Laurent agreed. In his prudence, there was a kind of brutal temerity, the temerity of a man with large fists. His mistress’s calm and solemn manner induced him to come and taste the passion so boldly offered. He found an excuse, obtained two hours’ leave from his boss and hurried round to the Passage du Pont-Neuf.
As soon as he got into the arcade, he felt the pangs of desire. The woman who sold costume jewellery was sitting right opposite the entrance; he had to wait for her to be busy, for a young shop girl to come and buy a ring or some copper earrings from her. Then, quickly, he slipped into the alleyway and climbed the dark, narrow staircase, steadying himself against walls that were oozing damp. His feet knocked on the stone stairs; at the sound of each step, he felt a burning pain across his chest. A door opened. On the threshold, in a patch of white light, he saw Thérèse in her camisole and petticoat, shining, with her hair tied tightly behind her head. She shut the door and put her arms around him. She exuded a warm smell, a smell of white linen and freshly washed flesh.
Laurent was amazed at finding his mistress beautiful. He had never seen this woman. Thérèse was lithe and strong; she grasped him, throwing her head back, while burning lights and passionate smiles flickered across her face. This lover’s face seemed transfigured; she had a look at once mad and tender; she was radiant, with moist lips and gleaming eyes. The young woman, sinuous and twisting, possessed a strange beauty, an utter abandon. It was as though her face had been lit from inside and flames were leaping from her flesh. And around her, her burning blood and taut nerves released hot waves of passion, a penetrating, acrid fever in the air.
With the first kiss, she revealed the instincts of a courtesan. Her thirsting body gave itself wildly up to lust. It was as though she were awakening from a dream and being born to passion. She went from the feeble arms of Camille to the vigorous arms of Laurent, and the approach of a potent man gave her a shake that woke her flesh from its slumber. All the instincts of a highly-strung woman burst forth with exceptional violence. Her mother’s blood, that African blood burning in her veins, began to flow and pound furiously in her thin, still almost virginal body. She opened up and offered herself with a sovereign lack of shame. From head to toe, she was shaken by long shudders of desire.
Laurent had never known such a woman. He was astonished, uneasy. Normally, his mistresses did not welcome him with such ardour; he was used to cold, indifferent kisses and to languid, sated loving. Thérèse’s sobs and fits almost scared him, even as they excited his voluptuous curiosity. When he left her, he would be staggering like a drunken man. The following day, when he recovered his sly mood of calm caution, he wondered if he should go back to this lover, whose kisses inflamed him. At first, he firmly decided to stay at home. Then he wavered. He tried to forget, not to see Thérèse, naked, with her soft, urgent caresses; but she was always there, relentless, holding out her arms. The physical pain that he felt from this spectacle became intolerable.
He gave in, made a new arrangement to meet her and went back to the Passage du Pont-Neuf.
From that day onwards, Thérèse became part of his life. He did not yet accept her, but he gave in to her. He experienced hours of terror and moments of caution; and, in brief, the liaison disturbed him considerably; but his fears and uneasiness ceded to his desires. Their meetings multiplied, one after another.
Thérèse had no such doubts. She gave herself to him without reserve, going directly where her passions drove her. This woman, who had bowed to circumstances, was now standing up to reveal her whole being, to lay her life bare.
Sometimes she would put her arms round Laurent’s neck, rest her head against his chest and say, in a voice still breathless:
‘If only you knew how I’ve suffered! I was brought up in the damp warmth of a sickroom. I used to sleep beside Camille; in the night, I would move away from him, disgusted by the musty smell of his body. He was spiteful and stubborn. He wouldn’t take any medicine unless I shared it with him, so to please my aunt I had to drink all sorts of potions ... I don’t know why I didn’t die ... They made me ugly, my poor dear, they stole everything I had, and you can’t love me as I love you.’
She cried, she kissed Laurent and she continued, speaking with an undertone of hatred in her voice:
‘I don’t wish them any harm. They brought me up, they took me in and protected me from poverty. But I would rather have been abandoned than endure their welcome. I had a ravenous hunger for fresh air; even when I was small, I dreamed of wandering the roads, barefoot in the dust, begging and living like a gypsy. They told me my mother was the daughter of a tribal chief in Africa. I have often thought about her. I realize that I belong to her in my blood and my instincts, I used to wish I had never left her, but was crossing the deserts, slung on her back ... Oh, what a childhood I had! I still feel revulsion and outrage when I remember the long days I spent in that room with Camille gasping away ... I had to crouch in front of the fire, watching like an idiot as his herb tea boiled and feeling the cramp in my limbs. But I couldn’t move, because my aunt would scold me if I made a noise ... Later on, I was terribly happy, in the little house by the river, but I was already stupefied, I could hardly walk and I fell over if I ran. Then they buried me alive in this vile shop.’
Thérèse was breathing heavily and hugging her lover tightly; she was getting her revenge. Her thin, supple nostrils gave little nervous twitches.
‘You wouldn’t believe how bad they made me,’ she continued. ‘They turned me into a hypocrite and a liar. They stifled me with their bourgeois comfort and I don’t understand why there is any red blood left in my veins. I would lower my eyes and put on a sad, imbecilic face like them, leading the same dead life. When you first met me, huh, didn’t I look like a fool? I was earnest, I was crushed, I was like an idiot. I no longer hoped for anything, I used to think about throwing myself into the Seine one day ... But before I got to that point, you don’t know how many nights I spent in fury! There, in Vernon, in my cold room, I would bite my pillow to stifle my cries, I would hit myself and call myself a coward. My blood was boiling, I could have torn myself apart. Twice, I thought of running away, just walking away, anywhere, in the sunlight. But I couldn’t do it: they had turned me into a docile creature with their weak kindness and their repulsive tenderness. So I lied, I kept on lying. I stayed there, sweet and silent, dreaming about how I could hit and bite.’
The young woman stopped, wiping her damp lips on Laurent’s neck. Then, after a pause:
‘I can’t remember why I agreed to marry Camille. I didn’t refuse, out of a sort of contemptuous indifference. I felt sorry for the boy. When I played with him, I could feel my fingers sink into his arms as though into clay. I took him, because my aunt offered him to me and I thought I would never have to bother about him ... And I found a husband who was no different from the ailing little boy I used to sleep with when I was six. He was just as frail, as whining, and he still had that smell of a sick child that used to disgust me so much in the old days. I’m telling you all this so that you won’t be jealous ... A sort of nausea would rise in my throat, I thought of all the medicines I’d taken and I shrank from him; I spent dreadful nights ... But you, you ...’
Thérèse sat upright and bent over backwards, her fingers caught in Laurent’s large hands, looking at his broad shoulders and his huge neck ...
‘I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment when Camille pushed you into the shop ... Perhaps you don’t respect me, because I gave myself to you, entirely, all at once ... It’s true, I don’t know how it happened. I’m proud, I got carried away. I wanted to hit you, that first day when you kissed me and threw me on the ground in this room. I don’t know how I loved you; if anything, I hated you. The sight of you upset me, it hurt to look at you. When you were there my nerves were at breaking-point, my mind went blank and a red film floated before my eyes. Oh, how much I suffered! And I looked for that suffering, I used to wait for you to come, I would walk round your chair so that I could
pick up your breath and rub my clothes against yours. It was as though your blood was sending waves of heat towards me as I went by, and this sort of burning mist that wrapped around you drew me and kept me beside you, much as I tried, inside me, to break away ... Do you remember when you were painting here? An irresistible force drew me to your side and I breathed in your atmosphere, feeling a cruel delight. I knew that I seemed to be begging for kisses and I was ashamed of my slavery, feeling that I would fall if you so much as touched me. But I gave in to my cowardice and shook with cold as I waited for you to deign to take me in your arms.’
At this, Thérèse paused, shivering, as though proud and avenged. She was intoxicated, holding Laurent against her breast; and the bare, icy room witnessed scenes of burning ardour and sinister brutality. Each new meeting between them brought still more passionate ecstasies.
The young woman seemed to enjoy her daring and impudence. She had no misgivings, no fear. She was throwing herself into adultery with a kind of urgent candour, careless of danger, feeling a sort of pride in taking risks. When her lover was due, her only precaution would be to tell her aunt that she was going upstairs for a rest. And while he was there, she walked around, talked and acted unheedingly, without ever thinking about the noise. At the start, it would sometimes worry Laurent.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ he would whisper to Thérèse. ‘Don’t make such a racket. Mme Raquin will come up.’
‘Pooh!’ she would reply, with a laugh. ‘You’re always scared. She’s stuck behind the counter, what would she be coming up here for? She’d be too afraid that someone would rob her. Anyway, let her come if she wants. You can hide ... I don’t give a damn about her. I love you.’
Laurent did not find this speech the least bit reassuring. Passion had not yet subdued his sly peasant caution. But soon habit induced him, without too much anxiety, to accept the boldness of these meetings in broad daylight, in Camille’s room, just feet away from the old haberdasher. His mistress kept telling him that danger spared those who confronted it directly, and she was right. The lovers could never have found a safer place than this room where no one thought to look for them. There, they would satisfy their desires, amazingly undisturbed.
One day, however, Mme Raquin did come up, concerned that her niece might be ill. The young woman had been upstairs for almost three hours. She was foolhardy enough not even to bolt the door which led off the dining room to the bedroom.
When Laurent heard the old woman’s heavy footsteps coming up the wooden staircase, he panicked and hurriedly looked for his waistcoat and hat. Thérèse started to laugh at the funny face he was making. She seized his arm and thrust him down, into a corner at the foot of the bed, telling him in a quiet, calm voice:
‘Stay there and don’t move.’
She threw the man’s clothing that was lying around over him and on top of it all spread a white petticoat that she had taken off herself. All this she did with measured, careful gestures, not losing any of her calm. Then she lay down in the bed, her hair untidy, half naked, still flushed and shaking.
Mme Raquin gently opened the door and came over to the bed, walking as softly as she could. The younger woman pretended to be asleep. Laurent was sweating under the white petticoat.
‘Thérèse, are you ill, child?’ the haberdasher asked, in a voice full of concern.
Thérèse opened her eyes, yawned, turned round and replied in a pained voice that she had a terrible migraine. She begged her aunt to let her sleep. The old woman left as she had come, without a sound.
The two lovers, laughing silently, kissed with violent passion.
‘You see!’ Thérèse said triumphantly. ‘We’ve nothing to fear here. All these people are blind. They are not in love.’
Another day, the young woman had an odd idea. Sometimes she would rave, behaving as though she were mad.
The tabby cat, François, was sitting on his bottom right in the middle of the room. Solemn and motionless, he was looking at the two lovers with wide-open eyes. He seemed to be examining them carefully, without blinking, lost in a sort of diabolical trance.2
‘Look at François,’ Thérèse said to Laurent. ‘You’d think he understood and that he was going to tell Camille everything this evening. Why, wouldn’t it be odd if he were to start speaking in the shop one of these days? He could tell some fine stories about us.’
The young woman was exceptionally amused by the idea that François might speak. Laurent looked at the cat’s large green eyes and felt a shudder run through him.
‘Here’s what he’d do,’ Thérèse went on. ‘He’d stand up and, pointing at me with one paw and at you with the other, he’d exclaim: “Monsieur and Madame here were kissing one another very hard in the bedroom; they didn’t bother about me, but since their criminal affair disgusts me, I beg you to have both of them thrown into gaol, and then they won’t disturb my afternoon sleep again.”’
Thérèse joked like a child, miming the cat, extending her hands like claws and moving her shoulders with a feline undulation. François, sitting still as a rock, kept on looking at her. Only his eyes seemed to be alive and, in the corners of his mouth, there were two deep folds that made this stuffed animal’s face seem to break out laughing.
Laurent felt a chill in his bones. He found Thérèse’s joke ridiculous. He got up and put the cat out of the door. In fact, he was afraid. Thérèse was not yet entirely mistress of him. Deep inside, he felt a little of the unease that he had experienced from the young woman’s first embrace.
VIII
In the evenings, in the shop, Laurent was perfectly happy. Normally, he came back from the office with Camille. Mme Raquin had conceived a maternal affection for him; she knew that he was not well off, that he ate poorly and slept in an attic, so she told him once and for all that there would always be a place for him at their table. She liked the boy with that effusive love that old women have for people from their own part of the world who carry with them memories of the past.
The young man took full advantage of this hospitality. On leaving the office, before coming back, he would take a bit of a walk with Camille along the river. Both of them appreciated this friendship; they suffered less from boredom and chatted as they went. Then they would agree to go and eat Mme Raquin’s supper. Laurent opened the door of the shop as though he owned it. He sat himself down, astride his chair, smoking and spitting, just as though he were at home.
He was not at all bothered by the presence of Thérèse. He treated the young woman with a friendly lack of formality, teasing her and paying her routine compliments, without a hint of a smile. Camille laughed and, since his wife would reply to his friend only in monosyllables, he was quite convinced that they hated each other. One day, he even reproached Thérèse with what he called her coldness towards Laurent.
Laurent had been right: he had become the wife’s lover, the husband’s friend and the mother’s spoiled child. Never had his appetites been so well satisfied. He luxuriated in the infinite pleasures provided for him by the Raquin family. In any case, his position in this family seemed quite natural to him. He was on intimate terms with Camille, but felt no anger or remorse towards him. He was not even cautious about what he did or said, so certain was he of his prudence and composure; the egotism with which he enjoyed this happiness protected him against any feeling of sin. In the shop, his mistress became a woman like any other, whom he might not kiss and who did not exist for him. The reason he did not kiss her in front of everyone was that he was afraid of not being allowed to come back. This was the only thing that stopped him. Otherwise, he would not have cared at all about the feelings of Camille and his mother. He was blissfully unaware of any consequences that the discovery of his affair might bring. He thought that he was acting naturally, as anyone would have done in his place, being a poor and hungry man. Hence his smug complacency, his prudent daring and his mocking attitude of unconcern.
Thérèse, who was more nervous and anxious, was obliged to play a part. S
he did so to perfection, thanks to the training in hypocrisy that she owed to her upbringing. She had lied for more than fifteen years, repressing her passions and applying her implacable will to appear dull and listless. She had no difficulty in freezing her features behind a dead mask. When Laurent arrived, she appeared to him serious, grumpy, her nose longer and her lips thinner. She was ugly, surly and unapproachable. In reality, she was not putting it on; she was simply playing her old self, without attracting attention by exaggerating her brusqueness. As far as she was concerned, she felt a bitter pleasure in fooling Camille and Mme Raquin. She was not like Laurent, wallowing in a state of dull contentment at the satisfaction of his desires and oblivious of duty. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, and she had violent urges to leap up from the table and kiss Laurent full on the mouth, to show her husband and her aunt that she was not an animal, and that she had a lover.
At times, warm feelings of joy rose within her and, accomplished actress though she was, she could not refrain from singing, when her lover was not there and she was not afraid of giving herself away. These sudden outbursts of merriment delighted Mme Raquin, who used to accuse her niece of being too solemn. The young woman bought pots of flowers and arranged them on the window sills of her room. Then she had new wallpaper put up; she wanted a carpet, curtains, new rosewood furniture. All this luxury was for Laurent’s benefit.
Nature and circumstances seemed to have made this man for this woman, and to have driven them towards one another. Together, the woman, nervous and dissembling, the man, lustful, living like an animal, they made a strongly united couple. They complemented one another, they protected one another. In the evening, at table, in the pale light of the lamp, you could feel the strength of the bond between them, seeing Laurent’s heavy, smiling face and the silent, impenetrable mask of Thérèse.