The Beast Within - Emile Zola [144]
Then he whispered gently into her ear: ‘Darling, shall we go to bed?’
She didn’t answer him. She had been feeling blissfully happy, when suddenly the past had overtaken her. She found herself reliving the hours she had spent there with her husband. The cake she had just shared with Jacques seemed a continuation of that lunch with Roubaud, eaten at the same table, with the same sounds coming up from the apartment below. Everything in the room awakened the past; memories flooded over her. Never had she felt such a burning need to tell her lover everything, to surrender herself to him completely. It was an almost physical need, inseparable from her sexual desire. It seemed to her that she would belong to him more fully and that she would receive the greatest joy from being his if she could whisper her confession into his ear as she lay in his arms. Everything was coming back to her. Her husband was there in the room. She looked round, thinking she had just seen his hand, with its short, hairy fingers reaching over her shoulder for the knife.
‘Shall we go to bed, darling?’ Jacques repeated.
She shuddered as she felt his lips fasten upon hers, as though once again he wished to keep the confession sealed within her. Without a word she stood up, quickly undressed and slipped between the sheets, leaving her petticoats strewn across the floor. Jacques left the table as it was; it could be cleared in the morning. The candle was almost finished and was already beginning to go out. He too undressed and got into the bed. Their bodies came together in a sudden embrace, a frenzy of possession that left them breathless and gasping for air. In the deathly silence of the room, as the music continued downstairs, there was no exclamation, not a sound, nothing but a thrill of abandonment, a wave of ecstasy, which made them almost faint.
Séverine was no longer the sweet, passive, blue-eyed woman that Jacques had first known. She seemed to have grown more passionate with every day that passed. Her hair fell thick and dark about her face. Gradually, in his arms, he had felt her waking from the long night of virginal frigidity which the senile indecencies of Grandmorin and the intemperate demands of her husband had merely succeeded in prolonging. As a lover, she had hitherto simply complied. Now, she was alive; she gave herself fully and was in turn deeply grateful for the pleasure she received. She had come to adore and even venerate the man who had shown her she was capable of love. It was because she felt so intensely happy to lie with him freely at last, to put her arms around him and hold him to her breast, that she had been able to remain silent, with not so much as a sigh.
They opened their eyes again. Jacques was the first to speak.
‘Look,’ he said with surprise, ‘the candle’s gone out!’
Séverine turned over, as if to say she couldn’t care less. Then, stifling a laugh, she whispered:
‘Did I behave myself?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘No one could have heard us. We were as quiet as mice!’
They lay back again, and she at once took him in her arms, pulling herself close to him and resting her nose on his neck. She sighed with pleasure.
‘Isn’t this wonderful!’ she said.
They fell silent. The room was completely dark; they could just make out the two pale squares where the windows were. On the ceiling, the stove cast a circle of light the colour of blood. They lay looking up at it, wide-eyed. The music had stopped. They heard the sound of doors being closed. The whole house fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. Down below, the train from Caen came clattering over the turntables, but the sound hardly reached them; it seemed to come from a long way away.
As she lay holding Jacques in her arms, Séverine’s desire returned, and with it the urge to confess her crime. It had been on her mind for weeks! The circle of light on the ceiling grew larger; it seemed to be spreading outwards like a bloodstain. As she gazed at it, shapes began to appear before her eyes; things around the bed began to speak, telling the whole story out loud. As