Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [72]
‘His portrait?’ Laurent said, his hair standing on end.
‘Yes, you know, the painting you did. My aunt was going to have it in her room from today. She must have forgotten to take it down.’
‘Of course, his portrait ...’
For a time, the murderer did not recognize the picture. He was so disturbed by it that he forgot that he had himself drawn the clumsy outlines of those features and filled in the dirty colours that now appalled him. Terror made him see the canvas as it really was: crude, badly composed and muddy, showing the grimacing face of a corpse against its black background. His work astonished him and crushed him with its atrocious ugliness. Worst of all were the two white eyes swimming in their soft, yellowish sockets, which precisely reminded him of the decaying eyes of the drowned man in the Morgue. For a moment, he could not catch his breath, thinking that Thérèse was lying to reassure him. Then he made out the frame and became a little calmer.
‘Go and take him down,’ he said softly to the young woman.
‘No, no! I’m too afraid!’ she replied, shuddering.
Laurent himself started to shake again. At times, the frame vanished and all he could see were the two white eyes staring hard at him.
‘I beg you,’ he said again, imploring her. ‘Go and take him down.’
‘No, no!’
‘We’ll turn him to the wall and then we won’t be afraid.’
‘No, I can’t do it.’
The murderer, cowardly and grovelling, pushed the young woman towards the picture, hiding behind her so as to escape the drowned man’s gaze. She dodged away and he decided to take the plunge: he went over to the painting and reached up, feeling for the nail. But the look of the portrait was so devastating, so foul and so unremitting, that Laurent, after trying to outstare it, had to admit defeat and shrank back, muttering: ‘No, Thérèse, you’re right. We can’t do it ... Your aunt will take it down tomorrow.’
He went back to walking up and down, hanging his head and feeling that the portrait was watching him, following him with its eyes. From time to time, he could not resist taking a look towards it, and then, in the depths of the shadow, he would still see the dead, flat stare of the drowned man. The thought that Camille was there, in a corner, keeping an eye on him, and present on his wedding night, examining the two of them, Thérèse and himself, made Laurent completely mad with terror and despair.
One event, which would have brought a smile to anyone else’s lips, drove him entirely out of his mind. When he was in front of the fireplace, he heard a sort of scratching noise. The blood drained from his face: he thought that the scratching was coming from the portrait and that Camille was getting down out of his frame. Then he realized that the noise was coming from the little door leading to the staircase. He looked at Thérèse, who was again seized by fear.
‘There’s someone on the stairs,’ he murmured. ‘Who can be coming through there?’
The young woman said nothing. Both of them were thinking about the drowned man and an icy sweat broke out on their brows. They fled to the back of the room, expecting to see the door open suddenly and the corpse of Camille fall through it on to the floor. The noise continued, sharper and less regular, so that it seemed to them that their victim was scratching at the wood with his fingernails, trying to get in. For more than five minutes, they did not dare move. Finally, there was a miaow. Laurent went across and saw Mme Raquin’s tabby cat, which had been shut into the bedroom by mistake and was trying to get out by scraping the little door with its claws. François was afraid of Laurent. In a bound, he leaped on to a chair, then, his hair on end and paws stiff, he gave his new master a hard, cruel stare. The young man did not like cats and François almost scared him. In this moment of fear and anguish, he thought the cat was going to leap at his face, to avenge Camille. The creature must know everything: there were thoughts behind those