The Beast Within - Emile Zola [196]
Cabuche left the room. Jacques motioned to Séverine to remain behind. He was very pale.
‘You know, don’t you,’ he said, ‘that it was Flore who pulled the horses forward and blocked the line with the stones?’
It was Séverine’s turn to go pale.
‘Darling, what are you saying? You’ve got a temperature. You must get back to bed.’
‘It’s not just a bad dream,’ he said. ‘I saw her, do you understand. As plainly as I see you. She had her hand on the horses, holding them back and preventing the wagon from crossing.’
Séverine’s legs gave way and she sank on to a chair in front of him.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘It’s terrifying! It’s monstrous! I shall never be able to sleep again.’
‘It’s perfectly clear,’ Jacques went on. ‘She tried to kill us ... both of us ... along with everyone else. She had wanted me for years and she was jealous. What’s more, she was crazy. Her head was full of mad ideas. All those people! Killed just like that! In one huge bloodbath! What a monster!’
His eyes were wide open, and a nervous twitch played on his lips. He fell silent, and they continued to look at each other. A whole minute went by. Then, tearing himself away from the fearful visions that were forming in their minds, he continued in a whisper, ‘If she’s dead, then it’s her ghost that comes to haunt me! Ever since I regained consciousness, she seems always to be there. This morning I thought she was standing by the bed. I turned round to look ... She is dead and we are alive. Let us hope that she won’t take her revenge!’
Séverine shuddered.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she cried. ‘You’ll drive me mad!’
She went out. Jacques heard her going downstairs to tend to Henri. He remained by the window, once again absorbed in the scene below — the railway line, the gate-keeper’s cottage with its large well, the little wooden section box, where Misard, for all the world as if he were asleep, performed his endless, repetitive tasks. Jacques sat contemplating these things for hours on end, as if he were pondering a problem he could not solve, yet on whose solution his life depended.
He could not take his eyes off Misard — such a pathetic, inoffensive, washed-out looking character, continually racked by a nasty little cough, a man who had poisoned his wife and reduced a fine healthy woman to nothing, like a voracious insect that is driven by only one impulse! For years he must have thought of nothing else, day and night, every minute of the twelve interminable hours he was on duty. Each time the telegraph sounded to announce a train he would blow his horn; then, once the train had passed and he had closed the line behind it, he would press one button to offer it to the next section and another button to free the line to the section it had just left. These were simple mechanical operations that had become an integral part of his dreary vegetable existence, a kind of bodily reflex. He was uneducated and obtuse; he never read anything, but simply sat waiting for the bells to ring, with his arms dangling at his sides and his eyes gazing vacantly into space. He spent nearly all his time sitting in his cabin, with no other distraction than trying to make his lunch last as long as possible. He would then relapse into his stupor, his mind completely blank and not a thought in his head, overcome with insuperable drowsiness and sometimes dropping off to sleep with