Erotic Classics I
Page 176
“She’s dead, monsieur, this very minute.”
Nana dead! It was a blow to them all. Without a word Muffat had gone back to the bench, his face still buried in his handkerchief. The others burst into exclamations, but they were cut short, for a fresh band passed by, howling, “À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!” Nana dead! Hang it, and such a fine girl too! Mignon sighed and looked relieved, for at last Rose would come down. A chill fell on the company. Fontan, meditating a tragic role, had assumed a look of woe and was drawing down the corners of his mouth and rolling his eyes askance, while Fauchery chewed his cigar nervously, for despite his cheap journalistic chaff he was really touched. Nevertheless, the two women continued to give vent to their feelings of surprise. The last time Lucy had seen her was at the Gaités; Blanche, too, had seen her in Mélusine. Oh, how stunning it was, my dear, when she appeared in the depths of the crystal grot! The gentlemen remembered the occasion perfectly. Fontan had played the Prince Cocorico. And their memories once stirred up, they launched into interminable particulars. How ripping she looked with that rich coloring of hers in the crystal grot! Didn’t she, now? She didn’t say a word: the authors had even deprived her of a line or two, because it was superfluous. No, never a word! It was grander that way, and she drove her public wild by simply showing herself. You wouldn’t find another body like hers! Such shoulders as she had, and such legs and such a figure! Strange that she should be dead! You know, above her tights she had nothing on but a golden girdle which hardly concealed her behind and in front. All round her the grotto, which was entirely of glass, shone like day. Cascades of diamonds were flowing down; strings of brilliant pearls glistened among the stalactites in the vault overhead, and amid the transparent atmosphere and flowing fountain water, which was crossed by a wide ray of electric light, she gleamed like the sun with that flame-like skin and hair of hers. Paris would always picture her thus—would see her shining high up among crystal glass like the good God Himself. No, it was too stupid to let herself die under such conditions! She must be looking pretty by this time in that room up there!
“And what a lot of pleasures bloody well wasted!” said Mignon in melancholy tones, as became a man who did not like to see good and useful things lost.
He sounded Lucy and Caroline in order to find out if they were going up after all. Of course they were going up; their curiosity had increased. Just then Blanche arrived, out of breath and much exasperated at the way the crowds were blocking the pavement, and when she heard the news there was a fresh outburst of exclamations, and with a great rustling of skirts the ladies moved toward the staircase. Mignon followed them, crying out:
“Tell Rose that I’m waiting for her. She’ll come at once, eh?”
“They do not exactly know whether the contagion is to be feared at the beginning or near the end,” Fontan was explaining to Fauchery. “A medical I know was assuring me that the hours immediately following death are particularly dangerous. There are miasmatic exhalations then. Ah, but I do regret this sudden ending; I should have been so glad to shake hands with her for the last time.
“What good would it do you now?” said the journalist.
“Yes, what good?” the two others repeated.
The crowd was still on the increase. In the bright light thrown from shop-windows and beneath the wavering glare of the gas two living streams were distinguishable as they flowed along the pavement, innumerable hats apparently drifting on their surface. At that hour the popular fever was gaining ground rapidly, and people were flinging themselves in the wake of the bands of men in blouses. A constant forward movement seemed to sweep the roadway, and the cry kept recurring; obstinately, abruptly, there rang from thousands of throats:
“À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!”
The room on the fourth floor upstairs cost twelve francs a day, since Rose had wanted something decent and yet not luxurious, for sumptuousness is not necessary when one is suffering. Hung with Louis XIII cretonne, which was adorned with a pattern of large flowers, the room was furnished with the mahogany commonly found in hotels. On the floor there was a red carpet variegated with black foliage. Heavy silence reigned save for an occasional whispering sound caused by voices in the corridor.
“I assure you we’re lost. The waiter told us to turn to the right. What a barrack of a house!”
“Wait a bit; we must have a look. Room number 401; room number 401!”
“Oh, it’s this way: 405, 403. We ought to be there. Ah, at last, 401! This way! Hush now, hush!”
The voices were silent. Then there was a slight coughing and a moment or so of mental preparation. Then the door opened slowly, and Lucy entered, followed by Caroline and Blanche. But they stopped directly; there were already five women in the room; Gaga was lying back in the solitary armchair, which was a red velvet Voltaire. In front of the fireplace Simonne and Clarisse were now standing talking to Léa de Horn, who was seated, while by the bed, to the left of the door, Rose Mignon, perched on the edge of a chest, sat gazing fixedly at the body where it lay hidden in the shadow of the curtains. All the others had their hats and gloves on and looked as if they were paying a call: she alone sat there with bare hands and untidy hair and cheeks rendered pale by three nights of watching. She felt stupid in the face of this sudden death, and her eyes were swollen with weeping. A shaded lamp standing on the corner of the chest of drawers threw a bright flood of light over Gaga.
“What a sad misfortune, is it not?” whispered Lucy as she shook hands with Rose. “We wanted to bid her goodbye.”
And she turned round and tried to catch sight of her, but the lamp was too far off, and she did not dare bring it nearer. On the bed lay stretched a gray mass, but only the ruddy chignon was distinguishable and a pale blotch which might be the face. Lucy added:
“I never saw her since that time at the Gaités, when she was at the end of the grotto.”
At this Rose awoke from her stupor and smiled as she said:
“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed.”
Then she once more lapsed into contemplation and neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps they would be able to look at her presently! And with that the three women joined the others in front of the fireplace. Simonne and Clarisse were discussing the dead woman’s diamonds in low tones. Well, did they really exist—those diamonds? Nobody had seen them; it must be a bit of humbug. But Léa de Horn knew someone who knew all about them. Oh, they were monster stones! Besides, they weren’t all; she had brought back lots of other precious property from Russia—embroidered stuffs, for instance, valuable knickknacks, a gold dinner service, nay, even furniture. “Yes, my dear, fifty-two boxes, enormous cases some of them, three truckloads of them!” They were all lying at the station. “Wasn’t it hard lines, eh?—to die without even having time to unpack one’s traps?” Then she had a lot of tin, besides—something like a million! Lucy asked who was going to inherit it all. Oh, distant relations—the aunt, without doubt! It would be a pretty surprise for that old body. She knew nothing about it yet, for the sick woman had obstinately refused to let them warn her, for she still owed her a grudge over her little boy’s death. Thereupon they were all moved to pity about the little boy, and they remembered seeing him at the races. Oh, it was a wretchedly sickly baby; it looked so old and so sad. In fact, it was one of those poor brats who never asked to be born!
“He’s happier under the ground,” said Blanche.
“Bah, and so’s she!” added Caroline. “Life isn’t so funny!”
In that gloomy room melancholy ideas began to take possession of their imaginations. They felt frightened. It was silly to stand talking so long, but a longing to see her kept them rooted to the spot. It was very hot—the lamp glass threw a round, moonlike patch of light upon the ceiling, but the rest of the room was drowned in steamy darkness. Under the bed a deep plate full of phenol exhaled an insipid smell. And every few moments tiny gusts of wi
nd swelled the window curtains. The window opened on the boulevard, whence rose a dull roaring sound.
“Did she suffer much?” asked Lucy, who was absorbed in contemplation of the clock, the design of which represented the three Graces as nude young women, smiling like opera dancers.
Gaga seemed to wake up.
“My word, yes! I was present when she died. I promise you it was not at all pleasant to see. Why, she was taken with a shuddering fit—”
But she was unable to proceed with her explanation, for a cry arose outside:
“À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!”
And Lucy, who felt suffocated, flung wide the window and leaned upon the sill. It was pleasant there; the air came fresh from the starry sky. Opposite her the windows were all aglow with light, and the gas sent dancing reflections over the gilt lettering of the shop signs.
Beneath these, again, a most amusing scene presented itself. The streams of people were discernible rolling torrent-wise along the sidewalks and in the roadway, where there was a confused procession of carriages. Everywhere there were vast moving shadows in which lanterns and lampposts gleamed like sparks. But the band which now came roaring by carried torches, and a red glow streamed down from the direction of the Madeleine, crossed the mob like a trail of fire and spread out over the heads in the distance like a vivid reflection of a burning house. Lucy called Blanche and Caroline, forgetting where she was and shouting:
“Do come! You get a capital view from this window!”
They all three leaned out, greatly interested. The trees got in their way, and occasionally the torches disappeared under the foliage. They tried to catch a glimpse of the men of their own party below, but a protruding balcony hid the door, and they could only make out Count Muffat, who looked like a dark parcel thrown down on the bench where he sat. He was still burying his face in his handkerchief. A carriage had stopped in front, and yet another woman hurried up, in whom Lucy recognized Maria Blond. She was not alone; a stout man got down after her.
“It’s that thief of a Steiner,” said Caroline. “How is it they haven’t sent him back to Cologne yet? I want to see how he looks when he comes in.”
They turned round, but when after the lapse of ten minutes Maria Blond appeared, she was alone. She had twice mistaken the staircase. And when Lucy, in some astonishment, questioned her:
“What, he?” she said. “My dear, don’t you go fancying that he’ll come upstairs! It’s a great wonder he’s escorted me as far as the door. There are nearly a dozen of them smoking cigars.”
As a matter of fact, all the gentlemen were meeting downstairs. They had come strolling thither in order to have a look at the boulevards, and they hailed one another and commented loudly on that poor girl’s death. Then they began discussing politics and strategy. Bordenave, Daguenet, Labordette, Prullière and others, besides, had swollen the group, and now they were all listening to Fontan, who was explaining his plan for taking Berlin within a week.
Meanwhile Maria Blond was touched as she stood by the bedside and murmured, as the others had done before her:
“Poor pet! The last time I saw her was in the grotto at the Gaités.”
“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed!” Rose Mignon repeated with a smile of gloomiest dejection.
Two more women arrived. These were Tatan Néné and Louise Violaine. They had been wandering about the Grand Hotel for twenty minutes past, bandied from waiter to waiter, and had ascended and descended more than thirty flights of stairs amid a perfect stampede of travelers who were hurrying to leave Paris amid the panic caused by the war and the excitement on the boulevards. Accordingly they just dropped down on chairs when they came in, for they were too tired to think about the dead. At that moment a loud noise came from the room next door, where people were pushing trunks about and striking against furniture to an accompaniment of strident, outlandish syllables. It was a young Austrian couple, and Gaga told how during her agony the neighbors had played a game of catch as catch can and how, as only an unused door divided the two rooms, they had heard them laughing and kissing when one or the other was caught.
“Come, it’s time we were off,” said Clarisse. “We shan’t bring her to life again. Are you coming, Simonne?”
They all looked at the bed out of the corners of their eyes, but they did not budge an inch. Nevertheless, they began getting ready and gave their skirts various little pats. Lucy was again leaning out of window. She was alone now, and a sorrowful feeling began little by little to overpower her, as though an intense wave of melancholy had mounted up from the howling mob. Torches still kept passing, shaking out clouds of sparks, and far away in the distance the various bands stretched into the shadows, surging loudly to and fro like flocks being driven to the slaughterhouse at night. A dizzy feeling emanated from these confused masses as the human flood rolled them along—a dizzy feeling, a sense of terror and all the pity of the massacres to come. The people were going wild; their voices broke; they were drunk with a fever of excitement which sent them rushing toward the unknown “out there” beyond the dark wall of the horizon.
“À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!”
Lucy turned round. She leaned her back against the window, and her face was very pale.
“Good God! What’s to become of us?”
The ladies shook their heads. They were serious and very anxious about the turn events were taking.
“For my part,” said Caroline Héquet in her decisive way, “I start for London the day after tomorrow. Mamma’s already over there getting a house ready for me. I’m certainly not going to let myself be massacred in Paris.”
Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her daughters’ money in foreign lands. One never knows how a war may end! But Maria Blond grew vexed at this. She was a patriot and spoke of following the army.
“There’s a coward for you! Yes, if they wanted me I should put on man’s clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians! And if we all die after? What of that? Our wretched skins aren’t so valuable!”
Blanche de Sivry was exasperated.
“Please don’t speak ill of the Prussians! They are just like other men, and they’re not always running after the women, like your Frenchmen. They’ve just expelled the little Prussian who was with me. He was an awfully rich fellow and so gentle: he couldn’t have hurt a soul. It’s disgraceful; I’m ruined by it. And, you know, you mustn’t say a word or I go and find him out in Germany!”
After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring in dolorous tones:
“It’s all over with me; my luck’s always bad. It’s only a week ago that I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy. Ah, God knows what trouble it cost me! I had to go to Lili for help! And now here’s the war declared, and the Prussians will come and they’ll burn everything. How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should like to know?”
“Bah!” said Clarisse. “I don’t care a damn about it. I shall always find what I want.”
“Certainly you will,” added Simonne. “It’ll be a joke. Perhaps, after all, it’ll be good biz.”
And her smile hinted what she thought. Tatan Néné and Louise Violaine were of her opinion. The former told them that she had enjoyed the most roaring jolly good times with soldiers. Oh, they were good fellows and would have done any mortal thing for the girls. But as the ladies had raised their voices unduly Rose Mignon, still sitting on the chest by the bed, silenced them with a softly whispered “Hush!” They stood quite still at this and glanced obliquely toward the dead woman, as though this request for silence had emanated from the very shadows of the curtains. In the heavy, peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, deathly stillness which made them conscious of the stiff dead body lying stretched close by them, the cries of the mob burst forth:
“À Berlin! À Berlin! À Berlin!”
“What a mistake this war is! What a bloodthirsty piece of stupidity!”
At this Lucy took up the cudgels for the empire. She had been the mistress of a prince of the imperial house, and its defense became a point of family honor with her.
“Do leave them alone, my dear. We couldn’t let ourselves be further insulted! Why, this war concerns the honor of France. Oh, you know I don’t say that because of the prince. He was just mean! Just imagine, at night when he was going to bed he hid his gold in his boots, and when we played at bezique he used beans, because one day I pounced down on the stakes for fun. But that doesn’t prevent my being fair. The emperor was right.”
Léa shook her head with an air of superiority, as became a woman who was repeating the opinions of important personages. Then raising her voice: