Read The Collected Stories of Colette for Free Online Page B

was not in the least passionate had nearly opened the floodgates of his egotistical tears; what he longs for now is the bed in which he slept the long sleeps of his adolescence. But he had not yet kissed either Léa’s hand or her face . . . He does not give a thought to the suffering of an abandoned child.
    Pensively Léa brushes Chéri’s clear cheek and his handsome, thankless forehead with the tips of her fingers. “Chéri . . .”
    He groans lazily. “What?”
    “You can’t stay here, you know. You have to go back . . .”
    He opens terrible, dark eyes. “Go back? You must be kidding! I’d rather die! I’m through with being married! Get me out of it, if you can!”
    He has wrapped his strong arms around her . . . Léa shrugs her shoulders, powerless . . .
    “Send Chéri back? Where will he go? He doesn’t understand yet that the one waiting there for him is a woman . . .” He is too young, this child hanging on to his old friend, trying to heal a sickly love bruised by its own emergence . . . “Well, too bad, I’m keeping him!” Léa decides with calm fatalism. “Worse things could happen . . . Let him stay—in the meantime.”
    And loosening Chéri’s grip, she makes a place for him in the hollow of her comforting side like a mother animal.
    THE PEARLS
    “We’ll have the coffee in the lounge, won’t we, Chéri?”
    “Of course.”
    “And Turkish coffee, like yesterday?”
    “Of course.”
    “You’re so sweet here. You have a delightful disposition when you travel.”
    “Yes, but I don’t want anyone telling me I do. It immediately makes me want to start acting up.”
    He laughs and his laughter arouses in his handsome face the ferocity of a wolf cub. His perfect mouth is nearly innocent of smiling; after brief outbursts of a stinging joke, it closes back up like a sullen flower. But today Chéri, languid and subdued, laughs lazily, turned toward the garden, which is blue with shadows and greenery.
    Léa gazes at her young friend and admires him without servility or bitterness.
    “You’ve never looked better than you have since we arrived in Tunis. What a face! And your eyes! Exactly like the eyes of the women here! You wouldn’t happen to be part Tunisian by any chance?”
    Blasé, Chéri does not deign to look at her with his dark eyes; but with a finger moist with saliva he shines his thrilling lashes and his gleaming eyebrows like plumage. They both fall silent, like satisfied lovers with nothing left to say to each other, like old friends resting together. A simple white dress and a white hat brighten Léa’s healthy complexion and are not intended to make it look younger. With her beautiful, solid shoulders, her tranquil blue eyes, and without the dye in her hair, she might be taken for a very agreeable mother accompanying her son . . .
    No one looks at them all that much at the Arabian Palace. In Paris they have been forgotten, and in any case, their running off together did not cause a big to-do. Chéri’s attempt at marriage was so brief—four months!—he had barely had time to leave his more mature friend for his young wife.
    And he has come back to her with the rage of a deceived child, impatient to rediscover in her, by turns obliging, calm, indifferent, and good, what for him takes the place of love. She took him back, peevish and wheedling, she looked after the ill-tempered, detestable little king, and they began living together again.
    As before, he insults her, he strokes her naggingly; as before, she lets him play and destroy all around her with an indulgent disdain which dwarfs him. He wields a powerless spite against her. When he feels like shouting at her, “The least you could do is cry! That other one cries, that little girl I abandoned cries!” Léa smiles, strokes Chéri’s forehead, and says only, “Poor baby.”
    Humiliated, bristling, he sometimes bites the appeasing hand, then little by little loosens his bite and stays there,