by Émile Zola
As it happened Claude came home very late, full of life, his eyes sparkling with some secret pleasure. He was famished, of course, and made a scene because the table was not laid. Then, as he sat between Christine and little Jacques, he gulped down the soup and devoured a large helping of potatoes.
‘Is this all there is?’ he asked. ‘You surely might have managed a scrap of meat. … Or have you been buying more boots?’
She made some faltering reply, not daring to tell the truth and deeply wounded by his unjust remark. Claude, however, was irrepressible and went on teasing her about the way she made the money go on odds and ends for herself. Then, more and more excited by the keen sensations he seemed disinclined to share, even with Christine, he suddenly turned on Jacques.
‘For God’s sake be quiet!’ he cried.
Jacques, uninterested in his food, was tapping with his spoon on the rim of his plate and looking delighted with the din.
‘Jacques! Stop that noise!’ added his mother. ‘Let father enjoy his meal in peace!’
Scared, and suddenly completely calmed, the child resumed his stolid silence and sat gazing glumly at his potatoes, which he made no attempt to eat.
Claude deliberately ate large quantities of cheese while Christine, mortified, talked about fetching some cooked meat from the charcutier’s. But he would not hear of it; he kept her talking, saying things which cut her to the heart. When the table had been cleared and they were all three settled for the evening around the lighted lamp, Christine sewing, Jacques quietly looking at a picture-book, Claude kept drumming on the table with his fingers, his mind far, far away, where he had been during the day. Suddenly he got up, took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and, sitting down at the table in the bright ring of light from the lamp, began to make a rapid sketch. It soon became obvious, however, that the sketch, drawn from memory in the urge to exteriorize the tumult of ideas in his brain, was a far from adequate outlet for his activity. It simply increased his need to express himself until at last the cause of his excitement found its way to his lips and he was able to find relief in a spate of words. He would have talked to the walls had he been alone; as Christine happened to be there he addressed his talk to her:
‘Look!’ he said. ‘It’s what we saw yesterday. …A superb sight! I spent three hours there today, and now I’ve got it. Just what I want. Amazing! A knock-out, if ever there was one! … Look, this is it. I stand under the bridge, with the Port Saint-Nicolas, the crane and the barges with all the porters busy unloading them, in the foreground, see? That’s Paris at work, understand: hefty labourers, with bare arms and chests and plenty of muscle! … Now on the other side, there’s the swimming-bath, Paris at play this time. There’ll be an odd boat or something there, to fill the centre, but I’m not too sure about that. I shall have to work it out a bit first. … There’ll be the Seine, of course, between the two, a good broad stretch. …’
As he talked he lined things in with his pencil, going over some of the more sketchy parts time after time and with so much energy that he cut clean through the paper. To please him Christine leaned across and pretended to be keenly interested in all his explanations, though the sketch, rapidly overloaded with endless summary details, soon became such an inextricable tangle of lines that she could make nothing of it at all.
‘You see what I mean?’ he asked.
‘Why, yes, of course! It’s lovely!’ she answered.
‘Well, in the background, I have the two vistas of river, with the embankments, and in the centre, towering in triumph on the skyline, the Cité. … It’s a marvel, when you come to think of it. You see it every day, you don’t even stop to look at it, but it somehow gets into you, your admiration accumulates and then, all of a sudden, one fine afternoon, you’re aware of it. There’s nothing in the world to touch it! It’s Paris in all its glory in a blaze of sunshine! … Wasn’t I a fool not to think of it before? The times I’ve looked at it and never really seen it! It was sheer luck that made me stop where I did after our walk along the embankment. … And, do you remember, there’s a patch of shadow just here, and there direct sunlight; there are the towers and there the Sainte-Chapelle with the spire tapering away to a needle-point in the sky. … No, not there; farther to the right. Wait. I’ll show you. …’
Never tiring, he went over the entire drawing again, branching out into endless little characteristic touches his painter’s eye had noted: here, the striking red of a shop-sign in the distance; here, a little nearer, the river looked green and there were patches of oil on the surface; the subtle colouring of some particular tree, the various greys of the buildings, the particular luminous quality of the sky. And Christine, meaning well, would always approve and try to show the necessary enthusiasm.
Jacques meanwhile had begun to assert himself again. After a long period of silence spent in contemplating the picture of a black cat in his book, he began to sing quietly to himself, on and on, to the same dreary tune:
‘Oh, nice, nice cat! Oh, naughty, naughty cat! Oh, nice, nice, naughty, naughty cat!’
To Claude, for a time, it was just a monotonous noise, and he could not understand why it annoyed him so much as a background to his talk. Then, suddenly, he grasped the meaning of the child’s tiresome ditty and burst out with a furious:
‘Damn that cat! And stop that row!’
And Christine added:
‘Yes, Jacques, do be quiet when father’s talking!’
‘The kid’s an idiot, if you ask me,’ Claude went on. ‘Look at that head of his; he looks an idiot! Oh! It’s enough to. … What do you mean, “nice cat, naughty cat”? Which is it?’
To which little Jacques, white with fear and wagging his big head, replied in bewilderment:
‘Don’t know.’
And as his father and mother said no more, but exchanged despairing glances, he laid one of his cheeks on his open book, his eyes wide open, and neither stirred nor spoke again.
It was getting late and Christine wanted to go to bed, but Claude had launched into further explanations. He would go tomorrow, he said, and make a sketch on the spot, just to fix his ideas. That led him to suggest that he might buy a little portable easel; he had been wanting to buy one for months. From there he went on to talk about money matters, and Christine, now thoroughly upset and at a loss, finally confessed everything, the last sou spent that morning, the dress pawned to pay for their evening meal. Overcome with remorse and pity, Claude took her in his arms and kissed her and asked her forgiveness for complaining about the supper. She’d got to forgive him, he said, for he was capable of anything whenever he felt this damnable need to paint gnawing at his entrails. As for the pawnshop, what a joke! He snapped his fingers at poverty!
‘I tell you I’ve got the very thing this time,’ he cried. ‘This is the picture that spells success!’
She made no reply; her mind was on her encounter on the steps of the pawnshop; she wanted to say nothing about it, but in her present rather torpid state of mind it was too much for her, and she let it slip out for no very obvious reason, without any kind of transition:
‘Madame Vanzade’s dead.’
Claude, taken completely by surprise, asked her how she knew.
‘I happened to meet her old footman. … Quite the gentleman now, and very sprightly, despite his seventy years. I didn’t recognize him. It was he who spoke to me. … Yes, she died six weeks ago. Her millions have all gone to hospitals, all except a small annuity to the two old servants who have retired to end their days in comfort.’
Claude looked at her, then murmured sadly:
‘Poor Christine! You’re sorry now, aren’t you? She would have provided for you, too, and found you a husband, as I used to say she would. You might have come into her whole fortune instead of starving with a mad fool like me.’
His words awoke her to reality again. She dragged her chair up close to his, flung one arm round him and pressed herself close against him with every particle of her being, crying:
> ‘No, no! Don’t say that! … I wouldn’t have dared to think of getting her money. If I had, I should have said so, and you know I don’t lie. I don’t really know what was the matter with me; I suddenly felt overcome and sad, somehow, as if I knew the end had come for me, too. … It was remorse, I expect, remorse for having left her so thoughtlessly, poor, helpless old woman! She used to call me her little girl. It was an unkind thing to do, and I shall have to pay for it some day. Oh, don’t try to deny it! I know, I can feel there’s not much left in life now for me.’
She wept bitter tears, for beyond the obsessing thought that her whole existence had been laid waste, life appeared to have nothing in store for her but sorrow.
‘Come, dry your eyes,’ said Claude, more tenderly now. ‘It’s not like you to get the jitters and let yourself be worried by all sorts of pointless nightmares! We’ll pull through somehow, you know we will! Besides, it was really you who discovered my picture for me! So you see, you can’t be cursed since you brought luck to me!’
He laughed, and she nodded her head in assent, seeing he wanted her to smile. His picture! That was one of the causes of her sadness, for down at the bridge he had forgotten all about her, as if she meant nothing to him, and since that moment she had felt him moving farther and farther away from her, into a world to which she could never hope to aspire. But she let him console her and they kissed each other as they used to do in the old days, before they left the table and retired to bed.
Little Jacques heard nothing of all this; after lying for a time in a kind of stupor, with one cheek resting on his picture-book, he had gradually dropped off to sleep, his head, the enormous head which marked him as the blemished offspring of genius and was often so heavy he could scarcely lift it, in the full glare of the lamp. When his mother put him to bed, he never even opened his eyes.
It was only about this time that it struck Claude that he might marry Christine. In part he was influenced by the advice of Sandoz who was surprised to see him prolong unnecessarily their irregular relationship, but he was not indifferent to a certain feeling of pity and the need to be kind to her and consequently to deserve her forgiveness for all his misdeeds.
For some time, he noticed, she had been so unhappy, so anxious about the future that he did not know what to do to cheer her up. He for his part had often been surly and given way to his old ungovernable tempers and treated her little better than a servant under notice to leave. Probably, if she were his lawful wife, she might feel that the home was more really hers and be less sensitive to his ill-humour. Christine herself had never brought up the subject of marriage, but had lived somehow detached from the world and fallen in with what she considered his discretion. Still, he knew she felt hurt when she was not asked to go with him to the Sandozes’. Besides, they were no longer either as free or as isolated as they had been in the country; they were in Paris, which meant malicious gossip, certain unavoidable contacts, and a host of other things which can make life unpleasant for a woman who lives with a man. The only objections he had to marriage were the time-worn objections of any artist who desires to retain his freedom. As it was obvious he was never going to leave her, why not give her the satisfaction of being a married woman? And indeed, when he did mention the subject to her, she gave one cry of joy and flung her arms around his neck, surprised herself that she should be so overcome by emotion. For a whole week she was supremely happy. Then, a long time before the actual ceremony, she began to accept the prospect much more calmly.
Claude made no attempt to speed up the various formalities and they had a long time to wait for some of the necessary papers. Meanwhile, he went on making studies for his picture, for Christine appeared to be no more inclined to impatience than himself. What did it matter really? It was certainly not going to bring about any considerable change in their lives. They had decided upon a civil marriage only, not out of any desire to flaunt their contempt for the Church, but solely because it was both quicker and simpler. The question of witnesses caused a certain momentary embarrassment; then, as Christine had no friends at all, Claude said she might have Sandoz and Mahoudeau. He had originally thought of asking Dubuche instead of Mahoudeau, but he saw so little of him nowadays and he was afraid of compromising him. For his own witnesses he would have Jory and Gagnière. In that way it would be entirely a friendly affair and need provide no one with gossip.
Weeks went by, and it was December and bitterly cold before the wedding took place. The night before the ceremony, although they had a bare thirty-five francs between them, they agreed that they could hardly let their friends depart with a simple hand-shake; so, to avoid too great an upset in their studio, they decided to take them to lunch at a little restaurant on the Boulevard de Clichy before they all dispersed.
In the morning, as Christine was busy stitching a collar on to the grey wool dress she had been self-indulgent enough to make for the occasion, Claude, who had already donned his morning coat and was stamping to and fro in the studio for lack of other occupation, suddenly announced he was going to pick up Mahoudeau who, he said, was quite capable of failing to turn up. Since the previous autumn, the sculptor had been living in Montmartre, in a small studio in the Rue des Tilleuls where he had moved after a series of dramatic and shattering events. First, he had been turned out of his ex-fruit-shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, for arrears in rent; then he had made a final break with Chaîne, who, despairing of ever making his living with his paint-box, had gone into business, going round suburban fairgrounds, running a stall for a showman’s widow; and lastly, there had been the sudden disappearance of Mathilde from the shop next door, which had been sold, lured away in all likelihood to some discreet apartment and kept there to satisfy some gentleman’s sinister passions. So now he lived alone, in worse poverty than before, eating only when he was given the job of cleaning up the ornaments on some building or putting the finishing touches to a figure for some more prosperous artist.
‘I’m going to fetch him, Christine,’ said Claude. ‘It’s the only way of making sure of him. We’ve still got a couple of hours to spare. … If the others turn up, get ’em to wait. We’ll all start out together.’
Outside, Claude hurried along through the biting cold that froze his breath into icicles on his moustache. Mahoudeau’s studio was at the far end of a block of tenements, which meant that Claude had to go through a whole row of tiny gardens, all white with frost and as stark and dreary as a graveyard. He recognized Mahoudeau’s door from afar off by the huge plaster cast of the ‘Grape-Picker’ that had once been shown at the Salon, and which it had been impossible to house in the tiny ground-floor room. There it had been left to disintegrate, like a pile of building waste tipped from a dust-cart, a crumbling, distressing spectacle since the rain had hollowed its cheeks with great black tears. As the key was in the lock, Claude let himself in.
‘Hello! Come to fetch me?’ said Mahoudeau, taken by surprise. ‘I’ve only my hat to put on. … But wait just a minute. I was just wondering whether I oughtn’t to make a bit of fire. I’m rather anxious about my “Bather”.’
The water in one of the tubs was frozen solid, for it was as cold inside the studio as it was out of doors, and, as Mahoudeau had not had a sou in his pocket for over a week, he was eking out the last of his coal by lighting the stove only for an hour or two in the mornings. It was a sinister sort of a place, more like a funeral-vault than a studio, for from its bare walls and cracked ceiling the cold wrapped round one like a winding-sheet. In retrospect, the shop in the Rue du Cherche-Midi appeared a haven of warmth and comfort. Other less cumbersome statues, cast in moments of genuine enthusiasm, exhibited but returned to the artist when they failed to find a buyer, stood shivering in the corners, drawn up, face to the wall like a row of ghastly cripples, for some of them were broken already, exposing their mutilated limbs all thick with dust and spattered with clay. For years these miserable nudes had been dragging out their death-agonies under the eyes of the very artist who had given of his
life-blood to create them. At first he had passionately refused to part with them, in spite of the limited space, and had then gradually left them to assume the fantastic horror of all dead things; until one day he would take a hammer and put them out of their misery, ridding himself of an encumbrance at the same time, by smashing them to bits.
‘Did you say we’d a couple of hours to kill?’ asked Mahoudeau. ‘Good! Then I’ll make a bit of a blaze, it’ll perhaps be wiser.’
As he set about lighting the stove he poured out all his complaints. A dog’s life, being a sculptor. Masons’ labourers had a better time of it. One piece that the authorities had bought for three thousand francs had cost him nearly two thousand, what with the model, the clay, the marble, the bronze, and what not. All that to see your work stowed away in a government vault because there was supposed to be nowhere else to put it! There were plenty of empty niches on public buildings, if they’d only look for them, and plenty of empty pedestals in the parks too, but officially there was no room! Private commissions were almost out of the question, apart from the odd bust or an occasional bit of statuary done on the cheap for presentation purposes. Oh, yes, it was the noblest, the manliest of the arts, and certainly the one you could rely on for letting you starve!
