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By Root 1403 0

or walk down to the signalman in his cabin and have a chat. Eventually the stillness of the night and the great expanse of dark sky above calmed his nerves. Following a scuffle with some intruders, he had been armed with a revolver, which he kept fully loaded in his pocket. Often he would walk around until dawn, stopping to take aim the minute he thought he saw something moving in the darkness and then walking on again, feeling vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t had to shoot. It came as a relief when the sky began to grow light and the huge station emerged pale and ghostly from the shadows. Now that day was breaking as early as three o’clock, he would return to his office, sink into his armchair and sleep like a log, until his alarm clock woke him up with a start.

Jacques and Séverine continued to meet every other week on Thursdays and Saturdays. One night Séverine happened to mention that her husband carried a revolver. Although Roubaud never came out as far as the engine shed, the thought of the revolver worried them. It added a sense of danger to their nocturnal excursions and made them seem all the more romantic. There was one place they were particularly fond of, a little alleyway behind the Sauvagnats’ house which, because it ran between two rows of huge coal stacks, made it look like the main street of some strange city, lined with big, square palaces built of black marble.2 It was completely hidden from view, and at the far end there was a little tool-shed with a pile of empty sacks inside it, which would have provided them with something soft to lie on. One Saturday, a sudden shower of rain had driven them inside the shed to take shelter. Séverine remained standing, offering him only her lips, in kiss after kiss. She kissed him unashamedly, greedily, holding her lips to his, seeking to tell him that she loved him. When Jacques, inflamed with passion, attempted to take her, she drew back with tears in her eyes, uttering the same repeated plea - why did he wish to make her unhappy? Their love for each other seemed so beautiful; sex was so sordid. Although she had been defiled at the age of sixteen by a lecherous old man whose grizzly spectre still haunted her, and then, after her marriage, had been subjected to the brutal appetites of her husband, she had retained a childlike innocence and virginal purity, a charmingly naive sense of modesty. What so attracted her to Jacques was his gentleness and compliance; when his hands were tempted to stray, she simply enclosed them in hers, and he desisted. For the first time in her life she was in love. She did not give herself, for she knew that if she yielded to him now, as she had yielded to the two others, her love would be ruined. Unconsciously, she wanted this happiness to continue for ever; she longed to be young again, as she was before she had been abused, to be like a girl of fifteen, with a sweetheart she could kiss freely and in secret. Jacques for his part, except in moments when his passions were roused, was undemanding, happily savouring this voluptuous deferment of pleasure. Like her, he seemed to have rediscovered his youth and for the very first time in his life to be in love, something which until now had always filled him with horror. If he was docile, withdrawing his hands the moment she guided them away from her, it was because underlying his love for her there remained a vague fear, a nameless dread, that this love might unleash his old compulsion to kill. Séverine, who had committed murder herself, seemed the very embodiment of his worst dreams come true. But every day he grew more confident that he was cured; he had held her in his arms for hours on end, he had pressed his mouth to hers, drinking in her very soul, without awakening the savage urge to dominate and kill her. Yet he remained uncertain. It was good to wait, to allow love to unite them when the moment came, and their resistance had faded away in each other’s arms. And so these joyful encounters continued. They seized every opportunity they could to meet, and walk together in the dark between