Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

was not going to be spoken to in that voice; she was

accustomed to being treated with respect! As he did not vouchsafe

any further answer, she was silenced, but she could not go to sleep

and lay tossing to and fro.

 

“Great God, have you done moving about?” cried he suddenly, giving a

brisk jump upward.

 

“It isn’t my fault if there are crumbs in the bed,” she said curtly.

 

In fact, there were crumbs in the bed. She felt them down to her

middle; she was everywhere devoured by them. One single crumb was

scorching her and making her scratch herself till she bled.

Besides, when one eats a cake isn’t it usual to shake out the

bedclothes afterward? Fontan, white with rage, had relit the

candle, and they both got up and, barefooted and in their night

dresses, they turned down the clothes and swept up the crumbs on the

sheet with their hands. Fontan went to bed again, shivering, and

told her to go to the devil when she advised him to wipe the soles

of his feet carefully. And in the end she came back to her old

position, but scarce had she stretched herself out than she danced

again. There were fresh crumbs in the bed!

 

“By Jove, it was sure to happen!” she cried. “You’ve brought them

back again under your feet. I can’t go on like this! No, I tell

you, I can’t go on like this!”

 

And with that she was on the point of stepping over him in order to

jump out of bed again, when Fontan in his longing for sleep grew

desperate and dealt her a ringing box on the ear. The blow was so

smart that Nana suddenly found herself lying down again with her

head on the pillow.

 

She lay half stunned.

 

“Oh!” she ejaculated simply, sighing a child’s big sigh.

 

For a second or two he threatened her with a second slap, asking her

at the same time if she meant to move again. Then he put out the

light, settled himself squarely on his back and in a trice was

snoring. But she buried her face in the pillow and began sobbing

quietly to herself. It was cowardly of him to take advantage of his

superior strength! She had experienced very real terror all the

same, so terrible had that quaint mask of Fontan’s become. And her

anger began dwindling down as though the blow had calmed her. She

began to feel respect toward him and accordingly squeezed herself

against the wall in order to leave him as much room as possible.

She even ended by going to sleep, her cheek tingling, her eyes full

of tears and feeling so deliciously depressed and wearied and

submissive that she no longer noticed the crumbs. When she woke up

in the morning she was holding Fontain in her naked arms and

pressing him tightly against her breast. He would never begin it

again, eh? Never again? She loved him too dearly. Why, it was

even nice to be beaten if he struck the blow!

 

After that night a new life began. For a mere trifle—a yes, a no—

Fontan would deal her a blow. She grew accustomed to it and

pocketed everything. Sometimes she shed tears and threatened him,

but he would pin her up against the wall and talk of strangling her,

which had the effect of rendering her extremely obedient. As often

as not, she sank down on a chair and sobbed for five minutes on end.

But afterward she would forget all about it, grow very merry, fill

the little lodgings with the sound of song and laughter and the

rapid rustle of skirts. The worst of it was that Fontan was now in

the habit of disappearing for the whole day and never returning home

before midnight, for he was going to cafes and meeting his old

friends again. Nana bore with everything. She was tremulous and

caressing, her only fear being that she might never see him again if

she reproached him. But on certain days, when she had neither Mme

Maloir nor her aunt and Louiset with her, she grew mortally dull.

Thus one Sunday, when she was bargaining for some pigeons at La

Rochefoucauld Market, she was delighted to meet Satin, who, in her

turn, was busy purchasing a bunch of radishes. Since the evening

when the prince had drunk Fontan’s champagne they had lost sight of

one another.

 

“What? It’s you! D’you live in our parts?” said Satin, astounded

at seeing her in the street at that hour of the morning and in

slippers too. “Oh, my poor, dear girl, you’re really ruined then!”

 

Nana knitted her brows as a sign that she was to hold her tongue,

for they were surrounded by other women who wore dressing gowns and

were without linen, while their disheveled tresses were white with

fluff. In the morning, when the man picked up overnight had been

newly dismissed, all the courtesans of the quarter were wont to come

marketing here, their eyes heavy with sleep, their feet in old down-at-heel shoes and themselves full of the weariness and ill humor

entailed by a night of boredom. From the four converging streets

they came down into the market, looking still rather young in some

cases and very pale and charming in their utter unconstraint; in

others, hideous and old with bloated faces and peeling skin. The

latter did not the least mind being seen thus outside working hours,

and not one of them deigned to smile when the passers-by on the

sidewalk turned round to look at them. Indeed, they were all very

full of business and wore a disdainful expression, as became good

housewives for whom men had ceased to exist. Just as Satin, for

instance, was paying for her bunch of radishes a young man, who

might have been a shop-boy going late to his work, threw her a

passing greeting:

 

“Good morning, duckie.”

 

She straightened herself up at once and with the dignified manner

becoming an offended queen remarked:

 

“What’s up with that swine there?”

 

Then she fancied she recognized him. Three days ago toward

midnight, as the was coming back alone from the boulevards, she had

talked to him at the corner of the Rue Labruyere for nearly half an

hour, with a view to persuading him to come home with her. But this

recollection only angered her the more.

 

“Fancy they’re brutes enough to shout things to you in broad

daylight!” she continued. “When one’s out on business one ought to

be respecifully treated, eh?”

 

Nana had ended by buying her pigeons, although she certainly had her

doubts of their freshness. After which Satin wanted to show her

where she lived in the Rue Rochefoucauld close by. And the moment

they were alone Nana told her of her passion for Fontan. Arrived in

front of the house, the girl stopped with her bundle of radishes

under her arm and listened eagerly to a final detail which the other

imparted to her. Nana fibbed away and vowed that it was she who had

turned Count Muffat out of doors with a perfect hail of kicks on the

posterior.

 

“Oh how smart!” Satin repeated. “How very smart! Kicks, eh? And

he never said a word, did he? What a blooming coward! I wish I’d

been there to see his ugly mug! My dear girl, you were quite right.

A pin for the coin! When I’M on with a mash I starve for it!

You’ll come and see me, eh? You promise? It’s the left-hand door.

Knock three knocks, for there’s a whole heap of damned squints

about.”

 

After that whenever Nana grew too weary of life she went down and

saw Satin. She was always sure of finding her, for the girl never

went out before six in the evening. Satin occupied a couple of

rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to save her

from the clutches of the police, but in little more than a

twelvemonth she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs,

dirtied the curtains, and that in a manner so furiously filthy and

untidy that the lodgings seemed as though inhabited by a pack of mad

cats. On the mornings when she grew disgusted with herself and

thought about cleaning up a bit, chair rails and strips of curtain

would come off in her hands during her struggle with superincumbent

dirt. On such days the place was fouler than ever, and it was

impossible to enter it, owing to the things which had fallen down

across the doorway. At length she ended by leaving her house

severely alone. When the lamp was lit the cupboard with plate-glass

doors, the clock and what remained of the curtains still served to

impose on the men. Besides, for six months past her landlord had

been threatening to evict her. Well then, for whom should she be

keeping the furniture nice? For him more than anyone else, perhaps!

And so whenever she got up in a merry mood she would shout “Gee up!”

and give the sides of the cupboard and the chest of drawers such a

tremendous kick that they cracked again.

 

Nana nearly always found her in bed. Even on the days when Satin

went out to do her marketing she felt so tired on her return

upstairs that she flung herself down on the bed and went to sleep

again. During the day she dragged herself about and dozed off on

chairs. Indeed, she did not emerge from this languid condition till

the evening drew on and the gas was lit outside. Nana felt very

comfortable at Satin’s, sitting doing nothing on the untidy bed,

while basins stood about on the floor at her feet and petticoats

which had been bemired last night hung over the backs of armchairs

and stained them with mud. They had long gossips together and were

endlessly confidential, while Satin lay on her stomach in her

nightgown, waving her legs above her head and smoking cigarettes as

she listened. Sometimes on such afternoons as they had troubles to

retail they treated themselves to absinthe in order, as they termed

it, “to forget.” Satin did not go downstairs or put on a petticoat

but simply went and leaned over the banisters and shouted her order

to the portress’s little girl, a chit of ten, who when she brought

up the absinthe in a glass would look furtively at the lady’s bare

legs. Every conversation led up to one subject—the beastliness of

the men. Nana was overpowering on the subject of Fontan. She could

not say a dozen words without lapsing into endless repetitions of

his sayings and his doings. But Satin, like a good-natured girl,

would listen unwearyingly to everlasting accounts of how Nana had

watched for him at the window, how they had fallen out over a burnt

dish of hash and how they had made it up in bed after hours of

silent sulking. In her desire to be always talking about these

things Nana had got to tell of every slap that he dealt her. Last

week he had given her a swollen eye; nay, the night before he had

given her such a box on the ear as to throw her across the night

table, and all because he could not find his slippers. And the

other woman did not evince any astonishment but blew out cigarette

smoke and only paused a moment to remark that, for her part, she

always ducked under, which sent the gentleman pretty nearly

sprawling. Both of them settled down with a will to these anecdotes

about blows; they grew supremely happy and excited over these same

idiotic doings about which they told one another a hundred times or