Nana - Émile Zola (good books to read for young adults txt) 📗
- Author: Émile Zola
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the circumstances of my burial. Probably the ground had been bought
for five years, and this would be against my chances of self-deliverance, for I remembered having noticed at Nantes that in the
trenches of the common graves one end of the last lowered coffins
protruded into the next open cavity, in which case I should only
have had to break through one plank. But if I were in a separate
hole, filled up above me with earth, the obstacles would prove too
great. Had I not been told that the dead were buried six feet deep
in Paris? How was I to get through the enormous mass of soil above
me? Even if I succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the
mold would drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and eyes. That
would be death again, a ghastly death, like drowning in mud.
However, I began to feel the planks carefully. The coffin was
roomy, and I found that I was able to move my arms with tolerable
ease. On both sides the roughly planed boards were stout and
resistive. I slipped my arm onto my chest to raise it over my head.
There I discovered in the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded
slightly at my pressure. Working laboriously, I finally succeeded
in driving out this knot, and on passing my finger through the hole
I found that the earth was wet and clayey. But that availed me
little. I even regretted having removed the knot, vaguely dreading
the irruption of the mold. A second experiment occupied me for a
while. I tapped all over the coffin to ascertain if perhaps there
were any vacuum outside. But the sound was everywhere the same. At
last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of the coffin, I fancied
that it gave out a clearer echoing noise, but that might merely be
produced by the sonority of the wood.
At any rate, I began to press against the boards with my arms and my
closed fists. In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and my
feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood. I strained with
all my strength, indeed, with so desperate an effort of my whole
frame, that my bruised bones seemed breaking. But nothing moved,
and I became insane.
Until that moment I had held delirium at bay. I had mastered the
intoxicating rage which was mounting to my head like the fumes of
alcohol; I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again
cried out aloud I should be undone. But now I yelled; I shouted;
unearthly howls which I could not repress came from my relaxed
throat. I called for help in a voice that I did not recognize,
growing wilder with each fresh appeal and crying out that I would
not die. I also tore at the wood with my nails; I writhed with the
contortions of a caged wolf. I do not know how long this fit of
madness lasted, but I can still feel the relentless hardness of the
box that imprisoned me; I can still hear the storm of shrieks and
sobs with which I filled it; a remaining glimmer of reason made me
try to stop, but I could not do so.
Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of
somnolent pain. The coffin was like stone, which no effort could
break, and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved,
without courage to make any fresh attempts. Another suffering—
hunger—was presently added to cold and want of air. The torture
soon became intolerable. With my finger I tried to pull small
pinches of earth through the hole of the dislodged knot, and I
swallowed them eagerly, only increasing my torment. Tempted by my
flesh, I bit my arms and sucked my skin with a fiendish desire to
drive my teeth in, but I was afraid of drawing blood.
Then I ardently longed for death. All my life long I had trembled
at the thought of dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to
crave for an everlasting night that could never be dark enough. How
childish it had been of me to dread the long, dreamless sleep, the
eternity of silence and gloom! Death was kind, for in suppressing
life it put an end to suffering. Oh, to sleep like the stones, to
be no more!
With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly
I pricked my left thumb. That slight pain roused me from my growing
numbness. I felt again and found a nail—a nail which the
undertaker’s men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in
the lower wood. It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to
the lid, but it moved. Henceforth I had but one idea—to possess
myself of that nail—and I slipped my right hand across my body and
began to shake it. I made but little progress, however; it was a
difficult job, for my hands soon tired, and I had to use them
alternately. The left one, too, was of little use on account of the
nail’s awkward position.
While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind. That
nail meant salvation, and I must have it. But should I get it in
time? Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were
losing their strength; my mind was becoming confused. I had sucked
the drops that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit
my arm and drank my own blood! Thereupon, spurred on by pain,
revived by the tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore
desperately at the nail and at last I wrenched it off!
I then believed in success. My plan was a simple one; I pushed the
point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could
in a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood.
My fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied
that I had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach
and, lifting myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength
of my back against the lid. But although it creaked it did not
yield; the notched line was not deep enough. I had to resume my old
position—which I only managed to do with infinite trouble—and work
afresh. At last after another supreme effort the lid was cleft from
end to end.
I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope. I had
ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth
should bury me. I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus
protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil.
Unfortunately I was assailed by unexpected difficulties. Some heavy
clods of earth weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I
foresaw that I should never reach the surface in that way, for the
mass of soil was already bending my spine and crushing my face.
Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was
stretching my legs, trying to find something firm against which I
might rest my feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding. I
at once gave a desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that
there might be a freshly dug grave in that direction.
It was so. My feet abruptly forced their way into space. An open
grave was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace,
and soon I rolled into the cavity. I was saved!
I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my
eyes raised to heaven. It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky
of velvety blueness. Now and then the rising breeze wafted a
springlike freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me. I was saved!
I could breathe; I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my
arms prayerfully extended toward the starry sky. O God, how sweet
seemed life!
MY RESURRECTION
My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask
him to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me
restrained me from following that course. My return would create
general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the
situation? I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my
left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent
me unhoped-for strength. I should no doubt be able to walk unaided.
Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind. I had
felt beside me in the open grave some sextons’ tools which had been
left there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I
had done, to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to
conceal all traces of my resurrection. I do not believe that I had
any positive motive in doing so. I only deemed it useless to
proclaim my adventure aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive
when the whole world thought me dead. In half an hour every trace
of my escape was obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole.
The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery;
the black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs. When
I endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the
sky was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that
direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the
darkness of the branches.
However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop,
feeling faint and weary. I then sat down on a stone bench and for
the first time looked at myself. I was fully attired with the
exception that I had no hat. I blessed my beloved Marguerite for
the pious thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best
clothes—those which I had worn at our wedding. That remembrance of
my wife brought me to my feet again. I longed to see her without
delay.
At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my
progress. However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the
summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side. Although
roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes
along a broad deserted street skirting the cemetery. I had no
notion as to where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania
I kept saying to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I
should find the Rue Dauphine somehow or other. Several people
passed me but, seized with sudden distrust, I would not stop them
and ask my way. I have since realized that I was then in a burning
fever and already nearly delirious. Finally, just as I reached a
large thoroughfare, I became giddy and fell heavily upon the
pavement.
Here there is a blank in my life. For three whole weeks I remained
unconscious. When I awoke at last I found myself in a strange room.
A man who was nursing me told me quietly that he had picked me up
one morning on the Boulevard Montparnasse and had brought me to his
house. He was an old doctor who had given up practicing.
When I attempted to thank him he sharply answered that my case had
seemed a curious one and that he had wished
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