Chéri and the End of Chéri by Colette

Author:Colette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

THE END OF CHÉRI

Chéri closed the gate of the little garden behind him and inhaled the night air: “Ah! It’s pleasant out . . .” He instantly corrected himself: “No, it’s not.” The densely planted chestnut trees pressed heavily on the captive heat. Above the nearest gas lamp a dome of scorched greenery stirred. Until dawn, the avenue Henri-Martin, choked with vegetation, would await the faint flow of cool air that rises from the Bois.

His head bare, Chéri gazed at his barren, illuminated house. The sound of roughly handled crystal reached him, followed by Edmée’s voice, clear, hardened for the rebuke. He saw his wife approach the bay window in the salon, on the second floor, and lean out. Her beaded white dress lost its snowy hue, picked up the greenish beam of the gas lamp, blazed yellow at the touch of the silk lamé curtain she brushed against.

“Is that you on the sidewalk, Fred?”

“Who else would it be?”

“You haven’t taken Filipesco back, then?”

“Of course not, he’d already taken off.”

“I would nevertheless have liked . . . Well, it’s not important. Are you coming in?”

“Not right away. Too hot. I’m going for a walk.”

“But . . . Well, as you wish.”

She fell silent for a moment, but she must have laughed, for he saw the frost of her dress shiver.

“All I see of you, from here, is your white shirtfront and your white face, suspended in the darkness . . . You look like a poster for a dance hall. It looks deathly.”

“How you like my mother’s expressions,” he said pensively. “You can let everyone go up, I’ve got my key.”

She waved a hand toward him, and one by one the windows went dark. A particular light, of a muted blue, informed Chéri that Edmée had reached, by way of her boudoir, the bedroom that opened onto the garden at the back of the house.

“Make no mistake,” he mused. “The boudoir is now called the study.”

Janson-de-Sailly chimed the hour, and Chéri, his face raised, caught the ringing of bells like drops of rain as they flew past.

“Midnight. She’s in quite a hurry to go to bed . . . Oh, of course, she has to be at her hospital at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

He took a few nervous steps, shrugged his shoulders, and calmed down.

“It’s as if I had married a classical dancer, in short. At nine o’clock, class: it’s sacred. It takes precedence over everything else.”

He walked as far as the entrance to the Bois. The sky, pale with suspended dust, softened the pulsing of the stars. A steady step matched his own steady step, and Chéri stopped and waited: he didn’t like anyone walking behind him.

“Good evening, Monsieur Peloux,” the man of La Vigilante said, touching his cap.

Chéri answered by lifting his finger to the height of his temple with an officer’s condescension, which he had learned by socializing, during the war, with his fellow sergeants, and outdistanced the man of La Vigilante, who was pressing his hand heavily on the iron doors of the little walled gardens.

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