Nana: By Emile Zola - Illustrated

by Emile Zola

“Why! here she is; she’s actually ready! She must know that the prince is there.”

  Nana had, indeed, appeared in the passage, dressed as a fisherwoman, her arms and face all white, excepting two dabs of colour under her eyes. She did not enter the green-room, but simply nodded to Mignon and Fauchery.

  “Good-day, how are you?”

  Mignon alone shook the hand she held out; and Nana continued on her way in queenly style, followed by her dresser, who, as she trod close on her heels, bent down to give a finishing touch to the folds of her skirt. Then, behind the dresser, bringing up the rear of the procession, came Satin, trying to look very lady-like, and really feeling bored to death.

  “And Steiner?” suddenly queried Mignon.

  “Monsieur Steiner left yesterday for the Loiret,” said Barillot, who was returning to the stage. “I believe he is going to purchase a country residence there.”

  “Ah! yes, I know; an estate for Nana.”

  Mignon became very grave. That Steiner had once promised Rose a mansion! Well, it was of no use quarrelling with anybody; it was an opportunity which he had lost, and which he must regain. Full of thought, but still quite master of himself, Mignon walked up and down from the fire-place to the mirror. There were only he and Fauchery left in the green-room. The journalist, feeling tired, had just stretched himself out in the easy-chair; and he kept very quiet, his eyes half closed, beneath the glances which the other gave him as he passed to and fro. When they were alone, Mignon disdained to pommel him. What would have been the use? as no one would have been there to enjoy the fun. He cared too little about the matter to find any amusement for himself in playing the bantering husband. Fauchery, thankful for this short respite, was languidly stretching his legs out before the fire, as his eyes wandered from the barometer to the clock. Mignon interrupted his walk for a moment, and stood before the bust of Potier, which he looked at without seeing. Then he went and placed himself at the window opening on to the dark court-yard beneath. It had left off raining, and a profound silence had succeeded, whilst the atmosphere had become closer through the heat of the coke fire and the flaring of the gas-jets. Not a sound could be heard from the stage. The staircase and the passages were as still as the tomb. It was the hushed peacefulness occasioned by the end of an act, when all the company are on the stage joining in the deafening uproar of some finale, whilst the empty green-room is under the influence of asphyxia.

  “Oh! the strumpets!” suddenly exclaimed Bordenave, in a hoarse voice.

  He had only just arrived, and he was already bellowing at two of his chorus-girls, who had almost fallen down on the stage through playing the fool. When he saw Mignon and Fauchery he called them to him to show them something: the prince had just requested permission to compliment Nana in her dressing-room, between the acts. But as he was taking them on to the stage, the stage-manager passed.

  “Just fine those hussies, Fernande and Maria!” shouted Bordenave, furiously. Then calming himself, and trying to look dignified like a father and a nobleman, after passing his handkerchief over his face, he added, “I will go and receive His Highness.”

  The curtain fell amidst thunders of applause. Immediately there was a regular stampede in the semi-obscurity of the stage, no longer under the glare of the foot-lights; the actors and the supers were hastening to reach their dressing-rooms, whilst the carpenters were rapidly changing the scenery. Simone and Clarisse, however, remained at the back of the stage, whispering together. During the last scene, between two of their lines, they had just arranged a little affair. Clarisse, after thinking the matter over, preferred not to see La Faloise, who no longer wished to leave her to go with Gaga. It would be better for Simone quietly to explain to him that it was not the thing to stick to a woman to that extent. In short, she was to send him about his business.

  Then Simone, dressed as a washerwoman in a comic opera, with her fur cape thrown over her shoulders, descended the narrow winding staircase, with its greasy stairs and its damp walls, which led to the doorkeeper’s room. This room, situated between the actors’ and manager’s staircases, shut in on the right and the left by some glass partitioning, was like a huge transparent lantern, inside which two gas-jets were flaring high. A set of pigeon-holes was crammed full of letters and newspapers. On the table bouquets of flowers were lying beside forgotten dirty plates and an old bodice, the button-holes of which the doorkeeper was occupied in mending. And, in the midst of all this disorder, similar to the confusion of a lumber-room, some fashionable gentlemen, stylishly dressed and wearing light kid gloves, occupied the four old rush-bottomed chairs, with patient and submissive looks, and quickly turning their heads each time Madame Bron returned from the interior of the theatre with answers for them. She had just handed a note to a young man, who hastened to open it beneath the gas-jet in the hall, and who turned slightly pale as his eyes encountered this classic phrase, which he had so often read before in the same place, “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged.” La Faloise was on one of the chairs at the end of the room, between the table and stove. He seemed ready to pass the evening there, looking rather anxious though, and keeping his long legs under his chair because a litter of little black kittens were gambolling around him, whilst the mother sat staring at him with her yellow eyes.

  “What! you here, Mademoiselle Simone? Whatever do you want?” asked the doorkeeper.

  Simone wished La Faloise to be sent out to her; but Madame Bron could not see to this at once. In a sort of deep cupboard, under the stairs, she kept a little bar where the supers came to drink between the acts, and as she then had four or five big fellows there, still dressed as masqueraders at the “Boule Noire,” all of them in a great hurry and clamouring for drink, she was a little bit flurried. By the aid of the gas that was blazing away in the cupboard, one could distinguish a table covered with a sheet of tin, and several shelves stocked with partly emptied bottles. When the door of this coal-hole was opened there issued from it a violent stench of alcohol, which mingled with the smell of burnt fat that always pervaded the room, and the strong perfume of the bouquets left on the table.

  “So,” resumed the doorkeeper, when she had finished serving the supers, “it’s the little dark fellow over there that you want to speak to?”

  “No, don’t be absurd!” said Simone. “It’s the thin one sitting beside the stove—the one your cat’s snuffing the trousers of.”

  And she led La Faloise into the hall, whilst the other gentlemen, though half suffocating, appeared as resigned as ever, and the supers stood drinking on the stairs, indulging among themselves in a good deal of noisy drunken horse-play. Upstairs, Bordenave was yelling at the scene-shifters, who were still engaged in changing the scenery. They were such a time; it was done on purpose; the prince would receive some of it on his head.

  “Now then! shove away—all together!” exclaimed the chief of the gang.

  At length the drop scene at the back was raised, and the stage was free. Mignon, who had been watching for Fauchery, seized this opportunity of continuing his delicate attentions. He caught him up in his strong arms, crying out, “Take care! that pole almost fell on you.”

  And he carried him off, and even shook him before placing him on the ground again. Fauchery turned pale as the workmen roared with laughter, his lips quivered, and he was on the point of giving vent to his passion, whilst Mignon went on in a most good-natured sort of way, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder almost hard enough to double him up, and saying each time, “You know I am very anxious about your health! By Jove! I should be in a fine way if any accident happened to you!”

  But a whisper passed from mouth to mouth, “The prince! the prince!” And every one looked towards the little door that gave access to the auditorium. At first one could only see Bordenave’s round back and his butcher’s neck, as he puffed and blowed and bent himself double in a series of obsequious bows. Then appeared the prince, tall and strong, wearing a fair beard, his complexion of a deep rose colour, and looking a
ltogether like a solid man about town, whose well-shaped figure was discernible beneath an irreproachably fitting overcoat. He was followed by Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard. The corner of the theatre where they were was very dark, and they almost disappeared among the big ever-moving shadows. To speak to this son of a queen, the future inheritor of a throne, Bordenave had adopted the tones of a lion-tamer’s voice trembling with a pretended emotion. He kept saying:

  “If your Highness will kindly follow me—Will Your Highness deign to pass this way? Your Highness, please to take care—”

  The prince did not hurry himself in the least; on the contrary, he waited and watched the scene-shifters with a good deal of interest. A float had just been lowered from the flies, and the row of flaring gas-jets, encompassed in wire net-work, shed a brilliant light upon the stage. Muffat, never having been behind the scenes of a theatre before, was especially lost in astonishment, and was seized with an unpleasant sensation, a vague repugnance mixed with fear. He looked up towards the flies, where other floats, the gas-lights of which were turned down, appeared like so many constellations of little blue stars in all the chaos of the light wooden frame-work, and the ropes and pulleys of different sizes, of the hanging-stages, and the back-drops spread out aloft, looking like immense cloths hung out to dry.

  “Let go!” suddenly exclaimed the head scene-shifter.

  And the prince himself was obliged to warn the count. One of the drop-scenes was being lowered. They were placing the scenery of the third act—the grotto in Mount Etna. Some men were fixing poles in openings made for the purpose in the flooring; others fetched the frames, which were leaning against the walls, and fastened them to the poles with strong cords. At the back of the stage a lamp-lighter was lighting a number of red lamps, to produce the reflection of Vulcan’s fiery forge. There seemed to be great confusion and hustling about, yet the least movements were regulated; whilst, amidst all this hurry, the prompter walked slowly up and down to stretch his legs.

  “Your Highness overwhelms me,” Bordenave was saying, still continuing to bow. “The theatre is not large; we do the best we can. Now, if Your Highness will deign to follow me—”

  Count Muffat had already moved off in the direction of the passage leading to the dressing-rooms. The rather sharp incline of the stage surprised him, and his uneasiness was to a great extent caused by these boards, which seemed to move beneath his feet. Through the open trap-doors he could see the gas-lights burning beneath. It was quite an underground world, with deep and obscure abysses, from which arose the sound of men’s voices, and the musty smell peculiar to cellars. But, as he passed along, a slight incident detained him. Two little women, dressed for the third act, were conversing together before the peep-hole of the curtain. One of them, leaning forward and widening the opening with her fingers, so as to see better, was looking round the house.

  “I see him,” she suddenly exclaimed. “Oh! what a mug!”

  Bordenave, awfully scandalized, only restrained himself with difficulty from kicking her behind; but the prince smiled, looking delighted and excited at having overheard the words, whilst he gazed tenderly on the little woman, who didn’t care a fig for His Highness. She laughed impudently. However, Bordenave at length induced the prince to follow him. Count Muffat, all in a perspiration, removed his hat. What inconvenienced him most was the closeness of the atmosphere, which had become overheated and, so to say, thick, and in which hovered a very strong smell—that odour of behind the scenes, stinking of gas, the glue of the scenery, the mouldy dirt in out-of-the-way corners, and the unwashed bodies of the female supers. In the passage the oppressiveness increased. The stench of dirty water, the perfume of scented soaps, escaped from the dressing-rooms, mingled now and again with the poisonous exhalations of foul breaths. As he passed, the count rapidly glanced up the staircase, struck by the sudden flood of light and warmth which descended upon him. From above came sounds of people washing, laughing, and calling to one another, a great noise of opening and shutting of doors, emitting feminine odours, the musk of the make-up mixed with the smell of perspiring heads of yellowy-red hair. He did not linger, but hastened his footsteps, almost flying under the emotion caused by this sudden glimpse of a world hitherto unknown to him.

  “Well, a theatre is a curious place, is it not?” observed the Marquis de Chouard, with the delighted manner of a man finding himself once more at home.

  But Bordenave had at length reached Nana’s dressing-room at the end of the passage. He coolly turned the door handle; then, standing aside, said, “If Your Highness will please to enter.”

  There was a cry of a woman taken by surprise, and one saw Nana, naked to the waist, run and hide herself behind a curtain, whilst her dresser, who had been occupied in drying her, was left standing with the towel in her hands.

  “Oh! how stupid it is to enter a room like that!” exclaimed Nana from her hiding-place. “Don’t come in; you see very well you cannot come in!”

  Bordenave seemed put out by this bashfulness. “Don’t run away, my dear; there is not the slightest necessity for doing so,” said he. “His Highness is here. Come, don’t be a child.” And, as she refused to appear, being slightly startled still, though, nevertheless, already beginning to laugh, he added, in a grumpy, paternal tone of voice, “Why, bless me! these gentlemen know very well what a woman’s like. They won’t eat you.”

  “But that is not certain,” gallantly observed the prince.

  Every one laughed, courtier-like, in a most exaggerated manner. A most witty remark, thoroughly Parisian, according to Bordenave. Nana no longer answered. The curtain shook; no doubt she was making up her mind to appear. Then Count Muffat, who had become very red in the face, looked about him. It was a square room, very low in the ceiling, and hung throughout with some light West Indian material. A curtain of the same stuff, hanging on a brass rod, completely shut off one end of the chamber. Two large windows looked out on to the courtyard of the theatre, at a distance of only a few feet from a leprous-looking wall, on to which, in the darkness of the night, the panes of glass reflected a series of yellow squares. A big cheval-glassak stood opposite a marble dressing-table, which was covered with innumerable glass bottles and pots containing hair oils, scents, face powders, and all the ingredients necessary for making up. Approaching the mirror, the count caught sight of his own red face, with beads of perspiration resting on his forehead. He lowered his eyes, and proceeded to place himself before the dressing-table, on which a basin full of soapy water, some wet sponges, and various little ivory implements scattered about seemed to absorb his mind for a while. The same dizzy feeling he had experienced on the occasion of his visit to Nana, in the Boulevard Haussmann, again seized hold of him. He seemed to sink deeper into the thick carpet beneath his feet; the gas-jets burning on either side of the dressing-table and the cheval-glass were like the hissing flames of a furnace surrounding his temples. One minute, fearful of fainting away under the influence of all the feminine odour, full of warmth, and rendered ten times more pronounced by the lowness of the ceiling, which he encountered for the second time, he seated himself on the edge of the well-padded sofa that occupied the space between the two windows. But he rose up again almost immediately, and returned to the dressing-table, no longer to examine anything, but with a vague expression in his eyes, and thinking of a bouquet of tuberoses which had been allowed to fade in his room a long time ago, their powerful smell having nearly killed him. When tuberoses decay they emit a kind of human odour.

  “Do be quick!” whispered Bordenave, passing his head behind the curtain.

  The prince, meanwhile, was complaisantly listening to the Marquis de Chouard, who, having taken up a hare’s foot from the dressing-table, was explaining how actresses put on the powder with it. Satin, sitting in a corner, with her virgin-like face, was staring at the gentlemen; whilst the dresser, Madame Jules, was preparing the tunic and tights composing Venus’s costume. Madame Jules no longer had an age; her face had much the
appearance of parchment, and her features were immovable, like those of old maids whom no one has ever known to have been young. She had dried up in the heated atmosphere of the dressing-rooms, in the midst of the most celebrated legs and breasts of Paris. She always wore a faded black dress, and over her flat and sexless bosom a forest of pins were stuck next to the heart.

  “You must excuse me, gentlemen,” said Nana, drawing aside the curtain. “I was taken by surprise.”

  Every one turned towards her. She had not dressed herself at all, but had merely buttoned up a little cambric chemisette, which only half hid her bosom. When the gentlemen surprised her, she had but partly undressed herself, having rapidly doffed her fisher-woman’s costume, and the end of her chemise could be seen protruding through the opening in her drawers. With bare arms and shoulders and firm projecting breasts, in her adorable freshness of a plump young blonde, she continued to hold the curtain with one hand, as though ready to draw it again should the least thing occur to scare her.

  “Yes, I was taken by surprise. I shall never dare—” stammered she, pretending to be very much confused, blushing down to her neck, and smiling in an embarrassed sort of way.

  “Oh! nonsense!” exclaimed Bordenave; “you look very well as you are!”

  She risked a few more of her hesitating, ingenuous ways, quivering the while as though she was being tickled, and repeating, “His Highness honours me too much. I beg His Highness to excuse me for receiving him in such a condition—”

  “It is I, madame, who am obtrusive,” said the prince; “but I could not resist the desire of coming to compliment you.”

  Then, in order to get to her dressing-table, she quietly walked in her drawers through the midst of the gentlemen, who all made way for her. Around her substantial hips her drawers looked like a balloon, as, with chest expanded, she continued to greet her visitors with her sly smile. Suddenly she appeared to recognise Count Muffat, and she shook hands with him as a friend. Then she scolded him for not having come to her supper. His Highness deigned to chaff Muffat, who stuttered out an explanation, trembling at the idea of having held in his hot hand for a second those tiny fingers, that were as cool as the water they had just been washed in. The count had dined well at the prince’s, who was a great eater and a splendid drinker. They were both, in fact, slightly tipsy, although they did not show it. To hide his confusion Muffat was only able to make a remark about the heat.