Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [23]
Thérèse impatiently rejected his books. She preferred to remain idle, staring, her thoughts vaguely wandering. Meanwhile, she remained even-tempered and easygoing; all her will was bent on the effort to make herself into a passive instrument, supremely compliant and self-denying.
Business was slow. The profits remained steadily the same every month. The clientele was made up of women who worked in the district. Every five minutes, a young woman would come in and buy a few sous’ worth of goods. Thérèse served the customers always with the same words and a mechanical smile on her lips. Mme Raquin was more flexible and talkative; and, to tell the truth, she was the one who attracted and kept the customers.
For three years, the days went on, one like the next. Camille was not absent from his office for a single day; his mother and his wife hardly left the shop. Thérèse, living in this dank darkness, in this dreary, depressing silence, would see life stretching in front of her, quite empty, bringing her each evening to the same cold bed and each morning to the same featureless day.
IV
Once a week, on Thursday evenings, the Raquin family received guests. They would light a big lamp in the dining room and put a kettle on to make tea. It was a whole palaver. This evening stood out from all the rest; it had become one of the family customs - a madly jolly (though respectable) orgy. They would go to bed at eleven.
In Paris Mme Raquin met up with one of her old friends, police commissioner Michaud, who had been in the force in Vernon for twenty years and lived in the same house as her. So they had got to know one another very well; then, when the widow sold up to go and live in her house by the river, they gradually lost sight of one another. Michaud came up from the provinces a few months later, to enjoy the fifteen hundred francs of his pension peacefully in Paris, in the Rue de Seine. One rainy day, he met his old friend in the Passage du Pont-Neuf and that very same evening, he went round for a meal at the Raquins.
This was the start of their Thursdays. The retired police commissioner got in the habit of coming regularly once a week. After a while, he brought his son, Olivier, a tall lad of thirty, dry and thin, who had married a rather small, slow, sickly woman. Olivier had a job with a salary of three thousand francs at the Prefecture de Police, which made Camille exceptionally jealous; he was head clerk in the department of security and order. From the very first, Thérèse hated this stiff, cold young man who felt he was honouring the shop in the arcade by bringing along the dryness of his lanky body and the weakness of his poor little wife.
Camille introduced another guest, a veteran employee of the Orléans Railway. Grivet had served there for twenty years; he was head clerk and earned two thousand one hundred francs. He was the one who handed out the work in Camille’s office and the younger man showed him a degree of respect. In his dreams, he imagined that Grivet would die some day and that he might replace him, after ten years. Grivet was delighted with the welcome Mme Raquin gave him and would come back every week without fail. Six months later, his Thursday visit had become a duty and he would go to the Passage du Pont-Neuf as he went every morning to the office, mechanically, with the instinct of an animal.
From that time on, the gatherings became delightful. At seven o‘clock, Mme Raquin would light the fire, put the lamp in the middle of the table, place a set of dominoes beside it and wipe the tea service which stood on the dresser. At eight o’clock precisely, Old Michaud and Grivet met in front of the shop, one coming from the Rue de Seine, the other from the Rue Mazarine. They used to come in and