The Kill - Emile Zola [83]
“What could M. de Saffré possibly have said to you to make you so angry? Did he find you ugly?”
“Oh, him!” she replied. “He’s a vile man. I never would have believed that a gentleman who is so distinguished and polite in my home could say such things. But I forgive him. It was the women who irritated me. They looked like the women you see selling apples. There was one who complained of a boil on her hip, and I think it wouldn’t have taken much for her to lift up her skirts and show us all her sore.”
Maxime burst out laughing.
“No, really,” she continued, warming to her task, “I don’t understand you. They’re filthy and stupid. . . . And to think that whenever I saw you going off to be with your Sylvia, I imagined wondrous things, ancient revels of the sort you see in paintings with creatures wearing crowns of roses and golden goblets and the most extraordinary voluptuousness. . . . Yes, indeed. But what you showed me was a filthy dressing room and women who swore like sailors. Sin like that isn’t worth the bother.”
He made as if to protest, but she silenced him, and, holding between her fingertips the bone of a partridge on which she nibbled daintily, she lowered her voice and added, “Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy. . . . Respectable woman that I am, when I’m bored and sin by dreaming impossible dreams, you can be sure that the things I come up with are a lot nicer than your Blanche Mullers.”
And with a grave air she concluded on a profound note of naïve cynicism: “It’s a matter of upbringing, don’t you see?”
She gently laid the small bone on her plate. The rumble of carriages continued, but no particular sound stood out from the dull roar. She was obliged to raise her voice so that he could hear her, and her cheeks grew redder. On the serving table there remained truffles, a sweet side-dish, and asparagus, unusual for that time of year. He brought everything to the table so as not to have to get up again, and since the surface was rather narrow, he set down on the floor between himself and Renée a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. In the end her appetite proved contagious. They sampled all the dishes and in high spirits emptied the bottle of champagne, proposing scandalous theories while leaning on their elbows like two friends letting themselves go after a bout of drinking. The noise from the boulevard died down, but to her it sounded louder, and at times all those wheels seemed to be turning round in her head.
When he asked about ringing for dessert, she got up, shook the crumbs from her long satin blouse, and said, “Go ahead. . . . You may light a cigar, if you like.”
She felt slightly dizzy. She went over to the window, drawn there by a peculiar sound she couldn’t account for. The shops were closing.
“Look,” she said, turning toward Maxime, “the orchestra is putting away its instruments.”
She leaned out again. Out in the middle of the street, cabs and omnibuses, rarer now and moving more rapidly than before, stared at each other with various-colored eyes as they passed. But along the sidewalks great pits of darkness had opened up in front of the closed shops. Only the cafés remained ablaze, striping the asphalt with streaks of light. From the rue Drouot to the rue du Helder Renée was thus able to observe a long series of white squares alternating with dark, from which the last stragglers emerged only to vanish again in the strangest way. The prostitutes above all, their long dresses alternately illuminated by a harsh light and then drowned in shadow, took on a ghostly air, like faded marionettes caught in the electric beam of some fantastic extravaganza. For a short while Renée found this game amusing. The puddles of light evaporated. The gaslights flickered out. The variegated kiosks stained the darkness more brightly than before. At intervals a crowd of people from some theater hurried past. Gaps began to open up in the flow, however, and groups of two or three men passed beneath the window and were approached by a woman. They stood and haggled. Some of what