A time came when Madame Raquin, in order to escape the sufferings she
endured, thought of starving herself to death. She had reached the
end of her courage, she could no longer support the martyrdom that the
presence of the two murderers imposed on her, she longed to find supreme
relief in death. Each day her anguish grew more keen, when Thérèse
embraced her, and when Laurent took her in his arms to carry her along
like a child. She determined on freeing herself from these clasps
and caresses that caused her such horrible disgust. As she had not
sufficient life left within her to permit of her avenging her son, she
preferred to be entirely dead, and to leave naught in the hands of the
assassins but a corpse that could feel nothing, and with which they
could do as they pleased.
For two days she refused all nourishment, employing her remaining
strength to clench her teeth or to eject anything that Thérèse succeeded
in introducing into her mouth. Thérèse was in despair. She was asking
herself at the foot of which post she should go to weep and repent, when
her aunt would be no longer there. She kept up an interminable discourse
to prove to Madame Raquin that she should live. She wept, she even
became angry, bursting into her former fits of rage, opening the jaw of
the paralysed woman as you open that of an animal which resists. Madame
Raquin held out, and an odious scene ensued.
Laurent remained absolutely neutral and indifferent. He was astonished
at the efforts of Thérèse to prevent the impotent old woman committing
suicide. Now that the presence of the old lady had become useless to
them he desired her death. He would not have killed her, but as she
wished to die, he did not see the use of depriving her of the means to
do so.
“But, let her be!” he shouted to his wife. “It will be a good riddance.
We shall, perhaps, be happier when she is no longer here.”
This remark repeated several times in the hearing of Madame Raquin,
caused her extraordinary emotion. She feared that the hope expressed
by Laurent might be realised, and that after her death the couple would
enjoy calm and happiness. And she said to herself that it would be
cowardly to die, that she had no right to go away before she had seen
the end of the sinister adventure. Then, only, could she descend into
darkness, to say to Camille:
“You are avenged.”
The idea of suicide became oppressive, when she all at once reflected
that she would sink into the grave ignorant as to what had happened
to the two murderers of her son. There, she would lie in the cold
and silent earth, eternally tormented by uncertainty concerning the
punishment of her tormentors. To thoroughly enjoy the slumber of death,
she must be hushed to rest by the sweet delight of vengeance, she must
carry away with her a dream of satisfied hatred, a dream that would last
throughout eternity. So she took the food her niece presented to her,
and consented to live on.
Apart from this, it was easy for her to perceive that the climax could
not be far off. Each day the position of the married couple became
more strained and unbearable. A crash that would smash everything was
imminent. At every moment, Thérèse and Laurent started up face to face
in a more threatening manner. It was no longer at nighttime, alone,
that they suffered from their intimacy; entire days were passed amidst
anxiety and harrowing shocks. It was one constant scene of pain and
terror. They lived in a perfect pandemonium, fighting, rendering all
they did and said bitter and cruel, seeking to fling one another to the
bottom of the abyss which they felt beneath their feet, and falling into
it together.
Ideas of separation had, indeed, occurred to both of them. Each had
thought of flight, of seeking some repose far from this Arcade of the
Pont Neuf where the damp and filth seemed adapted to their desolated
life. But they dared not, they could not run away. It seemed impossible
for them to avoid reviling each other, to avoid remaining there to
suffer and cause pain. They proved obstinate in their hatred and
cruelty. A sort of repulsion and attraction separated and kept them
together at the same time. They behaved in the identical manner of two
persons who, after quarrelling, wish to part, and who, nevertheless,
continue returning to shout out fresh insults at one another.
Moreover, material obstacles stood in the way of flight. What were
they to do with the impotent woman? What could be said to the Thursday
evening guests? If they fled, these people would, perhaps, suspect
something. At this thought, they imagined they were being pursued and
dragged to the guillotine. So they remained where they were through
cowardice, wretchedly dragging out their lives amidst the horror of
their surroundings.
During the morning and afternoon, when Laurent was absent, Thérèse went
from the dining-room to the shop in anxiety and trouble, at a loss to
know what to do to fill up the void in her existence that daily became
more pronounced. When not kneeling at the feet of Madame Raquin or
receiving blows and insults from her husband, she had no occupation. As
soon as she was seated alone in the shop, she became dejected, watching
with a doltish expression, the people passing through the dirty, dark
gallery. She felt ready to die of sadness in the middle of this gloomy
vault, which had the odour of a cemetery, and ended by begging Suzanne
to come and pass entire days with her, in the hope that the presence of
this poor, gentle, pale creature might calm her.
Suzanne accepted her offer with delight; she continued to feel a sort of
respectful friendship for Thérèse, and had long desired to come and work
with her, while Olivier was at his office. Bringing her embroidery with
her, she took the vacant chair of Madame Raquin behind the counter.
From that day Thérèse rather neglected her aunt. She went upstairs
less frequently to weep on her knees and kiss the deathlike face of the
invalid. She had something else to do. She made efforts to listen with
interest to the dilatory gossip of Suzanne, who spoke of her home, and
of the trivialities of her monotonous life. This relieved Thérèse of her
own thoughts. Sometimes she caught herself paying attention to nonsense
that brought a bitter smile to her face.
By degrees, she lost all her customers. Since her aunt had been confined
to her armchair upstairs, she had let the shop go from bad to worse,
abandoning the goods to dust and damp. A smell of mildew hung in the
atmosphere, spiders came down from the ceiling, the floor was but rarely
swept.
But what put the customers to flight was the strange way in which
Thérèse sometimes welcomed them. When she happened to be upstairs,
receiving blows from Laurent or agitated by a shock of terror, and the
bell at the shop door tinkled imperiously, she had to go down, barely
taking time to do up her hair or brush away the tears. On such occasions
she served the persons awaiting her roughly; sometimes she even spared
herself the trouble of serving, answering from the top of the staircase,
that she no longer kept what was asked for. This kind of off-hand
behaviour, was not calculated to retain custom.
The little work-girls of the quarter, who were used to the sweet
amiability of Madame Raquin, were driven away by the harshness and wild
looks of Thérèse. When the latter took Suzanne with her to keep her
company, the defection became complete. To avoid being disturbed
in their gossip, the two young woman managed to drive away the few
remaining purchasers who visited the shop. Henceforth, the mercery
business ceased to bring in a sou towards the household expenses, and it
became necessary to encroach on the capital of forty thousand francs and
more.
Sometimes, Thérèse absented herself the entire afternoon. No one knew
where she went. Her reason for having Suzanne with her was no doubt
partly for the purpose of securing company but also to mind the shop,
while she was away. When she returned in the evening, worn out, her
eyelids heavy with exhaustion, it was to find the little wife of Olivier
still behind the counter, bowed down, with a vague smile on her lips, in
the same attitude as she had left her five hours previously.
Thérèse had a bad fright about five months after her marriage to
Laurent. She found out she was pregnant and detested the thought of
having a child of Laurent’s. She had the fear that she would give birth
to a drowned body. She thought that she could feel inside herself a
soft, decomposing corpse. No matter what, she had to rid herself of this
child. She did not tell Laurent. One day she cruelly provoked him and
turned her stomach towards him, hoping to receive a kick. He kicked her
and she let him go on kicking her in the stomach until she thought
she would die. The next day her wish was fulfilled and she had a
miscarriage.
Laurent also led a frightful existence. The days seemed insupportably
long; each brought the same anguish, the same heavy weariness which
overwhelmed him at certain hours with crushing monotony and regularity.
He dragged on his life, terrified every night by the recollections of
the day, and the expectation of the morrow. He knew that henceforth, all
his days would resemble one another, and bring him equal suffering. And
he saw the weeks, months and years gloomily and implacably awaiting him,
coming one after the other to fall upon him and gradually smother him.
When there is no hope in the future, the present appears atrociously
bitter. Laurent no longer resisted, he became lumpish, abandoning
himself to the nothingness that was already gaining possession of his
being. Idleness was killing him. In the morning he went out, without
knowing where to go, disgusted at the thought of doing what he had done
on the previous day, and compelled, in spite of himself, to do it again.
He went to his studio by habit, by mania.
This room, with its grey walls, whence he could see naught but a bare
square of sky, filled him with mournful sadness. He grovelled on the
divan heavy in thought and with pendent arms. He dared not touch a
brush. He had made fresh attempts at painting, but only to find on each
occasion, the head of Camille appear jeering on the canvas. So as not to
go out of his mind, he ended by throwing his colour-box into a corner,
and imposing the most absolute idleness on himself. This obligatory
laziness weighed upon him terribly.
In the afternoon, he questioned himself in distress to find out what
he should do. For half an hour, he remained on the pavement in the Rue
Mazarine, thinking and hesitating as to how he could divert himself. He
rejected the idea of returning to the studio, and invariably decided
on going down the Rue Guénégaud, to walk along the quays. And, until
evening, he went along, dazed and seized with sudden shudders whenever
he looked at the Seine. Whether in his studio or in the streets, his
dejection was the same. The following day he began again. He passed
the morning on his divan, and dragged himself along the quays in the
afternoon. This lasted for months, and might last for years.
Occasionally Laurent reflected that he had killed Camille so as to
do nothing ever afterwards, and now that he did nothing, he was quite
astonished to suffer so much. He would have liked to force himself to be
happy. He proved to his own satisfaction, that he did wrong to suffer,
that he had just attained supreme felicity, consisting in crossing his
arms, and that he was an idiot not to enjoy this bliss in peace. But his
reasoning exploded in the face of facts. He was constrained to confess,
at the bottom of his heart, that this idleness rendered his anguish
the more cruel, by leaving him every hour of his life to ponder on the
despair and deepen its incurable bitterness. Laziness, that brutish
existence which had been his dream, proved his punishment. At moments,
he ardently hoped for some occupation to draw him from his thoughts.
Then he lost all energy, relapsing beneath the weight of implacable
fatality that bound his limbs so as to more surely crush him.
In truth, he only found some relief when beating Thérèse, at night. This
brutality alone relieved him of his enervated anguish.
But his keenest suffering, both physical and moral, came from the bite
Camille had given him in the neck. At certain moments, he imagined that
this scar covered the whole of his body. If he came to forget the past,
he all at once fancied he felt a burning puncture, that recalled the
murder both to his frame and mind.
When under the influence of emotion, he could not stand before
a looking-glass without noticing this phenomenon which he had so
frequently remarked and which always terrified him; the blood flew to
his neck, purpling the scar, which then began to gnaw the skin.
This sort of wound that lived upon him, which became active, flushed,
and biting at the slightest trouble, frightened and tortured him. He
ended by believing that the teeth of the drowned man had planted an
insect there which was devouring him. The part of his neck where the
scar appeared, seemed to him to no longer belong to his body; it
was like foreign flesh that had been stuck in this place, a piece of
poisoned meat that was rotting his own muscles.
In this manner, he carried the living and devouring recollection of his
crime about with him everywhere. When he beat Thérèse, she endeavoured
to scratch the spot, and sometimes dug her nails into it making him howl
with pain. She generally pretended to sob, as soon as she caught sight
of the bite, so as to make it more insufferable to Laurent. All her
revenge for his brutality, consisted in martyrising him in connection
with this bite.
While shaving, he had frequently been tempted to give himself a gash
in the neck, so as to make the marks of the teeth of the drowned man
disappear. When, standing before the mirror, he raised his chin and
perceived the red spot beneath the white lather, he at once flew into a
rage, and rapidly brought the razor to his neck, to cut right into the
flesh. But the sensations of the cold steel against his skin always
brought him to his senses, and caused him to feel so faint that he was
obliged to seat himself, and wait until he had recovered sufficient
courage to continue shaving.
He only issued from his torpor at night to fall into blind and puerile
fits of anger. When tired of quarreling with Thérèse and beating her,
he would kick the walls like a child, and look for something he could
break. This relieved him.
He had a particular dislike for the tabby cat François who, as soon as
he appeared, sought refuge on the knees of Madame Raquin. If Laurent had
not yet killed the animal, it was because he dared not take hold of
him. The cat looked at him with great round eyes that were diabolical
in their fixedness. He wondered what these eyes which never left him,
wanted; and he ended by having regular fits of terror, and imagining all
sorts of ridiculous things.
When at table--at no matter what moment, in the middle of a quarrel or
of a long silence--he happened, all at once, to look round, and perceive
François examining him with a harsh, implacable stare, he turned pale
and lost his head. He was on the point of saying to the cat:
“Heh! Why don’t you speak? Tell me what it is you want with me.”
When he could crush his paw or tail, he did so in affrighted joy, the
mewing of the poor creature giving him vague terror, as though he
heard a human cry of pain. Laurent, in fact, was afraid of François,
particularly since the latter passed his time on the knees of the
impotent old lady, as if in the centre of an impregnable fortress,
whence he could with impunity set his eyes on his enemy. The murderer
of Camille established a vague resemblance between this irritated animal
and the paralysed woman, saying to himself that the cat, like Madame
Raquin, must know about the crime and would denounce him, if he ever
found a tongue.
At last, one night, François looked at Laurent so fixedly, that the
latter, irritated to the last pitch, made up his mind to put an end to
the annoyance. He threw the window of the dining-room wide open, and
advancing to where the cat was seated, grasped him by the skin at the
back of the neck. Madame Raquin understood, and two big tears
rolled down her cheeks. The cat began to swear, and stiffen himself,
endeavouring to turn round and bite the hand that grasped him. But
Laurent held fast. He whirled the cat round two or three times in the
air, and then sent him flying with all the strength of his arm, against
the great dark wall opposite. François went flat against it, and
breaking his spine, fell upon the glass roof of the arcade. All night
the wretched beast dragged himself along the gutter mewing hoarsely,
while Madame Raquin wept over him almost as much as she had done over
Camille. Thérèse had an atrocious attack of hysterics, while the wailing
of the cat sounded sinisterly, in the gloom below the windows.
Laurent soon had further cause for anxiety. He became alarmed at a
certain change he observed in the attitude of his wife.
Thérèse became sombre and taciturn. She no longer lavished effusions
of repentance and grateful kisses on Madame Raquin. In presence of the
paralysed woman, she resumed her manner of frigid cruelty and egotistic
indifference. It seemed as though she had tried remorse, and finding no
relief had turned her attention to another remedy. Her sadness was no
doubt due to her inability to calm her life.
She observed the impotent old woman with a kind of disdain, as a useless
thing that could no longer even serve her for consolation. She now only
bestowed on her the necessary attention to prevent her dying of hunger.
From this moment she dragged herself about the house in silence and
dejection. She multiplied her absences from the shop, going out as
frequently as three and four times a week.
It was this change in her mode of life, that surprised and alarmed
Laurent. He fancied that her remorse had taken another form, and was now
displayed by this mournful weariness he noticed in her. This weariness
seemed to him more alarming than the chattering despair she had
overwhelmed him with previously. She no longer spoke, she no longer
quarrelled with him, she seemed to consign everything to the depths of
her being. He would rather have heard her exhausting her endurance than
see her keep in this manner to herself. He feared that one day she
would be choking with anguish, and to obtain relief, would go and relate
everything to a priest or an examining magistrate.
Then these numerous absences of Thérèse had frightful significance in
his eyes. He thought she went to find a confidant outside, that she was
preparing her treason. On two occasions he tried to follow her, and lost
her in the streets. He then prepared to watch her again. A fixed idea
got into his head: Thérèse, driven to extremities by suffering, was
about to make disclosures, and he must gag her, he must arrest her
confession in her throat.