The Kill - Emile Zola [95]
“All right, then, it’s agreed,” she said, rising abruptly from her seat. “I rattle on and on and forget that I’m giving you a headache. . . . You’ll come tomorrow, won’t you? We’ll talk money and find you a lender. . . . Hear me, now: I want you to be happy.”
Still motionless, fainting from the heat, the young woman was silent for a while before answering, as though it took laborious effort on her part to understand what was being said. “Yes, I’ll come, it’s agreed, and we’ll talk, but not tomorrow. . . . Worms will be content with an installment on what I owe. When he bothers me again, we’ll see. . . . Don’t say anything more about all this. My head is splitting from talking business.”
Mme Sidonie looked quite upset. She was on the point of sitting down again and resuming her soothing monologue, but Renée’s weary attitude persuaded her to postpone her attack. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of papers, among which she searched for and eventually found an object enclosed in a pink box. “I came to recommend this new soap to you,” she said, reverting to her businesswoman’s voice. “I’ve taken a great interest in the inventor, a charming young man. It’s a very gentle soap, very good for the skin. You’ll try it, won’t you? And mention it to your friends? . . . I’ll leave it here, on the mantel.”
She had reached the doorway when she turned again and, standing in the rosy glow from the fireplace, her face like wax, she began to sing the praises of an elastic belt, an invention she said was destined to replace the corset.
“It gives you a perfectly round waist, a real wasp waist,” she said. “I rescued it from a bankruptcy. When you come, you can try on some samples, if you like. . . . It took me a week of running to the lawyers. The papers are in my pocket, and I’m on my way right now to see an official about having the final lien removed. . . . See you soon, my darling. Remember that I’m waiting for you and that I want to dry your beautiful eyes.”
She slipped out and disappeared. Renée didn’t even hear her close the door. She remained in front of the dying fire, continuing her daydream, her head full of dancing numbers, while in the distance she heard the voices of Saccard and Mme Sidonie talking, offering her considerable sums in the tone in which an auctioneer invites bids on a piece of furniture. On her neck she could still feel her husband’s brutal kiss, and when she turned around there was the businesswoman at her feet, with her black dress and pasty face, making passionate speeches to her, extolling her perfections, begging her for a tryst in the posture of a lover on the brink of despair. This made her smile. The heat in the room was more and more stifling. And the young woman’s stupor and bizarre dreams were merely the products of a light and artificial sleep, and behind that thin veil she could still see the small private room on the boulevard and the wide divan next to which she had fallen to her knees. She had ceased to suffer altogether. When she opened her eyes, Maxime flitted through the rosy firelight.
The next day, at the ministry ball, beautiful Mme Saccard was marvelous to behold. Worms had accepted the payment of 50,000 francs. She emerged from financial embarrassment laughing like a woman who has recovered from a serious illness. When she crossed the salons in her splendid pink faille gown with its long Louis XIV train edged with white lace, there was a murmur, and the men shouldered one another aside to catch a glimpse of her. Those who knew her intimately bowed with discreet, knowing smiles, paying homage to those beautiful shoulders, so well-known to all of official Paris—indeed, they were the stalwart pillars on which the Empire rested. She had bared her bosom with such scorn for gawkers, and walked with such tranquillity and tenderness in her nudity, that it almost ceased to be indecent. Eugène Rougon, the illustrious politician, recognizing that those bare breasts were even more eloquent than