Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

playing a part with a view to regaining

possession of the treasury key. The light had been extinguished

when he felt it necessary to reaffirm his will and pleasure.

 

“You must know, my girl, that this is really very serious and that I

keep the money.”

 

Nana, who was falling asleep with her arms round his neck, uttered a

sublime sentiment.

 

“Yes, you need fear nothing! I’ll work for both of us!”

 

But from that evening onward their life in common became more and

more difficult. From one week’s end to the other the noise of slaps

filled the air and resembled the ticking of a clock by which they

regulated their existence. Through dint of being much beaten Nana

became as pliable as fine linen; her skin grew delicate and pink and

white and so soft to the touch and clear to the view that she may be

said to have grown more good looking than ever. Prulliere,

moreover, began running after her like a madman, coming in when

Fontan was away and pushing her into corners in order to snatch an

embrace. But she used to struggle out of his grasp, full of

indignation and blushing with shame. It disgusted her to think of

him wanting to deceive a friend. Prulliere would thereupon begin

sneering with a wrathful expression. Why, she was growing jolly

stupid nowadays! How could she take up with such an ape? For,

indeed, Fontan was a regular ape with that great swingeing nose of

his. Oh, he had an ugly mug! Besides, the man knocked her about

too!

 

“It’s possible I like him as he is,” she one day made answer in the

quiet voice peculiar to a woman who confesses to an abominable

taste.

 

Bosc contented himself by dining with them as often as possible. He

shrugged his shoulders behind Prulliere’s back—a pretty fellow, to

be sure, but a frivolous! Bosc had on more than one occasion

assisted at domestic scenes, and at dessert, when Fontan slapped

Nana, he went on chewing solemnly, for the thing struck him as being

quite in the course of nature. In order to give some return for his

dinner he used always to go into ecstasies over their happiness. He

declared himself a philosopher who had given up everything, glory

included. At times Prulliere and Fontan lolled back in their

chairs, losing count of time in front of the empty table, while with

theatrical gestures and intonation they discussed their former

successes till two in the morning. But he would sit by, lost in

thought, finishing the brandy bottle in silence and only

occasionally emitting a little contemptuous sniff. Where was

Talma’s tradition? Nowhere. Very well, let them leave him jolly

well alone! It was too stupid to go on as they were doing!

 

One evening he found Nana in tears. She took off her dressing

jacket in order to show him her back and her arms, which were black

and blue. He looked at her skin without being tempted to abuse the

opportunity, as that ass of a Prulliere would have been. Then,

sententiously:

 

“My dear girl, where there are women there are sure to be ructions.

It was Napoleon who said that, I think. Wash yourself with salt

water. Salt water’s the very thing for those little knocks. Tut,

tut, you’ll get others as bad, but don’t complain so long as no

bones are broken. I’m inviting myself to dinner, you know; I’ve

spotted a leg of mutton.”

 

But Mme Lerat had less philosophy. Every time Nana showed her a

fresh bruise on the white skin she screamed aloud. They were

killing her niece; things couldn’t go on as they were doing. As a

matter of fact, Fontan had turned Mme Lerat out of doors and had

declared that he would not have her at his house in the future, and

ever since that day, when he returned home and she happened to be

there, she had to make off through the kitchen, which was a horrible

humiliation to her. Accordingly she never ceased inveighing against

that brutal individual. She especially blamed his ill breeding,

pursing up her lips, as she did so, like a highly respectable lady

whom nobody could possibly remonstrate with on the subject of good

manners.

 

“Oh, you notice it at once,” she used to tell Nana; “he hasn’t the

barest notion of the very smallest proprieties. His mother must

have been common! Don’t deny it—the thing’s obvious! I don’t

speak on my own account, though a person of my years has a right to

respectful treatment, but YOU—how do YOU manage to put up with his

bad manners? For though I don’t want to flatter myself, I’ve always

taught you how to behave, and among our own people you always

enjoyed the best possible advice. We were all very well bred in our

family, weren’t we now?”

 

Nana used never to protest but would listen with bowed head.

 

“Then, too,” continued the aunt, “you’ve only known perfect

gentlemen hitherto. We were talking of that very topic with Zoe at

my place yesterday evening. She can’t understand it any more than I

can. ‘How is it,’ she said, ‘that Madame, who used to have that

perfect gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, at her beck and call’—for

between you and me, it seems you drove him silly—‘how is it that

Madame lets herself be made into mincemeat by that clown of a

fellow?’ I remarked at the time that you might put up with the

beatings but that I would never have allowed him to be lacking in

proper respect. In fact, there isn’t a word to be said for him. I

wouldn’t have his portrait in my room even! And you ruin yourself

for such a bird as that; yes, you ruin yourself, my darling; you

toil and you moil, when there are so many others and such rich men,

too, some of them even connected with the government! Ah well, it’s

not I who ought to be telling you this, of course! But all the

same, when next he tries any of his dirty tricks on I should cut him

short with a ‘Monsieur, what d’you take me for?’ You know how to

say it in that grand way of yours! It would downright cripple him.”

 

Thereupon Nana burst into sobs and stammered out:

 

“Oh, Aunt, I love him!”

 

The fact of the matter was that Mme Lerat was beginning to feel

anxious at the painful way her niece doled out the sparse,

occasional francs destined to pay for little Louis’s board and

lodging. Doubtless she was willing to make sacrifices and to keep

the child by her whatever might happen while waiting for more

prosperous times, but the thought that Fontan was preventing her and

the brat and its mother from swimming in a sea of gold made her so

savage that she was ready to deny the very existence of true love.

Accordingly she ended up with the following severe remarks:

 

“Now listen, some fine day when he’s taken the skin off your back,

you’ll come and knock at my door, and I’ll open it to you.”

 

Soon money began to engross Nana’s whole attention. Fontan had

caused the seven thousand francs to vanish away. Without doubt they

were quite safe; indeed, she would never have dared ask him

questions about them, for she was wont to be blushingly diffident

with that bird, as Mme Lerat called him. She trembled lest he

should think her capable of quarreling with him about halfpence. He

had certainly promised to subscribe toward their common household

expenses, and in the early days he had given out three francs every

morning. But he was as exacting as a boarder; he wanted everything

for his three francs—butter, meat, early fruit and early

vegetables—and if she ventured to make an observation, if she

hinted that you could not have everything in the market for three

francs, he flew into a temper and treated her as a useless, wasteful

woman, a confounded donkey whom the tradespeople were robbing.

Moreover, he was always ready to threaten that he would take

lodgings somewhere else. At the end of a month on certain mornings

he had forgotten to deposit the three francs on the chest of

drawers, and she had ventured to ask for them in a timid, roundabout

way. Whereupon there had been such bitter disputes and he had

seized every pretext to render her life so miserable that she had

found it best no longer to count upon him. Whenever, however, he

had omitted to leave behind the three one-franc pieces and found a

dinner awaiting him all the same, he grew as merry as a sandboy,

kissed Nana gallantly and waltzed with the chairs. And she was so

charmed by this conduct that she at length got to hope that nothing

would be found on the chest of drawers, despite the difficulty she

experienced in making both ends meet. One day she even returned him

his three francs, telling him a tale to the effect that she still

had yesterday’s money. As he had given her nothing then, he

hesitated for some moments, as though he dreaded a lecture. But she

gazed at him with her loving eyes and hugged him in such utter self-surrender that he pocketed the money again with that little

convulsive twitch or the fingers peculiar to a miser when he regains

possession of that which has been well-nigh lost. From that day

forth he never troubled himself about money again or inquired whence

it came. But when there were potatoes on the table he looked

intoxicated with delight and would laugh and smack his lips before

her turkeys and legs of mutton, though of course this did not

prevent his dealing Nana sundry sharp smacks, as though to keep his

hand in amid all his happiness.

 

Nana had indeed found means to provide for all needs, and the place

on certain days overflowed with good things. Twice a week,

regularly, Bosc had indigestion. One evening as Mme Lerat was

withdrawing from the scene in high dudgeon because she had noticed a

copious dinner she was not destined to eat in process of

preparation, she could not prevent herself asking brutally who paid

for it all. Nana was taken by surprise; she grew foolish and began

crying.

 

“Ah, that’s a pretty business,” said the aunt, who had divined her

meaning.

 

Nana had resigned herself to it for the sake of enjoying peace in

her own home. Then, too, the Tricon was to blame. She had come

across her in the Rue de Laval one fine day when Fontan had gone out

raging about a dish of cod. She had accordingly consented to the

proposals made her by the Tricon, who happened just then to be in

difficulty. As Fontan never came in before six o’clock, she made

arrangements for her afternoons and used to bring back forty francs,

sixty francs, sometimes more. She might have made it a matter of

ten and fifteen louis had she been able to maintain her former

position, but as matters stood she was very glad thus to earn enough

to keep the pot boiling. At night she used to forget all her

sorrows when Bosc sat there bursting with dinner and Fontan leaned

on his elbows and with an expression of lofty superiority becoming a

man who is loved for his own sake allowed her to kiss him on the

eyelids.

 

In due course Nana’s very adoration of her darling, her dear old

duck, which was all the more passionately blind, seeing that now she

paid for everything, plunged her back into the muddiest depths of

her calling. She roamed the streets and loitered on the pavement in

quest of a five-franc piece, just as when