“You promised me you’d console Fossette. She’s yours as much as mine. Please keep in mind that, during my absence, she’d never forgive you if you showed her too much attention.
Her bulldog tact extends to the most delicate emotional austerity and, when I leave her behind, she gets offended if an affectionate third party takes notice of her chagrin, even in an attempt to divert her.
“Goodbye, goodbye!
I kiss you and love you.
What a cold twilight, if you only knew! . . .
The sky is as green and clear as in January, when there’s a heavy frost.
Write to me, love me, warm up your “RENEE.”
“April 10
“My last letter must have made you unhappy.
I’m discontented with myself and with you.
Your beautiful handwriting is thick and round, and yet slender, elegant, and curly, like that plant which people out our way call the “flowering osier”; it fills up four pages, eight pages, with just a few repetitions of ‘I adore you,’ with loving curses, with very hot statements about how you miss me. I can read it in twenty seconds!
And I’m sure you honestly think you’ve written me a long letter!
And besides, you only talk about me! . . .
“Darling, without stopping in it, I’ve just ridden through a district which is mine, that of my childhood.
I felt as if a long caress were warming my heart . . . Promise me that some day we’ll go there together!
No, no! what am I saying?
We won’t go there!
The memory of your forests in the Ardennes would put to shame my copses of oaks, brambles, and service trees, and you wouldn’t see (as I do) trembling above them, and on the shadowy waters of the springs, and on the blue hills adorned by the tall thistle flowers, that narrow rainbow which forms the magical setting for all these jewels of my native land! . . .
“Nothing has changed there.
A few new roofs, with their fresh red, that’s all.
Nothing has changed in my homeland—except me.
Oh, my darling, how old I am!
Can you really love such an old young woman?
Here I blush at myself.
Why did you never meet the tall girl who wandered through these places with her regal braids and her taciturn moods, like those of a wood nymph?
All that I once was I gave to another man, a man who wasn’t you!
Forgive me for this outburst, Max, it’s the cry of the torment I’ve been repressing ever since I’ve loved you!
And what do you love in me, now that it’s too late, except the things that alter me, the things that tell you lies, my curls as abundant as foliage, my eyes that are lengthened and drowned by blue kohl, the false smoothness of a powdered complexion?
What would you say if I came back and appeared before you with my heavy lank hair, my blonde lashes cleansed of their mascara, and with the eyes I was born with, topped off by short eyebrows always ready to frown—gray, narrow, horizontal eyes in whose depths there gleams a hard, rapid glance that reminds me of my father’s?
“Don’t be afraid, darling!
I’ll return to you more or less the way I left, a little wearier, a little more loving . . . My homeland charms me with a sad but fleeting intoxication every time I brush up against it, but I’d never dare make a long stop there.
Maybe it’s only beautiful because I’ve lost it . . .
“Goodbye, dear, dear Max.
We have to leave for Lyons early tomorrow. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have our orchestra rehearsal, which I supervise while Brague, who’s tireless, sees after the programs, the framing of our posters, and the sale of our postcards . . .
“Oh, how cold I was again last night in that light Dominance costume!
The cold is my enemy: it suspends my life and my thinking—as you well know, since it’s in your hands that mine take refuge when they’re shriveled up like two leaves in the frost!
I miss you, my dear warmth, as much as I miss the sunshine.
Your “RENEE.”
*** We tour.
I eat.
I sleep, I walk, I mime, and I dance.
Without verve, but also without effort.
There’s just one feverish moment in the whole day: the one when I ask the vaudeville-house stage-door keeper whether there’s any mail for me.
I read my letters like a starving woman, leaning against the greasy jamb of the stagedoor in the stinking draft that smells of cellars and ammonia . . . The hour that follows is made more oppressive: there’s nothing more to read, I’ve deciphered the date on the postmark, and I’ve turned the envelope inside out, as if I hoped to see a flower or a picture fall out . . .
I’m paying no attention to the cities we’re playing.
I know them and I have no urge to renew the acquaintance.
I cling to Brague, who takes renewed possession of these familiar “burgs”—Rheims, Nancy, Belfort, Besancon—like a good-natured conquerer . . .
“Did you see?
That little eatery is still there at the corner of the river embankment: I bet they recognize me when we go there tonight to dig into their sausage in white wine!”
He breathes deeply, flings himself into the streets with the joy of a vagabond, window-shops, and climbs the cathedral towers.