most seductive expression, as if responding to a man’s overtures.
“You see, you see? Now I’m the one that’s being attacked! Now, really! Because I allowed myself to say that the Sémiramis bar is not exactly a provincial branch of a convent and lacked respect when I spoke of that Queen of Babylon and other such places!”
“Sémiramis doesn’t ask for respect. What would she do with it? Respect can’t be eaten, can’t be sold, and it takes up room. But she allots to me a portion of her grumpy motherliness, which transforms her regular customers into a progeny pampered, knocked about, and submissive. Besides, her capricious humor, both grasping and spendthrift, renders her in my eyes worthy of an authentic scepter. For example, take this exchange I overheard one night. ‘What do I owe you, Sémiramis?’ asked a wretched-looking regular customer with anxious eyes and in a low voice. ‘No idea,’ Sémiramis growled. ‘I haven’t made out your bill. Do you imagine I have no one but you to think about?’ ‘But I happen to have some money on me tonight, Sémiramis.’ ‘Money, money, money! You’re not the only one who has money!’ ‘But, Sémiramis . . .’ ‘Oh, shut up, that’s enough! I can always find money when I need it, you know. That yokel down there at the farthest table, he’s just paid me a gold louis for his chicken-in-the-pot, that’s one hundred sous more than he’d pay at Paillard’s, just look at that bigmouth now, he’s getting ready to leave. His lordship didn’t want anything on my menu! His lordship had to order à la carte ! His lordship thinks this is a restaurant!’ As she spoke, she focused her brown eyes on the intimidated and fugitive back of the ‘yokel,’ and if looks could kill he’d have dropped dead. Just imagine! He thought that by paying a golden louis he could eat poulet cocotte at Sémiramis’s bar . . . Am I boring you, Valentine?”
“Not at all. On the contrary.”
“I didn’t hope for so much! This is success! Well now, I can tell you that while dining at Sémiramis’s bar I enjoy watching the girls dancing together, they waltz well. They’re not paid for this, but dance for pleasure between the cabbage soup and the beef stew. They are young models, young scapegraces of the neighborhood, girls who take bit parts at the music hall but who are out of work. Under their big umbrella hats or cloches pulled down to their eyes, their faces are hidden, I have no idea what the waltzers’ faces are like, so I can forget their no doubt dubious little fizzes, their slightly prognathous little fizzes, blue-white with powder. I see only two graceful bodies united, sculptured beneath thin dresses by the wind of the waltz, two long adolescent bodies, skinny, with narrow feet in fragile slippers that have come without a carriage through the snow and the mud . . . They waltz like the habitués of cheap dance halls, lewdly, sensuously, with that delicious inclination of a tall sail of a yacht . . . I can’t help it! I really find that prettier than any ballet . . .
“And that, dear Valentine, is when I leave the Sémiramis bar, with Sémiramis herself sometimes detaining me with a friendly hand as I reach the doorway. ‘Hush! don’t say a word,’ she whispered the other night, slipping over my finger the string of a bumpy parcel. ‘Not a word! These are apples dug out for you, some old pippins the way you like them, wrinkled like the hind end of a pauper . . .’ That makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I thought it was very nice of her. You see, she’d found out that I like old wrinkled apples with that musky smell of the cellar where I used to line them up when I was a child . . .”
[ Translated by Herma Briffault ]
“If I Had a Daughter . . .”
“In the first place, if I had a daughter . . .”
“But you don’t have a daughter!”
My friend Valentine shrugs her shoulders, vexed. I’ve broken one of the rules of her
“You see, you see? Now I’m the one that’s being attacked! Now, really! Because I allowed myself to say that the Sémiramis bar is not exactly a provincial branch of a convent and lacked respect when I spoke of that Queen of Babylon and other such places!”
“Sémiramis doesn’t ask for respect. What would she do with it? Respect can’t be eaten, can’t be sold, and it takes up room. But she allots to me a portion of her grumpy motherliness, which transforms her regular customers into a progeny pampered, knocked about, and submissive. Besides, her capricious humor, both grasping and spendthrift, renders her in my eyes worthy of an authentic scepter. For example, take this exchange I overheard one night. ‘What do I owe you, Sémiramis?’ asked a wretched-looking regular customer with anxious eyes and in a low voice. ‘No idea,’ Sémiramis growled. ‘I haven’t made out your bill. Do you imagine I have no one but you to think about?’ ‘But I happen to have some money on me tonight, Sémiramis.’ ‘Money, money, money! You’re not the only one who has money!’ ‘But, Sémiramis . . .’ ‘Oh, shut up, that’s enough! I can always find money when I need it, you know. That yokel down there at the farthest table, he’s just paid me a gold louis for his chicken-in-the-pot, that’s one hundred sous more than he’d pay at Paillard’s, just look at that bigmouth now, he’s getting ready to leave. His lordship didn’t want anything on my menu! His lordship had to order à la carte ! His lordship thinks this is a restaurant!’ As she spoke, she focused her brown eyes on the intimidated and fugitive back of the ‘yokel,’ and if looks could kill he’d have dropped dead. Just imagine! He thought that by paying a golden louis he could eat poulet cocotte at Sémiramis’s bar . . . Am I boring you, Valentine?”
“Not at all. On the contrary.”
“I didn’t hope for so much! This is success! Well now, I can tell you that while dining at Sémiramis’s bar I enjoy watching the girls dancing together, they waltz well. They’re not paid for this, but dance for pleasure between the cabbage soup and the beef stew. They are young models, young scapegraces of the neighborhood, girls who take bit parts at the music hall but who are out of work. Under their big umbrella hats or cloches pulled down to their eyes, their faces are hidden, I have no idea what the waltzers’ faces are like, so I can forget their no doubt dubious little fizzes, their slightly prognathous little fizzes, blue-white with powder. I see only two graceful bodies united, sculptured beneath thin dresses by the wind of the waltz, two long adolescent bodies, skinny, with narrow feet in fragile slippers that have come without a carriage through the snow and the mud . . . They waltz like the habitués of cheap dance halls, lewdly, sensuously, with that delicious inclination of a tall sail of a yacht . . . I can’t help it! I really find that prettier than any ballet . . .
“And that, dear Valentine, is when I leave the Sémiramis bar, with Sémiramis herself sometimes detaining me with a friendly hand as I reach the doorway. ‘Hush! don’t say a word,’ she whispered the other night, slipping over my finger the string of a bumpy parcel. ‘Not a word! These are apples dug out for you, some old pippins the way you like them, wrinkled like the hind end of a pauper . . .’ That makes you laugh, doesn’t it? I thought it was very nice of her. You see, she’d found out that I like old wrinkled apples with that musky smell of the cellar where I used to line them up when I was a child . . .”
[ Translated by Herma Briffault ]
“If I Had a Daughter . . .”
“In the first place, if I had a daughter . . .”
“But you don’t have a daughter!”
My friend Valentine shrugs her shoulders, vexed. I’ve broken one of the rules of her
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