The Beast Within - Emile Zola [52]
‘Mother made a mistake marrying Misard,’ she said. ‘It’ll do her no good ... I couldn’t care less ... I’ve got enough on my plate. Whenever I try to help she tells me to mind my own business ... So she can sort it out herself. I keep out of the house. I think about all the things I’m going to do. I saw you go past on your train this morning. I was sitting over there in those bushes, but you never look. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Not now. Another day perhaps ... when we’re best friends.’
She had dropped her scissors. Still without speaking, Jacques took her two hands in his. She thrilled to his touch. But the minute he raised her hands to his burning lips, she recoiled from him in horror, like an untouched virgin. In an instant she was again the Amazon, the despiser of men, defiant, hostile, spurning his advance.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to. Let’s just sit quietly ... That’s all you men ever think of! You wouldn’t believe what Louisette told me the day she died at Cabuche’s! Not that it was anything I didn’t know already. I’ve seen the President up to his dirty tricks with girls. He used to bring them here. There’s one that nobody knows about. He married her off.’
Jacques was no longer listening to her; her words fell on deaf ears. He seized her in a violent embrace and fastened his lips to hers. She gave a small cry, a moan, so deep, so tender, so clearly betraying the long-concealed love she bore him. Yet still she fought against him, blindly, instinctively refusing to yield. She desired him, yet she resisted him. She needed him to conquer her. They did not speak. They remained locked together, breast to breast, each trying desperately to overpower the other. It appeared briefly that she might be the stronger. He was beginning to weaken, and she had almost managed to pin him down beneath her when he grabbed her by the throat. He tore open her bodice, exposing her breasts, hard and swollen from the struggle, milky white in the pale light of the moon. She fell to the ground on her back and surrendered herself to him, defeated.
But he did not take her. He drew back, gasping for breath, looking at her. He seemed to be possessed; some wild impulse made him look around him for a weapon, a stone, anything that he might use to kill her. His eyes fell upon the scissors glinting in the moonlight among the pieces of twine that she had been cutting. He grabbed them and was on the point of plunging them into her body between the two rose-tipped white breasts when a chill ran through him and his mind suddenly became clear. He threw the scissors to the ground and fled from her, horrified. Flore lay with her eyes closed, thinking that he had rejected her because she had resisted him.
Jacques ran off into the night. He followed a path which led up a hill and then back down into a narrow dell, running as fast as he could. His feet sent stones clattering noisily down the path in front of him. He swerved off to the left into the bushes and then went right again, coming out on to a bare hilltop. He rushed down the slope and collided with the railway fence at the bottom. A train was approaching, snorting and belching out sparks; at first he didn’t realize what it was and he was terrified. Then he remembered. Ah, yes, he thought, all those people, the never-ending stream; and here was he, alone, in torment! He got to his feet and started running again, up a hill and down the other side. Whichever way he went, he found himself back at the railway line, sometimes deep in a cutting that opened up before him like a bottomless chasm, sometimes high on an embankment that shut out the horizon like an enormous barricade. The deserted countryside with its endless succession of hills was like a maze with no way out; he was lost in a dreary wasteland of barren fields, from which his distracted mind could find no escape. He had been walking for what seemed