The Collected Stories of Colette Read Online Free PDF Page A

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