Human Beast: The Emile Zola Society Edition

by Emile Zola

  ‘How lovely it is outside!’ she whispered. ‘Such a beautiful night! I walked fast. With all those stars shining, it’s as light as day! What a fine day it will be tomorrow when the sun comes up!’

  For a moment she remained standing at the window, looking out at the tranquil countryside, softened by the first warm days of April. Her walk had reopened the wound in her heart and had left her feeling pensive and sad. But when she heard Misard walk out of the room and start moving furniture about in other parts of the house, she went over to the bed and sat looking at her mother. The candle was still burning on the bedside table with a long, steady flame. A train went by, shaking the house.

  Flore had decided she would stay beside her mother through the night. She began to ponder. The sight of the dead woman took her mind off an idea that had haunted her for some time, an idea she had been turning over and over in her head beneath the starry skies, in the stillness of the night, all the way back from Doinville. There was something that puzzled her, and for a while it stopped her thinking about her own troubles: why hadn’t she felt more upset at the death of her mother? Why, even now, wasn’t she weeping? It was true that she had never spoken much to her; she was a law unto herself, and preferred to be out on her own, roaming the countryside the minute she was off duty. Even so she had been genuinely fond of her. During her final illness she had come and sat beside her a score of times, begging her to call a doctor. She was sure that Misard was up to no good and hoped that a doctor might frighten him off. But all she ever got from her sick mother was an angry ‘no’, as if she prided herself on accepting help from no one in her battle against her husband, a battle she was certain of winning whatever the outcome, since she was going to take her money with her. And so Flore had not insisted; she was too absorbed in her own troubles. She spent most of her time pacing furiously about the countryside in an attempt to forget her sorrows. It must have been this that stopped her weeping for her mother; when the heart is already heavy-laden, it has no room for further grief. Her mother had gone. She looked at her as she lay on the bed, pale and lifeless. Try as she might, she could not make herself feel any sadder. What was the point of calling the police and accusing Misard, since her world was about to collapse? Her eyes remained fixed on the body, but she no longer saw it. Slowly, inescapably, she was drawn back into the private realm of her own thoughts, and the idea which had planted itself in her brain took hold of her once again. All she felt was the violent rattle of the trains, marking the hours as they hurtled past.

  In the distance she heard the rumble of an approaching stopping train from Paris. When the engine’s headlamp eventually passed in front of the window, the room was lit up as if by a flash of lightning or a sudden burst of flame.

  ‘Eighteen minutes past one,’ she thought. ‘Another seven hours! They will pass here at sixteen minutes past eight, tomorrow morning.’

  For the past few months, waiting for this particular train once a week had become an obsession. She knew that the Friday-morning express was always driven by Jacques and that it would also be carrying Séverine, on her weekly trip to Paris. She was consumed with jealousy; all week long she waited for the moment the train went by, when she could look out for them and see them, and picture them in Paris, happy in each other’s arms. How she hated seeing the train fly past, wishing she could cling on to the last carriage and be carried away to Paris herself! It seemed to her as if the wheels of the train were cutting her heart to pieces. She felt so hurt that one night she had hidden herself in her room to write to the police. If she could get this woman arrested, her troubles would be at an end. She had once seen Séverine at La Croix-de-Maufras and knew that she had been one of Grandmorin’s mistresses. All she had to do was inform the authorities, and Séverine would be brought to trial. When she attempted to put pen to paper, however, the words wouldn’t come. She wondered whether the police would even listen to her. These high-up people were all in it together. She might well end up being put in prison herself, as had happened to Cabuche. No! If she sought revenge, she would do it on her own; she needed help from no one. Flore thought of revenge not as it was usually understood - hurting someone in order to remedy the hurt done to oneself - but as a final solution, a cataclysm, in which all was destroyed as if by lightning. She was a proud girl, physically stronger and more handsome than her rival, and was convinced that she had as much right to be loved as her. On her solitary excursions into the wild countryside near by, her long blonde hair flying freely in the wind, she wished she could take hold of her and settle the dispute like two maiden warriors, face to face in the depths of a forest. She had never been taken by a man. She was a match for any of them. She was indomitable. Victory would always be hers.

  The idea had suddenly occurred to her the week before; it had struck her like a bolt from the blue. In order to stop them going past her house every week, in order to stop them going to Paris together, she must kill them. It was not something she had thought out; it was simply a crude, instinctive urge to get rid of them. When she had a thorn stuck in her finger she pulled it out; she would have cut her finger off if she’d had to. She must kill them. She must kill them the next time they went past. She must wreck the train, drag a beam of wood across the track, lift one of the rails, smash everything to pieces, destroy it. Jacques would be driving the locomotive; he couldn’t get off it. He would be crushed. His mistress always travelled in the leading carriage in order to be close to him; so she wouldn’t escape either. As for everyone else, the never-ending stream of passengers, she didn’t even give them a thought. They meant nothing to her; she didn’t know them. This train crash, and the sacrifice of so many lives, had become a waking obsession. Only a catastrophe on this scale, involving so much loss of life and human suffering, could possibly ease the enormous ache in her heart and assuage the tears she had shed.

  On the Friday morning, however, her resolve had weakened; she was unable to decide where and how she was going to lift a rail. That evening, after she had finished duty for the day, another idea occurred to her. She walked through the tunnel and out to the Dieppe junction. She often came this way. The tunnel was a good half-league long, a vaulted passageway, completely straight. It excited her to see the trains coming towards her with their blinding headlamps; she was nearly run over every time. It must have been the sense of danger that attracted her, a need to do something reckless. This evening, however, having managed to avoid being seen by the night watchman, she had walked half-way through the tunnel, keeping to the left so that she could be sure that any train coming towards her would pass on her right, when she foolishly turned round to watch the tail-lights of a train for Le Havre. As she set off again, she had tripped, which forced her to turn round on herself a second time, with the result that she could no longer tell in which direction the red lights had been travelling. Her head was still spinning from the noise of the wheels. Bold as she was, she dared not move; she was so frightened that her hands went cold and her hair stood on end. She realized that, when another train went past, she wouldn’t know whether it was an up train or a down train; she might throw herself to the right or to the left and could be cut to pieces. She tried desperately to hold on to her reason, to remember, to think it through. But she was suddenly overcome with panic and ran forward blindly, frantically, into the darkness before her. She must not allow herself to be killed until she had killed the two she most hated. Her feet stumbled over the rails; she kept slipping and falling to the ground as she tried to run faster and faster. She felt as if she were going mad; the tunnel walls seemed to be closing in around her, the vaulted roof re-echoed with imaginary noises, fearful cries and horrible groans. She kept looking behind her, thinking she could feel the hot steam from a locomotive on her neck. Twice she was convinced she had made a mistake; she was running in the wrong direction and would be killed. She turned and ran the other way. She ran on and on. In front of her in the distance appeared a star, a shining eye, which was growing bigger and bigger. She steeled he
rself against the temptation to turn yet again and run the other way. The eye had grown to an incandescent ball, a savage mouth of flame. Without knowing what she was doing, she had leaped blindly to her left. The train thundered past, and a great gust of wind blew around her. Five minutes later she walked out of the Malaunay end of the tunnel, safe and sound. 2

  It was nine o’clock. The express from Paris would be there in a few minutes. She walked steadily on towards the junction for Dieppe two hundred metres ahead, looking carefully along the track for something that might serve her purpose. It so happened that the line to Dieppe was being repaired. Her friend Ozil had just changed the points for a ballast train3 to run on to the branch line, and it was waiting there. In a sudden flash of inspiration, she hit upon an idea. All she had to do was prevent the signalman from changing the points back to the Le Havre line, so that the express would crash into the ballast train. Ever since Ozil had tried to take Flore by force and she had nearly cracked his skull open with a stick, she had remained quite fond of him and liked to turn up on him unexpectedly, scampering through the tunnel like a goat running down from its mountain. Ozil was an ex-soldier, very thin and rather taciturn; he was completely dedicated to his job and so far had an impeccable record, keeping watch day and night. But there was something about Flore that attracted him. Her ways were strange, she had the strength of a man and had once given him a thrashing; yet she only had to lift her little finger and he would come running. Even though he was fourteen years older than her, he still desired her and had sworn he would have her; since force had not succeeded, he had decided he would bide his time and be nice to her. When she came up to his cabin in the dark and called to him to come outside, he left what he was doing and joined her straight away. She led him off towards the fields, trying to distract him with a long, involved account of how her mother was very ill and how she would leave La Croix-de-Maufras if she died. All the time, she was listening to the sound of the express in the distance, as it left Malaunay and sped towards them. When she thought the train had reached the junction, she turned to watch. What she had not taken into account was the new interlocking warning system. As the express ran on to the Dieppe branch line, it automatically set the signal at red,4 and the driver had been able to bring it to a halt a few metres short of the ballast train. Ozil let out a cry as if he had woken up to find his house falling down on top of him and ran back to his cabin. Flore stood in the dark, stiff and motionless, watching as the express was reversed back on to the main line. Two days later, the signalman had called to say goodbye to her. He was being transferred. He still had no idea that Flore had planned a train crash. He asked her to come and see him again once her mother had died. Ah well, she thought, her plan hadn’t worked. She would have to think of something else.

  Suddenly, as she recalled this incident, the dreamy mist that floated before her eyes lifted and there in front of her, in the yellow light of the candle flame, she once again saw the dead woman. Her mother was no more. Should she leave and marry Ozil? He wanted her and might make her happy. But her whole being rejected the idea. If she was such a coward that she allowed Jacques and Séverine to go on living, and went on living herself, she would sooner become a tramp or hire herself out as a servant than belong to a man she didn’t love. She heard a strange noise and turned to listen. It was Misard breaking up the earthen floor of the kitchen with a mattock. He was so desperate to get his hands on the hidden treasure that he would have torn the whole house apart. Flore had no desire to continue living with Misard either. What was she to do? There was a sudden rush of wind, the walls of the house shook, and the glow from the firebox of a passing train moved across the dead woman’s white face, making her staring eyes and the sneering grin on her lips turn blood-red. It was the last stopping train from Paris, making its slow, laborious progress towards Le Havre.

  Flore turned to gaze at the stars twinkling in the stillness of the spring night.

  ‘Ten minutes past three! In another five hours it will be their train going past.’

  The thought pained her. She must do something to stop them. Seeing them every week on their way to make love was more than she could bear. She couldn’t stand it. Now that she knew she would never have Jacques to herself, she would rather he no longer existed; she would rather that nothing existed any more. This gloomy bedroom, where she sat watching over her mother, filled her with a sense of loss, and a growing longing that everything might be swept clean away. As there was no longer anyone in the world who loved her, everyone else might as well end their days along with her mother. More people were going to die — many more. They would all be taken in one fell swoop. But what was she to do? Her sister was dead, her mother was dead, and her love was at an end. She was alone. Whether she stayed or left, she would always be alone, whereas they would have each other. No! She would put an end to everything. Even now, sitting in that dismal room, she was in the presence of death. Death would lie in wait beside the railway line, ready for the moment of retribution!

  Having finally taken her decision, she began to consider how she could put her plan into action. She came back to the idea of removing a section of the track. It seemed the most practical solution; it was certain to work and would be easy to do. She simply needed to knock the keys out of the rail-chairs with a hammer and pull the rail off the sleepers. She had the tools, and in such a deserted spot no one would see her. The best place would be at the far end of the cutting, towards Barentin, where the line was on a curve and crossed a valley on an embankment, seven or eight metres high. The train would come off the rails and crash down the side of the embankment. But the timing was crucial and would not be easy. The express from Le Havre came past on the up line at sixteen minutes past eight. The only train before that was a stopping train at seven fifty-five. This gave her twenty minutes to do what she had to, which was ample. Between the trains that were timetabled, however, they often sent out an unscheduled goods train, especially when the goods depot was busy. If that happened, her efforts would all have been in vain. How could she make sure that it was the express that crashed? For a long time she sat weighing up the possibilities. Outside it was still dark. She had not trimmed the candle; the wick had become charred and burned with a long, sooty flame.

  Misard returned just as a goods train from Rouen was approaching. He had been searching through the woodpile, and his hands were filthy. He was out of breath, and furious at having found nothing. In his impotent frenzy he once more started looking under the furniture, in the chimney, everywhere. The goods train came slowly clanking past; it seemed as if it would never end. The wheels let out a series of heavy thuds as the train rolled by, each one sending a jolt through the house that shook the dead woman as she lay on her bed. As Misard stretched out his arm to take a little picture from the wall, he once again met the staring eyes, watching him. The grinning lips moved.

  He went pale and shivered with a mixture of fear and anger.

  ‘I know what you’re saying!’ he muttered. “‘Keep looking!” You’ll see! I’ll find it, damn you! Even if I have to take the house apart stone by stone and dig up the whole neighbourhood!’

  The goods train had finally gone past and was rumbling slowly away into the night. The dead woman had stopped moving but continued to look at her husband; a look of such scorn and triumph that he once again walked from the room, without closing the door behind him.

  Misard had interrupted Flore in the middle of her reflections. She stood up and closed the door. She didn’t want him coming back again and disturbing her mother. Suddenly, to her own amazement, she heard herself saying: ‘Ten minutes before will be enough.’

  It would only take ten minutes to lift the rail. If no other train had been signalled ten minutes before the express was due, she could go ahead. Once she had taken her decision and knew what she was going to do, her anxiety left her and she became quite calm.

  Day dawned at about five o’clock, fresh and perfectly clear. Although it was still quite chilly,
she pulled the window wide open. The sweet morning air streamed into the gloomy bedroom, blowing away the candle smoke and the sickly smell of death. The sun was still below the horizon, behind a clump of trees on top of a hill. Suddenly it rose into the sky, in a splash of crimson, spilling down the hillside and flooding the sunken lanes and by-ways, as the earth rejoiced at the yearly return of spring. She had known it the night before; it was going to be a fine morning, a morning bursting with youth and radiant health, a morning that makes one feel glad to be alive. How good it would be to be out there, free to go where she wished, walking along untrodden pathways, wandering over hill and dale. She turned from the window and came back to the middle of the room. She noticed with surprise that the candle was almost out, flickering in the broad light of day, like a pale tear. The dead woman now seemed to be looking out at the railway line as the trains went by, without noticing the pallid glow from the candle beside her.

  Flore only worked during daylight hours, so she didn’t leave the bedroom until twelve minutes past six, for the stopping train to Paris. At six o’clock Misard had also gone to relieve his colleague, who had been on night duty. When Flore heard him sound his horn, she came and took up her position in front of the gate, holding her flag. She watched the train as it went by.

  ‘Another two hours!’ she said to herself.

  Her mother had no further need of anyone, and the thought of going back into the bedroom sickened her. It was all over; she had kissed her mother goodbye and could now dispose of her own life and of everyone else’s. Usually between trains she would wander off on her own, but this morning something seemed to be holding her back. She remained at her position near the gate, sitting on a bench, a simple plank beside the line. The sun was rising over the distant horizon, shedding its golden warmth into the pure air like a shower of rain. She did not move, content to sit there, bathed in the sun’s gentle radiance, with the open countryside all around her, quivering with the approach of spring. For a while she watched Misard in his wooden hut on the other side of the line; he was visibly agitated, and quite unlike his usual sleepy self. He kept darting in and out of his hut, fiddling with the controls on his receiver and continually looking towards the house as if his mind were still there, looking for the money. But she soon forgot about him, and after a while she was no longer aware that he was there. She was waiting for something, concentrating, silent and tense, her eyes fixed on the railway line in the distance, towards Barentin. Out of that shimmering haze of sunlight would appear the vision that her wild eyes so eagerly anticipated.