Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [25]
Mme Raquin suddenly remembered little Laurent, who seemed to her to have grown up considerably; it was at least twenty years since she had seen him last. She tried to make up for her astonishment with a flood of memories and some quite maternal endearments. Laurent had sat down and was smiling serenely. He spoke out clearly and examined his surroundings with a calm and relaxed expression.
‘Just imagine,’ Camille said, ‘this joker has been working at the Orléans Railway Station for eighteen months, and it was not until this evening that we met and recognized one another. That’s how big and important the office is!’
The young man said this wide-eyed, pursing his lips, so proud was he to be a humble cog in such a huge mechanism. He went on, shaking his head:
‘Oh, but he’s well off, this one. He’s done his studies and he’s earning fifteen hundred francs already. His father sent him to boarding school where he did law and learned how to paint. Isn’t that right, Laurent? You must stay for dinner ...’
‘I’d be delighted,’ Laurent said, without further ado.
He took off his hat and settled down in the shop. Mme Raquin hurried away to attend to her saucepans. Thérèse, who had not spoken a word, was looking at the newcomer. She had never before seen a real man. Laurent amazed her: he was tall, strong and fresh-faced. She looked with a kind of awe at his low forehead with its rough black hair, at his plump cheeks, his red lips and his regular features with their sanguine beauty.2 Her gaze paused for a moment on his neck, a broad, short neck, thick and powerful. Then she became absorbed in the contemplation of the large hands resting on his knees; their fingers were squared off and the closed fist, which must be huge, could have stunned a bull. Laurent came of true peasant stock, with a somewhat heavy manner, rounded back, slow, studied movements and a calm, stubborn look about him. You could sense the swelling, well-developed muscles beneath his clothes, and the whole body, with its thick, firm flesh. Thérèse examined him curiously from his hands to his face, feeling a little shudder pass through her when she reached his bull’s neck.
Camille got out his volumes of Buffon and his ten-centime instalments, to show his friend that he, too, was working. Then, as though replying to a question that he had been asking himself for a few minutes, he said: ‘But, Laurent, you must know my wife? Don’t you remember the little cousin who used to play with us, in Vernon?’
‘I recognized Madame straight away,’ Laurent replied, staring Thérèse in the eyes.
The young woman felt somehow uneasy beneath this direct gaze, which seemed to penetrate right inside her. She gave a forced smile and exchanged a few words with Laurent and her husband, then hurried off to join her aunt. She was not comfortable.
They sat down to dinner. From the soup onwards, Camille thought he should look after his friend.
‘How is your father?’ he asked.
‘I really don’t know,’ Laurent replied. ‘We fell out. We haven’t written to one another for five years.’
‘Well, I never!’ the clerk exclaimed, amazed by this monstrous behaviour.
‘Yes, the dear man has his own ideas about things ... As he is always in dispute with his neighbours, he sent me off to boarding school, imagining that he would later have me as a lawyer who could win all his suits for him. Oh, Old Laurent only has useful ambitions! He wants to take advantage of every notion, however idiotic!’
‘But didn’t you want to be a lawyer?’ Camille asked, still more amazed.
‘Good Lord, no,’ his friend answered, with a laugh. ‘For two years, I pretended to be attending lectures so that I could collect the grant of twelve hundred francs that my father was giving me. I lived with one of my friends from school who’s a painter and I started to paint as well. It was fun; it’s a jolly business, not too tiring. We used to smoke and lark around all day long.’
The Raquin family stared in astonishment.
‘Unfortunately,’ Laurent went on, ‘it couldn’t last.