Nana: By Emile Zola - Illustrated

by Emile Zola

  “How very warm it is in here,” said he. “However do you manage to exist in such a temperature, madame?”

  And the conversation was about to start from that, when the sound of loud voices was heard at the door. Bordenave slid aside a little board that closed a convent-like peep-hole. It was Fontan, who was accompanied by Prullière and Bosc, all three carrying bottles of champagne under their arms, and with their hands full of glasses. He knocked, he shouted that it was his saint’s-day and that he was standing champagne. Nana, with a look, consulted the prince. Why, of course! His Highness did not wish to be in anyone’s way, he would be only too delighted! But without waiting for the permission, Fontan entered the room, saying:

  “I’m not ill-bred; I stand champagne—”

  But he suddenly caught sight of the prince, whom he did not know was there. He stopped short, and putting on a ludicrously solemn look, he said:

  “King Dagobert is outside, and requests the honour of drinking with Your Royal Highness.”

  The prince having smiled, everyone thought it very witty. The dressing-room, however, was too small for all these people. They were obliged to huddle up together, Satin and Madame Jules at the end of the room, against the curtain, and the gentlemen close to each other around Nana, who was half-naked. The three actors were still in their second act costumes. While Prullière took off his Swiss admiral’s hat, the immense plume of which would have touched the ceiling, Bosc, in his purple cassock and his tin crown, steadied himself on his drunken legs, and greeted the prince like a monarch receiving the son of a powerful neighbour. The wine was poured out and they clinked glasses.

  “I drink to Your Highness!” said old Bosc, right royally.

  “To the army!” added Prullière.

  “To Venus!” shouted Fontan.

  The prince complaisantly balanced his glass in his hand. He waited, and then bowed thrice, murmuring, “Madame—admiral—sire.”

  And he swallowed the wine at a draught. Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard had done the same. There was no more jesting now, they were all at court. This theatrical world was making them forget the real one, with a serious farce performed beneath the hot glare of the gas. Nana, forgetting that she was in her drawers and displaying the tail of her chemise, acted the grand lady, Queen Venus, opening her private apartments to the great personages of the state. To every sentence she uttered she added the words “royal highness,” which she accompanied with curtsies, and she treated those masqueraders, Bosc and Prullière, in the style of a queen accompanied by her prime minister. And no one smiled at the strange mixture, of a real prince, heir to a throne, who was drinking a stroller’s champagne, quite at his ease in this carnival of the gods, in this masquerade of royalty, in the midst of a crowd composed of dressers and strumpets, players and exhibitors of women. Bordenave, carried away by the scene, was thinking of the money he would make if His Highness would only consent to appear like that in the second act of the “Blonde Venus.”

  “I say!” he exclaimed, becoming very familiar. “I’ll have all my little women down.”

  But Nana objected, though she was beginning to forget herself. Fontan attracted her with his grotesque face. She kept close to his side, looking tenderly at him like a pregnant woman with a longing for something the reverse of nice; suddenly she addressed him most familiarly:

  “Come, pour out, you big ninny!”

  Fontan filled the glasses again, and they drank, repeating the same toasts.

  “His Highness!”

  “The army!”

  “Venus!”

  But Nana motioned for silence. She held her glass high above her head, and said, “No, no, we must drink to Fontan! It’s Fontan’s saint’s-day. To Fontan! Fontan!”

  Then they clinked glasses a third time, and they all exclaimed “Fontan.” The prince, who had noticed the young woman devour the actor with her eyes, bowed to him.

  “M. Fontan,” said he, with true politeness, “I drink to your successes.”

  Meanwhile His Highness’s overcoat was rubbing against the marble dressing-table behind him. It was like being in the depths of an alcove, or a narrow bath-room, with this vapour from the basin and the sponges, the strong perfume from the scents mixed with the slightly sourish intoxicating odour of the champagne. The prince and Count Muffat, between whom Nana now found herself, were obliged to hold up their hands so as not to touch her hips or her bosom each time they moved. And Madame Jules, without the least sign of perspiration, was waiting, standing as erect as a post; whilst Satin, with all her vice, astonished at seeing a prince and gentlemen in evening-dress join in a lot of mummers in running after a naked woman, thought to herself that fashionable people were not so very virtuous after all.

  Old Barillot now came along the passage tingling his bell. When he appeared at the dressing-room door and saw the three actors still in their second act costumes, he was almost dumb-foundered.

  “Oh! gentlemen, gentlemen,” he stammered out, “do be quick. The bell has just rung in the foyer.”

  “Never mind!” said Bordenave, coolly; “the audience can wait.”

  Nevertheless, as the bottles were empty, the actors went up to dress, after again bowing. Bosc, having soaked his beard with champagne, had taken it off, and beneath the venerable appendage the drunkard had suddenly reappeared, with the diseased and purple face of an old actor who had taken to drink. He was heard at the foot of the stair-case saying to Fontan, in his hoarse voice, in allusion to the prince:

  “Now, didn’t I astonish him?”

  His Highness, the count, and the marquis still remained with Nana. Bordenave had gone off with Barillot, after ordering him not to have the curtain raised without first warning madame.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Nana, as she proceeded to make up her face and arms again with more than ordinary care on account of the nudity of the third act. The prince seated himself on the sofa with the Marquis de Chouard. Only Count Muffat remained standing. The couple of glasses of champagne, taken in that suffocating atmosphere, had increased their intoxication. Satin, seeing the gentlemen shut in with her friend, had discreetly retired behind the curtain, and there she waited, seated on a trunk, tired of doing nothing; whilst Madame Jules quietly moved about the room, without a word, and without looking either to the right or to the left.

  “You sang your rondeau marvellously well,” observed the prince.

  Then the conversation was established, but only in short phrases, broken by numerous pauses. Nana could not always be answering. After spreading some cold cream over her face and arms with her hand, she laid on the white paint with the corner of a towel. For an instant she ceased looking at herself in the glass, and smiled as she glanced at the prince, without, however, laying down the towel and the paint.

  “Your Highness is spoiling me,” she murmured.

  The making-up was a most complicated business, which the Marquis de Chouard followed with extreme delight. He, also, ventured an observation.

  “Could not the orchestra,” he asked, “accompany you more softly? It drowns your voice, and that is an unpardonable crime.”

  This time Nana did not turn round. She had taken the hare’s foot, and was passing it very lightly and carefully over her face, leaning so forward over the dressing-table as to cause the rounded portion of her white drawers to swell out, the corner of her chemise still protruding. To show that she was sensible of the old gentleman’s compliment, she slightly moved her hips. A pause ensued. Madame Jules had observed a rent in the drawers. She took one of the pins stuck over her heart, and remained kneeling for a moment on the ground, occupied about Nana’s leg; whilst the young woman, without appearing to know that she was there, was covering herself with powder, being careful, however, not to lay any on the upper part of her cheeks. When the prince remarked that, if she came to sing in London, all England would want to applaud her, she laughed pleasantly, and turned herself round for a second, her left cheek very white in the midst of a cloud
of powder. Then she suddenly became very serious: she was about to put on the rouge. Once more, standing with her face close to the glass, she dipped her finger in a pot, and applied the rouge under her eyes, spreading it gently up to the temples. The gentlemen maintained a respectful silence.

  Count Muffat had scarcely said a word: he was immersed in thoughts of his youth. The room he had when a child had been very cold. Later on, when sixteen years old, he used to kiss his mother every night, and would then feel, even in his sleep, the icy coldness of her embrace. One day, as he passed a half-closed door, he caught a glimpse of a maid-servant washing herself; and that was the only reminiscence that had troubled him from the age of puberty to the day of his marriage. Then he had encountered in his wife a strict observance of conjugal duties; he himself experienced a sort of devout repugnance. He grew up, he grew old, ignorant of the ways of the flesh, bent to rigid religious practices, having regulated his life according to precepts and laws; and suddenly he found himself deposited in this actress’s dressing-room, in company of this almost naked girl. He who had never even seen Countess Muffat put on her garters was now assisting at the most secret details of a woman’s toilet, in the midst of that fascinating and powerful odour, surrounded by all those pots and basins. His whole being revolted; the slow possession that Nana had taken of him for some little time past terrified him, as it recalled to his mind the pious stories he had read in his childhood of persons possessed by devils. He believed in the devil. In his confused state of mind, Nana, with her smiles and her body full of vice, was the devil in person. But he would be strong; he would know how to defend himself.

  “Then that is settled,” the prince was saying, as he took his ease on the sofa. “Next year you come to London, and you will receive such a welcome that you will never return to France. Ah! my dear count, you do not value your pretty women sufficiently. We shall take them all from you.”

  “He will not miss them,” maliciously murmured the Marquis de Chouard, who threw off his mask on such occasions as the present. “The count is virtue itself.”

  Hearing the count’s virtue spoken of, Nana looked at him in so peculiar a manner that Muffat felt greatly annoyed. Then he was surprised at having given way to the feeling, and became angry with himself. Why should the fact of his being virtuous embarrass him in the presence of that girl? He could have beaten her. But Nana, reaching over for a hair pencil, let it fall; and as she stooped to pick it up, he hastened to anticipate her. Their breaths mingled, and Venus’s golden locks fell over his hands. It was a pleasure alloyed with remorse—one of those pleasures of Catholics whom the fear of hell is perpetually goading when in sin.

  Just then old Barillot’s voice was heard outside. “Madame, may I give the signal? The audience is becoming very impatient.”

  “Presently,” replied Nana, without hurrying herself.

  She had dipped the hair pencil into a pot of black; then, her nose almost touching the looking-glass, her left eye closed, she delicately painted the lashes. Muffat stood behind her, looking on. He saw her in the glass, with her plump shoulders and her neck drowned in a roseate shadow; and he could not, in spite of his efforts, withdraw his gaze from that face rendered so provoking by the closed eye, and full of dimples, as though transported with desires. When she shut her right eye, and applied the pencil, he felt that he belonged to her wholly.

  “Madame,” again cried the panting voice of the old call-boy, “they are stamping their feet; they will end by smashing the seats. May I give the signal?”

  “Oh! damn ’em!” said Nana angrily. “Give the signal; I don’t care! If I’m not ready, well! they’ll have to wait for me.” Suddenly calming herself, she turned towards the gentlemen, and added with a smile, “It’s true; one can’t even have a few minutes’ quiet conversation.”

  She had now finished her face and arms. She added, with her finger, two broad streaks of carmine to her lips. Count Muffat felt more agitated still, bewitched by the perversion of the powders and the pigments, seized with an inordinate desire for that painted beauty, with her mouth too red and her face too white, her eyes enlarged, ardent and circled with black, as though wounded by love. However, Nana passed behind the curtain for a moment to get into Venus’s tights, after taking off her drawers. Then, without the least shame, she doffed her chemisette, and held out her arms to Madame Jules, who slipped on the short sleeves of the tunic.

  “Now, let me dress you quick, as they are making a disturbance!” murmured the old woman.

  The prince, with half closed eyes, examined the symmetry of her neck and chest with the eye of a connoisseur, whilst the Marquis de Chouard wagged his head involuntarily. Muffat, in order that he might see no more, gazed down at the carpet. Venus was now ready, as that gauze drapery was all that she wore over her shoulders. Madame Jules hovered round her, looking like an old woman carved out of wood, with clear, expressionless eyes, and every now and then she kept taking pins from the inexhaustible cushion over her heart to pin Venus’s tunic, passing her bony hands over those next to naked rolls of fat, without their awakening in her mind a single recollection, and with the greatest indifference for her sex.

  “There!” said the young woman, as she gave a last look at herself in the glass.

  Bordenave came back, very anxious, saying that the third act had commenced.

  “Well! I am ready,” resumed she. “What a fuss to make! I always have to wait for the others.”

  The gentlemen left the dressing-room, but they did not say good-bye, the prince having a desire to witness the third act from the wings. Left alone, Nana looked about her with surprise.

  “Wherever has she got to?” asked she.

  She was seeking Satin. When she at length found her behind the curtain, sitting waiting on the trunk, Satin quietly said, “I certainly didn’t intend to be in your way there, with all those men!” And she added that she would now go off. But Nana stopped her. She must be cracked to think of such a thing, when Bordenave had consented to engage her! They could settle the matter after the performance. Satin hesitated. It was altogether such a queer place, nothing like anything she had been used to. In spite of all this, however, she remained.

  As the prince descended the little wooden staircase, a strange noise, a mixture of stifled oaths and stampings of feet as of men struggling, reached him from the other side of the theatre. It was caused by an occurrence that quite scared the actors and actresses awaiting their cues. For some little while Mignon had been amusing himself again by overwhelming Fauchery with delicate attentions. He had just imagined a little game, which consisted in every now and then snapping his fingers close to the journalistic nose, to keep the flies off, as he said. This little business naturally amused the onlookers immensely. But suddenly, Mignon, carried away by his success, taking a greater interest in the performance, gave the journalist what was really a blow, and a good hard blow too. This time he had gone too far. Fauchery could not, in the presence of the others, smilingly receive such a punch on the nose. And the two men, putting an end to the comedy, their faces livid and full of hate, had sprung at each others’ throats. They rolled about the stage, behind one of the side-scenes, calling each other the vilest names imaginable.

  “M. Bordenave! M. Bordenave!” cried the terrified stage-manager, panting for breath.

  Bordenave followed him, after having begged to be excused by the prince. When he recognised Fauchery and Mignon on the ground, he made a gesture implying that he was very much put out. Really, they chose a nice time, with His Highness on the other side of the scenery, and all the audience, who could overhear them! To complete his annoyance, Rose Mignon arrived, all out of breath, and at the moment she had to go on the stage. Vulcan gave her her cue, but Rose remained as though petrified, as she caught sight of her husband and her lover lying at her feet, strangling each other, struggling together, their hair all in disorder, their clothes covered with dust. She was unable to pass them, and one of the scene-shifters only just succeeded in catch
ing hold of Fauchery’s hat as it was rolling into view of the audience. Vulcan, who had meanwhile interpolated a string of gag to amuse the audience, again gave Rose her cue. But she stood watching the two men, without moving.

  “Don’t look at them!” angrily whispered Bordenave behind her. “Go on! go on! It’s nothing to do with you! You’re missing your cue!”

  And, pushed forward by him, Rose stepped over the prostrate bodies, and found herself before the audience in the glare of the footlights. She had not understood why they were on the ground fighting together. All in a tremble, and with a buzzing in her ears, she walked towards the conductor with the bewitching smile of an amorous Diana, and gave the first line of her duo in so warm a voice, that she received quite an ovation. But she could still hear the two men pommelling each other at the side. They had now rolled to within a few steps of the footlights. Fortunately the noise of the band prevented the sound of the blows reaching the audience.

  “Damnation!” exclaimed Bordenave, exasperated, when he had at length succeeded in separating the pair, “couldn’t you go and fight it out in your own place? You know very well I don’t like this sort of thing. You, Mignon, you will do me the pleasure of remaining here, on the prompt side; and you, Fauchery, I’ll kick you out of the theatre if you dare to leave the o.p.al side. Now, that’s understood, eh? Prompt side and o.p. side, or else I’ll forbid Rose to bring you here again.”

  When he returned to the prince, the latter asked what had been the matter. “Oh! nothing at all,” he calmly murmured.