Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

skin and fine dark eyes.

 

“You shall present me to them between the acts,” he ended by saying.

“I have already met the count, but I should like to go to them on

their Tuesdays.”

 

Energetic cries of “Hush” came from the upper galleries. The

overture had begun, but people were still coming in. Late arrivals

were obliging whole rows of spectators to rise; the doors of boxes

were banging; loud voices were heard disputing in the passages. And

there was no cessation of the sound of many conversations, a sound

similar to the loud twittering of talkative sparrows at close of

day. All was in confusion; the house was a medley of heads and arms

which moved to and fro, their owners seating themselves or trying to

make themselves comfortable or, on the other hand, excitedly

endeavoring to remain standing so as to take a final look round.

The cry of “Sit down, sit down!” came fiercely from the obscure

depths of the pit. A shiver of expectation traversed the house: at

last people were going to make the acquaintance of this famous Nana

with whom Paris had been occupying itself for a whole week!

 

Little by little, however, the buzz of talk dwindled softly down

among occasional fresh outbursts of rough speech. And amid this

swooning murmur, these perishing sighs of sound, the orchestra

struck up the small, lively notes of a waltz with a vagabond rhythm

bubbling with roguish laughter. The public were titillated; they

were already on the grin. But the gang of clappers in the foremost

rows of the pit applauded furiously. The curtain rose.

 

“By George!” exclaimed La Faloise, still talking away. “There’s a

man with Lucy.”

 

He was looking at the stage box on the second tier to his right, the

front of which Caroline and Lucy were occupying. At the back of

this box were observable the worthy countenance of Caroline’s mother

and the side face of a tall young man with a noble head of light

hair and an irreproachable getup.

 

“Do look!” La Faloise again insisted. “There’s a man there.”

 

Fauchery decided to level his opera glass at the stage box. But he

turned round again directly.

 

“Oh, it’s Labordette,” he muttered in a careless voice, as though

that gentle man’s presence ought to strike all the world as though

both natural and immaterial.

 

Behind the cousins people shouted “Silence!” They had to cease

talking. A motionless fit now seized the house, and great stretches

of heads, all erect and attentive, sloped away from stalls to

topmost gallery. The first act of the Blonde Venus took place in

Olympus, a pasteboard Olympus, with clouds in the wings and the

throne of Jupiter on the right of the stage. First of all Iris and

Ganymede, aided by a troupe of celestial attendants, sang a chorus

while they arranged the seats of the gods for the council. Once

again the prearranged applause of the clappers alone burst forth;

the public, a little out of their depth, sat waiting. Nevertheless,

La Faloise had clapped Clarisse Besnus, one of Bordenave’s little

women, who played Iris in a soft blue dress with a great scarf of

the seven colors of the rainbow looped round her waist.

 

“You know, she draws up her chemise to put that on,” he said to

Fauchery, loud enough to be heard by those around him. “We tried

the trick this morning. It was all up under her arms and round the

small of her back.”

 

But a slight rustling movement ran through the house; Rose Mignon

had just come on the stage as Diana. Now though she had neither the

face nor the figure for the part, being thin and dark and of the

adorable type of ugliness peculiar to a Parisian street child, she

nonetheless appeared charming and as though she were a satire on the

personage she represented. Her song at her entrance on the stage

was full of lines quaint enough to make you cry with laughter and of

complaints about Mars, who was getting ready to desert her for the

companionship of Venus. She sang it with a chaste reserve so full

of sprightly suggestiveness that the public warmed amain. The

husband and Steiner, sitting side by side, were laughing

complaisantly, and the whole house broke out in a roar when

Prulliere, that great favorite, appeared as a general, a masquerade

Mars, decked with an enormous plume and dragging along a sword, the

hilt of which reached to his shoulder. As for him, he had had

enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he

averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to

be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere

delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had

about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman

whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering

glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in the boxes.

 

Then the public cooled again, for the ensuing scenes were found

tiresome. Old Bosc, an imbecile Jupiter with head crushed beneath

the weight of an immense crown, only just succeeded in raising a

smile among his audience when he had a domestic altercation with

Juno on the subject of the cook’s accounts. The march past of the

gods, Neptune, Pluto, Minerva and the rest, was well-nigh spoiling

everything. People grew impatient; there was a restless, slowly

growing murmur; the audience ceased to take an interest in the

performance and looked round at the house. Lucy began laughing with

Labordette; the Count de Vandeuvres was craning his neck in

conversation behind Blanche’s sturdy shoulders, while Fauchery, out

of the corners of his eyes, took stock of the Muffats, of whom the

count appeared very serious, as though he had not understood the

allusions, and the countess smiled vaguely, her eyes lost in

reverie. But on a sudden, in this uncomfortable state of things,

the applause of the clapping contingent rattled out with the

regularity of platoon firing. People turned toward the stage. Was

it Nana at last? This Nana made one wait with a vengeance.

 

It was a deputation of mortals whom Ganymede and Iris had

introduced, respectable middle-class persons, deceived husbands, all

of them, and they came before the master of the gods to proffer a

complaint against Venus, who was assuredly inflaming their good

ladies with an excess of ardor. The chorus, in quaint, dolorous

tones, broken by silences full of pantomimic admissions, caused

great amusement. A neat phrase went the round of the house: “The

cuckolds’ chorus, the cuckolds’ chorus,” and it “caught on,” for

there was an encore. The singers’ heads were droll; their faces were

discovered to be in keeping with the phrase, especially that of a

fat man which was as round as the moon. Meanwhile Vulcan arrived in

a towering rage, demanding back his wife who had slipped away three

days ago. The chorus resumed their plaint, calling on Vulcan, the

god of the cuckolds. Vulcan’s part was played by Fontan, a comic

actor of talent, at once vulgar and original, and he had a role of

the wildest whimsicality and was got up as a village blacksmith,

fiery red wig, bare arms tattooed with arrow-pierced hearts and all

the rest of it. A woman’s voice cried in a very high key, “Oh,

isn’t he ugly?” and all the ladies laughed and applauded.

 

Then followed a scene which seemed interminable. Jupiter in the

course of it seemed never to be going to finish assembling the

Council of Gods in order to submit thereto the deceived husband’s

requests. And still no Nana! Was the management keeping Nana for

the fall of the curtain then? So long a period of expectancy had

ended by annoying the public. Their murmurings began again.

 

“It’s going badly,” said Mignon radiantly to Steiner. “She’ll get a

pretty reception; you’ll see!”

 

At that very moment the clouds at the back of the stage were cloven

apart and Venus appeared. Exceedingly tall, exceedingly strong, for

her eighteen years, Nana, in her goddess’s white tunic and with her

light hair simply flowing unfastened over her shoulders, came down

to the footlights with a quiet certainty of movement and a laugh of

greeting for the public and struck up her grand ditty:

 

“When Venus roams at eventide.”

 

From the second verse onward people looked at each other all over

the house. Was this some jest, some wager on Bordenave’s part?

Never had a more tuneless voice been heard or one managed with less

art. Her manager judged of her excellently; she certainly sang like

a squirt. Nay, more, she didn’t even know how to deport herself on

the stage: she thrust her arms in front of her while she swayed her

whole body to and fro in a manner which struck the audience as

unbecoming and disagreeable. Cries of “Oh, oh!” were already rising

in the pit and the cheap places. There was a sound of whistling,

too, when a voice in the stalls, suggestive of a molting cockerel,

cried out with great conviction:

 

“That’s very smart!”

 

All the house looked round. It was the cherub, the truant from the

boardingschool, who sat with his fine eyes very wide open and his

fair face glowing very hotly at sight of Nana. When he saw

everybody turning toward him be grew extremely red at the thought of

having thus unconsciously spoken aloud. Daguenet, his neighbor,

smilingly examined him; the public laughed, as though disarmed and

no longer anxious to hiss; while the young gentlemen in white

gloves, fascinated in their turn by Nana’s gracious contours, lolled

back in their seats and applauded.

 

“That’s it! Well done! Bravo!”

 

Nana, in the meantime, seeing the house laughing, began to laugh

herself. The gaiety of all redoubled itself. She was an amusing

creature, all the same, was that fine girl! Her laughter made a

love of a little dimple appear in her chin. She stood there

waiting, not bored in the least, familiar with her audience, falling

into step with them at once, as though she herself were admitting

with a wink that she had not two farthings’ worth of talent but that

it did not matter at all, that, in fact, she had other good points.

And then after having made a sign to the conductor which plainly

signified, “Go ahead, old boy!” she began her second verse:

 

“‘Tis Venus who at midnight passes—”

 

Still the same acidulated voice, only that now it tickled the public

in the right quarter so deftly that momentarily it caused them to

give a little shiver of pleasure. Nana still smiled her smile: it

lit up her little red mouth and shone in her great eyes, which were

of the clearest blue. When she came to certain rather lively verses

a delicate sense of enjoyment made her tilt her nose, the rosy

nostrils of which lifted and fell, while a bright flush suffused her

cheeks. She still swung herself up and down, for she only knew how

to do that. And the trick was no longer voted ugly; on the

contrary, the men raised their opera glasses. When she came to the

end of a verse her voice completely failed her, and she was well

aware that she never would get through with it. Thereupon, rather

than fret herself, she kicked up her leg, which forthwith was

roundly outlined under her diaphanous tunic, bent sharply backward,

so that her bosom was thrown upward and forward, and stretched her

arms out. Applause burst forth on all sides. In the twinkling of

an eye she had turned on her heel and was going up the stage,

presenting the nape of her neck to the spectators’ gaze, a neck