Thérèse Raquin

by Emile Zola

  Camille was then twenty years old. His mother still spoiled him like a little boy. She loved him because she had fought to keep him alive during a long childhood full of suffering. One after the other, the child had had every fever and every kind of sickness imaginable. For fifteen years, Mme Raquin kept up the struggle against these dreadful illnesses that came one after another to wrench her child away from her. She conquered each one in turn through her patience, her care and her devotion.

  When he had grown up and been saved from death, Camille was still trembling from the repeated shocks that had struck him. His growth had been arrested and he remained small and stunted. The movements of his spindly arms and legs were slow and wearisome. His mother loved him all the more for the weakness that bowed him down. She looked with triumphant tenderness on his poor, pale little face and remembered that she had given life to him more than ten times.

  In the occasional periods of respite from his suffering, the child attended classes at a commercial school in Vernon. There he learned spelling and arithmetic. His education did not go beyond the four rules of adding, subtraction, multiplication and division, and a very basic knowledge of grammar. Later on, he took lessons in writing and doing accounts. Mme Raquin became very nervous when anyone advised her to send her boy off to boarding school; she knew that he would die if he was away from her, and said that the books would kill him. Camille remained in his ignorance and this ignorance was like an additional weakness in him.

  At eighteen, with nothing to do and bored to death in the atmosphere of tender care with which his mother encased him, he took a post as clerk in a cloth merchant’s. He earned sixty francs a month. He had the sort of unquiet spirit that made it unbearable to him to remain idle. He felt calmer, his health was better, when he was doing this mindless task, this clerical job that kept him bent all day over the invoices, over those vast lines of figures, each one of which he spelled out patiently. In the evening, worn out, his head empty, he had a sense of profound enjoyment in the exhaustion that overtook him. He had to row with his mother before she would allow him to enter the cloth merchant’s; she wanted to keep him always beside her, tucked up in a blanket, far from the hazards of life. The young man put his foot down. He demanded work as other children demand toys, not out of any sense of obligation, but by an instinctive, natural need. His mother’s tenderness and devotion had given him a vicious streak of egotism; he thought that he loved whoever felt sorry for him and caressed him, though in reality he lived apart, buried in himself, caring only for his own well-being and seeking by every possible means to multiply his own pleasure. When he got sick of Mme Raquin’s loving kindness, he threw himself with delight into a mindless occupation that kept him away from her herbal teas and her potions. Then, in the evening, when he got back from the office, he ran down to the banks of the Seine with his cousin Thérèse.

  Thérèse was then eighteen years old. One day, sixteen years earlier, when Mme Raquin was still a haberdasher, her brother, Captain Degans, brought a little girl to her in his arms. He was back from Algeria.2

  ‘Here’s a child; you’re its aunt,’ he told her, with a smile. ‘Her mother is dead ... I don’t know what to do with her. I’m letting you have her.’

  The haberdasher took the child, smiled at her and kissed her ruddy cheeks. Degans stayed at Vernon for three days. His sister hardly asked him any questions about the girl that he was giving her. She had a vague notion that the dear little thing had been born in Oran and that her mother was a native woman of great beauty. An hour before he left, the captain handed over a birth certificate in which Thérèse was recognized by him as his child and bore his name. He left and they never saw him again. A few years later, he was killed in Africa.

  Thérèse grew up sleeping in the same bed as Camille and wrapped in the warm tenderness of her aunt. She had an iron constitution and was treated like a sickly child, sharing her cousin’s medicine and kept in the warm atmosphere of the sick boy’s room. She stayed for hours crouching in front of the fire, lost in thought, staring straight into the flames without blinking. This convalescent life that was imposed on her drove her back into herself. She became accustomed to speaking in a low voice, walking along quietly, and staying silent and motionless on a chair, looking blankly with wide-open eyes. Yet, when she did raise an arm or take a step, there was a feline suppleness in her, a mass of energy and passion dormant within her torpid frame. One day, her cousin had fallen over in a faint. She picked him up and carried him off brusquely, this sudden outburst of strength putting large patches of red on her face. The cloistered life that she led and the debilitating regime imposed on her could not weaken her sturdy, slender body, but her face did assume a pale, slightly yellowish tint, and she became almost ugly through being kept from daylight. Sometimes, she would go to the window and look at the houses opposite across which the sun cast its golden rays.

  When Mme Raquin sold her business and retired to the little house by the water, Thérèse felt secret shivers of joy run through her. Her aunt had so often told her: ‘Don’t make a fuss, keep quiet,’ that she carefully kept all her natural impulses concealed deep inside. She had an immense capacity for coolness and an appearance of calm that hid violent fits of passion. She felt herself to be constantly in her cousin’s room, beside this dying child; she had the gentle manner, stillness, placidity and stammering voice of an old woman. When she saw the garden, the pale river and the huge green slopes rising up on the horizon, she had a mad impulse to run around, shouting. She felt her heart beat furiously in her breast; but not a muscle moved on her face and she merely smiled when her aunt asked her whether she liked this new home.

  So life improved for her. She had the same suppleness of movement, the same calm and indifferent expression: she was still the child brought up in the bed of an invalid. But inside, she lived an ardent and passionate existence. When she was alone, in the long grass by the river, she lay flat on her stomach like an animal, her eyes dark and wide, her body flexed, ready to pounce. And she would stay there for hours on end, thinking of nothing, with the sun burning into her, delighted at being able to dig her fingers into the earth. She had wild dreams; she would look defiantly at the river as it rumbled past and imagine that the water was going to leap out and attack her; so she stiffened and prepared to defend herself, wondering angrily how to overcome the waves.

  In the evening, Thérèse, now calm and silent, would sew beside her aunt; her face seemed to be dozing in the light that oozed softly from under the shade of the lamp. Camille, slumped in an armchair, thought about his sums. Only the occasional word, spoken in a low voice, would disturb the tranquillity of this sleepy scene.

  Mme Raquin contemplated her children with serene goodwill. She had decided to marry them to each other. She still considered her son to be on the point of death and was terrified by the thought that she would one day die, leaving him alone and ill. So she was counting on Thérèse, telling herself that the girl would keep good watch over Camille. There were no limits to the confidence she felt in her niece, with her quiet manners and silent devotion. She had seen her at work, and she wanted to give her to Camille as a guardian angel. The marriage was decided upon, a foregone conclusion.

  The children had long known that they were to marry one day. They had grown up in the idea, so it had become quite natural and familiar to them. In the family, the alliance was spoken of as something necessary, inevitable. Mme Raquin had said: ‘We’ll wait until Thérèse is twenty-one.’ And they waited, patiently, without shame or eagerness.

  Camille’s blood had been impoverished by illness and he felt none of the urgent desires of adolescence. With his cousin, he remained a little boy, kissing her as he would kiss his mother, as a matter of habit, abandoning none of his egotistical composure. He saw her as an obliging companion who prevented him from getting too bored and who, from time to time, made him a herbal tea. When he played with her or held her in his arms, he felt as though he were holding a boy; not a shudder passe
d through him. And it never occurred to him on such occasions to kiss Thérèse’s hot lips as she struggled free with a nervous laugh.

  The girl, too, seemed to remain cold and indifferent. Sometimes she would fix her large eyes on Camille and watch him for several minutes with a supremely untroubled stare. Only her lips made slight, barely perceptible movements. There was nothing to be read on this closed face, kept ever sweet and attentive by her implacable will. When there was talk of her marriage, Thérèse took on a serious look and merely nodded approval of everything that Mme Raquin said. Camille fell asleep.

  In the evening, in summer, the two young people would make off to the river. Camille was irritated by his mother’s constant attentions; he had moments of rebellion, he wanted to run about, make himself ill, escape from all the petting that nauseated him. So he would drag Thérèse along with him, provoke her to wrestling bouts and rolling around in the grass. One day, he pushed his cousin and she fell over. She leaped up in a single bound, like a wild animal, her face blazing and her eyes red, and rushed at him with both fists raised. Camille slumped to the ground. He was afraid of her.

  Months and years went by. The day fixed for the wedding arrived. Mme Raquin took Thérèse aside, spoke to her about her father and mother, and told her the story of her birth. The young woman listened to her aunt, then kissed her without saying a word.

  That night, instead of going to her own bedroom on the left of the staircase, Thérèse went to her cousin’s, on the right. This was the only alteration that took place in her life that day. The next morning, when the young couple came down, Camille still had his sickly languor and his saintly, self-centred calm, while Thérèse retained her mild indifference and her restrained expression, terrifying in her impassivity.

  III

  A week after his wedding, Camille stated plainly to his mother that he intended to leave Vernon and go to live in Paris. Mme Raquin protested: she had arranged her life for herself and did not want to change a single thing in it. Her son threw a tantrum and threatened to fall ill if she did not give in to his whim.

  ‘I’ve never got in the way of your plans,’ he told her. ‘I’ve married my cousin, I’ve taken all the medicines you gave me. Now, the least you can do is to allow me one wish and see it from my point of view ... We’ll leave at the end of the month.’

  Mme Raquin did not sleep that night. Camille’s decision was turning her life upside down and she tried desperately to see how she could right it. Little by little, she calmed down. She told herself that the young couple might have children and that, if that happened, her small capital would not be enough. She had to make more money, go back into business, find a lucrative employment for Thérèse. By the next morning, she had grown accustomed to the idea of leaving and drawn up her plans for a new life.

  Over breakfast, she was quite merry.

  ‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ she told her children. ‘I’ll go to Paris tomorrow. I’ll look for a little haberdasher’s business and Thérèse and I will go back to selling needles and thread. It will keep us occupied. As for you, Camille, you can do what you like: you can stroll around in the sunshine, or find yourself a job.’

  ‘I’ll find a job,’ the young man replied.

  The truth was that only a silly ambition had driven Camille to leave Vernon. He wanted to be an employee in a large department; he blushed with pleasure when he imagined himself in the middle of a huge office, with glazed cotton sleeves and a pen behind his ear.

  Thérèse was not consulted. She had always shown such passive obedience that her aunt and her husband no longer bothered to ask her opinion. She went where they went, she did what they did, without complaint, without reproach, without even seeming to realize that anything had altered.

  Mme Raquin came to Paris and went directly to the Passage du Pont-Neuf. An old spinster in Vernon had directed her to a relative who had a haberdashery business in the arcade which she wanted to dispose of. Being an experienced haberdasher, Mme Raquin found the shop rather small and a bit dark; but as she was crossing Paris, she had been horrified by the noise in the streets and the richness of the window displays, while this narrow passage with its modest shop fronts reminded her of her old shop, which had been so quiet and so peaceful. She could imagine herself still in the provinces; she breathed again, thinking that her dear children would be happy in this backwater. The cheapness of the business decided her; it was on offer for two thousand francs. The rent of the shop and the first floor was only twelve hundred francs. Mme Raquin, who had nearly four thousand francs in savings, calculated that she could pay the purchase price and the first year’s rent without breaking into her capital. Camille’s wages and the profits from the haberdashery would be enough, she thought, to cover everyday expenses. In that way she would not draw any further on her income and would allow the capital to grow for the benefit of her grandchildren.

  She returned to Vernon radiant, saying that she had found a pearl, a charming corner in the centre of Paris. Little by little, after a few days, as she chatted about it in the evening, the damp, dark shop in the arcade became a palace; in memory, she saw it as spacious, wide and quiet, full of a thousand inestimable qualities.

  ‘Oh, my dear Thérèse!’ she said. ‘You see how happy we shall be in that spot! There are three fine rooms upstairs ... The arcade is full of people ... We’ll create some delightful displays ... Be sure of it, we won’t get bored.’

  There was no end to it. All her business instincts were reawakened and she prepared Thérèse with advice on selling, buying and all the little tricks of the retail trade. At length, the family left its house on the banks of the Seine and the same evening settled into the Passage du Pont-Neuf.

  When Thérèse entered the shop where she was to spend her life from then on, she felt as though she were going down into the clammy earth of a pit. She shuddered with fear and a feeling of nausea rose in her throat. She looked at the damp, dirty passageway, toured the shop, went up to the first floor and examined each room; these bare rooms, without furniture, were terrifyingly lonely and decrepit. The young woman could not make a gesture or speak a word. She was rigid. When her aunt and her husband had gone downstairs, she sat down on a trunk, her hands stiff and her throat full of sobs, though she could not weep.

  Confronted with the reality, Mme Raquin was embarrassed, ashamed of her dreams. She tried to defend her purchase. She found an answer to every new drawback as it appeared, explaining the darkness by the fact that the weather was dull, and summed up by saying that all that was needed was a good sweep.

  ‘Huh!’ Camille replied. ‘It’s all quite satisfactory. In any case, we’ll only come up here in the evenings. I won’t be home before five or six o’clock. The two of you will have each other for company, so you won’t get bored.’

  The young man would never have agreed to live in such a hovel if he had not been counting on the cosy comfort of his office. He told himself that he would be warm all day in his department and that, in the evenings, he could go to bed early.

  For a whole week, the shop and living quarters remained in disorder. From the first day onwards, Thérèse sat behind the counter and did not move from her place. Mme Raquin was astonished by this attitude of resignation. She had imagined that the young woman would try to beautify her home, put flowers on the window-sills and ask for new wallpaper, curtains and carpets. When she suggested some improvement or a repair, her niece just replied calmly:

  ‘What’s the use? We’re very well as we are, we don’t need any luxuries.’

  It was Mme Raquin who had to arrange the bedrooms and put some order into the shop. Eventually, Thérèse got tired of seeing her constantly moving around the place; she hired a cleaner and forced her aunt to come and sit beside her.

  It was a month before Camille found a job. He spent as little time as possible in the shop, wandering the streets all day long. He became so bored that he even spoke of going back to Vernon. Finally, he got a place in the offices of the Orléans Rail
way Company,1 where he earned a hundred francs a month. He had realized his dream.

  In the morning, he left at eight. He went down the Rue Guénégaud and arrived on the banks of the river. Then, walking along slowly with his hands in his pockets, he followed the Seine from the Institut to the Jardin des Plantes.2 This long walk, which he took twice a day, never bored him. He watched the river flow by and paused to see a string of barges going along it. His mind was blank. He would often station himself opposite Notre-Dame and stare at the scaffolding around the church, which was then being restored; these huge timbers amused him, though he did not know why. Then, as he went on, he glanced into the Port aux Vins3 and counted the number of cabs coming from the station. In the evening, worn out and with his head full of some silly story he had heard at the office, he went through the Jardin des Plantes and had a look at the bears, if he was not in too much of a hurry. He would stay there for half an hour, leaning over the pit and watching the bears as they ambled heavily around. It amused him to see how these big creatures walked. He stared at them, with his jaw hanging, wide-eyed, like an idiot enjoying the sight of them as they moved about. Finally, he would make up his mind to go home, dragging his feet and taking in the passers-by, the carriages and the shops.

  When he got home, he would eat and then start to read. He had bought the works of Buffon4 and every evening he would set himself the task of reading twenty or thirty pages, even though it bored him. He would also read the History of the Consulate and the Empire by Thiers and Lamartine’s History of the Girondins,5 which he got in parts at ten centimes each, or else some work of popular science. He thought he was improving himself. Sometimes, he would force his wife to listen as he read a few pages or told a particular story out of them. He was very surprised that Thérèse could remain thoughtful and silent for a whole evening, without being tempted to pick up a book. When it came down to it, he decided that his wife was none too clever.