Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [82]
Meanwhile, Thérèse and Laurent led their double life. It was as though in each one of them there were two quite distinct beings: a nervous, terrified creature who would shudder as soon as dusk came, and a numb, forgetful one who breathed freely as soon as the sun rose. They were living two lives, crying out in pain when they were alone with one another and smiling complacently when there were other people about. Never did their faces in public hint at the suffering that came to tear them apart when they were together; they seemed calm and happy, instinctively hiding their woes.
Seeing them so untroubled by day, no one would have suspected that they were tormented every night by hallucinations. Theirs might have been seen as a marriage blessed in heaven, a couple living in perfect harmony. Grivet called them (suggestively) the ‘turtle-doves’. When they had bags under their eyes after a long period without sleep, he teased them and asked when the baptism was due. And all the guests laughed. Laurent and Thérèse went a little pale and managed a smile; they were getting used to Grivet’s risque jokes. Whenever they were in the dining room, they could control their fears. No one could have imagined the frightful change that came over them when they shut the bedroom door behind them. On Thursday evenings especially this change was so sudden and violent that it seemed to belong to some supernatural world. So strange was the drama of their nights, so savage in its excesses, that it exceeded all credibility and stayed hidden deep inside their tormented beings. Had they spoken about it, they would have been considered insane.
‘How happy they are, those love-birds!’ Old Michaud often used to say. ‘They don’t have a lot to say for themselves, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think about it. I’ll bet they are all over one another when we aren’t here.’
This was what everyone thought: Thérèse and Laurent would even be cited as a model couple. The whole Passage du Pont-Neuf praised the affection, the tranquil happiness and the endless honeymoon enjoyed by the couple. They alone knew how the corpse of Camille would lie between them, they alone would feel the nervous contractions beneath the calm surface of their faces which at night would horribly distort their features and change their peaceful expressions to a ghastly, tormented and grimacing mask.
XXV
After four months, Laurent thought about reaping the benefits he had anticipated from his marriage. He would have abandoned his wife and fled before the spectre of Camille three days after the wedding if self-interest had not tied him to the shop in the arcade. He bore his nights of terror and stayed despite his suffocating fears, so as not to lose the profits of his crime. If he were to leave Thérèse, he would lapse back into poverty and be obliged to keep his job; if, on the contrary, he stayed with her, he could indulge his taste for idleness and do nothing, living well off the income from the money that Mme Raquin had invested in his wife’s name. It seems likely that he would have made off with the forty thousand francs if he had been able to cash the money in, but the old haberdasher, on Michaud’s advice, had been careful to protect her niece’s interests in the contract. There was consequently a strong bond attaching Laurent to Thérèse. So, as a compensation for his dreadful nights, he wanted at least to have himself kept in idle contentment, well fed, warmly clothed and with enough money in his pocket to satisfy his whims. Only at this price would he agree to sleep with the drowned man’s corpse.
One evening, he announced to Mme Raquin and his wife that he had handed in his notice and would be leaving the office at the end of a fortnight. Thérèse gave a sign of anxiety, so he hastened