Complete Works of Emile Zola (1065 page)

So as not to see the knife, Jacques turned towards Séverine, who was sleeping very calmly in her intense fatigue, with the even respiration of a child. Her mass of unbound, black hair made her a sombre pillow, and spread over her shoulders. Beneath her chin, her throat appeared amidst the curls, a throat of cream-like delicacy, faintly tinted with rose. He gazed at her, as if he did not know her. And yet he adored her, carrying her image along with him, impressed on his mind, wherever he went. She was ever in his thoughts, even when he was driving his engine; and so much so, that on one occasion, when he awoke to reality, as from a dream, it was to find himself going at full speed past a station, in defiance of the signals.

But, at the sight of that white throat, he was overcome by a sudden, inexorable fascination; and, with a feeling of horror, of which he still had conscience, he felt the imperious necessity rising within him to take the knife from the table and bury it up to the handle in the flesh of this woman. He heard the thud of the blade entering the throat, he saw the body quake with three spasms, then stiffen in the death agony amidst a crimson flood.

In the struggle to free himself from these haunting thoughts, he every second lost a little of his will. It seemed to be succumbing to the fixed idea, to be reaching that extremity when a man yields, vanquished, to the impulse of instinct Everything went wrong. His revolted hands, overcoming his effort to conceal them, became unclasped of themselves, and escaped. He then understood that, henceforth, he was not their master, and that they would go, and brutally satisfy themselves if he continued gazing at Séverine.

Although it was now broad daylight, the room appeared to him to be full of reddish smoke, as if it was a dawn of icy fog, drowning everything. He shivered with fever. He had taken the knife, and concealed it up his sleeve, certain of killing one woman, the first he should meet on the pavement outside, when a crumpling of linen, a prolonged sigh, made him turn pale and stop riveted beside the table. It was Séverine waking up.

He felt convinced that if he approached her, with that knife in his sleeve, if he only saw her again, in all her delicate beauty, there would be an end to that will which kept him firmly standing there close to her. In spite of himself, his hand would rise and bury the knife in her neck. Distracted, he opened the door, and fled.

It was eight o’clock when Jacques found himself on the pavement of the Rue d’Amsterdam. The snow had not yet been removed, and the footsteps of the few passersby could barely be heard. He immediately caught sight of an old woman, but, as she happened to be turning the corner of the Rue de Londres, he did not follow her. Being among men he walked down towards the Place du Havre, grasping the handle of the knife, whose blade disappeared up his sleeve. As a girl about fourteen left a house opposite, he crossed the road, but only reached the other side to see her enter the shop of a baker next door. His impatience was such that he could not wait, but sought farther on, continuing to descend the street.

Since he had quitted the room with this knife, it was no longer he who acted, but the other one, him whom he had so frequently felt stirring in the depths of his being, that unknown party who dated back so very far, who was burning with the hereditary thirst for murder. He had killed in days of yore, he wanted to kill again.

And the objects around Jacques were only things in a dream, for he saw them in the light of his fixed idea. His everyday life was as if abolished. He strode along like a somnambulist, without memory of the past, without forethought for the future, a slave to his necessity. His personality was absent from the body, which took its own direction.

Two women who brushed by, as they advanced ahead of him, caused him to hasten his step; and he had caught them up, when a man stopped them. All three stood laughing and chatting together. This man being in his way, he began following another woman who went by, looking feeble and gloomy, and presenting a poverty-stricken appearance in her thin shawl. She advanced with short steps, on her way, no doubt, to some execrated task, that was hard and meanly remunerated, for she did not hurry, and her face looked despairingly sad.

Nor did he hurry, now that he had found a victim, but waited to select a spot where he could strike her at ease.

Probably she perceived him following her, as her eyes turned towards him in unutterable distress, astonished that anybody could wish to have anything to say to her. She had already led him to the middle of the Rue du Havre, where she turned round twice more, each time preventing him plunging the knife, which he drew from his sleeve, into her throat — her eyes looked so full of misery, and so supplicating! He would strike her down over there, as she stepped from the pavement. But, he abruptly turned aside, in pursuit of another woman coming the opposite way. And he acted thus without reason, without will, simply because she happened to be passing at that minute.

Jacques followed her towards the station. This young woman was very lively, and walked with sonorous tread. She looked adorably pretty. She could be no more than twenty, and was plump and fair, with lovely, merry eyes that laughed at life. Apparently in a great hurry, she did not even notice that a man was following her, but briskly ascended the flight of steps in the Cour du Havre into the grand hall, along which she almost ran in her haste to reach the ticket-office of the Ceinture line. And as she there asked for a first-class ticket to Auteuil, Jacques took the same. He then accompanied her through the waiting-rooms, on to the platform, and seated himself beside her in the compartment she selected. The train at once started “I have plenty of time,” thought he; “I’ll kill her in a tunnel.”

But opposite them, an elderly lady, the only other person there, had just recognised the young woman.

“What! Is it you?” she exclaimed. “Where are you off to so early?”

The other laughed heartily with a comical gesture of despair. “Only fancy,” said she, “one cannot go anywhere without meeting somebody one knows! I hope you will not betray me. To-morrow is the birthday of my husband; and, as soon as he went away to business, I set out on my errand. I am going to Auteuil to find a florist who has an orchid which my husband has set his mind on. A surprise, you understand.” The elderly lady nodded her head up and down with tender benevolence. “And how is the baby?” she inquired.

“The baby?” answered the young mother. “Oh! she is going on beautifully. You know I weaned her a week ago. You should see her eating her pap. We are all remarkably well. It is perfectly disgraceful.”

She laughed louder than ever, displaying the white teeth between her ruby lips. And Jacques, who had seated himself on her right, his knife in his fist, hidden under his leg, said to himself that he was in a first-rate position to deal the blow. He had only to raise his arm, and turn half round, to have her within reach. But in the Batignolles tunnel, the thought of something she wore round her neck stopped him.

“There is a knot which will inconvenience me,” he reflected. “I want to be quite sure.”

The two ladies continued chatting gaily together.

“So I see you are happy,” remarked the older one.

“Happy? Ah! if I could only tell you to what extent,” replied the other. w Two years ago I was nobody at all. You remember, there was no amusement at the home of my aunt; and I was without a sou of dowry. When he used to call, I trembled, I had become so fond of him. He was so handsome, so wealthy. And he is mine, my husband, and we have baby between us. I assure you it is too delightful!” Jacques, in examining the knot of the scarf, perceived a big gold locket underneath, attached to a black velvet band; and he calculated how he would proceed.

“I will grasp her by the neck,” thought he, “with my left hand, and thrust aside the locket as I put her head back to have the throat free.”

The train stopped, and went on again every few minutes, the stations being so close together. Short tunnels followed one another at Courcelles and Neuilly. Presently would do, one minute would be sufficient.

“Did you go to the seaside last summer?” inquired the old lady.

“Yes,” answered the other, “to Brittany, for six weeks, in an out-of-the-way comer, a perfect paradise. Then we passed September in Poitou, at the seat of ray father-in-law, who owns extensive woods down there.”

“And you are going to the south for the winter?” said the old lady.

“Yes,” answered the younger one, “we shall be at Cannes about the 15th. The house is taken. A delightful bit of garden facing the sea. We have sent someone down to prepare the place. Neither of us fear the cold, but then, the sun is so nice! We shall be back in March. Next year we intend to remain in Paris. After two years, when baby is big, we mean to travel. I hardly know what afterwards. It is one constant holiday!”

She was so overflowing with felicity, that yielding to a feeling of expansion, she turned towards Jacques, towards this unknown individual to smile at him. In making this movement the knot of her scarf was displaced, carrying the locket away with it, and revealing the rosy neck with a slight dimple gilded by the shadow.

The fingers of Jacques clutched the handle of the knife, at the same time as he formed an irrevocable resolution.

“That is the spot where I will deal the blow,” said he to himself. “Yes, in the tunnel before reaching Passy.”

But, at the Trocadero station, a member of the staff got in, who, knowing Jacques, began to talk about a theft of coal that had been brought home to a driver and his fireman. From that moment everything became confused. Later on he was never able to establish the facts, exactly. The laughter continued in such a beam of happiness that he felt as if penetrated and appeased by it. Perhaps he went as far as Auteuil with the two ladies, only he had no recollection of seeing them leave the carriage.

In the end he found himself beside the Seine, without knowing how he came there. But he had the distinct remembrance of casting the knife, which had remained in his hand, with the blade up his sleeve, from the top of the bank into the river. Then he hardly knew what occurred, being half silly, absent from his being, which the other one had also left along with the knife. He must have wandered about for hours through streets and squares, wherever his body chanced to take him. People and houses filed past very faintly. Doubtless, he had gone in somewhere to get food at the end of a room full of customers, for he clearly recalled the white plates. He had also the firm impression that he saw a red broadside on the shutters of a shop. And then, all sank into a black chasm, to nothingness, where there was neither time nor space, where he lay inert, perhaps since centuries.

When Jacques came to himself, he was in his little room in the Rue Cardinet. He had fallen across his bed in his clothes. Instinct had taken him there, just as a lame dog drags himself to his kennel, or his hole. He remembered neither going upstairs, nor going to sleep. He awoke from heavy slumber, scared to suddenly regain self-possession, as if after a long fainting fit Perhaps he had slept three hours, perhaps three days. All at once his memory returned: the confession Séverine had made of the murder, and his departure like a feline animal in search of blood. He had been beside himself, but he now had full command of his faculties, and felt astounded at what had taken place against his will. Then the recollection of the young woman awaiting him, made him leap to his feet at a bound. He looked at his watch, and saw it was already four o’clock; and, with a clear head, very calm, as if after a copious bleeding, he hastened back to the Impasse d’Amsterdam.

Séverine had been wrapped in profound slumber until noon.

Then, waking up, surprised not to see Jacques there, she had lit the fire, and, dying of inanition, had made up her mind, at about two o’clock, to run down and get something to eat at a neighbouring restaurant. When Jacques appeared she had just come up again, after going on a few errands.

“Oh! my darling!” she exclaimed, as he entered the room; “I was most anxious!”

And she hung round his neck, looking into his eyes, quite close.

“What has happened?” she added inquiringly.

He placidly removed her fears, without feeling in the least troubled.

“Oh! nothing,” he replied, “a nasty job. When they once get hold of you, they will never let you go.”

Then, Séverine, lowering her voice, became very humble and fondling.

“Only think,” said she, “I fancied, — oh! an ugly thought, that caused me a great deal of pain! — Yes, I fancied to myself that perhaps after the confession I made, you would have nothing more to do with me; and I imagined you had gone, never, never to return!”

Tears filled her eyes, and she burst into sobs, pressing him distractedly in her arms.

“Ah! my darling,” she continued, “if you only knew how I yearn for kindness! Love me, love me fondly, because, you see, it is only your love that can make me forget. Now that I have told you all my trouble, you must not leave me. Oh! I implore you!”

Jacques felt penetrated by this tenderness. An invincible relaxation softened him little by little, and he stammered out:

“No, no, I love you, do not be afraid.”

And quite overcome, he also wept, in face of the fatality of that abominable evil which had again taken hold of him, and of which he would never be cured. It was shame, and despair without limit.

“Love me, love me fondly, also,” he continued. “Oh! with all your strength, for I have as great, a need of love as you.”

She shuddered, and wished to know more.

“If you are in grief, you must confide in me,” said she.

“No, no,” he replied, “not grief, things that do not exist, moments of sadness that make me horribly unhappy, without it being even possible to speak of them.”

They strained one another, mingling their frightfully melancholy trouble. It was infinite suffering without any possible oblivion, and without pardon. They wept, and upon them they felt the blind force of life, made up of struggles and death.

“Come,” said Jacques, disengaging himself, “it is time to think of leaving! To-night you will be at Havre!”