Complete Works of Emile Zola (603 page)

“It’s the plain-clothes men!” whispered Satin. “Off with you! Off with you!” A wild stampede took place amid the surging crowd. Skirts streamed out behind and were torn. There were blows and shrieks. A woman fell down. The crowd of bystanders stood hilariously watching this rough police raid while the plain-clothes men rapidly narrowed their circle. Meanwhile Nana had lost Satin. Her legs were failing her, and she would have been taken up for a certainty had not a man caught her by the arm and led her away in front of the angry police. It was Prulliere, and he had just recognized her. Without saying a word he turned down the Rue Rougemont with her. It was just then quite deserted, and she was able to regain breath there, but at first her faintness and exhaustion were such that he had to support her. She did not even thank him.

“Look here,” he said, “you must recover a bit. Come up to my rooms.”

He lodged in the Rue Bergere close by. But she straightened herself up at once.

“No, I don’t want to.”

Thereupon he waxed coarse and rejoined:

“Why don’t you want to, eh? Why, everybody visits my rooms.”

“Because I don’t.”

In her opinion that explained everything. She was too fond of Fontan to betray him with one of his friends. The other people ceased to count the moment there was no pleasure in the business, and necessity compelled her to it. In view of her idiotic obstinacy Prulliere, as became a pretty fellow whose vanity had been wounded, did a cowardly thing.

“Very well, do as you like!” he cried. “Only I don’t side with you, my dear. You must get out of the scrape by yourself.”

And with that he left her. Terrors got hold of her again, and scurrying past shops and turning white whenever a man drew nigh, she fetched an immense compass before reaching Montmartre.

On the morrow, while still suffering from the shock of last night’s terrors, Nana went to her aunt’s and at the foot of a small empty street in the Batignolles found herself face to face with Labordette. At first they both appeared embarrassed, for with his usual complaisance he was busy on a secret errand. Nevertheless, he was the first to regain his self-possession and to announce himself fortunate in meeting her. Yes, certainly, everybody was still wondering at Nana’s total eclipse. People were asking for her, and old friends were pining. And with that he grew quite paternal and ended by sermonizing.

“Frankly speaking, between you and me, my dear, the thing’s getting stupid. One can understand a mash, but to go to that extent, to be trampled on like that and to get nothing but knocks! Are you playing up for the ‘Virtue Prizes’ then?”

She listened to him with an embarrassed expression. But when he told her about Rose, who was triumphantly enjoying her conquest of Count Muffat, a flame came into her eyes.

“Oh, if I wanted to — “ she muttered.

As became an obliging friend, he at once offered to act as intercessor. But she refused his help, and he thereupon attacked her in an opposite quarter.

He informed her that Bordenave was busy mounting a play of Fauchery’s containing a splendid part for her.

“What, a play with a part!” she cried in amazement. “But he’s in it and he’s told me nothing about it!”

She did not mention Fontan by name. However, she grew calm again directly and declared that she would never go on the stage again. Labordette doubtless remained unconvinced, for he continued with smiling insistence.

“You know, you need fear nothing with me. I get your Muffat ready for you, and you go on the stage again, and I bring him to you like a little dog!”

“No!” she cried decisively.

And she left him. Her heroic conduct made her tenderly pitiful toward herself. No blackguard of a man would ever have sacrificed himself like that without trumpeting the fact abroad. Nevertheless, she was struck by one thing: Labordette had given her exactly the same advice as Francis had given her. That evening when Fontan came home she questioned him about Fauchery’s piece. The former had been back at the Varietes for two months past. Why then had he not told her about the part?

“What part?” he said in his ill-humored tone. “The grand lady’s part, maybe? The deuce, you believe you’ve got talent then! Why, such a part would utterly do for you, my girl! You’re meant for comic business — there’s no denying it!”

She was dreadfully wounded. All that evening he kept chaffing her, calling her Mlle Mars. But the harder he hit the more bravely she suffered, for she derived a certain bitter satisfaction from this heroic devotion of hers, which rendered her very great and very loving in her own eyes. Ever since she had gone with other men in order to supply his wants her love for him had increased, and the fatigues and disgusts encountered outside only added to the flame. He was fast becoming a sort of pet vice for which she paid, a necessity of existence it was impossible to do without, seeing that blows only stimulated her desires. He, on his part, seeing what a good tame thing she had become, ended by abusing his privileges. She was getting on his nerves, and he began to conceive so fierce a loathing for her that he forgot to keep count of his real interests. When Bosc made his customary remarks to him he cried out in exasperation, for which there was no apparent cause, that he had had enough of her and of her good dinners and that he would shortly chuck her out of doors if only for the sake of making another woman a present of his seven thousand francs. Indeed, that was how their liaison ended.

One evening Nana came in toward eleven o’clock and found the door bolted. She tapped once — there was no answer; twice — still no answer. Meanwhile she saw light under the door, and Fontan inside did not trouble to move. She rapped again unwearyingly; she called him and began to get annoyed. At length Fontan’s voice became audible; he spoke slowly and rather unctuously and uttered but this one word.

“MERDE!”

She beat on the door with her fists.

“MERDE!”

She banged hard enough to smash in the woodwork.

“MERDE!”

And for upward of a quarter of an hour the same foul expression buffeted her, answering like a jeering echo to every blow wherewith she shook the door. At length, seeing that she was not growing tired, he opened sharply, planted himself on the threshold, folded his arms and said in the same cold, brutal voice:

“By God, have you done yet? What d’you want? Are you going to let us sleep in peace, eh? You can quite see I’ve got company tonight.”

He was certainly not alone, for Nana perceived the little woman from the Bouffes with the untidy tow hair and the gimlet-hole eyes, standing enjoying herself in her shift among the furniture she had paid for. But Fontan stepped out on the landing. He looked terrible, and he spread out and crooked his great fingers as if they were pincers.

“Hook it or I’ll strangle you!”

Whereupon Nana burst into a nervous fit of sobbing. She was frightened and she made off. This time it was she that was being kicked out of doors. And in her fury the thought of Muffat suddenly occurred to her. Ah, to be sure, Fontan, of all men, ought never to have done her such a turn!

When she was out in the street her first thought was to go and sleep with Satin, provided the girl had no one with her. She met her in front of her house, for she, too, had been turned out of doors by her landlord. He had just had a padlock affixed to her door — quite illegally, of course, seeing that she had her own furniture. She swore and talked of having him up before the commissary of police. In the meantime, as midnight was striking, they had to begin thinking of finding a bed. And Satin, deeming it unwise to let the plain-clothes men into her secrets, ended by taking Nana to a woman who kept a little hotel in the Rue de Laval. Here they were assigned a narrow room on the first floor, the window of which opened on the courtyard. Satin remarked:

“I should gladly have gone to Mme Robert’s. There’s always a corner there for me. But with you it’s out of the question. She’s getting absurdly jealous; she beat me the other night.”

When they had shut themselves in, Nana, who had not yet relieved her feelings, burst into tears and again and again recounted Fontan’s dirty behavior. Satin listened complaisantly, comforted her, grew even more angry than she in denunciation of the male sex.

“Oh, the pigs, the pigs! Look here, we’ll have nothing more to do with them!”

Then she helped Nana to undress with all the small, busy attentions, becoming a humble little friend. She kept saying coaxingly:

“Let’s go to bed as fast as we can, pet. We shall be better off there! Oh, how silly you are to get crusty about things! I tell you, they’re dirty brutes. Don’t think any more about ‘em. I — I love you very much. Don’t cry, and oblige your own little darling girl.”

And once in bed, she forthwith took Nana in her arms and soothed and comforted her. She refused to hear Fontan’s name mentioned again, and each time it recurred to her friend’s lips she stopped it with a kiss. Her lips pouted in pretty indignation; her hair lay loose about her, and her face glowed with tenderness and childlike beauty. Little by little her soft embrace compelled Nana to dry her tears. She was touched and replied to Satin’s caresses. When two o’clock struck the candle was still burning, and a sound of soft, smothered laughter and lovers’ talk was audible in the room.

But suddenly a loud noise came up from the lower floors of the hotel, and Satin, with next to nothing on, got up and listened intently.

“The police!” she said, growing very pale.

“Oh, blast our bad luck! We’re bloody well done for!”

Often had she told stories about the raids on hotel made by the plainclothes men. But that particular night neither of them had suspected anything when they took shelter in the Rue de Laval. At the sound of the word “police” Nana lost her head. She jumped out of bed and ran across the room with the scared look of a madwoman about to jump out of the window. Luckily, however, the little courtyard was roofed with glass, which was covered with an iron-wire grating at the level of the girls’ bedroom. At sight of this she ceased to hesitate; she stepped over the window prop, and with her chemise flying and her legs bared to the night air she vanished in the gloom.

“Stop! Stop!” said Satin in a great fright. “You’ll kill yourself.”

Then as they began hammering at the door, she shut the window like a good-natured girl and threw her friend’s clothes down into a cupboard. She was already resigned to her fate and comforted herself with the thought that, after all, if she were to be put on the official list she would no longer be so “beastly frightened” as of yore. So she pretended to be heavy with sleep. She yawned; she palavered and ended by opening the door to a tall, burly fellow with an unkempt beard, who said to her:

“Show your hands! You’ve got no needle pricks on them: you don’t work. Now then, dress!”

“But I’m not a dressmaker; I’m a burnisher,” Satin brazenly declared.

Nevertheless, she dressed with much docility, knowing that argument was out of the question. Cries were ringing through the hotel; a girl was clinging to doorposts and refusing to budge an inch. Another girl, in bed with a lover, who was answering for her legality, was acting the honest woman who had been grossly insulted and spoke of bringing an action against the prefect of police. For close on an hour there was a noise of heavy shoes on the stairs, of fists hammering on doors, of shrill disputes terminating in sobs, of petticoats rustling along the walls, of all the sounds, in fact, attendant on the sudden awakening and scared departure of a flock of women as they were roughly packed off by three plain-clothes men, headed by a little oily-mannered, fair-haired commissary of police. After they had gone the hotel relapsed into deep silence.

Nobody had betrayed her; Nana was saved. Shivering and half dead with fear, she came groping back into the room. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding, for they had been torn by the grating. For a long while she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, listening and listening. Toward morning, however, she went to sleep again, and at eight o’clock, when she woke up, she escaped from the hotel and ran to her aunt’s. When Mme Lerat, who happened just then to be drinking her morning coffee with Zoe, beheld her bedraggled plight and haggard face, she took note of the hour and at once understood the state of the case.

“It’s come to it, eh?” she cried. “I certainly told you that he would take the skin off your back one of these days. Well, well, come in; you’ll always find a kind welcome here.”

Zoe had risen from her chair and was muttering with respectful familiarity:

“Madame is restored to us at last. I was waiting for Madame.”

But Mme Lerat insisted on Nana’s going and kissing Louiset at once, because, she said, the child took delight in his mother’s nice ways. Louiset, a sickly child with poor blood, was still asleep, and when Nana bent over his white, scrofulous face, the memory of all she had undergone during the last few months brought a choking lump into her throat.

“Oh, my poor little one, my poor little one!” she gasped, bursting into a final fit of sobbing.

CHAPTER IX

The Petite Duchesse was being rehearsed at the Varietes. The first act had just been carefully gone through, and the second was about to begin. Seated in old armchairs in front of the stage, Fauchery and Bordenave were discussing various points while the prompter, Father Cossard, a little humpbacked man perched on a straw-bottomed chair, was turning over the pages of the manuscript, a pencil between his lips.

“Well, what are they waiting for?” cried Bordenave on a sudden, tapping the floor savagely with his heavy cane. “Barillot, why don’t they begin?”

“It’s Monsieur Bosc that has disappeared,” replied Barillot, who was acting as second stage manager.’

Then there arose a tempest, and everybody shouted for Bosc while Bordenave swore.

“Always the same thing, by God! It’s all very well ringing for ‘em: they’re always where they’ve no business to be. And then they grumble when they’re kept till after four o’clock.”

But Bosc just then came in with supreme tranquillity.

“Eh? What? What do they want me for? Oh, it’s my turn! You ought to have said so. All right! Simonne gives the cue: ‘Here are the guests,’ and I come in. Which way must I come in?”