The Beast Within - Emile Zola [138]
‘I thought that madame might perhaps wish to take this opportunity of inspecting her property. I am at your service, madame. If madame would like me to accompany her ...’
Séverine once again declined. But his voice whined on and on.
‘I imagine madame was surprised about the fruit ... It really wasn’t worth the cost of sending it; it was all rotten ... And then there was a gale that did so much damage ... It is such a pity that madame cannot sell her house! There was one gentleman, but he wanted repairs carried out. Of course I am entirely at madame’s disposal; she may count on me to act in her best interests.’
He insisted on serving her some bread and pears - pears from his own garden, he said, which weren’t rotten. She accepted.
As he walked through the kitchen, Misard had told the other passengers that work on clearing the line was progressing but that it would still take another four or five hours. The clock had just chimed midday. Everyone groaned, for they were all getting very hungry. Flore told them that she didn’t have enough bread to feed everyone but that she did have some wine. She had just come from the cellar with ten litre-bottles, which she placed on the table in a row. Then, of course, there weren’t enough glasses, so people had to share - the Englishwoman and her two daughters, the elderly gentleman and his young wife. The young wife had acquired a new admirer in the person of the young man from Le Havre, who was waiting on her hand and foot and showing her the utmost solicitude and consideration. He went away and came back with some apples and a loaf of bread, which he had found in the woodshed. Flore was annoyed, saying that the bread was for her sick mother. But the young man had already cut it and was sharing it out among the ladies, beginning with the young wife, who smiled at him, obviously feeling highly honoured. Her husband had still not calmed down and was taking no notice of his wife, extolling the commercial achievements of New York to the American. Never had the two young English girls bitten into apples with such relish. Their mother was very tired and half asleep. Two women sat on the floor in front of the fire, exhausted by the long wait. A few of the men went outside for a smoke to help pass the time and came back in, frozen stiff and shivering. Everyone was becoming more and more disgruntled; they were still hungry and tired and they were growing restless and impatient. The scene in the kitchen resembled a party of survivors from a shipwreck, people from the modern world who had had the misfortune to be marooned on a desert island.
As Misard kept walking in and out of the room, leaving the door open behind him, Aunt Phasie was able to see everything from her sickbed. These were the people that she too had seen flashing past the window for almost a year, as she dragged herself backwards and forwards between her bed and her chair. It was only rarely now that she could get outside; her days and nights were spent alone, stuck in this room, looking out of the window, with no other company than the trains that came speeding past. She had always complained about living in such an outlandish place, where no one ever came to see her, and now a whole crowd of people had suddenly dropped out of the blue! To think that there in her own kitchen, amongst all those people rushing madly about their business, not one of them suspected a thing, not one of them knew about the poison being put in her salt! She couldn’t get over it. It was so ingenious! She wondered how God could allow anyone to perform such a crafty trick without it being spotted. Enough people went past their front door, thousands and thousands of them, but they were all in such a rush. Not one of them could have imagined that, here in this little house, someone was calmly and quietly killing her. Aunt Phasie looked at them one by one, all these people who had dropped from the skies, and reflected that when you were so busy it wasn’t surprising if you walked into