Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [49]
He went to see Old Michaud and told him that he had just recognized Camille on a slab in the Morgue. The formalities were completed, the drowned man was buried and a death certificate made out. Laurent, with nothing to worry about now, threw himself with delight into forgetting his crime and the annoying, distressing scenes that had followed the murder.
XIV
The shop in the Passage du Pont-Neuf stayed closed for three days. When it reopened, it seemed darker and damper. The window display, yellow with dust, appeared to be wearing the family’s mourning; everything was scattered haphazardly in the dirty windows. Behind the linen bonnets hanging from rusted hooks, the pallor of Thérèse’s face was duller and more earthy. Its immobility took on a sinister calm.
All the old wives in the arcade were full of sympathy. The woman who sold costume jewellery pointed out the young woman’s emaciated profile to each of her customers as an interesting and regrettable object of curiosity.
For three days, Mme Raquin and Thérèse stayed in their beds without speaking or even seeing one another. The old haberdasher was propped upright on her pillows, staring vacantly in front of her with the gaze of an idiot. Her son’s death had given her a massive blow to the head and she fell as though bludgeoned. For hours on end she remained, calm and motionless, swallowed up by the bottomless gulf of her despair; then, at times, a crisis seized her and she wept and cried out in delirium. Thérèse, in the next room, seemed to be asleep; she had turned her head to the wall and drawn the blanket over her face; and she lay there, stiff and silent, not one sob moving her body or the sheet that covered it. It was as though she were hiding the thoughts that kept her pinned, rigid, in the darkness of the alcove. Suzanne, who looked after the two women, went softly from one to the other, shuffling her feet, but she could not get Thérèse to turn round, only to react with sudden movements of irritation, nor could she console Mme Raquin, whose tears started to flow as soon as a voice roused her in her despondency.
On the third day, Thérèse threw back the blanket and sat up in bed, swiftly, with a sort of feverish resolve. She brushed her hair aside and held her hands against her temples, staying like that for a moment, with her hands up and her eyes staring, as though still reflecting. Then she jumped down on to the carpet. Her limbs were shivering and red with fever; there were broad, livid patches on her skin, which was wrinkled in places, as though it had no flesh under it. She had aged.
Suzanne, just coming into the room, was quite surprised to find her up. In a placid, drawling voice, she advised her to get back into bed and rest some more. Thérèse took no notice; she was looking for her clothes and putting them on with hurried, trembling hands. When she was dressed, she went to examine herself in a mirror, rubbed her eyes and ran her hands across her face, as though to obliterate something. Then, without a word, she walked quickly across the dining room and into Mme Raquin’s room.
The older woman was temporarily in a state of stunned calm. When Thérèse came in, she turned her head and looked at the young widow as she came across and stood in front of her, silent and depressed. The two stared at one another for a few seconds, the niece with growing anxiety and the aunt making a painful effort of memory. At last it came back to her and she held out her trembling arms, hugging Thérèse around the neck and saying:
‘My poor child! My poor Camille!’
She was weeping and the tears dried on the burning skin of the young woman, who was hiding her face in the folds of the sheet. Thérèse stayed there, bending over, letting the mother weep out her tears. Ever since