Текст книги "The Kill"

Автор книги: Émile Zola

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At that point, M. Hupel de la Noue, displaying a gallantry befitting a prefect, exclaimed that the ladies were absolutely right and launched into an indecent story about something that had happened in the capital of his district. The marquise, Mme Haffner, and the other ladies laughed uproariously at certain details. The prefect told the story in a most titillating way, with winks and nudges and inflections of his voice that imparted a very nasty connotation to the most innocuous of words. The talk then turned to the duchess’s first Tuesday, to a farce that had been performed the night before, to the death of a poet, and to the last races of the autumn season. M. Toutin-Laroche, who could be pleasant when he chose, compared the women to roses, and M. de Mareuil, still in a tizzy about his electoral prospects, came up with profound things to say about the new shape of hats. Renée’s mind continued to wander.

Meanwhile the guests had stopped eating. A hot wind seemed to have grazed the table, clouding the glasses, leaving the bread in crumbs, darkening the skins of the fruits on their plates, and disrupting the pleasing symmetry of the settings. The flowers spilling out of the great cornucopias of chased silver wilted. And for a moment, the guests, staring vacantly at what was left of dessert, forgot themselves and remained seated, lacking the heart to get up. Leaning on one elbow, they sat with the blank faces and vague lassitude of fashionable people whose drunkenness takes a measured and respectable form, who get sloshed one sip at a time. The laughs had subsided, and talk had become rare. Having drunk and eaten a good deal, the group of bemedaled gentlemen seemed graver than ever. In the heavy air of the dining room, the ladies felt their foreheads and the backs of their necks grow moist. Waiting to move into the drawing room, they seemed serious and a little pale, as though they felt a bit faint. Mme d’Espanet had turned quite pink, while Mme Haffner’s shoulders had taken on a waxy white sheen. Meanwhile, M. Hupel de la Noue examined the handle of a knife; M. Toutin-Laroche continued to spit fragmentary comments at M. Haffner, who received them with much nodding of his head; M. de Mareuil stared dreamily at M. Michelin, who returned the look with an arch smile. As for the delectable Mme Michelin, she had long since stopped talking. Looking quite flushed, she had allowed one of her hands to dangle beneath the tablecloth, where M. de Saffré was no doubt holding it in his as he leaned awkwardly against the table’s edge, his eyebrows knit with the grimace of a man solving a problem in algebra. Mme Sidonie had also made a conquest. Mignon and Charrier, both leaning on their elbows and facing her, seemed delighted to share her confidences. She confessed that she adored dairy products and was afraid of ghosts. And Aristide Saccard himself, eyes half-closed, reveled in the smug satisfaction of a host confident of having properly lubricated his guests and gave no thought to leaving the table. With a respectfully affectionate eye he contemplated Baron Gouraud, who was ponderously digesting his dinner while his right hand lay splayed across the white tablecloth– the hand of a sensual old man, small, thick-fingered, discolored by purple blotches, and covered with red hair.

Renée mechanically finished off the few drops of Tokay that remained in the bottom of her glass. Her face tingled. The short, pale hairs on her forehead and the back of her neck stood out in unruly display as if moistened by a humid breeze. Her lips and nose were pinched by nervous tension, and her face was as expressionless as that of a child who has drunk undiluted wine. If her mind had been filled with nice bourgeois thoughts while staring into the shadows of the Parc Monceau, those thoughts were now drowned out by the excitement induced by the food, wine, and light and the stimuli of unsettling surroundings rife with warm exhalations and raucous laughter. She was no longer exchanging quiet smiles with her sister Christine and Aunt Elisabeth—both modest, self-effacing women not much given to talk. With a sharp glance she had forced poor M. de Mussy to lower his eyes. Though still apparently lost in thought, she leaned against the back of her chair, causing the satin of her bodice to crinkle softly, and although she avoided turning toward the corner of the table where Maxime and Louise continued to banter as loudly as ever despite the waning buzz of conversation, her shoulders quivered imperceptibly with each fresh burst of laughter from their direction.

And behind her, at the edge of the darkness, his tall silhouette looming large over the chaotic table and drowsy guests, stood Baptiste, his flesh pallid and his face grave, with the disdainful attitude of a lackey who has just fed his masters their fill. In the drunken atmosphere suffused with garish light from the chandelier, which cast a yellow pall over everything, he alone maintained his aplomb, with his silver chain around his neck, his cold eyes in which the bare shoulders of the women kindled no flame, and his air of a eunuch serving Parisians of the decadent era without forfeiting his dignity.

At last Renée rose uneasily to her feet. Everyone else followed suit. The guests adjourned to the drawing room, where coffee was served.

The main salon was a long vast room, a sort of gallery extending from one pavilion to the other and occupying the entire façade on the garden side. A wide French door opened onto the terrace. The gallery was resplendent with gold. The ceiling, slightly arched, was decorated with whimsical scrolls wound around huge gilt medallions that gleamed like shields. Splendid rosettes and garlands lined the edge of the arch. Sprays of gold, like jets of molten metal, ran along the walls, framing the panels, which were covered with red silk. Plaited stems topped by bouquets of rose blossoms hung beside mirrors. An Aubusson carpet covering the parquet showed off its purple flowers. The damasked red silk upholstery, door curtains, and drapes; the enormous rockwork clock on the fireplace; the Chinese vases on their consoles; the feet of the two long tables embellished with Florentine mosaics; and even the jardinières in the embrasures next to the windows—all of these things sweated and dripped with gold. In the four corners of the room, four large lamps stood on pedestals of red marble from which chains of gilded bronze were draped with symmetrical grace. And from the ceiling hung three crystal chandeliers, shedding droplets of blue and pink light whose ardent glow set all the gold in the salon ablaze.

The men soon withdrew to the smoking room. M. de Mussy came over and in a familiar way took Maxime by the arm. He had known the boy at school, even though he was six years older. Mussy led his younger schoolmate out onto the terrace and after both had lit cigars began to complain bitterly about Renée.

“So tell me, what’s got into her? I saw her yesterday, and she was delightful. But today she’s treating me as though it were all over between us. What crime could I have committed? It would be awfully nice of you, my dear Maxime, if you’d ask her what’s the matter and tell her how much she’s making me suffer.”

“Oh, no, not that! Never!” Maxime replied with a laugh. “Renée has a case of nerves, and I’m not keen to bear the brunt of her wrath. Figure it out for yourself, and take care of your own business.”

After slowly exhaling the smoke from his Havana cigar, he finished his thought. “That’s a fine role you’d have me play!”

Mussy professed his warm friendship for Maxime, however, and told the younger man that he was only waiting for an opportunity to prove his devotion to him. He loved Renée so much, he said, that it was making him miserable.

“All right, then,” Maxime finally gave in. “Have it your way. I’ll speak to her. But I promise you nothing. She’s certain to turn me away.”

They returned to the smoking room and stretched out in big lounging chairs. For the next half hour, Mussy poured out his woes to Maxime. For the tenth time he told the young man how he had fallen in love with his stepmother and how she had been kind enough to single him out. And Maxime, while finishing off his cigar, offered him advice, explained Renée to him, and pointed out how he ought to behave if he wanted to dominate her.

Meanwhile, Saccard came in and sat down a short distance away from the two young men, so Mussy remained silent, and Maxime ended by saying, “If I were in your shoes, I’d treat her in a most cavalier manner. She likes that.”

The smoking room, located at one end of the drawing room, occupied the round space formed by one of the turrets. Its style was very rich and very sober. Hung with imitation cordovan leather, it had drapes and door curtains of Algerian inspiration, while the rug was a pile carpet with a Persian pattern. The furniture, with its tawny-colored shagreen upholstery, consisted of ottomans, armchairs, and a circular sofa that occupied a portion of the wall’s circumference. The small chandelier, the decorative items displayed on a pedestal table, and the fire irons were of light green Florentine bronze.

Only a few young people and pasty-faced old men who loathed tobacco remained with the ladies. In the smoking room the men laughed and joked quite freely. M. Hupel de la Noue greatly amused the company by repeating the same story he had told at dinner but with all the truly vulgar details restored. This was his specialty: he always had two versions of every anecdote, one for the ladies, the other for the men. When Aristide Saccard came in, he was immediately surrounded and heaped with compliments, and when he pretended not to understand, M. de Saffré explained, in words that garnered considerable applause, that he, Saccard, had done his country a great service by preventing the beautiful Laure d’Aurigny from going over to the English.

“No, really, gentlemen, you’re mistaken,” Saccard stammered with false modesty.

“No, father, don’t deny it!” Maxime exclaimed in a bantering tone of voice. “At your age, it’s quite an accomplishment.”

The young man disposed of his cigar and returned to the drawing room. Lots of people had gathered. The gallery was full of dark frock coats, standing and talking in low voices, and of skirts, spread out across love seats. Servants had begun to circulate with silver trays laden with ice cream and glasses of punch.

Maxime, wanting to speak to Renée, traversed the length of the drawing room, knowing full well where he would find the ladies gathered. At the opposite end of the gallery from the smoking room was another round room that had been turned into an adorable little salon. With its hangings, drapes, and door curtains of buttercup satin, this room had a voluptuous charm, a delicate, original flavor. The light from the chandelier—a piece of exquisite craftsmanship—played a symphony in yellow minor on the sun-colored silks. The effect was like a fountain of subdued sunlight, a sunset on a field of ripe wheat. Ultimately the light settled onto an Aubusson carpet strewn with autumn leaves. For furniture the room had only an ebony piano with ivory inlay, two small cabinets with glass doors displaying a collection of curios, a Louis XVI table, and a jardinière console holding an enormous bouquet of flowers. The love seats, armchairs, and poufs were upholstered with buttercup satin striped with bands of the same material in black and conspicuously embroidered with tulips. And then there were footstools and ottomans, a whole host of elegant and bizarre varieties of the tabouret. ¹⁷ The wood in these pieces could not be seen: satin and stuffing covered everything. The backs had the curvaceous fullness of bolsters, so that these sofas and armchairs were like discreet beds where a person could sleep and make love on a cushion of down while the sensual symphony in yellow minor played on in the background.

Renée loved this little salon, one of whose French doors opened onto the magnificent conservatory attached to the side of the mansion. During the day this was where she spent her idle hours. The yellow hangings did not outshine her pale blonde hair but rather lent it a strange golden glow. Her head stood out against an auroral gleam of pink and white, as if a blonde Diana were awakening in the morning light. No doubt that was why she loved this room, which highlighted her beauty.

Now she found herself there with her intimates. Her sister and aunt had just left. Only the inner circle remained, the fast crowd. Half-reclining on one of the love seats, Renée listened to the confidences of her friend Adeline, who whispered in her ear while making kittenish expressions punctuated by bursts of laughter. Suzanne Haffner had gathered quite a crowd. She was holding forth to a group of young men, who pressed in close without disturbing her German languor or subduing her provocative impudence, as naked and cold as her shoulders. In a corner Mme Sidonie, speaking in a low voice, was indoctrinating a young woman with the eyelashes of a Madonna. A little farther off, Louise stood chatting with a tall, shy youth, who blushed, while Baron Gouraud slumbered in his armchair in the bright light, his flabby flesh and elephantine frame making a stark contrast with the frail grace and silky delicacy of the women. In the room, meanwhile, a fantastic light rained like gold dust on satin skirts as hard-edged and polished as porcelain and on shoulders whose milky whiteness sparkled with diamonds. A fluting voice and laughter like a cooing of doves could be heard with crystal clarity. It was very hot. Fans fluttered slowly to and fro, like wings, each stroke sending a musky fragrance of bosom wafting into the languid air.

When Maxime appeared in the doorway, Renée, who had been listening to the marquise with half an ear, suddenly stood up as if to attend to her duties as hostess. She moved into the main drawing room, and the young man followed. After walking a short distance and shaking a few hands, she drew Maxime aside.

“So,” she whispered. “The chore turned out to be a rather pleasant one. Making love to her isn’t such a fool’s errand after all.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” replied the young man, who had come to plead the case of M. de Mussy.

“Why, it looks to me as though I did well not to rescue you from Louise. You two aren’t wasting any time.”

With some annoyance she added, “It was indecent, the way you were carrying on at the dinner table.”

Maxime burst out laughing.

“Yes, of course, we were telling each other stories. I had no idea what sort of girl she was. She’s funny. She looks like a boy.”

Since Renée continued to wear an expression of prudish annoyance, the young man, who had never known her to get angry about such things, continued in his joshingly familiar way. “Do you suppose, stepmother dear, that I squeezed her knee under the table? What the devil do you take me for? I know how to behave with a fiancée! . . . Listen, I have something more serious to talk to you about. . . . Are you listening?”

He lowered his voice even more.

“What I came to tell you is that Mussy is very unhappy. He told me so himself just a few minutes ago. Now, if you two have quarreled, I have no intention of patching it up. But I knew him at school, you know, and since he looked truly desperate, I promised him I’d speak to you.”

He stopped. Renée fixed him with a look that was impossible to define.

“You have nothing to say?” he continued. “It makes no difference to me. I’ve done my errand. Settle it as you like. But honestly, I think you’re cruel. It pained me to look at the poor fellow. If I were you, I’d at least send him a nice note.”

At that, Renée, who had not stopped staring at Maxime with fire in her eyes, said, “Tell M. de Mussy that he bores me.”

Then she returned to her guests, smiling, nodding, and shaking hands as she wandered among them. Maxime, looking stunned, stood where she had left him. Then he laughed to himself.

In no haste to deliver Renée’s message to M. de Mussy, Maxime took a turn about the drawing room. The evening, at once marvelous and banal like all such evenings, was drawing to a close. It was close to midnight, and people were slowly making their way out. Not wanting to turn in on an unpleasant note, he decided to look for Louise. While passing the door of the vestibule, he caught sight of Mme Michelin, whose husband was carefully draping a blue-and-pink evening wrap over her shoulders. “He was charming,” the young woman was saying, “simply charming. All through dinner we talked about you. He will speak to the minister. But it’s not his department—”

Near where they were standing, a servant was swaddling Baron Gouraud in a fur greatcoat, so Mme Michelin whispered in her husband’s ear. “The fellow who can seal the deal for you is that fat man over there,” she said, as he tied her hood under her chin. “He can get whatever he wants from the ministry. Tomorrow, at the Mareuils, we must try—”

M. Michelin smiled. He led his wife cautiously away, as if he were holding something precious and fragile. Maxime, after glancing around the vestibule and assuring himself that Louise was not there, headed straight for the small salon. And there he found her, almost alone, waiting for her father, who must have spent the evening in the smoking room with the political men. The marquise, Mme Haffner, and the other ladies had already left. Only Mme Sidonie remained, telling the wives of a couple of bureaucrats how much she loved animals.

“So there you are, my friend,” Louise exclaimed. “Sit down here and tell me what chair my father fell asleep in. He must be under the impression that he’s already made it to the Chamber.”

Maxime responded in kind, and the two young people were soon laughing again as loudly as they had done at dinner. Maxime sat on a very low stool at Louise’s feet, and by and by he took her hands and carried on with her as he would have done with a comrade. In her dress of white foulard with red polka dots and a high bodice, and with her flat chest, small ugly head, and cunning baby face, she looked like a boy disguised as a girl. Yet at times her slender arms and misshapen body assumed some rather provocative poses, ardor flickered in her still childlike eyes, and Maxime’s teasing failed to bring the slightest blush to her face. Both laughed in the belief that they were alone, unaware that Renée, standing half-hidden in the conservatory, was observing them from a distance.

A moment earlier, while crossing one of the conservatory walkways, Renée had caught sight of Maxime and Louise and stopped abruptly behind a bush. The hothouse in which she found herself was like the nave of a church, with thin iron columns soaring upward to support an arched glass roof that sheltered a profusion of lush vegetation, thick layers of leaves, and towering displays of greenery.

In the middle, in an oval pool at ground level, a multitude of aquatic flora from sunnier climes thrived in a watery world of slime and mystery. Green plumes of cyclanthus wound a monumental sash around the fountain, which resembled the truncated capital of some cyclopean column. At either end of the pool, huge tornelia lifted their strangely scruffy appendages above the water, their bare, dry branches twisting like ailing serpents as they dropped aerial roots into the pool like fishnets suspended in midair. Near the edge, a pandanus from Java spread its coif of green leaves with white stripes, as thin as fencing foils yet as prickly and serrated as Malayan daggers. And grazing the lukewarm surface of the gently heated stagnant pool, water lilies opened their rosy stars, while euryales let their round, leprous leaves droop into the water, on whose surface they floated like the pustulated backs of monstrous toads.

A wide band of selaginella circled the pool. This dwarf fern created a thick carpet of soft green moss, a lawn of sorts. On the far side of the main circular path, four massive thickets of vegetation sent shoots soaring upward to the arched roof: the palms, leaning slightly in their grace, spread their fans, displayed their rounded crowns, and let their leafy branches droop like oars wearied by their eternal voyage through the blue of the sky; the great bamboo of India stood erect, slender and hard, letting loose a light rain of leaves from on high; a ravenala, or traveler’s tree, put up its bouquet of immense Chinese screens; and in a corner a banana tree, heavy with fruit, reached out in all directions with long horizontal leaves large enough for two lovers to lie beneath if they held each other tight. In the corners the euphorbia from Abyssinia resembled prickly candles, misshapen things whose many ugly protuberances oozed poison. Underneath the trees, providing ground cover, low ferns, the maiden-hair and strap, spread their subtle patterns of delicate lace. Plants of a taller genus, the alsophila, arrayed their branches in symmetrical tiers, hexagons of such regularity that they resembled large pieces of china, fruit bowls intended for some gigantic dessert. The clumps of trees were edged with begonia and caladium, the begonia with their twisted leaves superbly spotted with green and red, and the caladium with leaves shaped like the head of a spear, white with green veins, resembling the wings of a big butterfly—strange plants whose foliage derived an odd vitality from the splendor of poisonous blossoms both light and dark.

Behind the clumps of trees a second, narrower path circled the outer circumference of the conservatory. There, arranged in tiers that partially hid the heating pipes, grew maranta, as soft to the touch as velvet; gloxinia, with its violet blossoms shaped like bells; and dracaena, like strips of old lacquer.

Among the charms of this winter garden were the verdant caverns in each of the four corners, ample arbors sealed off by thick curtains of vine. Here, bits of virgin forest had built leafy walls, impenetrable tangles of stems, of supple shoots clinging to branches, leaping the void with a bold thrust or dropping from the vault like the tassels on sumptuous tapestries. A stalk of vanilla, whose ripe beans exhaled penetrating fragrances, followed the curve of a moss-covered portico. Cocculus from the Levant carpeted the slender columns with their round leaves. Bauhinias with their red seedpods and quisqualis with flowers hanging like necklaces of glass beads crept and oozed and entwined themselves like slender snakes playing endlessly and slithering their way ever deeper into the darkness of the vegetation.

And here and there beneath the arches and between the clusters of trees hung baskets attached to thin metal chains and filled with orchids, bizarre plants that grow in midair and put out compact shoots in all directions—gnarled, crooked shoots that dangle like diseased members. There were Venus’ slippers, the flowers of which resemble a marvelous slipper with dragonfly wings adorning the heel; aerides, so sweetly fragrant; and stanhopea, with pale, striped flowers whose strong, acrid odor can be smelled from quite a distance, like foul exhalations from the infected throat of a convalescent.

Yet what most struck visitors from every vantage in the conservatory was the giant Chinese hibiscus, which covered the entire side of the house where the conservatory was attached with a vast expanse of leaf and blossom. The big purple flowers of this gigantic mallow lived only a few hours, but fresh blossoms were constantly appearing to replace the ones that died. They looked for all the world like sensual, gaping female mouths—like the red lips, soft and moist, of some enormous Messalina,¹⁸ bruised by kisses yet perpetually resurrecting their insatiable bloody smiles.

Renée, standing close to the pool and surrounded by all this floral splendor, was shivering. Behind her, a great sphinx of black marble crouching on a block of granite turned its head toward the aquarium with a stealthy, cruel, feline smile. This figure, with its gleaming thighs, seemed to be the somber idol of this land of fire. At this hour the globes of frosted glass lent a milky sheen to the greenery. Statues, busts of women with their heads thrown back, puffed up with laughter, blanched in the thickets of vegetation, their mad glee contorted by patches of shadow. A strange light played over the viscous, stagnant water of the pool, revealing vague shapes, glaucous masses with monstrous outlines. Waves of brightness washed over the glossy leaves of ravenala and the lacquered fronds of fan palms, while light fell from the lacy ferns in a fine drizzle. Reflections from the glass shimmered above, amid the somber crowns of the tall palms. Meanwhile, darkness loomed all around. The arbors with their vine draperies were submerged in gloom, like the nests of dormant reptiles.

Renée stood musing in the bright light, watching Louise and Maxime from afar. This was no longer the vague daydream, the nebulous twilight temptation she had experienced on the cool byways of the Bois. No longer were her thoughts lulled to sleep by the hoofbeats of her horses trotting past manicured lawns and woods where cosseted families went on Sunday outings. A sharp, piercing desire had taken possession of her.

An overwhelming love, a sensual need, suffused this sealed nave seething with the ardent sap of the tropics. The young woman was caught up in the potent nuptials of the earth itself—nuptials from which issued the dark vegetation and colossal shoots that surrounded her. From the acrid depths of this sea of fire, this sylvan luxuriance, this vegetal mass burning with the entrails on which it fed, troubling currents flowed into her, intoxicated her. At her feet, the pool of hot water thick with the juices of floating roots gave off steam, wreathing her shoulders in a mantle of heavy vapors, a mist that warmed her skin like the touch of a hand moist with desire. The smell of the palms, the aroma shed by the quivering foliage atop their tall trunks, swirled around her head. More than the stifling hot air, more than the bright lights, more than the huge, brilliant blossoms like faces laughing or grimacing among the leaves, it was above all the odors that overpowered her. An indefinable fragrance, powerful and exciting, lingered in the air, compounded of a thousand smells: of human sweat, the breath of women, the smell of hair. Sweet breezes, hints of fragrance faint to the point of vanishing, mixed with coarse, pestilential blasts, heavy with poison. In all this strange symphony of odors, however, the melodic phrase that came back again and again, dominating everything else, smothering the tenderness of the vanilla and the harshness of the orchids, was a sharp, sensual, human odor—the odor of love that filters out of the closed bedroom of a young married couple at daybreak.

Sinking back slowly, Renée leaned against the granite pedestal. In her green satin dress, her breast and face flushed and glistening with diamond raindrops, she resembled a magnificent flower of pink and green, a water lily from the pond wilting in the heat. Now that her vision had cleared, all her good resolutions evaporated forever, and the intoxication of the dinner table went once more to her head, imperious, victorious, reinforced by the flames of the hothouse. Her thoughts were no longer about the calming coolness of the night, the murmuring shades of the park that had counseled her to live a life of happy tranquillity. Ardent but blasé, she felt her senses now aroused, her impulsiveness now awakened. Above her, the great black marble sphinx laughed its mysterious laugh, as if it had read the desire, at last articulated, that had galvanized this dead heart—the long-elusive desire, the “something else” that Renée had vainly sought in the swaying of the calèche, in the fine ash of the falling night, and that had just been suddenly revealed to her in the harsh light of this garden of fire by the sight of Louise and Maxime laughing and joking while sitting hand in hand.

At that moment, the sound of voices issued from one of the nearby arbors, into which Aristide Saccard had led Mignon and Charrier.

“No, really, Monsieur Saccard,” said the latter in an unctuous tone, “we can’t buy that back from you at more than 250 francs a meter.”

To which came Saccard’s sharp retort: “But you valued every meter in my share at 250 francs.”

“All right. Listen, we’ll make it 225.”

The blunt exchanges continued, sounding strange in those groves of drooping palms. But they passed in and out of Renée’s dream like so much useless noise, for what loomed before her, with all the allure of a dizzying gaze into the void, was an unknown ecstasy, hot with crime, keener than any pleasure she had yet tasted, the last drop remaining in her cup. Her weariness had evaporated.

The shrub behind which she stood half-concealed was a deadly plant, a tanghin from Madagascar, with broad, boxy leaves and whitish stems whose smallest veins distilled a milky poison. When Louise and Maxime, bathed in the yellow glow, the sunset, of the small salon, chanced to laugh a little louder than before, Renée, her mind awry, her mouth parched and irritated, took a dangling sprig of tanghin between her lips and bit down on one of its bitter leaves.