Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

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Maybe Nana was still crying. The other must have grown savage and

have dealt her blows. Thus when Zoe finally took her departure he

ran to the door and once more pressed his ear against it. He was

thunderstruck; his head swam, for he heard a brisk outburst of

gaiety, tender, whispering voices and the smothered giggles of a

woman who is being tickled. Besides, almost directly afterward,

Nana conducted Philippe to the head of the stairs, and there was an

exchange of cordial and familiar phrases.

 

When Georges again ventured into the drawing room the young woman

was standing before the mirror, looking at herself.

 

“Well?” he asked in utter bewilderment.

 

“Well, what?” she said without turning round. Then negligently:

 

“What did you mean? He’s very nice, is your brother!”

 

“So it’s all right, is it?”

 

“Oh, certainly it’s all right! Goodness me, what’s come over you?

One would have thought we were going to fight!”

 

Georges still failed to understand.

 

“I thought I heard—that is, you didn’t cry?” he stammered out.

 

“Me cry!” she exclaimed, looking fixedly at him. “Why, you’re

dreaming! What makes you think I cried?”

 

Thereupon the lad was treated to a distressing scene for having

disobeyed and played Paul Pry behind the door. She sulked, and he

returned with coaxing submissiveness to the old subject, for he

wished to know all about it.

 

“And my brother then?”

 

“Your brother saw where he was at once. You know, I might have been

a tottie, in which case his interference would have been accounted

for by your age and the family honor! Oh yes, I understand those

kinds of feelings! But a single glance was enough for him, and he

behaved like a well-bred man at once. So don’t be anxious any

longer. It’s all over—he’s gone to quiet your mamma!”

 

And she went on laughingly:

 

“For that matter, you’ll see your brother here. I’ve invited him,

and he’s going to return.”

 

“Oh, he’s going to return,” said the lad, growing white. He added

nothing, and they ceased talking of Philippe. She began dressing to

go out, and he watched her with his great, sad eyes. Doubtless he

was very glad that matters had got settled, for he would have

preferred death to a rupture of their connection, but deep down in

his heart there was a silent anguish, a profound sense of pain,

which he had no experience of and dared not talk about. How

Philippe quieted their mother’s fears he never knew, but three days

later she returned to Les Fondettes, apparently satisfied. On the

evening of her return, at Nana’s house, he trembled when Francois

announced the lieutenant, but the latter jested gaily and treated

him like a young rascal, whose escapade he had favored as something

not likely to have any consequences. The lad’s heart was sore

within him; he scarcely dared move and blushed girlishly at the

least word that was spoken to him. He had not lived much in

Philippe’s society; he was ten years his junior, and he feared him

as he would a father, from whom stories about women are concealed.

Accordingly he experienced an uneasy sense of shame when he saw him

so free in Nana’s company and heard him laugh uproariously, as

became a man who was plunging into a life of pleasure with the gusto

born of magnificent health. Nevertheless, when his brother shortly

began to present himself every day, Georges ended by getting

somewhat used to it all. Nana was radiant.

 

This, her latest installation, had been involving all the riotous

waste attendant on the life of gallantry, and now her housewarming

was being defiantly celebrated in a grand mansion positively

overflowing with males and with furniture.

 

One afternoon when the Hugons were there Count Muffat arrived out of

hours. But when Zoe told him that Madame was with friends he

refused to come in and took his departure discreetly, as became a

gallant gentleman. When he made his appearance again in the evening

Nana received him with the frigid indignation of a grossly affronted

woman.

 

“Sir,” she said, “I have given you no cause why you should insult

me. You must understand this: when I am at home to visitors, I beg

you to make your appearance just like other people.”

 

The count simply gaped in astonishment. “But, my dear—” he

endeavored to explain.

 

“Perhaps it was because I had visitors! Yes, there were men here,

but what d’you suppose I was doing with those men? You only

advertise a woman’s affairs when you act the discreet lover, and I

don’t want to be advertised; I don’t!”

 

He obtained his pardon with difficulty, but at bottom he was

enchanted. It was with scenes such as these that she kept him in

unquestioning and docile submission. She had long since succeeded

in imposing Georges on him as a young vagabond who, she declared,

amused her. She made him dine with Philippe, and the count behaved

with great amiability. When they rose from table he took the young

man on one side and asked news of his mother. From that time forth

the young Hugons, Vandeuvres and Muffat were openly about the house

and shook hands as guests and intimates might have done. It was a

more convenient arrangement than the previous one. Muffat alone

still abstained discreetly from too-frequent visits, thus adhering

to the ceremonious policy of an ordinary strange caller. At night

when Nana was sitting on her bearskins drawing off her stockings, he

would talk amicably about the other three gentlemen and lay especial

stress on Philippe, who was loyalty itself.

 

“It’s very true; they’re nice,” Nana would say as she lingered on

the floor to change her shift. “Only, you know, they see what I am.

One word about it and I should chuck ‘em all out of doors for you!”

 

Nevertheless, despite her luxurious life and her group of courtiers,

Nana was nearly bored to death. She had men for every minute of the

night, and money overflowed even among the brushes and combs in the

drawers of her dressing table. But all this had ceased to satisfy

her; she felt that there was a void somewhere or other, an empty

place provocative of yawns. Her life dragged on, devoid of

occupation, and successive days only brought back the same

monotonous hours. Tomorrow had ceased to be; she lived like a bird:

sure of her food and ready to perch and roost on any branch which

she came to. This certainty of food and drink left her lolling

effortless for whole days, lulled her to sleep in conventual

idleness and submission as though she were the prisoner of her

trade. Never going out except to drive, she was losing her walking

powers. She reverted to low childish tastes, would kiss Bijou from

morning to night and kill time with stupid pleasures while waiting

for the man whose caresses she tolerated with an appearance of

complaisant lassitude. Amid this species of self-abandonment she

now took no thought about anything save her personal beauty; her

sole care was to look after herself, to wash and to perfume her

limbs, as became one who was proud of being able to undress at any

moment and in face of anybody without having to blush for her

imperfections.

 

At ten in the morning Nana would get up. Bijou, the Scotch griffon

dog, used to lick her face and wake her, and then would ensue a game

of play lasting some five minutes, during which the dog would race

about over her arms and legs and cause Count Muffat much distress.

Bijou was the first little male he had ever been jealous of. It was

not at all proper, he thought, that an animal should go poking its

nose under the bedclothes like that! After this Nana would proceed

to her dressing room, where she took a bath. Toward eleven o’clock

Francois would come and do up her hair before beginning the

elaborate manipulations of the afternoon.

 

At breakfast, as she hated feeding alone, she nearly always had Mme

Maloir at table with her. This lady would arrive from unknown

regions in the morning, wearing her extravagantly quaint hats, and

would return at night to that mysterious existence of hers, about

which no one ever troubled. But the hardest to bear were the two or

three hours between lunch and the toilet. On ordinary occasions she

proposed a game of bezique to her old friend; on others she would

read the Figaro, in which the theatrical echoes and the fashionable

news interested her. Sometimes she even opened a book, for she

fancied herself in literary matters. Her toilet kept her till close

on five o’clock, and then only she would wake from her daylong

drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at her own house.

She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very late, only to

rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before and to

begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.

 

The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her

little Louis at her aunt’s. For a fortnight at a time she forgot

all about him, and then would follow an access of maternal love, and

she would hurry off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness

becoming a good mother. On such occasions she would be the bearer

of snuff for her aunt and of oranges and biscuits for the child, the

kind of presents one takes to a hospital. Or again she would drive

up in her landau on her return from the Bois, decked in costumes,

the resplendence of which greatly excited the dwellers in the

solitary street. Since her niece’s magnificent elevation Mme Lerat

had been puffed up with vanity. She rarely presented herself in the

Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it wasn’t her

place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street. She was

delighted when the young woman arrived in dresses that had cost four

or five thousand francs and would be occupied during the whole of

the next day in showing off her presents and in citing prices which

quite stupefied the neighbors. As often as not, Nana kept Sunday

free for the sake of “her family,” and on such occasions, if Muffat

invited her, she would refuse with the smile of a good little

shopwoman. It was impossible, she would answer; she was dining at

her aunt’s; she was going to see Baby. Moreover, that poor little

man Louiset was always ill. He was almost three years old, growing

quite a great boy! But he had had an eczema on the back of his

neck, and now concretions were forming in his ears, which pointed,

it was feared, to decay of the bones of the skull. When she saw how

pale he looked, with his spoiled blood and his flabby flesh all out

in yellow patches, she would become serious, but her principal

feeling would be one of astonishment. What could be the matter with

the little love that he should grow so weakly? She, his mother, was

so strong and well!

 

On the days when her child did not engross attention Nana would

again sink back into the noisy monotony of her existence, with its

drives in the Bois, first nights at the theater, dinners and suppers

at the Maison-d’Or or the Cafe Anglais, not to mention all the

places of public resort, all the spectacles to which crowds rushed—

Mabille, the reviews, the races. But whatever happened she still

felt that stupid, idle void, which caused her, as it were, to suffer

internal cramps. Despite the incessant infatuations that possessed

her heart,