Thérèse Raquin

by Emile Zola

  On the Thursday after the wedding, Grivet and Michaud made a triumphal entry. They had won. The dining room belonged to them once more; they no longer feared that someone might drive them away from it. They came in joyfully, they let themselves go, they told all their old jokes one after another. You could see from their smug, confident manner that as far as they were concerned there had just been a revolution. The memory of Camille had gone; the dead husband, that spectre who had chilled them, had been expelled by the living husband. The past returned with all its pleasures. Laurent was taking the place of Camille and there was no longer any reason to be sad: the guests could laugh without upsetting anyone - and, indeed, they should laugh in order to spread joy in this excellent family that was good enough to invite them. Henceforth, Grivet and Michaud, who had ostensibly been coming here over the past eighteen months to console Mme Raquin, could put aside this little hypocrisy and come openly so that they could fall asleep, one opposite the other, to the click of dominoes.

  Every week brought its Thursday evening and every week once again reunited around the table these dead, grotesque heads that had once exasperated Thérèse. The young woman talked about showing them the door; they irritated her with their bursts of silly laughter and their idiotic remarks. But Laurent told her that it would be a mistake to do this. As far as possible, the present must seem like the past; and, most of all, they had to keep friends with the police, those imbeciles who were guarding them against suspicion. Thérèse capitulated, and the guests, welcomed in, were delighted to contemplate a long series of warm evenings ahead of them.

  It was around this time that the young couple started to lead a kind of double life.

  In the morning, when the daylight drove away the terrors of the night, Laurent hastened to get dressed. He did not feel at ease or recover his egotistical composure until he was sitting at the dining-room table in front of a huge bowl of milky coffee, which Thérèse made for him. Mme Raquin was now such an invalid that she could hardly get down into the shop, but she would watch him eat with a maternal smile on her face. He would gorge on toast, filling his stomach, and gradually regain his self-assurance. After his coffee, he would drink a little glass of cognac. This finally completed the process of restoration. He would say: ‘See you this evening,’ to Mme Raquin and Thérèse, without ever kissing them, then stroll off to his office. Spring came and the trees beside the Seine were covered with leaves — a light, pale-green lace. Down below the river ran with a caressing sound, and up above the first rays of the sun were gentle and warm. Laurent felt revived by the cool air. He took deep breaths of this young life in the skies of April and May. He looked up at the sun, stopped to watch the silver reflections shimmering on the surface of the water, listened to the noises of the quayside, let the sharp scents of morning sink into him and appreciated this clear, happy morning with all his senses. He definitely did not think much about Camille, though sometimes he did happen to glance mechanically across to the Morgue on the other side of the river, and would then remember the drowned man in the way that a courageous one considers some foolish fright that he has had. With a full stomach and a fresh, cool head, he lapsed back into his calmly stolid nature, reached his office and spent the whole day there yawning, waiting for the time to leave. He became just a clerk like the rest of them, dull and bored, with his head empty. The only idea he had at such moments was to hand in his resignation and rent a studio; he would have vague dreams of a new life of idleness, which were enough to keep his mind occupied until evening. Never was he troubled by any thought of the shop in the arcade. In the evening, having waited since morning for it to be time to leave, he would be reluctant to go out, full of his private worries and anxieties on his way along the embankment. However slowly he walked, he would eventually have to return to the shop. And there terror awaited.

  Thérèse had the same feelings. As long as Laurent was not with her, she felt all right. She had dismissed the cleaning woman, saying that everything was dirty and left lying around in the shop and the flat. She felt an urge to tidy up. The truth was that she needed to walk around, to do something, to exhaust her stiffened limbs. She bustled around all morning, sweeping, dusting and cleaning the bedrooms, washing the dishes and carrying out tasks that would previously have disgusted her. These domestic duties kept her on her feet until noon, active and silent, leaving her no time to think of anything except the cobwebs on the ceiling and the grease on the plates. Then she went into the kitchen and prepared lunch. While they were eating, it grieved Mme Raquin to see her constantly getting up to go and fetch the courses. She was touched and annoyed by her niece’s constant activity; she would scold her and Thérèse answered that they had to save money. After the meal, the young woman would get dressed and finally resign herself to joining her aunt behind the counter. There, she would become drowsy. Exhausted by her sleepless nights, she would nod off, abandoning herself to the delicious lethargy that overcame her as soon as she sat down. They were only light snoozes, imbued with a kind of delight, which calmed her nerves. The thought of Camille vanished and she experienced the deep rest of sick people whose pain is suddenly taken away. Her body felt relaxed and her mind free: she lapsed into a sort of warm, healing oblivion. Without these few moments of peace, her organism would have broken down under the pressure from her nervous system, but she drew enough strength from them to suffer yet again and feel terror on the following night. In any case, she did not fall asleep, hardly lowering her eyelids, lost in a dream of peace. When a customer came in she would open her eyes and produce the few sous’ worth of goods requested, then drift back into her vague reverie. She would spend three or four hours in this way, perfectly happy, replying to her aunt in monosyllables and taking a real delight in letting herself lapse into this state of unconsciousness that took away thought and drew her back into herself. She would only very occasionally cast a glance into the arcade, feeling most at ease when the weather was overcast, when it was dark and when she hid her weariness in the shadows. The damp, mean arcade, traversed by a population of poor, wet devils whose umbrellas dripped on the paving, seemed to her like the passage into some place of ill-repute, a kind of sinister, dirty corridor where no one would come and look for her or bother her. At times, seeing the murky glows around her and smelling the acrid scent of damp, she imagined that she had been buried alive and thought she was in the earth at the bottom of a communal grave, with the dead milling around her. The idea calmed her and consoled her. She told herself that she was safe now, that she would die and not suffer any longer. At other times, she had to keep her eyes open: Suzanne would visit and stay sewing beside the counter all afternoon. Thérèse now liked the company of Olivier’s wife, with her soft face and slow gestures; she felt a strange sense of relief looking at this poor, disconnected creature. She had made a friend of her and liked having her by her side, smiling a pale smile and only half alive, bringing a faint graveyard odour into the shop. When Suzanne’s blue eyes, with their glassy transparency, stared into hers, Thérèse felt a beneficial chill in the marrow of her bones. She would stay like that for four hours. Then she would go back to the kitchen and try to tire herself out again, making Laurent his dinner with feverish haste. And when her husband appeared in the doorway, her throat tightened and a feeling of anxiety once more wrenched her whole being.

  Every day, the couple experienced more or less the same feelings. In the daytime, when they were not face to face with one another, they enjoyed delightful hours of rest, but in the evening, when they were together again, a piercing sense of disquiet swept through them.

  Their evenings, however, were quiet. Thérèse and Laurent, who shuddered at the idea of going back to their room, delayed going to bed for as long as possible. Mme Raquin, half recumbent at the back of a wide armchair, sat between them and chatted in her placid tones. She would tell them about Vernon, always thinking about her son, but not naming him, out of a sense that it would somehow be indecent to do so. She would smile at her dear children
and make plans for their future. The lamp cast a pale light over her white face and her words took on an extraordinary softness in the still, silent air. And, on either side of her, the two murderers, not speaking or moving, seemed to be listening to her devoutly. In fact, they would not seek to follow the meaning of the good old woman’s prattling; they were just happy at this soft sound of words, which prevented them from hearing the roar of their own thoughts. They did not dare look at one another; they would look at Mme Raquin, so as to keep a good face. They never spoke about going to bed and would have stayed there until morning, caressed by the flow of chatter from the old haberdasher, in the tranquillity that she created around her, if she herself had not expressed a wish to retire. Only then would they leave the dining room and return to their room in despair, like people hurling themselves into a chasm.

  They very soon came to prefer the Thursday sessions to these intimate evenings. When they were alone with Mme Raquin, they could not deafen themselves. The slender thread of their aunt’s voice and her tender merriment did not stifle the cries tearing them apart. They felt bedtime approaching and shuddered when they happened to glance towards the door of their room. Waiting for the moment when they would be alone became more and more painful as the evening progressed. On Thursdays, on the other hand, they were intoxicated by idiocies and forgot about each other’s presence, so they suffered less. Even Thérèse came eventually to long for these days when they had guests. If Michaud and Grivet had not come, she would have gone to look for them. When there were strangers in the dining room, between her and Laurent, she felt calmer; she would have liked there to be guests always; and noise: something that would stun and isolate her. With other people, she exhibited a sort of nervous merriment. Laurent, too, reverted to his coarse peasant jokes, his belly laughs and his art student’s tricks. Never had their gatherings been so jolly or so noisy.

  That is how, once a week, Laurent and Thérèse managed to remain in each other’s company without a shudder.

  Soon they had a new cause for anxiety. Mme Raquin was gradually being overtaken by paralysis and they could foresee the day when she would be tied to her chair, physically and mentally incapable. The poor old woman was starting to mutter phrases that were not connected to one another, her voice was growing weaker and her limbs were failing one by one. She was turning into a thing. Thérèse and Laurent were horrified to see the vanishing of this person who, for the time being, was keeping them apart and whose voice roused them from their nightmares. When the old haberdasher had lost all understanding, when she was left dumb and stiff in her chair, they would be alone. In the evening, they would no longer be able to escape from an intimacy that they dreaded. In that case, their terror would start at six o’clock, instead of starting at midnight. They would go mad.

  They devoted themselves entirely to preserving the health of Mme Raquin, which was so precious to them. They called in doctors, they attended to her slightest need and they even found that the job of sick-nurse helped them to forget, bringing a sense of peace that encouraged them to double their efforts. They did not want to lose this third party who made their evenings bearable, they did not want the dining room and the whole house to become a tormenting and sinister place like their bedroom. Mme Raquin was extremely touched by the care that they lavished on her; she congratulated herself, with tears in her eyes, at having brought them together and having given them her forty or so thousand francs. Never since the death of her son had she expected to find such affection in her declining years and, old woman that she was, she felt warmed through by the kindness of her dear children. She did not feel the relentless paralysis that, despite it all, was making her a little less mobile every day.

  Meanwhile, Thérèse and Laurent led their double life. It was as though in each one of them there were two quite distinct beings: a nervous, terrified creature who would shudder as soon as dusk came, and a numb, forgetful one who breathed freely as soon as the sun rose. They were living two lives, crying out in pain when they were alone with one another and smiling complacently when there were other people about. Never did their faces in public hint at the suffering that came to tear them apart when they were together; they seemed calm and happy, instinctively hiding their woes.

  Seeing them so untroubled by day, no one would have suspected that they were tormented every night by hallucinations. Theirs might have been seen as a marriage blessed in heaven, a couple living in perfect harmony. Grivet called them (suggestively) the ‘turtle-doves’. When they had bags under their eyes after a long period without sleep, he teased them and asked when the baptism was due. And all the guests laughed. Laurent and Thérèse went a little pale and managed a smile; they were getting used to Grivet’s risque jokes. Whenever they were in the dining room, they could control their fears. No one could have imagined the frightful change that came over them when they shut the bedroom door behind them. On Thursday evenings especially this change was so sudden and violent that it seemed to belong to some supernatural world. So strange was the drama of their nights, so savage in its excesses, that it exceeded all credibility and stayed hidden deep inside their tormented beings. Had they spoken about it, they would have been considered insane.

  ‘How happy they are, those love-birds!’ Old Michaud often used to say. ‘They don’t have a lot to say for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think about it. I’ll bet they are all over one another when we aren’t here.’

  This was what everyone thought: Thérèse and Laurent would even be cited as a model couple. The whole Passage du Pont-Neuf praised the affection, the tranquil happiness and the endless honeymoon enjoyed by the couple. They alone knew how the corpse of Camille would lie between them, they alone would feel the nervous contractions beneath the calm surface of their faces which at night would horribly distort their features and change their peaceful expressions to a ghastly, tormented and grimacing mask.

  XXV

  After four months, Laurent thought about reaping the benefits he had anticipated from his marriage. He would have abandoned his wife and fled before the spectre of Camille three days after the wedding if self-interest had not tied him to the shop in the arcade. He bore his nights of terror and stayed despite his suffocating fears, so as not to lose the profits of his crime. If he were to leave Thérèse, he would lapse back into poverty and be obliged to keep his job; if, on the contrary, he stayed with her, he could indulge his taste for idleness and do nothing, living well off the income from the money that Mme Raquin had invested in his wife’s name. It seems likely that he would have made off with the forty thousand francs if he had been able to cash the money in, but the old haberdasher, on Michaud’s advice, had been careful to protect her niece’s interests in the contract. There was consequently a strong bond attaching Laurent to Thérèse. So, as a compensation for his dreadful nights, he wanted at least to have himself kept in idle contentment, well fed, warmly clothed and with enough money in his pocket to satisfy his whims. Only at this price would he agree to sleep with the drowned man’s corpse.

  One evening, he announced to Mme Raquin and his wife that he had handed in his notice and would be leaving the office at the end of a fortnight. Thérèse gave a sign of anxiety, so he hastened to add that he was going to rent a little studio where he would go back to painting. He discoursed at length on the tedium of his job and the broad horizons that Art would open up for him. Now that he had some money and could try for success, he wanted to see if he might not be capable of doing great things. His speech on the subject merely concealed the fact that he urgently desired to go back to his former bohemian existence. Thérèse pursed her lips, without answering; she did not intend Laurent to waste the little fortune that guaranteed her freedom. When her husband pressed her, in order to obtain her consent, she replied with a few curt answers and gave him to understand that if he left his office, he would earn nothing more and would be entirely dependent on her. As she spoke, Laurent looked at her intently, which disturbed her. The refusal she was
about to make stopped in her throat. She thought that she could read this threat in her accomplice’s eyes: ‘If you don’t agree, I’ll tell all.’ She began to stammer. At this, Mme Raquin exclaimed that her dear son’s wish was only too proper and that he must have the means to become a man of talent. The good woman spoiled Laurent as she had once spoiled Camille. She was entirely softened by the young man’s marks of affection towards her, she belonged to him and always took his side.

  So it was decided that the artist would rent a studio and have a hundred francs a month for the various expenses that might arise. In that way the family budget was settled: the profits from the haberdashery business would pay the rent of the shop and the apartment, and almost cover the family’s day-to-day expenditure; Laurent would deduct the rent of his studio and his hundred francs a month out of the two thousand and a few hundred francs of income from the capital; and the rest of that income would go on whatever else they needed. In this way, they would not break into the capital. This made Thérèse a little easier, but she made her husband swear never to exceed the amount that had been allocated to him. And she told herself that, in any case, Laurent would not be able to draw on the forty thousand francs without her signature, promising herself that she would never sign any paper.