Nana and Muffat
 

ONCE SHE HAD got him in the bedroom with the doors closed, she'd entertain herself with the man's humiliation. At first, they'd have fun, she'd give him a few light slaps and force him to comply with funny wishes, making him lisp like a child and repeat little phrases.

'Say like me: "Shit! Goco doesn't care a toss!"' He was pliable to the point of imitating her accent. 'Shit! Coco doesn't care a toss!'

Or, she'd play at being a bear on all fours, on her fur rug, in her chemise, turning round growling as if she'd devour him; and she even bit his calves, for a joke. Then, getting up, she'd say: 'It's your turn now. I bet you don't make as good a bear as me.'

It was charming. She amused him as a bear, with her white skin and her mane of red hair. He would laugh and get down on all fours as well, growling and biting her calves as she got away, acting as if she was thoroughly frightened.

'Aren't we fools?' she'd say in the end. 'You have no idea how ugly you are, my pet! Ah, what if they were to see you at the Tuileries?'

But these little games soon went downhill. It wasn't cruelty in her, for she was a kind enough girl; it was as if a blast of insanity had swept its way in behind those closed doors. Their luxuriousness threw them off course and into delirious fantasies of the flesh. The old pious fears of a sleepless night turned into a bestial thirst, a mania for going down on all fours, growling and biting. Then, one day, while he was playing bear, she pushed him roughly and he fell against a piece of furniture, she burst out laughing - she couldn't help herself- seeing a bruise on his forehead. From then on, having got a taste for it with her try on La Faloise, she treated him like an animal, whipped him and followed him round with kicks.

'Gee up! Gee up! You're the horse. . Giddy up. Filthy nag! Won't you go?'

At other times he was a dog. She'd throw her perfumed handkerchief into the corner of the room and he'd have to go over on his hands and knees to pick it up with his teeth.

'Fetch, Caesar! . . . I'll give it to you if you dawdle. Good, Caesar! Obedient dog! Nice! Do it gently!'

He revelled in his abasement, feeling the joy of being a brute. He longed to sink further and would shout:

'Hit me harder! . . . Go on, go on, I'm all worked up! Hit me for that!' She had a sudden fancy - she ordered him to turn up one evening in his full chamberlain's uniform. What a laugh, what fun she had mocking him when he was in his full regalia with his sword, hat, white breeches and a red dress-coat emblazoned with gold embroidery and carrying the symbolic key on the right tail. This key, above all, diverted her, launching her off into a mad fantasy of dirty explanations. Laughing all the time, carried away by her lack of respect for grandeur and by the joy of demeaning him in all the official pomp of this costume, she shook him, she pinched him and yelled at him:

'Go on then, chamberlain!' She accompanied this with a series of kicks up the bum. She gave these with all her heart as against the Tuileries, the majesty of the imperial court enthroned on the summit of the fear and subjugation of the populace. That was what she thought of society! This was her revenge, a subconscious grudge of her family, bequeathed in her blood. Then, when the chamberlain was undressed, with his uniform on the floor, she shouted at him to jump on it and he jumped, she shouted at him to spit and he spat; she shouted at him to walk on the gold braid, on the eagles, on the decorations, and he walked. Scrunch! There was nothing left, everything caved in. She smashed a chamberlain as she smashed a decanter or a comfit-dish, making a complete mess of him, a heap of filth at the street corner.

In the meantime, the goldsmiths had broken their word, the bed wasn't delivered until the middle of January. Muffat happened to be in Normandy at that time, where he had gone to sell a last piece of the wreckage. Nana at once extorted four thousand francs. He wasn't due to come back until the day after next; but, having finished his business, he brought forward his return, and, without even passing Rue Miromesnil he went to the Avenue de Villiers. Ten o'clock struck. As he had a key to the little door opening on to Rue Cardinet, he went straight up. Upstairs, in the drawing-room, Zoc, who was polishing the bronzes, was struck dumb. Not knowing how to stop him, she started to tell him, in a roundabout way, that Monsieur Venot, seeming very upset, had been looking for him from the day before, and that he'd already come twice to beg her to send Monsieur home, if he stopped off first at Nana's house. Muffat heard, but couldn't make a thing of her story; then, noticing her confusion, he was seized with a fit of jealous rage - something he no longer thought himself capable of- and threw himself against the bedroom door, where he heard laughter. The door gave, the two halves flew open, while Zoc withdrew with a shrug of her shoulders. So much the worse! As Madame was going crazy she could sort matters out herself.

At the threshold, Muffat gave a cry at what he saw in front of him.

'My God! ... My God!'

The bedroom glittered in its new royal splendour. The tea-rose velvet hangings, sewn with twinkling stars on silver bosses, were of that rosy hue the sky takes on fine evenings, when Venus shines on the horizon against the clear background of the dwindling day. Gold cords fell in the corners, gold lace framed the panels, like light flames, like heads of loose red hair half-covering the spacious emptiness of the room, heightening its volup tuous pallor. Next, just opposite, there was the gold and silver bed which sparkled with the new brilliance of its craftsmanship - a throne just large enough for Nana to be able to spread the glory of her naked limbs, an altar of Byzantine riches, worthy of the almighty power of her sex, and where she was, at this moment, uncovered, with all the religious, shameless display of a feared idol. And, near her, beneath the snowy reflection of her breasts, in the midst of her triumph as a goddess, there wallowed a disgrace, a decrepitude, a laughable and pathetic ruin, the Marquis de Chouard in his shirt.

The count had clasped his hands. A great shudder went through him.

'My God! . . . My God!'

It was for the Marquis de Chouard that the gold roses bloomed on the prow-like head of the bed, the little clusters of gold roses opening amongst the gold foliage; it was for him that the Cupids hung over, the circle of them somersaulting over a trellis of silver, laughing in amorous playfulness; and it was for him that the faun at their feet uncovered the sleeping nymph, worn out with voluptuousness, that figure of Night, modelled on the famous naked body of Nana, down to the big strong thighs by which she was known to all. Thrown there, like a human rag, marred and rotted by sixty years of debauchery, he brought a flavour of the charnel-house into the glorious display of the woman's radiant flesh. When he saw the door open, he raised himself up, seized with fear, like an ancient dotard. That night of love had turned him into a complete idiot, he'd relapsed into childhood; unable to find the right words any longer, half paralysed, stammering and shaking, he stayed in his cowering posture, his shirt rucked up on his skeletal body, one leg out of the covers, a miserable livid leg covered in grey hairs. Nana, in spite of being put out, couldn't help laughing.

'Lie down, cover yourself up in the bed,' she said, pulling him down and burying him beneath the coverlet, like a bit of filth you wouldn't want to show.

And she got up to close the door. No luck, certainly, with her little muff. He always turned up at the wrong moment. Besides, hadn't he gone to Normandy to get money? The old man had brought four thousand francs, so she'd let him have his way. She pushed back the two doors and shouted:

'So much the worse for you! It's your own fault. Is that any way to come in? I've had enough. Bon voyage.'

Trans. F.P.