The Collected Stories of Colette Read Free

insolent strength.
    Pearls and more pearls, a white dress which, in the style of the day, combines Louis XV panniers, a Directoire-style sash, Byzantine décolletage, and Japanese sleeves; on her head is a little black glengarry, which looks as if it is worth four sous, from which there rises an aigrette worth fifty louis. Her feet are not happy under the table because of two purple shoes with gold heels. But she no longer pays them any attention. Good heavens, one’s feet are always what hurt most when, for three hours every night, one treads the boards of a raked stage, when one is subjected to spiked heels during the day and to unyielding ballet shoes in the morning.
    For Lulu works. Four years have been enough to transform an undernourished dressmaker’s assistant into a highly paid star of the music hall. In order to become rich she acquired the taste for money, and hard work gave her a sense of pride. Lulu is as proud as any locksmith or electrician. Like them she says in a tough voice and with mock simplicity, “I’m not afraid to work.” She also says, “I didn’t know how to do anything, but I learned how to do everything!” She in fact sings, dances, and acts with a cinematographic spirit and swiftness that is already being called “the Lulu style” . . .
    “Now who’s looking at those silly women! Clouk, you must have some old relative in the crowd!”
    Clouk laughed stupidly into his glass and glanced at the neighboring table where there was some rather loud shouting going on over a broken glass. Two operetta singers, once notorious, were laughing through all their jovial wrinkles, across from a poor, graying bit player with a healthy appetite. The fourth woman is Léa de Lonval, overripe, enormous, and magnificent as a heavy fruit fallen beneath a tree . . . All four have given themselves over to the pleasure of eating a good supper unescorted, and drinking a champagne as celebrated as themselves. They form a well-heeled and cordial group of jewel-bedecked matrons. Clouk, listening to Lulu, turns his sickly little boy’s smile toward them, without doing it on purpose . . .
    “So, you see, Clouk, I’m not saying this play they’re bringing out for me this winter isn’t a marvelous play, not at all. But they’re telling me that if I do it, I’ll be considered a great actress overnight . . . As if I need them to be considered great . . . Which doesn’t change the fact that it’s a hopeless play.”
    “Yes?”
    “Hopeless. I read it. For example, at one point it says that Linda—Linda, that’s my role—Linda ‘feverishly paces the living room with long strides,’ and a little further on, ‘She runs after him, panic-stricken,’ and a little further than that, ‘Linda, raising her arms to the sky in a wide, imploring gesture . . .’”
    “Yes?”
    “What do you mean, ‘yes’? Oh, my poor dear, I can be talking to you about the theater, or literature, or anything serious, and you always have the same silly look on your face! You must understand that that scene, the way it is, can’t be done! Can you see me, in a day dress, pacing the stage ‘with long strides’? Can you see me, in that same dress, running after my lover ‘panic-stricken’? And then try, just try raising your arms ‘in a wide, imploring gesture’ with sleeves nowadays not having any seams at the shoulders! So I told them, I said to the authors, ‘I don’t care if your play flops, but I do not want to fall flat on my face, nor do I want to dress like Raymond Duncan! There would have to be changes, a lot of changes!’”
    “Yes . . .”
    “‘Yes’ . . . There’s one thing no one can take away from you, you are a gifted conversationalist!”
    Clouk keeps himself from sniffling and adjusts the monocle which he uses to hide a weak eye, smaller and paler than the other. He remains silent. What could he say? Lulu’s metallic voice, her gemlike dazzle overwhelm him. That is how she is,