Short Fiction

alone in the valley, well tied up, and without a blade of grass within range of its jaws.

Famished, it tried to reach the thick verdure that it could touch with the tip of its nostrils. It went down on its knees, stretching its neck, thrusting forward its slobbering lips. All in vain. Throughout the day, the old beast wore itself out with useless, terrible struggles. Hunger ravaged it, a hunger rendered more frightful by the sight of all that good green food stretched out on every side.

The boy did not return that day. He roamed about the woods after birds’ nests.

He reappeared the next day. Coco was lying down, exhausted. It rose at the sight of the boy, expecting that at last its position would be changed.

But the young peasant did not even touch the mallet lying in the ground. He came up, stared at the animal, flung a clod of earth at its muzzle, which splashed the white hair, and went away again, whistling.

The horse remained standing as long as it could still keep him in sight; then, feeling only too well that its attempts to reach the nearby grass would be useless, lay down once more upon its side and closed its eyes.

Next day Zidore did not come.

When, the following day, he drew near to Coco, who was still lying down, he saw that the horse was dead.

He remained standing, looking at it, pleased with his work, and at the same time surprised that it was already finished. He touched it with his foot, lifted one of its legs and then let it fall back again, sat down on the body and stayed there, his eyes fixed on the grass, without thinking of anything.

He returned to the farm, but did not mention the accident, for he wanted to go on playing truant at the times when he had been accustomed to go and change the horse’s position.

He went to see it the next day. Crows took flight at his approach. Innumerable flies were crawling about the body and buzzing all round it.

On his return he announced the event. The beast was so old that no one was surprised. The master said to two hands:

“Get your spades and dig a hole where it lies.”

The men buried the horse just at the spot where it had died of hunger.

The grass came up lush, verdant, and vigorous, nourished by the poor body.

Misti

Recollections of a Bachelor

My mistress at that time was a funny little woman. She was married, of course, for I’ve a perfect horror of unmarried women. After all, what pleasure can one have in possessing a woman who has the double disadvantage of belonging to no one and belonging to everyone? And honestly, quite apart from the moral side of the question, I can’t understand love as a profession. It rather disgusts me. It’s a weakness, I know, and I confess it.

The chiefest pleasure enjoyed by a bachelor who has a married woman for his mistress, is that she provides him with a home, a comfortable, pleasant home in which everyone looks after him and spoils him, from the husband to the servants. Every pleasure is there united, love, friendship, even paternity, the bed and the table, which constitute the final happiness of life, together with the incalculable advantage of being able to change your household from time to time, of installing yourself by turns in every different class of family, in the country, during the summer, in the home of the workman who lets you a room in his house; in the middle-class home of the provincial, during the winter, even in the homes of the aristocracy, if you are ambitious.

I have another weakness: I like my mistresses’ husbands. I admit that there are husbands, vulgar or coarse, who fill me with disgust for their wives, however charming these may be. But when the husband has wit or charm, I fall inevitably desperately in love. I am careful, if I break with the woman, not to break with the husband. In this way I have made my best friends, and in this manner I have ofttimes verified the incontestable superiority of the male over the female of the human species. The latter causes you every possible worry, makes scenes, reproaches you, and so forth; the former, who has quite as much right to complain, treats you, on the contrary, as though you were providence fallen at his fireside.

Well, my mistress was a funny little woman, dark, fantastic, capricious, religious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. Above all, she had a way of kissing which I have never found in another woman⁠ ⁠… but this is not the place.⁠ ⁠… And such a soft skin! I derived infinite pleasure merely from holding her hand! And her eyes. Her gaze passed over you like a slow caress, delicious and endless. Often I laid my head on her knees, and we remained motionless, she bending over me with that faint, enigmatic, disturbing little smile that women have, I lifting my eyes towards her, receiving like wine poured gently and deliciously into my heart, the shining gaze of her blue eyes, bright as though filled with thoughts of love, blue like a heaven of delights.

Her husband, a civil servant, was often away, leaving our evenings free. Often I spent them at her house, lying on the divan, my forehead pressed against one of her legs, while upon the other slept a huge black cat named “Misti,” which she adored. Our fingers met on the animal’s muscular back, and caressed one another amid its silky hair. I felt against my cheek its warm flank, throbbing with a perpetual purr-purr. Sometimes it would stretch out a paw to my mouth, or set five unsheathed claws upon my eyelids, whose points pricked my eyes and made me close them in a flash.

Sometimes we went out to enjoy what we called our escapades. As a matter of fact they were very innocent.