A Love Story

by Emile Zola

  And as she was silent:

  ‘I was greatly upset by your letter. Hélène, you are hiding something from me. I beg you to put me out of my agony.’

  She wasn’t listening. She was thinking that he had every reason to think it was a rendezvous. What would she have been doing there, why would she have been waiting for him? She couldn’t think of a plausible story. She was now not even certain she had not arranged this rendezvous with him herself. She was enveloped in his embrace, she was slowly vanishing.

  He pressed her further. He was questioning her closely, his lips on her lips, to get at the truth.

  ‘You were waiting, you were waiting for me?’

  Then, surrendering, sinking into a passivity and a tenderness which she could no longer struggle against, she agreed to say what he would say, to want what he wanted.

  ‘I was waiting for you, Henri...’

  Again their lips met.

  ‘But why write this letter? And to find you here! Where is this anyway?’

  ‘Do not ask, never try and find out... You have to swear to me... I am here, I am near you, you can see that. What more do you want?’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Yes, I love you.’

  ‘Are you mine, Hélène, all mine?’

  ‘Yes, I am all yours.’

  They kissed full on the lips. She forgot everything, she yielded to a superior force. It seemed to her natural and inevitable. Peace had descended upon her, all that came to her now were memories and the feeling of being young again. On such a winter’s day when she was a girl in the Rue des Petites-Maries she had nearly suffocated in an airless room before a great coal fire that had been lit for the ironing. Another day in summer the windows were open and a chaffinch lost in the dark street had flown suddenly round her room. Then why was she thinking of death, why did she see that bird fly off? She felt wholly sad and like a child again in the delicious annihilation of her whole being.

  ‘But you are wet through,’ murmured Henri. ‘Did you walk here?’

  He lowered his voice and called her ‘tu’. He whispered in her ear, as though someone might hear. And now that she could not resist him, trembling with desire there in front of her, he enclosed her in his arms with a passionate, shy caress, not daring to do more, putting off the moment. He felt a brotherly concern for her, he must look after her in intimate and small ways.

  ‘Your feet are soaked, you’ll catch cold,’ he repeated. ‘Oh heavens, is it sensible to go out on the streets with shoes like that!’

  He made her sit down in front of the fire. She smiled, did not draw back, gave him her feet to take off her shoes. Her little slippers which had split in the puddles going down the Passage des Eaux were sodden as sponges. He pulled them off and put them on each side of the fireplace. The stockings, too, were still damp, and spattered with mud up to her ankles. Leaving her no time for embarrassment, with a gesture that was at once brusque, cross, and full of tenderness, he took them off, saying:

  ‘That’s how you catch cold. Warm yourself.’ He had pushed up a stool.

  Her two snow-white feet glowed pink in front of the flames. It was rather stuffy in the room. At the back of the apartment the room with its big bed was sunk in slumber. The night lamp had gone out, one of the curtains on the portière, come off its loop, was half concealing the door. In the small salon the flames of the candles gave off the warm smell that betokens the end of an evening. From time to time you could hear the rain streaming down, a dull pounding in the deep silence.

  ‘Yes, it’s true, I’m cold,’ she whispered, shivering in spite of the great heat.

  Her white feet were ice-cold. Then he insisted on taking them in his hands. His hands were hot, he’d warm her up immediately.

  ‘Can you feel them?’ he demanded. ‘Your feet are so small they fit perfectly into my hands.’

  He squeezed them between his burning hot fingers. Only her little pink toes protruded. She raised her heels and they heard the slight friction of her ankles. He opened his hands, looked at her feet for a few seconds, so fine, so delicate, with the big toes a little separate. The temptation was too much for him, he kissed them. Then, as she shuddered:

  ‘No, no, get warm. When you’ve warmed up...’

  Both had lost all consciousness of time and place. They had the vague feeling they were far advanced into a long winter’s night. These candles, nearly extinguished in the drowsy dank room, made them imagine they must have been awake for hours. But they no longer knew where. A desert stretched out around them. No sound, no human voice, it felt like a dark sea with a storm blowing. They were far from the world, a thousand leagues away from the earth. And this forgetfulness of the bonds that attached them to beings and things was so absolute they seemed to have been born there at that moment and would die there in a little while when they took each other into their arms.

  They could not even speak. Words no longer expressed the way they felt. Perhaps they had known each other in another place, but that former life was of no significance. Only the moment existed, and they dwelt in it for a long time, not speaking of their love, quite used to each other as if they had been already married for ten years.

  ‘Are you warm?’

  ‘Oh yes, thank you.’

  A troubling thought made her lean over. She murmured:

  ‘My slippers will never dry.’

  He reassured her, picked up the little slippers and propped them up against the andirons, saying in a very low voice:

  ‘They’ll be bound to dry like that.’

  He turned round, kissed her feet again and went on kissing her all the way up her leg. The coals which filled the hearth were burning them both. She was not upset by these hands, straying again with his desire, feeling their way. In the blotting out of everything surrounding her, and that included her own self, all she could think of was her young days, spent in a room as hot as this, a large stove with irons over which she had crouched; and she remembered that she had experienced a similar feeling of annihilation then, and the sensual delight, the sensation of slowly dying was no more voluptuous now under the rain of Henri’s kisses. But when suddenly he seized her in his arms to carry her into the bedroom, one last worry beset her. She thought that someone had cried out, she thought she could hear someone sobbing in the darkness. But it was nothing but a little frisson; she looked around the room but there was no one there. This room was unknown to her, the objects in it meant nothing to her. The rain lashed down ever more violently, making a continuous racket. Then, as though overwhelmed by the need for sleep, she collapsed on to Henri’s shoulder, allowed herself to be carried off. Behind them, the other curtain on the portière slipped from its loop.

  When Hélène came back in her bare feet to fetch her slippers from in front of the dying embers, it occurred to her that never had they loved one another less than they had that day.

  Chapter 5

  Jeanne, her eyes on the door, was still very upset by the abrupt departure of her mother. She looked round. The bedroom was empty and silent, but she could still hear the sounds of her leaving, the hurried steps retreating, the rustle of her skirts, the landing door banging shut. Then, nothing. She was alone.

  All alone. All alone. On the bed was her mother’s dressing gown hastily jettisoned, undone, and with one sleeve lying across the pillow in a strange crumpled position, like someone who has fallen sobbing there, as if collapsed under the weight of her own pain. Underclothes lay around all over the place. A black scarf made a funereal mark on the floor. In the disorder of overturned chairs and the little table, which had been shoved against the large wardrobe, she was alone. She felt the sobs rise in her throat, when she saw this dressing gown without her mother in it, laid out and looking for all the world like an emaciated dead woman. She wrung her hands and called one last time: ‘Maman, Maman!’ But the blue velvet hangings muffled the sound in the room. It could not be helped, she was all alone.

  Time passed. The clock struck three. The light t
hrough the window was a murky grey. Clouds the colour of soot floated past, darkening the sky even more. Through the window panes covered in a light film, Paris was a blur, blotted out by the mist, the distances lost in great swirls. Even the city was not there to keep the child company, as it did in the bright afternoons when she thought that if she leaned out a little she would be able to touch the neighbouring houses with her hand.

  What could she do? Her small, desperate arms clutched one another against her chest. Her abandoned state seemed black, limitless, the injustice and wickedness of it all made her furious. She had never encountered anything so mean, and imagined that everybody and everything would leave her and never come back. Then she saw her doll near her in an armchair, sitting propped up by a cushion, its legs stuck out and staring at her like a real person. It wasn’t her wind-up doll, this was a large doll with a paste head, curly hair, and enamel eyes, and a stare that she sometimes found uncomfortable. In the last two years as she dressed and undressed her, the head had become scuffed on her chin and cheeks, the pink limbs stuffed with bran had started to look lanky and gangling like flabby old underclothes. At the moment the doll was in her nightwear, wearing only a vest, her arms dislocated, one pointing up and one down. Then Jeanne, feeling there was someone with her, was briefly less miserable. She caught hold of her, squeezed her very hard, so that her head swung back and her neck hung loose. And she chatted to her, she was a very well-behaved doll, she was kind, she never went out and left her all on her own. She was her treasure, her darling, her sweetest dolly. Shaking and still holding back her tears, she covered her with kisses.

  This fury of kisses assuaged her feelings a little, the doll fell back in her arms like a rag. She stood up and looked out, her forehead pressed against the glass. The rain had stopped, the clouds from the last downpour had been carried off by gusts of wind and were moving across the horizon to the heights of Père-Lachaise that were hatched in grey lines. And against this stormy background and illuminated in an unvarying bright light, Paris assumed a solitary, gloomy grandeur. It seemed empty of people, like those cities in nightmares you see in the reflected light of some dead planet. Of course it wasn’t a pretty sight. In an abstracted way she thought about the people she had loved in her life. Her oldest best friend in Marseilles was a large and very heavy marmalade cat. She would catch hold of him under his tummy, squeezing him in her little arms. She would carry him like that from one chair to the next without him getting angry. Then he had disappeared. That was the first bad thing she could remember. After that she’d had a sparrow. It had died, she’d picked it up one morning from the bottom of its cage. That made two. That was not counting the toys that broke just to annoy her. She suffered a great deal because of the unfairness of it all, though it was silly of her. Especially one, a miniature doll, drove her to despair when it let its head get crushed. She had been so fond of it, she had even buried it secretly in a corner of the yard. And later, with a pressing need to see her again, she had dug her up and made herself sick with fear, when she found she was so blackened and ugly. It was always others who stopped loving her first. They broke, or they left you. Well anyway, it was their fault. But why? She did not change. When she loved someone it was for life. She could not understand why they went away. It was a terrible thing, monstrous, her little heart broke when she thought of it. She shuddered at the muddled thoughts which were slowly dawning on her. So one day they left you, you went your separate ways, you did not see them any more, you did not love them any more. And as she contemplated the immensity and melancholy that was Paris, the passionate twelve-year-old felt chilled by what she divined about the cruelty of life.

  Meanwhile her breath had misted over the glass again. She rubbed away the film that prevented her from seeing anything. There were brown reflections of distant landmarks, washed by the rain, in the glass. Rows of houses, clean and distinct, with their pale fronts, looked like underclothes hung out on a line, like some colossal washing drying on fields of rust-coloured grass. It was getting lighter, the last piece of cloud which cloaked the city in mist let the milky rays of the sun through. And you could sense a hesitant gaiety above the different neighbourhoods, certain spots where the sky was going to smile. Jeanne looked down, on the bank and on the slopes of the Trocadéro at the life in the streets beginning again after the harsh rain which fell with sudden violence. The cabs started slowly bumping along again while in the silence of the still deserted streets the omnibuses rolled along twice as noisily. Umbrellas were folded, pedestrians sheltering under the trees ventured from one side of the street to the other, crossing the puddles running down into the gutters. Her attention was particularly taken by a very well-dressed lady and a little girl she saw standing under the awning of a toyshop near the bridge. They had probably taken shelter there, caught in the rain. The little girl was looking longingly at the shop, pestering her mother to buy her a hoop. And both were leaving now, the child ran laughing and free, bowling the hoop along the pavement. Then Jeanne became very gloomy again, her doll seemed ugly to her. It was a hoop she wanted, and to be down there, running along while her mother walked slowly behind her shouting to her not to run on too far. Everything misted up again. She wiped the pane constantly. She had been forbidden to open the window, but she felt full of rebellious indignation; well, at least she could look out, even if she hadn’t been taken out. She opened it and leaned on the sill like a grown-up, like her mother when she stood there in silence.

  The air was mild and damp, it smelled good to her. A shadow, gradually creeping over the horizon, made her look up. Above her she felt as if there were a gigantic bird with spreading wings. At first she saw nothing, the sky was clear. But a black stain appeared on the corner of the roofs, spilled over and invaded the sky. It was a new squall propelled there by a blustery wind from the west. The light had faded rapidly, the town was black in a livid-coloured light which imparted the hue of old rust to the fronts of houses. Almost immediately the rain came down. The streets were swept clean. Umbrellas blew inside out, walkers fled for cover everywhere and disappeared like straws. An old lady clutched at her skirts with both hands while the rain beat down on her hat with the force of a downpour. And the rain cloud was moving across, you could follow it in its full-on rush towards Paris. The bore of heavy drops careered down the avenues by the river like a runaway horse raising a dust, that in a small white cloud rolled over the surface with prodigious speed. It went down the Champs-Élysées, surged into the long straight streets of the Quartier Saint-Germain, with a leap enveloping the wide spaces, the empty squares, the deserted junctions. In a few seconds, behind this cloth that was getting ever more opaque, the city grew paler and seemed to melt away. It was as if a curtain were being drawn from one side of the vast sky down to the earth. Vapours rose, the immense lapping noise made a din like the clatter of old iron.

  Jeanne drew back, her head spinning with the noise. It seemed to her that a pale wall had risen in front of her. But she loved the rain, she came back to lean on the windowsill, and stretched out her arms to feel the big cold drops splash on to her hands. She liked that, she was soaked up to her sleeves. Her doll probably had a headache, like her. So she had just put her astride the sill and leaning against the wall. And when she saw the drops splashing on to her, she thought it was doing her good. The stiff doll with her little teeth and everlasting smile had one soaking shoulder as the wind blew, lifting her chemise. Her poor body, devoid of sawdust, was shivering.

  So why had her mother not taken her with her? Because of the rain beating steadily on her hands, Jeanne was again tempted to go outside. How nice it would be out in the street! And again she could see, through the veil of rain, the little girl bowling her hoop along the pavement. You couldn’t deny it, that little girl was out with her mother. And indeed they looked as though they were both very happy to be there. That proved that little girls went out, even when it was raining. But people had to want to do that. Why hadn’t they wanted to? Then she thought once more
of her marmalade cat who had gone away with its tail in the air up on to the houses opposite, and of that little sparrow creature which she had tried to feed when it was dead and which had pretended not to understand. Things like that were always happening to her, nobody loved her enough. Oh, she could have been ready in two minutes; some days when she wanted to she dressed herself quickly, her boots buttoned up by Rosalie, then the woollen jacket, the hat, and she was ready. Her mother might have waited for her for two minutes. When she was going down to visit friends, she did not throw her things all over the place like that. When she was going to the Bois de Boulogne, she walked along with her, holding her hand nicely, she stopped with her at all the shops on the Rue de Passy. And Jeanne could not understand; her black eyebrows furrowed, her fine features assumed the jealous, hard look and the pallor of a malevolent old maid. She had a vague feeling that her mother was somewhere where children are not allowed to go. She had not taken her, they were hiding something from her. At these thoughts her heart tightened in inexpressible sadness and pain.

  The rain eased off. There were openings through the curtain which hung like a veil over Paris. The Dôme des Invalides was the first to reappear, light and trembling in the shining vibrations of the rain. Then some of the quartiers emerged from the water, which was receding, the city seemed to be rising out of a flood with its streaming roofs while rivers were still filling the streets with steam. But suddenly a flame burst forth and a ray of light struck into the midst of the showers. For an instant it was a smile through tears. It was not raining any more on the quartier of the Champs-Élysées, the rain cut its way along the Left Bank, the Cité, the distant faubourgs. And you could see the drops like strokes of steel, coming thick and fast in the sun. To the right a rainbow lit up the sky. As the ray of light gradually broadened, pink and blue hatched stripes were daubed on the horizon in splatters of childish watercolours. There was a flaming, a falling of golden snow on a city of crystal. And the ray of light faded, a cloud had rolled across, the smile was drowning in tears, Paris was draining away in one long sound of sobbing beneath the leaden sky.