The Beast Within - Emile Zola [172]
‘We’re not going to catch him,’ Jacques muttered. ‘If he gets to the signal box, we’ve lost him.’
Séverine kept whispering encouragement.
‘Come on!’ she said. ‘Come on!’
Although he was out in the dark, in a huge empty railway yard at the dead of night, Jacques’s mind was made up as firmly as if he were quietly lying in wait in a corner of some secluded alleyway. He moved forward quickly but cautiously. His heart was beating fast; he kept telling himself that this murder was perfectly justified, that it was a sensible and legitimate act that had been carefully thought through and properly decided. He was simply exercising a right — the right to live in fact, since Roubaud’s death was a prerequisite for his own survival. All he had to do was stab him with the knife and his happiness was assured.
‘We’re not going to catch him, we’re not going to catch him,’ he repeated furiously, as he saw the shadow move towards the signal box. ‘We’ve had it. He’s going to get away.’
Suddenly, Séverine placed her hand on his arm and held him close. She was trembling.
‘Look!’ she said. ‘He’s coming back!’
Roubaud had turned to the right and was coming towards them. If he had any inkling that there had been somebody behind him waiting to pounce on him, it didn’t seem to affect him; he continued calmly on his way, carefully making sure that all was in order, and in no hurry to leave until his inspection was complete.
Jacques and Séverine remained standing where they were, without moving. As chance would have it, they had stopped near the edge of one of the coal stacks. They leaned against it, pressing their backs to the wall of coal, as if trying to melt into it and lose themselves in its inky blackness. They hardly dared breathe.
Jacques watched Roubaud as he came towards them. He was now no more than thirty metres away, and every step brought him nearer, like the steady, inexorable pendulum of fate. Another twenty steps, another ten steps, and Roubaud would be in front of him; he would raise his arm thus and plant the knife in his neck, twisting it backwards and forwards to silence his screams. The seconds seemed unending; his head was teeming with so many thoughts that he had lost all sense of time. One by one, his reasons for murdering Roubaud passed through his mind yet again. He saw the murder clearly; he understood both its cause and its consequences. Roubaud was now only five steps away. Jacques’s resolve was stretched to breaking point, but he held firm. He had made up his mind to kill and he knew why he was going to do it.
Roubaud was within two steps of him. One step more and ... Suddenly Jacques’s courage abandoned him; his determination collapsed. He couldn’t do it. How could he kill a defenceless man? Reasoning alone could never impel someone to murder; something more was needed — the killer instinct, the will to seize the prey, the hunger, the passion maybe, to tear it limb from limb. Conscience was probably no more than a vague assortment of ideas instilled by the slow workings of a centuries-old tradition of justice. Even so, he knew he didn’t have the right to kill, and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself, he felt that it was not a right he could assume.
Roubaud walked past, quite undisturbed. His elbow brushed against them as they stood pressing themselves to the stack of coal. If either of them had as much as breathed, Roubaud would have spotted them, but they stood there like corpses. Jacques did not raise his arm and he did not plant the knife in Roubaud’s neck. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the night; nothing moved. Roubaud was already ten steps away from them, and they remained motionless, pressed against the coal stack, not daring to breath, terrified of the man who, alone and defenceless, had just calmly walked past them.
Jacques let out a sob of pent-up rage and humiliation.
‘I can’t do it! I can’t do it!