Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [115]
Nana was not moving now. With an arm passed behind her neck, and one hand clasped in the other, she was leaning back her head, with her elbows wide apart. He caught sight obliquely of her half-closed eyes, her slightly opened mouth, her face covered with a bewitching smile, her firm amazonian breasts with their sturdy muscles quivering beneath the satin of her skin, and behind her her loose yellow hair covering her back with a mane like a lioness. Muffat followed this delicate profile, these flakes of rosy flesh disappearing in a golden shadow, these curves which the light of the candles caused to shine like silk. He thought of his old horror of woman, the monster of Scripture,ao lecherous and bestial. Nana was covered all over with a reddish down which gave to her skin the appearance of velvet; whilst, in her flanks and mare-like thighs, in the thick rolls of flesh which veiled her sex with their troubled shadow, there was something of the beast. It was the golden insect, unconscious of its power, but yet destroying the world with its smell alone. Muffat still continued to look, so completely possessed by the sight that, having for a moment lowered his eyelids and withdrawn his gaze, the animal reappeared in the depths of the darkness, enlarged, terrible, and with its posture exaggerated. And it would remain there, before his eyes in his very flesh, as it were, for evermore.
Nana was now rolling herself up. A tremor of endearment seemed to have passed through her limbs. With moistened eyes she tried to become smaller, as though to feel herself all the better. Then she unclasped her hands behind her neck, and let them slip slowly down to her breasts, which she pressed in a nervous embrace. And, satiated, melting into a caress of her whole body, she fondlingly rubbed her cheeks, right and left, against her shoulders. Her rapacious mouth breathed desire upon her. She pouted her lips and kissed herself longingly close to her arm-pit, smiling the while at that other Nana who was also kissing herself in the looking-glass.
Then Muffat uttered a low and prolonged sigh. This self-enjoyment exasperated him. All his reason was abruptly swept away as though by a gale of wind. He seized Nana round the waist, and, in an outburst of brutal passion, flung her on to the carpet.
“Let me be,” cried she—“you have hurt me!”
He was conscious of his defeat. He knew that she was stupid, ribald and deceitful, and he desired her all the same, even poisonous though she might be.
“Oh! it’s ridiculous!” said she, in a fury, when she had regained her feet.
However, she became calmer. He would soon be going off. After putting on a night-dress trimmed with lace, she sat down on the rug before the fire. It was her favourite place. As she again questioned him respecting Fauchery’s article, Muffat gave vague answers, anxious to avoid a scene. Then she lapsed into a long silence, thinking of some means of getting rid of the count.
She wanted to do it pleasantly, for she was a good-natured girl, and was sorry to pain others, and more especially him, because he was a cuckold—a circumstance that had led to making her feel more kindly disposed towards him.
“So it’s to-morrow morning,” she at length observed, “that you are expecting your wife?”
Muffat had thrown himself into an easy-chair. He looked drowsy and tired. He nodded his head. Nana watched him seriously, racking her brain the while. Still seated on the rug, amidst the rumpled lace, she was nursing one of her bare feet between her hands, and kept turning it about mechanically.
“How long have you been married?” asked she.