The Kill - Emile Zola [56]
She had gone over to a mirror. Maxime walked around behind her so as to examine her from various angles.
“But when I put on the jacket, I noticed that there was a big crease right here on the left shoulder. Do you see it? . . . It’s very ugly. It makes me look as though one shoulder is higher than the other.”
He moved close to her, passed his finger over the crease as if to smooth it out, and then, naughty schoolboy that he was, allowed his hand to linger on the spot with a certain apparent comfort.
“Well,” she continued, “I simply couldn’t stand it. I ordered the carriage brought round and went to tell Worms what I thought of his inconceivable carelessness. . . . He promised me he’d fix it.”
She remained in front of the mirror, still contemplating her image and all of a sudden lost in reverie. After a while she placed a finger on her lips with an air of meditative impatience. Then, in a very low voice, as if talking to herself, she said, “Something is missing. . . . Something is definitely missing.”
Turning abruptly, she faced Maxime and asked, “Is it really all right? . . . Don’t you think something is missing, a trifle, a bow somewhere?”
The schoolboy, reassured by the young woman’s friendly manner, had regained all the poise of his impudent nature. He moved away, drew near, squinted, muttering all the while: “No, no, nothing is missing. It’s very pretty, very pretty. . . . If anything, there is a bit too much.”
He blushed a bit for all his audacity, drew still closer to Renée, and tracing an acute angle on her bosom with his fingertip said, “If it were up to me, I’d scoop out the lace like this and add a necklace with a big cross.”
She clapped her hands, beaming.
“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “That’s it! . . . A big cross was just what I had on the tip of my tongue.”
She opened up her blouse, vanished for two minutes, and returned with the necklace and cross. Then she stationed herself once more in front of the mirror, murmuring, “Oh, now it’s perfect, quite perfect! . . . So, my little boy with the shaved head is not stupid at all! Did you dress the women in your province? . . . Clearly we shall be good friends. But you must mind what I say. First of all, you must let your hair grow, and you must never wear that dreadful tunic again. And you will faithfully heed all my lessons in good manners. I want you to be a smart young man.”
“Of course,” the boy said naïvely, “since papa is rich now, and you’re his wife.”
She smiled, and with her usual audacity said, “Then let’s begin by addressing each other familiarly. I’ve been switching between tu and vous. It’s silly. . . . Do you promise to love me?”
“I shall love you with all my heart,” he answered with the effusive-ness of a lad addressing his sweetheart.
Such was the first conversation between Maxime and Renée. The boy did not return to school for a month. In their first days together, his stepmother played with him as she would have played with a doll. She knocked the rough edges of his provincial upbringing off him, and it must be said that he lent himself to her efforts with the utmost alacrity. When he appeared dressed from head to toe in spanking new clothes supplied by his father’s tailor, she gave a cry of joyful surprise. He was as “pretty as a picture,” as she put it. It took a desperately long time for his hair to grow out, however. Renée always said that the hair made the face. She took devoted care of her own. For quite some time the color of her hair drove her to despair—that soft yellow color reminiscent of the finest butter. But when blonde hair became fashionable, she was delighted, and in order to make people believe that she wasn’t just unconsciously following fashion, she swore that she dyed her hair every month.
For a boy of thirteen, Maxime was already terribly knowing. His was one of those frail and precocious natures in which the senses assert themselves early. He had vices before he had desires. On two occasions he nearly got himself expelled from school. Had Renée been attuned to provincial graces, she might have noticed that,