Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

But

he got up again almost directly and, returning to the dressing

table, seemed to gaze with vacant eyes into space, for he was

thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had once faded in his

bedroom and had nearly killed him in their death. When tuberoses

are turning brown they have a human smell.

 

“Make haste!” Bordenave whispered, putting his head in behind the

curtain.

 

The prince, however, was listening complaisantly to the Marquis de

Chouard, who had taken up a hare’s-foot on the dressing table and

had begun explaining the way grease paint is put on. In a corner of

the room Satin, with her pure, virginal face, was scanning the

gentlemen keenly, while the dresser, Mme Jules by name, was getting

ready Venus’ tights and tunic. Mme Jules was a woman of no age.

She had the parchment skin and changeless features peculiar to old

maids whom no one ever knew in their younger years. She had indeed

shriveled up in the burning atmosphere of the dressing rooms and

amid the most famous thighs and bosoms in all Paris. She wore

everlastingly a faded black dress, and on her flat and sexless chest

a perfect forest of pins clustered above the spot where her heart

should have been.

 

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said Nana, drawing aside the

curtain, “but you took me by surprise.”

 

They all turned round. She had not clothed herself at all, had, in

fact, only buttoned on a little pair of linen stays which half

revealed her bosom. When the gentlemen had put her to flight she

had scarcely begun undressing and was rapidly taking off her

fishwife’s costume. Through the opening in her drawers behind a

corner of her shift was even now visible. There she stood, bare-armed, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted, in all the adorable glory of

her youth and plump, fair beauty, but she still held the curtain

with one hand, as though ready to draw it to again upon the

slightest provocation.

 

“Yes, you took me by surprise! I never shall dare—” she stammered

in pretty, mock confusion, while rosy blushes crossed her neck and

shoulders and smiles of embarrassment played about her lips.

 

“Oh, don’t apologize,” cried Bordenave, “since these gentlemen

approve of your good looks!”

 

But she still tried the hesitating, innocent, girlish game, and,

shivering as though someone were tickling her, she continued:

 

“His Highness does me too great an honor. I beg His Highness will

excuse my receiving him thus—”

 

“It is I who am importunate,” said the prince, “but, madame, I could

not resist the desire of complimenting you.”

 

Thereupon, in order to reach her dressing table, she walked very

quietly and just as she was through the midst of the gentlemen, who

made way for her to pass.

 

She had strongly marked hips, which filled her drawers out roundly,

while with swelling bosom she still continued bowing and smiling her

delicate little smile. Suddenly she seemed to recognize Count

Muffat, and she extended her hand to him as an old friend. Then she

scolded him for not having come to her supper party. His Highness

deigned to chaff Muffat about this, and the latter stammered and

thrilled again at the thought that for one second he had held in his

own feverish clasp a little fresh and perfumed hand. The count had

dined excellently at the prince’s, who, indeed, was a heroic eater

and drinker. Both of them were even a little intoxicated, but they

behaved very creditably. To hide the commotion within him Muffat

could only remark about the heat.

 

“Good heavens, how hot it is here!” he said. “How do you manage to

live in such a temperature, madame?”

 

And conversation was about to ensue on this topic when noisy voices

were heard at the dressing-room door. Bordenave drew back the slide

over a grated peephole of the kind used in convents. Fontan was

outside with Prulliere and Bosc, and all three had bottles under

their arms and their hands full of glasses. He began knocking and

shouting out that it was his patron saint’s day and that he was

standing champagne round. Nana consulted the prince with a glance.

Eh! Oh dear, yes! His Highness did not want to be in anyone’s way;

he would be only too happy! But without waiting for permission

Fontan came in, repeating in baby accents:

 

“Me not a cad, me pay for champagne!”

 

Then all of a sudden he became aware of the prince’s presence of

which he had been totally ignorant. He stopped short and, assuming

an air of farcical solemnity, announced:

 

“King Dagobert is in the corridor and is desirous of drinking the

health of His Royal Highness.”

 

The prince having made answer with a smile, Fontan’s sally was voted

charming. But the dressing room was too small to accommodate

everybody, and it became necessary to crowd up anyhow, Satin and Mme

Jules standing back against the curtain at the end and the men

clustering closely round the half-naked Nana. The three actors

still had on the costumes they had been wearing in the second act,

and while Prulliere took off his Alpine admiral’s cocked hat, the

huge plume of which would have knocked the ceiling, Bosc, in his

purple cloak and tinware crown, steadied himself on his tipsy old

legs and greeted the prince as became a monarch receiving the son of

a powerful neighbor. The glasses were filled, and the company began

clinking them together.

 

“I drink to Your Highness!” said ancient Bosc royally.

 

“To the army!” added Prulliere.

 

“To Venus!” cried Fontan.

 

The prince complaisantly poised his glass, waited quietly, bowed

thrice and murmured:

 

“Madame! Admiral! Your Majesty!”

 

Then he drank it off. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had

followed his example. There was no more jesting now—the company

were at court. Actual life was prolonged in the life of the

theater, and a sort of solemn farce was enacted under the hot flare

of the gas. Nana, quite forgetting that she was in her drawers and

that a corner of her shift stuck out behind, became the great lady,

the queen of love, in act to open her most private palace chambers

to state dignitaries. In every sentence she used the words “Royal

Highness” and, bowing with the utmost conviction, treated the

masqueraders, Bosc and Prulliere, as if the one were a sovereign and

the other his attendant minister. And no one dreamed of smiling at

this strange contrast, this real prince, this heir to a throne,

drinking a petty actor’s champagne and taking his ease amid a

carnival of gods, a masquerade of royalty, in the society of

dressers and courtesans, shabby players and showmen of venal beauty.

Bordenave was simply ravished by the dramatic aspects of the scene

and began dreaming of the receipts which would have accrued had His

Highness only consented thus to appear in the second act of the

Blonde Venus.

 

“I say, shall we have our little women down?” he cried, becoming

familiar.

 

Nana would not hear of it. But notwithstanding this, she was giving

way herself. Fontan attracted her with his comic make-up. She

brushed against him and, eying him as a woman in the family way

might do when she fancies some unpleasant kind of food, she suddenly

became extremely familiar:

 

“Now then, fill up again, ye great brute!”

 

Fontan charged the glasses afresh, and the company drank, repeating

the same toasts.

 

“To His Highness!”

 

“To the army!”

 

“To Venus!”

 

But with that Nana made a sign and obtained silence. She raised her

glass and cried:

 

“No, no! To Fontan! It’s Fontan’s day; to Fontan! To Fontan!”

 

Then they clinked glasses a third time and drank Fontan with all the

honors. The prince, who had noticed the young woman devouring the

actor with her eyes, saluted him with a “Monsieur Fontan, I drink to

your success!” This he said with his customary courtesy.

 

But meanwhile the tail of his highness’s frock coat was sweeping the

marble of the dressing table. The place, indeed, was like an alcove

or narrow bathroom, full as it was of the steam of hot water and

sponges and of the strong scent of essences which mingled with the

tartish, intoxicating fumes of the champagne. The prince and Count

Muffat, between whom Nana was wedged, had to lift up their hands so

as not to brush against her hips or her breast with every little

movement. And there stood Mme Jules, waiting, cool and rigid as

ever, while Satin, marveling in the depths of her vicious soul to

see a prince and two gentlemen in black coats going after a naked

woman in the society of dressed-up actors, secretly concluded that

fashionable people were not so very particular after all.

 

But Father Barillot’s tinkling bell approached along the passage.

At the door of the dressing room he stood amazed when he caught

sight of the three actors still clad in the costumes which they had

worn in the second act.

 

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he stammered, “do please make haste.

They’ve just rung the bell in the public foyer.”

 

“Bah, the public will have to wait!” said Bordenave placidly.

 

However, as the bottles were now empty, the comedians went upstairs

to dress after yet another interchange of civilities. Bosc, having

dipped his beard in the champagne, had taken it off, and under his

venerable disguise the drunkard had suddenly reappeared. His was

the haggard, empurpled face of the old actor who has taken to drink.

At the foot of the stairs he was heard remarking to Fontan in his

boozy voice:

 

“I pulverized him, eh?”

 

He was alluding to the prince.

 

In Nana’s dressing room none now remained save His Highness, the

count and the marquis. Bordenave had withdrawn with Barillot, whom

he advised not to knock without first letting Madame know.

 

“You will excuse me, gentlemen?” asked Nana, again setting to work

to make up her arms and face, of which she was now particularly

careful, owing to her nude appearance in the third act.

 

The prince seated himself by the Marquis de Chouard on the divan,

and Count Muffat alone remained standing. In that suffocating heat

the two glasses of champagne they had drunk had increased their

intoxication. Satin, when she saw the gentlemen thus closeting

themselves with her friend, had deemed it discreet to vanish behind

the curtain, where she sat waiting on a trunk, much annoyed at being

compelled to remain motionless, while Mme Jules came and went

quietly without word or look.

 

“You sang your numbers marvelously,” said the prince.

 

And with that they began a conversation, but their sentences were

short and their pauses frequent. Nana, indeed, was not always able

to reply. After rubbing cold cream over her arms and face with the

palm of her hand she laid on the grease paint with the corner of a

towel. For one second only she ceased looking in the glass and

smilingly stole a glance at the prince.

 

“His Highness is spoiling me,” she murmured without putting down the

grease paint.

 

Her task was a complicated one, and the Marquis de Chouard followed

it with an expression of devout enjoyment. He spoke in his turn.

 

“Could not the band accompany you more softly?” he said. “It drowns

your voice, and that’s an unpardonable crime.”

 

This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken up the hare’s-foot

and was lightly manipulating it. All her attention was concentrated

on this action, and she bent forward over her toilet table so very

far that the white round contour of her drawers and the little patch

of chemise stood out with the unwonted tension. But