The Kill - Emile Zola [149]
The poor wretch held out his hands and begged: “Listen, my dear sweet Renée, don’t do anything foolish. Calm down. . . . Think a little about the scandal.”
“I don’t give a damn about the scandal! If you refuse, I’ll go down to the drawing room and shout out that I’ve slept with you and that you’re such a coward that now you want to marry the hunchback.”
He heard her and bowed his head, giving in already to this willful woman, who imposed herself on him so heedlessly.
“We’ll be going to Le Havre,” she resumed in a lower voice, savoring her dream, “and from there we’ll sail for England. Nobody will bother us anymore. If that isn’t far enough, we’ll go to America. Since I’m always cold, I’ll be better off there. I’ve often envied the Creoles.”
But as her plans for the future grew more grandiose by the minute, terror again took hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far with a woman who was assuredly mad, and to leave in his wake a scandal so shameful that he would be obliged to remain in exile forever—it was like a horrible nightmare snuffing the life out of him. He desperately sought a way out of that dressing room, that pink fortress in which he could hear the tolling of the madhouse bell at Charenton.9
Then he thought he saw a ray of hope. “The problem is that I have no money,” he said softly, so as not to set her off. “If you lock me up, I won’t be able to get any.”
“But I have money,” she replied triumphantly. “I have a hundred thousand francs. It’s all coming together quite nicely.”
She took from the mirror-front wardrobe the purchase-and-sale agreement that her husband had left her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She brought it to the dressing table, ordered Maxime to fetch pen and ink from the bedroom, pushed the soap aside, and signed the document.
“There,” she said, “the foolish thing is done. If I’m being robbed, it’s because I want to be robbed. . . . We’ll stop by Larsonneau’s office on the way to the railway station. . . . Now, my darling Maxime, I’m going to lock you up, and we’ll make our getaway through the garden when I’ve sent everyone home. We don’t even need to take any luggage.”
She was gay again. This madcap adventure delighted her. It was the ultimate eccentricity, an altogether original ending to the story, or so it seemed to Renée in the throes of her fever. It far surpassed her wish to take a trip in a balloon. She went and took Maxime in her arms, whispering, “I hurt you before, my poor darling. So you refused. . . . You’ll see how nice it will be. Would your hunchback love you as I love you? . . . That little half-breed isn’t a woman.”
She laughed, drew him toward her, and was kissing him on the lips when a noise made both of them turn their heads. Saccard was standing in the doorway.
A terrible silence ensued. Slowly, Renée removed her arms from around Maxime’s neck. She did not lower her brow but continued to stare at her husband with big eyes as unblinking as the eyes of a corpse. Meanwhile, Maxime, his head bowed, looking stunned and terrified, wobbled unsteadily now that he was no longer supported by her embrace. Saccard, thunderstruck by this ultimate blow, which at last drew a cry of pain from the husband and father in him, turned white as a sheet and did not move, but the fire in his eyes singed them from afar. In the moist and pungent air of the dressing room, the three candles burned quite high, their flames steady and erect, like glowing tears. And the only thing that broke the silence—the terrible silence—was the faint music that floated up the narrow staircase. The waltz, with its serpentine undulations, slithered and coiled and came to rest on the snowy-white carpet, amid the torn tights and discarded petticoats.
Then the husband moved forward into the room. A need for brutality mottled his face, and he clenched his fists to strike the guilty pair. Rage in this little dervish of a man exploded with the force of a pistol shot. As he continued to move toward them, he snickered: “You told her about your marriage, didn