Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [45]
When the taking of the statements was finished, Laurent felt a wave of warm joy filling his flesh with new life. From the time when the victim had buried his teeth into his neck, it was as though he had been stiffened, acting mechanically, according to a plan laid down long in advance. He was possessed by the sole instinct of self-preservation which dictated his words and advised him how to act. Now, with the certainty that he would get away with it, the blood started to flow through his veins with sweet tranquillity. The police had gone past his crime and seen nothing; they were fooled, they had just acquitted him. He was saved. At this thought, he felt a sweat of pleasure along the length of his body, and a warmth that restored free movement to his limbs and to his mind. He continued in his role as the grieving friend with incomparable skill and self-assurance. Underneath, he felt an animal satisfaction; he thought of Thérèse, lying in the room upstairs.
‘We can’t leave that poor young woman here,’ he said to Michaud. ‘She may be in danger of serious illness, we really must take her back to Paris ... Come on, we’ll persuade her to come with us.’
Upstairs, he himself spoke to Thérèse, begging her to get up and let them take her to the Passage du Pont-Neuf. When she heard the sound of his voice, she shuddered, opened her eyes wide and looked at him. She was haggard and trembling. Painfully and without answering, she sat up. The men left the room, leaving her alone with the restaurant owner’s wife. When she was dressed, she came unsteadily down the stairs and got into the cab, supported by Olivier.
No one spoke during the journey. Laurent, with supreme daring and insolence, slid one hand along the young woman’s skirts and grasped her fingers. He was sitting opposite her, in the shifting shadows. He could not see her face, which she kept sunk on her breast. When he had taken her hand, he pressed it strongly and kept it in his until they reached Rue Mazarine. He felt her hand tremble, but she did not take it away; on the contrary, she squeezed his quickly a few times. And, one held in the other, the hands burned, the damp palms stuck together and the clenched fingers bruised one another whenever the cab shook. It seemed to Laurent and Thérèse that the blood of the other was flowing into their chests through their joined hands; their fists became the burning hearth on which their life seethed. Wrapped in the darkness and the desolate silence around them, this furious squeezing of hands was like a crushing weight bearing down on Camille’s head to keep it under the water.
When the cab stopped, Michaud and his son were the first to get down. Laurent leaned over towards his mistress and softly murmured: ‘Be strong, Thérèse. We have a long time to wait. Remember...’
The young woman had still not spoken. She opened her lips for the first time since her husband’s death.
‘Oh, I’ll remember!’ she said, trembling, in a voice as soft as a sigh.
Olivier gave her his hand, to help her down. This time, Laurent went as far as the shop. Mme Raquin was lying down, in the throes of delirium. Thérèse dragged herself to her own bed and Suzanne hardly had time to undress her. Feeling reassured and seeing that everything was working out as he hoped, Laurent left. He went slowly back to his dingy attic in the Rue Saint-Victor.
It was after midnight. A cool breeze was blowing down the silent, empty streets. The young man could hear nothing but the regular sound of his footsteps on the stone pavements. The cool air filled him with a sense of well-being, while the silence and the dark gave him brief sensations of pleasure. He strolled along ...
At last, he was done with his crime. He had killed Camille. All that was finished business and would not be spoken about again. He would live quietly and wait until he could take possession of Thérèse. He had sometimes found the idea of the murder oppressive; but now that the murder was accomplished, his chest felt lighter,