Human Beast: The Emile Zola Society Edition

  ‘A train for Auteuil,’ he murmured. ‘Ten to twelve.’

  Then he whispered gently into her ear: ‘Darling, shall we go to bed?’

  She didn’t answer him. She had been feeling blissfully happy, when suddenly the past had overtaken her. She found herself reliving the hours she had spent there with her husband. The cake she had just shared with Jacques seemed a continuation of that lunch with Roubaud, eaten at the same table, with the same sounds coming up from the apartment below. Everything in the room awakened the past; memories flooded over her. Never had she felt such a burning need to tell her lover everything, to surrender herself to him completely. It was an almost physical need, inseparable from her sexual desire. It seemed to her that she would belong to him more fully and that she would receive the greatest joy from being his if she could whisper her confession into his ear as she lay in his arms. Everything was coming back to her. Her husband was there in the room. She looked round, thinking she had just seen his hand, with its short, hairy fingers reaching over her shoulder for the knife.

  ‘Shall we go to bed, darling?’ Jacques repeated.

  She shuddered as she felt his lips fasten upon hers, as though once again he wished to keep the confession sealed within her. Without a word she stood up, quickly undressed and slipped between the sheets, leaving her petticoats strewn across the floor. Jacques left the table as it was; it could be cleared in the morning. The candle was almost finished and was already beginning to go out. He too undressed and got into the bed. Their bodies came together in a sudden embrace, a frenzy of possession that left them breathless and gasping for air. In the deathly silence of the room, as the music continued downstairs, there was no exclamation, not a sound, nothing but a thrill of abandonment, a wave of ecstasy, which made them almost faint.

  Séverine was no longer the sweet, passive, blue-eyed woman that Jacques had first known. She seemed to have grown more passionate with every day that passed. Her hair fell thick and dark about her face. Gradually, in his arms, he had felt her waking from the long night of virginal frigidity which the senile indecencies of Grandmorin and the intemperate demands of her husband had merely succeeded in prolonging. As a lover, she had hitherto simply complied. Now, she was alive; she gave herself fully and was in turn deeply grateful for the pleasure she received. She had come to adore and even venerate the man who had shown her she was capable of love. It was because she felt so intensely happy to lie with him freely at last, to put her arms around him and hold him to her breast, that she had been able to remain silent, with not so much as a sigh.

  They opened their eyes again. Jacques was the first to speak.

  ‘Look,’ he said with surprise, ‘the candle’s gone out!’

  Séverine turned over, as if to say she couldn’t care less. Then, stifling a laugh, she whispered:

  ‘Did I behave myself?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘No one could have heard us. We were as quiet as mice!’

  They lay back again, and she at once took him in her arms, pulling herself close to him and resting her nose on his neck. She sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Isn’t this wonderful!’ she said.

  They fell silent. The room was completely dark; they could just make out the two pale squares where the windows were. On the ceiling, the stove cast a circle of light the colour of blood. They lay looking up at it, wide-eyed. The music had stopped. They heard the sound of doors being closed. The whole house fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. Down below, the train from Caen came clattering over the turntables, but the sound hardly reached them; it seemed to come from a long way away.

  As she lay holding Jacques in her arms, Séverine’s desire returned, and with it the urge to confess her crime. It had been on her mind for weeks! The circle of light on the ceiling grew larger; it seemed to be spreading outwards like a bloodstain. As she gazed at it, shapes began to appear before her eyes; things around the bed began to speak, telling the whole story out loud. As her flesh responded to his touch, she felt the words rising to her lips. How good it would be to have nothing more to hide, to be merged with him completely!

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘there is something I must tell you ...’

  Jacques, who had also been staring fixedly at the red patch of light on the ceiling, knew what she was about to say. He could feel her delicate body lying against his. He had sensed the gathering wave within her that was about to break, the guilty secret, the awful truth which both of them thought of but could never speak about. Until now he had persuaded her to say nothing; he was afraid it might bring back his old malady, or that talk of murder would alter their feelings for each other. But this time, lying there so deliciously relaxed in this warm bed with her arms wrapped gently around him, he lacked the energy even to lean over her and silence her with a kiss. The moment had come, he thought. She was about to tell him everything. Having anxiously waited for her to begin, it came as a relief when she seemed to become embarrassed, to hesitate and change her mind.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘there is something I must tell you ... My husband suspects I am sleeping with you.’

  At the last minute, what had sprung to her lips, involuntarily, was not the confession, but the memory of the night before at Le Havre.

  ‘Do you think so?’ murmured Jacques, incredulously. ‘He seems very friendly to me. He shook hands with me only this morning.’

  ‘I tell you, he knows everything,’ she said. ‘He will be picturing us, this very minute, in bed, in each other’s arms, making love! I know he will!’

  She fell silent, holding him tighter, in an embrace in which passion was tinged with bitterness. She lay there thinking. Suddenly she shuddered.

  ‘I hate him!’ she said. ‘I hate him!’

  Jacques was surprised. He had nothing against Roubaud. He found him very easy to get on with.

  ‘Why do you hate him?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t bother us.’

  She didn’t answer, simply repeating: ‘I hate him. I hate even feeling him near me. I can’t bear it. If only I could get away from him! If only I could always be with you!’

  Jacques was moved by this passionate outburst. He drew her still closer and held her tight, feeling her whole body against his, from her feet to her shoulders. She was his entirely. Once again as she lay enfolded in his arms, and scarcely without removing her lips from his neck, she began to whisper: ‘Darling, there is something you should know ...’

  This was the confession. It was inevitable; sooner or later it had to come. This time he realized that nothing in the world would prevent it, for it rose from within her like an uncontrollable desire to be taken and possessed. Not a sound could be heard in the house. Even the newspaper woman must have been fast asleep. Outside, Paris lay covered in snow. There was no sound of wheels; everything was buried and draped in silence. With the departure of the last train for Le Havre, which had left at twenty past twelve, the station seemed to have closed down. The stove had stopped roaring, and the fire had burned through to its last embers, which made the circle of red light on the ceiling even brighter. It stared down at them like a startled eye. The room was so hot that it felt as if a heavy, suffocating fog had descended on to the bed where the couple lay blissfully entwined.

  ‘Darling, there is something you should know ...’

  He answered her. What else could he do?

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know.’

  ‘No,’ she answered, ‘you might have guessed something, but you don’t know what happened.’

  ‘I know he did it to get the legacy,’ he said.

  She turned over and gave a nervous little laugh.

  ‘Oh, that!’ she muttered.

  Then, very quietly, so quietly that a fly on the window-pane would have made more noise, she began to tell him of the years she had spent as a child at Doinville. She was tempted to lie to him and not tell him about her relationship with Grandmorin, but decided that she should be totally frank and found it a relief, almost a pleasure, to tell him all ab
out it. The confession had begun, whispered softly into his ear, unstoppable.

  ‘Can you imagine it?’ she said. ‘It was here, in this room, last February, when there was all that trouble with the Sub-Prefect ... we’d had lunch. It was lovely ... just like us eating now, at that table, there ... He knew nothing of course ... Why should I tell him all about it? Then all of a sudden, just because of a ring, an old present, something of no importance ... I don’t know how it happened ... Suddenly he knew everything ... Darling, you can’t imagine what he did to me ...’

  She was shaking. He felt her hands on his naked flesh, clutching him.

  ‘He punched me and knocked me to the floor ... He dragged me round the room by my hair ... He lifted his foot and threatened to kick me in the face ... I shall never forget it as long as I live ... And then he started to hit me again ... Oh my God ... If I told you all the questions he asked me ... what he forced me to tell him! I’m being honest with you, Jacques. I don’t have to tell you all this, but I want you to know. I couldn’t bear to repeat half of what he forced me to tell him ... it was disgusting! But he would have killed me; I know he would! I suppose he loved me ... It must have been awful for him to suddenly find out about it like that. Perhaps I should have told him before we got married ... it would have been more honest. But it was in the past, it was forgotten ... can you understand? I’ve never seen anyone so insanely jealous. He was like an animal ... Jacques darling, will you stop loving me now you know all this?’

  Jacques had not moved. He lay there thinking, absolutely still, with Séverine’s arms around him, encircling his neck and his waist like the coils of a snake. He was amazed; he had never suspected anything like this. Everything seemed to have become more complicated. The legacy had been a much simpler way of explaining things! But he preferred it like this. The knowledge that they had not killed merely for money dispelled a vague feeling of contempt he had sometimes felt towards her, even when she was in his arms.

  ‘Why should I stop loving you?’ he said. ‘What you did in the past doesn’t bother me; it’s none of my business. You’re married to Roubaud; for all I know, you might have been married to somebody else too.’

  There was a silence. They hugged each other so tightly they could hardly breathe. He felt her hard, swollen breasts against his body.

  ‘So you were Grandmorin’s mistress. What a strange thought!’

  She drew herself across him and lifted her mouth to his, kissing him and murmuring: ‘You’re the only one I love. I’ve never loved anyone but you. If only you knew. With them, I didn’t even know what love meant. But you, darling ... you make me so happy!’

  He felt her hands upon him and was inflamed with desire. She was offering herself to him, wanting him and drawing him passionately towards her. He longed to take her, yet he held her away from him at arms’ length.

  ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Later! Tell me about Grandmorin.’

  Her whole body shook, and, in a barely audible whisper, she confessed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we killed him.’

  As the memory came back to her, her shudder of desire became a shudder of death.5 At the moment of supreme ecstasy her agony was about to begin again. Her head slowly began to swim. She pressed her face to her lover’s neck and continued in the same low whisper: ‘He made me write to the President, telling him to leave Paris on the same train as us, but to keep out of sight until it reached Rouen ... I sat in a corner seat, shaking with fright, horrified at the thought of the awful thing we were about to do ... Opposite me there was a woman dressed in black. She said nothing. She terrified me. I couldn’t see her properly but I imagined she could read our thoughts and that she knew exactly what we were planning to do ... It took two hours to get from Paris to Rouen. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t move. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. I could feel Roubaud sitting next to me. He didn’t move either. What was so terrible was that I knew the awful things he was turning over in his mind, but I couldn’t tell exactly what he had decided to do ... Ah, what a journey! All those things going round and round in my head, the engine whistling, the constant drumming of the wheels, and the train lurching from side to side!’

  Jacques had buried his mouth in her thick, sweet-scented hair. He kept kissing it with long, distracted kisses.

  ‘But if you weren’t in the same compartment, how did you manage to kill him?’ he asked.

  ‘Wait!’ she said. ‘I’m coming to that. My husband had worked out a plan, and it succeeded. But it was more by luck than judgement. There was a ten-minute stop at Rouen. We got out on to the platform and he made me walk down to the President’s coupé, as if we were stretching our legs. When we reached it we saw Grandmorin standing at the carriage window. My husband pretended to be surprised, as if he had no idea he was on the train. There were crowds of people on the platform, all pushing and shoving to try and get into the second-class carriages; there was some big event in Le Havre the day after. As they started shutting the doors, the President asked us to join him in his carriage. I didn’t know what to say; I muttered something about our suitcase. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said he was sure no one would steal it and that we could go back to our own compartment when we got to Barentin; that was where he was getting off. For a moment my husband seemed worried and thought of running back to fetch it. But just then the guard blew his whistle. Roubaud decided to leave the suitcase, pushed me into the coupé, climbed in behind me and closed the door and the window. How it was that nobody saw us I still can’t understand. There were people dashing about everywhere; the railway staff could hardly cope. Anyway, there wasn’t a single witness prepared to say they saw anything. The train slowly started to leave the station.’

  For a moment or two Séverine remained silent, reliving the scene in her mind. She was by now so relaxed in his arms that she was unaware of an involuntary twitch in her left leg which at intervals caused it to rub against one of his knees.

  ‘Ah, that first moment in the coupé when I realized the train had started to move! My mind was in a whirl. All I could think of was the suitcase. How were we going to get it back? If we left it where it was it would give us away. We were going to commit a murder. The whole thing seemed crazy, impossible, like something a child might dream of in a nightmare. We must be mad to go ahead with it. We would be arrested in the morning and convicted. I tried to reassure myself that my husband wouldn’t go through with it; that it wouldn’t happen, that it couldn’t happen. But no! I could tell from the way he was talking to the President that his mind was made up, that nothing would deter him. Yet he seemed perfectly calm, chatting away happily as he always did. It must have been the steady, clear look in his eyes every time he turned towards me that told me he was absolutely determined to do it. He was going to kill him, another kilometre further on, two perhaps, wherever it was he had decided it would happen. Where it would be I didn’t know. But it was going to happen. You could tell from the way he kept calmly looking at Grandmorin, the man who in a few minutes’ time would no longer be alive. I said nothing. I was all churned up inside; I tried to hide it from them by forcing myself to smile every time they looked at me. Why did it never occur to me to try and stop it happening? It was only later, when I tried to understand what I’d done, that I realized I should have shouted to someone through the window or pulled the communication cord.6 But at the time it was as if I was paralysed; I felt totally incapable. I dare say I thought my husband was in the right, and if I am to be honest, darling, I must tell you that despite everything he’d done to me I was completely on his side against Grandmorin because, well, they’d both had me, hadn’t they, but Roubaud was young ... when Grandmorin put his hands all over you, it was ... ugh! Anyway, who knows? Sometimes you do things that you’d never think you were capable of. When I think that I couldn’t even kill a chicken! It was awful! It was like a dark storm raging inside me; a terrifying darkness ...’

  To Jacques, the frail little creature that lay so
small and slender in his arms had become a mystery, an impenetrable abyss; a darkness, as she had put it. No matter how tightly he held her to him, he could not enter her soul. This tale of murder, whispered into his ear as they lay in each other’s arms, excited him.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘did you help to kill him?’

  ‘I was sitting in one of the window seats,’ she continued without answering him. ‘My husband was sitting between me and the President, who was in the other window seat. They were talking about the coming elections ... From time to time I noticed my husband lean forward and look outside to see where we were; he seemed to be getting impatient. Every time he looked outside, I looked outside as well; so I knew how far we had come too. It wasn’t very dark, and you could see the shape of the trees rushing past the window. All the time you could hear the carriage wheels squealing on the railway line; it wasn’t the usual sound, it was a terrible clamour of hysterical, whining voices, like the pitiful howling of animals being slaughtered. The train ran on, faster and faster ... Suddenly we saw some lights through the window, and the noise of the train grew louder as it went through a station. It was Maromme, already two and a half leagues from Rouen. The next station was Malaunay, and then Barentin. Where was it going to happen? Was he going to wait until the last minute? I had lost all sense of time and distance; I had abandoned myself like a falling stone, plummeting through the echoing darkness. Then suddenly, as we went through Malaunay, it came to me; he was going to do it in the tunnel, a kilometre further on ... I turned towards my husband, and our eyes met. Yes, it would be in the tunnel, in another two minutes ... The train ran on. We passed the junction for Dieppe; I noticed the signalman standing beside his cabin. The railway runs through a series of hills at that point on the line, and I had a clear impression that there were men standing on the top of them with their hands raised in the air shouting curses at us. Then the engine gave a long whistle ... the train was about to enter the tunnel. Its walls closed in around us. The noise was deafening! A great clanging of iron, like hammers striking an anvil! I didn’t know what was happening. To me it sounded like thunder.’