Erotic Classics I

by Various Authors

  “Exactly so! And I’m going to get ’em to tell Madame Bron to send up champagne after the second act.”

  For some seconds a bell had been ringing in the distance. The long-drawn sound grew fainter, then louder, and when the bell ceased a shout ran up the stair and down it till it was lost along the passages. “All on the stage for the second act! All on the stage for the second act!” The sound drew near, and a little pale-faced man passed by the greenroom doors, outside each of which he yelled at the top of his shrill voice, “On the stage for the second act!”

  “The deuce, it’s champagne!” said Prullière without appearing to hear the din. “You’re prospering!”

  “If I were you I should have it in from the café,” old Bosc slowly announced. He was sitting on a bench covered with green velvet, with his head against the wall.

  But Simonne said that it was one’s duty to consider Mme Bron’s small perquisites. She clapped her hands excitedly and devoured Fontan with her gaze while his long goat-like visage kept up a continuous twitching of eyes and nose and mouth.

  “Oh, that Fontan!” she murmured. “There’s no one like him, no one like him!”

  The two greenroom doors stood wide open to the corridor leading to the wings. And along the yellow wall, which was brightly lit up by a gas lamp out of view, passed a string of rapidly moving shadows—men in costume, women with shawls over their scant attire, in a word, the whole of the characters in the second act, who would shortly make their appearance as masqeuraders in the ball at the Boule Noire. And at the end of the corridor became audible a shuffling of feet as these people clattered down the five wooden steps which led to the stage. As the big Clarisse went running by Simonne called to her, but she said she would be back directly. And, indeed, she reappeared almost at once, shivering in the thin tunic and scarf which she wore as Iris.

  “God bless me!” she said. “It isn’t warm, and I’ve left my furs in my dressing room!”

  Then as she stood toasting her legs in their warm rose-colored tights in front of the fireplace she resumed:

  “The prince has arrived.”

  “Oh!” cried the rest with the utmost curiosity.

  “Yes, that’s why I ran down: I wanted to see. He’s in the first stage box to the right, the same he was in on Thursday. It’s the third time he’s been this week, eh? That’s Nana; well, she’s in luck’s way! I was willing to wager he wouldn’t come again.”

  Simonne opened her lips to speak, but her remarks were drowned by a fresh shout which arose close to the greenroom. In the passage the callboy was yelling at the top of his shrill voice, “They’ve knocked!”

  “Three times!” said Simonne when she was again able to speak. “It’s getting exciting. You know, he won’t go to her place; he takes her to his. And it seems that he has to pay for it too!”

  “Egad! It’s a case of when one ‘has to go out,’” muttered Prullière wickedly, and he got up to have a last look at the mirror as became a handsome fellow whom the boxes adored.

  “They’ve knocked! They’ve knocked!” the callboy kept repeating in tones that died gradually away in the distance as he passed through the various stories and corridors.

  Fontan thereupon, knowing how it had all gone off on the first occasion the prince and Nana met, told the two women the whole story while they in their turn crowded against him and laughed at the tops of their voices whenever he stooped to whisper certain details in their ears. Old Bosc had never budged an inch—he was totally indifferent. That sort of thing no longer interested him now. He was stroking a great tortoise-shell cat which was lying curled up on the bench. He did so quite beautifully and ended by taking her in his arms with the tender good nature becoming a worn-out monarch. The cat arched its back and then, after a prolonged sniff at the big white beard, the gluey odor of which doubtless disgusted her, she turned and, curling herself up, went to sleep again on the bench beside him. Bosc remained grave and absorbed.

  “That’s all right, but if I were you I should drink the champagne at the restaurant—its better there,” he said, suddenly addressing Fontan when he had finished his recital.

  “The curtain’s up!” cried the callboy in cracked and long-drawn accents “The curtain’s up! The curtain’s up!”

  The shout sounded for some moments, during which there had been a noise of rapid footsteps. Through the suddenly opened door of the passage came a burst of music and a far-off murmur of voices, and then the door shut to again and you could hear its dull thud as it wedged itself into position once more.

  A heavy, peaceful, atmosphere again pervaded the greenroom, as though the place were situated a hundred leagues from the house where crowds were applauding. Simonne and Clarisse were still on the topic of Nana. There was a girl who never hurried herself! Why, yesterday she had again come on too late! But there was a silence, for a tall damsel had just craned her head in at the door and, seeing that she had made a mistake, had departed to the other end of the passage. It was Satin. Wearing a hat and a small veil for the nonce she was affecting the manner of a lady about to pay a call.

  “A pretty trollop!” muttered Prullière, who had been coming across her for a year past at the Café des Variétés. And at this Simonne told them how Nana had recognized in Satin an old schoolmate, had taken a vast fancy to her and was now plaguing Bordenave to let her make a first appearance on the stage.

  “How d’ye do?” said Fontan, shaking hands with Mignon and Fauchery, who now came into the room.

  Old Bosc himself gave them the tips of his fingers while the two women kissed Mignon.

  “A good house this evening?” queried Fauchery.

  “Oh, a splendid one!” replied Prullière. “You should see ’em gaping.”

  “I say, my little dears,” remarked Mignon, “it must be your turn!”

  Oh, all in good time! They were only at the fourth scene as yet, but Bosc got up in obedience to instinct, as became a rattling old actor who felt that his cue was coming. At that very moment the callboy was opening the door.

  “Monsieur Bosc!” he called. “Mademoiselle Simonne!”

  Simonne flung a fur-lined pelisse briskly over her shoulders and went out. Bosc, without hurrying at all, went and got his crown, which he settled on his brow with a rap. Then dragging himself unsteadily along in his greatcoat, he took his departure, grumbling and looking as annoyed as a man who has been rudely disturbed.

  “You were very amiable in your last notice,” continued Fontan, addressing Fauchery. “Only why do you say that comedians are vain?”

  “Yes, my little man, why d’you say that?” shouted Mignon, bringing down his huge hands on the journalist’s slender shoulders with such force as almost to double him up.

  Prullière and Clarisse refrained from laughing aloud. For some time past the whole company had been deriving amusement from a comedy which was going on in the wings. Mignon, rendered frantic by his wife’s caprice and annoyed at the thought that this man Fauchery brought nothing but a certain doubtful notoriety to his household, had conceived the idea of revenging himself on the journalist by overwhelming him with tokens of friendship. Every evening, therefore, when he met him behind scenes he would shower friendly slaps on his back and shoulders, as though fairly carried away by an outburst of tenderness, and Fauchery, who was a frail, small man in comparison with such a giant, was fain to take the raps with a strained smile in order not to quarrel with Rose’s husband.

  “Aha, my buck, you’ve insulted Fontan,” resumed Mignon, who was doing his best to force the joke. “Stand on guard! One—two—got him right in the middle of his chest!”

  He lunged and struck the young man with such force that the latter grew very pale and could not speak for some seconds. With a wink Clarisse showed the others where Rose Mignon was standing on the threshold of the greenroom. Rose had witnessed the scene, and she marche
d straight up to the journalist, as though she had failed to notice her husband and, standing on tiptoe, bare-armed and in baby costume, she held her face up to him with a caressing, infantine pout.

  “Good evening, baby,” said Fauchery, kissing her familiarly.

  Thus he indemnified himself. Mignon, however, did not seem to have observed this kiss, for everybody kissed his wife at the theater. But he laughed and gave the journalist a keen little look. The latter would assuredly have to pay for Rose’s bravado.

  In the passage the tightly shutting door opened and closed again, and a tempest of applause was blown as far as the greenroom. Simonne came in after her scene.

  “Oh, Father Bosc has just scored!” she cried. “The prince was writhing with laughter and applauded with the rest as though he had been paid to. I say, do you know the big man sitting beside the prince in the stage box? A handsome man, with a very sedate expression and splendid whiskers!”

  “It’s Count Muffat,” replied Fauchery. “I know that the prince, when he was at the empress’s the day before yesterday, invited him to dinner for tonight. He’ll have corrupted him afterward!”

  “So that’s Count Muffat! We know his father-in-law, eh, Auguste?” said Rose, addressing her remark to Mignon. “You know the Marquis de Chouard, at whose place I went to sing? Well, he’s in the house too. I noticed him at the back of a box. There’s an old boy for you!”

  Prullière, who had just put on his huge plume of feathers, turned round and called her.

  “Hi, Rose! Let’s go now!”

  She ran after him, leaving her sentence unfinished. At that moment Mme Bron, the portress of the theater, passed by the door with an immense bouquet in her arms. Simonne asked cheerfully if it was for her, but the porter woman did not vouchsafe an answer and only pointed her chin toward Nana’s dressing room at the end of the passage. Oh, that Nana! They were loading her with flowers! Then when Mme Bron returned she handed a letter to Clarisse, who allowed a smothered oath to escape her. That beggar La Faloise again! There was a fellow who wouldn’t let her alone! And when she learned the gentleman in question was waiting for her at the porter’s lodge she shrieked:

  “Tell him I’m coming down after this act. I’m going to catch him one on the face.”

  Fontan had rushed forward, shouting:

  “Madame Bron, just listen. Please listen, Madame Bron. I want you to send up six bottles of champagne between the acts.”

  But the callboy had again made his appearance. He was out of breath, and in a singsong voice he called out:

  “All to go on the stage! It’s your turn, Monsieur Fontan. Make haste, make haste!”

  “Yes, yes, I’m going, Father Barillot,” replied Fontan in a flurry.

  And he ran after Mme Bron and continued:

  “You understand, eh? Six bottles of champagne in the green room between the acts. It’s my patron saint’s day, and I’m standing the racket.”

  Simonne and Clarisse had gone off with a great rustling of skirts. Everybody was swallowed up in the distance, and when the passage door had banged with its usual hollow sound a fresh hail shower was heard beating against the windows in the now-silent greenroom. Barillot, a small, pale-faced ancient, who for thirty years had been a servant in the theater, had advanced familiarly toward Mignon and had presented his open snuffbox to him. This proffer of a pinch and its acceptance allowed him a minute’s rest in his interminable career up and down stairs and along the dressing room passage. He certainly had still to look up Mme Nana, as he called her, but she was one of those who followed her own sweet will and didn’t care a pin for penalties. Why, if she chose to be too late she was too late! But he stopped short and murmured in great surprise:

  “Well, I never! She’s ready; here she is! She must know that the prince is here.”

  Indeed, Nana appeared in the corridor. She was dressed as a fish hag: her arms and face were plastered with white paint, and she had a couple of red dabs under her eyes. Without entering the greenroom she contented herself by nodding to Mignon and Fauchery.

  “How do? You’re all right?”

  Only Mignon shook her outstretched hand, and she went royally on her way, followed by her dresser, who almost trod on her heels while stooping to adjust the folds of her skirt. In the rear of the dresser came Satin, closing the procession and trying to look quite the lady, though she was already bored to death.

  “And Steiner?” asked Mignon sharply.

  “Monsieur Steiner has gone away to the Loiret,” said Barillot, preparing to return to the neighborhood of the stage. “I expect he’s gone to buy a country place in those parts.”

  “Ah yes, I know, Nana’s country place.”

  Mignon had grown suddenly serious. Oh, that Steiner! He had promised Rose a fine house in the old days! Well, well, it wouldn’t do to grow angry with anybody. Here was a position that would have to be won again. From fireplace to console table Mignon paced, sunk in thought yet still unconquered by circumstances. There was no one in the greenroom now save Fauchery and himself. The journalist was tired and had flung himself back into the recesses of the big armchair. There he stayed with half-closed eyes and as quiet as quiet could be, while the other glanced down at him as he passed. When they were alone Mignon scorned to slap him at every turn. What good would it have done, since nobody would have enjoyed the spectacle? He was far too disinterested to be personally entertained by the farcical scenes in which he figured as a bantering husband. Glad of this short-lived respite, Fauchery stretched his feet out languidly toward the fire and let his upturned eyes wander from the barometer to the clock. In the course of his march Mignon planted himself in front of Potier’s bust, looked at it without seeming to see it and then turned back to the window, outside which yawned the darkling gulf of the courtyard. The rain had ceased, and there was now a deep silence in the room, which the fierce heat of the coke fire and the flare of the gas jets rendered still more oppressive. Not a sound came from the wings: the staircase and the passages were deadly still.

  That choking sensation of quiet, which behind the scenes immediately precedes the end of an act, had begun to pervade the empty greenroom. Indeed, the place seemed to be drowsing off through very breathlessness amid that faint murmur which the stage gives forth when the whole troupe are raising the deafening uproar of some grand finale.

  “Oh, the cows!” Bordenave suddenly shouted in his hoarse voice.

  He had only just come up, and he was already howling complaints about two chorus girls who had nearly fallen flat on the stage because they were playing the fool together. When his eye lit on Mignon and Fauchery he called them; he wanted to show them something. The prince had just notified a desire to compliment Nana in her dressing room during the next interval. But as he was leading them into the wings the stage manager passed.

  “Just you find those hags Fernande and Maria!” cried Bordenave savagely.

  Then calming down and endeavoring to assume the dignified expression worn by “heavy fathers,” he wiped his face with his pocket handkerchief and added:

  “I am now going to receive His Highness.”

  The curtain fell amid a long-drawn salvo of applause. Then across the twilight stage, which was no longer lit up by the footlights, there followed a disorderly retreat. Actors and supers and chorus made haste to get back to their dressing rooms while the sceneshifters rapidly changed the scenery. Simonne and Clarisse, however, had remained “at the top,” talking together in whispers. On the stage, in an interval between their lines, they had just settled a little matter. Clarisse, after viewing the thing in every light, found she preferred not to see La Faloise, who could never decide to leave her for Gaga, and so Simonne was simply to go and explain that a woman ought not to be palled up to in that fashion! At last she agreed to undertake the mission.

  Then Simonne, in her theatrical laundress’s attire b
ut with furs over her shoulders, ran down the greasy steps of the narrow, winding stairs which led between damp walls to the porter’s lodge. This lodge, situated between the actors’ staircase and that of the management, was shut in to right and left by large glass partitions and resembled a huge transparent lantern in which two gas jets were flaring.

  There was a set of pigeonholes in the place in which were piled letters and newspapers, while on the table various bouquets lay awaiting their recipients in close proximity to neglected heaps of dirty plates and to an old pair of stays, the eyelets of which the portress was busy mending. And in the middle of this untidy, ill-kept storeroom sat four fashionable, white-gloved society men. They occupied as many ancient straw-bottomed chairs and, with an expression at once patient and submissive, kept sharply turning their heads in Mme Bron’s direction every time she came down from the theater overhead, for on such occasions she was the bearer of replies. Indeed, she had but now handed a note to a young man who had hurried out to open it beneath the gaslight in the vestibule, where he had grown slightly pale on reading the classic phrase—how often had others read it in that very place!—“Impossible tonight, my dearie! I’m booked!” La Faloise sat on one of these chairs at the back of the room, between the table and the stove. He seemed bent on passing the evening there, and yet he was not quite happy. Indeed, he kept tucking up his long legs in his endeavors to escape from a whole litter of black kittens who were gamboling wildly round them while the mother cat sat bolt upright, staring at him with yellow eyes.