Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [99]
Sometimes, Thérèse would go out for a whole afternoon at a time. No one knew where she went. She must have taken on Suzanne not only to keep her company but also to keep shop while she was away. In the evening, when she came back exhausted, her eyelids black with fatigue, she would find Olivier’s little wife hunched behind the counter, smiling a vague smile and sitting exactly as she had left her five hours earlier.
Five months after her wedding, Thérèse had a scare. She became convinced that she was pregnant. The idea of having a child by Laurent appalled her, though she could not explain why. She was vaguely afraid that she might give birth to a drowned baby. She thought she could feel the cold of a soft, rotting corpse in her womb. She wanted at any cost to get rid of this child that was chilling her and which she could not carry any longer. She said nothing to her husband, but one day, after she had severely provoked him, he began to kick her and she offered him her belly. She let him kick her almost to death and the next day she had a miscarriage.
Laurent, for his part, was leading a dreadful existence. The days seemed unbearably long to him, each one bringing the same anxieties, the same heavy tedium, which would settle on him at particular moments with a deadening monotony and punctuality. He dragged himself through life, horrified every evening by the memory of the last day and anticipation of the next. He knew that from now on all his days would be alike and each would bring the same suffering. He could see the weeks, months and years awaiting him, dark and pitiless, coming one after another to settle on him and stifle him. When there is no hope for the future, the present acquires a vile, bitter taste. There was no rebellion left in Laurent; he slumped and gave himself up to the void that was already starting to possess his being. The idleness was killing him. First thing in the morning, he would go out, wandering aimlessly, sickened by the thought of doing the same thing as he had done the day before, and forced despite himself to repeat it. He would go to his studio, from force of habit, obsessively. This grey-walled room, out of which you could see only an empty square of sky, filled him with melancholy sadness. He would fling himself down on the divan, his arms dangling and his thoughts leaden. In any case, he did not dare to touch a brush now. He had made some fresh attempts and Camille’s face had always sniggered at him from the canvas. To avoid lapsing into insanity, he eventually threw his box of paints into a corner and abandoned himself to the most utter laziness. He found this imposed idleness incredibly hard to bear.
In the afternoon, he would rack his brains to think of something to do. He would spend half an hour on the pavement in the Rue Mazarine wondering about it, hesitating between the various forms of entertainment that he might choose. He rejected the idea of going back to his studio and would always decide to go down the Rue Guénégaud, then walk along the banks of the Seine. So until evening he would carry straight on, in a daze, shivering suddenly from time to time when he looked at the river. Whether he was in his studio or in the street, he felt the same oppression. The next day, he would start all over again, spending the morning on his divan and, in the afternoon, wandering along the river bank. This had lasted for months and could go on for years.
Sometimes it occurred to Laurent that he had killed Camille in order to enjoy a life of leisure, and he was quite astonished, now that he did have nothing to do, to