The Kill - Emile Zola [71]
“So where are you coming from?” she would say. “You reek of tobacco and perfume. . . . I’m sure I’m going to have a migraine.”
And something about the peculiar odor did indeed trouble her deeply. Such was the persistent fragrance of this unusual household.
Meanwhile, Maxime was smitten with a grand passion for little Sylvia. For months on end he bored his stepmother with talk of this prostitute. Renée soon knew all there was to know about her, from the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair. She had a slight bruise on her hip; nothing was lovelier than her knees; her shoulders were peculiar in that only the left one was dimpled. Maxime took malicious pleasure in recounting the perfections of his mistress to Renée during their drives together. One evening, on the way home from the Bois, Renée’s carriage was caught with Sylvia’s in a traffic jam, and the two were obliged to sit for a time side by side on the Champs-Elysées.10 The two women stared at each other with keen curiosity, while Maxime, delighted by this critical encounter, snickered to himself. When the calèche resumed its forward motion, Renée’s somber silence made Maxime think she was sulking, and he expected one of those maternal scenes, one of those odd scoldings with which she still occasionally diverted herself in her lassitude.
“Do you know that woman’s jeweler?” she asked him abruptly, just as they reached the place de la Concorde.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he answered with a smile. “I owe him 10,000 francs. . . . Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
Then, after another interval of silence: “She was wearing a very pretty bracelet, the one on her left wrist. . . . I would have liked to have seen it close up.”
They returned home. She said no more about it. But the next day, as Maxime and his father were about to go out together, she took the young man aside and spoke to him in a low voice, with an embarrassed look and a pretty smile as if seeking a favor. He seemed surprised and went off laughing in his wicked way. That evening he brought Sylvia’s bracelet home with him, for his stepmother had begged him to show it to her.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “Who wouldn’t steal for you, step-mama?”
“She didn’t see you take it?” Renée asked, as she eagerly examined the bracelet.
“I don’t think so. . . . She wore it yesterday, so she certainly won’t want to wear it today.”
In the meantime the young woman had gone over to the window and put the bracelet on. She held her wrist slightly raised and turned it slowly, ecstatically repeating, “Oh! Very pretty, very pretty. . . . I quite like everything about it, except the emeralds.”
At that moment, with her wrist still held high in the white light of the window, Saccard walked in.
“What have we here?” he cried out in astonishment. “Sylvia’s bracelet!”
“You’re familiar with this item?” she said, more embarrassed than he and not knowing what to do with her arm.
He recovered. He pointed a menacing finger at his son and muttered, “This young scoundrel always has some kind of forbidden fruit in his pocket! . . . One of these days he’ll be bringing us the lady’s arm with the bracelet still on it.”
“Hold on a minute!” Maxime replied with cowardly cunning. “It wasn’t me. It was Renée who wanted to see it.”
“Oh!” was all the husband said.
And he in turn examined the jewelry, repeating the same words as his wife: “It’s very pretty, very pretty indeed.”
Then he quietly left the room, and Renée scolded Maxime for giving her away. He replied that his father couldn’t care less about such things. She returned the bracelet to him.
“You will go see the jeweler,” she said, “and order me one just like this, only you’ll ask him to use sapphires instead of emeralds.”
Saccard could not keep anything or anyone close to him