Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [94]
It never occurred to Thérèse that her tears and the display of her remorse must be imposing the most unspeakable agony on her aunt. The truth is that, if you were to invent a torture to inflict on Mme Raquin, you could surely not find anything more appalling than the dramas of repentance that her niece played out in front of her. The paralysed woman could perceive the egotism behind these outpourings of pain. She suffered agonies listening to these long monologues, which she was obliged constantly to undergo and which repeatedly reminded her of Camille’s murder. She could not forgive; she shut herself into a pitiless idea of vengeance, which her disability made more acute; yet all day she had to hear these pleas for forgiveness, these despicable, cowardly prayers. She would have liked to reply; some things that her niece said brought crushing responses to her lips, but she had to remain silent, allowing Thérèse to plead her case without ever interrupting her. Her inability to cry out or to stop her ears filled her with inexpressible torment. And, one by one, the young woman’s slow, plaintive words sank into her mind, like an annoying tune. For a while, she thought that the murderers were inflicting this sort of torture on her out of sheer, diabolical cruelty. Her only means of defence was to close her eyes as soon as her niece knelt before her: if she could still hear, at least she could not see her.
Eventually, Thérèse grew bold enough to kiss her aunt. One day, in a fit of repentance, she pretended that she had seen a hint of mercy in the eyes of the paralysed woman. She crawled along on her knees, then got up and cried in a distraught voice: ‘You forgive me! You forgive me!’ After this, she kissed the forehead and cheeks of the poor old woman, who could not move her head away. Thérèse experienced a sharp feeling of disgust as her lips touched the cold flesh, but she decided that this disgust, like the tears and the remorse, would be a fine way to calm her nerves, so she continued to kiss the cripple every day, as a penance and to give herself relief.
‘Oh, how good you are!’ she would exclaim at times. ‘I can see that my tears have moved you. Your look is full of pity. I am saved.’
She would smother her with caresses, put her head on the old woman’s lap, kiss her hands, smile happily at her and care for her with all the signs of passionate affection. After a while, she came to believe in the reality of this play-acting. She imagined that she had received Mme Raquin’s pardon and from then on talked to her only of her happiness at having her forgiveness.
This was too much for the paralysed woman. It almost killed her. Her niece’s kisses gave her the same bitter feeling of repugnance and fury that filled her every morning and evening when Laurent picked her up to get her out of bed or to lie her down. She was obliged to suffer the foul embraces of the wretched woman who had betrayed and killed her son. She could not even use her hand to wipe off the kisses that this creature left on her cheeks. For hours on end, she would feel these kisses burning her flesh. This is how she became the plaything of Camille’s murderers, a doll whom they dressed, whom they turned to right or left, and used according to their needs and whims. She remained inert in their hands, as if she had only sawdust in her belly, when in fact her guts came to life, anguished and outraged, at the slightest touch of Thérèse or Laurent. What made her most angry was the frightful mockery of this young woman who claimed to be able to read feelings of mercy in her look, when she would have liked with a look to strike the criminal down. She often made immense efforts to give a cry of protest, and put all her hatred into her eyes. But Thérèse, whom it suited to repeat twenty times a day that she had been forgiven, refused to guess the truth and