Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗
- Author: Émile Zola
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The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room. As I had
not awakened I was condemned. All clearness departed from my ideas;
everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such
utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping.
“They haven’t spared the material,” said one of the undertaker’s men
in a gruff voice. “The box is too long.”
“He’ll have all the more room,” said the other, laughing.
I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three
flights of stairs to descend. As they were seizing me by the
shoulders and feet I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion.
“You cursed little brat,” she screamed, “what do you mean by poking
your nose where you’re not wanted? Look here, I’ll teach you to spy
and pry.”
Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the
gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded,
however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother
returned she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of
the two men who were settling me in the coffin.
“She is only ten, you know. She is not a bad girl, but she is
frightfully inquisitive. I do not beat her often; only I WILL be
obeyed.”
“Oh,” said one of the men, “all kids are alike. Whenever there is a
corpse lying about they always want to see it.”
I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself
still in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped
from being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was
pretty comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature.
“Stop!” suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin. “I promised his wife to put a
pillow under his head.”
The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of
them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the
tool below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two
sharp blows of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran
through my being—I had ceased to live. The nails then entered in
rapid succession with a rhythmical cadence. It was as if some
packers had been closing a case of dried fruit with easy dexterity.
After that such sounds as reached me were deadened and strangely
prolonged, as if the deal coffin had been changed into a huge
musical box. The last words spoken in the room of the Rue Dauphine—
at least the last ones that I heard distinctly—were uttered by Mme
Gabin.
“Mind the staircase,” she said; “the banister of the second flight
isn’t safe, so be careful.”
While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to
that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea.
However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague.
I remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me
was an imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I
should be taken to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single
street of Paris, and I was ignorant of the position of the large
burial grounds (though of course I had occasionally heard their
names), and yet every effort of my mind was directed toward
ascertaining whether we were turning to the right or to the left.
Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the paving stones, the
rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot passengers, all
created a confused clamor, intensified by the acoustical properties
of the coffin.
At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt. I
was again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in
church, but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I
lost all consciousness of the road we took. A ringing of bells
informed me that we were passing another church, and then the softer
and easier progress of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a
garden or park. I was like a victim being taken to the gallows,
awaiting in stupor a deathblow that never came.
At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse. The business
proceeded rapidly. The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a
deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my
head. No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the
inhabitants of the lodginghouse, perhaps—Simoneau and others, for
instance—for faint whisperings reached my ear. Then I heard a
psalm chanted and some Latin words mumbled by a priest, and
afterward I suddenly felt myself sinking, while the ropes rubbing
against the edges of the coffin elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a
bow were being drawn across the strings of a cracked violoncello.
It was the end. On the left side of my head I felt a violent shock
like that produced by the bursting of a bomb, with another under my
feet and a third more violent still on my chest. So forcible,
indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid was cleft atwain.
I fainted from it.
THE NAIL
It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted. Eternity
is not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility. I was
no more. It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree
of consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a
nightmare started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a
nightmare compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had
haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my propensity for
dwelling upon hideous thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes.
Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere—at Guerande,
I believe—and that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed
through a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a
sudden subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our
train intact in the center. We were walled up by blocks of rock in
the heart of a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced.
No assistance could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines
and incessant labor it would take a month to clear the tunnel. We
were prisoners there with no outlet, and so our death was only a
question of time.
My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly
varied the details and touches. My actors were men, women and
children; their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever
furnishing me with new incidents. There were some provisions in the
train, but these were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if
they did not actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously
over the last piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven back
with blows and slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf
to keep three or four mouthfuls for her child. In my own
compartment a bride and bridegroom were dying, clasped in each
other’s arms in mute despair.
The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people
came and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in
search of carrion. All classes were mingled together. A
millionaire, a high functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s
shoulder. The lamps had been extinguished from the first, and the
engine fire was nearly out. To pass from one carriage to another it
was necessary to grope about, and thus, too, one slowly reached the
engine, recognizable by its enormous barrel, its cold, motionless
flanks, its useless strength, its grim silence, in the overwhelming
night. Nothing could be more appalling than this train entombed
alive with its passengers perishing one by one.
I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded
through the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity
was not even suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder.
But what affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air.
I have never felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me;
heavy moisture rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault
seemed to crush my chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing
upon me.
Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded. For some time past we
fancied that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that
men were at work and that help was coming, but it came not thus.
One of the passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the
tunnel, and, crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we
could discern a blue patch about the size of a wafer. That blue
patch filled us with rapture, for it was the sky. We stretched
ourselves and stood on tiptoes to breathe more freely. Then we
distinguished some black specks moving about, specks that must
surely be workmen about to deliver us. A furious clamor arose. The
cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from every mouth, while trembling arms
were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.
That roar of voices aroused me. Where was I? In the tunnel, of
course. I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing
against my ribs. Then I attempted to rise and struck my head
roughly. Was it the rock closing in on all sides? The blue speck
had vanished—aye, the sky had disappeared and I was still
suffocating, shivering, with chattering teeth.
All at once I remembered. Intense horror raised my hair on end. I
felt the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I had
shaken off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with
corpselike rigidity. Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the
boards of my coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and
instinctively I called out Marguerite’s name. It was a scream I
raised. In that deal box my voice took so hoarse and weird a sound
that it terrified me. Oh, my God, was this thing true? I was able
to walk, speak, cry out that I was living, and yet my voice could
not be heard; I was entombed under the earth.
I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect. Was there no
means of getting out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled
brain. The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was
mingled with the real grave in which I was lying. I stared at the
darkness with widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a
slit, a glimmer of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through
that night, with rays that broadened and then faded away. I was in
a somber abyss again. With returning lucidity I struggled against
these fatal visions. Indeed, I should need all my reason if I meant
to try to save myself.
The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation.
If I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to
suspended animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of
my existence, but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I
should die, asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I
also suffered from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the
mortal numbness of those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake
again. Still, while unceasingly realizing the necessity of
remaining calm, I felt maddening blasts sweep through my brain, and
to quiet my senses I exhorted myself
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