“Oh, I know!
Such penny-pinching . . .”
I hold back a retort that would hurt his feelings: where would that spoiled child have learned that money, earned money, is something serious and worthy of respect, to be handled carefully and discussed earnestly?
He mops his brow with a beautiful violet silk handkerchief.
For some time my friend has been displaying an extreme concern for elegance: he has magnificent shirts, handkerchiefs that match his ties, shoes with doeskin spats . . . I haven’t failed to notice it, because, with this dear Big Ninny, whose build is a little heavy, the slightest detail of attire assumes an almost shocking importance.
“Why do you consent to that?” he asks reproachfully. “Such promiscuity is hateful!”
Promiscuity!
I was expecting the word.
It’s used a lot . . .
“Backstage promiscuity” . . .
“Tell me, dear,” I say as, with two fingers, I narrow the tips of his reddish-black, silky mustache, “if your shirts and your shorts were involved, that wouldn’t be promiscuity?
Remember: I’m just a very sensible little vaudevillian living on her salary . . .”
Suddenly he embraces me and crushes me a little, on purpose:
“To hell with your career! . . .
Oh, when I have you completely to myself, I’ll treat you to special railroad cars, their luggage racks filled with flowers, and dresses and more dresses!
And everything beautiful I can find or think up!”
His lovely dark voice makes this commonplace promise sound noble . . .
In those ordinary words I sense the vibrant desire to lay the world at my feet . . .
Dresses?
It’s true, he must find it austere and pretty monotonous, my neutral chrysalis of gray, brown, or dark-blue tailored suits, which in the glare of the footlights I exchange for painted gauze, shiny spangles, and swirling, iridescent skirts . . . Special cars?
What for?
They don’t travel farther than regular ones . . .
Fossette has slipped her bonzelike skull, gleaming like rosewood, between us . . . My little companion can tell I’m leaving.
She has recognized the valise with scratched corners, and the raincoat; she has seen the black-enameled English box, the makeup case . . . She knows I won’t take her along, and she’s resigning herself in advance to a life, a pampered life, consisting of walks along the city limits with Blandine, nights with my concierge, dinners out, and picnics in the Bois . . .
“I know you’ll be back,” her slitlike eyes say, “but when?”
“Max, she likes you. Will you look after her?”
There we go! Just because we’ve leaned over this restless little animal together, our tears are overflowing!
I repress mine with an effort that hurts my throat and nose . . . How beautiful my friend’s eyes are, enlarged by the two gleaming tears that wet his lashes!
Oh, why leave him?
“In a little while,” he murmurs with a choked voice, “I”ll go out and fetch a . . . pretty little handbag . . . that I’ve ordered for you . . . a very sturdy one . . . for the trip . . .”
“Really, Max?”
“It’s . . . pigskin . . .”
“Max, come now! Be a little more courageous than I am!”
He blows his nose rebelliously:
“Why? I don’t feel like being courageous!
Just the opposite!”
“We’re both being silly!
Neither of us would have dared to be self-pitying: Fossette acted as a catalyst to our emotion.
It works like the ‘little table’ in Manon or the muff in Poliche, remember?”
Maxime wipes his eyes, at length, carefully, in the simple way he does everything, which keeps him from looking ridiculous.
“That’s very possible, Renee . . . Anyway, if you want my eyes to turn into fountains, all you need to do is speak to me of all your surroundings here in this little apartment, all the things I won’t see again till you’re back.
This old couch, the easy chair you sit and read in, and the pictures of you, and the sunbeam that moves across the carpet between noon and two o’clock . . .”
Deeply moved, he smiles:
“Don’t speak to me of the fire shovel, the hearth, and the tongs, or I’ll collapse altogether! . . .”
He has gone to fetch the pretty little pigskin bag.
“When we’re together again,” he said to me coaxingly before he left, “you’ll give me the furniture from this little parlor, won’t you? I’ll have other pieces made for you.”
I smiled, in order not to refuse.
This furniture in Max’s home?
It’s only for lack of money that I never replaced this flotsam and jetsam from my home with Taillandy, which he left in my hands as a measly compensation for the author’s royalties he had swindled me out of.
What an aria of the “little table” I could sing about this fumed-oak piece with pretensions to be Dutch, about this old couch hollowed out by “sporting events” . . . to which I wasn’t invited!