Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [105]
The evening rows began again. In fact, the blows and shouts lasted throughout the day. Mistrust was added to hatred and this mistrust finally drove them mad.
They were afraid of one another. The scene that followed Laurent’s demand for five thousand francs was soon being replayed morning and evening. They had an obsession with betraying one another. They could not escape from it. When one of them spoke a word or made a movement, the other imagined that he or she was planning to go to the commissioner of police. At that they would fight or plead with one another. In their anger, they would shout that they were going to reveal all and terrified one another to death; then they trembled, humiliated themselves and promised, with bitter tears, to keep silent. They suffered terribly, but did not feel brave enough to cure their ills by putting a hot iron on the wound. When they threatened to confess to the crime, it was only to scare each other and to drive the thought away, because they would never have found the strength to speak and to look for peace in punishment.
More than twenty times, they went as far as the door of the police station, one following the other. Sometimes it was Laurent who wanted to confess to the murder, sometimes it was Thérèse who would hurry to give herself up. And they always met again in the street, deciding to wait a little longer, after exchanging insults and earnest entreaties.
Each new crisis would leave them more suspicious and afraid.
They spied on one another, from morning to evening. Laurent no longer left the house in the arcade and Thérèse would not let him go out alone. Their mutual suspicion and their terror of admitting their guilt brought them together in an awful union. Never since they were married had they lived so closely together and never had they suffered so much. But despite the pain that they inflicted, they never took their eyes off one another, preferring to put up with the most agonizing torments rather than be apart for an hour. If Thérèse went down to the shop, Laurent would follow her, afraid that she might talk to a customer. If Laurent was standing at the door, watching the people going up and down the arcade, Thérèse would stand next to him to make sure that he did not speak to anyone. On Thursday evening, when the guests were there, the murderers would exchange pleading looks, and listen with terror to what the other was saying, each expecting a confession from his or her accomplice and discovering compromising meanings in every new sentence the other began.
This state of war could not go on for much longer.
It got to the point where both Thérèse and Laurent, separately, dreamed of escaping by means of a new crime from the consequences of their first one. It was essential for one of them to disappear for the other to enjoy a measure of peace. This idea occurred to them both at the same time: both felt the pressing need for separation and both wanted that separation to be eternal. The murder that they were each thinking about seemed natural to them, inevitable, a necessary consequence of the murder of Camille. They did not even discuss it, they just accepted the scheme as their only salvation. Laurent decided that he would kill Thérèse, because Thérèse was getting in his way, because she could destroy him with a word and because she caused him unbearable misery. Thérèse made up her mind to kill Laurent for the same reasons.
This firm decision to murder calmed them a little. They made their plans. As