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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Sunday — June 2, 1918

Sunday
June 2, 1918

Voilà! Encore un! Il fait plus chaud que jamais, et je suis décidée de ne pas sortir. Je reste alors sur le balcon…. Avez-vous l'idée de venir ici? Dites-moi. Parce que, depuis votre télégramme, vaguement, chaque soir je vous attends, et quoique je peux attendre pour toujours, tout de même, c'est inquiétant de ne pas savoir vos projets.

I don't know why I am writing pidgin French: perhaps because the English in the dining-room sounds so remote from any tongue of mine. It's a cursed nuisance. Since this hotel has filled a bit, they cannot serve my repasts, except breakfast, in my room, and I have to descend to the common feeding ground. Dead serious—there's not a single person there under 65 and the oldest and most garrulous is 84! A more revolting, loathsome set of old guzzlers I can't imagine. Not only with their blown-out old bellies and clicking false teeth have they the appetites of proud, fierce lions, but oh! and oh! and oh!—I'd better not talk about them.

I sit at a table pushed up against the window, and try not to look on or to Hear. They'll make a good story one of these days, but that's grim comfort. I can smell them all up and down the passages now. But they are just as bad as the Frenchies were, in the room next to mine at Bandol. In fact, they are just exactly the same, and in the same state of pourriture.

I know what they are like. They are exactly like blowflies—but exactly, in every way. They have unsettled page 189 me so. It is so infinitely hard for me to go among them, don't you know? and of course, being the particular kind of silly that I am I cannot help but listen and look. Instead of splendidly ignoring them, I simply quiver with horror.

Late last evening I went off to the village to look for (vain quest) an orange or an apple or any kind of fruit. Neither are there any cigarettes except 2/1 for 25. Will you send me a few cigarettes or (better) ask L. M. to get another box of those Grenades?

No, I am not what you call a good girl to-day. I am sad. I have seen another horror this feed time, and I can't quite fly, after it, but have to hang on a flower and try to forget it before my wings will spread again.