Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [56]
He could really watch his thoughts as they unfolded in front of him. With his eyes focused on the gloom, he could actually see. When, after running through the streets, entering the arcade and going up the little staircase, he imagined he could make out Thérèse, eager and pale, he jumped quickly out of bed, muttering: ‘I must go, she’s waiting for me.’ His sudden movement dispelled the vision. He felt the cold of the floor and was afraid. For a moment, he stayed without moving, barefoot, listening. He thought he could hear a noise outside. If he went to see Thérèse, he would once again have to go past the cellar door downstairs, and this idea sent a great cold shudder up his back. Once again, he felt terrified, with a stupid, overwhelming dread. He looked defiantly round his room and saw some whitish streaks of light; and so, gently, cautiously, but at the same time with anxious haste, he got back into bed and curled up, hiding himself under the blanket, as though getting out of the way of a weapon, a knife that was threatening him.
The blood had rushed suddenly to his neck and his neck was burning. He put a hand to it, feeling the scar from Camille’s bite beneath his fingers. He had almost forgotten the bite, and now he was terrified to find it on his skin. He imagined it eating into his flesh. He quickly pulled his hand away so that he would not have to feel it, but he did feel it still, pressing in, devouring his neck. So he tried to scratch it gently, with the end of a nail, but the dreadful burning increased. To prevent himself from tearing off his skin, he pressed his hands between his knees, which were drawn up under him. And there he remained, stiff, on edge, his neck burning and his teeth chattering with fear.
Now his mind became fixed on Camille, with terrifying intensity. Until then, the drowned man had not troubled Laurent’s sleep. But now the thought of Thérèse brought with it the spectre of her husband. The murderer did not dare reopen his eyes: he was afraid of seeing the victim in a corner of the room. At one point, he thought that his bed was shaking in some odd way; he imagined Camille hiding under it and shaking it like that, so that Laurent would fall out and he could bite him. Crazed with fear, his hair standing on end, he grasped his mattress, imagining that the shaking was getting stronger and stronger.
Then he perceived that the bed was not moving. This brought about a reaction in him. He sat up, lit his candle and called himself an idiot. To calm his fever, he drank a large glass of water.
‘I was wrong to drink at that wine shop,’ he thought. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. It’s silly. I’ll be knocked out later on in the office. I should have gone to sleep straight away when I got into bed, and not thought about a load of things. That’s what’s keeping me awake ... Now let’s go to sleep.’
He blew out the light again and put his head into the pillow, slightly cooler and fully determined not to think any more or be afraid. Tiredness began to relax his nerves.
He did not sleep his usual, heavily weighted sleep. He slipped gradually into a sort of drowsiness. He was like someone merely numbed, plunged in a sweet, voluptuous state of insensibility. He could feel his drowsing body and, in his insensate flesh, his mind remained awake. He had chased away the ideas in his head and struggled against wakefulness, and now that he was numbed, when he had no strength and no willpower, the ideas slowly came back, one by one, to take possession of his weakened self. His daydreams began again. He went back over the journey between himself and