Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [35]
Laurent said nothing.
‘You see,’ she went on, ‘all the usual methods are no good.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m not a fool, I want to love you in peace. I was just thinking that accidents do happen every day, that a foot can slip or a tile fall off the roof ... Do you understand? In that last case, only the wind is to blame.’
His voice was strange. He gave a smile and added, in a caressing tone:
‘Now then, don’t worry, we’ll love one another, we shall live together happily ... Since you can’t come here, I’ll arrange it somehow ... If we should stay without seeing one another for several months, don’t forget me, but know that I am working for our happiness.’
He put his arms around Thérèse as she was opening the door to go.
‘You are mine, aren’t you?’ he went on. ‘Swear to me that you will give yourself to me entirely, at any time, whenever I want — ’
‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘I belong to you. Do what you wish with me.’
They stayed there for a moment, fierce, wild and silent. Then Thérèse roughly tore herself away from him and, without turning round, left the attic and went down the stairs. Laurent listened to the sound of her receding footsteps.
When the sound had died away, he went back into his little room and lay down. The bedclothes were warm. He felt suffocated in this narrow cage, which Thérèse had left full of the heat of her passion. He seemed to be still breathing something of her, she had been there, leaving behind a pervasive scent of herself, a smell of violets; but now all he had to press in his arms was his mistress’s intangible ghost, present all around him; he was in a fever of reviving, unsatisfied desire. He did not close the window, but lay on his back, his arms bare and his hands unclenched, drinking in the cool air, while pondering it all as he gazed at the square of dark blue outlined above him by the skylight.
Until daybreak, he turned the same idea over in his mind. Before Thérèse came, he had not considered the murder of Camille. It was under pressure of events, annoyed at the idea of not seeing his mistress again, that he had spoken about the man’s death. And, at that, a new corner of his unconscious being had come to light. In the passion of adultery, he had begun to dream about killing.
Now, calmer, alone in the peace of night, he was reviewing the notion of murder. The idea of death, uttered in desperation between two kisses, came back keenly, relentlessly. Driven by insomnia, aroused by the pungent scents that Thérèse had left behind, he devised traps, working out what could go wrong and enumerating all the benefits to be derived from becoming a murderer.
He had everything to gain from the crime. He told himself that his father, the peasant in Jeufosse, was never going to die; he might have to spend another ten years working in the department, eating in cheap restaurants and living, without a wife, in an attic. The idea infuriated him. On the other hand, with Camille dead, he would marry Thérèse, become the heir to Mme Raquin, resign from his job and stroll around in the sunshine. It pleased him to imagine this lazy existence; he could already see himself as a man of leisure, eating and sleeping, waiting patiently for his father to die. And when reality invaded his dream, he bumped into Camille and clenched his fists, as though to strike him down.
Laurent wanted Thérèse. He wanted her for himself alone, always within reach. If he did not get rid of the husband, the wife would elude him. She had told him that she could not come back. He would happily have kidnapped her and carried her off somewhere, but then they would both die of hunger. There was less risk in killing the husband. There would be no scandal, he would just push a man out of the way in order to take his place. With his brutal peasant reasoning, he considered this solution both an excellent and a natural one. It was in fact his innate prudence that suggested adopting this quick expedient.
He lay sprawling on his bed, flat