Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [33]
It was on Thursday evening that Thérèse would settle the day and time of their meetings. In the confusion at the end, when Mme Raquin and Camille were taking their guests to the front door, the young woman would go up to Laurent and whisper to him, squeezing his hand. Sometimes, when everyone’s back was turned, she would even kiss him, from a kind of bravado.
This life of alternating storm and calm lasted for eight months. The lovers lived in a state of complete beatitude. Thérèse was no longer bored and no longer desired anything, while Laurent, sated, cosseted and even plumper, feared nothing except the end of this delightful existence.
IX
One afternoon, when Laurent was about to leave work and hurry off to see Thérèse, who was expecting him, his boss called him in and informed him that in future he was forbidden to go out of the office. He had been having too much time off and the management had decided to sack him if he was away one more time.
Tied to his desk, he was in desperation until the evening. He had to earn his living, he could not afford to lose his job. When evening came, Thérèse’s wrathful look was a torture for him. He had no idea how to explain to his mistress why he had failed in his promise. While Camille was shutting up shop, he quickly went over to the young woman.
‘We can’t see one another any more,’ he whispered. ‘My boss won’t let me out again.’
Camille came back and Laurent had to go without any further explanation, leaving Thérèse stunned by this abrupt remark. In exasperation, refusing to admit that her pleasure could be denied, she spent a sleepless night devising ridiculous plans for them to meet. The following Thursday, she talked to Laurent for a minute longer. Their anxiety was increased by the fact that they did not even know where to meet so that they could talk it over. The young woman gave her lover a new rendezvous which, for the second time, he failed to keep. From then on, she had only one idea in her mind, which was to see him at all costs.
For a fortnight, Laurent had not been able to go near Thérèse, and he realized how essential the woman had become to him. Indulging his lusts had created new appetites in him, which urgently demanded satisfaction. He no longer felt any awkwardness at his mistress’s love-making, but sought it with the determination of a starving animal. A raging of the blood had infected his flesh and now that his mistress was being taken away from him, his passion burst out with blind fury; he loved her to distraction. Everything in the blossoming of this animal being seemed unconscious: he was obeying his instincts, letting himself be driven by the will of his body. If anyone had told him, a year earlier, that he would be enslaved by a woman, to the point of destroying his peace of mind, he would have burst out laughing. Desire had been working silently inside him, without his realizing it, and had eventually cast him, bound hand and foot, into the savage embraces of Thérèse. Now he was afraid of stepping beyond the bounds of prudence and did not dare come to the Passage du Pont-Neuf in the evenings, fearful that he might do something crazy. He was no longer his own master; his mistress, with her feline sinuosity and nervous flexibility, had gradually insinuated herself into every fibre of his body. He needed that woman to live as one needs to eat and drink.
He would surely have done something foolish had he not received a letter from Thérèse telling him to stay at home the next day. His mistress promised to come and see him at around eight o’clock in the evening.
On leaving the office, he got rid of Camille by saying that he was tired and wanted to go back to bed straight away. After dinner, Thérèse also played a part; she said something about a customer who had left without paying, pretended to be a resolute creditor and announced that she was going to claim her money. The customer lived at Batignolles. Mme Raquin