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By Root 859 0

Stormy rages and powerful fluids accumulated within her and were later to erupt as uncontrollable tempests. Laurent had been for her what she was for Laurent: a kind of violent shock. From their first love-making, her dry, sensual temperament had developed with savage energy; from then on, she lived only for passion and, increasingly abandoning herself to the ardent fevers within her, she arrived at a state of unhealthy stupor. She was overwhelmed by events and driven towards madness. In her terror, she reacted in a more womanly way than her new husband. She had vague feelings of remorse and unadmitted regrets. At times, she felt like falling on her knees and pleading with Camille’s ghost, imploring his pity and swearing to appease him with her repentance. Laurent may have noticed these moments of weakness in Thérèse. When they were seized with a common terror, he turned on her and treated her savagely.

For the first few nights, they could not go to bed. They waited for daylight, sitting in front of the fire or walking backwards and forwards, as on their wedding night. They felt a kind of terrified repugnance at the idea of lying side by side on the bed. By tacit agreement, they avoided kissing and did not even look at the bedclothes, which Thérèse undid in the morning. When tiredness overcame them, they fell asleep for an hour or two in armchairs, only to wake up with a start, aroused by the sinister unfolding of some nightmare. When they did wake up, their limbs stiff and aching, with livid blotches on their faces, shivering with discomfort and cold, they would look at one another with amazement, astonished to see the other there and suffering a strange embarrassment towards each other, ashamed to show their disgust and terror.

In any case, they struggled against sleep as much as they could. They sat on either side of the fireplace and chatted about this or that, being careful to avoid letting the conversation lapse. There was a wide space between them, opposite the fire. When they turned round, they imagined that Camille had drawn up a chair and was occupying this space, warming his feet with lugubrious derision. The vision that they had had on the wedding night returned every night from then on. This corpse, silent and mocking, who listened in on their discussions, this horribly disfigured corpse, ever present, overwhelmed them with continual feelings of anxiety. They dared not budge, they blinded themselves with staring into the blazing hearth and, when they could no longer resist casting a fearful glance to the side, their eyes, irritated by the burning coals, created the apparition and bathed it in a reddish light.

Eventually, Laurent refused to sit down, though he did not tell Thérèse why. She realized that this behaviour meant that Laurent must be seeing Camille, as she was, so she announced in her turn that the heat was painful and that she would be better off a short distance away from the fireplace. She pushed her chair over to the foot of the bed and slumped down in it there, while her husband resumed his marching up and down. At times, he would open the window and let the cold January night fill the room with its icy breath. It brought his fever down.

For a week, the newlyweds spent all night in this way. They dozed off, catching a bit of rest during the day, Thérèse behind the shop counter and Laurent at his desk. At night, they were a prey to pain and fear. And the oddest thing yet was their attitude towards one another. They did not speak a single loving word, they pretended to have forgotten the past, appearing to accept and tolerate each other, like sick people feeling a secret pity for their shared miseries. Both of them hoped to hide their disgust and fear, and neither of the pair seemed to find anything strange in the way they spent their nights, which should have enlightened them about the true state of their minds. When they stayed up until morning, barely speaking to each other and blanching at the slightest sound, they acted as though they imagined this was how all newlyweds behaved in the first