Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [74]
“Oh! the strumpets!” suddenly exclaimed Bordenave, in a hoarse voice.
He had only just arrived, and he was already bellowing at two of his chorus-girls, who had almost fallen down on the stage through playing the fool. When he saw Mignon and Fauchery he called them to him to show them something: the prince had just requested permission to compliment Nana in her dressing-room, between the acts. But as he was taking them on to the stage, the stage-manager passed.
“Just fine those hussies, Fernande and Maria!” shouted Bordenave, furiously. Then calming himself, and trying to look dignified like a father and a nobleman, after passing his handkerchief over his face, he added, “I will go and receive His Highness.”
The curtain fell amidst thunders of applause. Immediately there was a regular stampede in the semi-obscurity of the stage, no longer under the glare of the foot-lights; the actors and the supers were hastening to reach their dressing-rooms, whilst the carpenters were rapidly changing the scenery. Simone and Clarisse, however, remained at the back of the stage, whispering together. During the last scene, between two of their lines, they had just arranged a little affair. Clarisse, after thinking the matter over, preferred not to see La Faloise, who no longer wished to leave her to go with Gaga. It would be better for Simone quietly to explain to him that it was not the thing to stick to a woman to that extent. In short, she was to send him about his business.
Then Simone, dressed as a washerwoman in a comic opera, with her fur cape thrown over her shoulders, descended the narrow winding staircase, with its greasy stairs and its damp walls, which led to the doorkeeper’s room. This room, situated between the actors’ and manager’s staircases, shut in on the right and the left by some glass partitioning, was like a huge transparent lantern, inside which two gas-jets were flaring high. A set of pigeon-holes was crammed full of letters and newspapers. On the table bouquets of flowers were lying beside forgotten dirty plates and an old bodice, the button-holes of which the doorkeeper was occupied in mending. And, in the midst of all this disorder, similar to the confusion of a lumber-room, some fashionable gentlemen, stylishly dressed and wearing light kid gloves, occupied the four old rush-bottomed chairs, with patient and submissive looks, and quickly turning their heads each time Madame Bron returned from the interior of the theatre with answers for them. She had just handed a note to a young man, who hastened to open it beneath the gas-jet in the hall, and who turned slightly pale as his eyes encountered this classic phrase, which he had so often read before in the same place, “Not to-night, ducky; I’m engaged.” La Faloise was on one of the chairs at the end of the room, between the table and stove. He seemed ready to pass the evening there, looking rather anxious though, and keeping his long legs under his chair because a litter of little black kittens were gambolling around him, whilst the mother sat staring at him with her yellow eyes.
“What! you here, Mademoiselle Simone? Whatever do you want?” asked the doorkeeper.
Simone wished La Faloise to be sent out to her; but Madame Bron could not see to this at once. In a sort of deep cupboard, under the stairs, she kept a little bar where the supers came to drink between the acts,