by Emile Zola
Suddenly, coming out on to the former Place Saint-Michel, Thérèse headed towards a café that was then on the corner of the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.2 She sat down in the middle of a group of women and students at one of the tables on the street. She greeted all these people as friends, shaking their hands. Then she ordered an absinthe.
She appeared to be at her ease, talking to a young, fair-haired man who had probably been waiting there some time for her. Two girls came and leaned over the table where she was sitting, and started to talk familiarly to her in their husky voices. Around her were women smoking cigarettes and men kissing women openly on the street, in front of passers-by who did not even bother to turn round. Laurent, standing motionless under a doorway on the far side of the street, could hear their coarse laughs and swear words.
When Thérèse had finished her absinthe, she got up, took the arm of the fair-haired man and set off down the Rue de la Harpe. Laurent followed them to the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts. There, he saw them go into a lodging-house. He stayed there in the middle of the street looking up towards the front of the house. His wife appeared for a moment at an open window on the second floor; then he thought he could see the fair-haired young man’s hands taking her around the waist. The window clanged shut.
Laurent understood. Without waiting any longer, he set off calmly, happy and reassured.
‘Huh!’ he said, as he walked back towards the Seine. ‘That’s better. This way at least she has something to do and won’t get up to mischief. She’s a lot smarter than I am.’
What astonished him was that he had not been the first to have the idea of relapsing into vice. He could have found a cure there for his terrors. He had not thought of it, because his flesh was dead and he no longer felt the slightest desire for debauchery. His wife’s infidelity left him entirely unmoved; he experienced no revulsion of the blood or the nerves at the idea of her in the arms of another man. On the contrary, it amused him: he felt as though he had been following the wife of some acquaintance and chuckled at the trick that she was playing on her husband. Thérèse had become so much a stranger to him that she no longer had any place in his heart; he would have sold and delivered her to another man a hundred times for the sake of an hour’s peace.
He started to stroll along, enjoying the sudden, pleasant feeling of having switched from anxiety to calm. He was almost grateful to his wife for going to join a lover when he had thought she was on her way to the police. He was pleasantly surprised by the unexpected outcome of this adventure. What was most clear to him in all this was that he had been wrong to worry, and that he ought to indulge in a little vice himself to see if it might not relieve him by drowning out his thoughts.
That evening when he got back to the shop, Laurent decided that he would ask his wife for a few thousand francs and go to any length to get them out of her. It occurred to him that vice is expensive for a man, and he felt vaguely envious of women, who can sell themselves. He waited patiently for Thérèse, who was not yet back. When she did come in, he tackled her gently and said nothing of spying on her that morning. She was a little drunk and her clothes, carelessly buttoned, gave off the rancid smell of tobacco and liquor that hangs around bars. Tired out, her face blotchy, she could hardly stand on her feet, heavy with the shameful exhaustion of her day.
There was silence at the table; Thérèse did not eat. At dessert, Laurent put his elbows up and asked point blank for five thousand francs.
‘No,’ she answered drily. ‘If I gave you a chance, you’d ruin us ... Don’t you know how things stand? We’re heading straight for penury as it is.’
‘Perhaps we are,’ he replied calmly. ‘I don’t care. I want money.’
‘No, a thousand times no! You’ve left your job, we’re not making anything from the haberdashery, and we’re not going to be able to live off the income from my dowry. Every day, I have to break into the savings to feed you and give you the hundred francs a month that you squeezed out of me. You won’t have anything more, do you understand? There’s no point in asking.’
‘Just think a moment, and don’t refuse me like that. I’m telling you, I want five thousand francs, and I’ll have them. You’ll give them to me, whatever you say.’
This placid obstinacy infuriated Thérèse and completed her intoxication.
‘Oh, now I understand!’ she yelled. ‘You want to finish as you started. We’ve been keeping you for four years. You only came here to eat and drink and since then you’ve been living off us. His Highness does nothing, his Highness has contrived to live at my expense, with his arms folded. No, you won’t have anything, not a penny. Do you want me to tell you what you are? Well, I will. You’re a ...’3
She said it. Laurent shrugged his shoulders and began to laugh, replying merely:
‘You’ve picked up some nice words from the company you’re keeping nowadays.’
This was the only reference he chose to make to Thérèse’s adultery. She looked up sharply and said, in a bitter voice:
‘In any case, I’m not mixing with murderers.’
Laurent went very pale. For a moment he stayed silent, staring at his wife, then he said, in a trembling voice:
‘Listen here, my girl, let’s not row with each other. It won’t do either of us any good. I’m at the end of my tether. It would be a good idea if we made a deal, if we don’t want something dreadful to happen. I asked you for five thousand francs because I need it. I might even tell you that I’m thinking of using the money to make sure we have a quiet life.’
He gave an odd smile and went on:
‘Now, think and give me your final word.’
‘I’ve thought it all through,’ the young woman replied. ‘As I told you, you won’t get a sou.’
Her husband jumped to his feet. She was afraid he would beat her and hunched up, determined not to give way to his blows. But Laurent did not even go near her; he just said coldly that he was tired of life and that he was going to the local police station to tell them all about the murder.
‘You’re driving me to the limit,’ he said. ‘You’re making my life unbearable. I’d rather have done with it. We’ll both be tried and condemned. That’s it.’
‘Do you think you’re frightening me?’ his wife shouted. ‘I’m as sick of it as you are. I’m the one who’s going to the police, if you don’t. Oh, yes! I’m ready to follow you to the scaffold, I won’t be such a coward as you. Come on, let’s go to the police station.’
She had got up and was already walking towards the stairs.
‘That’s right,’ Laurent stammered. ‘We’ll go together.’
When they were down in the shop, they looked at one another, anxious and afraid. It felt as though someone had just pinned them to the ground. The few seconds that it had taken to come down the wooden staircase had been enough to show them, in a flash, what would happen if they confessed. At one and the same time, they saw the gendarmes, prison, the assizes and the guillotine — all at once and clearly. In their hearts, they felt weak, they were tempted to fall on their knees and beg each other to stay, not to reveal anything. Fear and confusion kept them there, motionless and silent for two or three minutes. Thérèse was the first to speak and give way.
‘After all,’ she said, ‘it’s very silly of me to argue over the money. You’ll manage to squander it all for me one day or another. I might as well give it to you straight away.’
She made no further attempt to disguise her defeat. She sat down at the counter and signed an order for five thousand francs, which Laurent could cash at a bank. There was no further talk of police commissioners that evening.
As soon as Laurent had the money in his pocket, he got drunk, went out with girls and embarked on a noisy, riotous existence. He spent nights away from home, slept during the day and stayed up late, looking for excitement and trying to escape from reality. All he managed to do was to make himself more depressed. When people were yelling and shouting all around, he could hear the great silence inside hi
m; when a woman was kissing him or when he emptied his glass, he found nothing in his intoxication but melancholy and sadness. He was no longer able to indulge in lust and gluttony: his being had cooled and, as it were, gone hard inside; food and kisses only irritated him. Sickened before he began, he could not manage to arouse his imagination, to excite his senses and his stomach. The more he drove himself to debauchery, the more he suffered, and that was that. Then, when he got home and saw Mme Raquin and Thérèse, his lassitude gave way to frightful attacks of terror. He swore that he would not go out any more, but stick with his suffering, get used to it and overcome it.
Thérèse for her part went out less and less often. For a month, she lived as Laurent did, on the pavements and in cafés. She would come back for a moment in the evening, give Mme Raquin something to eat, put her to bed, then go out again until morning. On one occasion, she and her husband went for four days without seeing one another. Then she felt a profound sense of repulsion and realized that vice was not doing her any more good than the pretence of remorse. In vain had she visited all the lodging-houses of the Latin Quarter, in vain had she led an indecent and dissolute life. Her nerves were shattered; debauchery and physical pleasure no longer gave her a strong enough shock to bring oblivion. She was like one of those drunkards whose palate is burned out and who remains indifferent even to the fire of the strongest liquors. Lust left her unmoved and she no longer sought anything from her lovers except boredom and exhaustion. So she would leave them, telling them that she had no further use for them. She was seized with a desperate laziness that kept her in the house, in a stained petticoat, her hair undone, her face and hands unwashed. She found forgetfulness in filth.
When the two murderers were face to face like this, tired out, having exhausted all means to save themselves from each other, they realized that they no longer had the strength to fight. Debauchery had rejected them and cast them back on their anguish. They found themselves once more in the dark, damp house in the arcade, where from now on they were more or less imprisoned, because, often though they had tried for salvation, they had never managed to break the bloody chain that bound them together. They no longer even dreamed of achieving this impossible feat. They felt so driven, crushed and linked by circumstances that they realized any attempt at rebellion would be ridiculous. They resumed their life together, but their hatred became fury.
The evening rows began again. In fact, the blows and shouts lasted throughout the day. Mistrust was added to hatred and this mistrust finally drove them mad.
They were afraid of one another. The scene that followed Laurent’s demand for five thousand francs was soon being replayed morning and evening. They had an obsession with betraying one another. They could not escape from it. When one of them spoke a word or made a movement, the other imagined that he or she was planning to go to the commissioner of police. At that they would fight or plead with one another. In their anger, they would shout that they were going to reveal all and terrified one another to death; then they trembled, humiliated themselves and promised, with bitter tears, to keep silent. They suffered terribly, but did not feel brave enough to cure their ills by putting a hot iron on the wound. When they threatened to confess to the crime, it was only to scare each other and to drive the thought away, because they would never have found the strength to speak and to look for peace in punishment.
More than twenty times, they went as far as the door of the police station, one following the other. Sometimes it was Laurent who wanted to confess to the murder, sometimes it was Thérèse who would hurry to give herself up. And they always met again in the street, deciding to wait a little longer, after exchanging insults and earnest entreaties.
Each new crisis would leave them more suspicious and afraid.
They spied on one another, from morning to evening. Laurent no longer left the house in the arcade and Thérèse would not let him go out alone. Their mutual suspicion and their terror of admitting their guilt brought them together in an awful union. Never since they were married had they lived so closely together and never had they suffered so much. But despite the pain that they inflicted, they never took their eyes off one another, preferring to put up with the most agonizing torments rather than be apart for an hour. If Thérèse went down to the shop, Laurent would follow her, afraid that she might talk to a customer. If Laurent was standing at the door, watching the people going up and down the arcade, Thérèse would stand next to him to make sure that he did not speak to anyone. On Thursday evening, when the guests were there, the murderers would exchange pleading looks, and listen with terror to what the other was saying, each expecting a confession from his or her accomplice and discovering compromising meanings in every new sentence the other began.
This state of war could not go on for much longer.
It got to the point where both Thérèse and Laurent, separately, dreamed of escaping by means of a new crime from the consequences of their first one. It was essential for one of them to disappear for the other to enjoy a measure of peace. This idea occurred to them both at the same time: both felt the pressing need for separation and both wanted that separation to be eternal. The murder that they were each thinking about seemed natural to them, inevitable, a necessary consequence of the murder of Camille. They did not even discuss it, they just accepted the scheme as their only salvation. Laurent decided that he would kill Thérèse, because Thérèse was getting in his way, because she could destroy him with a word and because she caused him unbearable misery. Thérèse made up her mind to kill Laurent for the same reasons.
This firm decision to murder calmed them a little. They made their plans. As it happens, they were acting impulsively, without taking many precautions; they were only vaguely thinking about the probable consequences of a murder committed without taking into consideration the need for flight and protection against repercussions. They felt an imperious need to kill one another and obeyed this need like wild animals. They would not have given themselves up for their first crime, which they had so skilfully concealed, yet they were risking the guillotine by committing a second one and not even considering how to hide it. They were not even aware of this contradiction in their behaviour. They told themselves simply that if they did manage to escape, they would go and live abroad after taking all the money. Over a period of a fortnight to three weeks, Thérèse had withdrawn the few thousand francs that remained of her dowry and was keeping them locked up in a drawer, which Laurent knew about. They did not for an instant consider what would happen to Mme Raquin.
A few weeks earlier, Laurent had met one of his old school-friends, who was now an assistant to a famous chemist much concerned with toxicology. This friend had shown him round the laboratory where he worked, pointing out the equipment and identifying the drugs. One evening, when he had made up his mind to murder and Thérèse was drinking a glass of sugar water in front of him, Laurent remembered having seen a little stone flask in the laboratory containing prussic acid. Recalling what the young assistant had told him about the terrible effects of this poison, which strikes its victims down, leaving few traces, he decided that this was the poison he needed. The next day, he managed to get away, went to see his friend and, while his back was turned, stole the little stone flask.
The same day, Thérèse took advantage of Laurent’s absence to sharpen a large kitchen knife that they used to crush sugar and which was quite blunt. She hid the knife in a corner of the sideboard.
XXXII
The following Thursday, the evening at the Raquins’ (as their guests continued to call the family), was an especially merry one. It went on until half past eleven. As he was leaving, Grivet said that he had never spent such an agreeable few hours.
Suzanne, who was pregnant, spoke constantly to Thérèse about her pains and joys. Thérèse appeared to be listening with much interest; with staring eyes and tight lips, she would bend her head forward from time to time and her lowered eyelids cast a shadow across her whole face. Laurent for his part w
as paying close attention to the stories of Old Michaud and Olivier. These gentlemen had an unfailing fund of anecdotes and Grivet managed only with difficulty to get a word in between two sentences from the father and son. In any case, he had some respect for them and considered them good talkers. That evening, talk had replaced games and he gauchely announced that he found the former police commissioner’s conversation almost as amusing as a game of dominoes.
In the more than four years that the Michauds and Grivet had spent Thursday evenings at the Raquins‘, they had not once grown tired of these monotonous evenings, which returned with infuriating regularity. As they entered, they had never for a moment suspected the drama that was being played out in this house, so peaceful and so mild. Olivier would commonly remark, in a policeman’s joke, that the dining room had ‘a whiff of honesty’ about it. Grivet, not to be outdone, called it the Temple of Peace. Recently, on two or three occasions, Thérèse had explained the bruises on her face by telling her guests that she had fallen over. In any case, none of them would have recognized the signs of Laurent’s fist. They were convinced that their hosts’ family was a model one, all sweetness and love.