Oxford World’s Classics Page 10

  By his third visit the great man’s curiosity was truly whetted. It was not that he was physically susceptible. What attracted him in Clorinde was the quality of the unknown, a mysterious past, and the ambition he thought he could read in her big, dark eyes. Frightful things were said about her—a first attachment to a coachman, then a deal with a banker, rumoured to have paid for her false virginity with the gift of the house on the Champs-Élysées. On the other hand, there were times when she seemed such a child that he doubted these stories. He swore he would get the truth out of her himself, and kept going back hoping to learn the truth from the strange girl’s own lips. Clorinde had become an enigma which began to obsess him as much as any delicate question of high politics. He had lived his life thus far in disdain of women, and the first woman to whom he was attracted was without doubt the most complicated creature imaginable.*

  The day after Clorinde trotted round on her hired horse to offer him her condolences, at the main entrance to the Council of State, Rougon paid her a visit, as she had enjoined him to do, telling him she must show him something that would take his mind off things. Laughingly, he called her his ‘little vice’, gladly seeking distraction at her place, titillated and amused by her, especially as he was still trying to work out what manner of being she was, and was as far from reaching any conclusions as when he started. Turning the corner of the Rue Marbeuf into the Champs-Élysées, he glanced down the Rue du Colisée opposite, at Delestang’s residence. Several times he thought he had seen him peering through the shutters of his study windows at Clorinde’s house, on the other side of the avenue. But today the shutters were closed. Delestang must have gone down to his model farm, La Chamade, early that morning.

  The front door of the Balbi residence was always wide open. At the foot of the stairs Rougon was met by a swarthy little woman with unkempt hair, in a tattered yellow frock, munching an orange just as if it were an apple.

  ‘Antonia, is your mistress at home?’ he asked.

  Her mouth full, the girl made no reply, merely nodding vigorously and laughing. Her mouth was smeared with orange juice; she screwed up her eyes, so that they looked like two inkblots on her dark skin.

  Accustomed to the chaotic administration of the house, Rougon made his way up the stairs. Halfway, he was met by a burly manservant, whose long black beard gave him the appearance of a bandit. The man stared blankly at him, and made no attempt to let him pass on the banister side. On the first-floor landing, Rougon found himself facing three open doors. The left-hand one was the door of Clorinde’s bedroom. He was inquisitive enough to peep inside. Although it was four o’clock, the room was still not done. A screen in front of the bed half hid the untidy bedclothes; some mud-bespattered petticoats, from the day before, had been hung over it to dry. By the window, on the floor, was a washbasin full of soapy water, while the household cat, a grey tom, was sleeping snugly in a pile of clothes.

  Clorinde usually spent her time on the second floor, in the long room which she had turned first into a studio, then, successively, a smoking room, a hothouse, and a summer drawing room. As Rougon climbed the stairs, he heard an increasing din: of voices, high-pitched laughter, and crashing furniture. As he reached the door, he realized that the focus of the din was a wheezy piano. A man was singing. He knocked twice, without any response, and decided to go straight in.

  ‘Bravo, bravo, here he is!’ cried Clorinde, clapping her hands.

  Hard though it usually was to make him lose his composure, Rougon stopped short in the doorway, uncertain what he should do. The man at the old piano was the Italian legate, Count Rusconi, a dark, handsome man who could at times be a serious diplomat. He was banging away at the piano in a furious effort to get a better sound out of it. In the middle of the room was La Rouquette, waltzing with a chair, the back of which he was clutching with mock passion in his arms. So carried away was he that he had littered the room with the chairs he had bumped into and overturned. And in the harsh light shed by one of the bay windows, opposite a young man who was making a charcoal sketch of her on a white canvas, was Clorinde, standing in the middle of a table, posing as Diana the Huntress. Her legs were bare, her arms and breasts were bare, she was entirely naked, but looking perfectly composed. On a sofa, their legs crossed, sat three very solemn gentlemen, smoking fat cigars and looking on impassively.

  ‘Wait, don’t move!’ cried Rusconi, seeing that Clorinde was about to jump down from the table. ‘I’ll take care of the introductions.’

  He led Rougon into the room. As they walked up to Monsieur La Rouquette, who had flopped breathless into an armchair, he said airily:

  ‘Monsieur La Rouquette, whom you know, I believe. A future minister.’

  Then, going over to the artist, he continued:

  ‘Monsieur Luigi Pozzo, my secretary—diplomat, painter, musician, lover.’

  He quite forgot the three gentlemen on the sofa. Then, noticing them as he turned round, he suddenly abandoned his flippant tone, bowed towards the trio, and, quite formally, murmured:

  ‘Monsieur Brambilla, Monsieur Staderino, Monsieur Viscardi, all three political refugees.’*

  Without abandoning their cigars, all three Venetian gentlemen bowed to Rougon. The Count was on the point of sitting down again at the piano when Clorinde shouted at him, accusing him of being a bad master of ceremonies. She nodded in the direction of Rougon and said simply, in an odd, deferential tone:

  ‘Monsieur Eugène Rougon.’

  The Venetian gentlemen bowed again. For a moment Rougon was afraid she would make some unfortunate joke at his expense, and was surprised by the sudden tact and dignity with which, though half naked in her gauze costume, she introduced him. Sitting down, he enquired after the Countess, as he usually did, for he invariably made the pretence of having called only to see Clorinde’s mother. He thought this more seemly.

  ‘I would have been delighted to present her my compliments,’ he added, using the formula he had adopted for this situation.

  ‘But Maman is here!’ cried Clorinde, and with her gilded bow she indicated a corner of the room.

  There, indeed, was the Countess, hidden behind the other furniture, reclining in an enormous armchair. There was general surprise. Apparently the three political refugees had been equally unaware of the Countess’s presence. They immediately rose to their feet and bowed. Rougon went over to the Countess and, shaking her hand, remained standing at her side. She continued to lie there, responding only in monosyllables, on her lips the smile which never left her, even when she was in pain. Then she sank back into her usual silence, appearing preoccupied, glancing sideways from time to time at the streams of traffic in the avenue. No doubt she had come to lie down there to watch the people going by. Rougon withdrew.

  Meanwhile, Rusconi had resumed his place at the piano, and was trying to remember a tune, tapping lightly on the keys and singing some Italian words softly to himself. Monsieur La Rouquette was fanning himself with his handkerchief. Clorinde, looking very serious again, had resumed her pose. In the hush which had suddenly descended, Rougon wandered slowly up and down the studio, examining the walls. The room was cluttered with an amazing variety of things: pieces of furniture, a writing desk, a sideboard, and a number of tables had all been pushed together into the centre, forming a maze of narrow pathways between them. At one end were some hothouse plants, stacked away, piled one on top of the other, dying, their green palm leaves drooping and already half faded, while at the other end loomed a big mass of dry clay, in which could still be seen the crumbling arms and legs of a statue Clorinde had begun one day when she had had the sudden whim of being an artist. Thus, for all its vastness, the only free area in this long room was a small space opposite one of the window recesses, a square patch that had become a kind of separate little drawing room, formed by two sofas and three assorted armchairs.

  ‘You can smoke,’ Clorinde said to Rougon.

  He thanked her, but he never smoked. Without turning her head, she called out
to Rusconi to roll her a cigarette:

  ‘There should be some tobacco just there, on the piano!’

  There was a fresh silence as the Italian legate rolled the cigarette. Rougon, rather put out to find so many people there, was on the point of taking his hat and leaving; but he thought better of it and, instead, went across to Clorinde and, looking up at her with a smile, said:

  ‘I thought you asked me to call so that you could show me something.’

  She was so engrossed in her posing that she did not answer at once. He had to repeat the question:

  ‘What is it, then, that you wanted to show me?’

  ‘Me!’ she said.

  She made this declaration in a regal tone, but without moving a muscle, rigid on the table in her goddess pose. Rougon, now becoming very serious, stepped back and looked at her. She was certainly magnificent, with that pure profile of hers, that supple neck, that graceful sweep from neck to shoulders. Above all, she had the queenly beauty of a lovely bust. Her rounded limbs, too, shone like marble. Her left hip, thrust forward a little, set her body at a slight angle, and she held her right arm aloft, so that, from armpit to heels, her body was one continuous line, powerful and flexible, going in at the waist and curving out over the buttocks. Her other hand was resting on her bow and, indifferent to her nakedness, she radiated all the quiet strength of the ancient goddess of the hunt, indifferent to the love of men—cold, haughty, immortal.

  ‘Very nice, very nice,’ murmured Rougon, not knowing what else to say.

  The truth was that she embarrassed him with her statuesque stillness. She seemed so victorious, so sure of being classically beautiful, that, had he dared, he would have criticized her as if she really were a thing of marble, some of whose features offended his bourgeois eyes; he would have preferred a smaller waist, hips less wide, a higher bosom. A moment later, however, he was overcome by a violent masculine desire—to caress her calves. He had to step back slightly, in order not to give way to the impulse.

  ‘Have you seen enough?’ Clorinde asked him, still deadly serious. ‘Wait a minute, here’s something else.’

  In the twinkling of an eye, she was Diana no longer. Dropping her bow, she became Venus. Her hands behind her head, intertwined with the coils of her hair, leaning back a little, her nipples pointing upwards, she gazed round, smiling with half-open mouth, her face suddenly bathed in sunlight. She seemed smaller now, but her limbs were fuller, gilded with quivering desire, which seemed to shed a vibrant warmth over her satiny skin. She seemed as if curled up, offering herself, making herself desirable, like a submissive mistress longing to be held in a tight embrace.

  Without for a moment abandoning their dark, conspiratorial demeanour, Monsieur Brambilla, Monsieur Staderino, and Monsieur Viscardi all solemnly applauded, with cries of ‘Brava! Brava! Brava!’

  Monsieur La Rouquette exploded in a burst of enthusiasm, while Count Rusconi, coming over to give Clorinde her cigarette, stood there, his eyes glazed, nodding slightly as if to mark the rhythm of his wonderment.

  Rougon made no comment, but clasped his hands together so violently that his fingers cracked. A faint shiver ran through him, from the nape of his neck to the souls of his feet. The matter was settled, he would stay, and he proceeded to install himself in an armchair. She, however, had already resumed her original, uninhibited pose, puffing at her cigarette and laughing, a couldn’t-care-less expression on her face. She told him she would have loved to be on the stage; she could have depicted anything, she said: anger, tenderness, modesty, terror. And now, by posture and expression, she represented one emotion after another. Then, all at once, she cried:

  ‘Monsieur Rougon, would you like me to do you, when you’re addressing the Chamber?’

  She puffed herself out, breathing hard, brandishing her clenched fists, with a mimicry so droll but so accurate that they were all lost in admiration. Rougon laughed like a child; she was adorable, so clever and so disturbing.

  ‘Clorinda, Clorinda,’ Luigi muttered, tapping the easel with his hand-rest.

  She kept moving, he said, so that he was unable to work. By now he had finished his charcoal outline, and was laying thin patches of colour on the canvas in the methodical manner of a schoolboy. He remained serious amid all the laughter, his blazing eyes fixed on Clorinde but casting menacing glances at the men with whom she was now exchanging witticisms. It was he who had had the idea of painting her in this costume of Diana the Huntress, which had been the talk of Paris since the last legation ball. He claimed to be her cousin, since they had been born in the same street in Florence.

  ‘Clorinda!’ he repeated angrily.

  ‘Luigi’s right,’ she said. ‘You’re behaving very badly, Messieurs; you’re making too much noise!… Let’s get back to work.’

  Once again she assumed her Olympian pose, and turned into a lovely marble statue. The gentlemen froze in their chairs, as if riveted to the spot. Only Monsieur La Rouquette ventured to move slightly, drumming nervously with his fingertips on the arm of his chair. Rougon leaned back and gazed at Clorinde, but more and more dreamily, as a reverie in which she gradually grew in size took hold of him. What strange creatures women were! He had never even thought about it before. Now, however, he was beginning to see extraordinary complexities. At one moment he was acutely aware of the power in those bare shoulders. They were capable of turning the whole world upside down. In his distorted vision, Clorinde continued to grow until, like a giant statue, she filled the whole window recess. Then, blinking madly, he saw her again, much smaller than himself, standing on the table. He smiled. Of course, had he wanted, he could have spanked her like a child; he was surprised that she could ever have frightened him at all.

  Meanwhile, a murmur of voices could be heard at the other end of the room. Out of sheer habit, Rougon listened, but all he could make out at first was a few gabbled words in Italian. Count Rusconi had slipped round behind the mass of furniture in the middle of the room and, with one hand on the back of the Countess’s armchair, seemed to be telling her a long, complicated story. The Countess simply nodded from time to time, until all of a sudden she shook her head violently. The Count then bent still lower, and in his sing-song voice tried to reassure her, chirping like a bird. In the end, thanks to his knowledge of Provençal, Rougon managed to catch something of what he was saying, enough to worry him.

  ‘Maman,’ Clorinde suddenly cried, ‘did you show the Count the telegram that came last night?’

  ‘Was there a telegram?’ the Count asked out loud.

  The Countess drew a bundle of letters from her pocket and sorted through them for a while before handing Rusconi a crumpled piece of blue paper. No sooner had he read it than he made a gesture of surprise and annoyance.

  ‘What?’ he cried in French, forgetting who was present, ‘you already knew yesterday? But I only heard this morning!’

  At this, Clorinde burst out laughing, which made him really angry.

  ‘But the Countess let me tell her the whole story as if she didn’t know a thing!’ cried Rusconi. ‘Very well, if the headquarters of the legation are here now, I’ll come round every day to have a look at your correspondence.’

  Countess Balbi smiled. Rummaging again through her bundle of letters, she took out a second sheet of paper, which she let him read. This time he seemed very pleased. The sotto voce conversation was resumed, and the Count again wore his deferential smile. He finally withdrew, kissing the Countess’s hand.

  ‘That’s all the serious business over,’ he murmured, and resumed his seat at the piano.

  He began to hammer out a lively rondo, very popular that year; then, suddenly noticing the time, ran to grab his hat.

  ‘Are you going?’ Clorinde asked.

  Beckoning him over, she leaned on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. He laughed and shook his head, then murmured:

  ‘Very good, very good… I’ll write and tell them that.’

  Bowing to everyone, Rusconi left. With fr
esh taps of his hand-rest, Luigi brought Clorinde up from her crouching position on the table. No doubt the stream of carriages down the avenue had finally begun to bore the Countess, for the moment she lost sight of the Count’s carriage as it vanished amid all the landaus returning from the Bois de Boulogne, she pulled on a bell rope behind her. The burly valet with the face of a bandit entered, leaving the door open behind him. Leaning on his arm, the Countess made her way slowly down the room between the gentlemen who stood bowing on either side. She acknowledged each one with a smile and a little nod. Reaching the door at last, she turned round and said to Clorinde: