The Beast Within - Emile Zola [151]
‘Wait!’ he said. ‘Wait a moment! You said you were lying flat across his legs and you felt him die.’
There were things he had to know. He felt a wave of burning curiosity run through him. His mind was invaded by a sea of red. The murder fascinated him.
‘Tell me about the knife. Did you feel it go in?’
‘Yes. I felt a thud.’
‘Just a thud? Didn’t you feel his neck being slit open?’
‘No, it was just a blow.’
‘Did he have a convulsion?’
‘Yes, he had three. They ran from one end of his body to the other, very slowly. I felt them run right down to his feet.’
‘Did they make him go stiff?’
‘Yes. The first one was very strong. The other two were weaker.’
‘And then he died. How did you feel when you felt him die like that, with his throat slit?’
‘How did I feel? I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Come on, tell me. I want to know. Tell me honestly, how did you feel? Were you upset?’
‘No, I wasn’t upset.’
‘Did it give you pleasure?’
‘Pleasure! Ah, no, certainly not!’
‘What then, love? I beg you! Tell me what it was like ... If only you knew ... Tell me what it feels like.’
‘How can you describe a thing like that, for heaven’s sake? It’s awful; you’re just carried away ... completely carried away! I lived more in that minute than in all my previous life put together!’
Jacques clenched his teeth, muttered something incoherent and took her. Séverine took him also. They possessed each other, finding love in the midst of death, and the same agonizing pleasure as beasts that tear each other apart as they mate. All that could be heard was the heavy sound of their breathing. The circle of red light had gone from the ceiling. The stove went out, and, with the wintry conditions outside, the room began to grow cold. Not a sound rose from the street as Paris lay muffled in snow. There were a few snores from the newspaper seller’s room next door. Then the house sank into a dark, fathomless sleep.
All this time, Séverine had been lying in Jacques’s arms. He suddenly felt her give in to sleep as if she had been struck down. The journey, the long wait at the Misards and a night of passion had finally taken their toll. She murmured a childlike goodnight and immediately fell fast asleep, breathing peacefully. The cuckoo clock had just struck three.
For nearly another hour Jacques lay with Séverine across his left arm, which gradually sent it to sleep. But his eyes would not remain closed; unseen fingers seemed to keep opening them again in the dark. By now he couldn’t see a thing in the room; it was pitch black. The stove, the furniture, even the walls - everything had disappeared. He turned his head to look for the two pale window squares, outlined on the wall, faint and dreamlike. Although he was exhausted, his mind would not rest; thoughts came teeming into his head - the same thoughts, returning again and again. Every time he succeeded in putting them from him and was about to fall asleep, the vision returned to haunt him, a succession of images, the same as before, each time more disturbing. The scene that presented itself with such mechanical regularity, as he stared open-eyed into the darkness, was the murder, in all its details. It kept coming back, identical, invading his mind, tormenting him. The knife entered the throat with a thud, the body had three long convulsions, its life drained away in a stream of warm blood, a red stream; he imagined he could feel it running over his hands. Twenty times, thirty times, the knife went in, the body jerked. The images grew bigger and bigger, they seemed to suffocate him, spill over him and banish the night. He longed to kill with a knife, to satisfy his old desire, to know what it feels like and to savour that moment in which one lives more than in a whole lifetime.
He became more and more breathless. Perhaps it was simply the weight of Séverine on his arm that was preventing him from sleeping. He gently freed himself from her and, without waking her, placed her beside him. Immediately he felt more at ease and began to breathe more freely,