The Collected Stories of Colette Read online

  All three stand around, black against the wide, illuminated hall, the muddy gravel of the garden. The small, imprisoned woman looks as if she is dancing in Clouk’s arms. Her peaked hat meets a gray fox collar that muffles her neck and her ears; but the rest of her body shivers under a tight satin wrap glistening in the light like a blue fish.

  “Lord,” she exclaims, “this is August! I’m freezing! We’ll see you tomorrow, Clouk. What am I saying, tomorrow? We’ll see you today, it’s already past two . . . My darling husband, are you asleep on your beautiful little feet?”

  “Let Robert leave by himself,” begs Clouk. “You can keep me company.”

  The woman bursts out laughing. “Robert? Leave by himself? No danger of that: he’s much too afraid all alone at night! Aren’t you, Robert?”

  Robert only groans like a man shaken in his sleep, and Clouk doubles over with laughter and slaps his thigh. “He’s afraid to be alone? That’s too much . . . Come inside and tell me all about it, Eva!”

  But, despite her tight coat, Eva gets away and manages to run, dragging Robert, drowsy and dignified, behind her. Her feet, in white shoes, skip with short hip-hops like two little rabbits. Clouk follows her like a puppy. He opens the gate regretfully, hoping that the car waiting at the curb won’t start . . . But it does, on the first try, then glides off unctuously over the wet asphalt as Clouk shouts out one last time: “See you this afternoon! Hey, Robert . . . Robert! Leave Eva with me and I’ll turn you over to my old nanny if you’re so afraid of the dark!”

  He leans forward to see the red light on the tail of the car pull off and fade away. Then, suddenly, his face freezes and he shuts the heavy gate. He walks back toward the brightly lit house, with long, gliding strides, forcing himself not to run, his arms pressed to his sides so as not to brush against the shrubs. The entrance hall dazzles and reassures him; he takes off his misty monocle, blinks his sensitive eyelids, and shrugs his shoulders.

  “Afraid to be alone at night . . . Oh, brother . . .”

  He was about to turn off the electricity before going up to his room, but stopped short: to get to the light switch he would have to walk past a long mirror, tinged green by the dampness, where he would have time to watch himself walking by, paler than normal, even more of the “poor child” than his fabulously wealthy mother had made him.

  He does not like to walk past it at certain hours of the night. He prefers to go straight up to the second floor, letting the chandelier and the sconces burn on. Upon waking, he would open his fishlike mouth, which could feign astonishment quite easily, when his inexorable valet would say to him: “Monsieur realizes that Monsieur again left the lights on downstairs. Monsieur won’t wonder why Monsieur’s electric bill is seven hundred francs again this month, worse than a department store.”

  Clouk, born a millionaire, remained parsimonious by upbringing: a new car every year is a duty, turning off the electricity when one leaves a room is another.

  He hurries noiselessly up the staircase, reaches his room, which he crosses double time, and rushes into his dressing room, turning on the light with a feverish hand before falling into an easy chair.

  “Afraid to be alone at night . . .” Right now Robert must be undressing to the reassuring sound of feminine chatter; Eva humming, taking off her shoes, yawning with a moan, fluffing up the pillows . . . Since Lulu left him, Clouk, as weak as if he were being bled, would revert at night to the terrors of childhood. He is flabbergasted that, before Lulu, he had been able to live alone in this pretentious dungeon, erected near the gates of the Bois de Boulogne, “an edifice, Monsieur, to withstand a siege,” the architect had declared.

  “A siege,” repeated Clouk. “Why did the idiot say that? Is it within the realm of possibility that it would ever come under siege?”

  He reaches out a limp hand to touch the wall, to feel its deep resonance like that of a full wine cask, but the coldness of its varnish stings him like a burn.

  “A siege . . . Who’s stamping around down in the garden like that? Really now . . .”

  For a brief instant, the combativeness of the proprietor in him struggles with an alcoholic cowardice.

  “How many of them are there? My God, they’re making a racket!” stammers Clouk, his head buzzing.

  He wants to get up and run to the window, but would he even be able to raise the padlocked bar across the heavy iron doors? Clouk, immured in his citadel, panics behind the walls whose protection he had just invoked.

  “Somebody could easily do me in here, the neighbors wouldn’t even wake up . . .”

  “Do me in . . .” The words struck Clouk’s sad brain with the dull sound of doom. Whole pages from detective novels, illustrated with thugs in cars, masked men carrying bludgeons, came back to Clouk’s memory like so many dire predictions. “Do me in . . . do me in . . .” and Clouk cursed his daily reading, which delighted him when the morning sunlight made the shadows of the leaves dance in the folds of the sheets. Oh, to believe in phantoms as when he was a little boy, to tremble at the mere rustling of an invisible, silky dress, to run from the harmless ghost abroad at midnight, how thrilling compared to the precise image which now has Clouk glued to his chair: a white hand wrapped around the black butt of a revolver moves slowly through the open door of the bedroom. Slowly, slowly, the muzzle of the gun turns its round eye toward Clouk . . . Afterward, there is nothing but chaos, horror, warm blood on the white rug, the smell of gunpowder and melted metal around the open safe . . . But this bloody confusion, still settling in Clouk’s imagination, does not equal in shock the appearance of the white hand, there in the doorway of . . .

  “No!” he screams despite himself.

  The loudness of his scream makes him stand up, his back to the wall, hands groping. A bell button gives way beneath his fingers, and this involuntary gesture brings him back to his senses.

  “Did I ring? Did I ring or not? I didn’t hear the bell . . . But if I didn’t ring, who’s that coming up the stairs?”

  Back against the wall, stiff, dripping with sweat, Clouk has time to appreciate the difference between the footsteps of an imaginary group of people and the sound of someone approaching slowly, heavily climbing the stairs, fumbling with the door, opening . . .

  “Monsieur rang?” asked the valet.

  Breath, movement, both came back to Clouk with life. And life is all vanity, reflection, the meaning of lies and frugality, his very soul . . .

  “Yes . . . I’d like you to turn off the lights, downstairs, in the front hall.”

  CLOUK’S FLING

  It is only half past midnight; they have arrived a little early, the bar is nearly empty. Clouk and his “companion” sit down side by side on the red banquette, haphazardly, with the vague feeling they would be better off at the table across from them, or in the corner at the back.

  “You don’t think we’re too near the door?” his companion asks.

  Clouk lifts one shoulder, sticks out a dubious lower lip, and his monocle falls. He wipes it, then applies it once again to his right eye, with a carefulness he knows is vain, for the monocle refuses to stay put for long on his soft little face, made, one might say, of pink butter.

  “Garçon! Keep an eye on the door, will you, our legs are freezing!”

  His companion gives the orders, with the authority of an old habitué, and lights a cigarette before even unbuttoning her coat.

  “What are you having, Clouk?”

  “Uh . . . I have no idea, really.”

  He too is smoking, his eyes on the entrance, and shivers each time the door is opened: what if, after her performance, Lulu had the idea to come have supper? . . . He barely gives it a thought, he doesn’t think about it anymore, it’s over, but each time the revolving door gleams and spins, he trembles imperceptibly.

  “I think I’ll have a nice little whiskey soda,” says his companion. “And you?”

  “I’ll have . . . I don’t know . . . a hot toddy.”

  He shivers at the thought of t
he steaming and spicy toddy. Opposite him the mirror reflects a stiff, pale little Clouk, next to his companion devoid of coquetry, somewhat heavy and squat in her moleskin coat. She is a brunette, dyed a redhead, whom one must meet several times before recognizing her, not ugly, not pretty, with big eyes and a hard mouth. She yawns nervously and, with a compulsive gesture, clicks the clasp of a long, dented gold case, bigger than a wallet, that can hold fifty cigarettes.

  Neither she nor Clouk saw the color of this brief and bright winter day. They got home around five in the morning, after a dismal night in Montmartre. Suffused with tobacco and the smell of alcohol, they slept the uneasy sleep of those who drift off a little drunk, deprived of the warm spray of the shower and a scented bath.

  They woke up stiff and unsightly around three in the afternoon, with the impression of having slept a very long time and being very old. The best time of their day was the interminable daily toilette, two hours of bath, hairdresser, manicurist, masseuse: the meticulous and listless toilette of cloistered women, the empty chatter, the perplexed fussing with ties and vests . . . Then the brief drive in the car around the already dark Bois, truly an old ladies’ drive, cut short again by the desire, the need to return and sit down at the table of a bar. “Some port and herring sandwiches, right, Clouk? What dried us up like that last night was that nasty demi-sec champagne.”

  They tried to eat dinner around nine-thirty, both of them overtaken by a sudden concern for health: two jus de viande and pasta. Clouk, basically disgusted, gulped down the syrupy, peppery juices and twirled skeins of long noodles around two forks, broadening his narrow shoulders with the childish hope that his “diet” would endow him with new strength and muscles to amaze the universe, the entire universe—and Lulu too.

  The hours after dinner, divided between the restaurant and box seats in a music hall, went by quickly—barely time for a dozen cigarettes—bringing back midnight and the moment to sit down, for the third time since waking, in front of a stiff tablecloth, glazed by the roller, and cold as oilcloth.

  Each time he sits down at a table in some late-night bar, Clouk feels a warm, fleeting rush of exhilaration. He is beginning to believe, he the weak, he abandoned by Lulu whom he loved, he the poor little rich boy, miserable and friendless, that he was closing, joyfully and forever, the dark string of his errant days. There are nights when every reflection in the glass panes of the revolving door seems to announce a marvelous arrival, which he was no longer hoping for, nights when the soft handshake of his “friends” seemed warm to the touch and indicative of a vigorous friendship; nights when the bubbly alcohol, gulped down like medicine, numbs the cramps in his stomach and the migraine clamped around his head. So Clouk gives himself over to the pleasant, poisonous warmth dilating and deadening him; he leans his head on his sisterly companion’s shoulder and speaks to her vaguely, in a low voice, while a familiar chorus of men and women eating their supper comment—some kindly, some ironically—on the tender pose of the two “lovers.”

  This same night, despite the emptiness of the room which creates an anxious idleness in the woman who owns the bar—yesterday’s demimondaine, today’s plump businesswoman dressed severely, like a minor town official’s wife—Clouk does not despair and waits for his hour. From minute to minute, the glass door turns, flashes brightly, and Clouk shivers, not with hope, but by now it is a habit with him to jump at the sound of a door or the ringing of a bell.

  “You can be such a bore,” says his companion indolently. “I had a dog like you once, his left leg used to twitch all the time. The vet said it was worms . . .”

  . . . It has been a long time, it has been months since Clouk stopped waiting for Lulu. He simply watches the door and counts the people who come in, the anonymous walk-ons vital to his happiness. There are the couples of petite women, regulation brunettes this year, hair all over the place and a little powdery, with lips as thick as a quadroon’s. There, one by one, or in groups, are Clouk’s “friends,” who for the most part are juvenile, defiant, and brought up to hold women in respect. The fact of drinking in company does not incite them to generosity, for they are rich, and it took the worst misfortune of love to teach Clouk, if not prodigality and the disdain of money, at least the beginnings of a noblesse called casualness . . .

  When the sky’s no longer blue,

  The hearts of lovers will be true . . .

  The piano, the diuretic scratching of the mandolins, the thready voice of a short tenor all rose together, and Clouk nodded in time to the music as if greeting someone affectionately recognized. The time for the music has come; the bar, now packed, is thick with smoke. Clouk is no longer trembling, no longer waiting for anyone. His night is beginning according to ritual; he is warm, he is thirsty because he has been drinking; he will have all the songs he likes, all the chaste, melancholy songs which comprise the repertoire of disreputable establishments and Clouk’s own poetic anthology: he will hum:

  You swore you loved me only,

  But you left me sad and lonely . . .

  He will proclaim at the top of his voice:

  I have a girl as blond as the sun,

  In this wide world she’s the only one . . .

  He will be drunk, howling, and happy: nothing, except dawn, will disturb the reassuring and predictable course of his sleepless night. A few more drinks, a few more rhymes, and he will be drunk enough to abandon himself—his feet on the knees of a “friend” he doesn’t know, his head leaning back against the warm shoulder of his sweet, insipid companion—to abandon himself to his most heartrending and purest memory, to his hidden, incurable love, still intact, for Lulu.

  [Translated by Matthew Ward]

  Chéri

  CHÉRI

  “Léa! Give it to me, give me your necklace! Do you hear me, Léa? Give me your pearls!”

  He moves, black and thin, back and forth across the sun-filled window. Because of the bright-pink curtains, slightly parted, he looks like a graceful demon dancing in front of a blazing fire. As he moves back into the center of the room, he turns white, dressed in silk pajamas and white babouches.

  “Why won’t you give me your necklace, Léa? It looks as good on me as it does on you . . . at least!”

  He raises his hands, and around his neck he fastens a strand of pearls which iridesce and light up, radiant, next to the white silk . . .

  At the faint snap of the clasp, the lace linens of a big bed ripple and two bare, strong arms, thin-wristed, raise two lovely, lazy hands. “Leave it alone, Chéri, you’ve played enough with that necklace.”

  “Why? It amuses me . . . Are you afraid I’ll steal it from you?”

  He had moved toward the bed, silent as a cat in his white slippers. He is a very handsome and very young man whose smooth black hair is worn like the tight cap of Pierrot. He leans his naughty chin over Léa, and the same pink spark, from the window, dances in his dark eyes, on his teeth, and on the pearls of the necklace . . .

  The nonchalant hands draw a vague response in the air and Chéri insists, “Say it, go on! Are you afraid I’ll take it?”

  “No. But if I were to offer it to you, you’re quite capable of accepting it.”

  He laughs softly, to himself, turns toward the warm light, and rolls the round pearls between his fingers.

  “And why not? It’s fine for a man to receive a set of studs and a tie pin, two or three pearls. But any more than that and the gift becomes a scandal. Really now . . . do I look ugly in a pearl necklace? Tell me.”

  He pirouettes nimbly and admires himself in the mirror, opening his pajama top with both hands and revealing a smooth, muscular neck and a tight, hard chest, curved like a shield.

  “Go on, say it, say I’m ugly!”

  Léa, leaning on her elbow, looks at him. In the merciful half-light, she shows what a pretty fifty-year-old woman, well cared for and in good health, can show: the bright complexion, somewhat ruddy and a bit weathered, of a natural blonde, shapely, solid shoulders, and celebrated blue e
yes which have kept their thick chestnut lashes. But she is now a redhead, because of her hair, which is turning gray.

  She loves to chat in bed, almost invisible, while her magnificent arms and expressive hands comment on her wise words. Nearing the end of a successful career as a sedate courtesan, she is neither sad nor spiteful. She keeps the date of her birth a secret, but willingly admits, as she settles her calm gaze on Chéri, that she is approaching the age when one is permitted little comforts . . .

  “I’m not going to say you’re ugly. In the first place, you wouldn’t believe it. But can’t you laugh without wrinkling up your nose like that? You won’t be happy until you’ve got three wrinkles at the corners of your nose, will you?”

  Chéri’s handsome face suddenly freezes and he turns around to examine, with fierce closeness, the little lines marking Léa’s cheeks from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” she says without getting angry. “But I’m not twenty-four years old. Take off that necklace.”

  He obeys reluctantly and sulks. “I obviously wouldn’t traipse around with this trinket on my neck, but if you were to give it to me, it would make an absolutely stunning wedding present!”

  “Wedding present? For whom?”

  “Why, for my fiancée!”

  “Your fiancée?”

  Léa sits up, showing above the covers. “Your fiancée! Are you serious?”

  Chéri nods his head, malicious and self-important. “I’m afraid so. The poor child’s crazy about me.”

  “Is it that same little girl? . . .”

  “Yes, the same.”

  “And what about you, what do you have to say about it?”

  Chéri raises his velvety eyes to the sky and opens his arms like a victim. “Take me . . .”

  Conscious of his beauty, he strikes a pose, because Léa is staring at him intently.