Complete Works of Emile Zola (624 page)

But as she left her own chamber Nana came suddenly upon Georges standing in the middle of the drawing room. Not noticing his waxen pallor and the somber fire in his wide eyes, she gave a sigh of relief.

“Ah, you’ve come from your brother.”

“No,” said the lad, growing yet paler.

At this she gave a despairing shrug. What did he want? Why was he barring her way? She was in a hurry — yes, she was. Then returning to where he stood:

“You’ve no money, have you?”

“No.”

“That’s true. How silly of me! Never a stiver; not even their omnibus fares Mamma doesn’t wish it! Oh, what a set of men!”

And she escaped. But he held her back; he wanted to speak to her. She was fairly under way and again declared she had no time, but he stopped her with a word.

“Listen, I know you’re going to marry my brother.”

Gracious! The thing was too funny! And she let herself down into a chair in order to laugh at her ease.

“Yes,” continued the lad, “and I don’t wish it. It’s I you’re going to marry. That’s why I’ve come.”

“Eh, what? You too?” she cried. “Why, it’s a family disease, is it? No, never! What a fancy, to be sure! Have I ever asked you to do anything so nasty? Neither one nor t’other of you! No, never!”

The lad’s face brightened. Perhaps he had been deceiving himself! He continued:

“Then swear to me that you don’t go to bed with my brother.”

“Oh, you’re beginning to bore me now!” said Nana, who had risen with renewed impatience. “It’s amusing for a little while, but when I tell you I’m in a hurry — I go to bed with your brother if it pleases me. Are you keeping me — are you paymaster here that you insist on my making a report? Yes, I go to bed with your brother.”

He had caught hold of her arm and squeezed it hard enough to break it as he stuttered:

“Don’t say that! Don’t say that!”

With a slight blow she disengaged herself from his grasp.

“He’s maltreating me now! Here’s a young ruffian for you! My chicken, you’ll leave this jolly sharp. I used to keep you about out of niceness. Yes, I did! You may stare! Did you think I was going to be your mamma till I died? I’ve got better things to do than to bring up brats.”

He listened to her stark with anguish, yet in utter submission. Her every word cut him to the heart so sharply that he felt he should die. She did not so much as notice his suffering and continued delightedly to revenge herself on him for the annoyance of the morning.

“It’s like your brother; he’s another pretty Johnny, he is! He promised me two hundred francs. Oh, dear me; yes, I can wait for ‘em. It isn’t his money I care for! I’ve not got enough to pay for hair oil. Yes, he’s leaving me in a jolly fix! Look here, d’you want to know how matters stand? Here goes then: it’s all owing to your brother that I’m going out to earn twenty-five louis with another man.”

At these words his head spun, and he barred her egress. He cried; he besought her not to go, clasping his hands together and blurting out:

“Oh no! Oh no!”

“I want to, I do,” she said. “Have you the money?”

No, he had not got the money. He would have given his life to have the money! Never before had he felt so miserable, so useless, so very childish. All his wretched being was shaken with weeping and gave proof of such heavy suffering that at last she noticed it and grew kind. She pushed him away softly.

“Come, my pet, let me pass; I must. Be reasonable. You’re a baby boy, and it was very nice for a week, but nowadays I must look after my own affairs. Just think it over a bit. Now your brother’s a man; what I’m saying doesn’t apply to him. Oh, please do me a favor; it’s no good telling him all this. He needn’t know where I’m going. I always let out too much when I’m in a rage.”

She began laughing. Then taking him in her arms and kissing him on the forehead:

“Good-by, baby,” she said; “it’s over, quite over between us; d’you understand? And now I’m off!”

And she left him, and he stood in the middle of the drawing room. Her last words rang like the knell of a tocsin in his ears: “It’s over, quite over!” And he thought the ground was opening beneath his feet. There was a void in his brain from which the man awaiting Nana had disappeared. Philippe alone remained there in the young woman’s bare embrace forever and ever. She did not deny it: she loved him, since she wanted to spare him the pain of her infidelity. It was over, quite over. He breathed heavily and gazed round the room, suffocating beneath a crushing weight. Memories kept recurring to him one after the other — memories of merry nights at La Mignotte, of amorous hours during which he had fancied himself her child, of pleasures stolen in this very room. And now these things would never, never recur! He was too small; he had not grown up quickly enough; Philippe was supplanting him because he was a bearded man. So then this was the end; he could not go on living. His vicious passion had become transformed into an infinite tenderness, a sensual adoration, in which his whole being was merged. Then, too, how was he to forget it all if his brother remained — his brother, blood of his blood, a second self, whose enjoyment drove him mad with jealousy? It was the end of all things; he wanted to die.

All the doors remained open, as the servants noisily scattered over the house after seeing Madame make her exit on foot. Downstairs on the bench in the hall the baker was laughing with Charles and Francois. Zoe came running across the drawing room and seemed surprised at sight of Georges. She asked him if he were waiting for Madame. Yes, he was waiting for her; he had for-gotten to give her an answer to a question. And when he was alone he set to work and searched. Finding nothing else to suit his purpose, he took up in the dressing room a pair of very sharply pointed scissors with which Nana had a mania for ceaselessly trimming herself, either by polishing her skin or cutting off little hairs. Then for a whole hour he waited patiently, his hand in his pocket and his fingers tightly clasped round the scissors.

“Here’s Madame,” said Zoe, returning. She must have espied her through the bedroom window.

There was a sound of people racing through the house, and laughter died away and doors were shut. Georges heard Nana paying the baker and speaking in the curtest way. Then she came upstairs.

“What, you’re here still!” she said as she noticed him. “Aha! We’re going to grow angry, my good man!”

He followed her as she walked toward her bedroom.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

She shrugged her shoulders. It was too stupid; she refused to answer any more and conceived the idea of slamming the door in his face.

“Nana, will you marry me?”

She slammed the door. He opened it with one hand while he brought the other and the scissors out of his pocket. And with one great stab he simply buried them in his breast.

Nana, meanwhile, had felt conscious that something dreadful would happen, and she had turned round. When she saw him stab himself she was seized with indignation.

“Oh, what a fool he is! What a fool! And with my scissors! Will you leave off, you naughty little rogue? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

She was scared. Sinking on his knees, the boy had just given himself a second stab, which sent him down at full length on the carpet. He blocked the threshold of the bedroom. With that Nana lost her head utterly and screamed with all her might, for she dared not step over his body, which shut her in and prevented her from running to seek assistance.

“Zoe! Zoe! Come at once. Make him leave off. It’s getting stupid — a child like that! He’s killing himself now! And in my place too! Did you ever see the like of it?”

He was frightening her. He was all white, and his eyes were shut. There was scarcely any bleeding — only a little blood, a tiny stain which was oozing down into his waistcoat. She was making up her mind to step over the body when an apparition sent her starting back. An old lady was advancing through the drawing-room door, which remained wide open opposite. And in her terror she recognized Mme Hugon but could not explain her presence. Still wearing her gloves and hat, Nana kept edging backward, and her terror grew so great that she sought to defend herself, and in a shaky voice:

“Madame,” she cried, “it isn’t I; I swear to you it isn’t. He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he’s killed himself!”

Slowly Mme Hugon drew near — she was in black, and her face showed pale under her white hair. In the carriage, as she drove thither, the thought of Georges had vanished and that of Philippe’s misdoing had again taken complete possession of her. It might be that this woman could afford explanations to the judges which would touch them, and so she conceived the project of begging her to bear witness in her son’s favor. Downstairs the doors of the house stood open, but as she mounted to the first floor her sick feet failed her, and she was hesitating as to which way to go when suddenly horror-stricken cries directed her. Then upstairs she found a man lying on the floor with bloodstained shirt. It was Georges — it was her other child.

Nana, in idiotic tones, kept saying:

“He wanted to marry me, and I said no, and he’s killed himself.”

Uttering no cry, Mme Hugon stooped down. Yes, it was the other one; it was Georges. The one was brought to dishonor, the other murdered! It caused her no surprise, for her whole life was ruined. Kneeling on the carpet, utterly forgetting where she was, noticing no one else, she gazed fixedly at her boy’s face and listened with her hand on his heart. Then she gave a feeble sigh — she had felt the heart beating. And with that she lifted her head and scrutinized the room and the woman and seemed to remember. A fire glowed forth in her vacant eyes, and she looked so great and terrible in her silence that Nana trembled as she continued to defend herself above the body that divided them.

“I swear it, madame! If his brother were here he could explain it to you.”

“His brother has robbed — he is in prison,” said the mother in a hard voice.

Nana felt a choking sensation. Why, what was the reason of it all? The other had turned thief now! They were mad in that family! She ceased struggling in self-defense; she seemed no longer mistress in her own house and allowed Mme Hugon to give what orders she liked. The servants had at last hurried up, and the old lady insisted on their carrying the fainting Georges down to her carriage. She preferred killing him rather than letting him remain in that house. With an air of stupefaction Nana watched the retreating servants as they supported poor, dear Zizi by his legs and shoulders. The mother walked behind them in a state of collapse; she supported herself against the furniture; she felt as if all she held dear had vanished in the void. On the landing a sob escaped her; she turned and twice ejaculated:

“Oh, but you’ve done us infinite harm! You’ve done us infinite harm!”

That was all. In her stupefaction Nana had sat down; she still wore her gloves and her hat. The house once more lapsed into heavy silence; the carriage had driven away, and she sat motionless, not knowing what to do next, her head swimming after all she had gone through. A quarter of an hour later Count Muffat found her thus, but at sight of him she relieved her feelings in an overflowing current of talk. She told him all about the sad incident, repeated the same details twenty times over, picked up the bloodstained scissors in order to imitate Zizi’s gesture when he stabbed himself. And above all she nursed the idea of proving her own innocence.

“Look you here, dearie, is it my fault? If you were the judge would you condemn me? I certainly didn’t tell Philippe to meddle with the till any more than I urged that wretched boy to kill himself. I’ve been most unfortunate throughout it all. They come and do stupid things in my place; they make me miserable; they treat me like a hussy.”

And she burst into tears. A fit of nervous expansiveness rendered her soft and doleful, and her immense distress melted her utterly.

“And you, too, look as if you weren’t satisfied. Now do just ask Zoe if I’m at all mixed up in it. Zoe, do speak: explain to Monsieur — “

The lady’s maid, having brought a towel and a basin of water out of the dressing room, had for some moments past been rubbing the carpet in order to remove the bloodstains before they dried.

“Oh, monsieur,” she declared, “Madame is utterly miserable!”

Muffat was still stupefied; the tragedy had frozen him, and his imagination was full of the mother weeping for her sons. He knew her greatness of heart and pictured her in her widow’s weeds, withering solitarily away at Les Fondettes. But Nana grew ever more despondent, for now the memory of Zizi lying stretched on the floor, with a red hole in his shirt, almost drove her senseless.

“He used to be such a darling, so sweet and caressing. Oh, you know, my pet — I’m sorry if it vexes you — I loved that baby! I can’t help saying so; the words must out. Besides, now it ought not to hurt you at all. He’s gone. You’ve got what you wanted; you’re quite certain never to surprise us again.”

And this last reflection tortured her with such regret that he ended by turning comforter. Well, well, he said, she ought to be brave; she was quite right; it wasn’t her fault! But she checked her lamentations of her own accord in order to say:

“Listen, you must run round and bring me news of him. At once! I wish it!”

He took his hat and went to get news of Georges. When he returned after some three quarters of an hour he saw Nana leaning anxiously out of a window, and he shouted up to her from the pavement that the lad was not dead and that they even hoped to bring him through. At this she immediately exchanged grief for excess of joy and began to sing and dance and vote existence delightful. Zoe, meanwhile, was still dissatisfied with her washing. She kept looking at the stain, and every time she passed it she repeated:

“You know it’s not gone yet, madame.”

As a matter of fact, the pale red stain kept reappearing on one of the white roses in the carpet pattern. It was as though, on the very threshold of the room, a splash of blood were barring the doorway.

“Bah!” said the joyous Nana. “That’ll be rubbed out under people’s feet.”

After the following day Count Muffat had likewise forgotten the incident. For a moment or two, when in the cab which drove him to the Rue Richelieu, he had busily sworn never to return to that woman’s house. Heaven was warning him; the misfortunes of Philippe and Georges were, he opined, prophetic of his proper ruin. But neither the sight of Mme Hugon in tears nor that of the boy burning with fever had been strong enough to make him keep his vow, and the short-lived horror of the situation had only left behind it a sense of secret delight at the thought that he was now well quit of a rival, the charm of whose youth had always exasperated him. His passion had by this time grown exclusive; it was, indeed, the passion of a man who has had no youth. He loved Nana as one who yearned to be her sole possessor, to listen to her, to touch her, to be breathed on by her. His was now a supersensual tenderness, verging on pure sentiment; it was an anxious affection and as such was jealous of the past and apt at times to dream of a day of redemption and pardon received, when both should kneel before God the Father. Every day religion kept regaining its influence over him. He again became a practicing Christian; he confessed himself and communicated, while a ceaseless struggle raged within him, and remorse redoubled the joys of sin and of repentance. Afterward, when his director gave him leave to spend his passion, he had made a habit of this daily perdition and would redeem the same by ecstasies of faith, which were full of pious humility. Very naively he offered heaven, by way of expiatory anguish, the abominable torment from which he was suffering. This torment grew and increased, and he would climb his Calvary with the deep and solemn feelings of a believer, though steeped in a harlot’s fierce sensuality. That which made his agony most poignant was this woman’s continued faithlessness. He could not share her with others, nor did he understand her imbecile caprices. Undying, unchanging love was what he wished for. However, she had sworn, and he paid her as having done so. But he felt that she was untruthful, incapable of common fidelity, apt to yield to friends, to stray passers-by, like a good-natured animal, born to live minus a shift.