Thérèse Raquin Page 11

  In reality, he was slightly dazed, his body and thoughts weighed down with tiredness. He got home and slept deeply. As he slept, little nervous twitches flicked across his face.

  XIII

  The next day, Laurent woke up feeling bright and cheerful. He had slept well. The cold air coming through the window sent the sluggish blood coursing in his veins. His could hardly remember what had happened the previous evening. Had it not been for the burning sensation on his neck, he might have thought that he had gone to bed at ten o’clock after a calm evening. Camille’s bite was like a hot iron on his skin; when he considered the pain that this injury was causing him, he deeply resented it. It was as though a dozen pins were gradually piercing his flesh.

  He turned down his shirt collar and looked at the wound in a tawdry, fifteen-sou mirror hanging on the wall. The wound was a red hole, as wide as a small coin. The skin had been torn off and the flesh was visible, pinkish, with black patches. Trails of blood had run down as far as the shoulder in slender threads, congealing as they went. The bite stood out on the white neck in dull, powerful brown; it was on the right, below the ear. Leaning back and craning his neck, Laurent looked, as the greenish mirror gave his face a frightful grimace.

  He splashed water over it, pleased with the results of his examination, telling himself that the wound would heal over in a few days. Then he dressed and went to his office, calmly, as usual. He described the accident in a voice full of feeling. When his colleagues read the account in the press, he became a real hero. For a week, this was the only subject of conversation for the staff of the Orléans Railway: they were quite proud that one of their fellow workers had been drowned. Grivet held forth at length on the folly of venturing into the midst of the river when you can so easily watch the Seine go by as you cross one of its bridges.

  Laurent had one vague source of unease. It had not been possible to confirm Camille’s death officially. Thérèse’s husband was certainly dead, but his murderer would like his body to have been recovered so that a formal certificate could be made out. They had looked in vain for the drowned man’s corpse on the day after the accident; it was considered that it must have gone down into one of the holes under the banks of the islands. Scavengers were already actively searching the river in order to collect the bounty.

  Laurent made it his business to go by the Morgue1 every morning on his way to the office. He had sworn to look after everything himself. Despite a revulsion that made him feel sick and despite the shudders that would sometimes pass through him, he went regularly for more than a week to examine the faces of all the drowned people laid out on the slabs.

  When he went in, he was sickened by a stale smell, a smell of washed flesh, and cold draughts blew across his skin. His clothes hung against his shoulders, as though weighed down by the humidity of the walls. He would go directly to the window that separates the spectators from the bodies, and press his pale face against the glass, looking. In front of him were the ranks of grey slabs on which, here and there, naked bodies stood out as patches of green and yellow, white and red. Some bodies kept their virginal flesh in the rigidity of death, while others seemed like heaps of bloody, rotten meat. At the end, against the wall, hung pitiful rags: skirts and trousers, grimacing against the bare plaster. At first, Laurent saw only the general greyness of stones and walls, spotted with red and black from the clothes and the corpses. There was a tinkling of running water.

  Bit by bit he could distinguish the bodies. He proceeded from one to the next. Only drowned men interested him; when there were several bodies swollen and blue from the water, he looked eagerly at them, trying to recognize Camille. Often the flesh was peeling off their faces in shreds, the bones had broken through the drenched skin and the face seemed to have been boiled and boned. Laurent found it hard to be certain; he examined the bodies and tried to identify his victim’s skinny frame. But all drowned bodies are fat; he saw huge bellies, puffy thighs, arms round and strong. He couldn’t tell for sure, so he remained shivering and staring at these greenish rag dolls whose frightful grimaces seemed to mock him.

  One morning, he got a real fright. For some minutes, he had been looking at a drowned man, short in stature and horribly disfigured. The flesh of this body was so soft and decayed that the water running over it was taking it away bit by bit. The stream pouring on the face was making a hole to the left of the nose. Then, suddenly, the nose collapsed and the lips fell off, revealing white teeth. The drowned man’s head broke into a laugh.

  Every time he thought he recognized Camille, Laurent felt a burning sensation in his heart. He desperately wanted to find his victim’s body, yet he was overcome with cowardice when he thought that he saw it in front of him. His visits to the Morgue filled him with nightmares and shudders that left him panting. He shook off his fears, called himself a child and tried to be strong, but in spite of that his flesh rebelled, and feelings of disgust and horror seized him as soon as he came into the humidity and the stale smell of the hall.

  When there were no drowned men on the last row of slabs, he breathed more easily and felt less disgust. Then he became a simple, curious onlooker, taking a strange pleasure in staring violent death in the face, in its dolefully peculiar and grotesque shapes. He enjoyed the spectacle, especially when there were women showing their naked busts. These brutal, outstretched naked bodies, spotted with blood, pierced in places, attracted him and held his gaze. Once, he saw a young woman of twenty, a working-class girl, strong, heavily built, who seemed to be sleeping on the stone. Her fresh, plump body was paling with very delicate variations of tint; she was half smiling, her head slightly to one side, offering her bosom in a provocative manner. You would have taken her for a courtesan lying on a bed if there had not been a black stripe on her neck, like a necklace of shadow:2 the girl had just hanged herself because of a disappointment in love. Laurent looked at her for a long time, studying her flesh, absorbed in a kind of fearful lust.

  Every morning, while he was there, he heard people coming and going behind him as they entered and left.

  The Morgue is a show that anyone can afford, which poor and rich passers-by get for free. The door is open, anyone can come in. There are connoisseurs who go out of their way not to miss one of these spectacles of death. When the slabs are empty, people go out disappointed, robbed, muttering under their breath. When the slabs are well filled, and when there is a fine display of human flesh, the visitors crowd in, getting a cheap thrill, horrified, joking, applauding or whistling, as in the theatre, and go away contented, announcing that the Morgue has been a success that day.

  Laurent soon came to know the regulars who attended the place, a mixed, diverse group of people who came to sympathize with one another or snigger together. Some workmen would come in on their way to their jobs, with a loaf of bread and some tools under their arms; they found death amusing. Among them were jokers who would play to the gallery by making a facetious remark about the expression on each body’s face. They nicknamed the victims of fires ‘coalmen’, while those who had been hanged, murdered or drowned, and bodies that had been wounded or crushed, excited their ridicule; and their voices, which trembled a little, stammered out comic remarks in the shivering silence of the hall. Then came the lower-middle classes, thin, dry old men, and casual passers-by who came in here because they had nothing better to do, looking at the bodies with the blank eyes and distasteful expressions of men of sensitive feelings and placid natures. Women came in great numbers: pink, young working girls, with white blouses and clean skirts, who went briskly from one end of the window to the other, attentive and wide-eyed, as though looking at the display in a fashion store; there were working-class women, too, haggard, with doleful expressions, and well-dressed ladies, nonchalant, trailing their silk dresses.

  One day, Laurent saw one of these ladies standing a few paces back from the window, pressing a cambric handkerchief to her nostrils. She was wearing a delightful grey silk skirt with a large, black lace mantelet. She had a v
eil over her face and her gloved hands seemed quite small and delicate. There was a gentle scent of violets around her. She was looking at a corpse. On a slab, a short distance away, was the body of a hefty lad, a builder who had died instantly when he fell off some scaffolding. He had a barrel chest, short, thick muscles and greasy, white flesh; death had made a marble statue of him. The lady was examining him, turning him round, as it were, with her eyes, weighing him up, engrossed by the sight of this man. She raised a corner of her veil, took another look, and left.

  From time to time, gangs of kids would come in, children aged between twelve and fifteen, running along the window and stopping only by women’s bodies. They would put their hands on the glass and stare impudently at the naked breasts. They would nudge one another and make crude remarks, learning about vice in the school of death. It is in the Morgue that young street urchins have their first mistress.

  After a week of this, Laurent was sickened by it. At night, he would dream about the bodies he had seen that morning. This daily dose of suffering and disgust that he imposed on himself eventually disturbed him so much that he decided to make only two more visits. The next day, on coming into the Morgue, he felt a vicious blow in his chest: opposite him, on a slab, Camille was staring at him, lying on his back with his head raised and his eyes half open.

  The murderer slowly went over to the window as though drawn by a magnet, unable to take his eyes off his victim. He was not in pain, but he did feel a great inner chill and a slight tingling on his skin. He would have expected to shake more. He stayed motionless for five whole minutes, lost in unconscious contemplation, involuntarily marking in the depths of his memory all the frightful lines and foul colours of the scene before his eyes.

  Camille was hideous. He had spent a fortnight in the water. His face still seemed firm and stiff, the features were preserved, but the skin had taken on a muddy, yellowish tint. The head, thin and bony, slightly puffy, was twisted into a grimace; it was leaning a bit to one side, the hair stuck to the temples, the eyelids raised, revealing the pallid globe of the eyes; the lips were twisted, drawn to one side of the mouth, giving a horrible sneer; the blackish tip of the tongue was visible between the whiteness of the teeth. This head, tanned and stretched, was even more terrifying in its pain and horror since it retained an appearance of humanity. The body seemed like a heap of decayed flesh; it had been horribly battered. You could tell that the arms were no longer joined to it; the shoulder blades were breaking through the skin. The ribs stood out on the greenish chest as black lines. The left side, open and broken, had a gaping hole surrounded by dark-red strips. The whole torso was decayed; the legs were more solid, stretched out, spotted with repulsive blotches. The feet were falling off.

  Laurent looked at Camille. He had never seen such a horrifying drowned body. More than that: the corpse had a skimped look, a shrunken, mean appearance; it was huddled up in its own decay; it amounted to just a small heap. You might have guessed that this was a clerk on twelve hundred francs, sickly and stupid, whose mother had fed him on herbal teas. This meagre body, which had grown up between warm blankets, was shivering on its cold marble.

  When Laurent did manage to tear himself away from the poignant curiosity that kept him there, motionless and gaping, he went out and began to walk quickly along the river bank. And as he went, he repeated: ‘That’s what I’ve made of him. He’s repulsive.’ He felt as though a pungent odour were following him around, the odour that this putrefying corpse must be giving off.

  He went to see Old Michaud and told him that he had just recognized Camille on a slab in the Morgue. The formalities were completed, the drowned man was buried and a death certificate made out. Laurent, with nothing to worry about now, threw himself with delight into forgetting his crime and the annoying, distressing scenes that had followed the murder.

  XIV

  The shop in the Passage du Pont-Neuf stayed closed for three days. When it reopened, it seemed darker and damper. The window display, yellow with dust, appeared to be wearing the family’s mourning; everything was scattered haphazardly in the dirty windows. Behind the linen bonnets hanging from rusted hooks, the pallor of Thérèse’s face was duller and more earthy. Its immobility took on a sinister calm.

  All the old wives in the arcade were full of sympathy. The woman who sold costume jewellery pointed out the young woman’s emaciated profile to each of her customers as an interesting and regrettable object of curiosity.

  For three days, Mme Raquin and Thérèse stayed in their beds without speaking or even seeing one another. The old haberdasher was propped upright on her pillows, staring vacantly in front of her with the gaze of an idiot. Her son’s death had given her a massive blow to the head and she fell as though bludgeoned. For hours on end she remained, calm and motionless, swallowed up by the bottomless gulf of her despair; then, at times, a crisis seized her and she wept and cried out in delirium. Thérèse, in the next room, seemed to be asleep; she had turned her head to the wall and drawn the blanket over her face; and she lay there, stiff and silent, not one sob moving her body or the sheet that covered it. It was as though she were hiding the thoughts that kept her pinned, rigid, in the darkness of the alcove. Suzanne, who looked after the two women, went softly from one to the other, shuffling her feet, but she could not get Thérèse to turn round, only to react with sudden movements of irritation, nor could she console Mme Raquin, whose tears started to flow as soon as a voice roused her in her despondency.

  On the third day, Thérèse threw back the blanket and sat up in bed, swiftly, with a sort of feverish resolve. She brushed her hair aside and held her hands against her temples, staying like that for a moment, with her hands up and her eyes staring, as though still reflecting. Then she jumped down on to the carpet. Her limbs were shivering and red with fever; there were broad, livid patches on her skin, which was wrinkled in places, as though it had no flesh under it. She had aged.

  Suzanne, just coming into the room, was quite surprised to find her up. In a placid, drawling voice, she advised her to get back into bed and rest some more. Thérèse took no notice; she was looking for her clothes and putting them on with hurried, trembling hands. When she was dressed, she went to examine herself in a mirror, rubbed her eyes and ran her hands across her face, as though to obliterate something. Then, without a word, she walked quickly across the dining room and into Mme Raquin’s room.

  The older woman was temporarily in a state of stunned calm. When Thérèse came in, she turned her head and looked at the young widow as she came across and stood in front of her, silent and depressed. The two stared at one another for a few seconds, the niece with growing anxiety and the aunt making a painful effort of memory. At last it came back to her and she held out her trembling arms, hugging Thérèse around the neck and saying:

  ‘My poor child! My poor Camille!’

  She was weeping and the tears dried on the burning skin of the young woman, who was hiding her face in the folds of the sheet. Thérèse stayed there, bending over, letting the mother weep out her tears. Ever since the murder, she had been dreading this first conversation, and she had stayed in bed so that she could delay the moment and have time to consider the terrible part she had to play.

  When she saw that Mme Raquin was calmer, she started to fuss around her, advising her to get up and come down into the shop. The old haberdasher had almost reverted to childhood. The sudden appearance of her niece had brought about a positive crisis in her which had restored her memory and awareness of the people and things around her. She thanked Suzanne for caring for her, speaking in a weak voice, but no longer delirious, full of a sadness that sometimes stifled her. She watched Thérèse walking about, giving in to sudden fits of weeping. On such occasions she would call her over, kiss her, still sobbing, and tell her in a choking voice that she had nothing but her left in the world.

  That evening, she agreed to get up and try to eat. When she did so, Thérèse saw what a dreadful blow her aunt had suffered. The poor old
woman’s legs had grown heavy, she needed a stick to drag herself into the dining room and it seemed to her that the walls were shaking around her.

  However, the next day she already wanted them to reopen the shop. She was afraid of going mad if she stayed alone in her room. She walked heavily down the wooden stairs, stopping with both feet at each one, and went to sit down behind the counter. From that day on, she remained fixed there in a passive state of grief.

  Beside her, Thérèse waited and thought. The shop was once more quiet and dark.

  XV

  Laurent would sometimes come back in the evening, every two or three days. He stayed in the shop, talking to Mme Raquin for half an hour. Then he would leave, without having looked Thérèse directly in the face. The old haberdasher considered him as the man who had saved her niece, a noble soul who had done everything he could to bring her son back to her. She welcomed him with affectionate goodwill.

  One Thursday evening, Laurent was there when Old Michaud and Grivet came in. Eight o’clock was striking. The office worker and the former police chief had each decided separately that they could resume their old routine without appearing to intrude, and they arrived at the same minute, as though driven by a single mechanism. Behind them, Olivier and Suzanne also made their appearance.

  They went up to the dining room. Mme Raquin, who was not expecting anyone, hurried to light the lamp and make some tea. When everyone was seated around the table, each in front of his or her cup, and when the box of dominoes had been emptied out, the poor mother was suddenly transported back into the past and burst into tears. One place was empty: her son’s.

  This grief threw a pall over the proceedings and made them feel awkward. Every face had a look of egotistical self-satisfaction. These people were embarrassed, none of them having in their minds the slightest living memory of Camille.