Thérèse Raquin

by Emile Zola

  Grivet had an obsession: he insisted that he had a perfect understanding with Mme Raquin and that she could not look at him without his at once knowing what she meant. That was another sign of how considerate he was - except that, each time, Grivet got it wrong. He would often interrupt the game of dominoes and examine the paralysed woman whose eyes had been calmly watching them play, and announce that she wanted this or that. When they looked into it, either Mme Raquin wanted nothing or she wanted something else entirely. This did not deter Grivet, who would exclaim victoriously: ‘I told you so!’, then start again a few minutes later. It was quite different when the cripple did openly express a wish. Thérèse, Laurent and the guests, one after another, would name the things that she might want. On such occasions. Grivet would distinguish himself by the inappropriateness of his suggestions. He named whatever came into his head, haphazardly, always choosing the opposite of what Mme Raquin wanted - which would not prevent him from repeating:

  ‘I can read her eyes like a book. Look, there, she’s telling me I’m right ... Aren’t you, dear lady? Yes, yes ...’

  In any event, it was no easy matter to grasp the poor old woman’s wishes. Only Thérèse knew how. She would communicate quite easily with this immured mind, still living but buried in the depths of a dead body. What was going on in this unfortunate being who was just enough alive to observe life without taking part in it? She could see, hear and no doubt reason in a sharp and clear enough way, but she no longer had any movement or any voice to express outwardly the thoughts that arose in her. Perhaps her ideas were stifling her. She could not have raised a hand or opened her mouth even if a single movement or a single word might determine the fate of the world. Her spirit was like one of those living people who are accidentally buried and who awake in the darkness of the earth under two or three metres of soil.2 They shout and thrash around while others walk above them without hearing their appalling cries for help. Laurent would often look at Mme Raquin, with her tight lips and hands resting on her knees, putting all her life into her bright, quick eyes, and he would think:

  ‘Who knows what might be going on in her mind? Some cruel drama must be taking place in the depths of this corpse.’

  Laurent was wrong. Mme Raquin was happy, happy in the dedication and affection of her dear children. She had always dreamed of ending her life like this, slowly, surrounded by care and caresses. Of course, she would have liked to be able to speak so that she could thank the friends who were helping her to die in peace. But she accepted her state with resignation. The quiet, retiring life that she had always led and the gentleness of her personality meant that she did not feel the loss of speech and mobility too deeply. She had become a child again and spent her days without boredom, staring in front of her and dreaming of the past. She even came to enjoy staying in her chair like a well-behaved little girl.

  Every day, her eyes took on a more penetrating softness and clarity. She had reached the point where she used her eyes like a hand and a mouth, to ask for things and to say ‘thank you’; and so, in some strange and endearing way, she made up for the faculties that she lacked. The looks that she gave had a celestial beauty, in the midst of a face on which the flesh hung soft and contorted. Since the time when her twisted, unmoving lips had lost the power to smile, she had smiled with her eyes, with delightful tenderness. Moist lights shone and dawn rays emerged from them. Nothing was more remarkable than these eyes laughing like lips in that dead face: the lower part of the face remained dreary and wan, while the upper part was divinely lit. It was for her dear children, especially, that she would put all her gratitude and all the feeling in her soul into a simple glance. When, morning and evening, Laurent took her in his arms to move her, she thanked him lovingly with looks full of tender affection.

  So she lived for several weeks, awaiting death and thinking herself safe from any further disaster. She thought that she had paid her debt of suffering. She was wrong. One evening she was smitten by a dreadful blow.

  Even though Thérèse and Laurent put her between them in the full light of day, she was no longer enough alive to keep them apart and protect them against their anguish. When they forgot that she was there, that she could see and hear, madness overcame them, Camille rose before them and they tried to drive him away. Then they would stammer, let slip confessions without meaning to, remarks that eventually revealed everything to Mme Raquin. Laurent had a sort of fit in which he spoke like a man in a trance. Suddenly, the paralysed woman understood.

  A frightful grimace passed across her face and she experienced such a shock that Thérèse thought she was going to leap up and scream. Then she lapsed back into a state of complete rigidity. This sort of shock was all the more terrifying since it seemed to have galvanized a corpse. For an instant feeling returned to her, then vanished, leaving the cripple more haggard and pallid than ever. Her eyes, which were usually so soft, had become hard and black like pieces of metal.

  Never had despair struck any being so hard. The awful truth burned the crippled woman’s eyes like a flash of lightning and entered into her with the finality of a thunderclap. If she could have got up, released the cry of horror that was rising in her throat and cursed the murderers of her son, she would have suffered less. But now that she had heard everything and understood everything, she was forced to remain motionless and silent, keeping the explosion of her pain inside her. It seemed to her that Thérèse and Laurent had tied her up and pinned her to her chair to prevent her from leaping out at them, and that they were taking a horrible delight in repeating: ‘We killed Camille,’ after putting a gag on her mouth to stifle her sobs. Terror and torment raged within her, but found no way out. She made superhuman efforts to lift the weight that was oppressing her, to unblock her throat and clear the way for the flood of her despair. But it was in vain that she struggled with the last of her energy: she felt her tongue cold against her palate and could not tear herself away from death. She was held rigid by the powerlessness of a corpse. Her feelings were like those of a man who has fallen into a lethargy and is being buried alive: gagged by the fetters of his own flesh, he hears the dull thud of spadefuls of sand above his head.

  The ravages in her heart were still worse. She felt as though something inside her had collapsed. She was crushed. Her whole life was destroyed, all her charity, all her kindness, all her care had been brutally knocked over and trampled underfoot. She had led a life of affection and gentleness and now, in her last hours, when she was about to take her belief in the simple goodness of life into the grave with her, a voice was shouting that everything was a lie, everything was criminal. The veil had been torn apart, showing her, beyond the love and friendship that she imagined she saw, a frightful vision of blood and shame. She would have cursed God if she could have uttered a blasphemy. For more than sixty years, God had deceived her, treating her as a kind, gentle little child and amusing her with the sight of lying pictures of tranquil happiness. And she had remained a child, foolishly believing in a myriad of silly things, without seeing the reality of life as it was, mired in a bloody slough of passion. God was bad. He should have told her the truth earlier, or else allowed her to depart with her innocence and her blindness. Now all that was left was for her to die, denying love, denying friendship, denying charity. Nothing existed except murder and lust.

  So! Camille had died at the hands of Thérèse and Laurent, and the two of them had plotted their crime in the throes of their shameful adultery! For Mme Raquin, this idea presented such an abyss that she could not adjust to it or grasp it clearly and in detail. She felt only one sensation: that of a dreadful fall. It seemed to her as though she were falling down a cold, black hole. And she thought: ‘I am going to be crushed at the bottom.’

  After the first shock, the enormity of the crime seemed unreal to her. Then she felt afraid that she might go mad, once she had become convinced of the adultery and the murder, as she remembered some little events that she had not previously been able to explain. Thérèse and La
urent were indeed Camille’s murderers: Thérèse, whom she had brought up, and Laurent, whom she had loved like a gentle and devoted mother. This idea went round and round in her head like a huge wheel with a deafening noise. She guessed such repulsive details, she plumbed the depths of such profound hypocrisy, she witnessed in her mind such a cruel double game that she wanted to die to escape from the thoughts. One single idea, formulaic and inescapable, crushed her brain with the weight and persistency of a grindstone. She would repeat to herself: ‘My child was killed by my children.’ She could find nothing else to express her despair.

  After this sudden change of heart, she looked frantically for a self that she could no longer recognize. She was overwhelmed by the sudden invasion of thoughts of revenge that drove all the goodness out of her life. When the transformation was complete, there was darkness inside her. She felt a new being, pitiless and cruel, being born in her dying flesh, a being that would like to bite into the killers of her son.

  Now that she had succumbed to the devastating embrace of paralysis and had realized that she could not leap at the throats of Thérèse and Laurent, whom she dreamed of strangling, she resigned herself to silence and immobility, and large tears fell slowly from her eyes. Nothing was more distressing than this silent, unmoving despair. These tears, running one after another across this dead face, in which not a line moved, this inert, pallid face in which the muscles could not weep and only the eyes sobbed, was the most moving of sights.

  Thérèse was overcome with terrified pity.

  ‘We must put her to bed,’ she said to Laurent, indicating her aunt.

  Laurent hastily pushed the cripple into her room. Then he bent down to pick her up in his arms. At that moment, Mme Raquin hoped that some powerful spring would raise her to her feet; she made a supreme effort. God could not allow Laurent to clasp her to his breast; she was sure that thunder would strike him if he showed such monstrous impudence. But no spring drove her and the heavens kept their thunderbolts. She remained there, slumped in the chair, passive, like a bundle of washing. She was grasped, lifted and carried by the murderer. She experienced the horror of feeling herself soft and powerless in the arms of the man who had killed Camille. Her head rolled on to Laurent’s shoulder and she looked at him with eyes made wider by terror and repulsion.

  ‘Go on, then, have a good look at me,’ he murmured. ‘Your eyes won’t eat me ...’

  And he threw her roughly on the bed. The cripple fainted away. Her last thought was one of fear and disgust. From now on, morning and evening, she would have to suffer the foul embrace of Laurent’s arms.

  XXVII

  Only a fit of terror had induced the couple to speak and confess in front of Mme Raquin. Neither one of them was cruel; they would have avoided making such a revelation out of sheer humanity, even if their safety had not required them to keep silent.

  The following Thursday, they were especially uneasy. In the morning, Thérèse asked Laurent if he thought it wise to bring the paralysed woman into the dining room that evening. She knew everything and could arouse suspicions.

  ‘Huh!’ said Laurent. ‘She can’t move her little finger. How do you expect her to talk?’

  ‘She might find a way,’ Thérèse replied. ‘Since the other evening, I have seen an implacable resolve in her eyes.’

  ‘No, don’t you see, the doctor told me everything is really finished for her. If she does speak once more, it will be in the last gasp of her death agony ... Come on, she won’t be with us for long. It would be stupid to burden our consciences any further by stopping her from coming along this evening.’

  Thérèse shuddered.

  ‘You don’t understand!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, you’re right, there has been enough blood. What I meant was that we could shut my aunt in her room and pretend that she has got worse, that she’s asleep.’

  ‘That’s great!’ said Laurent. ‘Then that idiot Michaud would march straight into the room to see his old friend even so. That would be the best way to destroy us.’

  He hesitated, trying to look calm, but the anxiety made him stutter.

  ‘Better to let things take their course,’ he continued. ‘Those people are as daft as geese, they’ll definitely not understand anything of the old lady’s silent miseries. They’ll never guess the thing itself, because they’re too far from thinking it. Once we’ve tested the water, we can rest easy about the result of our indiscretion. You’ll see, everything will be all right.’

  That evening, when the guests arrived, Mme Raquin was in her usual place, between the stove and the table. Laurent and Thérèse pretended to be in good spirits, hiding their fears and anxiously waiting for the incident that was bound to happen. They had lowered the lampshade a long way, so that only the oiled tablecloth was lit.

  The guests had that banal, noisy bit of a chat that always preceded the first game of dominoes. Grivet and Michaud naturally asked Mme Raquin the usual questions about her health, and provided some excellent replies to the questions themselves, as they were accustomed to do. After that, without taking any further notice of the poor old woman, they happily immersed themselves in their game.

  Since learning the dreadful secret, Mme Raquin had eagerly been awaiting this evening. She had gathered her last strength to denounce the guilty pair. Up to the last moment, she was afraid that she would not be joining the party: she thought that Laurent would spirit her away, perhaps kill her, or at least shut her up in her room. When she saw that they were allowing her to be there, and she was in the presence of the guests, she felt a warm surge of joy at the thought that she was going to try to avenge her son. Realizing that her tongue was quite dead, she tried out a new language. By an incredible exercise of will, she managed as it were to galvanize her right hand, lift it a little off the knee where it always lay, inert, and after that to make it crawl little by little up one of the table legs which was in front of her, until she managed to place it on the oilcloth. There, she moved her fingers feebly as though to attract attention.

  The players were very surprised to find that dead hand, soft and white, on the table in front of them. Grivet stopped, his arm raised, just at the moment when he was going to put down a victorious double six. Since her stroke, the cripple had not once moved her hands.

  ‘Well, I never! Look at that, Thérèse,’ Michaud exclaimed. ‘Mme Raquin is moving her fingers. She must want something.’

  Thérèse was unable to reply. With Laurent, she had followed the paralysed woman’s efforts and was considering her aunt’s hand, pale beneath the harsh light of the lamp, as a vengeful hand, about to speak. The two murderers waited with bated breath.

  ‘By golly, yes!’ said Grivet. ‘She wants something. Oh, we understand one another, she and I. She wants to play dominoes. Huh? That’s right, isn’t it, dear lady?’

  Mme Raquin made a violent attempt to deny it. She extended one finger and bent the others back, with infinite pains, and started with agonizing slowness to trace out letters on the table. She had only made a few lines when Grivet once more exclaimed triumphantly:

  ‘I see it! She’s saying that I’m right to play the double six.’

  The cripple gave him a furious look and again started the word that she wanted to write. But Grivet kept on interrupting her, saying that it was not necessary, that he had understood; and he would then suggest some idiocy. Eventually, Michaud told him to be quiet.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ he said. ‘Let Mme Raquin talk. Tell us, my old friend.’

  And he looked at the oilcloth as though listening to something. But the cripple’s fingers were tiring: they had started one word more than ten times, and now they could not form it without wandering to the left and to the right. Michaud and Olivier leaned over, but could not read it, so they obliged the victim to keep on repeating the first letters.

  ‘Ah! That’s it!’ Olivier suddenly exclaimed. ‘I’ve read it this time. She has just written your name, Thérèse. Look: Thérèse and ... Carry on, dear lady.’
>
  Thérèse almost cried out in agony. She watched her aunt’s fingers slide along the oilcloth and it seemed to her that those fingers were writing her name and the admission of her crime in letters of fire. Laurent had leaped to his feet, wondering if he ought to throw himself at the old woman and break her arm. He thought that all was lost and could feel the cold weight of retribution on him as he watched that hand come back to life to reveal Camille’s murder.

  Mme Raquin was still writing, in an increasingly unsteady way.

  ‘That’s perfect, I can read it very clearly,’ said Olivier after a short while, looking at the young couple. ‘Your aunt is writing your two names: Thérèse and Laurent.’

  At once, the old lady made affirmative signs, casting devastating looks towards the murderers. Then she tried to complete the sentence. But her fingers had stiffened and she was losing the supreme effort of will that had galvanized them; she could feel the paralysis moving slowly along her arm and once more grasping her wrist. She hastened to write another word.

  Old Michaud read aloud:

  ‘Thérèse and Laurent are...’

  And Olivier asked:

  ‘What are they, your dear children?’

  The murderers, wild with fear, were on the point of finishing the sentence aloud. They were staring at the vengeful hand with anxious eyes when, suddenly, the hand was seized with a convulsion and dropped flat on the table. It slipped and fell on the old woman’s knee like a mass of inanimate flesh. The paralysis had returned and halted the punishment. Michaud and Olivier sat down, disappointed, while Thérèse and Laurent felt such a sharp flood of joy that they thought they were about to faint with the sudden rush of blood thumping in their chests.

  Grivet was annoyed at not having been believed. He thought that the moment had come to retrieve his reputation for infallibility by completing Mme Raquin’s unfinished sentence. While they were searching for the meaning of the words, he said: