Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

bad to make me play that fellow Saint-Firmin; why,

it’s a regular failure! And then what a style it’s written in, my

dears! It’ll fall dead flat, you may be sure.”

 

But just then Simonne, who had been chatting with Father Barillot,

came back breathless and announced:

 

“By the by, talking of Nana, she’s in the house.”

 

“Where, where?” asked Clarisse briskly, getting up to look for her.

 

The news spread at once, and everyone craned forward. The rehearsal

was, as it were, momentarily interrupted. But Bordenave emerged

from his quiescent condition, shouting:

 

“What’s up, eh? Finish the act, I say. And be quiet out there;

it’s unbearable!”

 

Nana was still following the piece from the corner box. Twice

Labordette showed an inclination to chat, but she grew impatient and

nudged him to make him keep silent. The second act was drawing to a

close, when two shadows loomed at the back of the theater. They

were creeping softly down, avoiding all noise, and Nana recognized

Mignon and Count Muffat. They came forward and silently shook hands

with Bordenave.

 

“Ah, there they are,” she murmured with a sigh of relief.

 

Rose Mignon delivered the last sentences of the act. Thereupon

Bordenave said that it was necessary to go through the second again

before beginning the third. With that he left off attending to the

rehearsal and greeted the count with looks of exaggerated

politeness, while Fauchery pretended to be entirely engrossed with

his actors, who now grouped themselves round him. Mignon stood

whistling carelessly, with his hands behind his back and his eyes

fixed complacently on his wife, who seemed rather nervous.

 

“Well, shall we go upstairs?” Labordette asked Nana. “I’ll install

you in the dressing room and come down again and fetch him.”

 

Nana forthwith left the corner box. She had to grope her way along

the passage outside the stalls, but Bordenave guessed where she was

as she passed along in the dark and caught her up at the end of the

corridor passing behind the scenes, a narrow tunnel where the gas

burned day and night. Here, in order to bluff her into a bargain,

he plunged into a discussion of the courtesan’s part.

 

“What a part it is, eh? What a wicked little part! It’s made for

you. Come and rehearse tomorrow.”

 

Nana was frigid. She wanted to know what the third act was like.

 

“Oh, it’s superb, the third act is! The duchess plays the courtesan

in her own house and this disgusts Beaurivage and makes him amend

his way. Then there’s an awfully funny QUID PRO QUO, when Tardiveau

arrives and is under the impression that he’s at an opera dancer’s

house.”

 

“And what does Geraldine do in it all?” interrupted Nana.

 

“Geraldine?” repeated Bordenave in some embarrassment. “She has a

scene—not a very long one, but a great success. It’s made for you,

I assure you! Will you sign?”

 

She looked steadily at him and at length made answer:

 

“We’ll see about that all in good time.”

 

And she rejoined Labordette, who was waiting for her on the stairs.

Everybody in the theater had recognized her, and there was now much

whispering, especially between Prulliere, who was scandalized at her

return, and Clarisse who was very desirous of the part. As to

Fontan, he looked coldly on, pretending unconcern, for he did not

think it becoming to round on a woman he had loved. Deep down in

his heart, though, his old love had turned to hate, and he nursed

the fiercest rancor against her in return for the constant devotion,

the personal beauty, the life in common, of which his perverse and

monstrous tastes had made him tire.

 

In the meantime, when Labordette reappeared and went up to the

count, Rose Mignon, whose suspicions Nana’s presence had excited,

understood it all forthwith. Muffat was bothering her to death, but

she was beside herself at the thought of being left like this. She

broke the silence which she usually maintained on such subjects in

her husband’s society and said bluntly:

 

“You see what’s going on? My word, if she tries the Steiner trick

on again I’ll tear her eyes out!”

 

Tranquilly and haughtily Mignon shrugged his shoulders, as became a

man from whom nothing could be hidden.

 

“Do be quiet,” he muttered. “Do me the favor of being quiet, won’t

you?”

 

He knew what to rely on now. He had drained his Muffat dry, and he

knew that at a sign from Nana he was ready to lie down and be a

carpet under her feet. There is no fighting against passions such

as that. Accordingly, as he knew what men were, he thought of

nothing but how to turn the situation to the best possible account.

 

It would be necessary to wait on the course of events. And he

waited on them.

 

“Rose, it’s your turn!” shouted Bordenave. “The second act’s being

begun again.”

 

“Off with you then,” continued Mignon, “and let me arrange matters.”

 

Then he began bantering, despite all his troubles, and was pleased

to congratulate Fauchery on his piece. A very strong piece! Only

why was his great lady so chaste? It wasn’t natural! With that he

sneered and asked who had sat for the portrait of the Duke of

Beaurivage, Geraldine’s wornout roue. Fauchery smiled; he was far

from annoyed. But Bordenave glanced in Muffat’s direction and

looked vexed, and Mignon was struck at this and became serious

again.

 

“Let’s begin, for God’s sake!” yelled the manager. “Now then,

Barillot! Eh? What? Isn’t Bosc there? Is he bloody well making

game of me now?”

 

Bosc, however, made his appearance quietly enough, and the rehearsal

began again just as Labordette was taking the count away with him.

The latter was tremulous at the thought of seeing Nana once more.

After the rupture had taken place between them there had been a

great void in his life. He was idle and fancied himself about to

suffer through the sudden change his habits had undergone, and

accordingly he had let them take him to see Rose. Besides, his

brain had been in such a whirl that he had striven to forget

everything and had strenuously kept from seeking out Nana while

avoiding an explanation with the countess. He thought, indeed, that

he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness. But mysterious

forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to reconquer him.

First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and finally a new

set of exclusive, tender, well-nigh paternal feelings.

 

The abominable events attendant on their last interview were

gradually effacing themselves. He no longer saw Fontan; he no

longer heard the stinging taunt about his wife’s adultery with which

Nana cast him out of doors. These things were as words whose memory

vanished. Yet deep down in his heart there was a poignant smart

which wrung him with such increasing pain that it nigh choked him.

Childish ideas would occur to him; he imagined that she would never

have betrayed him if he had really loved her, and he blamed himself

for this. His anguish was becoming unbearable; he was really very

wretched. His was the pain of an old wound rather than the blind,

present desire which puts up with everything for the sake of

immediate possession. He felt a jealous passion for the woman and

was haunted by longings for her and her alone, her hair, her mouth,

her body. When he remembered the sound of her voice a shiver ran

through him; he longed for her as a miser might have done, with

refinements of desire beggaring description. He was, in fact, so

dolorously possessed by his passion that when Labordette had begun

to broach the subject of an assignation he had thrown himself into

his arms in obedience to irresistible impulse. Directly afterward

he had, of course, been ashamed of an act of self-abandonment which

could not but seem very ridicubus in a man of his position; but

Labordette was one who knew when to see and when not to see things,

and he gave a further proof of his tact when he left the count at

the foot of the stairs and without effort let slip only these simple

words:

 

“The right-hand passage on the second floor. The door’s not shut.”

 

Muffat was alone in that silent corner of the house. As he passed

before the players’ waiting room, he had peeped through the open

doors and noticed the utter dilapidation of the vast chamber, which

looked shamefully stained and worn in broad daylight. But what

surprised him most as he emerged from the darkness and confusion of

the stage was the pure, clear light and deep quiet at present

pervading the lofty staircase, which one evening when he had seen it

before had been bathed in gas fumes and loud with the footsteps of

women scampering over the different floors. He felt that the

dressing rooms were empty, the corridors deserted; not a soul was

there; not a sound broke the stillness, while through the square

windows on the level of the stairs the pale November sunlight

filtered and cast yellow patches of light, full of dancing dust,

amid the dead, peaceful air which seemed to descend from the regions

above.

 

He was glad of this calm and the silence, and he went slowly up,

trying to regain breath as he went, for his heart was thumping, and

he was afraid lest he might behave childishly and give way to sighs

and tears. Accordingly on the first-floor landing he leaned up

against a wall—for he was sure of not being observed—and pressed

his handkerchief to his mouth and gazed at the warped steps, the

iron balustrade bright with the friction of many hands, the scraped

paint on the walls—all the squalor, in fact, which that house of

tolerance so crudely displayed at the pale afternoon hour when

courtesans are asleep. When he reached the second floor he had to

step over a big yellow cat which was lying curled up on a step.

With half-closed eyes this cat was keeping solitary watch over the

house, where the close and now frozen odors which the women nightly

left behind them had rendered him somnolent.

 

In the right-hand corridor the door of the dressing room had,

indeed, not been closed entirely. Nana was waiting. That little

Mathilde, a drab of a young girl, kept her dressing room in a filthy

state. Chipped jugs stood about anyhow; the dressing table was

greasy, and there was a chair covered with red stains, which looked

as if someone had bled over the straw. The paper pasted on walls

and ceiling was splashed from top to bottom with spots of soapy

water and this smelled so disagreeably of lavender scent turned sour

that Nana opened the window and for some moments stayed leaning on

the sill, breathing the fresh air and craning forward to catch sight

of Mme Bron underneath. She could hear her broom wildly at work on

the mildewed pantiles of the narrow court which was buried in

shadow. A canary, whose cage hung on a shutter, was trilling away

piercingly. The sound of carriages in the boulevard and neighboring

streets was no longer audible, and the quiet and the wide expanse of

sleeping sunlight suggested the country. Looking farther afield,

her eye fell on the small buildings and glass roofs of the galleries

in the passage and, beyond these, on the tall houses in the Rue

Vivienne, the backs of which rose silent and apparently deserted

over against her. There was a succession of terrace roofs close by,

and on one of these a photographer had perched a big cagelike

construction of blue glass. It was all very gay, and