Nana, Émile Zola [reading list txt] 📗

>asleep, was again seized with the fever of her triumph. Dear, dear,

‘twas Rose Mignon that would be spending a pleasant morning! Her

aunt having been unwilling to go to the theater because, as she

averred, sudden emotions ruined her stomach, Nana set herself to

describe the events of the evening and grew intoxicated at her own

recital, as though all Paris had been shaken to the ground by the

applause. Then suddenly interrupting herself, she asked with a

laugh if one would ever have imagined it all when she used to go

traipsing about the Rue de la Goutted’Or. Mme Lerat shook her

head. No, no, one never could have foreseen it! And she began

talking in her turn, assuming a serious air as she did so and

calling Nana “daughter.” Wasn’t she a second mother to her since

the first had gone to rejoin Papa and Grandmamma? Nana was greatly

softened and on the verge of tears. But Mme Lerat declared that the

past was the past—oh yes, to be sure, a dirty past with things in

it which it was as well not to stir up every day. She had left off

seeing her niece for a long time because among the family she was

accused of ruining herself along with the little thing. Good God,

as though that were possible! She didn’t ask for confidences; she

believed that Nana had always lived decently, and now it was enough

for her to have found her again in a fine position and to observe

her kind feelings toward her son. Virtue and hard work were still

the only things worth anything in this world.

 

“Who is the baby’s father?” she said, interrupting herself, her eyes

lit up with an expression of acute curiosity.

 

Nana was taken by surprise and hesitated a moment.

 

“A gentleman,” she replied.

 

“There now!” rejoined the aunt. “They declared that you had him by

a stonemason who was in the habit of beating you. Indeed, you shall

tell me all about it someday; you know I’m discreet! Tut, tut, I’ll

look after him as though he were a prince’s son.”

 

She had retired from business as a florist and was living on her

savings, which she had got together sou by sou, till now they

brought her in an income of six hundred francs a year. Nana

promised to rent some pretty little lodgings for her and to give her

a hundred francs a month besides. At the mention of this sum the

aunt forgot herself and shrieked to her niece, bidding her squeeze

their throats, since she had them in her grasp. She was meaning the

men, of course. Then they both embraced again, but in the midst of

her rejoicing Nana’s face, as she led the talk back to the subject

of Louiset, seemed to be overshadowed by a sudden recollection.

 

“Isn’t it a bore I’ve got to go out at three o’clock?” she muttered.

“It IS a nuisance!”

 

Just then Zoe came in to say that lunch was on the table. They went

into the dining room, where an old lady was already seated at table.

She had not taken her hat off, and she wore a dark dress of an

indecisive color midway between puce and goose dripping. Nana did

not seem surprised at sight of her. She simply asked her why she

hadn’t come into the bedroom.

 

“I heard voices,” replied the old lady. “I thought you had

company.”

 

Mme Maloir, a respectable-looking and mannerly woman, was Nana’s old

friend, chaperon and companion. Mme Lerat’s presence seemed to

fidget her at first. Afterward, when she became aware that it was

Nana’s aunt, she looked at her with a sweet expression and a die-away smile. In the meantime Nana, who averred that she was as

hungry as a wolf, threw herself on the radishes and gobbled them up

without bread. Mme Lerat had become ceremonious; she refused the

radishes as provocative of phlegm. By and by when Zoe had brought

in the cutlets Nana just chipped the meat and contented herself with

sucking the bones. Now and again she scrutinized her old friend’s

hat out of the corners of her eyes.

 

“It’s the new hat I gave you?” she ended by saying.

 

“Yes, I made it up,” murmured Mme Maloir, her mouth full of meat.

 

The hat was smart to distraction. In front it was greatly

exaggerated, and it was adorned with a lofty feather. Mme Maloir

had a mania for doing up all her hats afresh; she alone knew what

really became her, and with a few stitches she could manufacture a

toque out of the most elegant headgear. Nana, who had bought her

this very hat in order not to be ashamed of her when in her company

out of doors, was very near being vexed.

 

“Push it up, at any rate,” she cried.

 

“No, thank you,” replied the old lady with dignity. “It doesn’t get

in my way; I can eat very comfortably as it is.”

 

After the cutlets came cauliflowers and the remains of a cold

chicken. But at the arrival of each successive dish Nana made a

little face, hesitated, sniffed and left her plateful untouched.

She finished her lunch with the help of preserve.

 

Dessert took a long time. Zoe did not remove the cloth before

serving the coffee. Indeed, the ladies simply pushed back their

plates before taking it. They talked continually of yesterday’s

charming evening. Nana kept rolling cigarettes, which she smoked,

swinging up and down on her backward-tilted chair. And as Zoe had

remained behind and was lounging idly against the sideboard, it came

about that the company were favored with her history. She said she

was the daughter of a midwife at Bercy who had failed in business.

First of all she had taken service with a dentist and after that

with an insurance agent, but neither place suited her, and she

thereupon enumerated, not without a certain amount of pride, the

names of the ladies with whom she had served as lady’s maid. Zoe

spoke of these ladies as one who had had the making of their

fortunes. It was very certain that without her more than one would

have had some queer tales to tell. Thus one day, when Mme Blanche

was with M. Octave, in came the old gentleman. What did Zoe do?

She made believe to tumble as she crossed the drawing room; the old

boy rushed up to her assistance, flew to the kitchen to fetch her a

glass of water, and M. Octave slipped away.

 

“Oh, she’s a good girl, you bet!” said Nana, who was listening to

her with tender interest and a sort of submissive admiration.

 

“Now I’ve had my troubles,” began Mme Lerat. And edging up to Mme

Maloir, she imparted to her certain confidential confessions. Both

ladies took lumps of sugar dipped in cognac and sucked them. But

Mme Maloir was wont to listen to other people’s secrets without even

confessing anything concerning herself. People said that she lived

on a mysterious allowance in a room whither no one ever penetrated.

 

All of a sudden Nana grew excited.

 

“Don’t play with the knives, Aunt. You know it gives me a turn!”

 

Without thinking about it Mme Lerat had crossed two knives on the

table in front of her. Notwithstanding this, the young woman

defended herself from the charge of superstition. Thus, if the salt

were upset, it meant nothing, even on a Friday; but when it came to

knives, that was too much of a good thing; that had never proved

fallacious. There could be no doubt that something unpleasant was

going to happen to her. She yawned, and then with an air, of

profound boredom:

 

“Two o’clock already. I must go out. What a nuisance!”

 

The two old ladies looked at one another. The three women shook

their heads without speaking. To be sure, life was not always

amusing. Nana had tilted her chair back anew and lit a cigarette,

while the others sat pursing up their lips discreetly, thinking

deeply philosophic thoughts.

 

“While waiting for you to return we’ll play a game of bezique,” said

Mme Maloir after a short silence. “Does Madame play bezique?”

 

Certainly Mme Lerat played it, and that to perfection. It was no

good troubling Zoe, who had vanished—a corner of the table would do

quite well. And they pushed back the tablecloth over the dirty

plates. But as Mme Maloir was herself going to take the cards out

of a drawer in the sideboard, Nana remarked that before she sat down

to her game it would be very nice of her if she would write her a

letter. It bored Nana to write letters; besides, she was not sure

of her spelling, while her old friend could turn out the most

feeling epistles. She ran to fetch some good note paper in her

bedroom. An inkstand consisting of a bottle of ink worth about

three sous stood untidily on one of the pieces of furniture, with a

pen deep in rust beside it. The letter was for Daguenet. Mme

Maloir herself wrote in her bold English hand, “My darling little

man,” and then she told him not to come tomorrow because “that could

not be” but hastened to add that “she was with him in thought at

every moment of the day, whether she were near or far away.”

 

“And I end with ‘a thousand kisses,’” she murmured.

 

Mme Lerat had shown her approval of each phrase with an emphatic

nod. Her eyes were sparkling; she loved to find herself in the

midst of love affairs. Nay, she was seized with a desire to add

some words of her own and, assuming a tender look and cooing like a

dove, she suggested:

 

“A thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes.”

 

“That’s the thing: ‘a thousand kisses on thy beautiful eyes’!” Nana

repeated, while the two old ladies assumed a beatified expression.

 

Zoe was rung for and told to take the letter down to a

commissionaire. She had just been talking with the theater

messenger, who had brought her mistress the day’s playbill and

rehearsal arrangements, which he had forgotten in the morning. Nana

had this individual ushered in and got him to take the latter to

Daguenet on his return. Then she put questions to him. Oh yes! M.

Bordenave was very pleased; people had already taken seats for a

week to come; Madame had no idea of the number of people who had

been asking her address since morning. When the man had taken his

departure Nana announced that at most she would only be out half an

hour. If there were any visitors Zoe would make them wait. As she

spoke the electric bell sounded. It was a creditor in the shape of

the man of whom she jobbed her carriages. He had settled himself on

the bench in the anteroom, and the fellow was free to twiddle his

thumbs till night—there wasn’t the least hurry now.

 

“Come, buck up!” said Nana, still torpid with laziness and yawning

and stretching afresh. “I ought to be there now!”

 

Yet she did not budge but kept watching the play of her aunt, who

had just announced four aces. Chin on hand, she grew quite

engrossed in it but gave a violent start on hearing three o’clock

strike.

 

“Good God!” she cried roughly.

 

Then Mme Maloir, who was counting the tricks she had won with her

tens and aces, said cheeringly to her in her soft voice:

 

“It would be better, dearie, to give up your expedition at once.”

 

“No, be quick about it,” said Mme Lerat, shuffling the cards. “I

shall take the half-past four o’clock train if