Complete Works of Emile Zola (604 page)

“Through the door, of course,” cried Fauchery in great exasperation.

“Yes, but where is the door?”

At this Bordenave fell upon Barillot and once more set to work swearing and hammering the boards with his cane.

“By God! I said a chair was to be put there to stand for the door, and every day we have to get it done again. Barillot! Where’s Barillot? Another of ‘em! Why, they’re all going!”

Nevertheless, Barillot came and planted the chair down in person, mutely weathering the storm as he did so. And the rehearsal began again. Simonne, in her hat and furs, began moving about like a maidservant busy arranging furniture. She paused to say:

“I’m not warm, you know, so I keep my hands in my muff.”

Then changing her voice, she greeted Bosc with a little cry:

“La, it’s Monsieur le Comte. You’re the first to come, Monsieur le Comte, and Madame will be delighted.”

Bosc had muddy trousers and a huge yellow overcoat, round the collar of which a tremendous comforter was wound. On his head he wore an old hat, and he kept his hands in his pockets. He did not act but dragged himself along, remarking in a hollow voice:

“Don’t disturb your mistress, Isabelle; I want to take her by surprise.”

The rehearsal took its course. Bordenave knitted his brows. He had slipped down low in his armchair and was listening with an air of fatigue. Fauchery was nervous and kept shifting about in his seat. Every few minutes he itched with the desire to interrupt, but he restrained himself. He heard a whispering in the dark and empty house behind him.

“Is she there?” he asked, leaning over toward Bordenave.

The latter nodded affirmatively. Before accepting the part of Geraldine, which he was offering her, Nana had been anxious to see the piece, for she hesitated to play a courtesan’s part a second time. She, in fact, aspired to an honest woman’s part. Accordingly she was hiding in the shadows of a corner box in company with Labordette, who was managing matters for her with Bordenave. Fauchery glanced in her direction and then once more set himself to follow the rehearsal.

Only the front of the stage was lit up. A flaring gas burner on a support, which was fed by a pipe from the footlights, burned in front of a reflector and cast its full brightness over the immediate foreground. It looked like a big yellow eye glaring through the surrounding semiobscurity, where it flamed in a doubtful, melancholy way. Cossard was holding up his manuscript against the slender stem of this arrangement. He wanted to see more clearly, and in the flood of light his hump was sharply outlined. As to Bordenave and Fauchery, they were already drowned in shadow. It was only in the heart of this enormous structure, on a few square yards of stage, that a faint glow suggested the light cast by some lantern nailed up in a railway station. It made the actors look like eccentric phantoms and set their shadows dancing after them. The remainder of the stage was full of mist and suggested a house in process of being pulled down, a church nave in utter ruin. It was littered with ladders, with set pieces and with scenery, of which the faded painting suggested heaped-up rubbish. Hanging high in air, the scenes had the appearance of great ragged clouts suspended from the rafters of some vast old-clothes shop, while above these again a ray of bright sunlight fell from a window and clove the shadow round the flies with a bar of gold.

Meanwhile actors were chatting at the back of the stage while awaiting their cues. Little by little they had raised their voices.

“Confound it, will you be silent?” howled Bordenave, raging up and down in his chair. “I can’t hear a word. Go outside if you want to talk; WE are at work. Barillot, if there’s any more talking I clap on fines all round!”

They were silent for a second or two. They were sitting in a little group on a bench and some rustic chairs in the corner of a scenic garden, which was standing ready to be put in position as it would be used in the opening act the same evening. In the middle of this group Fontan and Prulliere were listening to Rose Mignon, to whom the manager of the Folies-Dramatique Theatre had been making magnificent offers. But a voice was heard shouting:

“The duchess! Saint-Firmin! The duchess and Saint-Firmin are wanted!”

Only when the call was repeated did Prulliere remember that he was Saint-Firmin! Rose, who was playing the Duchess Helene, was already waiting to go on with him while old Bosc slowly returned to his seat, dragging one foot after the other over the sonorous and deserted boards. Clarisse offered him a place on the bench beside her.

“What’s he bawling like that for?” she said in allusion to Bordenave. “Things will be getting rosy soon! A piece can’t be put on nowadays without its getting on his nerves.”

Bosc shrugged his shoulders; he was above such storms. Fontan whispered:

“He’s afraid of a fiasco. The piece strikes me as idiotic.”

Then he turned to Clarisse and again referred to what Rose had been telling them:

“D’you believe in the offers of the Folies people, eh? Three hundred francs an evening for a hundred nights! Why not a country house into the bargain? If his wife were to be given three hundred francs Mignon would chuck my friend Bordenave and do it jolly sharp too!”

Clarisse was a believer in the three hundred francs. That man Fontan was always picking holes in his friends’ successes! Just then Simonne interrupted her. She was shivering with cold. Indeed, they were all buttoned up to the ears and had comforters on, and they looked up at the ray of sunlight which shone brightly above them but did not penetrate the cold gloom of the theater. In the streets outside there was a frost under a November sky.

“And there’s no fire in the greenroom!” said Simonne. “It’s disgusting; he IS just becoming a skinflint! I want to be off; I don’t want to get seedy.”

“Silence, I say!” Bordenave once more thundered.

Then for a minute or so a confused murmur alone was audible as the actors went on repeating their parts. There was scarcely any appropriate action, and they spoke in even tones so as not to tire themselves. Nevertheless, when they did emphasize a particular shade of meaning they cast a glance at the house, which lay before them like a yawning gulf. It was suffused with vague, ambient shadow, which resembled the fine dust floating pent in some high, windowless loft. The deserted house, whose sole illumination was the twilight radiance of the stage, seemed to slumber in melancholy and mysterious effacement. Near the ceiling dense night smothered the frescoes, while from the several tiers of stage boxes on either hand huge widths of gray canvas stretched down to protect the neighboring hangings. In fact, there was no end to these coverings; bands of canvas had been thrown over the velvet-covered ledges in front of the various galleries which they shrouded thickly. Their pale hue stained the surrounding shadows, and of the general decorations of the house only the dark recesses of the boxes were distinguishable. These served to outline the framework of the several stories, where the seats were so many stains of red velvet turned black. The chandelier had been let down as far as it would go, and it so filled the region of the stalls with its pendants as to suggest a flitting and to set one thinking that the public had started on a journey from which they would never return.

Just about then Rose, as the little duchess who has been misled into the society of a courtesan, came to the footlights, lifted up her hands and pouted adorably at the dark and empty theater, which was as sad as a house of mourning.

“Good heavens, what queer people!” she said, emphasizing the phrase and confident that it would have its effect.

Far back in the corner box in which she was hiding Nana sat enveloped in a great shawl. She was listening to the play and devouring Rose with her eyes. Turning toward Labordette, she asked him in a low tone:

“You are sure he’ll come?”

“Quite sure. Without doubt he’ll come with Mignon, so as to have an excuse for coming. As soon as he makes his appearance you’ll go up into Mathilde’s dressing room, and I’ll bring him to you there.”

They were talking of Count Muffat. Labordette had arranged this interview with him on neutral ground. He had had a serious talk with Bordenave, whose affairs had been gravely damaged by two successive failures. Accordingly Bordenave had hastened to lend him his theater and to offer Nana a part, for he was anxious to win the count’s favor and hoped to be able to borrow from him.

“And this part of Geraldine, what d’you thing of it?” continued Labordette.

But Nana sat motionless and vouchsafed no reply. After the first act, in which the author showed how the Duc de Beaurivage played his wife false with the blonde Geraldine, a comic-opera celebrity, the second act witnessed the Duchess Helene’s arrival at the house of the actress on the occasion of a masked ball being given by the latter. The duchess has come to find out by what magical process ladies of that sort conquer and retain their husbands’ affections. A cousin, the handsome Oscar de Saint-Firmin, introduces her and hopes to be able to debauch her. And her first lesson causes her great surprise, for she hears Geraldine swearing like a hodman at the duke, who suffers with most ecstatic submissiveness. The episode causes her to cry out, “Dear me, if that’s the way one ought to talk to the men!” Geraldine had scarce any other scene in the act save this one. As to the duchess, she is very soon punished for her curiosity, for an old buck, the Baron de Tardiveau, takes her for a courtesan and becomes very gallant, while on her other side Beaurivage sits on a lounging chair and makes his peace with Geraldine by dint of kisses and caresses. As this last lady’s part had not yet been assigned to anyone, Father Cossard had got up to read it, and he was now figuring away in Bosc’s arms and emphasizing it despite himself. At this point, while the rehearsal was dragging monotonously on, Fauchery suddenly jumped from his chair. He had restrained himself up to that moment, but now his nerves got the better of him.

“That’s not it!” he cried.

The actors paused awkwardly enough while Fontan sneered and asked in his most contemptuous voice:

“Eh? What’s not it? Who’s not doing it right?”

“Nobody is! You’re quite wrong, quite wrong!” continued Fauchery, and, gesticulating wildly, he came striding over the stage and began himself to act the scene.

“Now look here, you Fontan, do please comprehend the way Tardiveau gets packed off. You must lean forward like this in order to catch hold of the duchess. And then you, Rose, must change your position like that but not too soon — only when you hear the kiss.”

He broke off and in the heat of explanation shouted to Cossard:

“Geraldine, give the kiss! Loudly, so that it may be heard!”

Father Cossard turned toward Bosc and smacked his lips vigorously.

“Good! That’s the kiss,” said Fauchery triumphantly. “Once more; let’s have it once more. Now you see, Rose, I’ve had time to move, and then I give a little cry — so: ‘Oh, she’s given him a kiss.’ But before I do that, Tardiveau must go up the stage. D’you hear, Fontan? You go up. Come, let’s try it again, all together.”

The actors continued the scene again, but Fontan played his part with such an ill grace that they made no sort of progress. Twice Fauchery had to repeat his explanation, each time acting it out with more warmth than before. The actors listened to him with melancholy faces, gazed momentarily at one another, as though he had asked them to walk on their heads, and then awkwardly essayed the passage, only to pull up short directly afterward, looking as stiff as puppets whose strings have just been snapped.

“No, it beats me; I can’t understand it,” said Fontan at length, speaking in the insolent manner peculiar to him.

Bordenave had never once opened his lips. He had slipped quite down in his armchair, so that only the top of his hat was now visible in the doubtful flicker of the gaslight on the stand. His cane had fallen from his grasp and lay slantwise across his waistcoat. Indeed, he seemed to be asleep. But suddenly he sat bolt upright.

“It’s idiotic, my boy,” he announced quietly to Fauchery.

“What d’you mean, idiotic?” cried the author, growing very pale. “It’s you that are the idiot, my dear boy!”

Bordenave began to get angry at once. He repeated the word “idiotic” and, seeking a more forcible expression, hit upon “imbecile” and “damned foolish.” The public would hiss, and the act would never be finished! And when Fauchery, without, indeed, being very deeply wounded by these big phrases, which always recurred when a new piece was being put on, grew savage and called the other a brute, Bordenave went beyond all bounds, brandished his cane in the air, snorted like a bull and shouted:

“Good God! Why the hell can’t you shut up? We’ve lost a quarter of an hour over this folly. Yes, folly! There’s no sense in it. And it’s so simple, after all’s said and done! You, Fontan, mustn’t move. You, Rose, must make your little movement, just that, no more; d’ye see? And then you come down. Now then, let’s get it done this journey. Give the kiss, Cossard.”

Then ensued confusion. The scene went no better than before. Bordenave, in his turn, showed them how to act it about as gracefully as an elephant might have done, while Fauchery sneered and shrugged pityingly. After that Fontan put his word in, and even Bosc made so bold as to give advice. Rose, thoroughly tired out, had ended by sitting down on the chair which indicated the door. No one knew where they had got to, and by way of finish to it all Simonne made a premature entry, under the impression that her cue had been given her, and arrived amid the confusion. This so enraged Bordenave that he whirled his stick round in a terrific manner and caught her a sounding thwack to the rearward. At rehearsal he used frequently to drub his former mistress. Simonne ran away, and this furious outcry followed her:

“Take that, and, by God, if I’m annoyed again I shut the whole shop up at once!”

Fauchery pushed his hat down over his forehead and pretended to be going to leave the theater. But he stopped at the top of the stage and came down again when he saw Bordenave perspiringly resuming his seat. Then he, too, took up his old position in the other armchair. For some seconds they sat motionless side by side while oppressive silence reigned in the shadowy house. The actors waited for nearly two minutes. They were all heavy with exhaustion and felt as though they had performed an overwhelming task.