‘Bragne’ on their programs!”
Very hurt, deep down, he vanishes, pursing his thin, red-painted lips, beneath a portiere with flowered borders, because another imposing servant has just called him, politely, by his mangled name.
In fifteen minutes it will be my turn . . . I look at myself and find myself ugly without the raw electric light which, in my dressing room, throws a cloth over the white walls, bathes the mirrors, and penetrates the makeup and softens the look of it . . . Will there be a rug on the dais?
If only they’ve shelled out, as Brague puts it, for a few footlights . . . This Salome-style wig pinches my temples and makes my headache worse . . .
I’m cold . . .
“Your turn, old girl!
Go and knock the pants off them!”
Back in the room, Brague has already sponged his white face, which is streaked with trickles of sweat, and has slipped on his cloak while still speaking:
“A very classy crowd, you can tell.
They don’t make too much of a racket.
Sure, they talk, but they don’t guffaw too loud . . . Here, take this two francs fifteen for my share of the cab ride . . . I’m going home.”
“You’re not waiting for me?”
“What for? You’re going to Les Ternes, I’m going to Montmartre: they’re too far apart.
Besides, I’m giving a lesson tomorrow morning at nine . . . So long, see you tomorrow.”
Let’s go!
It’s my turn.
My little rickety piano player is at her post.
I roll around me, with hands made nervous by stage fright, the veil that comprises almost my whole costume, a round purple-and-blue veil with a circumference of fifteen yards . . .
At first I can’t make out anything through the dense network of my gauze cage.
My bare feet are alert; they feel the short, tough wool of a fine Persian rug . . .
Unfortunately, there are no footlights . . .
A brief prelude awakens the bluish chrysalis that I represent, and makes it writhe, slowly freeing my limbs.
Little by little the veil is loosened, swells, flies out, and falls back again, revealing me to the eyes of those present, who, in order to look at me, have interrupted their feverish chatter . . .
I see them. In spite of myself, I see them.
While dancing, while crawling, while spinning, I see them and I recognize them! . . .
There, in the front row, is a woman, still young, who for quite some time was my ex-husband’s mistress.
She didn’t expect to see me tonight, and I wasn’t thinking of her . . . Her sorrowful blue eyes, the only thing beautiful about her, express as much surprise as fear . . . It isn’t me she fears; but my appearing out of the blue has brutally thrown her back on her memories. She suffered for Adolphe’s sake, she would have left everything for him; with loud cries and hot, imprudent tears, she wanted to kill her husband and me, too, and run away with Adolphe.
By that time he was no longer in love with her and he found her a burden.
He’d entrust her to me for days at a time, with the mission—no, the orders!—not to bring her back before seven; and there have never been more heartbreaking one-on-one conversations than the ones between those two betrayed women who hated each other.
Sometimes the poor creature, all her strength gone, would break into tears of humiliation, while I watcher her cry, feeling no pity for her tears and proud of my ability to hold back my own . . .
There she is in the front row.
All available space has been put to use, and her chair is so close to the dais that, with an ironic caress, I could graze her hair, which she dyes blonde because it’s getting gray.
She’s grown old in these four years, and she looks at me in terror.
Through me she is contemplating her sin, her despair, and her love, which has possibly died at last . . .
Behind her I also recognize that other woman . . . and then yet another . . .
They used to come to my home for tea every week when I was married.
Maybe they slept with my husband.
That’s of no importance . . . None of them shows any sign that she knows me, but something indicates that they’ve recognized me, because one of them is pretending that her attention is wandering and she’s muttering animatedly to the woman next to her; another one is exaggerating her nearsightedness; while the third, fanning herself and shaking her hand, keeps on whispering:
“How hot it is in here! How hot it is!”
They’ve changed their hairdos since the year when I dropped all those false friends . . . They’re wearing the now compulsory tight cap of hair that covers their ears, bound with a wide band of ribbon or metal that makes them look like unwashed convalescents . . . You no longer see tempting napes or filmy temples; all you see now is little snouts—jaws, chin, mouth, nose—which this year strikingly reveal their true wild-animal nature . . . On the sides and in the rear is a dark line of standing men.
Crowded together, they lean forward with that vulgar curiosity men in society have for a woman who “has lost her standing”; they used to kiss her fingertips in her salon, and now she’s dancing half-naked on a dais . . .
Snap out of it!
I’m seeing things too clearly tonight, and if I don’t get control of myself, my dance will suffer . . . I go on dancing and dancing . . . A beautiful serpent coils itself on the Persian rug, an Egyptian amphora tilts and pours out a wave of perfumed hair, a cloud rises and flies off, stormy and blue, a feline darts forward and retreats, a sphinx the color of yellow sand stretches out, rests her elbows on the ground, her back drawn in and her breasts thrust forward . . .
I’m not forgetting a thing, I’ve got hold of myself again. Who cares?
Do those people really exist? . . .
No, the only real things are the dance, the light, freedom, music . . .
The only real need is to make your thoughts rhythmical, to translate them into beautiful movements. Isn’t a single backbend of mine ignorant of all shackles, sufficient to heap scorn on those bodies diminished by their long corsets, impoverished by a fashion that demands they look slim?
I have better things to do than to humiliate them; for just one instant, I want to seduce them!
Just a little more effort: already their necks, laden with jewelry and hair, are following me with a vague, submissive swaying . . .
In a moment that vindictive light in all their eyes will go out, in a moment all those animals I have charmed will succumb and smile, all together.