Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [22]
Confronted with the reality, Mme Raquin was embarrassed, ashamed of her dreams. She tried to defend her purchase. She found an answer to every new drawback as it appeared, explaining the darkness by the fact that the weather was dull, and summed up by saying that all that was needed was a good sweep.
‘Huh!’ Camille replied. ‘It’s all quite satisfactory. In any case, we’ll only come up here in the evenings. I won’t be home before five or six o’clock. The two of you will have each other for company, so you won’t get bored.’
The young man would never have agreed to live in such a hovel if he had not been counting on the cosy comfort of his office. He told himself that he would be warm all day in his department and that, in the evenings, he could go to bed early.
For a whole week, the shop and living quarters remained in disorder. From the first day onwards, Thérèse sat behind the counter and did not move from her place. Mme Raquin was astonished by this attitude of resignation. She had imagined that the young woman would try to beautify her home, put flowers on the window-sills and ask for new wallpaper, curtains and carpets. When she suggested some improvement or a repair, her niece just replied calmly:
‘What’s the use? We’re very well as we are, we don’t need any luxuries.’
It was Mme Raquin who had to arrange the bedrooms and put some order into the shop. Eventually, Thérèse got tired of seeing her constantly moving around the place; she hired a cleaner and forced her aunt to come and sit beside her.
It was a month before Camille found a job. He spent as little time as possible in the shop, wandering the streets all day long. He became so bored that he even spoke of going back to Vernon. Finally, he got a place in the offices of the Orléans Railway Company,1 where he earned a hundred francs a month. He had realized his dream.
In the morning, he left at eight. He went down the Rue Guénégaud and arrived on the banks of the river. Then, walking along slowly with his hands in his pockets, he followed the Seine from the Institut to the Jardin des Plantes.2 This long walk, which he took twice a day, never bored him. He watched the river flow by and paused to see a string of barges going along it. His mind was blank. He would often station himself opposite Notre-Dame and stare at the scaffolding around the church, which was then being restored; these huge timbers amused him, though he did not know why. Then, as he went on, he glanced into the Port aux Vins3 and counted the number of cabs coming from the station. In the evening, worn out and with his head full of some silly story he had heard at the office, he went through the Jardin des Plantes and had a look at the bears, if he was not in too much of a hurry. He would stay there for half an hour, leaning over the pit and watching the bears as they ambled heavily around. It amused him to see how these big creatures walked. He stared at them, with his jaw hanging, wide-eyed, like an idiot enjoying the sight of them as they moved about. Finally, he would make up his mind to go home, dragging his feet and taking in the passers-by, the carriages and the shops.
When he got home, he would eat and then start to read. He had bought the works of Buffon4 and every evening he would set himself the task of reading twenty or thirty pages, even though it bored him. He would also read the History of the Consulate and the Empire by Thiers and Lamartine’s History of the Girondins,5 which he got in parts at ten centimes each, or else some work of popular science. He thought he was improving himself.