by Émile Zola
‘Coming to dinner on Thursday, Dubuche? … The others are all coming, Fagerolles, Mahoudeau, Jory, Gagnière.’
Every Thursday a whole gang of young men used to meet at Sandoz’s flat, friends from Plassans, others they had made in Paris, all revolutionaries, every one animated by the same passion for art.
‘Next Thursday? I don’t think so,’ Dubuche replied. ‘I have to go and call on some people; they’re giving a dance.’
‘And what do you expect to get out of that, a handsome wife with a nice fat dowry?’
‘I could do worse, I expect. That’s quite an idea!’
He tapped his pipe in his left palm to empty it, and then suddenly announced:
‘I was forgetting! … I’ve had a letter from Pouillaud.’
‘You too! … He’s certainly been pouring his heart out by the look of it … Pity he’s gone to the bad as he has.’
‘What do you mean? He’ll carry on his father’s business and get through his money in comfort at Plassans. What’s wrong with that? I always said he’d teach us all a lesson, even though he did play the fool. … He was a one, was Pouillaud!’
Sandoz, furious, was just about to retort when a despairing oath from Claude cut him short. Since he had insisted on going on working, Claude had never opened his lips; he did not even seem to notice the presence of his two friends.
‘To hell with the thing! Missed it again! … I’m hopeless, I must be! Never will be any good!’
In his blind fury he was about to put his fist through his canvas, but his friends restrained him just in time. It was childish, they said, to flare up like that. What good would it do him to ruin his work and regret it ever afterwards? Claude, quivering with wrath, made no reply, but stood glaring at the picture, his eyes burning with the unspeakable torture of his impotence. His hands had refused once more to produce anything clear or lifelike; the woman’s bosom he had been painting was simply a dauby mess of dull colour, the flesh he worshipped and had dreamed of reproducing with such brilliance was drab and lifeless. He could not even set it in its proper plane. What could be wrong with his brain that he almost thought he could hear it snap under the strain of his futile efforts? Could there be something wrong with his eyes that impaired his vision? Were his hands no longer his, since they refused to carry out his intentions? What drove him to distraction was the infuriating thought of the hereditary something, he did not know what, that sometimes made creation a sheer pleasure and at other times reduced him to such complete sterility that he forgot the very basics of drawing. It was like being swept up into some sickening vortex and filled with the urge to create while everything was being swirled away from one—pride in one’s work, hopes of success, the very meaning of one’s life!
‘Listen, Claude,’ said Sandoz, ‘we’re not blaming you, but it’s half-past six and we’re both famished. … Be a good fellow and come out with us.’
But Claude was busy cleaning a corner of his palette. He squeezed out more colours and replied, in a voice like thunder:
‘No!’
For ten whole minutes nobody uttered a word, while the artist, beside himself, struggled with his painting. The other two sat there, anxious and downcast, wondering what they could do to calm him. There was a knock on the door. It was the architect who got up to open it.
‘Hello! If it isn’t Malgras!’
The dealer was a big man with white, cropped hair and a red face mottled with purple which, combined with the old, very dirty green greatcoat in which he was enveloped, made him look like a down-at-heel cabby.
‘I happened to be passing,’ he said in his husky, drinker’s voice, ‘when I spotted monsieur at the window, so I thought I’d come up. …’
He stopped short, receiving no response from the painter who, with a gesture of impatience, had turned firmly towards his canvas. Otherwise, Malgras was in no way perturbed; quite at his ease, he just stood there and ran his bloodshot eyes over the unfinished picture. He appraised it candidly in a sentence compounded of irony and sympathy.
‘There’s a creation for you!’
Then, as nobody said a word, he ambled quietly round the studio, looking at the walls.
Under his thick shell of dirt, old Malgras was a smart dealer with a taste and a flair for good painting. He never wasted his time on second-raters, but instinctively went straight for the original, though still unrecognized painters whose future his flamboyant, drunkard’s nose could sniff out from afar. What was more, he drove a very hard bargain and would stop at nothing to acquire a coveted picture dirt cheap. After that he would be satisfied with a relatively honest profit, twenty per cent or at most thirty, as he ran his business on a basis of quick returns, never buying anything in the morning without knowing which of his customers would buy it in the evening. As a liar, he was superb.
Near the door, he stood for a long while contemplating the nude studies painted at Boutin’s; his eyes lit up with the pleasure of a connoisseur, though he kept them carefully shaded under his heavy lids. He had talent, great talent, and a real feeling for life, this young maniac, if only he wouldn’t waste his time on things that nobody wanted!
Those little girl’s legs, that woman’s body, they were a delight to look at, but they wouldn’t sell. He had already made his choice—that little landscape, a bit of the Plassans country, both forceful and delicate, but he pretended not to be looking at it. Then, after a time, he went up to it and said, in his off-hand way:
‘What’s this? Oh, one of the little things you did in Provence. … Too crude. I still haven’t sold the last two.’
Then he rambled on lackadaisically:
‘You may refuse to believe me, Monsieur Lantier, but they just don’t sell, they just don’t. At home I’ve a room crammed with that sort of thing, so full that I’m afraid I’ll put my foot through something every time I turn round. I can’t carry on like that, you know, I really can’t. I shall have to sell them off cheap, and that means the poor-house. … Now you know me, Monsieur Lantier. You know my heart’s bigger than my pocket and there’s nothing I like better than to oblige young men of talent like yourself. And you have talent, no doubt about it, and don’t I keep telling ’em you have? But they won’t bite. Believe it or not, they just won’t bite!’
He piled up the emotion very cleverly, then, with the impulse of someone who cannot resist extravagance, added:
‘Ah well, I can’t go away empty-handed. … How much for this little thing?’
Claude, angry and still very agitated, went on painting and did not even look round as he snapped out:
‘Twenty francs.’
‘Twenty francs! You’re mad! You let me have the others at ten francs a time. … I’ll give you eight, take it or leave it.’
Usually Claude gave way at once. He had no patience with bargaining and at heart he was only too glad to make a little money. But this time he stood firm and told the dealer to his face what he thought about him; to which Malgras replied in kind, stripped him of all his talent, cursed him roundly, and called him an ungrateful young puppy. Then, taking out of his pocket, one at a time, three five-franc pieces, he pitched them one after the other on to the table where they fell chinking among the dirty crockery.
‘One, two, three! … and that’s the last, understand! There’s one too many already. But you’ll pay it back; I’ll knock it off something else, you see if I don’t. … Fifteen francs for that bit of a thing! You’ll be sorry for this, my lad! You’ll wish you’d never done it.’
Claude was exhausted. He let the old dealer take down the picture himself, and it disappeared as if by magic into the green greatcoat. Had he slipped it into some special pocket, or tucked it away under the lapel? Wherever it was, it did not show.
Having worked his trick, Malgras, suddenly calm, made as if to go, then turned back and said good-naturedly:
‘Look, Lantier, I want a lobster. … Can you manage one? It’s the least you can do, surely, after skinning me like this. Good, I’ll provi
de the lobster, you’ll do me a nice still-life and you can keep it for your trouble and eat it with your friends. How’s that? Agreed?’
At this proposal, Sandoz and Dubuche, who had been taking everything in, burst into such peals of laughter that Malgras had to laugh with them. Oh, these good-for-nothing painters! Starving, every one of them. What would they do, the lazy spongers, if old Malgras didn’t show up now and again with a nice leg of lamb or a fine fresh brill, or a lobster complete with bunch of parsley?
‘I get my lobster then, Lantier? … Good … Many thanks.’
He was back again in front of the big canvas. He gave a smile of mocking admiration, then took his leave, repeating:
‘There’s a creation for you!’
Claude would have picked up palette and brushes again, but his legs gave way beneath him and his arms dropped heavily to his sides as if bound to his body by some irresistible force. He staggered blindly across to his half-formed picture and, through the dreary silence that followed Malgras’s departure, he stammered:
‘No, impossible! … I’m finished! … That swine’s finished me!’
The cuckoo had just called seven o’clock, which meant that he had worked for eight solid hours with nothing to eat but a crust, without a moment’s rest, on his feet the whole time and trembling with fever. Now the sun was going down, and the studio was filling with shadows, imparting a feeling of overpowering melancholy to the end of the day. When the light filtered away like this after a bout of fruitless labour, it felt as if the sun had disappeared for ever and taken with it all the life and gaiety and harmony of colours.
‘Come on, Claude,’ begged Sandoz, moved almost to tears by his friend’s despair. ‘Come and have some dinner.’
‘Yes, come and have some dinner,’ repeated Dubuche, and added: ‘You’ll get it all sorted out in the morning.’
For a time Claude refused to give in. He stood riveted to the floor, deaf to their friendly voices, in grim determination. What he wanted to do now that his fingers were so numb they could not grip the brush, he did not know, but he refused to acknowledge his impotence, burning with the mad desire to do something, to create something in spite of it. Even if he did nothing, he was going to stay where he was, he was not going to retreat before his difficulties. Finally, a tremor ran through his body like some long sob, and he made his move. Seizing a broad palette knife, with one slow, deliberate stroke he scraped off the head and shoulders of the reclining woman. It was murder he was committing, total obliteration in a mess of pulpy, muddy pigment. So all that remained, stretched out beside the man in the powerful jacket while in the background two lively female figures rolled and frolicked on the bright green turf, was a naked woman’s body with neither head nor shoulders, a mutilated trunk, a vague, corpselike shape, the dead flesh of the beauty of his dreams.
Dubuche and Sandoz were already clattering down the wooden stairs. Claude went after them, suffering unspeakable torture at the thought of leaving his picture as it was, disfigured by an ugly, gaping wound.
Chapter 3
The week had started with disaster. Claude was plunged in one of his fits of doubt which made him hate painting with the hatred of a betrayed lover who curses his false mistress though tortured by the knowledge that he loves her still. On Thursday, after three horrible days of fruitless, solitary struggle, he was so disheartened that by eight o’clock in the morning he had walked out of his studio, slamming the door behind him and swearing he would never touch a brush again as long as he lived. Whenever he succumbed to a fit of depression he knew there was only one way of throwing it off: by getting away from himself, either by having a good healthy argument with some of his friends or, better still, by walking it off, tramping the streets of Paris till the heat and the smell of battle that rises from their paving stones had given him heart again.
This Thursday he was dining as usual with Sandoz, who was at home to his friends every Thursday evening. But what was he going to do until then? He could not bear the idea of being alone with his gnawing despair, and would have gone straight to look up Sandoz if he had not remembered that the latter would be engaged at his office. He wondered about Dubuche, then hesitated, as their old friendliness had been cooler of late. The brotherly sympathy in times of stress had weakened; Dubuche had other ambitions now, and Claude was not unaware of a certain obtuseness, not to say hostility, in his attitude. Still, whom else could he turn to? So he decided to take the risk and made for the Rue Jacob where the architect occupied a box of a room on the sixth floor of a big cold house.
Claude had already reached the second floor when the concierge shrieked up to him that Monsieur Dubuche was out and had not been in all night. He was so staggered by this outrageous announcement—the idea of Dubuche having an ‘affair’!—that it was some moments before he emerged on to the street again. This was a stroke of ill-luck he had not bargained for. What should he do now? Hovering on the corner of the Rue de Seine, wondering which way to go next, he suddenly remembered that Dubuche had talked of working all night at Duquersonnière’s studio, the night before the last day for sending in drawings for the Beaux-Arts Diploma competition. So he turned up towards the Rue du Four in the direction of the studio. Up to now he had always avoided going there for Dubuche, because of the jibes and cat-calls which always greeted outsiders. But today, emboldened by his agonizing solitude, he cast shyness to the winds and made straight for it, ready to face all manner of abuse to gain a companion in his troubles.
The studio was at the back of an old, weather-beaten building in the narrowest part of the Rue du Four. To reach it he had to go through two filthy courtyards into a third, across which had been built a sort of hut of lath and plaster, formerly occupied by a packing-agent. From outside all that could be seen through the four big windows was the bare, whitewashed ceiling, for the lower panes had been rubbed with whitening.
Claude went in, closed the door behind him, but stopped where he was, on the threshold. It was a huge place, with rows of students sitting at four wide, double tables set at right-angles to the windows and cluttered with damp sponges, paint-pots, jars of water, iron candlesticks and the wooden boxes in which the students left their white overalls, compasses and colours. In one corner, which was obviously never swept out, stood a large, rusty stove and the remains of last winter’s coke. On the wall at the other end, between a pair of hand-towels, hung a big zinc water-cistern. The walls themselves, in this vast, bare, unkempt barn of a place, afforded a remarkable spectacle. Around their upper half ran shelves loaded with a nondescript collection of plaster casts; the lower half was hidden behind a barricade of drawing boards strapped together in bundles and a forest of T-squares and set squares; while the spaces which were left uncovered had gradually been filled up with drawings and scribblings, like scum splashed over the margins of an ever-open book. These were caricatures of people, sketches of unmentionable objects, expressions to make a gendarme blench; there were maxims, calculations, and addresses, the whole outshone by the plain, laconic statement chalked up in big letters in the place of honour: ‘On the seventh of June Gorju said, “To hell with Rome”: signed, Godemard.’*
Claude was welcomed by a sort of general growl, the growl of wild beasts disturbed in their lair, and he stood in amazement at the sight of the place on the morning after ‘tumbril night’, as the architecture students call their last night of work for their diploma. Since the previous evening the entire studio, sixty students, had been shut up in this place, the ones who were not competing, the ‘slaves’, giving a hand to the ones who were behind with their drawings and trying to squeeze a whole week’s work into twelve hours. At midnight they had feasted on cold meats and cheap wine. About one a.m., for dessert, they had sent out for three ladies from a neighbouring brothel. And so, without interrupting the work, the feast had developed into a Roman orgy thinly veiled in tobacco smoke. The last traces of it were still in evidence, strewn about the floor, greasy papers, broken bottles, sinister little pools now
slowly sinking into the boards, while the whole place reeked of a mixture of burnt-out candles, the pungent musk used by the ladies, cold sausage, and wine.
‘Outside! Outside! … What an idiot! … What’s he after? … Who is this dummy? … Outside!’ they bawled, like a lot of savages.
Claude, somewhat daunted by the outburst, wavered for a moment, wondering what to do. But by the time they had reached the refined stage of seeing who could bring out the most disgusting epithets, he had rallied and was just about to retaliate when Dubuche recognized him and blushed furiously, for he hated to be involved in situations of this kind. He was ashamed of Claude, and received his own share of jeers as he rushed up to him, spluttering with rage:
‘How could you? … I told you never to come inside! … Wait for me in the yard.’
As he backed out, Claude was nearly bowled over by a small handcart which two bearded giants were just rushing into the yard. This was the ‘tumbril’ to which last night’s work owed its name and to which for the past week the students whose outside jobs had made them behind with their studio work had been referring when they groaned they were ‘booked for the tumbril’. Now it was here, there was pandemonium. It was a quarter to nine, just time to get to the Beaux-Arts. The studio emptied in a general stampede; everybody elbowing his way out with his mounted drawing; the ones who wanted to hang back and put on the odd finishing touch were soon hustled out with the rest. In less than five minutes all the drawings were piled up in the cart, and the two bearded giants, the most junior members of the studio, harnessed between the shafts, raced away with their load while the rest of the mob streamed after them, shouting and pushing behind. They roared through the other two yards like a river in spate and poured out into the roadway, flooding the street with their din.
