A Love Story

by Emile Zola

  And when he came back the following day, Hélène had to tell him that the child did not want him. So the old doctor did not go into the bedroom again. He came up every two days, asking for news, sometimes chatting with his colleague, Doctor Deberle, who was deferential because of the other’s advanced age.

  Anyway it was no good seeking to deceive Jeanne. Her senses were refined to a remarkable degree. The abbé and Monsieur Rambaud came each evening, sat down, and spent an hour there in silent despair. One day as the doctor was leaving, Hélène made a sign to Monsieur Rambaud to take his place and hold the little girl’s hand, so that she did not realize her friend had left. But after two or three minutes, Jeanne, who was asleep, opened her eyes again and pulled her hand away. And she wept, saying they were playing tricks on her.

  ‘Don’t you love me any more, you don’t want me any more?’ repeated poor Monsieur Rambaud, tears in his eyes.

  She looked at him without speaking, she seemed not even to try and recognize him. And the good fellow returned to his place with a heavy heart. After a while he took to coming in silently and slipping into the recess where he remained, half hidden behind a curtain, throughout the evening, numb with sadness, gazing at the sick girl. The abbé was there too, his large face very white on his thin shoulders. He blew his nose noisily in his handkerchief to hide his tears. The danger his little friend was facing upset him to such an extent that he forgot about the poor of his parish.

  But try as they might to conceal themselves in a corner of the room, Jeanne sensed their presence. She did not want them there, she tossed and turned uncomfortably even when lulled to sleep by the fever. Her mother leaned over her to hear the words she was uttering.

  ‘Oh, Maman, I feel so poorly! I can’t breathe. Tell them to go away now, now!’

  As gently as possible, Hélène explained to the two brothers that the little girl wanted to sleep. They understood, and went away with heads bowed. As soon as they had gone, Jeanne breathed more deeply, glanced around the bedroom, then focused again, with infinite sweetness, on her mother and the doctor.

  ‘Hello,’ she murmured. ‘I’m all right now, stay there.’

  For three weeks she clung to them like that. Henri had come twice a day at first, but then spent entire evenings there, giving as much time as he could to be with the child. At the beginning he had feared it might be typhoid fever; but such contradictory symptoms manifested themselves that before long he was very puzzled. He thought this must be one of those chloro-anaemic infections, which are so difficult to diagnose, and whose complications are dreadful at an age when a girl is growing into womanhood. He suspected, one after the other, a lesion in the heart and incipient consumption. He was very concerned by Jeanne’s nervous hypersensitivity which he could not assuage, and especially her high fever, which wouldn’t go away and refused to be brought down by even the strongest medication. He put all his energy and medical expertise into her treatment, with the thought uppermost in his mind that he was nurturing his own happiness, his own life. He fell into a profound silence, and gravely awaited the outcome. Not once during those three weeks of anxiety did his passion awake. He was no longer affected by Hélène’s nearness, and when their eyes met, they were full of the sympathetic sadness of two people who are threatened by a common misfortune.

  Yet every minute their hearts melted more and more into one. They both lived with a single thought in mind. As soon as he arrived he could tell from her expression how Jeanne had spent the night, and he did not need to say anything for her to know how he had found the sick girl. In any case, she, with fine maternal courage, had made him swear not to deceive her, but to tell her what he feared. Always on her feet, not having slept three hours together in twenty nights, she demonstrated a superhuman strength and calm, without shedding a tear, overcoming her despair in order to keep her head in this struggle against her child’s illness. An immense void had opened up in and around her, into which her world, her feelings every hour, the awareness of her own existence even, had sunk. Nothing existed now. She was only connected with life through this dear child near to death and this man who promised her a miracle. It was him and him alone that she saw, that she heard, his slightest word took on a supreme importance, and she abandoned herself unreservedly, dreaming of being present within him, to give him some of her strength. Silently, inexorably, this possession was coming about. When Jeanne was having an attack, almost every evening, at the times when the fever intensified, they were there silent and alone in the stuffy room. And despite themselves, as though they needed to feel they were two against death, trembling with anxiety and pity, their hands found one another and coupled for some time on the edge of the bed, uniting them, until a little sigh from the child, her calm, regular breathing, told them that the crisis was over. Then, they exchanged a reassuring nod. Once more their love had triumphed. And each time their touch grew more overt, their union was closer. One evening Hélène guessed that Henri was hiding something from her. He had been examining Jeanne for ten minutes without a word. The little girl was complaining that she was terribly thirsty; she was choking and from her throat came a continuous whistling noise. Then she had become very sleepy, her face very red, so heavy she could no longer open her eyelids. And she remained inert, you would have thought she was dead except for the whistling in her throat.

  ‘You think she’s very ill, don’t you?’ asked Hélène curtly.

  He replied that no, there was no change. But he was very pale, he sat there, crushed by his inability to do anything. So despite feeling so tense in her whole body, she sank on to a chair on the other side of the bed.

  ‘Tell me everything. You swore you would... Have we lost her?’

  And, as he said nothing, she went on violently:

  ‘I’m strong, you know... Am I crying? Am I in despair? Talk to me. I want to know the truth.’

  Henri gazed at her. He spoke slowly.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if within one hour she doesn’t come out of this drowsiness, it will be over.’

  Hélène did not give so much as a sob. Her cold horror was hair-raising. Her eyes fell on Jeanne, she fell to her knees and took her child in her arms, in a superb gesture of possession, as though to keep her there against her shoulder. For more than a minute she leaned her face next to hers, drinking her in with her eyes, wanting to breathe life, her own life, into her. The halting breath of the sick little girl became shorter.

  ‘Can’t we do anything?’ she went on, looking up. ‘Why are you still standing there? Do something!’

  He made a dispirited gesture.

  ‘Do something... I don’t know what. Anything at all. There must be something we can do. You are not going to let her die? It’s not possible.’

  ‘I’ll do all I can,’ the doctor answered simply.

  He had risen. Then there was in him a supreme struggle. All his confidence and practical decisiveness as a doctor returned. Until that moment he had not dared use violent means, fearing to weaken the little body that was already so feeble. But hesitating no longer, he sent Rosalie to get twelve leeches, and he did not hide from her mother that it was a desperate measure, which might save or kill her child. When the leeches arrived, he saw her weaken a moment.

  ‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘Supposing you kill her...’ He had to extract her consent.

  ‘Well, put them on her, but may Heaven be with you!’

  She had not let go of Jeanne, she refused to get up, wanting to keep her head there against her shoulder. His face expressionless, he said nothing more, absorbed in the effort of what he was trying to do. First the leeches did not cling on properly. The minutes ticked by, the pitiless, obstinate ticking of the clock in the big room sunk in shadow was the only thing you could hear. Each second dashed another hope. Beneath the circle of yellow light from the lampshade, Jeanne’s lovely little naked, suffering body in the middle of the disarrayed sheets looked pale as wax. Hélène dry-eyed, unable to speak, gazed at those small limbs, that looked alrea
dy dead. To see a drop of her daughter’s blood, she would willingly have given all of her own. Finally a drop of red appeared, the leeches were working. One by one they attached themselves. The life of the child was in the balance. Those were terrifying minutes, of poignant emotion. Was that sigh Jeanne gave her last breath? Or was she coming back to life? One moment Hélène, feeling her stiffen, thought she was passing away, and she had an uncontrollable desire to pull off those beasts that were so thirstily sucking her blood. But a greater force held her back; she sat there motionless, with parted lips. The clock continued to tick, the anxious bedroom seemed to be waiting.

  The child moved. Her eyelids slowly lifted, then closed again, as though surprised and weary. A slight vibration, like a breath of air, passed over her face. Her lips moved. Hélène eager, tense, leaned over in fierce expectation.

  ‘Maman, Maman,’ murmured Jeanne.

  Henri came over then to the young woman, saying:

  ‘She is saved.’

  ‘She is saved,’ Hélène stammered. And again: ‘She is saved.’ Suffused with such joy, she sank on to the floor by the side of the bed looking at her daughter, looking at the doctor as if she had lost her mind.

  And with a violent movement she rose and threw herself at Henri’s neck.

  ‘Oh, I love you,’ she cried.

  She kissed him, she hugged him. It was her declaration of love, the admission which had been so long delayed, and had at long last burst forth in the crisis of her heart. Mother and lover were one being, in this moment of delight. She offered the burning love of her gratitude.

  ‘I’m crying, look, I can cry now,’ she stammered. ‘Oh God, how I love you, how happy we shall be!’

  She called him ‘tu’, she sobbed. The fount of her tears, dried up for the last three weeks, poured down her cheeks. She stayed in his arms, embracing and stroking him like a child, carried away by this opening and flowering of her love. Then she fell to her knees again, moving Jeanne against her shoulder to sleep, and from time to time, while her daughter was resting, she raised her moist, passionate eyes to Henri’s face.

  It was a night of great happiness. The doctor stayed very late. Lying in her bed, with the covers up to her chin, her fine brown head in the middle of the pillow, Jeanne shut her eyes, not asleep but comforted and oblivious. The lamp placed on the little table they had pulled up next to the hearth was only lighting one end of the room, leaving Hélène and Henri in the half-shadow, sitting in their usual places on the two sides of the narrow bed. But the child did not separate them, on the contrary she brought them together, and added an innocence to the first evening of their love. Both savoured the calm after the long days of anguish they had just spent. Finally they found each other, side by side, with their hearts more open than ever; and they realized their love was greater through sharing the terror and joy which had so shaken them. And in all this, the bedroom itself, so warm, so discreet, so charged with the religious silence that surrounds a sickbed, became complicit. From time to time Hélène got up, went on tiptoe to fetch a potion, turn up the lamp, give an order to Rosalie; and the doctor, watching, signalled to her to move quietly. Then when she sat down again they exchanged a smile. They did not say a word, their sole concern was Jeanne, who was like their love itself. But sometimes while they tended her, when they pulled up the coverlet or raised her head, their hands met and forgot everything for a moment in their nearness to one another. It was the only caress, involuntary and furtive, that they allowed themselves.

  ‘I’m not asleep,’ whispered Jeanne. ‘I know you are there.’

  Then they rejoiced to hear her speak. Their hands unlocked, they had no other desire. The child was enough for them, calming their passion.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’ asked Hélène when she saw her stirring.

  Jeanne did not answer straight away. She spoke as though in a dream.

  ‘Oh yes... I don’t feel... I can hear you, I like to hear you.’

  After a moment she made an effort to open her eyes and look at them. Then she gave a beatific smile and shut her eyes again.

  The next day when the abbé and Monsieur Rambaud appeared, Hélène made an involuntary gesture of impatience. They were encroaching on her little zone of happiness. And as they questioned her, worried that they might hear some bad news, she was cruel enough to say that Jeanne was no better. She spoke without thinking, impelled by the selfish need to keep the joy of having saved her for herself and Henri, and to be the only ones who knew that. Why did anyone want to share their happiness? It belonged to them, it would be diminished in her eyes if someone else knew about it. It would have seemed like a stranger intervening, in their love.

  The priest went over to the bed.

  ‘Jeanne, it’s us, your friends... Don’t you know us?’

  She nodded gravely. She knew them but did not want to chat. Deep in thought, she looked up at her mother as if she understood. And the two kindly men left, sadder than on other evenings. Three days later Henri allowed the sick girl her first boiled egg. It was quite a business. Jeanne insisted on eating it alone with her mother and the doctor, with the door shut. As Monsieur Rambaud was indeed there, she whispered in her mother’s ear, as she was spreading a serviette on the bed to serve as tablecloth:

  ‘Wait till he’s gone.’

  Then, when he had gone away:

  ‘Now, now... It’s nicer when there’s no one here.’

  Hélène had sat her up, while Henri was putting two pillows behind her back to prop her. And once the serviette was spread out and a plate on her knees, Jeanne waited with an expectant smile.

  ‘I’ll crack it for you, shall I?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Yes all right, Maman.’

  ‘And I’ll cut you three pieces of bread to dip in,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Oh, four, I can eat four, you’ll see.’

  She called the doctor ‘tu’ now. When he gave her the first piece, she caught hold of his hand and, still holding her mother’s, she kissed them both, going from one to the other with the same passionate show of affection.

  ‘Come now, be a good girl,’ Hélène said, seeing she was about to start sobbing. ‘Eat up your egg, to please us.’

  Then Jeanne began to eat, but she was so weak that after the second piece of bread she was very weary. She smiled every time she took a mouthful, saying her teeth couldn’t bite properly. Henri encouraged her, Hélène’s eyes full of unshed tears. Oh God, she was watching her daughter eat! She kept her eye on the piece of bread, this first egg she ate, and was moved to the depths of her being. The sudden thought of Jeanne, dead and stiff beneath a sheet, made her blood run cold. And she was eating, she was eating so nice and slowly, hesitatingly, like a convalescent!

  ‘You won’t scold me, Maman... I’m doing my best, I’m on to my third piece... Are you pleased with me?’

  ‘Yes, very pleased, darling... You can’t believe what pleasure you are giving me.’

  And in the surfeit of happiness which was choking her, she forgot herself and leaned against Henri’s shoulder. Both laughed at the little girl. But she seemed to be more uncomfortable now. She looked at them suspiciously, then her head drooped and she stopped eating. A shadow of mistrust and anger spread over her pale face. She had to be put back to bed.

  Chapter 3

  The convalescence lasted for months. In August Jeanne was still in bed. She got up for an hour or two towards evening and it tired her dreadfully to walk even as far as the window, where she remained lying back in an armchair, looking at Paris ablaze in the setting sun. Her poor legs refused to carry her. As she said with a faint smile, she did not have as much blood as a little bird, they should wait until she could eat a lot of soup. They cut up raw meat and put it in her broth. She had got to liking that in the end because she wanted to go down and play in the garden.

  Those weeks, months, went by, in a dull but pleasant routine and Hélène was not aware of time passing. She no longer went out, she forgot everything when
looking after Jeanne. No news from elsewhere reached her. With its view over Paris, that filled the horizon with its smoke and noise, it was a retreat that was more remote and secluded than the holy hermitages of the saints deep in the rocks. Her child was saved, this certainty was enough for her, she spent her days watching for any improvement in her health, happy at any subtle change, a bright glance, a happy wave. Every hour her daughter was growing a little more like her old self, with her lovely eyes and hair that was shiny again. She felt as if she was giving birth to her a second time. The slower the resurrection, the more she appreciated its delights, remembering when she had fed her from her breast long ago, and when she saw her regain her strength, she felt an emotion even more powerful than in those days, when she had measured the two tiny feet in her clasped hands to find out if she would be walking soon.

  But she was still worried about something. On several occasions she had noticed a shadow come over Jeanne’s face and render it mistrustful and fierce. Why in the midst of gaiety did she suddenly change like that? Was she suffering, was she concealing some recurring pain?

  ‘Tell me, darling, what’s the matter? You were laughing just now, and now you are sad. Answer me, do you hurt somewhere?’

  But Jeanne turned violently away, burying her face in her pillow.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she snapped. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  And for afternoons at a time she was resentful and obstinate, her face to the wall, falling into some dreadful trough of despair that her stricken mother could not fathom. The doctor was baffled. The attacks always occurred when he was present, and he attributed them to the nervous disposition of the sick girl. Above all they should avoid crossing her, was his advice.

  One afternoon, Jeanne was asleep. Henri, who had found her doing very well, had stayed in the bedroom chatting to Hélène, once more busy with her never-ending sewing in front of the window. Ever since the terrible night when in a cry of passion she had declared her love, they had both relaxed, letting themselves enjoy the sweet sensation of loving one another, not caring about tomorrow, forgetful of the world. Near Jeanne’s bed in the room which was still charged with the memory of the child’s suffering, their chastity protected them from all untoward surprises of the senses. It calmed them to hear her innocent breathing. Yet as the invalid recovered her strength, so too did their love. It grew stronger, they relished the present and did not attempt to think about what they were going to do when Jeanne was on her feet again and their passion could express itself, freely and strongly.