Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

her face, hugging in her bare arms a pillow in

which she was burying cheeks grown pale in sleep. The bedroom and

the dressing room were the only two apartments which had been

properly furnished by a neighboring upholsterer. A ray of light,

gliding in under a curtain, rendered visible rosewood furniture and

hangings and chairbacks of figured damask with a pattern of big blue

flowers on a gray ground. But in the soft atmosphere of that

slumbering chamber Nana suddenly awoke with a start, as though

surprised to find an empty place at her side. She looked at the

other pillow lying next to hers; there was the dint of a human head

among its flounces: it was still warm. And groping with one hand,

she pressed the knob of an electric bell by her bed’s head.

 

“He’s gone then?” she asked the maid who presented herself.

 

“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul went away not ten minutes back. As

Madame was tired, he did not wish to wake her. But he ordered me to

tell Madame that he would come tomorrow.”

 

As she spoke Zoe, the lady’s maid, opened the outer shutter. A

flood of daylight entered. Zoe, a dark brunette with hair in little

plaits, had a long canine face, at once livid and full of seams, a

snub nose, thick lips and two black eyes in continual movement.

 

“Tomorrow, tomorrow,” repeated Nana, who was not yet wide awake, “is

tomorrow the day?”

 

“Yes, madame, Monsieur Paul has always come on the Wednesday.”

 

“No, now I remember,” said the young woman, sitting up. “It’s all

changed. I wanted to tell him so this morning. He would run

against the nigger! We should have a nice to-do!”

 

“Madame did not warn me; I couldn’t be aware of it,” murmured Zoe.

“When Madame changes her days she will do well to tell me so that I

may know. Then the old miser is no longer due on the Tuesday?”

 

Between themselves they were wont thus gravely to nickname as “old

miser” and “nigger” their two paying visitors, one of whom was a

tradesman of economical tendencies from the Faubourg Saint-Denis,

while the other was a Walachian, a mock count, whose money, paid

always at the most irregular intervals, never looked as though it

had been honestly come by. Daguenet had made Nana give him the days

subsequent to the old miser’s visits, and as the trader had to be at

home by eight o’clock in the morning, the young man would watch for

his departure from Zoes kitchen and would take his place, which was

still quite warm, till ten o’clock. Then he, too, would go about

his business. Nana and he were wont to think it a very comfortable

arrangement.

 

“So much the worse,” said Nana; “I’ll write to him this afternoon.

And if he doesn’t receive my letter, then tomorrow you will stop him

coming in.”

 

In the meantime Zoe was walking softly about the room. She spoke of

yesterday’s great hit. Madame had shown such talent; she sang so

well! Ah! Madame need not fret at all now!

 

Nana, her elbow dug into her pillow, only tossed her head in reply.

Her nightdress had slipped down on her shoulders, and her hair,

unfastened and entangled, flowed over them in masses.

 

“Without doubt,” she murmured, becoming thoughtful; “but what’s to

be done to gain time? I’m going to have all sorts of bothers today.

Now let’s see, has the porter come upstairs yet this morning?”

 

Then both the women talked together seriously. Nana owed three

quarters’ rent; the landlord was talking of seizing the furniture.

Then, too, there was a perfect downpour of creditors; there was a

livery-stable man, a needlewoman, a ladies’ tailor, a charcoal

dealer and others besides, who came every day and settled themselves

on a bench in the little hall. The charcoal dealer especially was a

dreadful fellow—he shouted on the staircase. But Nana’s greatest

cause of distress was her little Louis, a child she had given birth

to when she was sixteen and now left in charge of a nurse in a

village in the neighborhood of Rambouillet. This woman was

clamoring for the sum of three hundred francs before she would

consent to give the little Louis back to her. Nana, since her last

visit to the child, had been seized with a fit of maternal love and

was desperate at the thought that she could not realize a project,

which had now become a hobby with her. This was to pay off the

nurse and to place the little man with his aunt, Mme Lerat, at the

Batignolles, whither she could go and see him as often as she liked.

 

Meanwhile the lady’s maid kept hinting that her mistress ought to

have confided her necessities to the old miser.

 

“To be sure, I told him everything,” cried Nana, “and he told me in

answer that he had too many big liabilities. He won’t go beyond his

thousand francs a month. The nigger’s beggared just at present; I

expect he’s lost at play. As to that poor Mimi, he stands in great

need of a loan himself; a fall in stocks has cleaned him out—he

can’t even bring me flowers now.”

 

She was speaking of Daguenet. In the self-abandonment of her

awakening she had no secrets from Zoe, and the latter, inured to

such confidences, received them with respeciful sympathy. Since

Madame condescended to speak to her of her affairs she would permit

herself to say what she thought. Besides, she was very fond of

Madame; she had left Mme Blanche for the express purpose of taking

service with her, and heaven knew Mme Blanche was straining every

nerve to have her again! Situations weren’t lacking; she was pretty

well known, but she would have stayed with Madame even in narrow

circumstances, because she believed in Madame’s future. And she

concluded by stating her advice with precision. When one was young

one often did silly things. But this time it was one’s duty to look

alive, for the men only thought of having their fun. Oh dear, yes!

Things would right themselves. Madame had only to say one word in

order to quiet her creditors and find the money she stood in need

of.

 

“All that doesn’t help me to three hundred francs,” Nana kept

repeating as she plunged her fingers into the vagrant convolutions

of her back hair. “I must have three hundred francs today, at once!

It’s stupid not to know anyone who’ll give you three hundred

francs.”

 

She racked her brains. She would have sent Mme Lerat, whom she was

expecting that very morning, to Rambouillet. The counteraction of

her sudden fancy spoiled for her the triumph of last night. Among

all those men who had cheered her, to think that there wasn’t one to

bring her fifteen louis! And then one couldn’t accept money in that

way! Dear heaven, how unfortunate she was! And she kept harking

back again to the subject of her baby—he had blue eyes like a

cherub’s; he could lisp “Mamma” in such a funny voice that you were

ready to die of laughing!

 

But at this moment the electric bell at the outer door was heard to

ring with its quick and tremulous vibration. Zoe returned,

murmuring with a confidential air:

 

“It’s a woman.”

 

She had seen this woman a score of times, only she made believe

never to recognize her and to be quite ignorant of the nature of her

relations with ladies in difficulties.

 

“She has told me her name—Madame Tricon.”

 

“The Tricon,” cried Nana. “Dear me! That’s true. I’d forgotten

her. Show her in.”

 

Zoe ushered in a tall old lady who wore ringlets and looked like a

countess who haunts lawyers’ offices. Then she effaced herself,

disappearing noiselessly with the lithe, serpentine movement

wherewith she was wont to withdraw from a room on the arrival of a

gentleman. However, she might have stayed. The Tricon did not even

sit down. Only a brief exchange of words took place.

 

“I have someone for you today. Do you care about it?”

 

“Yes. How much?”

 

“Twenty louis.”

 

“At what o’clock?”

 

“At three. It’s settled then?”

 

“It’s settled.”

 

Straightway the Tricon talked of the state of the weather. It was

dry weather, pleasant for walking. She had still four or five

persons to see. And she took her departure after consulting a small

memorandum book. When she was once more alone Nana appeared

comforted. A slight shiver agitated her shoulders, and she wrapped

herself softly up again in her warm bedclothes with the lazy

movements of a cat who is susceptible to cold. Little by little her

eyes closed, and she lay smiling at the thought of dressing Louiset

prettily on the following day, while in the slumber into which she

once more sank last night’s long, feverish dream of endlessly

rolling applause returned like a sustained accompaniment to music

and gently soothed her lassitude.

 

At eleven o’clock, when Zoe showed Mme Lerat into the room, Nana was

still asleep. But she woke at the noise and cried out at once:

 

“It’s you. You’ll go to Rambouillet today?”

 

“That’s what I’ve come for,” said the aunt. “There’s a train at

twenty past twelve. I’ve got time to catch it.”

 

“No, I shall only have the money by and by,” replied the young

woman, stretching herself and throwing out her bosom. “You’ll have

lunch, and then we’ll see.”

 

Zoe brought a dressing jacket.

 

“The hairdresser’s here, madame,” she murmured.

 

But Nana did not wish to go into the dressing room. And she herself

cried out:

 

“Come in, Francis.”

 

A well-dressed man pushed open the door and bowed. Just at that

moment Nana was getting out of bed, her bare legs in full view. But

she did not hurry and stretched her hands out so as to let Zoe draw

on the sleeves of the dressing jacket. Francis, on his part, was

quite at his ease and without turning away waited with a sober

expression on his face.

 

“Perhaps Madame has not seen the papers. There’s a very nice

article in the Figaro.”

 

He had brought the journal. Mme Lerat put on her spectacles and

read the article aloud, standing in front of the window as she did

so. She had the build of a policeman, and she drew herself up to

her full height, while her nostrils seemed to compress themselves

whenever she uttered a gallant epithet. It was a notice by

Fauchery, written just after the performance, and it consisted of a

couple of very glowing columns, full of witty sarcasm about the

artist and of broad admiration for the woman.

 

“Excellent!” Francis kept repeating.

 

Nana laughed good-humoredly at his chaffing her about her voice! He

was a nice fellow, was that Fauchery, and she would repay him for

his charming style of writing. Mme Lerat, after having reread the

notice, roundly declared that the men all had the devil in their

shanks, and she refused to explain her self further, being fully

satisfied with a brisk allusion of which she alone knew the meaning.

Francis finished turning up and fastening Nana’s hair. He bowed and

said:

 

“I’ll keep my eye on the evening papers. At half-past five as

usual, eh?”

 

“Bring me a pot of pomade and a pound of burnt almonds from

Boissier’s,” Nana cried to him across the drawing room just as he

was shutting the door after him.

 

Then the two women, once more alone, recollected that they had not

embraced, and they planted big kisses on each other’s cheeks. The

notice warmed their hearts. Nana, who up till now had been half