The Kill - Emile Zola [88]
He laid the bill on the mantelpiece, took up the tongs, and began to poke the fire. This mania for raking ashes while talking business had begun with him as a calculated stratagem but had become a habit. Whenever he came to a figure or statement that would have been difficult to pronounce forthrightly, he would knock a few logs off the pile and then laboriously repair it by pushing the logs back together and collecting smaller pieces to add to the heap. Sometimes he would almost disappear into the fireplace to go after a stray ember. His voice would become muffled, and the person to whom he was talking would become impatient or fascinated by the clever constructions he made with the hot coals and stop listening; and as a general rule they left him defeated but happy. Even when he called on other people in their homes, he would tyrannically take up the tongs. During the summer he toyed with a quill, a letter opener, or a penknife.
“My dear,” he said, just as he gave the fire a hard poke that sent the logs flying, “I beg your pardon once again for going into these details. . . . I’ve been punctual in paying you the interest on the money you placed in my hands. Without wishing to hurt your feelings, I can even say that I simply regarded that interest as your pocket money, paying your expenses and never asking you to contribute your half of the common household expenditures.”
He paused. Renée was in agony as she watched him clear a space in the ashes for a log. He was about to broach a delicate matter.
“I’ve been obliged, you understand, to make your money yield a substantial rate of interest. Rest assured that the capital is in good hands. . . . As for the money received for your Sologne properties, part of it went to pay for the house we are living in. The rest is invested in an excellent company, the Société Générale des Ports du Maroc. . . . We’re not going to count every penny, are we? But I wanted to make it clear to you that we poor husbands are sometimes sadly misjudged.”
He must have had a powerful reason for lying less than usual. The truth was that Renée’s dowry had long since ceased to exist. It had become one of the phony assets in Saccard’s safe. Although he was paying out interest on his wife’s money at an annual rate of two or three hundred percent or more, he wouldn’t have been able to produce a single bond or the smallest shred of the original capital. As he had half confessed, moreover, the 500,000 francs from the Sologne properties had gone into the down payment on the house and furniture, the total cost of which was nearly two million. He still owed a million to the decorator and the contractor.
“I make no demands of you,” Renée said at last. “I know that I’m very much in your debt.”
“Oh, my dear!” he exclaimed, taking his wife’s hand without putting down the tongs. “What an unpleasant thought! . . . Look, this is the situation in a nutshell. I’ve been unlucky on the Bourse, Toutin-Laroche has done some foolish things, and Mignon and Charrier are louts who’ve pulled a fast one on me. And that’s why I can’t pay your bill. You forgive me, don’t you?”
He seemed genuinely wrought up. He poked the tongs into the pile of logs, sending sparks shooting out like fireworks. Renée remembered the worried look he had worn for some time, but she had no way of divining the astonishing truth. Saccard had reached the point where he had to pull off a miracle every day. He lived in a house worth two million francs, on a princely allowance, yet some mornings he didn’t have a thousand francs in his safe. His expenses did not appear to be diminishing. He survived on debt, surrounded by a horde of creditors who from one day to the next devoured the scandalous profits he realized on certain of his dealings. Meanwhile, companies were collapsing under him, and deeper holes were opening up beneath his feet—holes that he leapt over because