by Émile Zola
To get him to change his mind was impossible, so Sandoz left him with a smile and said:
‘Very well then, as you please. Withdraw from the world, wrap yourself in mystery, I won’t stop you.’
Claude managed to repress a movement of impatience, and, after watching his friend across the bridge, he went on his way straight down the embankment. Oblivious to everything, his eyes fixed on the ground, he swung along like a sleepwalker guided by instinct. Opposite his own door on the Quai de Bourbon he looked up, surprised to find a cab in his way, drawn up at the kerb waiting for someone. With the same mechanical step he went up to the concierge’s lodge to pick up his key.
‘I’ve given it to the lady,’ Madame Joseph called out from the depths of her retreat. ‘She’s gone upstairs.’
‘Lady!’ he exclaimed in amazement. ‘What lady?’
‘The young lady, of course! You know very well who I mean, the one that comes here regular.’
He had no idea what she meant, his mind was so confused, so he decided to go and investigate. He found the key in the lock, went in, and closed the door behind him, very gently.
He stood where he was for a moment. The studio had been invaded by shadow, a deep violet shadow, that poured through the skylight in a melancholy twilight, drowning everything. He could not even see the floor clearly; furniture, pictures, and everything else that happened to be lying about seemed to have merged into one even mass, like the stagnant water of a pool. One thing, however, stood out against the dying light of day, a dark shape sitting on the edge of the divan, a tense, anxious figure desperately awaiting his return. He recognized her now; it was Christine.
She stretched out her hands to him and murmured in a low, broken voice:
‘I’ve been here three hours, three whole hours, listening for you. … When I came out of that place I took a cab, because I only wanted to look in and then hurry home. … But I couldn’t go away without shaking your hand, even if I’d had to wait all night.’
She went on to tell him of her burning desire to see his picture and how she had slipped away to the Salon and found herself caught in the storm of laughter and derision. It was at her the hisses of the crowd were aimed, her nudity that was being spat upon, her nudity so brazenly exposed to all the wits and wags of Paris that it had taken her breath away as soon as she entered the room. Panic-stricken, overcome by shame and mortification, she had run away, feeling as if the laughter were pounding down upon her naked flesh, drawing blood like the merciless lashing of whips. But now she could forget about herself and think only of him, for she was keenly aware of the depth of his grief and her feminine sensitiveness intensified the bitterness of his disappointment and filled her heart to overflowing with a tremendous need to share her sympathy.
‘Don’t take it so much to heart,’ she said. ‘I had to come and see you and tell you I think they’re just jealous, and that I think it’s a wonderful picture, and that I am so proud and so happy I was able to help you and have my little share in it too.’
He never stirred as he listened to her warm, kind words, her faltering voice. Then suddenly he collapsed in front of her, with his head on her knees, and burst into tears. All the excitement of the afternoon, his dauntless courage before the hisses of the crowd, his gaiety, all his violence broke down in a burst of choking sobs. From the moment when the laughter of the crowd had struck him, like a slap in the face, he had felt it pursuing him like a pack of hounds in full cry, down the Champs-Élysées, all along the embankment, and still now, at his heels, in his own studio. His strength gave way in the end, leaving him helpless as a child, and he kept on saying, in a weary, toneless voice as he rolled his head on her knees:
‘Oh God, how it hurts!’
Then, in a sweep of passion, she took hold of him with both hands, raised him up to her lips and kissed him.
‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Don’t cry, my dearest. I love you.’
And her warm breath carried her words to his very heart.
They were both in love, and it seemed fitting that their love should be consummated there in the studio as part of the story of the picture that had gradually drawn them together. Night closed in around them, and they lay in each other’s arms, weeping tears of joy in the first outpourings of their passion. Near them, on the table, the lilacs she had sent that morning filled the evening air with their perfume, and on the floor flecks of gilt from the picture-frame caught the last of the daylight and shone out like a galaxy of stars.
Chapter 6
It was quite dark now, and she was still in his arms.
‘Stay here with me,’ he said.
But she withdrew, reluctantly, from his embrace.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s impossible. I must go home.’
‘Tomorrow, then. … Come back tomorrow. … Please.’
‘Tomorrow’s impossible too … but I’ll come again soon. Goodbye.’
The following morning she was back again by seven o’clock, still blushing at the thought of the lie she had told Madame Vanzade. She was supposed to have gone to the station to meet a friend from Clermont who was spending the day in Paris.
Claude was delighted to have her with him for a whole day and suggested taking her to the country, feeling he wanted her all to himself, far away from everything, in the sunshine.
Christine was thrilled by the idea, so they rushed out like a pair of mad things and reached the Gare Saint-Lazare just in time to jump into the train for Le Havre. He knew a small village just on the other side of Mantes, Bennecourt, where there was an artists’ inn on which he had descended more than once with his friends, and, without a thought for the two-hour journey, he took her there for lunch with as little fuss as if he had been taking her no farther afield than Asnières. She thought the long journey was great fun; the longer the better! It seemed impossible that the day itself could ever come to an end.
By ten o’clock they were at Bonnières. There they took the ramshackle old ferry boat, worked by a chain, across the river to Bennecourt. It was a lovely May morning; the little waves glittered like spangles in the sun and the tender young leaves shone green against the cloudless blue of the sky. Then, when they had passed the islands that lie scattered across the river at that particular point, they came to the intriguing little country inn and grocery store, with its big general room that smelt of washing and its vast farmyard full of manure heaps and dabbling ducks.
‘Hello there, Faucheur!’ Claude called to the landlord. ‘Can you give us some lunch? … An omelette, sausage, cheese. …’
‘Will you be staying the night, monsieur Claude?’
‘No, not this time. … And some white wine, eh? Something with a kick in it!’
Christine was already out in the farmyard with Faucheur’s wife who, when she came back with the eggs, smiled at Claude in her knowing peasant way and said:
‘So you’re married now, then, are you?’
‘I am,’ Claude replied without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Must be, as I’ve brought the wife with me!’
The lunch was delicious, though the omelette was over-cooked, the sausage fatty, the bread so hard that Claude had to cut off snippets to save Christine from spraining her wrist. They drank two bottles of wine and part of a third, and became so gay and so noisy that they talked themselves into a whirl, alone over their lunch in the big general room of the inn. Christine, her cheeks on fire, swore she was tipsy; she had never been tipsy before and thought it was so very funny that she was soon helpless with laughter.
‘Let’s go out and get some air,’ she said at last.
‘Good idea, a short walk. … We start back at four, so we’ve got three hours to play with.’
They walked to the top of Bennecourt past all its little yellow cottages straggling for a couple of kilometres or more along the riverside. The whole village was at work in the fields; all they met were three cows and the little girl who was driving them. Claude apparently knew his way about and kept pointing out thin
gs as they went along; then, when they reached the last of the houses, a rambling old place on the bank of the Seine, just across from the slopes of Jeufosse, he skirted right round it and led her into a dense oak wood. This was the faraway place they had both been looking for; turf like velvet, a canopy of leaves pierced only by slender shafts of blazing sunlight. Their lips met at once in a devouring kiss, and there, amid the perfume of the freshly trampled grasses, she was his. Then, for a long time they lay where they were, too much in love to do more than breathe an occasional word, gazing ecstatically at the flecks of gold each saw sparkling in the depths of the other’s brown eyes.
As they came out of the wood two hours later they were startled to find a peasant with wizened little eyes like an old wolf’s standing at the open door of the house as if he had been watching for them. Christine blushed and Claude, to hide his embarrassment, exclaimed:
‘Why, if it isn’t old Poirette! … So this old shack is yours, is it?’
The old man explained, with tears in his eyes, that his tenants had cleared out and paid no rent, but left him their furniture. Then he asked them inside.
‘You can always have a look … maybe you’d know somebody who. … There must be plenty of folk in Paris who’d be glad of a place … three hundred francs a year, furnished … If that isn’t cheap, what is?’
Intrigued, they followed him round. It was a large, roomy old place that might easily at one time have been a barn. Downstairs there was an enormous kitchen and a living-room big enough for a ballroom; upstairs were two more rooms, both so huge that they felt lost in them. The furniture consisted of a walnut bed in one of the upstairs rooms and a table and household utensils in the kitchen. In front of the house, the garden, badly neglected, was planted with magnificent apricot trees and overrun with giant rose-bushes, all in full bloom; at the back, running up to the oak wood, was a small potato field surrounded by a hedge.
‘And I’ll leave the potatoes in,’ added old Poirette.
Claude and Christine looked at each other in one of those sudden desires for solitude and escape that often overtake lovers. How wonderful it would be to be there, in the back of beyond, far removed from everyone they knew, alone with their love! But could they do it? They looked at each other and smiled; they had only just time to catch the train back to Paris. The old peasant, who happened to be Madame Faucheur’s father, went with them along the riverbank to the ferry, and as they were getting into the boat he called to them, much against his better judgement:
‘Listen! I’ll take two hundred and fifty, so don’t forget to send somebody!’
Back in Paris, Claude escorted Christine all the way to Madame Vanzade’s mansion. They were now both very downcast and parted with a long, silent, despairing hand-clasp, for they were afraid to kiss each other good night.
It was the beginning of a life of torment for both of them. In the next fortnight Christine was able to go to the studio only three times, and then always in a breathless hurry, with only a few moments to call her own, as the old lady was making more and more demands on her time. Claude was worried about her, for she was looking very pale and enervated, and her eyes were bright and feverish. Never, she said, when he questioned her, had she found Madame Vanzade’s pious household so unbearable, like a family vault without either daylight or fresh air; it was killing her with boredom. Her old fits of dizziness had come back again, and lack of exercise sent the blood rushing to her head. One night in her room, she said, she had fainted outright, just as if a heavy hand had suddenly choked her. But she did not have a bad word to say against her mistress; she was, on the contrary, very sorry for her, the poor old creature, so helpless, but so very kind, who called her ‘my little girl’. It pained her as if she were committing some heinous crime every time she deserted the old lady to run and join her lover.
Two more weeks went by, during which the lying with which she had to pay for every hour of freedom grew to be unbearable. She quivered with shame now every time she returned to Madame Vanzade’s strict world, where her love seemed to her like some ugly stain. She had given herself to her lover, and she would willingly have cried it from the rooftops; her honesty rebelled against having to hide the truth as if it were a sin and tell such abject lies, like a servant afraid of being dismissed.
The end came one evening in the studio. Just as she was ready to leave, she turned and, in despair, flung herself into Claude’s arms, sobbing with pent-up emotion.
‘I can’t!’ she cried. ‘I can’t! … Let me stay here! Don’t let me go back!’
Holding her close in his arms, he stifled her sobs with kisses.
‘Do you love me as much as that? … Oh, my dear! My dear, dear love! … But I have nothing to offer you, and you have everything to lose. … How can I let you ruin your expectations for me?’
Still sobbing bitterly, she tried to answer, but the words she managed to bring out were broken with tears:
‘Her money, you mean? … Or whatever she might leave me. … Do you think I’m worried about that? I’ve never even thought about it; I swear I haven’t. … Let her keep her money. What I want is to be free. … I’m beholden to nobody, I have no family, so surely I have a right to do as I like! I’m not asking you to marry me, all I want is to live with you. …’
Then, in one last, heartrending sob, she added:
‘Oh, but you’re right! It would be wrong to leave her, poor woman! Oh, I despise myself! … If I only had the strength! … but I love you too much, and it hurts me too much. I can’t go on suffering like this.’
‘You shan’t go!’ he cried. ‘Stay with me, and let others do the suffering. It’s our happiness that counts!’
He had drawn her down on to his knees, and they sat laughing and crying at the same time, swearing between their kisses that they would never leave each other again, never.
In one foolish moment it was done. Christine packed her trunk and, without more ado, left Madame Vanzade’s the very next day. Both she and Claude at once turned their minds to the old derelict house at Bennecourt with its giant rosebushes and enormous rooms. If only they could get away, at once, without wasting a moment, and live their simple domestic bliss far away at the end of the world! She clapped her hands for joy. He, still smarting after his failure at the Salon, felt that nothing would help him to recover so much as the peace and quiet of nature. Out there he could have the real open air, he could work out of doors to his heart’s content and come back to Paris loaded with masterpieces. In a couple of days they were ready to go, they had given up the studio and packed their few bits of furniture off to the station. They had had a stroke of luck, a windfall, five hundred francs old Malgras had paid for a batch of twenty-odd pictures he picked out from the flotsam and jetsam of the removal. They were going to live like royalty; Claude had his thousand francs a year, and Christine brought some small savings, her linen, and a few dresses. So off they went; one might even say they fled, for they carefully avoided all their friends and did not even write to tell them they were going away. Paris meant nothing to them now and they were only too happy to leave it.
It was nearing the end of June, and for a whole week after their move the rain came down in torrents. They discovered, too, that before signing their lease old Poirette had taken away half the kitchen utensils. Disappointment had no effect on them however; they thought nothing of paddling through the rain as far as Vernon, three kilometres away, to buy pots and pans and bring them back in triumph. They were in their own home and they were happy, that was all that mattered. Upstairs they used only one of the rooms and left the other to the mice; downstairs they turned the dining-room into an enormous studio, and they were as pleased as two children to eat in the kitchen on the big deal table, near the hearth with the pot simmering on the hob. They had taken on as a daily help a girl from the village called Mélie, a niece of the Faucheurs’ and delightfully stupid. They would have had a long way to go to find one denser, they said.
When the sunny weather ret
urned their life was one long succession of blissful days; the months went by in monotonous felicity. They never knew the date or even the day of the week. In the mornings they lingered in bed long after the sun, shining through the slits in the shutters, had begun to cast bars of deep red light on the whitewashed walls of their bedroom. Then, after breakfast, the day was spent in rambling over the hilltop planted with apple-trees, down grassy lanes, along the banks of the Seine, through the meadows as far as La Roche-Guyon, or even farther afield, away on the opposite bank of the river, exploring the way through the cornfields round Bonnières and Jeufosse. They had developed a wild passion for the river itself, and, having bought an old boat for thirty francs from someone who had had to move away from the district, they would spend whole days on voyages of discovery, rowing up and down, or lying up in dusky little backwaters, under the willows. Among the islands strung along the Seine like a mysterious floating city they explored the whole network of narrow waterways, floating gently through them, stroked as they passed by the low, overhanging branches, alone with the wood-pigeons and kingfishers. Claude, with his trousers rolled up to the knee, would occasionally have to leap out on to the sand and push the boat along. Christine, full of determination and very proud of her strength, loved to handle the oars and always wanted to row against the strongest currents. Back home in the evening they would eat their cabbage soup in the kitchen and laugh at Mélie’s stupidity, just as they had laughed at it the previous night. By nine o’clock they were in bed, in the great walnut bed, big enough for a whole family, where they spent twelve hours of every day, pillow-fighting in the early morning, then going off to sleep again, their arms round each other’s neck.
Every night Christine would say:
‘Now, my darling, you’re going to promise me one thing. Say you’ll do some work tomorrow.’
‘I promise. I’ll do some work tomorrow.’
‘And remember, this time I shall be cross if you don’t. I don’t keep you from it, do I?’