hand. Two tableaux later, she came back onstage with “Feminine Undergarments,” dressed in a lace teddy and a pair of half hose: her naked little knees would quiver, as she sang a little song with indistinct words, and the flowers of her breasts would show mauve beneath the sheer linen. She looked sweet in it, slightly ridiculous, and perfectly indecent; well, one of her roles was cut: you understand that that meant she gave up the bow of Artemis and kept her sheer lace.
Does that seem perfectly natural to you? I was sure it did.
O infernal little woman! There are still moments when I am weak enough to want to make you understand me, to grab that hard little head of yours by its golden hair—real or false—and give it a good hard knock, to shake loose all its prejudices, all the bits and pieces of ideas, the debris of principles which, all together, make such an immoral fuss inside it.
Yes, immoral, you little dolt! Immoral, you ninny! Immoral, you nitwit! (And I’m still using polite language!) I don’t care about your wide eyes and gaping mouth. You will never know all the bad things I think of you, you who look at me because I broke off with my husband, as though I had contracted an embarrassing disease, hard to hide
and hard to admit. You will laugh, as though it were an easy paradox, if I try to explain to you that the married state appears preposterous and quite abnormal to me, you who have a husband—a husband in automobiles!—and who forget, when you’re in his arms, about infidelity and the flight of a first lover . . .
Haven’t you ever thought long and hard about that man, your husband? Don’t answer me wittily and evasively: “Yes, since I started cheating on him!” Remember back, without laughing, to the time when you didn’t cheat on him. Wasn’t there a day in your life when, faithful, loving, even in love, you suddenly looked at him and shrank back in astonishment: “What is this man doing in my house with me? Why, in fact, am I living with this man here in my bedroom? I married him, fine! I’ve gone to bed with him, fine!—all that doesn’t change the fact that this is a man, a man like any other, who is here in my bedroom, in my bed, in my life. He comes in, into my bathroom, after asking, ‘Am I bothering you, darling?’ I reply, ‘No, my love!’ but that doesn’t change the fact that this man is here, in my bedroom, and that his face, the shape of his back, the way he strokes his mustache, suddenly strike me as strange, shocking, out of place . . . All my life, then, I’ll live like this with a man, who will have the right to see how awful I look in the morning, to walk in on me while I’m drinking my laxative tisane, who’ll ask about awkward dates in my little lady’s calendar, and walk around in his shorts in my bathroom! There he is in my life, for the rest of my life! Why? The fact is, I don’t know why. I love him . . . but that’s another matter. Love has nothing to do with living together—on the contrary, most of the time it dies from it.”
Admit it, my friend: it is simply not possible that your married state has not appeared to you—for an hour, for an instant—in all its ludicrous crudeness! And who’s to say that your husband, in his modesty, hasn’t suffered from it too, with a man’s modesty which is nearly always more delicate, more sincere than ours? I mean your husband, my husband, the husbands of all these ladies . . . One morning he’ll wake up in a sullen mood, absorbed in his thoughts, hardly saying a word, eyes downcast. To your concerned “What’s the matter, darling?,” he’ll reply, “Nothing . . . a little migraine . . .” And after swallowing the headache powder offered by your affectionate hand, he’ll remain silent, with the look of a man to whom something has happened.