The Collected Stories of Colette Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    “You’re getting married . . . just like that? . . . You’re getting married . . . Why?”
    Chéri puts his finger to his lips, goes “Shhh!” mysteriously, and shrugs his shoulders. His charming liar’s face grows sad, then smiles, then goes blank—he plays with all his features like an expert mime.
    “Well, there you have it . . . Lofty motives, my dear. The kid’s loaded. And pretty, too. And besides, the old girl—I mean my sainted mother—has spoken, and when my mother speaks . . . Besides . . . besides, what do I know?”
    He leaps up, comes back down after a perfect entrechat-six , butts his way through the Persian door curtains, and disappears, shouting: “My bath—now! And send the masseuse to my dressing room, quick! I’m lunching at the old girl’s!”
    “Chéri! . . . Listen, Chéri!”
    He does not hear or else does not want to come back.
    Seated on the edge of the big bed, Léa thinks to herself: “What? He’s getting married? It’s impossible! The whole family’s crazy! What can his mother be thinking? Marry Chéri!”
    She looks at the Persian door curtains and raises her shoulders. “Marry that?”
    Léa is neither pained nor jealous. She is shocked and is slowly becoming indignant.
    “I swear, people are crazy! Here’s a boy who’s . . . well, who’s Chéri! As far as reason goes, he’s eight years old, except that he knows pearls like an old Jewess and speaks sharply to the help—at least to mine. What need is there for him to marry, I ask you. Doesn’t he have everything he needs here, everything? A young girl . . . crazy about him . . . She’s going to give this spoiled little brat her love, as if he needs it! He’s too mean, he’s too young. It doesn’t matter to me. He can sharpen his nails on me, it doesn’t leave any marks. But a young girl . . . who loves him! . . . This one doesn’t love anything. He doesn’t know how. They don’t know how, all the other Chéris just like him . . . People envy me because he’s so young and so handsome, they envy me for being the nanny of one of these brainless boys, Chéri or some other one, brought up by lackeys, manicurists, and boxing instructors . . . Poor Chéri, people take him for a man because he has biceps. They’re going to give him a wife—a young girl . . . a child . . . Oh, they can’t do that! . . .”
    Léa gives a start because Chéri has just come back, shivering and grumbling, in his bathrobe.
    “You’re not getting up today? But, Léa, you’ll get so fat!”
    She sizes him up and does not deign to respond.
    “A young