The Kill - Emile Zola [148]
“Come,” said Renée to Maxime.
The orchestra was still playing the waltz. The soft music, whose monotonous rhythm became insipid in the end, heightened the young woman’s exasperation. She made her way to the small salon, still holding Maxime by the hand, and pushed him into the stairway leading up to the dressing room.
“Go on up,” she ordered.
She followed. At that moment, Mme Sidonie, who had been prowling around her sister-in-law all evening, astonished by her restless scouting of all the rooms, happened to be coming up the conservatory steps. She saw a man’s legs disappear into the darkness of the small staircase. A pale smile lit up her waxen face, and, hiking up her magician’s skirt in order to move more quickly, she went looking for her brother, disrupting a figure of the cotillion along the way and questioning any servants she ran into. She finally found Saccard with M. de Mareuil in a room off the dining room that had been converted into a temporary smoking room. The two fathers were discussing dowries and marriage contracts. But after Saccard’s sister whispered something in his ear, he got up, excused himself, and disappeared.
Upstairs, the dressing room was in total disarray. Tossed aside and left lying on the chairs were the nymph Echo’s costume, the torn tights, bits of crumpled lace, and balled-up underthings—the kinds of things a woman urgently expected elsewhere leaves behind in her haste. Little silver and ivory implements lay strewn about. Brushes and files had fallen onto the carpet; and the still-damp towels, the cakes of soap forgotten on the marble, the perfume bottles left unstoppered filled the flesh-colored tent with a strong, penetrating odor. In order to remove the white powder from her arms and shoulders, the young woman had soaked in the pink marble bathtub after the tableaux vivants. An iridescent film of soap spread in patches over the surface of the bathwater now grown cold.
Maxime tripped over a corset, nearly fell, and tried to laugh. But he was shivering at the sight of Renée’s severe countenance. She walked over to him, pushed him, and said in an undertone, “So, you’re going to marry the hunchback?”
“Why, not at all,” he murmured. “Who told you that?”
“Look, don’t lie. It’s pointless.”
A rebellious feeling rose within him. She made him anxious. He wanted to be rid of her.
“All right, yes, I’m marrying her. So what? . . . I’m in charge of my own life, am I not?”
She moved toward him, her head bowed slightly, and with a wicked laugh took him by the wrists: “In charge! You, in charge! . . . You know you’re not. I’m in charge. If I were a mean woman, I’d break your arm. You have no more strength than a girl.”
And since he struggled, she twisted his arms with a violent force that came from anger. He gave a feeble cry. Then she let him go and resumed her train of thought: “Let’s not fight. As you see, I’m stronger than you are.”
His pallor remained, and he felt ashamed of the pain in his wrists. He watched her move about the dressing room, pushing furniture around, meditating, pondering the plan that she had been turning over in her mind ever since her husband had told her of the marriage.
“I’m going to lock you up here,” she said at last, “and when day comes we’ll leave for Le Havre.”
He went white again with alarm and stupor.
“But that’s crazy!” he shouted. “We can’t run off together. You’re out of your mind.”
“That may be. In any case, it’s your fault and your father’s if I’ve lost my mind. . . . I need you, and I’m taking you. Too bad for the imbeciles.”
There was a red glow in her eyes. She approached Maxime again, scorching his face with her breath: “What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You’d all laugh at me, and I might be forced to take back that big lump Mussy, who can’t even keep my feet warm. . . . When you’ve done what we’ve done, you stay together. In any case, it’s perfectly clear, I’m bored when you’re not around, and since I’m leaving, I’m taking you with me. . . . You can tell Céleste what you need and she’ll