The Beast Within - Emile Zola [176]
Misard was shaking with anger. As he was trying to rearrange the bed, in walked Flore, having completed her errand in Doinville.
‘It’s arranged for the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Saturday, at eleven.’
She was referring to the funeral. A single glance was enough to tell her what Misard had been spending his energy on while she’d been away. She raised her hands in a gesture of indifference and contempt.
‘Why don’t you just give up?’ she said. ‘You’ll never find it.’
Misard imagined that she too was defying him. He went up to her.
‘She’s given it to you, hasn’t she?’ he muttered between clenched teeth. ‘You know where it is, don’t you?’
Flore merely shrugged her shoulders. The idea that her mother could have given her thousand francs to someone else, even to her, her own daughter, was laughable.
‘Given it to me!’ she said. ‘You must be joking! She’s got rid of it, that’s for sure. It’s out there somewhere, buried in the ground. You’ll just have to keep looking for it.’
With a broad sweep of her hand she indicated the house, the garden with its well, the railway line and the open countryside beyond. The money was out there, buried in a hole, somewhere where no one would ever find it. Misard was beside himself. Once again he began frantically moving furniture about and tapping on the walls, not in the least bothered that Flore was still in the room. She went over to the window.
‘How lovely it is outside!’ she whispered. ‘Such a beautiful night! I walked fast. With all those stars shining, it’s as light as day! What a fine day it will be tomorrow when the sun comes up!’
For a moment she remained standing at the window, looking out at the tranquil countryside, softened by the first warm days of April. Her walk had reopened the wound in her heart and had left her feeling pensive and sad. But when she heard Misard walk out of the room and start moving furniture about in other parts of the house, she went over to the bed and sat looking at her mother. The candle was still burning on the bedside table with a long, steady flame. A train went by, shaking the house.
Flore had decided she would stay beside her mother through the night. She began to ponder. The sight of the dead woman took her mind off an idea that had haunted her for some time, an idea she had been turning over and over in her head beneath the starry skies, in the stillness of the night, all the way back from Doinville. There was something that puzzled her, and for a while it stopped her thinking about her own troubles: why hadn’t she felt more upset at the death of her mother? Why, even now, wasn’t she weeping? It was true that she had never spoken much to her; she was a law unto herself, and preferred to be out on her own, roaming the countryside the minute she was off duty. Even so she had been genuinely fond of her. During her final illness she had come and sat beside her a score of times, begging her to call a doctor. She was sure that Misard was up to no good and hoped that a doctor might frighten him off. But all she ever got from her sick mother was an angry ‘no’, as if she prided herself on accepting help from no one in her battle against her husband, a battle she was certain of winning whatever the outcome, since she was going to take her money with her. And so Flore had not insisted; she was too absorbed in her own troubles. She spent most of her time pacing