Thérèse Raquin (23 page)

She lived thus for weeks, awaiting death, fancying herself sheltered
from any fresh misfortune. She thought she had already received her
share of suffering. But she was mistaken. One night she was crushed by a
frightful blow.

Therese and Laurent might well place her between them, in the full
light, but she was no longer sufficiently animated to separate and
defend them against their anguish. When they forgot that she was there
and could hear and see them, they were seized with folly. Perceiving
Camille, they sought to drive him away. Then, in unsteady tones,
they allowed the truth to escape them, uttering words that revealed
everything to Madame Raquin. Laurent had a sort of attack, during
which he spoke like one under the influence of hallucination, and the
paralysed woman abruptly understood.

A frightful contraction passed over her face, and she experienced such
a shock that Therese thought she was about to bound to her feet and
shriek, but she fell backward, rigid as iron. This shock was all the
more terrible as it seemed to galvanise a corpse. Sensibility which had
for a moment returned, disappeared; the impotent woman remained more
crushed and wan than before. Her eyes, usually so gentle, had become
dark and harsh, resembling pieces of metal.

Never had despair fallen more rigorously on a being. The sinister truth,
like a flash of flame, scorched the eyes of the paralysed woman and
penetrated within her with the concussion of a shaft of lightning. Had
she been able to rise, to utter the cry of horror that ascended to her
throat, and curse the murderers of her son, she would have suffered
less. But, after hearing and understanding everything, she was forced
to remain motionless and mute, inwardly preserving all the glare of her
grief.

It seemed to her that Therese and Laurent had bound her, riveted her to
her armchair to prevent her springing up, and that they took atrocious
pleasure in repeating to her, after gagging her to stifle her cries—

"We have killed Camille!"

Terror and anguish coursed furiously in her body unable to find an
issue. She made superhuman efforts to raise the weight crushing her, to
clear her throat and thus give passage to her flood of despair. In vain
did she strain her final energy; she felt her tongue cold against her
palate, she could not tear herself from death. Cadaverous impotence held
her rigid. Her sensations resembled those of a man fallen into lethargy,
who is being buried, and who, bound by the bonds of his own frame, hears
the deadened sound of the shovels of mould falling on his head.

The ravages to which her heart was subjected, proved still more
terrible. She felt a blow inwardly that completely undid her. Her
entire life was afflicted: all her tenderness, all her goodness, all her
devotedness had just been brutally upset and trampled under foot. She
had led a life of affection and gentleness, and in her last hours, when
about to carry to the grave a belief in the delight of a calm life, a
voice shouted to her that all was falsehood and all crime.

The veil being rent, she perceived apart from the love and friendship
which was all she had hitherto been able to see, a frightful picture of
blood and shame. She would have cursed the Almighty had she been able to
shout out a blasphemy. Providence had deceived her for over sixty years,
by treating her as a gentle, good little girl, by amusing her with
lying representations of tranquil joy. And she had remained a child,
senselessly believing in a thousand silly things, and unable to see life
as it really is, dragging along in the sanguinary filth of passions.
Providence was bad; it should have told her the truth before, or have
allowed her to continue in her innocence and blindness. Now, it only
remained for her to die, denying love, denying friendship, denying
devotedness. Nothing existed but murder and lust.

What! Camille had been killed by Therese and Laurent, and they had
conceived the crime in shame! For Madame Raquin, there was such a
fathomless depth in this thought, that she could neither reason it
out, nor grasp it clearly. She experienced but one sensation, that of
a horrible disaster; it seemed to her that she was falling into a dark,
cold hole. And she said to herself:

"I shall be smashed to pieces at the bottom."

After the first shock, the crime appeared to her so monstrous that it
seemed impossible. Then, when convinced of the misbehaviour and murder,
by recalling certain little incidents which she had formerly failed to
understand, she was afraid of going out of her mind. Therese and Laurent
were really the murderers of Camille: Therese whom she had reared,
Laurent whom she had loved with the devoted and tender affection of
a mother. These thoughts revolved in her head like an immense wheel,
accompanied by a deafening noise.

She conjectured such vile details, fathomed such immense hypocrisy,
assisting in thought at a double vision so atrocious in irony, that she
would have liked to die, mechanical and implacable, pounded her brain
with the weight and ceaseless action of a millstone. She repeated to
herself:

"It is my children who have killed my child."

And she could think of nothing else to express her despair.

In the sudden change that had come over her heart, she no longer
recognised herself. She remained weighed down by the brutal invasion of
ideas of vengeance that drove away all the goodness of her life. When
she had been thus transformed, all was dark inwardly; she felt the birth
of a new being within her frame, a being pitiless and cruel, who would
have liked to bite the murderers of her son.

When she had succumbed to the overwhelming stroke of paralysis, when she
understood that she could not fly at the throats of Therese and Laurent,
whom she longed to strangle, she resigned herself to silence and
immobility, and great tears fell slowly from her eyes. Nothing could
be more heartrending than this mute and motionless despair. Those tears
coursing, one by one, down this lifeless countenance, not a wrinkle
of which moved, that inert, wan face which could not weep with its
features, and whose eyes alone sobbed, presented a poignant spectacle.

Therese was seized with horrified pity.

"We must put her to bed," said she to Laurent, pointing to her aunt.

Laurent hastened to roll the paralysed woman into her bedroom. Then, as
he stooped down to take her in his arms, Madame Raquin hoped that some
powerful spring would place her on her feet; and she attempted a supreme
effort. The Almighty would not permit Laurent to press her to his bosom;
she fully anticipated he would be struck down if he displayed such
monstrous impudence. But no spring came into action, and heaven reserved
its lightning. Madame Raquin remained huddled up and passive like
a bundle of linen. She was grasped, raised and carried along by the
assassin; she experienced the anguish of feeling herself feeble and
abandoned in the arms of the murderer of Camille. Her head rolled on to
the shoulder of Laurent, whom she observed with eyes increased in volume
by horror.

"You may look at me," he murmured. "Your eyes will not eat me."

And he cast her brutally on the bed. The impotent old lady fell
unconscious on the mattress. Her last thought had been one of terror and
disgust. In future, morning and night, she would have to submit to the
vile pressure of the arms of Laurent.

A shock of terror alone had made the married pair speak, and avow their
crime in the presence of Madame Raquin. Neither one nor the other was
cruel; they would have avoided such a revelation out of feelings of
humanity, had not their own security already made it imperative on their
part to maintain silence.

On the ensuing Thursday, they felt particularly anxious. In the morning,
Therese inquired of Laurent whether he considered it prudent to leave
the paralysed woman in the dining-room during the evening. She knew all
and might give the alarm.

"Bah!" replied Laurent, "it is impossible for her to raise her little
finger. How can she babble?"

"She will perhaps discover a way to do so," answered Therese. "I have
noticed an implacable thought in her eyes since the other evening."

"No," said Laurent. "You see, the doctor told me it was absolutely
all over with her. If she ever speaks again it will be in the final
death-rattle. She will not last much longer, you may be sure. It would
be stupid to place an additional load on our conscience by preventing
her being present at the gathering this evening."

Therese shuddered.

"You misunderstand me," she exclaimed. "Oh! You are right. There has
been enough crime. I meant to say that we might shut our aunt up in her
own room, pretending she was not well, and was sleeping."

"That's it," replied Laurent, "and that idiot Michaud would go straight
into the room to see his old friend, notwithstanding. It would be a
capital way to ruin us."

He hesitated. He wanted to appear calm, and anxiety gave a tremor to his
voice.

"It will be best to let matters take their course," he continued. "These
people are as silly as geese. The mute despair of the old woman will
certainly teach them nothing. They will never have the least suspicion
of the thing, for they are too far away from the truth. Once the ordeal
is over, we shall be at ease as to the consequences of our imprudence.
All will be well, you will see."

When the guests arrived in the evening, Madame Raquin occupied her usual
place, between the stove and table. Therese and Laurent feigned to be
in good spirits, concealing their shudders and awaiting, in anguish, the
incident that was bound to occur. They had brought the lamp-shade very
low down, so that the oilcloth table covering alone was lit up.

The guests engaged in the usual noisy, common-place conversation that
invariably preceded the first game of dominoes. Grivet and Michaud did
not fail to address the usual questions to the paralysed woman, on the
subject of her health, and to give excellent answers to them, as was
their custom. After which, the company, without troubling any further
about the poor old lady, plunged with delight into the game.

Since Madame Raquin had become aware of the horrible secret, she had
been awaiting this evening with feverish impatience. She had gathered
together all her remaining strength to denounce the culprits. Up to the
last moment, she feared she would not be present at the gathering; she
thought Laurent would make her disappear, perhaps kill her, or at least
shut her up in her own apartment. When she saw that her niece and nephew
allowed her to remain in the dining-room, she experienced lively joy at
the thought of attempting to avenge her son.

Aware that her tongue was powerless, she resorted to a new kind of
language. With astonishing power of will, she succeeded, in a measure,
in galvanising her right hand, in slightly raising it from her knee,
where it always lay stretched out, inert; she then made it creep little
by little up one of the legs of the table before her, and thus succeeded
in placing it on the oilcloth table cover. Then, she feebly agitated the
fingers as if to attract attention.

When the players perceived this lifeless hand, white and nerveless,
before them, they were exceedingly surprised. Grivet stopped short,
with his arm in the air, at the moment when he was about to play the
double-six. Since the impotent woman had been struck down, she had never
moved her hands.

"Hey! Just look, Therese," cried Michaud. "Madame Raquin is agitating
her fingers. She probably wants something."

Therese could not reply. Both she and Laurent had been following the
exertion of the paralysed woman, and she was now looking at the hand
of her aunt, which stood out wan in the raw light of the lamp, like
an avenging hand that was about to speak. The two murderers waited,
breathless.

"Of course," said Grivet, "she wants something. Oh! We thoroughly
understand one another. She wants to play dominoes. Eh! Isn't it so,
dear lady?"

Madame Raquin made a violent sign indicating that she wanted nothing of
the kind. She extended one finger, folded up the others with infinite
difficulty, and began to painfully trace letters on the table cover.
She had barely indicated a stroke or two, when Grivet again exclaimed in
triumph:

"I understand; she says I do right to play the double-six."

The impotent woman cast a terrible glance at the old clerk, and returned
to the word she wished to write. But Grivet interrupted her at every
moment, declaring it was needless, that he understood, and he then
brought out some stupidity. Michaud at last made him hold his tongue.

"The deuce! Allow Madame Raquin to speak," said he. "Speak, my old
friend."

And he gazed at the oilcloth table cover as if he had been listening.
But the fingers of the paralysed woman were growing weary. They had
begun the word more than ten times over, and now, in tracing this word,
they wandered to right and left. Michaud and Olivier bent forward, and
being unable to read, forced the impotent old lady to resume the first
letters.

"Ah! Bravo!" exclaimed Olivier, all at once, "I can read it, this time.
She has just written your name, Therese. Let me see: '
Therese and
—'
Complete the sentence, dear lady."

Therese almost shrieked in anguish. She watched the finger of her aunt
gliding over the oilcloth, and it seemed to her that this finger traced
her name, and the confession of her crime in letters of fire. Laurent
had risen violently, with half a mind to fling himself on the paralysed
woman and break her arm. When he saw this hand return to life to reveal
the murder of Camille, he thought all was lost, and already felt the
weight and frigidity of the knife on the nape of his neck.

Madame Raquin still wrote, but in a manner that became more and more
hesitating.