“We can see it here and now, if you like,” said Madame Ruby promptly, pushing her empty glass toward the bottle.
Madame Suzanne gave her friend a warning look.
“Moderation in all things, Madame Ruby. Would you be an angel and go and find that fool of a Slough? And shut the rabbit up, if you can! Have you covered up the parakeets?”
Through the light buzzing of the wine in my ears, I listened to those ritual phrases, not unlike “counting-out rhymes.” I know by experience how their sound, their fatal recurrence can be like longed-for dew or a faint, neutral blessing. I know, too, that they can also fall like a branding iron on a place already seared.
But that night I was all benevolence. Pati, who was also getting fatter at Bella-Vista, waddled peacefully into the courtyard and I listened gratefully to Madame Ruby’s voice outside announcing that it was going to be fine.
As I stood up, my spectacles and my room key slipped off my knees. As they fell, Monsieur Daste’s hand reached out and caught them with such a swift, perfectly timed movement that I hardly had time to see his gesture. “Ah,” I thought. “So he’s not quite human, this climber.”
We all separated without further words like people who have the sense not to prolong the pleasures of a superficial gaiety and cordiality to the point of imprudence. Still under the spell of my optimism, I complimented Monsieur Daste on the appearance of his little wound. I did not tell him that it brought out the character, at once intelligent and uninteresting, of his face. He seemed enchanted. He bridled and passed one hand coquettishly over his ear to smooth his hair.
Lucie did not have to wake me the next morning. When she came in with the tray and the rose, I was already dressed and standing at my open french window, contemplating the fine weather.
Thirteen years ago, I did not know what spring or summer in the Midi could be. I knew nothing of that irruption, that victorious invasion of a season of serenity, of that enduring pact between warmth, color, and scent. That morning I took to longing for the sea salt on my hands and lips and to thinking of my patch of land where my picnicking workmen were drinking vin rosé and eating salami.
“Lucie, what beautiful weather!”
“The proper weather for the season. About time too. It’s kept us waiting long enough.”
As she arranged my breakfast and the daily rose on the table, the dark-haired maid answered me absently. I looked at her and saw that she was pale. Her pallor and a certain troubled look made her more attractive. She had put a little rouge on her beautiful mouth.
“Hello, Madame Colette!”
I answered Madame Ruby, who, dressed all in blue, with a narrow tight-fitting shirt and a beret pulled over one ear, was loading up her hampers.
My dog rushed at her, gave her her military salute, and danced around her.
“You is not want to come with me?”
“I’d love to.”
“While I do my shopping, you gives good advice to your pioneers.”
“Excellent idea!”
“You say the mason: ‘Dear friend.’ You say the man who does the roof: ‘My boy.’ You say the little painter: ‘Where is you get made the smart white blouse what suits you so well?’ You turn on the charm! Perhaps that works.”
“Ah, you know how to talk to men, Madame Ruby! Hold Pati. Just let me get a pullover and I’ll be with you.”
I went into the bathroom for a moment. When I returned, Lucie and Madame Ruby, one standing perfectly still in my room and the other stationed in the courtyard, were looking at each other across the intervening space. The maid did not turn away quickly enough to conceal from me that her eyes were full of fear, gentleness, and tears.
Madame Ruby drove us, fast and well, through the sparse forest, still russet from the annual fires. Between two tracts of pineland were carefully cultivated allotments now green with young beans and marrows, and fenced-off tracts of wild quince with great pink flowers. The much-prized garlic and onion lifted their spears from the light, powdery earth and the growing vines were stretching out their first tendrils. The blue air was now chill but kindly, now full of new and subtle warmth. The blue air of the Estérels rushed to meet us, and moistened the dog’s nose. Along the lane which ran into the main road, I could put out my hand as we drove and touch the leaves of the almond trees and the fruit already set and downy.
“The spring is born tonight,” said Madame Ruby softly.
Up till then, we had only exchanged a few commonplaces and these last words, spoken in such a low, troubled voice that they were almost inaudible, came as a surprise. They did not demand an answer and I made none. My strange companion sat impassive at the wheel, her chin high and her little beret over one eye. I threw a glance at her firm profile, so unlike a Frenchwoman’s, and noted again the coarse ruddy texture of her skin. The back of her neck, emerging from her pullover, looked as strong as a coal heaver’s. With a terrible blast of her horn, she swept the sprawling, dusty dogs off the road, to Pati’s intense delight, and kept up a stream of blasphemy in English against the heedless cart drivers. “The spring is born tonight.” Imprisoned behind the same ambiguous exterior, a brazen, angular female and a collegian in love with a servant girl were both claiming the right to live and to love. Very likely each hated the other.
It seemed a long time before we came to the coast and drove along the edge of the sea where a few bathers were shrieking with cold as they splashed about. We passed through sham villages; pink, silent, and empty, idly blossoming with no one to admire. At last Madame Ruby put me down in front of my future dwelling. She gave a whistle of ironic commiseration and refused to get out of the car. Raising her forefinger to the level of her pale, bushy eyebrow, she said: “I come and fetch you in three-quarters of an hour. You thinks it is enough for your whole house to be finished?”
She indicated the rampart of hollow bricks, the crater of slaked lime, and the mound of sifted sand which defended my gates, and left me to my fate.
But when she returned, I no longer wanted to leave the place. Instead of the workmen, who were missing one and all, I had found white arum lilies, red roses, a hundred little tulips with pointed cups, purple irises, and pittosporums whose scent paralyzes the will. Leaning over the edge of the well, I had listened to the musical noise of drops that filtered through the broken bricks falling into the water below, while Pati rested after her first encounter with a hedgehog. The interior of the house bore not the slightest resemblance to anything which had charmed me about it at first. But in the little pine wood, the bright drops of liquid resin were guttering in the wind, those drops that congeal almost as soon as they are formed, and tarnish before they fall to the ground. I had treated the mimosa, which flowers all the year round, with scant respect. Feeling like a rich person, I flung my bundle of flowers into the car, on top of the hampers of early artichokes, broad beans, and French beans with which the back seat was loaded.
“Not a soul?” asked Madame Ruby.
“Not a soul! Such luck! It was delightful.”
“We used to say that at Bella-Vista too, in the beginning. ‘Such luck! Not a soul!’ And now . . .”
She raised that clerical chin of hers and started up the car.
“And now we is a little blasé. A little old, both of us.”
“It’s very beautiful, a friendship that grows old gracefully. Don’t you agree?”
“Nobody loves what is old,” she said harshly. “Everyone loves what is beautiful, what is young—dangerous. Everyone loves the spring.”
On the way back, she did not speak again except to the dog. In any case, I should have been incapable of listening intelligently. I was conscious only of the noonday sun drugging me with light well-being and overwhelming drowsiness. I sat with my eyes closed, aware only of the resonance of a voice which, though nasal, was never shrill and whose deep pitch was as pleasant as the lowest notes of a clarinet. Madame Ruby drove fast, pointing out objects of vituperation to Pati, such as small donkeys, chickens, and other do
gs. The griffon responded enthusiastically to all these suggestions, even though they were expressed in English spoken with an American twang.
“O.K.,” approved Madame Ruby. “Good for you to learn English. Holiday task. Look to the left, enormous, enormous goose! Wah!”
“Wah!” repeated the little dog, standing up, quite beside herself with excitement, with her front paws against the windshield.
Of the few days that followed, I remember only the glorious weather. The weather spread an indulgent blue and gold and purple haze over my work and my worries, over the letters which arrived from Paris, over the full-blown idleness of the workmen, whom I found singing and playing “she loves me, she loves me not” with daisy petals when I revisited my little house. Fine weather, day and night, induced in me an Oriental rebelliousness against the accustomed hours of sleep. I was wide awake at midnight and overwhelmed with the imperative need of a siesta in the afternoon. Laziness, like work, demands to be comfortably organized. Mine sleeps during the day, muses at night, wakes at dawn, and closes the shutters against the unsympathetic light of the hours after lunch. On dark nights and under the first quarter of a slender, rosy moon, the nightingales all burst out together, for there is never a first nightingale.
On this subject, Monsieur Daste made various poetic remarks which did not affect me in the least. For I never bothered less about Monsieur Daste than I did during that week of fine weather. I saw hardly anything even of my hostesses. Their importance faded under the dazzling impact of the season. I did however observe a little poker incident between Madame Ruby and Monsieur Daste one evening. It was a very brief incident, mimed rather than spoken, and in the course of it I had a vision of Madame Ruby flushing the color of copper and clutching the edge of the green table with both hands. At that, Monsieur Daste gathered himself together in a most peculiar way. He seemed to shrink till he became very small and very compact, and as he thrust his lowered brow forward, he gave the impression of drawing back his shoulders behind his head. It was an attitude that blended ill with his prim face and that hair which was neither old nor young. Madame Suzanne promptly laid her hand on her friend’s well-groomed head.
“Now, now, my pet! Now, now . . .” she said without raising her voice.
With one accord, the two adversaries resumed a friendly tone and the game went on. As I was not interested in the cause of their quarrel, I made no inquiries. Perhaps Monsieur Daste had cheated. Or perhaps Madame Ruby. Or possibly both of them. I only thought to myself that, had it come to a fight, I should not have backed Monsieur Daste to win.
It was that night, if I am not mistaken, that I was awakened by a great tumult among the parakeets. As it was silenced almost at once, I did not get up. The next morning, very early, I saw Madame Ruby, trim as usual in white and blue, her rose in her lapel, standing near the aviary. Her back was turned to me and she was attentively studying some object she was holding in her cupped hand. Then she slipped whatever it was into her pocket. I pulled on a dressing gown and opened my french window.
“Madame Ruby, did you hear the parakeets in the night?”
She smiled at me, nodded from the distance, and came up the little steps to shake hands with me.
“Slept well?”
“Not badly. But did you hear, about two in the morning . . .”
She drew out of her pocket a dead parakeet. It was soft and the eye showed bluish between two borders of gray skin.
“What! They’re capable of killing each other?”
“So we must suppose,” said Madame Ruby, without looking up. “Poor little bird!”
She blew on the cold feathers which parted about a torn, bloodless wound. The dog wanted to be in on the affair and sniffed the bird with that mixture of bewilderment and eroticism which the sight and smell of death so often excites in the living.
“Not so keen, not so keen, little yellow dog. You begins smell, smell and then you eats. And then ever after, you eats.”
She went off with the bird in her pocket. Then she changed her mind and came back.
“Please, it’s better to say nothing to Madame Suzanne. Nor Monsieur Daste. Madame Suzanne is super . . . superstitious. And Monsieur Daste is . . .”
Her prominent eyes, gray as agates, sought mine.
“He is . . . sensitive. It’s better to say nothing.”
“I agree.”
She gave me that little salute with her forefinger and I did not see her again till luncheon.
In addition to its usual guests, Bella-Vista was receiving a family from Lausanne: three couples of hiking campers. Their rucksacks, their little tents and battery of aluminum cooking utensils, their red faces and bare knees seemed like the emblems of some inoffensive faith.
Lucie went to and fro between the tables, carrying the chervil omelette, the brains fried in batter, and the ragoût of beef. Her face was thickly powdered and she was languid and absentminded.
Their meal over, the campers spread out a map. With managerial discretion, Madame Suzanne signed to us to come and take our coffee in the “boudoir.” There was an expression of faint repugnance on her heated face. She gave off her strong perfume which blended ill with that of the ragoût, and she cooled the fire of her complexion with the help of a vast powder puff which never left the pocket of her white blouse.
“Pooh!” she sighed as she fell into a chair. “My goodness, how they fell on the stew, those Switzers! You’ll eat God knows what tonight: I haven’t a thing left. Those people give me the creeps. So I’m going to treat myself to a little cigar. Where are they off to already, Madame Ruby?”
With a thrust of her chin, Madame Ruby indicated the direction of the sea.
“Over there. Somewhere that isn’t got a name, provided it’s at least thirty miles away.”
“And they sleep on the hard ground. And they drink nothing but water. And it’s for idiots like that that our wonderful age invented the railway and the motorcar and the airplane! I ask you! As for me sleeping on the ground, the mere idea of ants . . .”
She bit off the end of her little Havana and rolled it carefully between her fingers. Madame Ruby never smoked anything but cigarettes.
“Come, come!” said Monsieur Daste. “Don’t speak ill of camping. You must be used to many forms of camping, Madame Ruby? And I’m sure you looked much more chic in plus-fours and a woolen shirt and hobnailed shoes than those three Swiss females. Come along now, admit it.”
She threw him an ironic glance and displayed her large teeth.
“All right, I admit it,” she said. “What about you, Monsieur Daste? Camping? Nights under the open stars? Dangerous encounters? You is a slyboots, Monsieur Daste! Don’t deny it!”
Monsieur Daste was flattered. He lowered his chin till it touched his tie, passed his hand over his ear to smooth the hair on his temple, and coquettishly swallowed a mouthful of brandy, which went the wrong way. He was convulsed with choking coughs and only regained his breath under the kindly hammering of Madame Suzanne’s hand on his shoulder blades. I must record that, with his face flushed and his streaming eyes bloodshot, Monsieur Daste was unrecognizable.
“Thank you,” he said when he could breathe again. “You’ve saved my life, Madame Suzanne. I can’t imagine what could have got stuck in my thoat.”
“A feather, perhaps,” said Madame Ruby.
Monsieur Daste turned his head toward her with an almost imperceptible movement and then became stock-still. Madame Suzanne, who was sucking her cigar, became agitated and said shrilly: “A feather? Whatever will she think of next? A feather! You’re not ill, are you, Ruby? Now me,” she went on hurriedly, “you’d never believe what I swallowed when I was a kid. A watch spring! But a huge watch spring, a positive metal snake, my dears, as long as that! I’ve swallowed a lot of other things since those days, bigger ones too, if you count insults.”
She laughed, not only with her mouth but with her eyes, and gave a great yawn.
“My children, I doubt very much whether you’ll se
e me again before five o’clock. Madame Ruby, will you look after the Swissies? They’re taking sandwiches with them tonight so that they can have dinner on a nice cool carpet of pine needles which’ll stick into their behinds.”
“Right,” said Madame Ruby. “Lucie is made the sandwiches?”
“No, Marguerite. Go and make sure she packs them in greaseproof paper. I’ve put it all down on their bill.”
Suddenly she extinguished the laugh in her blue eyes and scanned her friend’s face closely. “I’ve sent Lucie to her room. She’s not feeling well.”
Having said that, she left the room, jerking her shoulders as she did so. The back of her neck suggested a proud determination which I was the only one to notice. Monsieur Daste, shrunken and tense, had still not moved. Madame Ruby paid not the slightest attention either to Monsieur Daste or to myself before she, too, went out.
It was from that moment that I realized I was no longer enjoying myself at Bella-Vista. The saffron walls and the blue shutters, the Basque roof, the plastered Norman beams, and the Provençal tiles all suddenly seemed to me false and pretentious. A certain troubled atmosphere and the menace and hostility it breeds can only interest me if I am personally involved in it. It was not that I repented of feeling a rather pendulum-like sympathy with my hostesses which inclined now to Suzanne, now to Ruby. But, selfishly, I would have preferred them happy, serene in their old, faithful, reprehensible love that should have been spiced only with childish quarrels. The fact remained that I did not see them happy. And as to faithfulness, the yielding gentleness of a darkhaired servant girl gave me matter for thought—and disapproval.
When I ran into Lucie, when she brought me my “rose” breakfast about half past seven, I found myself feeling as severe toward Madame Ruby as if she had been Philemon deceiving Baucis.
I began to suspect “Daddy” Daste, that climber who had been so ill rewarded for his bird watching. I began to suspect his mysterious government employment, his scar adorned with black sticking plaster, and even what I called his malicious good temper. A conversation with Madame Ruby might have taught me more about Monsieur Daste and possibly explained the obvious antipathy he inspired in her. But Madame Ruby made no attempt to have any private talk with me.