Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

she had been

overcome by pious terrors on quitting her lover’s arms.

 

Since morning, indeed, she had been complaining of feeling

uncomfortable, and all her stupid notions, as she phrased it,

notions about death and hell, were secretly torturing her. From

time to time she had nights such as these, during which childish

fears and atrocious fancies would thrill her with waking nightmares.

She continued:

 

“I say, d’you think I shall go to heaven?”

 

And with that she shivered, while the count, in his surprise at her

putting such singular questions at such a moment, felt his old

religious remorse returning upon him. Then with her chemise

slipping from her shoulders and her hair unpinned, she again threw

herself upon his breast, sobbing and clinging to him as she did so.

 

“I’m afraid of dying! I’m afraid of dying!” He had all the trouble

in the world to disengage himself. Indeed, he was himself afraid of

giving in to the sudden madness of this woman clinging to his body

in her dread of the Invisible. Such dread is contagious, and he

reasoned with her. Her conduct was perfect—she had only to conduct

herself well in order one day to merit pardon. But she shook her

head. Doubtless she was doing no one any harm; nay, she was even in

the constant habit of wearing a medal of the Virgin, which she

showed to him as it hung by a red thread between her breasts. Only

it had been foreordained that all unmarried women who held

conversation with men would go to hell. Scraps of her catechism

recurred to her remembrance. Ah, if one only knew for certain, but,

alas, one was sure of nothing; nobody ever brought back any

information, and then, truly, it would be stupid to bother oneself

about things if the priests were talking foolishness all the time.

Nevertheless, she religiously kissed her medal, which was still warm

from contact with her skin, as though by way of charm against death,

the idea of which filled her with icy horror. Muffat was obliged to

accompany her into the dressing room, for she shook at the idea of

being alone there for one moment, even though she had left the door

open. When he had lain down again she still roamed about the room,

visiting its several corners and starting and shivering at the

slightest noise. A mirror stopped her, and as of old she lapsed

into obvious contemplation of her nakedness. But the sight of her

breast, her waist and her thighs only doubled her terror, and she

ended by feeling with both hands very slowly over the bones of her

face.

 

“You’re ugly when you’re dead,” she said in deliberate tones.

 

And she pressed her cheeks, enlarging her eyes and pushing down her

jaw, in order to see how she would look. Thus disfigured, she

turned toward the count.

 

“Do look! My head’ll be quite small, it will!”

 

At this he grew vexed.

 

“You’re mad; come to bed!”

 

He fancied he saw her in a grave, emaciated by a century of sleep,

and he joined his hands and stammered a prayer. It was some time

ago that the religious sense had reconquered him, and now his daily

access of faith had again assumed the apoplectic intensity which was

wont to leave him well-nigh stunned. The joints of his fingers used

to crack, and he would repeat without cease these words only: “My

God, my God, my God!” It was the cry of his impotence, the cry of

that sin against which, though his damnation was certain, he felt

powerless to strive. When Nana returned she found him hidden

beneath the bedclothes; he was haggard; he had dug his nails into

his bosom, and his eyes stared upward as though in search of heaven.

And with that she started to weep again. Then they both embraced,

and their teeth chattered they knew not why, as the same imbecile

obsession overmastered them. They had already passed a similar

night, but on this occasion the thing was utterly idiotic, as Nana

declared when she ceased to be frightened. She suspected something,

and this caused her to question the count in a prudent sort of way.

It might be that Rose Mignon had sent the famous letter! But that

was not the case; it was sheer fright, nothing more, for he was

still ignorant whether he was a cuckold or no.

 

Two days later, after a fresh disappearance, Muffat presented

himself in the morning, a time of day at which he never came. He

was livid; his eyes were red and his whole man still shaken by a

great internal struggle. But Zoe, being scared herself, did not

notice his troubled state. She had run to meet him and now began

crying:

 

“Oh, monsieur, do come in! Madame nearly died yesterday evening!”

 

And when he asked for particulars:

 

“Something it’s impossible to believe has happened—a miscarriage,

monsieur.”

 

Nana had been in the family way for the past three months. For long

she had simply thought herself out of sorts, and Dr Boutarel had

himself been in doubt. But when afterward he made her a decisive

announcement, she felt so bored thereby that she did all she

possibly could to disguise her condition. Her nervous terrors, her

dark humors, sprang to some extent from this unfortunate state of

things, the secret of which she kept very shamefacedly, as became a

courtesan mother who is obliged to conceal her plight. The thing

struck her as a ridiculous accident, which made her appear small in

her own eyes and would, had it been known, have led people to chaff

her.

 

“A poor joke, eh?” she said. “Bad luck, too, certainly.”

 

She was necessarily very sharp set when she thought her last hour

had come. There was no end to her surprise, too; her sexual economy

seemed to her to have got out of order; it produced children then

even when one did not want them and when one employed it for quite

other purposes! Nature drove her to exasperation; this appearance

of serious motherhood in a career of pleasure, this gift of life

amid all the deaths she was spreading around, exasperated her. Why

could one not dispose of oneself as fancy dictated, without all this

fuss? And whence had this brat come? She could not even suggest a

father. Ah, dear heaven, the man who made him would have a splendid

notion had he kept him in his own hands, for nobody asked for him;

he was in everybody’s way, and he would certainly not have much

happiness in life!

 

Meanwhile Zoe described the catastrophe.

 

“Madame was seized with colic toward four o’clock. When she didn’t

come back out of the dressing room I went in and found her lying

stretched on the floor in a faint. Yes, monsieur, on the floor in a

pool of blood, as though she had been murdered. Then I understood,

you see. I was furious; Madame might quite well have confided her

trouble to me. As it happened, Monsieur Georges was there, and he

helped me to lift her up, and directly a miscarriage was mentioned

he felt ill in his turn! Oh, it’s true I’ve had the hump since

yesterday!”

 

In fact, the house seemed utterly upset. All the servants were

galloping upstairs, downstairs and through the rooms. Georges had

passed the night on an armchair in the drawing room. It was he who

had announced the news to Madame’s friends at that hour of the

evening when Madame was in the habit of receiving. He had still

been very pale, and he had told his story very feelingly, and as

though stupefied. Steiner, La Faloise, Philippe and others,

besides, had presented themselves, and at the end of the lad’s first

phrase they burst into exclamations. The thing was impossible! It

must be a farce! After which they grew serious and gazed with an

embarrassed expression at her bedroom door. They shook their heads;

it was no laughing matter.

 

Till midnight a dozen gentlemen had stood talking in low voices in

front of the fireplace. All were friends; all were deeply exercised

by the same idea of paternity. They seemed to be mutually excusing

themselves, and they looked as confused as if they had done

something clumsy. Eventually, however, they put a bold face on the

matter. It had nothing to do with them: the fault was hers! What a

stunner that Nana was, eh? One would never have believed her

capable of such a fake! And with that they departed one by one,

walking on tiptoe, as though in a chamber of death where you cannot

laugh.

 

“Come up all the same, monsieur,” said Zoe to Muffat. “Madame is

much better and will see you. We are expecting the doctor, who

promised to come back this morning.”

 

The lady’s maid had persuaded Georges to go back home to sleep, and

upstairs in the drawing room only Satin remained. She lay stretched

on a divan, smoking a cigarette and scanning the ceiling. Amid the

household scare which had followed the accident she had been white

with rage, had shrugged her shoulders violently and had made

ferocious remarks. Accordingly, when Zoe was passing in front of

her and telling Monsieur that poor, dear Madame had suffered a great

deal:

 

“That’s right; it’ll teach him!” said Satin curtly.

 

They turned round in surprise, but she had not moved a muscle; her

eyes were still turned toward the ceiling, and her cigarette was

still wedged tightly between her lips.

 

“Dear me, you’re charming, you are!” said Zoe.

 

But Satin sat up, looked savagely at the count and once more hurled

her remark at him.

 

“That’s right; it’ll teach him!”

 

And she lay down again and blew forth a thin jet of smoke, as though

she had no interest in present events and were resolved not to

meddle in any of them. No, it was all too silly!

 

Zoe, however, introduced Muffat into the bedroom, where a scent of

ether lingered amid warm, heavy silence, scarce broken by the dull

roll of occasional carriages in the Avenue de Villiers. Nana,

looking very white on her pillow, was lying awake with wide-open,

meditative eyes. She smiled when she saw the count but did not

move.

 

“Ah, dear pet!” she slowly murmured. “I really thought I should

never see you again.”

 

Then as he leaned forward to kiss her on the hair, she grew tender

toward him and spoke frankly about the child, as though he were its

father.

 

“I never dared tell you; I felt so happy about it! Oh, I used to

dream about it; I should have liked to be worthy of you! And now

there’s nothing left. Ah well, perhaps that’s best. I don’t want

to bring a stumbling block into your life.”

 

Astounded by this story of paternity, he began stammering vague

phrases. He had taken a chair and had sat down by the bed, leaning

one arm on the coverlet. Then the young woman noticed his wild

expression, the blood reddening his eyes, the fever that set his

lips aquiver.

 

“What’s the matter then?” she asked. “You’re ill too.”

 

“No,” he answered with extreme difficulty.

 

She gazed at him with a profound expression. Then she signed to Zoe

to retire, for the latter was lingering round arranging the medicine

bottles. And when they were alone she drew him down to her and

again asked:

 

“What’s the matter with you, darling? The tears are ready to burst

from your eyes—I can see that quite well. Well now, speak out;

you’ve come to tell me something.”

 

“No, no, I swear I haven’t,” he blurted out. But he was