Cheri Page 5

  Elle regarda, par-dessus son journal, du côté de Mme Peloux. “Dort-elle aussi?” Léa aimait que la sieste de la mère et du fils lui donnât, à elle bien éveillée, une heure de solitude morale parmi la chaleur, l’ombre et le soleil.

  Mais Mme Peloux ne dormait point. Elle se tenait bouddhique dans

  She looked at her son without anger, accustomed as she was to his insolence, and sat down in a dignified manner, her feet swinging, in an upholstered armchair that was too high off the floor for her short legs. In her hand she cradled a glass of brandy. Léa, moving back and forth in a rocking-chair, cast an occasional glance at Chéri, who was sprawling on a cool cane chair, his vest open, a half-extinguished cigarette on his lip, a lock of hair over his forehead—and very quietly, and flatteringly, she called him a good-looking scoundrel.

  They remained there side by side, making no effort to be pleasant or to speak, peaceful and, in a way, happy. Their long acquaintance with one another made them silent, inducing inertia in Chéri and serenity in Léa. Because of the increasing heat, Madame Peloux raised her narrow skirt up to her knees, revealing her small calves, like those of a sailor, and Chéri angrily tore off his tie, a gesture that Léa reprimanded by clicking her tongue.

  “Oh, leave the boy alone,” Madame Peloux protested, as if lost in a dream. “It’s so hot . . . Do you want a kimono, Léa?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine as I am.”

  These afternoon laxities disgusted her. Her young lover had never caught her in disarray, with her bodice open, or wearing slippers in the daytime. “Naked, if you like,” she said to herself, “but not slovenly.” She picked up her picture magazine again, but didn’t read it. “This old lady Peloux and her son!” she thought. “Put a hearty meal in front of them, or take them to the country—bang! the mother takes off her corset and the son takes off his vest. They’re like saloonkeepers on vacation.” She cast a vindictive glance at the saloonkeeper in question and saw that he was asleep, his lashes touching his white cheeks, his mouth shut. At its highest points the delicious bow of his upper lip, lit from below, captured and held two dots of silvery light, and Léa confessed that he looked much more like a god than like a bar proprietor. Without getting up, she delicately removed a smoking cigarette from Chéri’s fingers and tossed it into the ashtray. The sleeper’s hand opened, revealing, like weary blossoms, his slender fingers tipped with cruel nails, a hand not at all feminine, but a little more beautiful than one might have wished, a hand that Léa had kissed a hundred times without servility, kissed for the pleasure of it, for its fragrance . . .

  Peering over her magazine, she looked at Madame Peloux. “Is she sleeping, too?” Léa liked to have the mother and son nap, granting her a wide-awake hour of mental solitude in the heat, shade, and sun.

  But Madame Peloux wasn’t asleep. She was sitting in her armchair

  sa bergère, regardant droit devant elle et suçant sa fine-champagne avec une application de nourrisson alcoolique.

  “Pourquoi ne dort-elle pas? se demanda Léa. C’est dimanche. Elle a bien déjeuné. Elle attend les vieilles frappes de son jour à cinq heures. Par conséquent, elle devrait dormir. Si elle ne dort pas, c’est qu’elle fait quelque chose de mal.”

  Elles se connaissaient depuis vingt-cinq ans. Intimité ennemie de femmes légères qu’un homme enrichit puis délaisse, qu’un autre homme ruine, — amitié hargneuse de rivales à l’affût de la première ride et du cheveu blanc. Camaraderie de femmes positives, habiles aux jeux financiers, mais l’une avare et l’autre sybarite. . . . Ces liens comptent. Un autre lien plus fort venait les unir sur le tard: Chéri.

  Léa se souvenait de Chéri enfant, merveille aux longues boucles. Tout petit, il ne s’appelait pas encore Chéri, mais seulement Fred.

  Chéri, tour à tour oublié et adoré, grandit entre les femmes de chambre décolorées et les longs valets sardoniques. Bien qu’il eût mystérieusement apporté, en naissant, l’opulence, on ne vit nulle miss, nulle fraulein auprès de Chéri, préservé à grands cris de “ces goules”. . . .

  “Charlotte Peloux, femme d’un autre âge!” disait familièrement le vieux, tari, expirant et indestructible baron de Berthellemy, “Charlotte Peloux, je salue en vous la seule femme de mœurs légères qui ait osé élever son fils en fils de grue! Femme d’un autre âge, vous ne lisez pas, vous ne voyagez jamais, vous vous occupez de votre seul prochain, et vous faites élever votre enfant par les domestiques. Comme c’est pur! comme c’est About! comme c’est même Gustave Droz! et dire que vous n’en savez rien!”

  Chéri connut donc toutes les joies d’une enfance dévergondée. Il recueillit, zézayant encore, les bas racontars de l’office. Il partagea les soupers clandestins de la cuisine. Il eut les bains de lait d’iris dans la baignoire de sa mère, et les débarbouillages hâtifs avec le coin d’une serviette. Il endura l’indigestion de bonbons, et les crampes d’inanition quand on oubliait son dîner. Il s’ennuya, demi-nu et enrhumé, aux fêtes des Fleurs où Charlotte Peloux l’exhibait, assis dans des roses mouillées; mais il lui arriva de se divertir royalement à douze ans, dans une salle de tripot clandestin où une dame améri-

  like a Buddha, staring straight in front of her and sipping her brandy as singlemindedly as an alcoholic infant.

  “Why isn’t she sleeping?” Léa wondered. “It’s Sunday. She’s had a big lunch. She’s expecting those good-for-nothing old dames who come at five on her open-house day. And so, she ought to be sleeping. Since she’s not sleeping, she’s up to some wickedness.”

  They had known each other for twenty-five years. A hostile intimacy of loose women whom a man enriches, then deserts, whom another man ruins—a peevish friendship of rivals on the lookout for the first wrinkle and gray hair. A comradeship between matter-of-fact women, skilled in financial matters, but one of whom was miserly and the other pleasure-loving . . . Such attachments mean something. A different bond, a stronger one, was to unite them later on: Chéri.

  Léa could recall Chéri as a child, a beauty with long curls. When very little, he was not yet called Chéri, but just Fred.

  Chéri, alternately neglected and worshiped, grew up among washed-out chambermaids and lanky, sardonic footmen. Though his birth had mysteriously brought wealth to the household, no English or German governess was to be seen around Chéri, who was clamorously kept free of “those ghouls” . . .

  “Charlotte Peloux, woman of a bygone era,” the old, worn-out, half-dead but indestructible Baron de Berthellemy used to say unceremoniously, “Charlotte Peloux, I salute in you the only woman of easy virtue who ever dared to bring up her son like a tart’s child! Woman of a bygone era, you don’t read books, you never travel, all you care about is your neighbors’ business, and you let servants raise your boy. How pure that is! How very like About! In fact, it’s just like Gustave Droz!4 And to think you’re not even aware of it!”

  And so, Chéri experienced all the joys of a shameless childhood. While still lisping, he was privy to the low gossip of the servants’ quarters. He partook of the clandestine suppers in the kitchen. He took baths of milk of orris root in his mother’s tub, or else had his face hastily cleaned with the corner of a towel. He suffered stomach aches from too much candy, or hunger pangs when they forgot to feed him. Half-naked, with a head cold, he underwent the boredom of the flower festivals at which Charlotte Peloux exhibited him, sitting amid damp roses. But he also had a rollicking good time at the age of

  * * *

  4. Edmond About (1828–1885) and Gustave Droz (1832–1895) were popular novelists interested in social and moral issues.

  caine lui donnait pour jouer des poignées de louis et l’appelait “petite chef-d’œuvre”. Vers le même temps, Mme Peloux donna à son fils un abbé précepteur qu’elle remercia au bout de dix mois “parce que”, avoua-t-elle, “cette robe noire que je voyais partout traîner dans la maison, ça me faisait comme si j’avais recueilli une parente pauvre — et Dieu sait qu’il n’y a rien de plus attristant qu’une parente pauvre chez s
oi!”

  A quatorze ans, Chéri tâta du collège. Il n’y croyait pas. Il défiait toute geôle et s’échappa. Non seulement Mme Peloux trouva l’énergie de l’incarcérer à nouveau, mais encore, devant les pleurs et les injures de son fils, elle s’enfuit, les mains sur les oreilles, en criant: “Je ne veux pas voir ça! Je ne veux pas voir ça!” Cri si sincère qu’en effet elle s’éloigna de Paris, accompagnée d’un homme jeune mais peu scrupuleux pour revenir deux ans plus tard, seule. Ce fut sa dernière faiblesse amoureuse.

  Elle retrouva Chéri grandi trop vite, creux, les yeux fardés de cerne, portant des complets d’entraîneur et parlant plus gras que jamais. Elle se frappa les seins et arracha Chéri à l’internat. Il cessa tout à fait de travailler, voulut chevaux, voitures, bijoux, exigea des mensualités rondes et, au moment que sa mère se frappa les seins en poussant des appels de paonne, il l’arrêta par ses mots:

  “Mame Peloux, ne vous bilez pas. Ma mère vénérée, s’il n’y a que moi pour te mettre sur la paille, tu risques fort de mourir bien au chaud sous ton couvre-pied américain. Je n’ai pas de goût pour le conseil judiciaire. Ta galette, c’est la mienne. Laisse-moi faire. Les amis, ça se rationne avec des dîners et du champagne. Quant à ces dames, vous ne voudriez pourtant pas, Mame Peloux, que fait comme vous m’avez fait, je dépasse avec elles l’hommage du bibelot artistique, — et encore!”

  Il pirouetta, tandis qu’elle versait de douces larmes et se proclamait la plus heureuse des mères. Quand Chéri commença d’acheter des automobiles, elle trembla de nouveau, mais il lui recommanda: “L’œil à l’essence, s’il vous plaît, Mame Peloux!” et vendit ses chevaux. Il ne dédaignait pas d’éplucher les livres des deux chauffeurs; il calculait vite, juste, et les chiffres qu’il jetait sur le papier juraient, élancés, renflés, agiles, avec sa grosse écriture assez lente.

  Il passa dix-sept ans, en tournant au petit vieux, au rentier tatillon. Toujours beau, mais maigre, le souffle raccourci. Plus d’une fois Mme

  twelve, in a room in an illicit gambling house where an American lady gave him handfuls of gold coins to bet with and called him “little masterpiece.”5 Around the same time, Madame Peloux gave her son an abbé for a tutor, but dismissed him ten months later “because,” she confessed, “that black robe I saw wandering all over the house made me feel as if I had taken in a female poor relation—and God knows there’s nothing more depressing than a poor relation in your house!”

  At fourteen Chéri had a taste of boarding school. It was not for him. Defying jails of any sort, he ran away. Not only did Madame Peloux find the energy to lock him up again: what’s more, faced with her son’s tears and insults, she clapped her hands to her ears and ran off, shouting: “I don’t want to see this! I don’t want to see this!” Her outcry was so sincere that she actually did leave Paris, in the company of a young but unscrupulous man, only to return two years later, alone. That was her last amorous weakness.

  On her return she found that Chéri had grown up too fast; he was gaunt, had dark rings around his eyes, wore suits that a horse trainer might sport, and was more foul-mouthed than ever. She beat her bosom and yanked Chéri out of boarding school. He stopped working altogether, and asked for horses, carriages, and jewelry; he demanded a substantial allowance and, when his mother beat her bosom and shrieked like a peahen, he cut her short with the words:

  “Ma’me Peloux, don’t work yourself up! Venerated mother, if I’m the only one who can make you go broke, you have every chance of dying nice and warm under your American comforter. I have no liking for a guardianship arrangement. Your dough is mine, too. Leave things to me. Friends can be bought off cheaply with dinners and champagne. As for the ladies, Ma’me Peloux, me being the way you’ve made me, you surely don’t expect me to go beyond a gift of an artistic trinket—if that much!”

  He performed a pirouette, while she shed tears of joy and declared she was the happiest of mothers. When Chéri began buying cars, she trembled again, but he enjoined her: “See to the gesoline supply, please, Ma’me Peloux!” and he sold his horses. He wasn’t too proud to pore over the two chauffeurs’ accounts; he was fast and accurate with calculations, and the figures he dashed down on paper, tall, well-rounded, and agile, were in striking contrast with his clumsy and very slow handwriting.

  On passing the age of seventeen, he became like a little old man, a finical coupon-clipper. Still handsome, but thin and short of breath.

  * * *

  5. The American lady’s French was a little shaky, because her adjective and noun are of different genders.

  Peloux le rencontra dans l’escalier de la cave, d’où il revenait de compter les bouteilles dans les casiers.

  “Crois-tu! disait Mme Peloux à Léa, c’est trop beau!

  — Beaucoup trop, répondait Léa, ça finira mal. Chéri, montre ta langue?”

  Il la tirait avec une grimace irrévérencieuse; et d’autres vilaines manières qui ne choquaient point Léa, amie trop familière, sorte de marraine-gâteau qu’il tutoyait.

  “C’est vrai, interrogeait Léa, qu’on t’a vu au bar avec la vieille Lili, cette nuit, assis sur ses genoux?

  — Ses genoux! gouaillait Chéri. Y a longtemps qu’elle n’en a plus, de genoux! Ils sont noyés.

  — C’est vrai, insistait Léa plus sévère, qu’elle t’a fait boire du gin au poivre? Tu sais que ça fait sentir mauvais de la bouche?”

  Un jour Chéri, blessé, avait répondu à l’enquête de Léa:

  “Je ne sais pas pourquoi tu me demandes tout ça, tu as bien dû voir ce que je faisais, puisque tu y étais, dans le petit cagibi du fond, avec Patron le boxeur!

  — C’est parfaitement exact, répondit Léa impassible. Il n’a rien du petit claqué, Patron, tu sais? Il a d’autres séductions qu’une petite gueule de quatre sous et des yeux au beurre noir.”

  Cette semaine-là, Chéri fit grand bruit la nuit à Montmartre et aux Halles, avec des dames qui l’appelaient “ma gosse” et “mon vice”, mais il n’avait le feu nulle part, il souffrait de migraines et toussait de la gorge. Et Mme Peloux, qui confiait à sa masseuse, à Mme Ribot, sa corsetière, à la vieille Lili, à Berthellemy-le-Desséché, ses angoisses nouvelles: “Ah! pour nous autres mères, quel calvaire, la vie!” passa avec aisance de l’état de plus-heureuse-des-mères à celui de mère-martyre.

  Un soir de juin, qui rassemblait sous la serre de Neuilly Mme Peloux, Léa et Chéri, changea les destins du jeune homme et de la femme mûre. Le hasard dispersant pour un soir les “amis” de Chéri, — un petit liquoriste en gros, le fils Boster, et le vicomte Desmond, parasite à peine majeur, exigeant et dédaigneux, — ramenait Chéri à la maison maternelle où l’habitude conduisait aussi Léa.

  Vingt années, un passé fait de ternes soirées semblables, le manque de relations, cette défiance aussi, et cette veulerie qui isolent vers la fin de leur vie les femmes qui n’ont aimé que d’amour, tenaient l’une devant l’autre, encore un soir, en attendant un autre

  More than once Madame Peloux met him on the stairs to the cellar, where he had just been counting the bottles in the racks.

  “Would you believe it!” Madame Peloux used to say to Léa. “It’s too wonderful!”

  “Much too wonderful,” Léa would reply. “No good will come of it. Chéri, show me your tongue.”

  He would stick it out with a disrespectful grimace, and other bad manners that didn’t upset Léa. She was too close a friend, a sort of child-spoiling godmother, and he addressed her with tu.

  “Is it true,” Léa would ask, “that you were seen in a bar with old Lili last night, sitting on her knees?”

  “Her knees!” Chéri would quip. “She hasn’t had any knees for some time. They’re submerged.”

  “Is it true,” Léa would go on, more severely, “that she gave you pepper gin to drink? Do you know it makes one’s mouth smell?”

  One day, Chéri was hurt and replied to Léa’s interrogation:

  “I don’t know why you’re asking me all this. You must have se
en what I was doing, because you were there in the little back room with that boxer Patron!”

  “That’s perfectly correct,” Léa replied calmly. “There’s nothing of the feeble runt about Patron, see? He’s got other attractions than a cheap pretty face and eyes with dark circles.”

  That week Chéri raised Cain every night in Montmartre and at Les Halles with women who called him “kiddie” and “cutie,” but his heart wasn’t in it, he had migraines and a chest cough. And Madame Peloux, who confided her new anguish to her masseuse, to Madame Ribot her corsetmaker, to old Lili, to Dried-up Berthellemy—“Oh, what suffering life is for us mothers!”—passed readily from the status of happiest of mothers to that of martyred mother.

  One June evening, when Madame Peloux, Léa, and Chéri were assembled in the glass-walled garden room at Neuilly, changed the destiny of the young man and the older woman. For that evening, chance had scattered Chéri’s friends—young Boster, a little wholesale liquor dealer, and Viscount Desmond, a demanding and haughty parasite who had barely attained his majority—and brought Chéri back to his mother’s house, where habit also led Léa.

  Twenty years, a past made up of similar lackluster evenings, the lack of social relations, and also that mistrust and inertia by which women who have loved only sensually are made lonely in their old days, kept the two women in each other’s company one more evening (and just such another

  soir, ces deux femmes, l’une à l’autre suspectes. Elles regardaient toutes deux Chéri taciturne, et Mme Peloux, sans force et sans autorité pour soigner son fils, se bornait à haïr un peu Léa, chaque fois qu’un geste penchait, près de la joue pâle, de l’oreille transparente de Chéri, la nuque blanche et la joue sanguine de Léa. Elle eût bien saigné ce cou robuste de femme, où les colliers de Vénus commençaient de meurtrir la chair, pour teindre de rose le svelte lis verdissant, — mais elle ne pensait pas même à conduire son bienaimé aux champs.