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Read books online » Fiction » Nana by Émile Zola (ebook reader ink .txt) 📖

Book online «Nana by Émile Zola (ebook reader ink .txt) 📖». Author Émile Zola



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too soft-hearted.”

 

The coffin had been dragged into the center of the room. As I had

not awakened I was condemned. All clearness departed from my ideas;

everything seemed to revolve in a black haze, and I experienced such

utter lassitude that it seemed almost a relief to leave off hoping.

 

“They haven’t spared the material,” said one of the undertaker’s men

in a gruff voice. “The box is too long.”

 

“He’ll have all the more room,” said the other, laughing.

 

I was not heavy, and they chuckled over it since they had three

flights of stairs to descend. As they were seizing me by the

shoulders and feet I heard Mme Gabin fly into a violent passion.

 

“You cursed little brat,” she screamed, “what do you mean by poking

your nose where you’re not wanted? Look here, I’ll teach you to spy

and pry.”

 

Dede had slipped her tousled head through the doorway to see how the

gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded,

however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother

returned she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of

the two men who were settling me in the coffin.

 

“She is only ten, you know. She is not a bad girl, but she is

frightfully inquisitive. I do not beat her often; only I WILL be

obeyed.”

 

“Oh,” said one of the men, “all kids are alike. Whenever there is a

corpse lying about they always want to see it.”

 

I was commodiously stretched out, and I might have thought myself

still in bed, had it not been that my left arm felt a trifle cramped

from being squeezed against a board. The men had been right. I was

pretty comfortable inside on account of my diminutive stature.

 

“Stop!” suddenly exclaimed Mme Gabin. “I promised his wife to put a

pillow under his head.”

 

The men, who were in a hurry, stuffed in the pillow roughly. One of

them, who had mislaid his hammer, began to swear. He had left the

tool below and went to fetch it, dropping the lid, and when two

sharp blows of the hammer drove in the first nail, a shock ran

through my being—I had ceased to live. The nails then entered in

rapid succession with a rhythmical cadence. It was as if some

packers had been closing a case of dried fruit with easy dexterity.

After that such sounds as reached me were deadened and strangely

prolonged, as if the deal coffin had been changed into a huge

musical box. The last words spoken in the room of the Rue Dauphine—

at least the last ones that I heard distinctly—were uttered by Mme

Gabin.

 

“Mind the staircase,” she said; “the banister of the second flight

isn’t safe, so be careful.”

 

While I was being carried down I experienced a sensation similar to

that of pitching as when one is on board a ship in a rough sea.

However, from that moment my impressions became more and more vague.

I remember that the only distinct thought that still possessed me

was an imbecile, impulsive curiosity as to the road by which I

should be taken to the cemetery. I was not acquainted with a single

street of Paris, and I was ignorant of the position of the large

burial grounds (though of course I had occasionally heard their

names), and yet every effort of my mind was directed toward

ascertaining whether we were turning to the right or to the left.

Meanwhile the jolting of the hearse over the paving stones, the

rumbling of passing vehicles, the steps of the foot passengers, all

created a confused clamor, intensified by the acoustical properties

of the coffin.

 

At first I followed our course pretty closely; then came a halt. I

was again lifted and carried about, and I concluded that we were in

church, but when the funeral procession once more moved onward I

lost all consciousness of the road we took. A ringing of bells

informed me that we were passing another church, and then the softer

and easier progress of the wheels indicated that we were skirting a

garden or park. I was like a victim being taken to the gallows,

awaiting in stupor a deathblow that never came.

 

At last they stopped and pulled me out of the hearse. The business

proceeded rapidly. The noises had ceased; I knew that I was in a

deserted space amid avenues of trees and with the broad sky over my

head. No doubt a few persons followed the bier, some of the

inhabitants of the lodginghouse, perhaps—Simoneau and others, for

instance—for faint whisperings reached my ear. Then I heard a

psalm chanted and some Latin words mumbled by a priest, and

afterward I suddenly felt myself sinking, while the ropes rubbing

against the edges of the coffin elicited lugubrious sounds, as if a

bow were being drawn across the strings of a cracked violoncello.

It was the end. On the left side of my head I felt a violent shock

like that produced by the bursting of a bomb, with another under my

feet and a third more violent still on my chest. So forcible,

indeed, was this last one that I thought the lid was cleft atwain.

I fainted from it.

CHAPTER IV

THE NAIL

 

It is impossible for me to say how long my swoon lasted. Eternity

is not of longer duration than one second spent in nihility. I was

no more. It was slowly and confusedly that I regained some degree

of consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a

nightmare started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a

nightmare compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had

haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my propensity for

dwelling upon hideous thoughts I had conjured up catastrophes.

 

Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting me somewhere—at Guerande,

I believe—and that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed

through a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our head, and a

sudden subsidence blocked up both issues of the tunnel, leaving our

train intact in the center. We were walled up by blocks of rock in

the heart of a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced.

No assistance could possibly reach us; even with powerful engines

and incessant labor it would take a month to clear the tunnel. We

were prisoners there with no outlet, and so our death was only a

question of time.

 

My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous drama and had constantly

varied the details and touches. My actors were men, women and

children; their number increased to hundreds, and they were ever

furnishing me with new incidents. There were some provisions in the

train, but these were soon exhausted, and the hungry passengers, if

they did not actually devour human flesh, at least fought furiously

over the last piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven back

with blows and slowly perished; a mother struggled like a she-wolf

to keep three or four mouthfuls for her child. In my own

compartment a bride and bridegroom were dying, clasped in each

other’s arms in mute despair.

 

The line was free along the whole length of the train, and people

came and went, prowling round the carriages like beasts of prey in

search of carrion. All classes were mingled together. A

millionaire, a high functionary, it was said, wept on a workman’s

shoulder. The lamps had been extinguished from the first, and the

engine fire was nearly out. To pass from one carriage to another it

was necessary to grope about, and thus, too, one slowly reached the

engine, recognizable by its enormous barrel, its cold, motionless

flanks, its useless strength, its grim silence, in the overwhelming

night. Nothing could be more appalling than this train entombed

alive with its passengers perishing one by one.

 

I gloated over the ghastliness of each detail; howls resounded

through the vault; somebody whom one could not see, whose vicinity

was not even suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s shoulder.

But what affected me most of all was the cold and the want of air.

I have never felt so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me;

heavy moisture rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the rocky vault

seemed to crush my chest; the whole mountain was seemingly weighing

upon me.

 

Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded. For some time past we

fancied that we could hear a dull sound, and we tried to hope that

men were at work and that help was coming, but it came not thus.

One of the passengers, however, had discovered an air shaft in the

tunnel, and, crowding round, we all saw this shaft, above which we

could discern a blue patch about the size of a wafer. That blue

patch filled us with rapture, for it was the sky. We stretched

ourselves and stood on tiptoes to breathe more freely. Then we

distinguished some black specks moving about, specks that must

surely be workmen about to deliver us. A furious clamor arose. The

cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from every mouth, while trembling arms

were uplifted toward the tiny azure patch above.

 

That roar of voices aroused me. Where was I? In the tunnel, of

course. I was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing

against my ribs. Then I attempted to rise and struck my head

roughly. Was it the rock closing in on all sides? The blue speck

had vanished—aye, the sky had disappeared and I was still

suffocating, shivering, with chattering teeth.

 

All at once I remembered. Intense horror raised my hair on end. I

felt the hideous truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I had

shaken off the long coma which for many hours had stricken me with

corpselike rigidity. Yes, I could move; my hands could feel the

boards of my coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and

instinctively I called out Marguerite’s name. It was a scream I

raised. In that deal box my voice took so hoarse and weird a sound

that it terrified me. Oh, my God, was this thing true? I was able

to walk, speak, cry out that I was living, and yet my voice could

not be heard; I was entombed under the earth.

 

I made a desperate effort to remain calm and reflect. Was there no

means of getting out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled

brain. The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit of sky overhead was

mingled with the real grave in which I was lying. I stared at the

darkness with widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole, a

slit, a glimmer of light, but only sparks of fire flitted through

that night, with rays that broadened and then faded away. I was in

a somber abyss again. With returning lucidity I struggled against

these fatal visions. Indeed, I should need all my reason if I meant

to try to save myself.

 

The most immediate peril lay in an increasing sense of suffocation.

If I had been able to live so long without air it was owing to

suspended animation, which had changed all the normal conditions of

my existence, but now that my heart beat and my lungs breathed I

should die, asphyxiated, if I did not promptly liberate myself. I

also suffered from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the

mortal numbness of those who fall asleep in the snow, never to wake

again. Still, while unceasingly realizing the necessity of

remaining calm, I felt maddening blasts sweep through my brain, and

to quiet my senses I exhorted myself

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