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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume I

Thursday — January 24, 1918

Thursday
January 24, 1918

I must add this to to-day's letter. I have chuckled over it for hours. As I went out this afternoon I met the widow hurrying up from the town, très pandaresque, and all a-flower with smiles. Justement she had come to look for me. One demanded me at the Mairie, and the Mayor waited. I said that I had better get my passport first, and she agreed. I told her that I was already registered, but she said they were very strict now. She had no idea (mark that!) what I was wanted for, but enfin—voilà! Off I went. In that office of theirs the Mayor, his deputy, and old Drum waited for me. The Mayor wore white shoes with blue-strings and his cap back to front and a bout of cigarette in his mouth, mais il était très sérieux.

“You are, Madame, the lady to whom these papers refer?” (The papers I had filled for the hotel.)

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Bien! Will you follow me, Madame, to the Salon du Conseil?”

“Très volontiers, Monsieur.”

My spirits mounted with every step of the stairs. He is lame and had to get up them like a pigeon—you know, both feet on one step before he could reach to the next. Came a black door, heavily gilded, hugely labelled Salon Du Conseil. This was unlocked, and I had a glimpse of a chambre sich as my irreverent British eye has never twinkled on before. A black paper with gold stamping— page 110 a huge table covered with a heavy black cloth fringed with gold. A few trunks of dead men, coloured, on brackets round the wall, and one of those portraits with a striped glass over, so that if you looked at it from your side, it was La Liberté, but if you looked at it from his, it was—je ne sais pas. There were also an immense number of bundles covered in black cloth—dead Mayors, I think. We sat down on a couple of velvet chairs with gold fleurs de lys so heavily stamped on their seats that if you had any chance vous pouvez montrer à votre ami une derrière—mais vraiment chic—and he produced a perfect mass of papers.

“Connaissez-vous, Madame, un certain M. Parquerre?”

“Non, Monsieur.”

“You are not expecting a gentleman to follow you to France?”

“Non, Monsieur.”

Then, of course, “I saw it all.” It was Baker. He had heard from the British Consulate at Marseilles that a lady, had tombéd gravement malade at Bandol. Was there such a lady? Her friend M. Parquerre prayed for permission, etc. This was, I think, the first official document he had ever received from the B.C. He could not get over it—its importance—the whole affair. So I explained. We had a lot of chat. Then said he, “But do you want the lady? I can arrange it. C'est vite fait.” That is so like the Midi. And I said No without hesitating—just like that. Are you surprised? I did right, didn't I? I hope she will understand…. I left the Mayor, his deputy, and old Drum preparing the answer to this document—trying pens, stamping the rubber stamp on the backs of their hands to see if it would work, etc.

But: There was one unpleasant fly. He says le crise des chemins de fer will last—will grow worse with the spring, and at times the railway will be, as now, absolutely closed to civilian traffic. So he warned me, if I want to get home, to choose a moment well in advance. How awful it would be if I got stuck here, wouldn't it?

No, it is much better that I remain alone now. I am page 111 really (except for one local funny ‘spot’ of pain about which I wrote Dr. A. yesterday) such a well girl. I hardly cough. They go on giving me wine at night and with my café au lait a jug of milk that must be a whole goat, and two fishes in place of anybody else's one—and the weather is if possible lovelier than ever. I sat on a warm stone this morning until my neck got burnt. The two windows of my room are wide open. It is much warmer, incomparably more exquisite than I have ever known it here. The sea is so clear (and every shade, blue and green and violet) that you can see, like a map outspread beneath you, a whole new uncharted country with little lakes and forests and bays. The coast is pink like the flesh of a peach, and everybody is out fishing—you know, hanging over the end of the boat and spearing the fish…. They are mending and tarring the boats outside my window—you can hear the little hammers, and a whiff or two of tar breaks across the mimosa. La Ciotat—Marie Réjane: the boats we know.

Another month has nearly gone. Six more days and it is gone. Then comes little February (can't you see little February, waiting and pleased: ‘I can't stay very long’?) and then March—but I shall be making my preparations in March—and then….