The Beast Within - Emile Zola [178]
On the Friday morning, however, her resolve had weakened; she was unable to decide where and how she was going to lift a rail. That evening, after she had finished duty for the day, another idea occurred to her. She walked through the tunnel and out to the Dieppe junction. She often came this way. The tunnel was a good half-league long, a vaulted passageway, completely straight. It excited her to see the trains coming towards her with their blinding headlamps; she was nearly run over every time. It must have been the sense of danger that attracted her, a need to do something reckless. This evening, however, having managed to avoid being seen by the night watchman, she had walked half-way through the tunnel, keeping to the left so that she could be sure that any train coming towards her would pass on her right, when she foolishly turned round to watch the tail-lights of a train for Le Havre. As she set off again, she had tripped, which forced her to turn round on herself a second time, with the result that she could no longer tell in which direction the red lights had been travelling. Her head was still spinning from the noise of the wheels. Bold as she was, she dared not move; she was so frightened that her hands went cold and her hair stood on end. She realized that, when another train went past, she wouldn’t know whether it was an up train or a down train; she might throw herself to the right or to the left and could be cut to pieces. She tried desperately to hold on to her reason, to remember, to think it through. But she was suddenly overcome with panic and ran forward blindly, frantically, into the darkness before her. She must not allow herself to be killed until she had killed the two she most hated. Her feet stumbled over the rails; she kept slipping and falling to the ground as she tried to run faster and faster. She felt as if she were going mad; the tunnel walls seemed to be closing in around her, the vaulted roof re-echoed with imaginary noises, fearful cries and horrible groans. She kept looking behind her, thinking she could feel the hot steam from a locomotive on her neck. Twice she was convinced she had made a mistake; she was running in the wrong direction and would be killed. She turned and ran the other way. She ran on and on. In front of her in the distance appeared a star, a shining eye, which was growing bigger and bigger. She steeled herself against the temptation to turn yet again and run the other way. The eye had grown to an incandescent ball, a savage mouth of flame. Without knowing what she was doing, she had leaped blindly to her left. The train thundered past, and a great gust of wind blew around her. Five minutes later she walked out of the Malaunay end of the tunnel, safe and sound. 2
It was nine o’clock. The express from Paris would be there in a few minutes. She walked steadily on towards the junction for Dieppe two hundred metres ahead, looking carefully along the track for something that might serve her purpose. It so happened that the line to Dieppe was being repaired. Her friend Ozil had just changed the points for a ballast train3 to run on to the branch line, and it was waiting there. In a sudden flash of inspiration, she hit upon an idea. All she had to do was prevent the signalman from changing the points back to the Le Havre line, so that the express would crash into the ballast train. Ever since Ozil had tried to take Flore by force and she had nearly cracked his skull open with a stick, she had remained quite fond of him and liked to turn up on him unexpectedly, scampering through the tunnel like a goat running down from its mountain. Ozil was an ex-soldier, very thin and rather taciturn; he was completely dedicated to his job and so far had an impeccable record,