There, or thereabouts, is where my knowledge of Provence ends. In fifteen years I moved very little. From St.-Tropez to Fréjus, from Pampelonne to Thoronet, from a rosé wine to a golden wine, from ailloli to pissaladière, from one dawn to one night snowy with stars . . . it is enough to remember enough to be thankful for . . . The prudent weariness of age keeps me from running any risk of forgetting that a sovereign blue color weighs down on the imaginary rooftops of Bella-Vista, or that the west wind rises fresh toward noon, or that sleep, in the breezy shade, is conducive to dreaming and speaks, to the trusting sleeper, of motionless ships and islands free from danger.
[Translated by Matthew Ward]
It is absurd to suppose that periods empty of love are blank pages in a woman’s life. The truth is just the reverse. What remains to be said about a passionate love affair? It can be told in three lines. He loved me, I loved Him. His presence obliterated all other presences. We were happy. Then He stopped loving me and I suffered.
Frankly, the rest is eloquence or mere verbiage. When a love affair is over, there comes a lull during which one is once more aware of friends and passers-by, of things constantly happening as they do in a vivid, crowded dream. Once again, one is conscious of normal feelings such as fear, gaiety, and boredom; once again time exists and one registers its flight. When I was younger, I did not realize the importance of these “blank pages.” The anecdotes with which they furnished me—those impassioned, misguided, simple, or inscrutable human beings who plucked me by the sleeve, made me their witness for a moment, and then let me go—provided more “romantic” subjects than my private personal drama. I shall not finish my task as a writer without attempting, as I want to do here, to draw them out of the shadows to which the shameless necessity of speaking of love in my own name has consigned them.
A house, even a very small house, does not make itself habitable or adopt us in the week which follows the signing of the agreement. As a wise man of few words who makes sandals at St-Tropez once said: “It takes as much work and thought to make sandals for someone aged six as to make them for someone aged forty.”
Thirteen years ago when I bought a small vineyard beside the sea in the South of France with its plumy pines, its mimosas and its little house, I regarded them with the prompt business-like eye of a camper. “I’ll unpack my two suitcases; I’ll put the bathtub and the portable shower in a corner, the Breton table and its armchair under the window, the divan-bed and its mosquito net in the dark room. I’ll sleep there and I’ll work there and I’ll wash there. By tomorrow, everything will be ready.” For the dining room, I could choose between the shade of the mulberry and that of the centuries-old spindle trees.
Having the necessities—that is to say shade, sun, roses, sea, a well, and a vine—I had a healthy contempt for such luxuries as electricity, a kitchen stove, and a pump. More prudent influences seduced me from leaving the little Provençal house in its primitive perfection. I gave in to them and listened to the convincing builder whom I went to see in his own home.
He was smiling. In his garden an all-the-year-round mimosa and purple wallflowers set off to advantage the various objects for sale: concrete benches, upended balusters arranged like skittles, drain pipes, and perforated bricks, the lot under the guardianship of a very pretty bulldog in turquoise Vallauris ware.
“You know how things are here,” said the builder. “If you need your villa by July or August, you’ll have to come and bully the workman on his own ground now and then.”
I remember that I kept blinking my eyelids, which were hurt by the chalky glare of March. The sky was patterned with great white clouds and the mistral was shaking all the doors in their frames. It was cold under the table but a sunbeam, which fell on the estimate covered with red figures and black dots and blue pencil ticks, burned the back of my hand. I caught myself thinking that warm rain is very agreeable in spring in the Ile-de-France and that a heated, draft-proof flat in Paris, staked out with lamps under parchment hats, has an unrivaled charm.
The Midi triumphed. I had indeed just been having attack after attack of bronchitis and the words “warm climate . . . rest . . . open air . . .” became the accomplices of the smiling builder. I decided therefore to try to find a haven of rest, some way away from the port to which I have since become so deeply attached, from which I could sally forth from time to time to “bully the workmen.” This would give me an excuse to escape from the most exhausting of all pleasures, conversation.
Thanks to a decorative painter who takes his holidays alone and makes himself unrecognizable, in the manner of Greta Garbo, by wearing sunglasses and sleeveless tennis shirts, I learned that a certain inn, crowded with odd people in the summer but peaceful for the rest of the year, would take me under its roof. I call it Bella-Vista because there are as many Bella-Vistas and Vista-Bellas in France as there are Montignys. You will not find it on the Mediterranean coast; it has lost its proprietresses and nearly all its charms. It has even lost its old name, which I shall not reveal.
Consequently, at the end of March, I packed a good pound of periwinkle-blue paper in a suitcase. I also put in my heavy wool slacks, my four pullovers, some woolen scarves, and my tartan-lined mackintosh—all the necessary equipment, in short, for winter sports or an expedition to the Pole. My previous stays in the Midi, during a lecture tour at the end of one winter, called up memories of Cannes blind with hail and Marseilles and Toulon as white and gritty as cuttlefish bones under the January mistral. They also evoked bright blue and pale green landscapes, followed by grim recollections of leeches and injections of camphorated oil.
These discouraging images accompanied me almost to the “hostelry” I call Bella-Vista. Concerning Bella-Vista I shall give only certain inoffensive details and draw posthumous portraits such as those of its two proprietresses of whom one, the younger, is dead. Supposing the other to be alive, heaven knows on what work, and in what place of seclusion, those agile fingers and piercing eyes are now employed.
Thirteen years ago, the two of them stood in the doorway of Bella-Vista. One expertly seized my smooth-haired griffon by the loose skin of her neck and back, deposited her on the ground, and said to her: “Hello, dear little yellow dog. I’m sure you is thirsty.”
The other held out her firm hand, with its big ring, to help me out of the car and greeted me by name: “A quarter of an hour later, Madame Colette, and you’d have missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“The bourride. They wouldn’t have left you a mouthful. I know them. Madame Ruby, when you can take your mind for one moment off that dog.”
Her charming accent took one straight back to the Place Blanche. She had acquired the red, uneven sunburn peculiar to high-colored blondes. Her dyed hair showed grayish at the roots; there was spontaneous laughter in her bright blue eyes and her teeth were still splendid. Her tailored white linen dress glistened from repeated ironing. A striking person, in fact; one of those who make an instant, detailed physical impression. Before I had even spoken to her, I already knew by heart the pleasant shape of her hands baked by the sun and much cooking, her gold signet ring, her small wide-nostriled nose, her piercing glance which plunged straight into one’s own eyes, and the good smell of laundered linen, thyme, and garlic which almost drowned her Paris scent.
“Madame Suzanne,” retorted her American partner, “you is lost in Madame Colette’s opinion if you is nicer to her than to her little yellow dog.”
Having made this statement, Madame Ruby announced lunch by ringing a little copper bell whose angry voice quite unhinged my griffon bitch. Instead of obeying the bell, I remained standing in the courtyard, a square which, like a stage set, lacked one side. Perched on a modest eminence, Bella-Vista prudently turned its back to the sea and offered its façade and its two wings to the kindly winds, contenting itself with a restricted view. From its paved terrace I discovered in turn the forest, some sheltered fields, and a dark blue fragment of the Mediterranean wedged between two slopes o
f hills.
“You isn’t any other luggage?”
“The suitcase, my dressing case, the carry-all, the rug. That’s all, Madame Ruby.”
At the sound of her name, she gave me a familiar smile. Then she called a dark-haired servant girl and showed her my luggage.
“Room 10!”
But though room 10, on the first floor, looked out on the sea, it refused me my favorite southwest aspect. So I chose instead a room on the ground floor which opened directly onto the terrace courtyard. It was opposite the garage and not far from the aviary of parakeets.
“Here you is more noisy,” objected Madame Ruby. “The garage . . .”
“It’s empty, thank heaven.”
“Quite right. Our car sleeps outdoors. It’s more convenient than going in, coming out, going in, coming out. So, you likes number 4 better?”
“I do like it better.”
“O.K. Here’s the bath, here’s the light, here’s the bell, here’s the cupboards”—she swept up my dog and threw her deftly onto the flowered counterpane—“and here’s yellow dog!”
The bitch laughed with pleasure while Madame Ruby, enchanted with the effect she had produced, pivoted on her rubber soles. I watched her cross the courtyard and thought that, from head to foot, she was exactly as she had been described to me. She was scandalous, but one liked her at first sight. She was mannish without being awkward, her boy’s hips and square shoulders were trimly encased in blue frieze and white linen; there was a rose in the lapel of her jacket. Her head was round and could not have been more beautifully modeled under the smooth cap of red hair. It had lost its golden glint and showed white in places and she wore it plastered to her skull with severe, provocative coquetry. There was something definitely attractive about her wide gray eyes, her unassuming nose, her big mouth with its big, seemingly indestructible teeth, and her skin, which was freckled over the cheekbones. Forty-five perhaps? More like fifty. The neck in the open cellular shirt was thickening and the loose skin and prominent veins on the back of the strong hands revealed that she might well be even more than fifty.
Undoubtedly I cannot draw Madame Ruby as well as I heard Madame Suzanne describe her later in a moment of irritation.
“You look like an English curate! You’re the living image of a Boche got up as a sportsman! You’re the living image of a vicious governess! Oh, I know you were an American schoolteacher! But I’d no more have trusted you with my little sister’s education than my little brother’s!”
On the day of my arrival, I still knew very little about the two friends who ran Bella-Vista. A sense of well-being, unforeseen rather than anticipated, descended on me and kept me standing there with my arms crossed on the windowsill of room 4. I submitted myself passively to the reverberations of the yellow walls and blue shutters; I forgot my exacting griffon bitch, my own hunger, and the meal now in progress. In that odd state of convalescence which follows a tiring night journey, my eyes wandered slowly around the courtyard. They came to rest on the rosebush under my window, idly following every sway of its branches. “Roses already! And white arum lilies. The wisteria’s beginning to come out. And all those black-and-yellow pansies.”
A long dog, lying stretched out in the courtyard, had wagged its tail as Madame Ruby passed. A white pigeon had come and pecked at the toes of her white shoes . . . From the aviary came a gentle, muffled screeching: the soft, monotonous language of the green parakeets. And I was glad that my unknown room behind me was filled with the smell of lavender, dry bunches of which were hung on the bed rail and in the cupboard.
The duty of having to examine them poisons one’s pleasure in new places. I dreaded the dining room as if I were a traveler contemplating the panorama of an unknown town and thinking: “What a nuisance that I’ll have to visit two museums, the cathedral, and the docks.” For nothing will give the traveler as much pleasure as that warm rampart or that little cemetery or those old dikes covered with grass and ivy . . . and the stillness.
“Come along, Pati.”
The griffon followed me with dignity because I had only said her name once. She was called Pati when it was necessary for us both to be on our best behavior. When it was time for her walk, she was Pati-Pati-Pati, or as many more Patis as one had breath to add. Thus we had adapted her name to all the essential circumstances of our life. In the same way, when Madame Ruby spoke French, she contented herself with the single auxiliary verb “to be” which stood for all the others: “You is all you want? . . . You is no more luggage?” and so on. As I crossed the courtyard, I had already assigned Madame Ruby to that category of active, rather limited people who easily learn the nouns and adjectives of a foreign language but jib at verbs and their conjugation.
The prostrate dog half hitched himself up for Pati’s benefit. She pretended to ignore his existence, and by degrees, he collapsed again: first his shoulders; then his neck, which was too thin; lastly his mongrel greyhound’s head, which was too large. A brisk, rather chilly breeze was blowing wallflower petals over the sand but I was grateful to feel the bite of the sun on my shoulder. Over the wall, an invisible garden wafted the scent which demoralizes the bravest, the smell of orange trees in flower.
In the dining room, which was far from monumental but low-ceilinged and carefully shaded, a dozen small scattered tables with coarse Basque linen cloths reassured my unsociable disposition. There was no butter in shells, no headwaiter in greenish-black tails and none of those meager vases containing one marguerite, one tired anemone, and one spray of mimosa. But there was a big square of ice-cool butter and on the folded napkin lay a rose from the climbing rose tree: a single rose whose lips were a little harsh from the mistral and the salt; a rose I was free to pin to my sweater or to eat as an hors-d’œuvre. I directed a smile toward the presiding goddesses, but the smile missed its target. Madame Ruby, alone at a table, was hurrying through her meal and only Madame Suzanne’s bust was visible. Every time the kitchen hatch opened, her golden hair and her hot face appeared in its frame against a background of shining saucepans and gridirons. Pati and I had the famous bourride, velvet-smooth and generously laced with garlic; a large helping of roast pork stuffed with sage and served with applesauce and potatoes; cheese, stewed pears flavored with vanilla, and a small carafe of the local vin rosé. I foresaw that three weeks of such food would repair the ravages of two attacks of bronchitis. When the coffee was poured out—it was quite ordinary coffee but admirably hot—Madame Ruby came over and vainly offered me her cigarette lighter.
“You is not a smoker? O.K.”
She showed her tact by going off at once to her duties and not prolonging the conversation. As she moved away, I admired her rhythmic, swaying walk.
My griffon bitch sat opposite me in the depths of a knitted woolen hood I had presented to her. For correct deportment and silence at table, she could have given points to an English child. The restraint was not entirely disinterested. She knew that the perfection of her behavior would not only win her general approval but more concrete tributes of esteem such as lumps of sugar soaked in coffee and morsels of cake. To this end she gave a tremendous display of engaging head turnings, expressive glances, false modesty, affected gravity, and all the terrier airs and graces. A kind of military salute invented by herself—the front paw raised to the level of the ear—which one might call the C in alt of her gamut of tricks, provoked laughter and delighted exclamations. I have to admit that she occasionally overdid this playing to the gallery.
I have written elsewhere of this tiny bitch, a sporting dog in miniature with a deep chest, cropped ears like little horns, and the soundest of health and intelligence. Like certain dogs with round skulls—bulldogs, griffons, and Pekinese—she “worked” on her own. She learned words by the dozen and was always observant and on the alert. She registered sounds and never failed to attribute the right meaning to them. She possessed a “rule of the road” which varied according to whether we were traveling by train or by car. Brought up in Belgium in
the company of horses, she passionately followed everything that wore iron shoes for the pleasure of running behind them and she knew how to avoid being kicked.
She was artful; a born liar and pretender. Once, in Brittany, I saw her give a splendid imitation of a poor, brave, suffering little dog with its cheek all swollen from a wasp sting. But two could play at that game and I gave her a slap which made her spit out her swelling. It was a ball of dried donkey’s dung which she had stowed away in her cheek so as to bring it home and enjoy it at leisure.
Glutted with food and less overcome with fatigue than I was, Pati sat up straight on the other side of the table and took an inventory of the people and things about us. There was a lady and her daughter, who appeared to be the same age: the daughter was already decrepit and the mother still looked young. There were two boys on their Easter holidays who asked for more bread at every course, and finally, there was a solitary resident, sitting not far from us, who seemed to me quite unremarkable though he riveted Pati’s attention. Twice, when he was speaking to the dark-haired maid, she puffed out her lips to snarl something offensive and then thought better of it.
I did not scold myself for sitting on there, with the remains of my coffee cooling in my cup, glancing now at the swaying rosebush, now at the yellow walls and the copies of English prints. I stared at the sunlit courtyard, then at something else, then at nothing at all. When I drift like that, completely slack, it is a sign not that I am bored but that all my forces are silently coalescing and that I am floating like a seed on the wind. It is a sign that, out of wisps and stray threads and scattered straws, I am fashioning for myself just one more fragment of a kind of youth. “Suppose I go and sleep? . . . Suppose I go and look at the sea? . . . Suppose I send a telegram to Paris? . . . Suppose I telephone to the builder?”
The resident who had not the luck to please my dog said something to the dark-haired girl as he got up. She answered: “In a moment, Monsieur Daste.” He passed close by my table, gave a vague apologetic bow, and said something like “Huisipisi” to my dog in a jocular way. At this she put up her hackles till she looked like a bottle brush and tried to bite his hand.