Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [28]
Nana was sleeping lying on her stomach, her bare arms entwining the pillow in which she buried her face, all pale with fatigue. The bedroom and dressing-room were the only two rooms to which a neighbouring upholsterer had really given his attention. By the aid of the faint streak of light gleaming between the curtains, one could distinguish the violet ebony furniture, the blue and grey hangings and chair coverings. In the warm, drowsy atmosphere of this bedchamber Nana suddenly awoke with a start, as though surprised to find the place beside her vacant. She looked at the other pillow placed next to her own, and which still showed the warm impression of a head in the midst of its frilling. Then, feeling with her hand, she pressed the knob of an electric bell, placed at the head of her bed.
“Has he gone, then?” she asked of the maid who appeared.
“Yes, madame. M. Paul left about ten minutes ago. As madame was tired, he would not wake her. But he requested me to tell madame that he would come to-morrow.”
Whilst speaking, Zoé, the maid, had thrown open the shutters. The bright daylight inundated the room. Zoé was very dark, and wore a little frilled cap; her face, long and pointed like a dog’s, was livid and scarred, with a flat nose, thick lips, and restless black eyes.
“To-morrow, to-morrow,” repeated Nana, still only half awake, “is to-morrow his day, then?”
“Yes, madame. M. Paul always comes on Wednesdays.”
“Ah! now I recollect!” exclaimed the young woman, sitting up in bed. “Everything is altered. I meant to tell him so this morning. He would meet the blackamoor, and then there would be no end of a row! ”
“Madame did not warn me, how was I to know,” murmured Zoé. “Next time madame alters her days, she will do well to tell me, so that I may act accordingly. So the old miser will no longer come on Tuesdays?”
It was thus between themselves, and without a smile, that they termed “old miser” and “blackamoor” the two paying gentlemen of the establishment, a tradesman of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, of a rather economical temperament, and a Wallachian, q a pretended count, whose money, always long in coming, had a most singular odour. Daguenet had secured for himself the morrows of the old miser; as the tradesman had to be at his shop by eight in the morning, the young man watched in Zoé’s kitchen until he took his departure, and then jumped into the warm place he had just vacated, where he remained until ten o’clock, when he also went off to his business. Nana and he thought this arrangement very convenient.
“Never mind!” said she, “I will write to him this afternoon. And, if by chance he doesn’t receive my letter, you must not let him in when he calls to-morrow.”
Zoé walked softly about the room. She talked of the great success of the previous evening. “Madame had shown such talent, she sang so well! Ah! madame need not bother herself now about the future!”
Nana, her elbow buried in the pillow, only answered by nodding her head. Her chemise had slipped from her shoulders, over which fell her unkempt hair.
“No doubt,” she murmured, musingly; “but how can we manage to wait? I shall have all sorts of annoyances to-day. By the way, has the landlord sent yet this morning?”
Then they both began to discuss ways and means. There were three quarters’ rent owing, and the landlord threatened to put in an execution. Besides him, there was a host of other creditors, a job-master, a linen-draper, a dressmaker, a coal merchant, and several others, who came every day and installed themselves on a bench in the anteroom; the coal merchant, especially, made himself most obnoxious, he shouted on the stairs. But Nana’s greatest worry was her little