Thérèse Raquin

by Emile Zola

  He went to bed. Once he was in the warmth of the sheets, he thought again of Thérèse, whom his anxieties had made him forget. Keeping his eyes obstinately closed and trying to go to sleep, he found that his thoughts were working involuntarily, forcing themselves on him and connecting with one another to show him the advantages that he would get by marrying as soon as possible. Sometimes, he would turn round and tell himself: ‘Don’t think any more, let’s sleep; I have to be up at eight o’clock tomorrow to go to the office.’ And he made an effort to slide off into sleep. But, one by one, the ideas would return and his mind would resume its silent inner debate. Soon he found himself in a sort of anxious reverie, which listed at the back of his brain the reasons why he should marry, and the alternate arguments that lust and caution gave for and against possessing Thérèse.

  So, realizing that he could not sleep, that insomnia was keeping his body in a state of irritation, he turned over on to his back, opened his eyes wide and let his mind fill with the memory of the young woman. The balance was upset and the hot fever of earlier times shook him once more. He thought of getting up and going back to the Passage du Pont-Neuf. He would have the outer gate opened for him, he would knock on the little door of the staircase and Thérèse would welcome him in. At this idea, the blood rushed to his neck.

  His daydream was astonishingly clear. He saw himself in the street, walking quickly beside the houses and saying to himself: ‘I’m taking this boulevard, crossing this crossroads, to get there sooner.’ Then the gate to the arcade grated on its hinges and he went down the narrow passage, dark and empty, congratulating himself on the fact that he could go to Thérèse without being seen by the woman who sold costume jewellery; then he imagined being in the alleyway and going up the little staircase as he had so often done. Once there, he felt again the searing delight that he used to feel; he recalled the delicious fears and voluptuous charms of adultery. His memories became a reality that impregnated his every sense: he could smell the musty odour of the corridor, touch the slimy walls and see the grimy shadows that lingered there. And he went up every step, panting, straining his ears and already satisfying his desires in this fearful approach to the woman he desired. Finally, he was scratching on the door and the door opened: Thérèse was there, waiting for him, in her petticoat, all white ...

  He could really watch his thoughts as they unfolded in front of him. With his eyes focused on the gloom, he could actually see. When, after running through the streets, entering the arcade and going up the little staircase, he imagined he could make out Thérèse, eager and pale, he jumped quickly out of bed, muttering: ‘I must go, she’s waiting for me.’ His sudden movement dispelled the vision. He felt the cold of the floor and was afraid. For a moment, he stayed without moving, barefoot, listening. He thought he could hear a noise outside. If he went to see Thérèse, he would once again have to go past the cellar door downstairs, and this idea sent a great cold shudder up his back. Once again, he felt terrified, with a stupid, overwhelming dread. He looked defiantly round his room and saw some whitish streaks of light; and so, gently, cautiously, but at the same time with anxious haste, he got back into bed and curled up, hiding himself under the blanket, as though getting out of the way of a weapon, a knife that was threatening him.

  The blood had rushed suddenly to his neck and his neck was burning. He put a hand to it, feeling the scar from Camille’s bite beneath his fingers. He had almost forgotten the bite, and now he was terrified to find it on his skin. He imagined it eating into his flesh. He quickly pulled his hand away so that he would not have to feel it, but he did feel it still, pressing in, devouring his neck. So he tried to scratch it gently, with the end of a nail, but the dreadful burning increased. To prevent himself from tearing off his skin, he pressed his hands between his knees, which were drawn up under him. And there he remained, stiff, on edge, his neck burning and his teeth chattering with fear.

  Now his mind became fixed on Camille, with terrifying intensity. Until then, the drowned man had not troubled Laurent’s sleep. But now the thought of Thérèse brought with it the spectre of her husband. The murderer did not dare reopen his eyes: he was afraid of seeing the victim in a corner of the room. At one point, he thought that his bed was shaking in some odd way; he imagined Camille hiding under it and shaking it like that, so that Laurent would fall out and he could bite him. Crazed with fear, his hair standing on end, he grasped his mattress, imagining that the shaking was getting stronger and stronger.

  Then he perceived that the bed was not moving. This brought about a reaction in him. He sat up, lit his candle and called himself an idiot. To calm his fever, he drank a large glass of water.

  ‘I was wrong to drink at that wine shop,’ he thought. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. It’s silly. I’ll be knocked out later on in the office. I should have gone to sleep straight away when I got into bed, and not thought about a load of things. That’s what’s keeping me awake ... Now let’s go to sleep.’

  He blew out the light again and put his head into the pillow, slightly cooler and fully determined not to think any more or be afraid. Tiredness began to relax his nerves.

  He did not sleep his usual, heavily weighted sleep. He slipped gradually into a sort of drowsiness. He was like someone merely numbed, plunged in a sweet, voluptuous state of insensibility. He could feel his drowsing body and, in his insensate flesh, his mind remained awake. He had chased away the ideas in his head and struggled against wakefulness, and now that he was numbed, when he had no strength and no willpower, the ideas slowly came back, one by one, to take possession of his weakened self. His daydreams began again. He went back over the journey between himself and Thérèse: he went downstairs, ran past the cellar and found himself outside. He walked down all the streets he had already taken earlier, when he was day-dreaming with open eyes. He went into the Passage du Pont-Neuf, climbed the little staircase and knocked on the door. But instead of Thérèse, instead of the young woman in a petticoat with her breasts naked, it was Camille who opened to him, Camille as he had seen him in the Morgue, greenish and horribly disfigured. The corpse held out its arms to him with a ghastly laugh, showing the tip of a blackened tongue between the whiteness of its teeth.

  Laurent gave a cry and woke up with a start. He was bathed in a cold sweat. He pulled the blanket over his eyes, cursing and angry with himself. He wanted to go back to sleep.

  He fell asleep as before, slowly, and the same heaviness seized him, so that when his will had once again been relaxed in the languor of half-sleep, he started to walk once more, returning to the place where his obsession led him: he hurried to see Thérèse. And once more it was the drowned man who opened the door.

  In terror, the wretch sat up in bed. The thing he most wanted in the world was to drive away this unrelenting dream. He longed for a leaden sleep that would crush his thoughts. Provided he was awake, he had enough energy to drive away the ghost of his victim, but as soon as he was no longer in control of his mind, even while his mind was leading him to pleasure, it led him on to horror.

  He tried to sleep once again. There followed a succession of sensual drowsings and sudden, agonized awakenings. In his furious obstinacy, he kept on going towards Thérèse and kept on coming up against Camille’s corpse. More than ten times, he went along the same path, starting out with his flesh ablaze with desire, followed the same route, experienced the same feelings, performed the same actions, with minute precision; and more than ten times, it was the drowned man that he saw waiting for his embrace when he reached out to grasp and hug his mistress. His desire was not lessened by this same sinister ending that woke him up every time; a few minutes later, as soon as he went back to sleep, his desire forgot the ghastly corpse that awaited him, and hurried once more to find the lithe, warm body of a woman. For an hour, Laurent lived through this series of nightmares, this bad dream constantly repeated, continually unforeseen, which, at every shocked awakening, left him shattered by an ever sharper sense of terr
or.

  One shock, the last, was so violent and painful that he decided to get up and stop struggling. Dawn was coming. A dismal grey light filtered through the attic window, which marked out a whitish square against the sky, the colour of ashes.

  Laurent got dressed slowly, with a dull feeling of annoyance. He was irritated at not having slept and at having given way to a fear that he now considered childish. As he was putting on his trousers, he stretched, rubbed his limbs and felt his face, beaten and puffy from a feverish night. And he kept saying:

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought of all that. I would have slept and then I’d be fresh and ready for anything by now ... Oh, if only Thérèse had wanted to, yesterday evening, if only Thérèse had slept with me!’

  This idea — that Thérèse would have prevented him from being afraid — calmed him a little. Underneath lay the fear of having to spend other nights like the one that he had just endured.

  He threw some water on his face and gave his hair a comb. This simple wash cleared his head and drove away his last fears. He was reasoning clearly and now felt only a great sense of tiredness in all his limbs.

  ‘I’m not a coward, though,’ he thought, as he finished dressing. ‘I really don’t give a damn about Camille. It’s quite ridiculous to think that the poor devil is under my bed. Now perhaps I’m going to be thinking that every night. I really do have to get married as soon as I can. When Thérèse is holding me in her arms, I won’t think about Camille. She will kiss my neck and I won’t feel that frightful burning sensation. Now, then, let’s look at that bite.’

  He went over to his mirror, stretched his neck and looked. The scar was light pink. As Laurent was making out his victim’s tooth marks, he felt quite moved by it and the blood rushed to his head. It was then that he noticed something odd. The scar was turned purple by the rising flow; it became bright and blood-filled, standing out red against the plump white neck. At the same time, Laurent felt sharp pricks, as though someone were sticking pins into the wound. He quickly turned up his shirt collar.

  ‘Pooh!’ he said. ‘Thérèse will cure that ... A few kisses will be all it takes. How stupid I am to think about such things!’

  He put on his hat and went downstairs. He needed to get some fresh air, to walk around. As he went past the cellar door, he smiled; but at the same time he tested the strength of the hook that kept the door shut. Outside, he walked slowly in the fresh morning air on the empty pavements. It was about five o’clock.

  Laurent spent a dreadful day. He had to fight against an overwhelming urge to sleep that overtook him in the afternoon in his office. His head was aching and heavy. He could not stop it falling forward, so that he had to jerk it upright when he heard one of his bosses coming along the corridor. The struggle with these sudden movements left his body completely exhausted and caused him a lot of anxiety.

  That evening, tired as he was, he wanted to go and see Thérèse. He found her as feverish, as dejected and as weary as he was.

  ‘Poor Thérèse had a bad night,’ said Mme Raquin, when he had sat down. ‘It appears that she had nightmares and frightful insomnia. I heard her cry out several times and this morning she was quite ill.’

  While her aunt was speaking, Thérèse was staring at Laurent. Each of them doubtless guessed the terror they had shared, because the same nervous shudder passed across both their faces. They stayed looking at each other until ten o’clock, exchanging commonplaces, but understanding one another and both conspiring through their looks to hasten the moment when they could unite against the drowned man.

  XVIII

  Thérèse, too, had been visited by the ghost of Camille in that night of fever.

  She had been suddenly aroused by Laurent’s ardent plea for them to meet, after more than a year of indifference. Her flesh began to ache when, lying in bed alone, she considered that the wedding was soon to take place. And then, struggling in the throes of insomnia, she saw the drowned man rise up in front of her. Like Laurent, she had twisted around in a frenzy of desire and horror and, like him, told herself that she would no longer be afraid, no longer experience such suffering, when she held her lover between her arms.

  At the same moment, this man and this woman had felt a kind of failing of the nerves, which brought them back, gasping and terrified, to their terrible love. An affinity of blood and lust had been established between them. They shuddered the same shudders, and their hearts, in a sort of agonizing fellowship, ached with the same terror. From then on, they had only one body and one soul to feel pleasure and pain. This community, this mutual interpenetration, is a psychological and physiological fact that often occurs between those who are thrown violently together by great nervous shocks.

  For more than a year, Thérèse and Laurent carried the chain lightly that was clamped to their limbs, binding them together. In the mental collapse that followed the acute crisis of the murder, in the feelings of disgust and the need for calm and forgetting that came after that, the two prisoners could imagine that they were free and that no iron link bound them together. The chain lay slack on the ground, while they rested, stricken with a kind of happy stupor, and tried to find love elsewhere, to lead sensibly balanced lives. But on the day when circumstances drove them once more to exchange words of desire, the chain suddenly tightened and they experienced such a shock that they felt attached to one another for ever.

  The very next day, Thérèse started her campaign, working away in secret to bring about her marriage to Laurent. The task was a difficult one, fraught with danger. The lovers were afraid that they might do something rash and awake suspicion by revealing too suddenly what they had had to gain from Camille’s death. Realizing that they could not talk about marriage, they devised a very sensible plan that consisted in getting Mme Raquin and the Thursday evening guests to offer them what they dare not ask for themselves. Their one idea from now on was to get the idea of Thérèse’s remarriage into the heads of these good people and above all to make them think that the idea originated with themselves and was theirs alone.

  The play-acting involved was long and delicate. Both Thérèse and Laurent had taken on the role that suited them and they went forward with extreme caution, weighing every little word and gesture. Underneath, they were consumed by an impatience that wore and stretched their nerves. They lived in a state of continual irritation; only their terror of the consequences kept them smiling and calm.

  They were in a hurry to get it over with, because they could no longer remain alone and separate. Every night, the drowned man came to them, while insomnia kept them lying on a bed of burning coals, and turned them over and over with iron pincers. Every evening, the state of nervous agony in which they lived drove up the fever in their blood, raising frightful spectres before them. When evening came, Thérèse no longer dared go up to her room. She experienced strong waves of terror at the idea of locking herself up until morning in that great room which was filled with strange glimmerings and peopled by ghosts as soon as the light went out. Eventually, she would leave her candle alight, not even wanting to go to sleep, so that it kept her eyes wide open. And when tiredness made her eyelids close, she saw Camille in the darkness and would reopen them with a start. In the morning, she would drag herself around in the daylight, shattered, after only a few hours’ sleep. As for Laurent, he had become quite timorous since the evening when he had been afraid while walking in front of the cellar door. Before that, he had lived with the self-confidence of an animal, but now he shook and went pale at the slightest noise, like a little boy. A shudder of fear had suddenly run through him and it had not left him since. At night, he suffered even more than Thérèse did: fear profoundly ravaged this great, soft, cowardly body, and he watched the close of day with a cruel sense of unease. Quite often he found that he did not want to go home and would spend whole nights walking through the deserted streets. Once, he remained until morning under a bridge in the pouring rain, and there, crouching down, freezing cold, not daring to get up and return
to the embankment, he watched the dirty water flowing past in the pale shadows for almost six hours, during which his terrors would sometimes flatten him against the damp ground. He imagined he could see long lines of drowned people carried along with the current under the arch of the bridge. When exhaustion finally drove him home, he double-locked the door, and tossed and turned until dawn, a prey to frightful attacks of fever. The same nightmare would persistently return: he thought he was falling out of the hot, passionate arms of Thérèse into the cold and slimy arms of Camille. He dreamed that his mistress was stifling him in her warm embrace and then that the drowned man was pressing him to his rotting chest in an icy hug. These sudden, alternating sensations of desire and disgust, the successive touch of flesh burning with love and of cold flesh softened by the mud, made him pant and shudder, gasping in horror.

  And, every day, the two lovers’ panic grew, every day their nightmares crushed and appalled them more. Each now believed that nothing but the other’s kisses would ever kill their insomnia. Out of prudence, they did not dare to meet, but waited for the day when they got married as a day of salvation that would be followed by a happy night.

  In this way they longed for their union with all the desire they felt within them to have a night’s tranquil sleep. During the period of indifference, they had wavered, each forgetting the arguments of selfishness and desire which had, as it were, faded, after having driven the two of them to murder. Now the fever was burning them again and, behind their desire and their selfishness, they rediscovered the reasons that had originally made them decide to kill Camille, in order to taste the joys that, to their minds, a legitimate marriage would surely procure them. And yet, it was with a feeling of vague despair that they took the final decision to get married openly. Deep inside, they were scared. Their desire trembled. They leaned over one another, so to speak, as over an abyss that held a horrible fascination for them; each of them bent above the other’s being, clinging on silently, while sharp, delicious waves of vertigo relaxed their grip and gave them the urge to let go. But confronted with the present moment, with their anxious waiting and their fearful desires, they felt an overwhelming need to close their eyes and dream of a future of affectionate happiness and quiet pleasures. The more they trembled at the sight of one another, the more they guessed the horror of the chasm into which they were about to plunge, the more they tried also to make promises of happiness to themselves and set out the unavoidable arguments that were leading them, inevitably, to marry.