Nana: By Emile Zola - Illustrated Read online

  Then Muffat uttered a low and prolonged sigh. This self-enjoyment exasperated him. All his reason was abruptly swept away as though by a gale of wind. He seized Nana round the waist, and, in an outburst of brutal passion, flung her on to the carpet.

  “Let me be,” cried she—“you have hurt me!”

  He was conscious of his defeat. He knew that she was stupid, ribald and deceitful, and he desired her all the same, even poisonous though she might be.

  “Oh! it’s ridiculous!” said she, in a fury, when she had regained her feet.

  However, she became calmer. He would soon be going off. After putting on a night-dress trimmed with lace, she sat down on the rug before the fire. It was her favourite place. As she again questioned him respecting Fauchery’s article, Muffat gave vague answers, anxious to avoid a scene. Then she lapsed into a long silence, thinking of some means of getting rid of the count.

  She wanted to do it pleasantly, for she was a good-natured girl, and was sorry to pain others, and more especially him, because he was a cuckold—a circumstance that had led to making her feel more kindly disposed towards him.

  “So it’s to-morrow morning,” she at length observed, “that you are expecting your wife?”

  Muffat had thrown himself into an easy-chair. He looked drowsy and tired. He nodded his head. Nana watched him seriously, racking her brain the while. Still seated on the rug, amidst the rumpled lace, she was nursing one of her bare feet between her hands, and kept turning it about mechanically.

  “How long have you been married?” asked she.

  “Nineteen years,” replied the count.

  “Ah! And your wife, is she nice? Do you get on well together?”

  He did not answer. Then, in an embarrassed sort of way, he said, “You know, I have asked you never to speak of such matters.”

  “Really! And why, pray?” she cried, already beginning to lose her temper. “I sha’n’t eat your wife by speaking of her, that’s very certain. My dear fellow, all women are alike.”

  Here she paused, afraid of saying too much. Only, she assumed a superior sort of an air, as she thought herself exceedingly kind. The poor man, one ought not to be too hard on. him. Besides, a merry idea had just occurred to her. She smiled as she critically examined him. She resumed,

  “I say, I haven’t told you the report that Fauchery has spread about you—he’s a regular viper! I’ve no ill-feeling against him, because his article might be true; but, all the same, he’s a regular viper.” And laughing boisterously, and letting go of her foot, she crawled along the rug and leant her bosom against the count’s knees. “Only fancy, he swears you were a perfect innocent when you married your wife! Do you understand? Is it true?”

  She looked him straight in the face, and placing her hands on his shoulders, she shook him to make him confess.

  “Of course it is,” he at length replied in a solemn tone of voice.

  Then she again rolled herself at his feet in a wild fit of laughter, stuttering and slapping his legs.

  “No, it’s not possible. Such a thing could only happen to you. You’re a phenomenon. But, my poor ducky, you must have looked foolish! When a man knows nothing it’s always so funny! By Jove, I should have liked to have seen you! And did it go off all right? Tell me, oh! come now, tell me all about it.”

  She pressed him with questions, asking everything, insisting on having details. And she laughed so heartily, with such sudden outbursts as made her roll about in her night-dress-which one moment slipped from her shoulders, and the next curled itself up under her, and displayed her skin shining like gold in front of the blazing fire—that the count, little by little, gave her the history of his wedding-night. He no longer felt any repugnance, and ended by thinking it great fun to explain. He merely chose his words, through a remnant of shame. The young woman, very excited, questioned him about the countess. She was beautifully made, but a regular icicle, so he pretended.

  “Oh! you’ve no cause for jealousy,” he despicably murmured.

  Nana had left off laughing, and had resumed her seat, her back to the fire, and her chin resting on her knees, round which she had clasped her hands.

  “My dear fellow, it’s the greatest mistake out for a man to appear a ninny to his wife on the first night,” declared she, in a grave tone of voice.

  “Why?” asked the count, in surprise.

  “Because,” replied she, slowly, like a professor.

  She was lecturing, she wagged her head. However, she deigned to explain herself.

  “You see, I know all about it. Well! my boy, women don’t like simpletons. They say nothing, on account of their modesty, you know; but you may be quite sure they think a great deal, and, sooner or later, when they haven’t had what they expected, they seek for it elsewhere. There, now you know as much as I do.”

  He did not seem to understand, so she was more circumstantial. She became quite maternal, and gave him this lesson in a friendly way, out of the kindness of her heart. Ever since she had heard that he was a cuckold, the knowledge of this circumstance worried her. She had a hankering to discuss the matter with him.

  “Well, really! I’ve been talking of things that don’t concern me. What I say is simply because I want every one to be happy. We’re merely having a chat, aren’t we? Come, now, you must answer me truly.”

  But she interrupted herself to change her position. The fire was so fierce.

  “By Jove! isn’t it hot? My back’s quite cooked. Wait a moment, I’ll cook my stomach a bit now; it’s good for the spasms!”

  And when she had turned herself round, with her legs doubled under her, she resumed, “You and your wife don’t occupy the same room, do you?”

  “No, I assure you,” replied Muffat, afraid not to answer.

  “And you think that she’s a regular stick?”

  He affirmatively bowed his head.

  “And that’s why you come to me? Answer me! I sha’n’t be angry.”

  He bowed his head again.

  “Very well!” concluded she, “I thought as much. Ah! poor fellow! You know my aunt, Madame Lerat? Next time she comes get her to tell you the story of the green-grocer who lives in her street. Just fancy, the green-grocer-Drat it! the fire is hot; I must turn round again. I’ll cook my left side this time.”

  As she presented her hip to the flames, a funny idea seized hold of her, and she joked herself in a jolly sort of way, delighted at seeing how plump and rosy she looked in the reflection of the fire.

  “I say! I’m just like a goose. Yes! that’s it—a goose roasting. I turn, I turn. Really, I’m cooking in my own juice.”

  Again she laughed aloud, when suddenly there was a sound of voices and of closing doors. Muffat, surprised, interrogated her with a look. She at once became serious, and there was an anxious expression on her face. It was no doubt Zoé’s cat, a confounded beast that was always breaking everything. Half past twelve. Whatever had she been thinking of, wasting her time in working for her cuckold’s happiness? Now that the other one was there she must get rid of him, and quickly, too.

  “What were you saying?” asked the count complaisantly, delighted at finding her so amiable.

  But in her desire to send him off, her humour quickly changed. She was coarse, and no longer minced her words.

  “Ah! yes, the green-grocer and his wife. Well! my boy, they never got on together, not a bit! She, you know, expected all sorts of things; but he was a ninny. And so it went on till it ended like this—he, thinking her a stick, went with a lot of strumpets, and got more than he bargained for; whilst she, on her side, consoled herself with some fellows who knew a trifle more than her simpleton of a husband. And it always ends like that when you don’t understand each other. I know it does!”

  Muffat paled, understanding at last her allusions, and wished to make her leave off. But she intended to have her say.

  “No, hold your row! If you were not all a set of fools, you would be just as nice with your wives as you are with us
; and if your wives were not a lot of geese, they would take the same trouble to keep you to themselves that we take to hook you. But you all give yourselves such confounded airs. There, my boy; put that in your pipe and smoke it.

  “Do not talk about respectable women,” said he, severely. “You do not know anything about them.”

  On hearing this, Nana rose on her knees.

  “I don’t know anything about them! But they’re not even clean, your respectable women! No, they’re not even clean! I defy you to find one who would dare to show herself as I am here. Really, you make me laugh, with your respectable women! Don’t drive me too hard; don’t force me to say things that I should regret afterwards.”

  For sole rejoinder, the count muttered a foul word between his teeth. Nana, in her turn, became deadly pale. She looked at him for a few seconds without speaking. Then, in a clear voice, she asked,

  “What would you do if your wife deceived you?”

  He made a menacing gesture.

  “Well! and I, supposing I deceived you?”

  “Oh! you,” he murmured, shrugging his shoulders.

  Nana was certainly not unfeeling. Ever since the first words, she had been resisting a desire to tell him of his cuckoldom to his face. She would have liked to have confessed him quietly. But he exasperated her; she must put an end to it.

  “Therefore, my boy,” she resumed, “I don’t know what the devil you’re doing here. You’ve done nothing but pester me for the last two hours. So go and join your wife, who’s consoling herself with Fauchery. Yes, I know what I’m saying; in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of the Rue de Provence. I give you the address, you see.” Then, seeing Muffat rise on his feet, staggering like an ox that had just received a stunning blow, she added triumphantly, “Ah! they’re getting on well, your respectable women! They even interfere with us now, and take our lovers!”

  But she was unable to continue. In a terrible passion he threw her full length on the floor, and raising his heel, was about to crush her face to silence her. For the moment she had an awful fright; but he, blinded, and as though mad, left her, and rushed helplessly about the room. Then the choking silence he maintained, the sight of the internal struggle which shook his frame, brought tears to her eyes. She felt a mortal regret; and curling herself up before the fire, so as to cook her right side, she undertook to console him.

  “I assure you, darling, I thought you knew of it. Otherwise, I would certainly not have spoken. Then, after all, perhaps it isn’t true. I’m not sure of anything. I merely heard it—people talk about it; but that proves nothing, does it? Ah! really now, you’re very stupid to be put out about it. If I was a man, I wouldn’t care a tinker’s curse for any woman! Women, my boy, high or low, are all the same—all loose fish; it’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.”

  She went in for abusing women in general, so as to make the blow less hard to bear; but he did not listen to her, he did not hear her. Whilst stamping about, he had somehow or other managed to get on his boots and his overcoat. For a moment longer he wandered about the room; then, with a last rush, as though he had only just discovered the door, he disappeared. Nana felt very much put out.

  “Well! ta ta!” she continued aloud, though all alone. “He’s polite, he is, when he’s being spoken to! And I, who was sweating away to make it up again with him! Anyhow, I was the first to hold out my hand. I made quite enough excuses, I think! Besides, he shouldn’t have stopped here annoying me!” However, she remained displeased with herself, scratching her legs with both hands; but she at length muttered consolingly,

  “Oh! dash it! It isn’t my fault that he’s a cuckold!”

  And, roasted on all sides, as hot as a quail just removed from the spit, she jumped into bed, after ringing for Zoé to usher in the other one, who was waiting in the kitchen.

  Outside, Muffat continued to hurry on. Another shower had just fallen. He slipped along the greasy pavement. As he mechanically looked up in the air he saw large black clouds floating rapidly across the moon. At that hour the Boulevard Haussmann was almost deserted. He passed by the scaffoldings of the new Opera-house, keeping in the shadow and stammering disconnected sentences. The girl lied. She had cruelly invented that to annoy him. He ought to have crushed her head when he had it beneath his heel. It was too shameful. He would never touch her nor see her again; if he did, he would indeed be a cur. And he drew a long breath of relief at his deliverance. Ah! that stupid naked monster, cooking like a goose, drivelling about all that he had respected for forty years past! The clouds had cleared away from the moon, which now lighted up the empty street. He was seized with fear and burst into sobs, suddenly giving way to despair, as though he had been precipitated into illimitable space.

  “Oh! heaven!” he stammered, “all is over, there is nothing more.”

  Along the Boulevards a few belated pedestrians were hurrying home. The count tried to compose himself. The girl’s story kept perplexing his heated brain; he wished to examine it calmly. That very morning the countess was to return from Madame de Chezelles’s château. There was nothing to have prevented her returning on the previous evening, and passing the night with that man. He now recalled certain things that had occurred during their stay at Les Fondettes. One night he had found Sabine wandering about among the trees, and she was so agitated that for some time she was unable to answer him. That man was there, then. Why should she not be with him now? The more he thought of it, the more it seemed to him possible. He ended by thinking it only natural, and even inevitable. Whilst he had been taking off his coat at a harlot’s his wife had been disrobing herself in a lover’s bedchamber; there was nothing more simple or more logical. And, as he reasoned thus, he forced himself to keep cool. He experienced the sensation of a fall into the follies of the flesh, which, spreading and gaining on him, swept the world away from around him. Phantoms, created by his heated imagination, pursued him. Nana undressed, abruptly evoked Sabine, undressed also. At this vision, which gave the two women a like parentage of wantonness and the same inordinate desires, he stumbled. A cab passing along the road nearly crushed him; some women, coming out of a café, pushed up against him, laughing coarsely. Then, again giving way to tears, in spite of his efforts, and not wishing to sob aloud before the passers-by, he turned down a dark, empty street, the Rue Rossini, where he cried like a child as he moved past the silent houses.

  “All is over,” he kept saying in a hollow voice. “There is nothing more, nothing more.”

  His tears so mastered him that he leant against a door, burying his wet face in his hands. A sound of footsteps chased him away. He felt such shame and such fear that he fled from everyone, with the cautious tread of a night prowler. Whenever anybody passed him on the pavement he tried to assume a careless gait, as though he imagined that his history could be read in the movement of his shoulders. He had turned down the Rue de la Grange-Batelière and reached the Faubourg Montmartre, but the bright lights caused him to retrace his footsteps, and for close upon an hour he wandered thus about the neighbourhood, choosing always the darkest turnings. He had, no doubt, a goal to which his feet instinctively conducted him, patiently and by a most circuitous road. At length, at the turn of a street, he raised his eyes. He had arrived. It was the corner of the Rue Taitbout and of the Rue de Provence. He had, in the painful disorder of his brain, taken an hour to reach it, while he might have done so in five minutes. One morning, in the previous month, he recollected having called on Fauchery to thank him for having mentioned his name in the description of a ball at the Tuileries. The apartment was on the first floor, with little square windows half hidden by the colossal sign-board of the shop. The last window on the left was divided by a streak of brilliant light, the ray of a lamp passing between the partly closed curtains. And, with his eyes fixed on that bright line, he stood absorbed, awaiting something.

  The moon had disappeared in an inky sky, from which a drizzling, icy rain fell. Two o’clock struck at the church of the Trinity. The
Rue de Provence and the Rue Taitbout, with their lighted gas-lamps, disappeared in the distance in a yellow vapour. Muffat did not stir. That was the room. He recollected it well, hung in crimson, and with a Louis XIII. bedstead at the back of the apartment. The lamp was probably to the right, on the mantel-piece. No doubt they were in bed, for not a shadow passed the immovable line of light; and he, still watching, arranged a plan. He would ring, and hastening upstairs in spite of the door-keeper, would burst into the room and fall upon them in bed, without even giving them time to disengage their arms. The knowledge that he had no weapon arrested him for a moment. Then he decided that he would strangle them. He turned his plan over in his head, he perfected it, always awaiting something, some sign, to make him certain. Had the shadow of a woman’s form appeared at that moment, he would have rung the bell; but the thought that he was perhaps mistaken froze him. What would he be able to say? His doubts returned to him. His wife could not be with that man. The idea was monstrous and impossible; but still he stayed on, overcome by degrees by numbness, succumbing to weakness, in that long vigil, to which the fixity of his look imparted a sense of hallucination.

  The shower increased. Two police officers drew near, and he was obliged to leave the door-post against which he had sought shelter. When they had disappeared down the Rue de Provence he returned, wet and shivering. The bright line still showed across the window. This time he was going away, when a shadow passed. The movement was so rapid that he thought he might be mistaken, but one after another other shadows passed, and there seemed quite a commotion in the room. Rivetted again to the pavement opposite, he experienced an insupportable sensation of burning in the stomach. Profiles or arms and legs came and went. An enormous hand, bearing the silhouette of a water-can, glided by. He distinguished nothing clearly, yet he thought he recognised a woman’s head of hair; and he argued within himself, it was like Sabine’s head-dress, only the back of the neck seemed broader than hers. But at that hour he was incapable of determining, he could not tell. His stomach caused him so much suffering that he pressed up against a door, like a shivering outcast, to obtain relief in the agony of this frightful uncertainty. Then as, in spite of all, he could not take his eyes from off that window, his anger melted into the imagination of a moralist. He saw himself a deputy. He was speaking in the Chamber, inveighing against debauchery, prophesying catastrophes, and he repeated the arguments in Fauchery’s article on the poisonous fly, and declared that society could no longer exist with the manners and customs of the Second Empire. This did him some good. The shadows had now disappeared. No doubt they had gone back to bed. He, ever on the watch, still waited.