Let’s close the window, let’s close the window!
I tremble too hard at seeing a provincial garden rising through the curtain of the rain—a green-and-black garden, silvered by the rising moon, in which there passes the shadow of a girl dreamily rolling her long braid around her wrist, like a caressing serpent . . .
“MARSEILLES, Nice, Cannes, Toulon . . .”
“No, Menton before Toulon . . .”
“And Grenoble!
We’ve got Grenoble, too!”
We check off the cities on our tour the way kids count their marbles.
Brague has decided that we’ll perform two pantomimes, Dominance and The Dryad.
“For the big burgs where we stop for four or six days,” he assures me, “it’s a good idea to have a spare number.”
It’s all right with me.
Anything is all right with me.
This morning, no one is more benevolent and approving than I.
Almost the only sounds in the Cernuschi studio where we’re working are Brague’s outbursts and the laughter of the Old Caveman, who’s thrilled by the thought of going on tour and making fifteen francs a day; his starved young face with the hollow blue eyes reflects a constant joy, and God knows whether he suffers for it! “Damn dickhead!” Brague howls, “I’ll teach you how to smile like a ballerina!
People would think you never saw a caveman!
Twist your mouth, I tell you!
More than that!
Let your eyes go limp!
And let your jaw tremble! Something in the style of Chaliapin, okay? . . .”
He mops his brow and turns toward me in discouragement:
“I don’t know why I’m busting my behind for this numbskull: when I mention Chaliapin to him, he thinks I’m using dirty language! . . .
And, then, what are you doing there wool-gathering?”
“Oh, it’s my turn now?
Just as I was saying to myself, ‘Brague hasn’t murmured words of love to me for some time!’”
My colleague and instructor looks me up and down with stagy contempt:
“Words of love! I leave that to others; surely you aren’t lacking for them?
Out!
The session is over.
Tomorrow, dress rehearsal with sets and props.
Which means that you’ll have a veil for your dance and that this gentleman will be wheeling-in a candle crate to represent the rock he waves around over our heads.
I’m sick and tired of seeing you two, one with a hanky the size of my butt, and this guy with the Paris-Journal rolled into a ball instead of his hunk of granite.
Here tomorrow at six. Those are orders.”
Just as Brague finishes speaking, a sunbeam gilds the skylight, and I raise my head as if abruptly summoned from up above.
“You hear me, little Miss Renee?”
“Yes . . .”
“Yes?
So get going!
It’s chowtime.
Go look at the sun outside!
You’re dreaming about the country, aren’t you?”
“No one can keep a secret from you.
See you tomorrow!”
I am dreaming about the country . . . but not the way my infallible partner imagines.
And even the cheerful bustle on Place Clichy at midday won’t let me forget a very recent, very keen, annoying memory . . .
Yesterday Hamond and Dufferein-Chautel took me to the Meudon woods, like two art students taking out a little milliner.
My admirer was doing the honors of a brand-new car that smelled of morocco leather and turpentine: a magnificent toy for adults.
His dark young face was radiant with the desire to make me a gift of this lovely polished and vibrant machine, which I absolutely didn’t want.
But I laughed because, for this outing to Meudon, Hamond and Dufferein-Chautel were both sporting the same deeply creased, broad-brimmed brown hat, and I looked so small between those two tall devils!
Sitting opposite me on one of the jump seats, my admirer tucked in his legs discreetly to avoid contact between our knees.
The bright-gray day, very mild and springlike, showed me every detail of his face, swarthier under the bronze-colored felt hat, and the smoky hue of his eyelids, and his tough, abundant lashes forming a double bar. His mouth, half-hidden beneath his reddish-black mustache, intrigued me, as did the imperceptible network of little wrinkles under his eyes, and his eyebrows that are longer than his eye sockets, thick, irregular eyebrows slightly bristling like those on the griffon terriers they use for hunting . . . With a nervous hand I suddenly looked for the mirror in my little bag . . .
“Lost something, Renee?”