Claudine and Annie by Colette

Author:Colette [Colette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1994-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

SIX

BAYREUTH.

Rain. Rain . . . The sky melts into rain, and the sky here is coal-dust. If I lean on the window-sill, my hands and elbows are smeared with black. The same impalpable black powder snows down invisibly on my white serge dress, and if I absent-mindedly stroke my cheek with the palm of my hand I crush a gritty sticky smut into long black streaks. Drops of rain have dried on the flounce of my skirt in little grey spots. Léonie is eternally brushing my clothes and Marthe’s. As she does so, she wears a blissful expression that makes her look like a sentimental policeman. It reminds her of her native Saint-Étienne, she declares.

In the west, the sky is turning yellow. Perhaps the rain is going to stop and I shall see Bayreuth otherwise than through this fine, open veil, otherwise too than through the distorting prism of my tears.

For, the moment I arrived, I dissolved into water like the clouds. I feel ashamed to write down the puerile reason for such a crisis of misery, but I will.

At Schnabelweide, where we changed from the Nürnberg—Carlsbad line, the train rushed on in a heedless hurry most untypical of German trains, carrying my trunk and my dressing-case off on their way to Austria. As a result I found myself – after fifteen hours of travelling and sticky all over with this German coal-dust that smells of sulphur and iodoform – without a sponge, without a clean handkerchief, without a comb, in fact without everything absolutely essential. This blow demoralized me, and while Léon and Maugis tore off to the Information Bureau, I began to cry. I just stood there on the platform, shedding great tears that made little pellets in the dust.

‘This Annie of ours was obviously born under Aquarius,’ murmured Claudine philosophically.

As a result, my arrival in the ‘Holy City’ was pitiable and absurd. I was not amused by Marthe’s snobbish ecstasies over the postcards, the red glass Grails, the carvings, the plates, and the beer jugs, all stamped with the image of the god Wagner. Even Claudine, unkempt, with her boater over one ear, hardly raised a smile from me when she brandished a smoking sausage she was clutching triumphantly, right under my nose.

‘Look what I’ve bought!’ she cried. ‘It’s a sort of postman who sells them. Yes, Renaud, a postman! He’s got hot sausages in his leather satchel and he fishes them out with a fork, like snakes. You needn’t make a face, Marthe, it’s delicious! I shall send one to Mélie – I shall tell her it’s called a Wagnerwurst . . .’

She went off, dancing, dragging her gentle husband towards a lilac-painted Konditorei to eat whipped cream with her sausage . . .

I recovered my luggage, thanks to the zeal of Léon, egged on by Marthe, and the polyglottism of Maugis. The latter speaks as many German dialects as there are tribes in Israel and, with one sentence I found totally unintelligible, he galvanized the smiling, apathetic officials into action.

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