Nana: By Emile Zola - Illustrated

by Emile Zola

  Nana, wrapped in a fur cloak, stood talking to the gentlemen while she waited for her cue. As Count Muffat advanced to obtain a view of the stage between two side scenes, he understood from a sign of the stage-manager that he must tread softly. All was quiet up above. In the wings, which were most brilliantly lighted up, a few persons were standing talking in whispers, or moving off on tiptoe. The gas-man was at his post, close to the complicated collection of taps; a fireman, leaning against one of the supports, was stretching his neck trying to get a glimpse of the performance; whilst the man who manœuvred the curtain was waiting on his seat up aloft, with a resigned look on his countenance, quite ignoring the piece and merely listening for the bell which directed his movements. And, in the midst of this stifling atmosphere and the faint noise caused by the light footsteps and the low whispers, the sound of the voices of the actors on the stage seemed strange and hushed, and surprisingly out of tune. Then, farther off, beyond the din of the orchestra, there was the audience breathing as with one immense respiration, which now and again swelled as it broke out in murmurs, laughter, and applause. One could feel the public without seeing it, even when it was silent.

  “There is something open,” said Nana suddenly, drawing her fur cloak closer around her. “Look and see, Barillot. I’m sure some one has opened a window. Really, the place will be the death of me!”

  Barillot swore that he had shut everything himself. Perhaps there was a broken window somewhere. Actors were always complaining of draughts. In the oppressive heat of the gas, one of those currents of cold air, productive of inflammation of the lungs, as Fontan said, might frequently be felt.

  “I should like to see you have to stand here with hardly anything on you,” continued Nana, who was getting angry.

  “Hush!” muttered Bordenave.

  On the stage, Rose had thrown so much expression into a phrase of her duo that the applause quite drowned the music. Nana left off talking, and looked very serious. On the count advancing too far along one of the wings, Barillot stopped him, saying that he might be seen. He caught sight of the reverse of the side-scenes slantwise, with the backs of the frames consolidated by a thick layer of old posters, and a portion of the further drop, representing the silver cavern of Mount Etna, with Vulcan’s forge in the background. The floats that had been lowered cast a glare of light on the daubs of metallic paint representing the silver. Some red and blue glass judiciously intermingled imitated the flames of a furnace; whilst midway up the stage a number of flaring gas-jets running along the floor lit up a row of black rocks. And behind these, reclining on a gently sloping boulder, surrounded by all the lights, which looked like so many Chinese lanterns among the grass on a day of illuminations, old Madame Drouard who played Juno, and was half blinded by the glitter, drowsily awaited the moment to make her appearance.

  Just then there was a slight commotion. Simone, who was listening to a story of Clarisse’s, exclaimed, “Halloa! there’s old Tricon!”

  It was, indeed, old Tricon, with her long curls and her air of a countess consulting her solicitor. As soon as she caught sight of Nana, she went straight up to her.

  “No,” said the latter, after a rapid exchange of words. “Not this time.”

  The old lady looked very solemn. Prullière shook hands with her, as he passed by. Two little chorus girls gazed on her with emotion. For a moment she seemed to hesitate; then she beckoned to Simone, and another rapid exchange of words took place.

  “Yes,” said Simone, at last. “In half an hour.”

  But, as she went up to her dressing-room, Madame Bron, who was again distributing some letters, handed her one. Bordenave, in a low tone of voice, began abusing the doorkeeper for having let old Tricon into the theatre. That woman in the place when His Highness was there! it was disgusting! Madame Bron, who had been thirty years in the theatre, replied in a surly tone of voice: How was she to know? Madame Tricon transacted business with all the ladies. M. Bordenave had seen her there dozens of times without ever saying a word; and whilst the manager muttered a string of oaths, old Tricon coolly examined the prince, staring him straight in the face, like a woman who weighs a man with a glance. A smile lighted up her yellow countenance. Then she slowly retired in the midst of the little women, who respectfully made way for her to pass.

  “As soon as possible; now don’t forget,” said she, turning towards Simone.

  Simone seemed very much worried. The letter was from a young man whom she had promised to meet that evening. She gave Madame Bron a note she had hastily scribbled, “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged.” But she remained very anxious; the young man might wait for her all the same. As she was not in the third act, she wished to get away at once, so she asked Clarisse to go and see. The latter had nothing to do until almost the end of the piece. She went down stairs, whilst Simone returned for a minute to the dressing-room they shared together. There was no one in Madame Bron’s little bar below but a super, dressed in a red and gold costume, who personated Pluto. The door-keeper’s little business had evidently gone well, for the recess under the stairs was quite damp from the rinsings of the glasses. Clarisse gathered up the skirts of her robe, which dragged on the greasy steps; but she prudently stopped when she got to where the staircase turned, and, stretching out her neck, took a peep into the room.

  She was well inspired, for that idiot La Faloise was still waiting there, on the same chair, between the table and the stove! He had pretended to go off when Simone had spoken to him, and returned directly after. The room, too, was still full of gentlemen in evening dress, with light kid gloves, and looking submissive and patient. They were all waiting, gravely eyeing one another. On the table there only remained the dirty plates, Madame Bron having just distributed the last bouquets; a rose alone, fallen from one of them, was lying half faded, close to the old cat, who had curled herself up and gone to sleep, whilst the kittens were madly careering between the gentlemen’s legs. For a moment Clarisse thought of having La Faloise turned out. The fool didn’t like animals; that showed what sort of a person he was. He kept his arms close to his sides for fear of touching the old cat, asleep on the table by him.

  “Take care! he’ll catch you,” said Pluto, a funny fellow, as he went upstairs wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  Then Clarisse gave up the idea of having a row with La Faloise. She had seen Madame Bron hand Simone’s letter to the young man, who went and read it under the gas-jet in the passage: “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged”; and, no doubt used to the phrase, he quietly went off. He, at least, knew how to behave! He wasn’t like the others, who obstinately sat waiting there on Madame Bron’s old worn-out cane chairs, in that lantern-like glass box, which was as hot as an oven, and which didn’t smell particularly nice. What dirty beasts men were! Clarisse returned upstairs, thoroughly disgusted. She passed at the back of the stage, and ran up the three flights of stairs leading to her dressing-room to let Simone know that the young man had gone off. At the wings, the prince had drawn Nana on one side and was conversing with her. He had remained with her all the time, glancing tenderly at her with his half closed eyes. Nana, without looking at him, smilingly said “yes,” with a nod of her head. But suddenly Count Muffat obeyed an invincible feeling within him. He quitted Bordenave, who was giving him some information respecting the manoeuvring of the windlasses and the drums, and advanced to interrupt their conversation. Nana raised her eyes and smiled at him, the same as she smiled at His Highness. She was, however, listening all the while for her cue.

  “The third act is the shortest, I think,” said the prince, whom the count’s presence embarrassed.

  She did not answer. Her face changed in a moment, and she was entirely occupied with her business. She rapidly let the fur cloak slip from off her shoulders, and Madame Jules, standing behind her, received it in her arms; and, after passing her hands over her hair as though to smooth it, she advanced on the stage in an almost nude state.

  “Hush! hush!” whispered Bor
denave.

  The count and the prince remained lost in surprise. In the midst of the silence there arose a profound sigh, the distant murmur of a vast crowd. Every night the same effect was produced as Venus appeared in her goddess-like nudity. Then Muffat, wishing to see, looked through a hole in the scenery. Beyond the dazzling semi-circle formed by the foot-lights, the house wore a sombre look, as though filled with a reddish coloured smoke; and on that neutral background, over which the rows of faces seemed to cast a confused pallor, Nana stood out all in white, looking taller, and quite hiding the boxes from the first tier to the amphitheatre. He could see her bent back and her opened arms, whilst on a level with her feet was the old prompter’s head, looking as though it was severed from his body, and wearing a poor and honest expression. At certain lines of Nana’s song, an undulating movement seemed to start from her neck, to descend to her waist, and then expire at the trailing edge of her flimsy tunic. When she had uttered her last note, in the midst of a tempest of applause, she bowed, the gauze drapery waving about her, and her hair reaching to her hips as she did so. Seeing her thus, bent forward and with her haunches expanded, move backwards towards the hole through which he was watching her, the count became very pale, and turned away. The stage disappeared, and all he saw was the wrong side of the scenery, the medley of posters pasted in all sorts of ways. Amidst the gas-jets, behind the row of rocks, the other Olympian gods and goddesses had joined Madame Drouard who was still dozing. They were awaiting the end of the act; Bosc and Fontan seated on the ground, their chins buried in their knees, Prullière yawning and stretching himself before making his last appearance of the evening, all of them looking worn out, with bloodshot eyes, and impatient to get home to bed.

  Just then, Fauchery, who had been wandering about on the o.p. side, since Bordenave had forbidden him to appear on the prompt one, got hold of the count, for want of some one better, and offered to show him the dressing-rooms. Muffat, whom an increasing indolence left without any will of his own, ended by following the journalist, after looking about for the Marquis de Chouard, who was no longer there. He felt, at the same time, a relief and a slight uneasiness on leaving the wings, from whence he could hear Nana’s voice. Fauchery had already preceded him up the staircase, which was shut off on the first and second floors by little wooden doors. It was one of those staircases that are generally met with in houses of evil reputation—such as Count Muffat had occasionally come across in his rounds as member of the poor relief committee—with bare, tumble-down, yellow walls, steps all worn with the constant traffic of feet, and an iron rail highly polished by the hands that rubbed along it. On each landing, on a level with the floor, was a low window, looking like the air-hole of a cellar; and, in lanterns fixed against the walls, jets of gas were blazing, crudely lighting up all this wretchedness, whilst emitting a heat that ascended and accumulated beneath the narrow ceilings of the landing-places.

  As the count reached the foot of the stairs, he again felt a scorching breath at the back of his neck, that feminine odour coming from the dressing-rooms above, in a flood of light and noise; and now, at every step he mounted, the musky smell of the face powders, the tartness of the toilet-vinegars, heated him and stupefied him all the more. On the first landing two passages branched off with a sharp turn, and on to these several doors, painted yellow and bearing large white numbers, opened, giving to the place very much the appearance of an hotel of suspicious character. Several of the tiles composing the flooring were missing, and left so many holes. The count ventured along one of the passages, and glancing into a room, the door of which was only half closed, he beheld a wretched den, looking not unlike a barber’s shanty in some low neighbourhood, and furnished with two chairs, a looking-glass, and a dressing-table containing a drawer, blackened by the grease and scurf from the combs. A big fellow, covered with perspiration, and his shoulders steaming, was changing his underlinen; whilst in a similar room, situated close by, a woman, ready to leave, was putting on her gloves, with her hair all damp and uncurled, as though she had just come out of a bath.

  Fauchery here called to the count, and the latter reached the second storey just as a furiously uttered oath issued from the passage on the right. Mathilde, a smutty little thing, who personated virtuous persecuted damsels, had just broken her basin, the soapy water from which ran out on to the landing. A door was closed violently. Two women in their stays jumped across the passage; another, holding the tail of her chemise between her teeth, suddenly appeared, and as hastily made off. Then were heard a great deal of laughing, the sound of a quarrel, a song commenced and almost immediately interrupted. Through the cracks in the walls and the doors of the passage, one caught glimpses of nudity, rosy skins and white underlinen. Two girls, who were very merry, were showing one another the different marks on their bodies; a third, very young, almost a child, had lifted up her skirts, and was mending her drawers; whilst the dressers, seeing the two men, gently closed the curtains out of decency.

  It was the jostling at the end of the performance, the great washing off of white paint and rouge, the resumption of everyday dress in the midst of a cloud of face powder, an increase of the human odour which issued through the slamming doors. Arrived on the third storey, Muffat abandoned himself to the intoxication which was taking possession of him. The dressing-room of the female supers was there: twenty women heaped together, a confusion of soaps and bottles of lavender water, resembling the common room of a house of ill-fame in the suburbs. As he passed, he heard behind a closed door a great noise of washing, a storm in a basin. And he was moving on to the top storey, when he had the curiosity to look through a peep-hole left open in a door; the room was unoccupied, and all he could see by the light of the flaring gas was a familiar utensil forgotten amidst a pile of skirts thrown on the floor. This was the last vision he carried away with him. Up above, on the fourth storey, he felt as though he would choke. All the odours, all the heat congregated there. The yellow ceiling had a roasted appearance; a gas-lamp was burning in a sort of ruddy mist. For a moment he clung to the iron railing, which had the cool feeling of living flesh, and, closing his eyes, he drew a long breath, seeming by doing so to inhale all that pertained to the female sex he was still unacquainted with, although he was, as it were, enveloped by it.

  “Come on,” cried Fauchery, who had disappeared a moment before; “someone wants you.”

  He was in Clarisse’s and Simone’s dressing-room—a long sort of attic under the slates, badly constructed, with innumerable angles. Two deep openings in the roof admitted the light. But, at that time of night, flames of gas illuminated the room, hung with wall-paper, rose-coloured flowers on a green trellis-work, costing a farthing a yard. Side by side two wooden shelves, deal-boards covered with oil-cloth, blackened by the dirty water constantly spilt upon it, served as dressing-tables; beneath them were scattered some zinc cans very much the worse for wear, two or three pails full of slops, and several coarse yellow earthenware jugs. There were, in fact, an infinity of things more or less damaged or dirtied by use—chipped basins, horn combs with half the teeth broken off, all, indeed, which the haste and carelessness of two women, who dress and wash in common, leave untidily about them in a place that they only momentarily occupy, and the dirt and disorder of which no longer affects them when once they are out of it.

  “Come on,” repeated Fauchery, with that comradeship which men affect when in company with damsels of easy virtue; “Clarisse wants to kiss you.”

  Muffat at length entered the room, but he was greatly surprised to find the Marquis de Chouard seated on a chair between the two dressing-tables. The marquis had retired there. He kept his feet wide apart because one of the pails leaked, making a big pool of soapy water on the floor. He appeared to be very much at his ease, evidently knowing the best places, and looking quite young again in that oppressive bath-room atmosphere, in the presence of that quiet feminine wantonness, which the unclean surroundings rendered the more natural and, so to say, excusable.
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  “Are you going with the old boy?” asked Simone of Clarisse, in a whisper.

  “Never! not if I know it!” answered the latter out loud.

  The dresser, a very ugly and very familiar young girl, who was helping Simone to put on her cloak, burst out laughing. They all three incited one another, murmuring words which redoubled their merriment.

  “Come, Clarisse; kiss the gentleman,” said Fauchery. “You know he can afford it.” And turning towards the count, he added, “You’ll see, she’s very nice; she’s going to kiss you.”

  But Clarisse had had enough of the men. She spoke vehemently of the beasts who were waiting below in the doorkeeper’s room. Besides, she was in a hurry to get down, they would make her miss her cue in the last scene. Then, as Fauchery stood in front of the door to detain her, she kissed Muffat’s whiskers, saying:

  “It’s not because it’s you, anyhow! it’s merely because Fauchery bothers me!” And she hastened away.

  The count felt very uneasy in the presence of his father-in-law. He became very red in the face. When in Nana’s dressing-room, surrounded by all the luxury of mirrors and hangings, he had not experienced the acrid excitation of the shameful misery of that garret, full of the two women’s indelicacy. The marquis, however, had gone off after Simone, who seemed in a great hurry, whispering in her ear, whilst she kept shaking her head. Fauchery followed them laughing. Then the count found himself left alone with the dresser, who was rinsing out the basins. So he also went off and descended the staircase, his legs scarcely able to bear his weight, startling women in their petticoats, and causing doors to be hastily closed as he passed. But in the midst of this hurry-skurry of girls across the four storeys, the only thing he distinctly saw was a cat—the big tortoise-shell cat who, in that furnace poisoned with musk, crawled down the stairs rubbing its back against the rails of the balustrade, with its tail erect.