The Kill - Emile Zola [78]
“Oh, your skirts!” he muttered with annoyance. “I’m up to my eyes in your skirts.”
But this sally made him laugh, and little by little he grew more animated. She told him about the fear she had felt just now in crossing the Parc Monceau. Then she confessed another of her desires: some night she hoped to go rowing on the little lake in the park in the boat she could see from her window, which had been left lying next to one of the paths. He thought she was getting rather sentimental. The cab rolled on, the gloom remained thick, and the two passengers leaned toward each other in order to hear better over the sound of the wheels, so that occasionally, when they got too close, their hands touched and they could feel each other’s warm breath. At regular intervals, Maxime’s cigar would flare up again, tinting the shadows red and casting a pale pink light on Renée’s face. She looked lovely in that fleeting glimmer, so lovely that the young man was struck by it.
“Oh, my, we’re looking very pretty tonight, step-mama! . . . Let’s see a little.”
He brought his cigar close to her and quickly drew a few puffs. Renée, in her corner, was bathed in a warm and strangely pulsating light. She had raised her hood a little. Her bare head, covered by cascades of little curls and adorned with a simple blue ribbon, looked like the head of a true gamin, and below she wore a big black satin blouse buttoned up to her neck. She found it quite amusing to be examined and admired by the light of a cigar. She threw her head back and laughed quietly, while Maxime added with an air of comic gravity, “Damned if I won’t have to keep an eye on you if I want to bring you back to my father safe and sound.”
Meanwhile, the cab rounded the Madeleine and proceeded down one of the boulevards. Dancing light from blazing store windows now filled its interior. Blanche Muller lived nearby in one of the new houses built after the rue Basse-du-Rempart was filled in and brought up to grade. There were still only a few carriages at the door. It was just past ten. Maxime wanted to tour the boulevards for an hour before going in, but Renée, her curiosity aroused, told him flatly that she would go up herself if he didn’t go with her. He followed her and was pleased to find a bigger crowd than he had expected. The young woman had covered her face with a mask. She went about on Maxime’s arm, whispering peremptory orders that he docilely obeyed, and thereby managed to poke her nose into all the rooms, lift the edges of door-curtains, and examine the furniture, and she would have rummaged in the drawers as well had she not been afraid of being seen. The apartment, though quite sumptuous, had corners suggestive of a bohemian existence, reminders that the occupant had once acted in music halls. It was chiefly in these corners that Renée’s pink nostrils quivered, and she forced her companion to walk slowly so as to miss nothing and savor the smell. She was particularly fascinated by the dressing room, which the hostess had left wide open, for when Blanche Muller entertained, she allowed her guests access to everything, even her alcove, where the bed had been pushed aside to make room for gaming tables. The dressing room did not satisfy Renée, however. To her eye it seemed common and even a little dirty, with its carpet in which the butts of cigarettes had burned little round holes and its blue silk wall hangings stained with pomade and splattered with soap. Once she completed her careful inspection of the premises, every last detail of which she stored away in memory to describe later to her intimate friends, she turned her attention to the people. The men she already knew. They were mostly the same financiers, politicians, and young men about town who attended her “Thursdays.” At times, as she stood facing groups of smiling men in black suits, she could imagine that she was in her own drawing room, where only the night before the same men had stood with the same smiles talking to the marquise d’Espanet or blonde Mme Haffner. And when she looked at the women,