Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

took the precaution of giving Zoe an

order. “You’ll look out for him, and you’ll tell him not to make a

noise if the other man’s still with me.”

 

“But where shall I put him, madame?”

 

“Keep him in the kitchen. It’s more safe.”

 

In the room inside Muffat was already taking off his overcoat. A

big fire was burning on the hearth. It was the same room as of old,

with its rosewood furniture and its hangings and chair coverings of

figured damask with the large blue flowers on a gray background. On

two occasions Nana had thought of having it redone, the first in

black velvet, the second in white satin with bows, but directly

Steiner consented she demanded the money that these changes would

cost simply with a view to pillaging him. She had, indeed, only

indulged in a tiger skin rug for the hearth and a cut-glass hanging

lamp.

 

“I’m not sleepy; I’m not going to bed,” she said the moment they

were shut in together.

 

The count obeyed her submissively, as became a man no longer afraid

of being seen. His one care now was to avoid vexing her.

 

“As you will,” he murmured.

 

Nevertheless, he took his boots off, too, before seating himself in

front of the fire. One of Nana’s pleasures consisted in undressing

herself in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, which reflected

her whole height. She would let everything slip off her in turn and

then would stand perfectly naked and gaze and gaze in complete

oblivion of all around her. Passion for her own body, ecstasy over

her satin skin and the supple contours of her shape, would keep her

serious, attentive and absorbed in the love of herself. The

hairdresser frequently found her standing thus and would enter

without her once turning to look at him. Muffat used to grow angry

then, but he only succeeded in astonishing her. What was coming

over the man? She was doing it to please herself, not other people.

 

That particular evening she wanted to have a better view of herself,

and she lit the six candles attached to the frame of the mirror.

But while letting her shift slip down she paused. She had been

preoccupied for some moments past, and a question was on her lips.

 

“You haven’t read the Figaro article, have you? The paper’s on the

table.” Daguenet’s laugh had recurred to her recollections, and she

was harassed by a doubt. If that Fauchery had slandered her she

would be revenged.

 

“They say that it’s about me,” she continued, affecting

indifference. “What’s your notion, eh, darling?”

 

And letting go her shift and waiting till Muffat should have done

reading, she stood naked. Muffat was reading slowly Fauchery’s

article entitled “The Golden Fly,” describing the life of a harlot

descended from four or five generations of drunkards and tainted in

her blood by a cumulative inheritance of misery and drink, which in

her case has taken the form of a nervous exaggeration of the sexual

instinct. She has shot up to womanhood in the slums and on the

pavements of Paris, and tall, handsome and as superbly grown as a

dunghill plant, she avenges the beggars and outcasts of whom she is

the ultimate product. With her the rottenness that is allowed to

ferment among the populace is carried upward and rots the

aristocracy. She becomes a blind power of nature, a leaven of

destruction, and unwittingly she corrupts and disorganizes all

Paris, churning it between her snow-white thighs as milk is monthly

churned by housewives. And it was at the end of this article that

the comparison with a fly occurred, a fly of sunny hue which has

flown up out of the dung, a fly which sucks in death on the carrion

tolerated by the roadside and then buzzing, dancing and glittering

like a precious stone enters the windows of palaces and poisons the

men within by merely settling on them in her flight.

 

Muffat lifted his head; his eyes stared fixedly; he gazed at the

fire.

 

“Well?” asked Nana.

 

But he did not answer. It seemed as though he wanted to read the

article again. A cold, shivering feeling was creeping from his

scalp to his shoulders. This article had been written anyhow. The

phrases were wildly extravagant; the unexpected epigrams and quaint

collocations of words went beyond all bounds. Yet notwithstanding

this, he was struck by what he had read, for it had rudely awakened

within him much that for months past he had not cared to think

about.

 

He looked up. Nana had grown absorbed in her ecstatic self-contemplation. She was bending her neck and was looking attentively

in the mirror at a little brown mark above her right haunch. She

was touching it with the tip of her finger and by dint of bending

backward was making it stand out more clearly than ever. Situated

where it was, it doubtless struck her as both quaint and pretty.

After that she studied other parts of her body with an amused

expression and much of the vicious curiosity of a child. The sight

of herself always astonished her, and she would look as surprised

and ecstatic as a young girl who has discovered her puberty.

Slowly, slowly, she spread out her arms in order to give full value

to her figure, which suggested the torso of a plump Venus. She bent

herself this way and that and examined herself before and behind,

stooping to look at the side view of her bosom and at the sweeping

contours of her thighs. And she ended with a strange amusement

which consisted of swinging to right and left, her knees apart and

her body swaying from the waist with the perpetual jogging,

twitching movements peculiar to an oriental dancer in the danse du

ventre.

 

Muffat sat looking at her. She frightened him. The newspaper had

dropped from his hand. For a moment he saw her as she was, and he

despised himself. Yes, it was just that; she had corrupted his

life; he already felt himself tainted to his very marrow by

impurities hitherto undreamed of. Everything was now destined to

rot within him, and in the twinkling of an eye he understood what

this evil entailed. He saw the ruin brought about by this kind of

“leaven”—himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a bit of the

social fabric cracking and crumbling. And unable to take his eyes

from the sight, he sat looking fixedly at her, striving to inspire

himself with loathing for her nakedness.

 

Nana no longer moved. With an arm behind her neck, one hand clasped

in the other, and her elbows far apart, she was throwing back her

head so that he could see a foreshortened reflection of her half-closed eyes, her parted lips, her face clothed with amorous

laughter. Her masses of yellow hair were unknotted behind, and they

covered her back with the fell of a lioness.

 

Bending back thus, she displayed her solid Amazonian waist and firm

bosom, where strong muscles moved under the satin texture of the

skin. A delicate line, to which the shoulder and the thigh added

their slight undulations, ran from one of her elbows to her foot,

and Muffat’s eyes followed this tender profile and marked how the

outlines of the fair flesh vanished in golden gleams and how its

rounded contours shone like silk in the candlelight. He thought of

his old dread of Woman, of the Beast of the Scriptures, at once lewd

and wild. Nana was all covered with fine hair; a russet made her

body velvety, while the Beast was apparent in the almost equine

development of her flanks, in the fleshy exuberances and deep

hollows of her body, which lent her sex the mystery and

suggestiveness lurking in their shadows. She was, indeed, that

Golden Creature, blind as brute force, whose very odor ruined the

world. Muffat gazed and gazed as a man possessed, till at last,

when he had shut his eyes in order to escape it, the Brute

reappeared in the darkness of the brain, larger, more terrible, more

suggestive in its attitude. Now, he understood, it would remain

before his eyes, in his very flesh, forever.

 

But Nana was gathering herself together. A little thrill of

tenderness seemed to have traversed her members. Her eyes were

moist; she tried, as it were, to make herself small, as though she

could feel herself better thus. Then she threw her head and bosom

back and, melting, as it were, in one great bodily caress, she

rubbed her cheeks coaxingly, first against one shoulder, then

against the other. Her lustful mouth breathed desire over her

limbs. She put out her lips, kissed herself long in the

neighborhood of her armpit and laughed at the other Nana who also

was kissing herself in the mirror.

 

Then Muffat gave a long sigh. This solitary pleasure exasperated

him. Suddenly all his resolutions were swept away as though by a

mighty wind. In a fit of brutal passion he caught Nana to his

breast and threw her down on the carpet.

 

“Leave me alone!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!”

 

He was conscious of his undoing; he recognized in her stupidity,

vileness and falsehood, and he longed to possess her, poisoned

though she was.

 

“Oh, you’re a fool!” she said savagely when he let her get up.

 

Nevertheless, she grew calm. He would go now. She slipped on a

nightgown trimmed with lace and came and sat down on the floor in

front of the fire. It was her favorite position. When she again

questioned him about Fauchery’s article Muffat replied vaguely, for

he wanted to avoid a scene. Besides, she declared that she had

found a weak spot in Fauchery. And with that she relapsed into a

long silence and reflected on how to dismiss the count. She would

have liked to do it in an agreeable way, for she was still a good-natured wench, and it bored her to cause others pain, especially in

the present instance where the man was a cuckold. The mere thought

of his being that had ended by rousing her sympathies!

 

“So you expect your wife tomorrow morning?” she said at last.

 

Muffat had stretched himself in an armchair. He looked drowsy, and

his limbs were tired. He gave a sign of assent. Nana sat gazing

seriously at him with a dull tumult in her brain. Propped on one

leg, among her slightly rumpled laces she was holding one of her

bare feet between her hands and was turning it mechanically about

and about.

 

“Have you been married long?” she asked.

 

“Nineteen years,” replied the count

 

“Ah! And is your wife amiable? Do you get on comfortably

together?”

 

He was silent. Then with some embarrassment:

 

“You know I’ve begged you never to talk of those matters.”

 

“Dear me, why’s that?” she cried, beginning to grow vexed directly.

“I’m sure I won’t eat your wife if I DO talk about her. Dear boy,

why, every woman’s worth—”

 

But she stopped for fear of saying too much. She contented herself

by assuming a superior expression, since she considered herself

extremely kind. The poor fellow, he needed delicate handling!

Besides, she had been struck by a laughable notion, and she smiled

as she looked him carefully over.

 

“I say,” she continued, “I haven’t told you the story about you that

Fauchery’s circulating. There’s a viper, if you like! I don’t bear

him any ill will, because his article may be all right, but he’s a

regular viper all the same.”

 

And laughing more gaily than ever, she let go her foot and, crawling

along the floor, came and propped herself against the count’s knees.

 

“Now just