The Debacle - Emile Zola [238]
The chairs were pushed back and he went up to Goliath and said:
‘Judgement has been passed. You are to die.’
The two candles were burning with tall flames, like altar-candles, on each side of Goliath’s agonized face. He was making such efforts to beg for mercy, to shout words he could not get out, that the blue handkerchief over his mouth was soaked in foam. It was a terrible sight, this man reduced to silence, already as mute as a corpse, about to die with a flood of explanations and pleas stuck in his throat.
Cabasse was cocking the revolver.
‘Shall I blow his face in?’ he asked.
‘Oh no, no!’ cried Sambuc. ‘He would be only too pleased.’
And turning to Goliath:
‘You’re not a soldier, you don’t deserve the honour of departing with a bullet in your head. No, you’re going to peg out like the dirty swine of a spy you are.’
He turned round and politely asked:
‘Silvine, I’m not giving you orders, but I should like to have a wash-tub.’
During the trial scene Silvine had kept quite still. She was waiting, with set face, detached from herself and wholly occupied with the fixed idea that had motivated her for two days. When she was asked for a tub she just obeyed, disappeared for a moment into the cellar and returned with a big tub she used for washing Charlot’s clothes.
‘Put it under the table, near the edge.’
She put it there and as she straightened up her eyes once again caught Goliath’s. There was in the wretched man’s eyes a last supplication, and also the revolt of a man who didn’t want to die. But at that moment there was nothing left of the woman in her, nothing but the desire for this death, awaited as a deliverance. She went back again to the dresser, where she stayed.
Sambuc had opened the table drawer and taken out a big kitchen knife, the one they used for slicing the bacon.
‘All right, as you’re a pig I’m going to bleed you like a pig.’
He took his time, and discussed with Cabasse and Ducat the way to do the butchering job properly. There was even a dispute because Cabasse said that in his part of the world, in Provence, pigs were bled head down, while Ducat protested, outraged, considering this method barbarous and inconvenient.
‘Move him to the edge of the table over the tub so as not to make a mess.’
They moved him over, and Sambuc proceeded calmly and neatly. With a single cut of the big knife he slit the throat across. The blood from the severed carotid poured out at once into the tub with a little noise like falling water. He had taken care with the cut and only a few drops pumped out with the heartbeats. Although this made death slower, there were no struggles visible, for the ropes were strong and the body remained quite motionless. Not a single jerk or gasp. The only way the march of death could be followed was on the face, a mask distorted by terror, from which the blood was receding drop by drop as the skin lost its colour and went white as a sheet. The eyes also emptied themselves. They dimmed and then went out.
‘I say, Silvine, we shall have to have a sponge, though.’
She did not respond, but seemed rooted to the floor, and her arms had closed instinctively over her breast like a collar of iron. She was watching. Then she suddenly realized that Chariot was there, clinging to her skirt. He must have woken up and managed to open the doors, and nobody had seen him tiptoe in, like the inquisitive child he was. How long had he been there, half hidden behind his mother? He was watching, too. With his big blue eyes, under his mop of yellow hair, he was looking at the blood running down, the little red trickle slowly filling the tub. Perhaps it amused him. Had he not understood at first? Was he suddenly touched by the wind of horror, did he have an instinctive consciousness of the abomination he was witnessing? Anyhow, he suddenly screamed in panic:
‘Oh Mummy, Mummy! I’m frightened, take me away!’
It shook Silvine to the depths of her being. It was too much, and something gave way within her, horror at last got the better of the strength and excitement of the obsession that had kept