The Woman Behind the Mask

A Story of the Hidden and Unconventional Self that Sometimes Seizes Its Opportunity

COLETTE

EDITOR'S NOTE: In this issue of Vanity Fair, we are beginning a series of translations of the short, satirical sketches of Mine. Colette-Willy. Colette-Willy, who has long been known in France as a writer of much distinction, was formerly an actress and the wife of an authour. She is now married to the Editor of Le Figaro, and, in addition to her vogue as a writer of fiction, her fen is becoming known to French readers through the sparkling, little essays on social topics, somewhat in the style of the eighteenth century, which appear from time to time in the columns of that journal. Although her stories are characterized by the delicate and restrained precision—leaving out more than is said—that we have come to associate with the French manner, they have also a biting and effective realism.

THE GREEN AND VIOLET BALL

HE gazed abstractedly at the foaming torrent of masqueraders streaming past him, vaguely disturbed by the vivid colours and by the dissonances produced by two orchestras that were placed too close together. The hood of his monk's gown was too tight across his temples and his mask made his nose twitch irritably. Nevertheless he savoured this mood, half of unrest, half of pleasure, which made the passing of the hours almost unnoticed. He had wandered through all the corridors of the opera house, had tasted the golden dust of the ballroom floor, had recognized some rather bored friends and had found the indifferent arms of a very fat girl—whose fancy had impelled her to represent a sylph—wound about his neck. Embarrassed by his domino, tripping in the manner of all males suddenly encumbered with skirts, this doctor in the monk's garb did not dare to remove either his mask or his domino on account of the rather college-boy sort of prank that he was perpetrating.

"I shall spend the night at the Nogents," he had said to his wife. "They've just telephoned me and I'm afraid the poor old lady. . . but, do you know I had an almost childish desire to go to that ball. It's ridiculous, don't you think, for a man of my age never to have seen a fancy dress opera ball: "

"Yes, dear, absolutely absurd! If I'd known, perhaps I shouldn't have married you."

"But you—don't you want to go to this— this green and violet ball? Even without me . . . if you would enjoy it, dearest?"

She had shuddered—one of those long shivers of disgust in which one could see her hair and her delicate hands tremble and her throat quiver as if at the touch of a slimy creature or the sight of something repulsive.

"I! Can you see me in that mob? delivered into all those hands? I'm not a prude—but I am—I am fastidious—and I can't help it!"

Leaning against the balustrade of a box just over the grand stairway, he thought of that trembling doc, his wife, while he stared at the bare back of a sultana squeezed by two enormous hands with long dirty nails. Crowding out of the sleeves of a Venetian signor, these hands left their impress on the soft white feminine flesh. Because he was thinking of his wife, he started perceptibly when he heard at his side a little "ha-hum", a ghost of a cough that was habitual with her. He turned and saw, mounted on the balustrade, what was clearly a Pierrot from the flowing sleeves, the wide pantaloons, the skull cap, the chalky whiteness of the bit of skin that was visible under the lace ruffle of the mask. The thin stuff of the costume and of the cap, shot with threads of violet and silver, shone like the iridescent salt-water cels that you catch at night, spearing them from a boat to which they have been attracted by a pine torch.

Overcome with surprise he waited for the little "ha-hum" again; but in vain. The ccllikc Pierrot, seated nonchalantly, beat with one swinging heel on the marble balustrade and revealed of herself only two satin shoes, and a black gloved hand resting on one hip. The two slanting slits in the mask, carefully veiled with tulle, allowed only a smothered flash of indistinct fire from her eyes.

He had to speak—

"Irene!"

SUSPENSE

THEN he stopped, remembering his own deception. But little used to making believe, he had forgotten to disguise his voice. The Pierrot scratched herself with a movement free and rather common.

The husband breathed again. "Ah, it is not she!"

But the Pierrot drew from a pocket a golden box and opened it to take out a stick of rouge; and the anxious husband recognized an ancient snuff-box with a little mirror inside of it, his present to her on their last anniversary.

He pressed his hand to his heart with a movement so sudden and so unconsciously theatrical that the cel-like Pierrot noticed it.

"Is that a declaration, Violet Domino?"

He did not answer. Half choked with astonishment, suspense, and dark forebodings, he listened for a long, long moment to the scarcely disguised voice of his wife. The eel looked at him, perched lightly, with her head on one side like a bird.

Then she shrugged her shoulders, jumped to the ground and moved away. The movement released the anxious husband, who, becoming actively and normally jealous, became once more capable of thought. He rose and followed her, very deliberately and without haste.

"She is here with someone", he thought. "In less than an hour I shall know all."

A hundred dominoes, violet or green, showed that he need not fear being either noticed or recognized. Irene walked carelessly ahead of him. He was thunderstruck at noticing that she swayed her hips, and dragged her feet a little, as if she were wearing mules.

A Byzantine, in emerald and gold brocade, seized her in passing, and she drooped into his arms, her slender figure swallowed up in his embrace. Her husband ran towards the couple and reached them just in time to hear Irene cry coqucttishlv—"You brute, you!"

She moved away with the same relaxed and easy step, stopping often, gazing in at the open doors of boxes, scarcely ever turning round. She hesitated at the foot of a staircase, turned abruptly, went back to the entrance of the orchestra, and insinuated herself adroitly, into a noisy group of people, with a movement like that of a sword gliding into its sheath. Ten pairs of arms imprisoned her. A wrestler, almost naked, thrust her against the edge of the lowest tier of boxes and held her there.

She yielded under the weight of the man, turned her head for a laugh that was matched bv the laughs ot the others; and the man in the violet domino saw the teeth of the wrestler shining under the flap of his mask. Then she extricated herself lightly and sat down upon the steps which led to the ball-room. Two steps behind her, her husband watched her. She fixed her mask, smoothed her rumpled jacket and readjusted her close-fitting cap. She seemed as calm as if she were alone. Then after a few minutes rest, she set forth again.

On the dance floor, she put her arm on the shoulder of a warrior who asked her, without words, to dance. She danced with him, pressed close to his side.

"He is the one!" said the husband to himself.

REVELATION

BUT she did not exchange a single word with the warrior and left him, calmly, at the end of the dance.

She went and drank a glass of champagne at the buffet, then a second glass, paid for them, watched, motionless, the beginning of a fight betwen two men, surrounded by a crowd of shrieking women. She amused herself also by putting her little black impish hands on the white throat of a woman dressed as a Hollander, in a gold headdress. The latter cried out nervously.

AT last the anxious husband, following her, saw her stop, as if compelled, beside a young man, seated panting and out of breath on a bench, fanning himself with his mask. She bent and, taking his beautiful, fresh but rather brutal face mockingly by the chin, kissed his half-open mouth.

But her husband, instead of throwing himself upon them and tearing the two apart, lost himself in the crowd.

Stupefied, he no longer feared—he no longer hoped—that she was deceiving him. I le was sure, now, that she knew neither the danceintoxicated youth whom she was kissing, nor the warrior with whom she had danced. He was certain that she was not waiting or looking for anyone, and that, abandoning the lips that she held with her own, like a flower drained of honey, she would set off one instant later in search of another—to forget and to taste until she should finally become satiated and go home —the strange pleasure of being alone, free, really herself, in her native animalism, of being unknown, in the solitude absolute and inviolate conferred upon her by a fancy dress costume and a little mask.