The Kill - Emile Zola [113]
Annoyed by the brusque way in which her sister-in-law had cut her story short, the businesswoman made her wait a bit for an answer.
“Yes, of course. Only I advise you first and foremost to look to your friends. . . . If I were in your position, I know what I’d do. . . . I’d quite simply go to M. de Saffré.”
Renée gave a forced smile. “But that would hardly be proper,” she replied, “if as you say he’s so much in love.”
The old woman stared at her hard. Then her pudgy face gently softened into a smile of tender pity.
“Poor dear,” she murmured. “You’ve been crying. Don’t deny it. I see it in your eyes. Be strong, accept life as it is. . . . Come, let me arrange the little matter we’ve been discussing.”
Renée got up, wringing her hands so that her gloves made a crinkling sound. And she remained standing, badly shaken by a cruel inner struggle. She was on the point of parting her lips, perhaps to indicate her acceptance, when a bell rang in the next room. Mme Sidonie rushed out, leaving the door open just enough to reveal two rows of pianos. The young woman then heard a man’s step and muffled echoes of a whispered conservation. Without thinking, she went over to examine the yellow stain the mattress had left on the wall. That stain annoyed her, irritated her. Forgetting everything— Maxime, the 50,000 francs, M. de Saffré—she walked back around the bed, thinking, “It went much better where it was before. Some women truly have no taste. Lying this way you’re bound to have the light in your eyes.” A vague image rose from the depths of her memory, an image of the stranger from the Quai Saint-Paul and of a romance that had consisted of just two encounters—a chance affair she had savored in this very room, with the bed in the other place. All that remained of that affair was that worn spot on the wallpaper. The room now made her very uneasy, and she grew impatient at the continuing buzz of voices from the adjoining room.
When Mme Sidonie returned, carefully opening the door and closing it again, she repeatedly signaled with her fingers that Renée should speak in a low voice. Then she whispered in her ear, “You’ll never guess, but you’re in luck. M. de Saffré is here.”
“You didn’t tell him that I was here, did you?” the young woman asked anxiously.
The businesswoman looked surprised and, feigning innocence, answered, “Why, yes, I did. . . . He’s waiting for me to invite him in. Of course I didn’t say anything about the 50,000 francs.”
Renée, who had turned quite pale, straightened as if lashed by a whip. Her pride returned with a vengeance. The sound of boots in the next room, now ominously brutal, exasperated her. “I’m leaving,” she announced curtly. “Come open the door for me.”
Mme Sidonie attempted to smile. “Don’t be childish. . . . I can’t stay here with this boy on my hands now that I’ve told him you were here. . . . You’re really putting me in an awkward position.”
But the young woman had already started down the stairs. Standing in front of the closed door of the shop, she repeatedly cried, “Open it for me! Open it!”
The milliner was in the habit of putting the knob in her pocket after removing it from the door. She wanted the discussion to continue. Finally giving way to anger herself and displaying in the depths of her gray eyes the bitter desiccation of her nature, she shouted, “But what do you want me to tell this man?”
“That I’m not for sale,” Renée answered, with one foot already on the sidewalk. And as the door shut violently behind her, she thought she heard Mme Sidonie mutter, “Get out then, whore. You’ll pay for this.”
“My God!” the young woman thought as she climbed back into her coupé. “Even my husband is preferable to that.”
She drove straight back to the house. That night she told Maxime not to come. She felt ill and needed rest, she said. And the next day, when she handed him the 15,000 francs for Sylvia’s jeweler, his astonishment and questions embarrassed her. She said that her husband had done a nice stroke of business.