by Emile Zola
‘Dear Mother,’ he said with a smile. ‘I talked with Monsieur Michaud yesterday evening about your future well-being. Your children want to make you happy.’
When the old lady heard herself addressed as ‘dear Mother’, her tears flowed. She grasped Thérèse’s hand and pressed it into Laurent’s, unable to utter a word.
The two lovers shuddered at each other’s touch. They stayed there, with fingers gripped and burning, in a nervous embrace. The young man went on in a hesitant voice:
‘Thérèse, would you like us to create a happy, peaceful life for your aunt?’
‘Yes,’ the young woman replied, weakly. ‘We have a duty to fulfil.’
At that, Laurent turned towards Mme Raquin and added, very pale:
‘When Camille fell into the water, he called out to me: “Save my wife, I entrust her to you.” I feel that I am carrying out his final wish by marrying Thérèse.’
When she heard this, Thérèse let go of Laurent’s hand. It was as though she had received a blow in the chest. She was overwhelmed by her lover’s effrontery. She stared at him with haggard eyes while Mme Raquin, choking with sobs, stammered out:
‘Yes, yes, my dear, marry her, make her happy; my son will thank you from the depths of his grave.’
Laurent felt that he was weakening, and leaned against the back of a chair. Michaud, also moved to tears, pushed him towards Thérèse, saying:
‘Kiss one another. This will be your engagement.’
The young man had a strange feeling as he put his lips on the widow’s cheeks, and she shrank back as though burned by the two kisses that her lover had given here. This was the first time that the man had kissed her before witnesses. The blood rushed to her face and she felt hot and uncomfortable — though she had no feelings of shame and had never blushed at the intimacies of their love-making.
After this crisis was over, the two murderers relaxed. Their marriage was fixed and they were at last reaching the goal that they had been pursuing for so long. Everything was agreed upon that very evening. On the following Thursday, the engagement was announced to Grivet, Olivier and his wife. Michaud was delighted to relay the news, rubbing his hands and saying again and again:
‘It was my idea, I married them ... You see what a fine couple they’ll make!’
Suzanne came over in silence to kiss Thérèse. This poor creature, pale and lifeless, had conceived a feeling of friendship for the dark, rigid young widow. She loved her as a child might, with a sort of respectful terror. Olivier complimented the aunt and the niece, while Grivet risked a few vulgar jokes, which did not go down well. In short, they were all thoroughly delighted and declared that everything was for the best. To be honest, they already saw themselves at the wedding.
Thérèse and Laurent maintained an attitude that was restrained and cautious. They demonstrated feelings for one another that were nothing more than considerate and affectionate. They gave the impression of carrying out an act of supreme self-sacrifice. Nothing in their appearance betrayed the terrors and desires that agitated them. Mme Raquin gave them faint smiles, and gentle, grateful looks of benevolence.
There were a few formalities to complete. Laurent had to write to his father to ask for the old man’s consent. The peasant of Jeufosse, who had almost forgotten that he had a son in Paris, replied in four lines that he could marry or get himself hanged if he wished. He let it be known that, since he had resolved never to give him a penny, he left him to look after himself and authorized him to commit any act of folly that he wished. Laurent was peculiarly unsettled by this kind of authorization.
After Mme Raquin had read the letter from this unnatural father, she had a surge of generosity that drove her to do something silly. She settled on her niece the forty-odd thousand francs that she owned, renouncing everything for the sake of the young couple and entrusting herself to their goodwill, because she wanted all her happiness to flow from them. Laurent was contributing nothing to their finances, and even suggested that he would not stick at his job for ever, but might go back to painting. In any event, the little family’s future was assured: the income from the forty-odd thousand francs, together with the profits from the haberdashery business, should be enough to let three people live comfortably. They would have just enough to be happy.
The preparations for the wedding were speeded up. The formalities were reduced to a minimum. You might have thought that everyone was in a hurry to drive Laurent into Thérèse’s bed. At last the longed-for day arrived.
XX
On the morning, Laurent and Thérèse both woke up in their separate rooms with the same profoundly joyful thought: they told themselves that their last night of terror was over. They would no longer sleep alone and could protect one another against the drowned man.
Thérèse looked around her and gave a strange smile as she mentally assessed the size of her large bed. She got up and dressed slowly, while waiting for Suzanne, who was to come and help to get her ready for her wedding.
Laurent sat upright in bed. He stayed like that for a few minutes, saying farewell to the attic that he considered so demeaning. At last, he would be leaving this dog’s kennel and have a wife of his own. It was December. He shuddered and stepped down on the tiled floor, telling himself that he would be warm that night.
A week earlier, Mme Raquin, knowing that he was broke, had slipped a purse into his hand containing the sum of five hundred francs, which was all her savings. The young man had accepted it without demur and fitted himself out in new clothes. The old haberdasher’s money had also allowed him to give Thérèse the customary gifts.
The black trousers, the tailcoat and white waistcoat, the fine linen shirt and tie, were laid out on two chairs. Laurent washed and scented his body from a bottle of eau de Cologne, then started to get dressed with minute care. He wanted to look good. While he was attaching his collar, a high, stiff, detachable collar, he felt a sharp pain in his neck. The collar stud slipped from his fingers. He got impatient with it and felt as though the starched material of the collar were cutting into his flesh. He wanted to look and lifted his chin; and it was then that he saw that Camille’s bite was quite red: the collar had grazed the scar. Laurent gritted his teeth and went pale. The sight of this blemish standing out on his neck was upsetting and annoying for him at this particular moment. He screwed up the collar and picked out another, putting it on very carefully. Then he finished dressing. When he went downstairs, his new clothes kept him quite stiff, so that he did not dare turn his head, with his neck imprisoned in starched cloth. At every move he made, a fold in this cloth would pinch the wound that the drowned man’s teeth had bitten into his flesh. He was enduring this kind of sharp pricking when he got into the carriage and went to find Thérèse and take her to the town hall and the church.
On the way, he picked up an employee of the Orléans Railway and Old Michaud, who were to be his witnesses. When they got to the shop, everyone was ready: Grivet and Olivier were there as Thérèse’s witnesses, and Suzanne, all three of them looking at the bride in the way that little girls look at the dolls they have just dressed. Mme Raquin, though she could no longer walk, wanted to go everywhere with her children. They lifted her into a carriage and set off.
Everything went off decently at the town hall and the church. People noticed and approved of the couple’s calm and modest demeanour. They spoke the sacramental ‘yes’ with such feeling that even Grivet was touched. They felt as though they were in a dream. While they stayed quietly sitting or kneeling side by side, wild thoughts were raging through them and tearing them apart. They avoided looking each other in the eye. When they got back into the carriage, they felt more like strangers towards one another than they had before.
It had been decided that the dinner would be a family affair, in a little restaurant on the hills of Belleville.1 The Michauds and Grivet were the only guests. While waiting for six o’clock, the wedding party drove along the boulevards before getting into the eating-house, where a tab
le with seven places had been laid in a yellow-painted room smelling of dust and wine.
The meal was not the jolliest of occasions. The couple were serious and thoughtful. Since that morning, they had been experiencing odd feelings, which they did not try to explain even to themselves. They had been stunned, from the beginning, by the speed of the formalities and of the service that had just united them for ever. Then the long drive along the boulevards had, as it were, rocked them to sleep. They felt that it had lasted for months on end. They had patiently let themselves be carried away by the monotony of the streets, looking at the shops and the passers-by with dead eyes, in the grip of a lethargy which dazed them, though they tried to shake it off with bursts of laughter. When they came into the restaurant, a crushing weariness weighed them down and they were overcome with a growing sense of torpor.
Seated opposite one another at table, they smiled awkwardly and kept sinking back into a state of pensive preoccupation. They ate, answered questions and moved like automata. The same succession of fleeting thoughts kept returning constantly to both their weary minds. They were married, but they were profoundly astonished to find that they had no awareness of anything new. They felt that a huge gulf still separated them and from time to time they wondered how they could cross this gulf. It seemed as though they were back before the murder, when a material obstacle stood between them. Then suddenly they remembered that they would sleep together that evening, in a few hours, and they looked at one another in amazement, not understanding they would be allowed to do that. They did not feel any union between them. On the contrary, they imagined that they had just been violently pulled apart and cast far away from each other.
The guests, giggling stupidly around them, wanted to hear them exchange intimacies, say ‘tu’ to each other, clear away any embarrassment; but they stammered and blushed and could not manage to behave as lovers towards one another in front of other people.
In the wait, their desires had worn out and all the past had vanished. They were losing their violent, lustful hunger and even forgetting their joy the same morning, the deep joy that had overtaken them both at the idea that from now on they would no longer be afraid. They were simply weary and stunned by everything that had happened; the events of the day were going round and round in their heads, monstrous and incomprehensible. There they were, silent, smiling, expecting nothing, hoping for nothing. A dull, anxious pain stirred in the depths of their despondency.
And Laurent, every time he moved his head, felt a sharp, burning sensation eating into his flesh: his detachable collar was pinching and cutting into Camille’s bite. While the Mayor was reading out the Code2 and while the priest was speaking about God, throughout this long day, he had felt the drowned man’s teeth digging into his flesh. At times, he felt as though a trail of blood would run down on to his chest and stain his white waistcoat red.
In herself, Mme Raquin felt grateful to the couple for their solemnity: the poor mother would have been hurt by a loud demonstration of happiness. To her mind, her son was there, invisible, entrusting Thérèse to Laurent. Grivet did not feel the same. He thought the wedding a bit sad and tried to cheer it up, despite the looks he got from Michaud and Olivier, which pinned him to his chair every time he made as though to get on his feet and say something idiotic. However, he did manage to get up once, to propose a toast.
‘I drink to the children of the bride and groom,’ he said, in a suggestive tone of voice.
They had to clink their glasses. Thérèse and Laurent had gone very pale when they heard Grivet’s toast. It had not occurred to them that they might have children. The idea shot through them like an icy shiver. They touched their glasses nervously and looked at one another in surprise, fearful at being there, face to face.
The company left the table early. The guests wanted to accompany the couple as far as the bridal chamber. It was barely half past nine when the wedding party came back to the shop in the arcade. The woman who sold costume jewellery was still sitting in her cubbyhole behind the tray lined with blue velvet. Out of curiosity, she raised her head and looked at the newlyweds with a smile. They caught the look and were terrified. What if the old woman knew about their meetings, in the old days, and had seen Laurent slipping into the little alleyway?
Thérèse went upstairs almost immediately, with Mme Raquin and Suzanne. The men stayed in the dining room while the bride got ready for bed. Laurent, limp and exhausted, felt not the slightest impatience; he listened indulgently to the crude jokes made by Old Michaud and Grivet, who told them without restraint now that the ladies were no longer present. When Suzanne and Mme Raquin came out of the nuptial chamber and the old haberdasher told him, in a trembling voice, that his bride was waiting for him, he shuddered and stayed for a moment in a state of terror. Then he feverishly shook the hands that they held out to him and went in to Thérèse, supporting himself on the doorway, like a drunken man.
XXI
Laurent carefully closed the door behind him and remained for a moment leaning against it, looking into the room with an uneasy, embarrassed manner.
A bright fire was blazing in the grate, casting large patches of yellow light that danced on the ceiling and the walls, so that the room was lit by a bright, flickering light in which the lamp, standing on a table, paled by comparison. Mme Raquin had tried to arrange the room prettily, all white and perfumed, to make a nest for these fresh, young lovers. She had taken a particular pleasure in adding some bits of lace to the bedclothes and putting large bunches of roses in the vases on the mantelpiece. Gentle warmth and sweet fragrances hung about the room, where the atmosphere was serene and peaceful, bathed in a sort of drowsy voluptuousness. The simmering calm was broken only by the little dry crackling of the fire in the hearth. It was like a fortunate oasis, a forgotten corner, warm and sweet-smelling, shut off from all extraneous noise, one of those corners designed for sensuality and to satisfy the needs of the mystery of passionate love.
Thérèse was sitting on a low chair, to the right of the chimney. With her chin on her hand, she was staring hard at the flames. She did not look round when Laurent came in. In her lace-trimmed petticoat and bodice, she was a harsh white against the burning light of the fire. Her bodice had slipped and part of her shoulder was visible, pink and half hidden by a lock of black hair.
Laurent made a few steps into the room without speaking. He took off his coat and waistcoat. When he was in his shirt-sleeves, he looked again at Thérèse, who had not moved. He appeared to hesitate. Then he saw the shoulder and bent over, trembling, to put his lips against this piece of naked flesh. The young woman moved her shoulder away, turning around sharply. She gave Laurent such a strange look of repulsion and panic that he shrank back, worried and uneasy, as though overtaken himself by terror and disgust.
He sat down opposite Thérèse on the other side of the hearth. They stayed there in silence, not moving, for five long minutes. From time to time, a reddish flame would spurt out of the wood and reflections, the colour of blood, played over the murderers’ faces.
It was almost two years since the lovers had found themselves alone in the same room, with no one watching, able to give themselves freely to one another. They had not had an amorous meeting since the day when Thérèse came to the Rue Saint-Victor, bringing Laurent the idea of murder with her. Caution had kept their flesh apart, and they had barely risked an occasional clasp of the hand or a furtive kiss. After Camille’s murder, when they once more felt desire for one another, they had restrained themselves, waiting for the wedding night and the promise of wild passion when they were safe from punishment. And now, at last, the wedding night had arrived and they were left face to face, anxious and troubled by a sudden feeling of uncertainty. They had only to reach out and clasp one another in a passionate embrace; yet their arms were weak, as though already weary and satiated with love. They felt increasingly weighed down with the pressures of the day. They looked at one another without desire, with timid embarrassment, pained at th
eir own silence and frigidity. Their ardent dreams were ending in a strange reality: it was enough for them to have succeeded in killing Camille and marrying one another, it was enough for Laurent’s mouth to have brushed against Thérèse’s shoulder, for their lust to be sated to the point of disgust and horror.
They began to search desperately in themselves for a little of the passion that had consumed them before. They felt as though their skin was empty of muscles and empty of nerves. Their anxiety and embarrassment grew; they felt ashamed of remaining silent and sad in each other’s presence. They longed to find the strength to grasp one another in a crushing embrace, so that they would not have to consider themselves idiots. What! They belonged together! They had killed a man and acted out a frightful piece of play-acting so that they could wallow with impunity in constant gratification of their senses; yet here they were, on either side of the fireplace, rigid, exhausted, their minds troubled and their bodies dead. This outcome struck them as a horrid, cruel farce. So Laurent tried to speak about love, to evoke memories of former times, calling on his imagination to revive his feelings of desire.
‘Therese,’ he said, leaning towards her, ‘do you remember our afternoons in this room? I would come through that door ... Today, I came through the other one. We are free, we can love one another in peace.’
His voice was weak and hesitant. The young woman, crouching on the low chair, kept looking at the flames, thoughtfully, without listening. Laurent went on:
‘Do you remember? I had this dream: I wanted to spend a whole night with you, to fall asleep in your arms and to wake up the next morning to your kisses. I am going to accomplish that dream.’
Thérèse started, as though surprised to hear a voice muttering in her ear. She looked up at Laurent, whose face at that moment was lit up by a broad, reddish glow from the fire. She looked at this blood-stained face and shuddered.
