The Kill - Emile Zola [79]
“Your father will be with us,” she shouted after him just as he rejoined Renée.
His stepmother found herself surrounded by a group of women who were laughing quite loudly, while M. de Saffré had availed himself of the place left free by Maxime to slide in alongside her and lavish her with crude compliments. Then he and the women all began to shout and slap their thighs, to the point where Renée, deafened by the noise and by now yawning herself, got up and said to her companion, “Let’s go! They’re too idiotic.”
As they were leaving, M. de Mussy came in. He seemed delighted to run into Maxime, and, paying no attention to the masked woman with him, murmured with a lovesick air, “Ah, my friend, she’s killing me. I know she’s feeling better, but her door remains closed to me. Tell her that you’ve seen me with tears in my eyes.”
“Don’t worry, your message will be delivered,” the young man replied with a strange laugh.
On the stairs he asked, “So, step-mama, did the poor boy touch your heartstrings?”
She shrugged but gave no answer. Downstairs, on the sidewalk, she paused a moment before climbing into the cab, which had waited for them, looking hesitantly first toward the Madeleine and then toward the boulevard des Italiens. It was barely eleven-thirty, and the boulevard was still quite animated.
“So, we’re going home,” she murmured wistfully.
“Unless you’d like to drive along the boulevards for a while,” Maxime replied.
She agreed. The evening, intended to be a feast to feed a woman’s curiosity, was not going as planned, and she hated the idea of returning home shorn of one more illusion and with a migraine coming on. It had long been a fantasy of hers that an actress’s ball had to be the most amusing thing in the world. As sometimes happens in the final days of October, spring seemed to have returned. The night was as warm as an evening in May, and the occasional chill breeze only added to the gaiety in the air. Renée, lying with her head against the carriage door, remained silent, staring at the crowd, the cafés, and the restaurants, which stretched out before her in an endless line. She had become quite serious, absorbed in a typical woman’s daydream filled with vague longings. The dresses of the prostitutes swept over the wide sidewalk, and the men’s boots struck the pavement with distinct familiarity; easy pleasures and facile loves seemed to gallop along the gray asphalt. And that sidewalk, that asphalt, awakened dormant desires in her, made her forget the idiotic ball she had just left and allowed her to glimpse other, more savory enjoyments. In the windows of the private rooms at Brébant’s she saw women silhouetted against the whiteness of the curtains. Maxime told her a very naughty story about a deceived husband who had caught the silhouette of his wife on a curtain in the act of making love to the silhouette of a man. She was barely listening. He cheered up, however, and after a while took her hands and teased her by talking about poor M. de Mussy.
On the way back they again passed by Brébant’s. “Did you know,” she asked suddenly, “that M. de Saffré invited me to supper tonight?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have eaten very well,” he replied, laughing. “Saffré hasn’t the slightest culinary imagination. He hasn’t gotten beyond