Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [44]
The poor mother saw her son tumbled along in the murky waters of the Seine, his body stiff and horribly swollen; and, at the same time, she saw him as a little baby in his cot, when she used to defend him from death as it tried to claim him. She had brought him into the world more than ten times and she loved him for all the love she had shown him in the previous thirty years. And now he had died far away from her, all of a sudden, in cold, dirty water, like a dog. She remembered the warm blankets that she used to wrap around him. How much care, what a warm childhood, how many endearments and expressions of affection — all this, only to see him one day miserably drowned! At this thought, Mme Raquin felt her throat tightening and hoped that she was about to die, stifled by so much grief.
Old Michaud hurried out. He left Suzanne with the haberdasher and went back with Olivier to look for Laurent, so that they could go directly to Saint-Ouen.
On the way, they barely exchanged a couple of words. Each had retreated into a corner of the cab which was shaking them along over the cobbles. They stayed silent and unmoving in the depth of the shadows that filled the carriage. From time to time, the swift ray of a gas lamp threw a flash of light across their faces. The dreadful event that had brought them together enveloped them in a sort of melancholy dejection.
When they finally reached the restaurant on the river bank, they found Thérèse lying down, her hands and head burning with fever. The café owner told them quietly that the young lady was running a high temperature. The truth was that Thérèse, feeling weak and cowardly, was afraid that she would have a fit and confess to the murder, so she had decided to fall ill. She remained fiercely mute, keeping her lips and eyelids tight closed and refusing to see anyone, because she was afraid to speak. With the bedclothes up to her chin and her face half buried in the pillow, she curled up like a baby and listened anxiously to everything that was being said around her. And, in the reddish light that filtered through her closed eyelids, she could still see Camille and Laurent struggling at the edge of the boat and her husband, pale, frightful, taller than life, rising straight up out of the muddy water. This inescapable vision fuelled the fever in her blood.
Old Michaud tried to talk to her, to console her. She shrugged him off, turned round and started to sob again.
‘Leave her, Monsieur,’ said the restaurant owner. ‘She shivers at the slightest noise. What she surely needs, you see, is rest.’
Downstairs, in the dining room, a policeman was taking statements about the accident. Michaud and his son came down, followed by Laurent. Once Olivier let it be known that he was an important official at the Prefecture, everything was over in ten minutes. The oarsmen were still there, giving minute details of the drowning, describing how the three trippers had fallen in and claiming to be eyewitnesses. If Olivier and his father had had the slightest suspicion, it would have disappeared as soon as they heard these statements. But they had not for a moment doubted Laurent’s honesty. On the contrary, they described him to the policeman as the victim’s best friend, and they were at pains to insist that the official report should include the fact that the young man had jumped into the water to save Camille Raquin. The following day, the newspapers described the event with a wealth of details: the despairing mother, the inconsolable widow, the noble, courageous friend ... it was all there, in the report which did