Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [38]
On days when they went out for a walk, Mme Raquin would accompany the children to the end of the arcade. She kissed them as though they were leaving on a journey, giving endless instructions and expressing earnest wishes.
‘Above all,’ she would tell them, ‘beware of accidents. There is so much traffic in Paris! Promise me you won’t go among crowds.’
Eventually, she would let them go, looking after them until they disappeared. Then she went back into the shop. Her legs were getting heavy and she could not walk any great distance.
At other times, though less often, the couple would escape from Paris; they would go to Saint-Ouen or Asnières,1 and eat a fried meal in one of the restaurants by the Seine. These were real occasions, talked about for a month in advance. Thérèse agreed more readily — almost with joy — to such outings, which would keep her out in the open air until ten or eleven at night. Saint-Ouen, with its green islands, reminded her of Vernon; there, all the wild affection that she had felt for the river when she was a girl revived in her. She would sit down on the bank, dipping her hands in the water and feeling truly alive in the heat of the sun, moderated by the cool breeze in the shade of the trees. While she was tearing and dirtying her dress on the pebbles and the muddy ground, Camille would carefully spread out his handkerchief and crouch down beside her, taking a dozen different precautionary measures. Recently, the young couple had almost always taken Laurent with them; he would brighten up the walk with his jokes and his peasant vigour.
One Sunday, Camille, Thérèse and Laurent set out for Saint-Ouen at about eleven o’clock, after lunch. They had planned the trip for a long time and it was to be their last that season. Autumn was coming and cold gusts were starting to freeze the evening air.
That morning, however, the sky was still blue and serene. It was hot in the sun and warm under the shade. They decided that they should take advantage of the last fine day.
The three trippers took a cab, pursued by the old haberdasher’s anxious outpourings and lamentations. They crossed Paris and left the cab at the fortifications,2 carrying on to Saint-Ouen on foot. It was midday. The road, brightly lit by the sun and covered in dust, had the dazzling brightness of snow. The air was thick, acrid and scorching. Thérèse walked along on Camille’s arm, with little steps, protected by his sunshade, while he mopped his brow with a huge handkerchief. Behind them came Laurent, with the sun beating down on the back of his neck, though he showed no sign of feeling it. He was whistling, knocking aside the pebbles with his foot and, from time to time, glancing at the swaying of his mistress’s hips with a fierce glint in his eye.
As soon as they got to Saint-Ouen, they set about finding a clump of trees with a carpet of green grass in the shade. They crossed over to an island and pushed their way into the undergrowth. The fallen leaves lay on the ground in a reddish layer, which snapped under their feet with a dry crackling sound. The tree trunks were standing upright, numberless, like clusters of Gothic columns, and the branches dipped right down to their foreheads, so that their only horizon was the bronze vault of dying leaves and the black-and-white shafts of the aspens and oaks.3 The walkers were in a wilderness, a melancholy pit in the silence and cool of a narrow clearing. All around, they could hear the Seine rumbling by.
Camille had chosen a dry