Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [34]
She hurried to the Port aux Vins, slipping on the greasy pavements and bumping into people on the street in her haste. Her face was damp with sweat and her hands were burning; she was like a drunken woman. She quickly ran up the stairs in the lodging house. On the sixth floor, breathless, through blurred eyes, she saw Laurent leaning over the banisters, waiting for her.
She came into the garret. The space was so small that her wide skirts could hardly fit inside it. She tore off her hat with one hand and leaned against the bed, swooning ...
The skylight was wide open and poured the cool of the evening on to the burning heat of the bed. The lovers stayed for a long time in this hovel, as though at the bottom of a hole. Suddenly, Thérèse heard the clock on La Pitié1 strike ten. She wished she had been deaf. She raised herself painfully off the bed and looked round the garret, which she had not yet examined. She looked for her hat, tied the ribbons and sat down again, saying in a measured voice:
‘I have to go.’
Laurent had come over and was kneeling in front of her. He took her hands.
‘Goodbye,’ she said, without moving.
‘Don’t just say goodbye,’ he insisted. ‘That’s too vague. When will you come back?’
She looked straight in his eyes.
‘Do you want the truth?’ she said. ‘Well, the truth is that I don’t think I shall come back. I don’t have any excuse, I can’t invent one.’
‘So we must say farewell, for good?’
‘No! I don’t want to!’
She spoke the words with a mixture of fury and terror. Then, without knowing what she was saying and without getting up, she added in a quieter voice:
‘I’m leaving.’
Laurent thought. His mind turned to Camille.
‘I’ve got nothing against him,’ he said finally, without saying the man’s name. ‘But he really is too much of a nuisance. Couldn’t you get rid of him for us, send him on a journey somewhere, a long way off?’
‘Oh, yes! Send him on a journey!’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Do you think a man like that would agree to go on a journey? There’s only one journey from which no one returns ... But he will bury the lot of us. All those types with one foot in the grave never seem to die.’
There was a pause. Laurent remained on his knees, pressed against his mistress, his head leaning on her breast.
‘I had a dream,’ he said. ‘I wanted to spend a whole night with you, to go to sleep in your arms and wake up the next morning to your kisses. I want to be your husband ... Do you understand?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Thérèse answered, trembling.
She suddenly leaned over Laurent’s face, covering it with kisses. The laces on her hat caught on the young man’s rough beard; she had forgotten that she was dressed and that she would crease her clothes. She was sobbing, panting as she murmured between her tears.
‘Don’t say such things,’ she said. ‘Don’t say such things, because I won’t have the strength to leave you, I’ll stay here ... You should give me courage. Tell me that we’ll see one another again. It’s true, isn’t it: you do need me? One day we’ll find a way of living together, won’t we?’
‘So come back, come back tomorrow,’ Laurent insisted, his trembling hands stroking her waist.
‘But I can’t come back ... I told you, I don’t have any excuse.’
She was wringing her hands. She continued:
‘It’s not the scandal that bothers me! If you like, when I get home, I’ll tell Camille that you are my lover and I’ll come back here to sleep ... I’m worried about you. I don’t want to upset your life, I want to make you happy.’
The young man’s instinctive caution came to the fore.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t behave like children. Now, if your husband were to die ...’
‘If my husband were to die,’ Thérèse repeated slowly.
‘We would get married, we wouldn’t fear a thing, we would revel in our love ... What a good, sweet life it would be!’
She was sitting up now, her cheeks pale, looking with dark eyes at her lover. Her lips were twitching.
‘People do