Claudine and Annie Read online

  On Claudine’s landing, I glanced at my watch: ten past four. Marthe would be sure to have arrived and would be sitting nibbling sweets in that extraordinary drawing-room that I had hardly taken in on my earlier visits – I had been too suffocated by shyness.

  ‘Is Madame Léon Payet here yet?’

  A hostile old female servant gave me an absent-minded stare; she was far more interested in preventing a big brindled cat from escaping.

  ‘Limaçon, just you wait . . . I’ll scorch your back-side for you, so I will . . . Madame Léon . . . what’s her name? Floor below, very like.’

  ‘No, I mean to say . . . Is Madame Claudine at home?’

  ‘So now it’s Madame Claudine? You don’t seem to know your own mind. Claudine, she lives here all right. But she’s gone out.’

  ‘Oh, you monstrous liar!’ shouted a gay, tomboyish voice. ‘I’m here and I’m at home. In one of your nasty moods, eh, Mélie?’

  ‘No such thing,’ retorted Mélie, unperturbed. ‘But another time, you can open the door yourself. That’ll larn you.’

  And she retreated with much dignity, the tabby cat at her heels. I was left standing in the hall, waiting for some being to emerge from the shadows and be good enough to show me in . . . Was this the witch’s home? ‘Sugar-house, sweet, pretty sugar-house . . .’ as Hansel and Gretel sang outside the alluring castle . . .

  ‘Come in! I’m in the drawing-room but I can’t budge,’ cried the same voice.

  A tall shadow rose up and blotted out the window; it was Renaud coming to meet me.

  ‘Come in, dear lady. The child’s so desperately busy that she can’t say how d’you do to you for a minute.’

  The child? Ah, there she was, almost squatting on the hearth where a wood fire was blazing in spite of the season. I went forward, intrigued: she was holding out some mysterious object to the flames. More than ever, she made me think of the witch in the stories that frightened me and enraptured me in my credulous childhood. I half-feared, half-hoped to see strange creatures writhing in the flames that gilded Claudine’s curly head – salamanders and tortured animals whose blood mingled with wine makes the victim languish to death . . .

  She rose to her feet, perfectly calm.

  ‘How d’you do, Annie.’

  ‘How d’you do, Mad . . . Claudine.’

  It was a slight effort for me to address her by name. But it was impossible to say ‘Madame’ to this child-like young woman whom everyone called Claudine.

  ‘It was just on the point of being done to a turn, so you see I couldn’t possible leave it.’

  She was holding a little square grill made of silver wire on which a tablet of chocolate was blackening and swelling up. Toasted chocolate?

  ‘You know, this utensil isn’t perfect, even now, Renaud! They’ve made the handle too short and I’ve got a blister on my hand . . .’

  ‘Show me quick.’

  Her tall husband bent down, and tenderly kissed the slender, scorched hand, caressing it with his lips and fingers, like a lover . . . They were no longer paying the slightest attention to me. I wondered whether I ought to go. This spectacle made me feel anything but inclined to laugh.

  ‘All better!’ cried Claudine, clapping her hands. ‘We’re going to eat our toasted chocolate now, Annie. Just the two of us. My great big beautiful man, I’m going to entertain a visitor in my drawing-room. Go into your study and see if I’m there.’

  ‘Am I in the way, then?’ that white-haired husband of hers whose eyes are those of a young man asked, still bending over her.

  His wife stood on tiptoe, raised the ends of Renaud’s long moustache with both hands and gave him a fierce, straining kiss. I was the one in the way. I got up to make my escape.

  ‘Hi, Annie! Where are you rushing off to?’

  A despotic hand grabbed hold of my arm and Claudine’s ambiguous face with its mocking mouth and melancholy eyelids searched mine severely.

  I blushed as if I felt guilty at having seen that kiss . . .

  ‘I thought . . . I mean, since Marthe hasn’t turned up . . .’

  ‘Marthe? Is she supposed to be coming?’

  ‘But of course! It was she who told me to come and meet her here . . . Otherwise . . .’

  ‘What d’you mean – “otherwise” – you rude little thing? Renaud, did you know Marthe was supposed to be coming?’

  ‘I did, darling.’

  ‘You never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Sorry, little one. I read you all your letters in bed, as usual. But you were playing with Fanchette.’

  ‘That’s a barefaced lie. Why don’t you admit you were tickling me all down my ribs with your nails? Sit down, Annie! Good-bye, you great bear . . .’

  Renaud softly shut the door behind him.

  I seated myself a little stiffly, right on the edge of the sofa. Claudine settled herself on it, tailor-fashion, with her legs drawn up and crossed under her orange cloth skirt. A supple white satin blouse, its whiteness emphasized by Japanese embroidery of the same colour as her skirt, gave a subtle glow to her matt complexion. What was she thinking of, all of a sudden so serious, sitting there pensively and looking like a little Bosphorus boatman with her embroidered skirt and her short hair?

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t he?’

  I find her laconic utterances and her quick movements, as sudden and unexpected as her immobility, as shattering as blows.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Renaud, of course, it’s quite possible he did read me Marthe’s letter . . . I couldn’t have been paying attention.’

  ‘He reads your letters?’

  She gave a preoccupied nod; the tablet of toasted chocolate had stuck to the little silver grill and was threatening to crumble . . . Emboldened by her absent-mindedness, I asked:

  ‘He reads them . . . before you do?’

  The mischievous eyes looked up at me.

  ‘Yes, Lovely-Eyes. (You don’t mind my calling you “Lovely-Eyes”?) What’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing, of course. But I shouldn’t like it myself.’

  ‘On account of your beaux?’

  ‘I don’t have any beaux, Claudine!’

  It burst from my lips with so much fervour, so much shocked sincerity, that Claudine doubled herself up with delight.

  ‘She’s risen! She’s risen! Oh, the simple soul! Well, Annie, I have had beaux . . . and Renaud used to read me their letters.’

  ‘And . . . what did he say?’

  ‘Oh . . . nothing. Not much, anyway. Occasionally he’d sigh: “Odd, Claudine, the number of people one meets who are convinced that they aren’t like everyone else – and of the need to put it in writing.” So that’s that.’

  ‘That’s that . . .’

  In spite of myself, I repeated the words in the same tone as hers.

  ‘So it means nothing at all to you?’

  ‘What? . . . Oh, all that . . . yes. In fact nothing means anything to me but one single human being . . .’ She corrected herself . . . ‘No, that’s not true. I’m not indifferent to the sky being warm and clear. Or to cushions being deep enough to sink into and pamper my laziness, or to the year being rich in sweet apricots and floury chestnuts. I care passionately that the roof of my house in Montigny should be solid enough not to scatter its lichened tiles on a stormy day . . .’ Her voice which had trailed away to a sing-song hastily recovered its firmness and went on ironically: ‘As you see, Annie, I’m interested, like you and everyone else, in the external world. And, to speak as simply as your sophisticated novelist of a brother-in-law, “in what devouring time bears away on its changing restless tides”.’

  I shook my head, not quite sure that I believed her. Then, to please Claudine, I accepted scraps of grilled chocolate that tasted a little of smoke and very much of burnt sugar.

  ‘Divine, isn’t it? You know it was I who invented the chocolate grill, this nice little gadget that they’ve made, in spite of all my careful directions, with too short a handle. I also
invented the flea-comb for Fanchette, the stove without holes for roasting winter chestnuts, pineapples in absinthe, and spinach tart . . . Mélie says she did but it isn’t true. I also invented my drawing-room kitchen which you see here.’

  Claudine’s humour made me alternate between laughter and uneasiness. At one moment she troubled me; the next I admired her. Her long tobacco-brown eyes that ran right up to her temples had the same fervour, the same candid, direct look in them when she was proclaiming her inventor’s rights in the chocolate grill as when she was proclaiming her passion for Renaud.

  Her drawing-room kitchen added still further to this disquieting impression. I wanted desperately to know whether this woman I was talking to was an out-and-out lunatic or an expert hoaxer.

  It was like a kitchen or the public room of an inn, one of those gloomy, smoky inns you find in Holland. But where, on the wall of an inn, even a Dutch one, would you find that exquisite, smiling fifteenth-century Virgin, so enchanting in her pink tunic and blue mantle – a frail, childish Madonna, on her knees yet seeming half-frightened to pray?

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Claudine. ‘But what I like most about it is the vicious – yes, vicious is the only word – contrast between that dress, all tender rosy pinks, and that appalling, desolate landscape in the background. As desolate as you were, Annie, the day your lord and master Alain set sail. Don’t you think about that voyage any more now?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean . . . not think about him any more?’

  ‘Well, anyway, you don’t think about him so much. Oh, you needn’t blush about it . . . It’s perfectly natural when you’ve got an impeccable husband like yours . . . Just look at that Virgin’s charmingly contrite expression; she seems to be looking down at her baby Jesus and saying, “Honestly, it’s the very first time such a thing’s happened to me!” Renaud thinks it’s a Masolino. But the great Panjandrums of the art world attribute it to Filippo Lippi.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me? I don’t care a fig who painted it.’ I did not press the point. This very individual art critic rather disconcerted me.

  In one corner, a Claudine in marble smiled under lowered eyelids like a St Sebastian who was revelling in his torments. A huge divan, covered with a dark bearskin that caressed my ungloved hand, retired into the shelter of a kind of alcove. But all the rest of the furniture astonished me; five or six public-house tables of shining dark oak and as many heavy, clumsy benches; an ancient rustic clock that did not go; some stone jugs, and a cavernous, canopied fireplace guarded by tall copper fire-dogs. Added to all this, the room was in a state of temporary disorder; books were strewn everywhere and gutted Reviews littered the dull rose carpet. Intrigued, I studied everything closely. It gave me a kind of melancholy . . . the peculiar melancholy I associate with long voyages. I felt as if I had been staring for a long time through those small greenish panes, behind which the light was fading, at a grey ocean, flecked with a little foam, under a transparent veil of rain falling as lightly as fine ashes . . . Claudine had followed my thoughts and when I was back with her again we looked at each other with the same expression in our eyes.

  ‘Do you like it here, Claudine?’

  ‘Yes. I loathe bright, cheerful rooms. Here, I can travel. Look, those green walls are the glaucous colour of daylight seen through a wine-bottle. And those oak benches must have been polished by the depressed behinds of generations of poor wretches who only got drunk to drown their sorrows . . . I say, Annie, it looks as if Marthe isn’t going to turn up. Typical of your precious sister-in-law, eh!’

  How abruptly, almost brutally, she had snapped off the thread of her sad little reverie! I had been following it so willingly, forgetting, just for this one hour, my anxiety about that husband of mine at sea . . . Besides, Claudine’s changeableness was beginning to weary me with its mixture of childishness and savagery. I could not keep pace with the mind of this young barbarian that leapt in a flash from greed to shameless passion, from a despairing drunkard to that bustling, aggressive Marthe.

  ‘Marthe . . . oh yes . . . She’s very late.’

  ‘I’ll say she is! No doubt Maugis has found some weighty reasons for keeping her.’

  ‘Maugis? Was she supposed to be seeing him today?’

  Claudine wrinkled up her nose, titled her head sideways like an inquisitive bird, and stared deep into my eyes. Then she leapt to her feet and burst out laughing.

  ‘I know nothing, I’ve seen nothing, I’ve heard nothing,’ she cried like a voluble schoolgirl, jumping up and down. ‘I’m only terrified of boring you. You’ve seen the chocolate grill, the drawing-room – kitchen, Renaud, the marble statue of me, the lot . . . Still I can call in Fanchette, can’t I?’

  One never has time to answer Claudine. She opened a door, bent forward and chirruped mysterious summonses.

  ‘My lovely, my precious, my snow-white . . . pussalina pussilove, mrrroo, mrrraow . . .’

  The animal appeared, like a somnambulist, like a little wild beast under a spell. It was a very beautiful white she-cat who looked up at Claudine with green, obedient eyes.

  ‘My little coalheaver, my little slut, you’ve gone and done weewee again on one of Renaud’s patent-leather boots. Never mind, he won’t know. I’ll tell him it’s poor-quality leather. And he’ll pretend to believe it. Come along and I’ll read you some lovely things Lucie Delarue-Mardrus has written about cats.’

  Claudine grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck, lifted it high above her head and cried:

  ‘Look, lady, the drowned cat hanging up on a hook!’ She opened her fist and Fanchette fell from the height, landing expertly on her soft paws. Not in the least perturbed, she remained where she was on the carpet. ‘You know, Annie, now that my girl lives in Paris, I read poetry to her. She knows everything Baudelaire has written about cats by heart. Now I’m teaching her all Lucie Delarue-Mardrus’s cat poems.’

  I smiled, amused at this inconsequent childishness.

  ‘Do you think she understands?’

  Claudine crushed me a long, withering look over her shoulder.

  ‘What an idiot you are, Annie! Sorry, I only meant to say: “Of course she does!” Sit, Fanchette! Now just you watch and listen, you little sceptic. This one’s unpublished . . . It’s marvellous . . .:

  ‘FOR A CAT

  ‘Majestic cat, mysterious and wise,

  Through whose black velvet mask gleam jewelled eyes,

  Do my ring-laden fingers not presume too much,

  When they caress you, monarch in disguise?

  Lithe, furry serpent, coiled up in repose,

  Warmer than living feathers to my touch

  Save for the coolness where your small bare nose

  Buds through the black and white, a glistening rose.

  Jungle-fierce still for all your ribbon bows

  And feigned docility. Let some hapless toy

  Catch your disdainful eye, at once peremptory paws

  Pounce on the prey grappling-irons of claws.

  Tonight, here in the dusk, no wile of mine

  Can lure your still remoteness, make you glance from where

  You sit, a Buddha-cat of stone, gold eyes astare:

  You are remembering you were once divine.’

  The cat was half-asleep, vibrating with a faint, muffled purr that made a muted accompaniment to Claudine’s peculiar voice, now grave and full of harshly rolled r’s, now so soft and low that it sent a shiver down my spine . . . When the voice ceased, Fanchette opened her slanting eyes. The two gazed at each other for a moment with the same grave intentness . . . Then raising her forefinger and touching her nose, Claudine turned to me and sighed:

  ‘“Peremptory . . .” It took some finding, that word! They’re good, aren’t they, those verses of Fervid’s. Just to have hit on “peremptory”, I’d gladly give ten years . . . of the Chessenet’s life!’

  That name seemed as shockingly inappropriate here as a piece of gimcrack in a flawless
collection.

  ‘You don’t like Ch . . . Madame Chessenet, Claudine?’

  Claudine, now semi-recumbent, stared at the ceiling and put up a lazy hand.

  ‘She means nothing to me . . . A carved yellow beetroot . . . Means no more to me than the Cabbage-Rose . . .’

  ‘Ah, the Cabbage-Rose . . .’

  ‘Rose or cabbage? That buxom girl with cheeks like the buttocks of little Cupids.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Why that shocked “Oh!”? Buttocks isn’t a dirty word. Anyway the Cabbage-Rose bores me too . . .’ She yawned.

  ‘And . . . Marthe?’

  I was animated by an indiscreet curiosity, as if, by questioning Claudine, I was about to discover the secret, the ‘recipe’ of her lucky disposition that detached her from everything, and made her indifferent to gossip, petty quarrels, even to the conventions. But I was not adroit enough and Claudine made fun of me. With a carp-like leap, she turned over on her stomach and said mockingly, with her nose in her cat’s silver fur:

  ‘Marthe? I think she’s missed her appointment . . . I mean the one she made with us. But . . . is this an interrogation, Annie?’

  I was ashamed. I leant towards her and said, in a sudden burst of frankness:

  ‘Forgive me, Claudine. The fact is I was beating about the bush . . . I couldn’t bring myself to ask you . . . what you think of Alain . . . Ever since he went away, I just haven’t known how to go on living and nobody talks to me about him, at least not in the way I want them to talk . . . Is it usual in Paris to forget people so quickly when they’ve gone away?’

  I had come straight out with what was in my mind, and I was surprised at my own vehemence. Claudine’s triangular face, propped up on two small fists, its smooth rather sallow skin lightened by pearly reflections from the white satin blouse, took on a wary expression.