And then I loaned (as she’d call it!) fifty francs to Myriame to pay for her coat, then there were a few dames who came to hit me up, saying they were stony broke . . . What can I tell you? . . . Hey, here comes Bouty!
Hi, Bouty!”
“Greetings to the party girl!”
Having politely made sure that a kimono is covering up my state of undress, Bouty pushes open my dressing-room door and shakes the hand Jadin is holding out to him; he says “Hi” again with a roguish gesture but in a tender tone . . . But Jadin forgets him immediately; standing behind me and talking to my reflection in the mirror, she continues:
“You understand, it makes me feel terrible to have all that money!”
“But . . . why not buy some dresses . . . at least one . . . to replace what you’ve got on?”
With the back of her hand she pushes back her lightweight, lank hair which is coming down in thin strands:
“Don’t believe it!
This dress can last very well until the revue!
What would they say if they saw me stepping out earning dough to bring fancy duds back here? . . . ”
She’s right.
“They” are her notorious local audience, demanding and jealous; she’s betrayed them somewhat, but they forgive her, provided she reappears before them in lousy clothes and shoes, got up like a rag doll, but the same as before her escapade, before her crime . . . After a pause Jadin resumes, completely at ease with Bouty’s embarrassed silence:
“Me, you know, I bought what I needed most: a hat and a muff and a scarf.
But what a hat!
You’ll see it in a little while . . . So long.
You’re staying, Bouty? . . .
Bouty, I’m rich, you know?
I’ll pay for anything you like!”
“I’ll pass on that, thanks.”
Bouty acts unusually chilly and disapproving.
If I said out loud that he’s in love with Jadin, I’d make myself a laughingstock.
So I have to make do with just thinking it.
The little comic leaves shortly afterward, leaving me alone with my bouquet of roses, a large, ordinary bouquet tied with a pale green ribbon . . . It’s truly the kind of bouquet that a “big ninny” like my new admirer would send!
“With his respectful compliments . . . ” For the last three years I’ve run across plenty of compliments, if I may say so, but there was nothing respectful about them. And my old middle-class sentiments, still on the alert, secretly take over—as if these new compliments, as cloaked with respect as they claim to be, weren’t really after the same thing, always the same thing . . .
My nearsightedness doesn’t prevent me from spotting in the front row of the orchestra, sitting there stiff and serious, with his dark hair gleaming like the silk of a top hat, Dufferein-Chautel the younger.
Happy at being recognized by me, he follows with his head my movements, my comings and goings on the stage, just the way my dog Fossette does when I get dressed to go out . . .
THE DAYS go by.
There’s nothing new in my life except for a man patiently lying in ambush for me.
We’ve just gotten through Christmas and New Year’s.
Christmas eve, very busy, shook up the whole “dump” with wild activity.
The audience, more than half drunk, yelled in unison; the socialites in the stage boxes threw mandarin oranges and expensive cigars at the second balcony; Jadin, tipsy since lunch, lost the thread of her song and did a raucous dance on the stage, lifting her skirt to show stockings with runs in them, with a heavy lock of hair tapping her on the back . . . A profitable night, with our boss-lady throning in her box, computing the royal receipts, her eyes on the sticky drinking glasses loading down the shelves nailed to the backs of the seats . . .
Brague had also been tipsy ever since dinner, and he was sparkling with raunchy imagination, like a little black billygoat. Alone in his dressing room, he improvised an extraordinary monologue in which a hallucinated man was defending himself against ghosts, crying,
“Oh! No, enough . . . let me alone!” or
“Not that! Not that!
Or anyway just once . . . ,” with the sighs and laments of a man being tortured by a diabolical sexual urge . . .
As for Bouty, writhing with enteritis cramps, he was sipping his bluish milk . . .
Instead of attending a Christmas party, I ate the lovely hothouse grapes that my old friend Hamond had brought; I was alone with Fossette, who was munching candy sent by the Big Ninny. Making fun of myself, I struggled with a fit of self-pitying jealousy, like a child who hasn’t been invited anywhere . . .
What would I have preferred?
To have supper with Brague, or with Hamond, or with Dufferein-Chautel?
Oh, no!
What, then?
I’m no better or worse than anyone else, and there are times when I’d like to forbid others to have fun while I’m bored . . .
My friends, the real ones, the loyal ones, like Hamond—I must make this clear—are losers, an incurably sad lot.
Is it the “solidarity of unhappiness” that connects us?
I don’t believe it.
It seems to me, rather, that I attract, and hold onto, melancholy people, solitaries dedicated to seclusion or to a wandering life, like me . . . “Birds of a feather . . . ”
I review these madcap ideas as I return from my visit to Margot.
Margot is my ex-husband’s younger sister.
Since childhood she has mournfully borne that funny pet name, which suits her so very badly.
She lives alone and, with her graying hair, cut short below her ears, her blouse with Russian embroidery, and her long black jacket, she strongly resembles Rosa Bonheur—if that painter had also been a nihilist.