ZINZOLINE
D’une lumière zinzoline....
Scarron
Color was the subject of conversation, and the young women were expressing their commonplace preferences. One liked rose, another liked blue, a third praised pale green, a fourth preferred red.
“And you, Alain?”
“Oh! I as a man,” said Alain, “am condemned to black, gray and brown. I do not dream like you of brilliant plumage. Still, if I were allowed my choice, I should like to dress in zinzoline.”
All burst out laughing to hide their ignorance.
“Is not the word beautiful?” continued Alain.
No answer came. Then the young man went on:
“I do not want to deceive you. The word is pretty but the color is frightful. Imagine something reddish violet, recall a piece of violet velvet all worn and showing the warp of a dubious red.”
“You are making fun of us, that is not fair.”
“I am not making fun. I like the word because it is so pretty, because it rhymes with my name, perhaps because it rhymes with yours, my Aline. Zinzoline!”
And he passionately kissed his sister who protested vigorously:
“No, I am not zinzoline; I do not want to be zinzoline.”
“But though I like the word I do not like the color it denotes, and if my Aline did in truth become zinzoline I would not love her so much.”
“Naughty boy!” said Aline.
“For several minutes,” said Alain.
The girl called Blue was an orphan. A daughter of the closest friend of Alain and Aline’s mother, she entered their house as a little girl and grew up there, although it was generally felt that she was not one of the family. Her nature separated her from her foster-relatives. She was gloomy, they were gay; she seemed to be afraid of life; they joyfully plunged into it, young and old, as into a warm sea. Neither the first nor the last possessed a strong will. Paula (this was her real name) was, on the contrary, always in a state of high, moral tension, and if she ever happened to laugh in company, aloud like everybody else, she would suddenly cut herself short as soon as she became aware of it. A philosopher would have found in this child the passion for suffering which priesthood has so often exploited in women among whom it is not at all rare; a passion which most men like because it flatters their pride or better still because they find it quite natural. Such women are hard to tame because they are very suspicious and also very apprehensive. One often thinks them cruel while they are only timorous. The more skilled in the art of self-torment seek often to displease, just as others seek to please; always, however, with some hidden motive; and when one divines this motive, he becomes their master.
Paula was neither ugly nor beautiful. When the features of her somewhat concentrated face were illumined with a smile, she became attractive. Her eyes would have been very eloquent had she not imposed an oath of unexpressiveness on them. She was small though not slight, and very nimble; her very thick hair was chestnut of that indefinable hue which is perhaps most captivating because most mysterious, because it does not promise anything.
Besides the two young girls there were two young women and it was to them, naturally, that Alain paid his chief attention. He was not quite sure which of the two pleased him more, nor, in fact, whether either one of them pleased him at all. Both, decided brunettes, scared him a little, but as they answered his banter, he kept teasing them somewhat as one teases a strange animal to see what would happen. What did happen was that while playing, they exchanged sidelong glances, and that each in turn brightened up whenever an extra compliment fell to her share. Alain kissed the tapering fingers of one, and the waist, where the fingers immediately withdrew to seek shelter, heaved like a big wave. He then walked up, like a traitor, to the other woman, and his lips touched the down on the nape of her neck; the neck and the entire body quivered long after.
Motionless, with a dull glance and disdainful air, Paula seemed to see nothing and saw everything. She seemed to feel nothing and suffered great pains.
“I am nothing. He did not look at me even once! I am ugly, it’s true, and badly dressed in this blue so unbecoming to me. But I am satisfied. Oh! I wish I could displease him still more!”
At that moment Alain noticed her.
“She is really the prettiest.”
He threw her a rose he had just stolen from one of the other two women.
“Thanks, Zinzoline,” said Paula, “you do not often make me presents; I shall keep this one.”
“He wanted to humiliate me,” she thought, “what shall I do to displease him still more? Stay here or go?”
She looked at the two young women:
“Stay.”
She smelled the rose:
“Go.”
“I am going up,” said Aline at that moment, “are you, Paula?”
She looked again at the two young women half concealed from her by Alain who was facing them.
“No, I stay here.”
Alain turned his head towards her. His face was smiling.
“Yes, I am going too, wait for me.”
She was thinking:
“He looked at me ironically. He thinks I want to watch him. What an idea! I scorn him!”
Aline entered the parlor. Paula went up to her room. She put some water into a small vase of blue crystal, and, before putting the rose in it, long inhaled its odor, looked attentively at it, then suddenly with a quick motion brought it to her lips.
“I am going mad. I am ashamed of my own self! What’s this flower to me? How stupid! No! no! no!”
And she crushed the rose in a violent fury, threw its shreds on the floor, and began to stamp her feet over the petals in ever-rising childish wrath. Coming to herself, she carefully swept into the fireplace the remnants of her rejected joy, when another fit overtook her in this humble plight. With the small duster in one hand, leaning with the other on the marble, comical and tragic, she burst into tears.
Paula once more found strength to counteract this. She straightened up, washed her eyes, forced herself to read three pages from The Treasure of the Humble, and went down calm and cool. Everybody was already in. As usual, she helped Aline to serve the tea. Alain, in the meantime, continued his adolescent pranks. Alain, eighteen years of age, was awkward and insolent, though quite innocently so, for he thought himself very clever as he had already conquered the hearts of two servant maids and one little flower girl in the neighboring city. He saw them swoon away by turns from pleasure and disappointment, and told them such things as occasions required. Hence, he did not think himself insolent at all but, on the contrary, well-bred and even affable.
He was rather tall and graceful, beardless and with hair closely cut. His head was of two hues superimposed above each other, rose and copper, in the rose—two big blue flowers. He was peculiar in appearance and very captivating; women desired him as they desire a sparkling, rare jewel, but being too self-conscious, he failed to notice their desire. Besides, the friends of his mother or sister seemed to him impenetrable fortresses. These two women, however, showed their weakness, and he began to believe them vulnerable.
Remaining alone with the two women, he began to tell them, rather awkwardly, the greatest impertinences in the world.
“I love you both, yes, both.”
“We don’t need to be loved,” answered the younger quickly, “we have husbands.”
“Husbands? Do they know how to love?”
“Certainly,” she answered.
“If your husbands loved you they would not have gone out hunting. They would have acted like me. They would have got a sudden pain in their foot and stayed with you.”
And he pointed to his slipper.
The young woman would not admit herself defeated. She said:
“There is a time for all things.”
But she was thinking:
“Heavens! He remained for my sake! he loves me.”
“So he loves me?” thought the other. “He loves me!”
As if divining their secret thoughts, Alain became more daring.
“Only lovers know how to love.”
“Perhaps this is true?” thought the older. “Shall I try it?”
“He is right,” thought the younger, who had some experience. “He would love me splendidly!”
They dropped their eyes to dream the better.
“Mesdames,” said Alain, “I place my heart at your feet.”
This time they both laughed.
“What a devil!”
“What a little demon!”
“Oh! I wish I could whisper something in your ears, to both at the same time.”
“Naughty boy!”
“Naughty boy!”
“Alright, one after the other. Let us draw lots.”
They began to laugh still more loudly.
“I shall say one word to each and ask one question. I expect an answer.”
“No, I don’t want to hear anything.”
“And still less, to answer.”
“But I won’t say the same thing to both, and won’t ask the same question.”
“You wouldn’t say anything that can’t be listened to?”
“You wouldn’t ask questions that can’t be answered?”
“Naturally.”
“Alright, give us the lots, naughty boy.”
“I yield my turn.”
“Your turn, dear Madame. Be kind enough to come near. Good: ‘I love you. And you?’ ‘Monster!’ Now yours: ‘I adore you. Do you love me!’ ‘Hush!’ I kept my word and you did likewise. Now let us go and have tea with a gratified conscience of duty performed.”
They walked, thinking. Alain followed them and was asking himself:
“With which shall I begin and how?”
The dawn was hardly breaking when Paula was already on her feet. She had slept very little. Before dressing, she went out of her bedroom, and straight to an adjacent room called the laundry, which contained besides the wash of the entire household, all sorts of remnants of worn-out clothes, hats, and discarded ribbons—a heritage left by several generations of women. There were multicolored silks brought into fashion by the Empress Eugenie, there was amaranthine velvet, and nacarat satins.
“Ah! Here is something I want!”
She took a box of ribbons the sad color of which seemed to answer fully the definition of zinzoline—reddish violet.
“How ugly!”
She fastened bows of zinzoline silk to her blue waist, to her white neck, to her chestnut hair.
“I look like a wild woman,” she said looking at herself in the mirror, “he will laugh at me; perhaps he is angry. If I do not quite displease him this time, what else can I do?”
She went into the garden. A blackbird was madly whistling the five notes of its monotonous plaint; the sun was casting long shadows; there was velvety dew on the leaves and the grass. She saw a morning glory open truly like a pretty eye; she ate up an apple cold as ice. Paula thought of nothing except how jolly it would be to leap like an early roe.
But what was that she suddenly noticed under the lilac bush? Alain sitting on a bench and looking at her in surprise!
The sight of this friendly enemy revived her rancor.
“What! You are not thinking about me?”
“No, dear, Paula, I was thinking of my own self.”
“Do you always get up so early?”
“Only today.”
Standing in the full light of the sun, Paula sparkled with zinzoline hues.
“Where did you find this?”
“What?”
“These dreadful ribbons.”
“Dreadful? Do you think so?”
“You put them on for my sake, perhaps?”
“Why not?”
“If you intended to displease me, you fully succeeded. But listen, I thought you were indifferent to everything, I thought nothing could touch your heart, and here I see you up at five in the morning....”
“And you?”
“I! I am, at least, in love.”
“Not I.”
“... and you disguise as a gypsy and run about in the garden to shake off your thoughts.... Sit down near me, Paula, come.... This is really zinzoline.... What an idea! But you have not been so foolish as you thought, and I am less stupid than you imagine....”
“Well?” she said with ill-disguised coolness.
“Well, I am like you, I do not know what to say. I would like to jest, but cannot.... Paula, Paula, do you know why we both got up with the sun? Tell me, do you?... Give me your hand, Paula.”
She let him take her hand, she let his arm embrace her, she allowed him to press her to his breast. The trees, flowers, heaven and earth—all became a whirling confusion. She shut her eyes, her head fell.
“Tell me, do you know?” continued Alain. “Well, we sought and found each other.”
She was a tender mistress of Alain during all his vacation and long after, every time he returned home.
One day Alain said to her:
“We ought to marry. But how shall we do it? Can a man marry at eighteen? Let us wait a little.”
“Let us not talk about it,” answered Paula, “I am yours, and you can do with me whatever you please.”
And so she reconciled her happiness with her love of suffering. She was very happy in the course of many years.