One morning, however, as Cabuche was standing near him, helping Séverine, he made up his mind.
‘Where’s Flore?’ he asked. ‘Is she ill?’
The question took Cabuche by surprise. Séverine made a sign, but Cabuche, mistakenly thinking that she was telling him to answer, said, ‘Poor Flore, she’s dead!’
Jacques looked at them. He was shaking all over. They had to tell him the whole story. Between them they told him of Flore’s suicide; how she had walked into the tunnel and thrown herself under a train. Her mother’s funeral had been delayed until the evening so that her daughter could be buried at the same time; they had been laid to rest side by side in the little cemetery at Doinville, where they had joined the first victim of this sorry tale, Phasie’s younger daughter, the poor, unfortunate Louisette, who had likewise met a violent end, having been beaten and dragged through the mud. Three pitiful women who had fallen by the wayside, crushed and discarded, like refuse blown away in the fearful blast of the passing trains!
‘Dead! Oh God!’ whispered Jacques. ‘My poor Aunt Phasie, and Flore and Louisette!’
At the mention of Louisette, Cabuche, who was helping Séverine move the bed, raised his eyes instinctively towards her, pained by the sudden recollection of his former love; he was completely besotted by his new-found admiration for Séverine. Being the soft-hearted, simple soul he was, he doted on her like an obedient dog that fawns on its master the minute it is stroked. Séverine knew about his tragic love affair. She gave him a look of sympathy and understanding. Cabuche was deeply touched. As he passed the pillows to her, his hand accidentally brushed against hers. He gasped, and stammered something in reply to Jacques. Jacques had asked him whether Flore had been accused of causing the accident.
‘Oh, no,’ he mumbled. ‘They said she was responsible for it, but...’
Speaking slowly and hesitantly he told him what he knew. He hadn’t seen anything himself. He had been inside the house when the horses moved forward and pulled the wagon across the line. He could never forgive himself. The police officers had given him a severe talking to. Horses should not be left unattended. If he’d stayed with them this terrible accident would never have happened. The inquiry had arrived at the conclusion that it was a case of simple negligence on Flore’s part, and as she had already inflicted such a terrible punishment on herself, no further action was needed. Nor did they propose to dismiss Misard, who in his usual grovelling, obsequious way had got himself out of difficulties by blaming Flore. She only ever did her job as it suited her. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to leave his post to close the crossing gate. The Railway Company, moreover, could only certify that on that particular morning Misard had performed his duties meticulously and they authorized him, until such time as he chose to remarry, to share his house with an old woman living near by by the name of Ducloux, who would act as the new gate-keeper. Madame Ducloux had at one time worked as a barmaid and now lived off the immoral earnings she had amassed previously.
Cabuche left the room. Jacques motioned to Séverine to remain behind. He was very pale.
‘You know, don’t you,’ he said, ‘that it was Flore who pulled the horses forward and blocked the line with the stones?’
It was Séverine’s turn to go pale.
‘Darling, what are you saying? You’ve got a temperature. You must get back to bed.’
‘It’s not just a bad dream,’ he said. ‘I saw her, do you understand. As plainly as I see you. She had her hand on the horses, holding them back and preventing the wagon from crossing.’
Séverine’s legs gave way and she sank on to a chair in front of him.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said. ‘It’s terrifying! It’s monstrous! I shall never be able to sleep again.’
‘It’s perfectly clear,’ Jacques went on. ‘She tried to kill us ... both of us ... along with everyone else. She had wanted me for years and she was jealous. What’s more, she was crazy. Her head was full of mad ideas. All those people! Killed just like that! In one huge bloodbath! What a monster!’
His eyes were wide open, and a nervous twitch played on his lips. He fell silent, and they continued to look at each other. A whole minute went by. Then, tearing himself away from the fearful visions that were forming in their minds, he continued in a whisper, ‘If she’s dead, then it’s her ghost that comes to haunt me! Ever since I regained consciousness, she seems always to be there. This morning I thought she was standing by the bed. I turned round to look ... She is dead and we are alive. Let us hope that she won’t take her revenge!’
Séverine shuddered.
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she cried. ‘You’ll drive me mad!’
She went out. Jacques heard her going downstairs to tend to Henri. He remained by the window, once again absorbed in the scene below — the railway line, the gate-keeper’s cottage with its large well, the little wooden section box, where Misard, for all the world as if he were asleep, performed his endless, repetitive tasks. Jacques sat contemplating these things for hours on end, as if he were pondering a problem he could not solve, yet on whose solution his life depended.
He could not take his eyes off Misard — such a pathetic, inoffensive, washed-out looking character, continually racked by a nasty little cough, a man who had poisoned his wife and reduced a fine healthy woman to nothing, like a voracious insect that is driven by only one impulse! For years he must have thought of nothing else, day and night, every minute of the twelve interminable hours he was on duty. Each time the telegraph sounded to announce a train he would blow his horn; then, once the train had passed and he had closed the line behind it, he would press one button to offer it to the next section and another button to free the line to the section it had just left. These were simple mechanical operations that had become an integral part of his dreary vegetable existence, a kind of bodily reflex. He was uneducated and obtuse; he never read anything, but simply sat waiting for the bells to ring, with his arms dangling at his sides and his eyes gazing vacantly into space. He spent nearly all his time sitting in his cabin, with no other distraction than trying to make his lunch last as long as possible. He would then relapse into his stupor, his mind completely blank and not a thought in his head, overcome with insuperable drowsiness and sometimes dropping off to sleep with his eyes wide open. At night, in order to stop himself falling asleep, he would get up and totter about like someone who had had too much to drink. For months on end, the battle with his wife, the silent contest over which of them would have the hidden one thousand francs after the death of the other, must have been the sole preoccupation of this lonely man’s empty mind. When he went out to sound his horn or change the signals, performing the unvaried routine that ensured the safety of so many lives, he was thinking about poison. As he sat in his hut, waiting, with his arms hanging limp and his eyes heavy with sleep, the same thoughts ran through his head. He thought of nothing else; he would kill her, he would look for the money and it would be his.
Jacques was surprised to see that Misard seemed no different. So it was possible to kill, without any fuss, and continue one’s life as before. Indeed, after his initial bout of frantic searching for the money, Misard had slipped back into his old apathetic ways, keeping himself to himself, like someone who didn’t want to be disturbed. In the end, he had done away with his wife to no purpose; she was the winner and he was the loser. He turned the house upside down and still found nothing, not a single centime. Only his eyes revealed his constant preoccupation — worried, prying eyes that peered at you from an ashen face. He continually saw the dead woman’s large, staring eyes and hideous grin and heard her voice telling him to ‘Keep looking!’ He looked and looked; he could not give his mind a moment’s rest. He racked his brains ceaselessly, trying to guess where the money might be buried, thinking of possible hiding places, eliminating those he had already tried and getting so excited when he thought of a new one that he would immediately drop whatever he was doing and run to see. But all to no avail! It became unb
earable, an agonizing retribution, a kind of cerebral insomnia that kept his addled brain alert and thinking, in spite of himself, as the obsession ticked steadily away inside his head. When he sounded his horn, once for down trains and twice for up trains, he was searching. When he answered the bells in his cabin and pushed the buttons on his control panel to block or clear the line, he was still searching. He never stopped searching, searching desperately, all day long as he sat at his desk doing nothing, and all through the night, hardly able to stay awake, alone in the darkness and silence of the countryside, like an exile banished to the far ends of the earth. Old Madame Ducloux, who for the time being was looking after the level-crossing and who was very keen to find herself a husband, looked after him most solicitously and was very worried that he never seemed to close his eyes.
One night, Jacques, who by now was able to take a few steps around his bedroom, had got up and walked over to the window, when he saw a lamp moving in and out of the Misards’ cottage. It must have been Misard looking for the money! The following night, as he was looking out of the window again, he saw a tall dark shape standing in the road, under the window of the room next to his, in which Séverine slept. To his amazement he saw that it was Cabuche. He didn’t know why, but instead of feeling annoyed it made him feel sad and rather sorry for him. Poor Cabuche! A clumsy great fellow like him, stuck out there in the dark like a tame watchdog! Séverine was such a small girl, and, objectively speaking, not exactly pretty, yet with her jet-black hair and her periwinkle blue eyes, she obviously possessed the sort of charm that could captivate even a great oaf like Cabuche and make him stand at her door all night long, like a frightened little boy. He recalled his eagerness to do jobs for her, the slavish looks he gave her when he offered to help her. There was no doubt about it, Cabuche was in love with her and desired her. The next day he watched him carefully and saw him surreptitiously pick up a hairpin that had fallen from her chignon while she had been making the bed. He hid it in his hand so as not to have to give it back to her. Jacques thought of all the agonies he had suffered as a result of his own sexual desires and how his troubles and fears were coming back as his health returned.
Another two days went by. The week was nearly over, and, as the doctor had predicted, the injured were ready to go back to work. One morning, Jacques was standing at the window when he saw a brand new locomotive go past with his fireman, Pecqueux, waving to him from the footplate as if he were telling him to come and join him. But he was in no hurry to get back to his job. He preferred to stay where he was and wait for things to take their course. On the same day he once again heard peals of fresh, young laughter from downstairs, sounds of girlish merriment that echoed through the dismal house like the noise of a school at playtime. He knew it was the two young Dauvergne girls but he didn’t speak about it to Séverine. Séverine, in fact, was out of the room for most of the day and didn’t seem able to stay with him for more than five minutes. Then in the evening, the house once again became as silent as the grave. She sat in his room looking rather pale and serious. Jacques looked hard at her and asked, ‘Has Henri gone? Have his sisters taken him home?’
‘Yes,’ she answered tersely.
‘So are we alone at last? Just you and me?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘just you and me. Tomorrow we must part. I shall go back to Le Havre. We can’t stay camping out in this wilderness for ever.’
Jacques continued to look at her, smiling awkwardly.
‘You’re sorry he’s left, aren’t you?’ he said suddenly.
The question took her by surprise, and she started to deny it, but he stopped her.
‘I’m not trying to pick a quarrel with you,’ he said. ‘You can see I’m not jealous. You once told me to kill you if you were unfaithful, didn’t you? Well, I don’t think I look like a lover who is thinking of killing his mistress ... but you hardly moved from that room downstairs. I couldn’t have you to myself for a minute. It reminded me of what your husband once told me. He said that one of these days you would sleep with Dauvergne. Not for pleasure, but just to do something different.’
‘Something different, something different,’ she repeated slowly.
She had stopped trying to protest her innocence; she suddenly felt impelled to be completely honest with him.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘it’s true. You and I don’t need to hide anything from each other; we share too many secrets already ... Dauvergne has been after me for months. He knew that we were lovers, and thought it would make no difference to me if I was his lover too. When I was with him downstairs, he spoke about it again and said he was head over heels in love with me. He seemed so grateful to me for looking after him and he was so tender and affectionate that, yes, for a moment I thought I might fall in love with him too, do something different, something better, something quiet and gentle ... not exactly pleasure perhaps, but something that would have calmed me ...’
She broke off, and paused for a moment before continuing.
‘You and I have no future,’ she said. ‘We can go no further. We’re stuck. All our dreams of sailing away and being rich and happy in America, that wonderful future which depended on you ... it’s all gone, because you couldn’t do it ... I’m not blaming you Jacques ... perhaps it’s just as well it never happened ... but you must understand that there’s nothing more I can hope for from you. Tomorrow will be no different from yesterday ... there will be the same problems, the same anxieties.’
Jacques let her talk, only speaking when he saw that she had finished.
‘Is that why you slept with him?’ he asked.
She had moved across the bedroom, but came back towards him.
‘I didn’t sleep with him,’ she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘I don’t have to try and convince you because I know you will believe me; there’s no point in our lying to each other. No, I couldn’t bring myself to do it ... any more than you could bring yourself to kill Roubaud. Does it surprise you that a woman can’t give herself to a man, even when she decides that, all things considered, it would be in her interest to do so? I didn’t really give it too much thought. It has never cost me anything to be nice ... to give pleasure, I mean ... to my husband, or to you when I saw how much you loved me. But this time I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even let him kiss me on the lips, I promise you. He just kissed my hands. He’ll be waiting for me in Paris; he seemed so disappointed that I didn’t want to leave him thinking he had no hope.’
Jacques believed her. She was right; he could tell she wasn’t lying. But his anxiety was beginning to return. He felt the terrifying curse of his desire stirring within him as he thought of himself alone with her in that isolated house, with the flame of their passion rekindled. He wished he could get away.
‘But there’s someone else as well,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s Cabuche!’
She turned towards him.
‘Ah! You’ve noticed,’ she said. ‘You’ve noticed that too. Yes, it’s true. There’s Cabuche. What’s the matter with all these men! Cabuche hasn’t said a word to me, but I’ve seen him wringing his hands together when we kiss. When I sit close to you and take your hand, he runs away and cries. He steals my belongings ... gloves, handkerchiefs ... they keep disappearing. He carries them off to his hovel, as trophies ... Surely you don’t imagine I could give myself to an overgrown brute like him; I’d be terrified. Anyway, he hasn’t said a thing ... big chaps like him are sometimes very shy; they might be desperately in love, but they don’t demand a thing. You could leave me alone with him for a month, and he wouldn’t as much as touch me ... any more than he did Louisette; of that I am now quite certain.’
At this reminder of the past their eyes met, and they looked at each other in silence, remembering all that had happened between them — their meeting at the examining magistrate’s office in Rouen, their first magical trip to Paris, their secret lovers’ meetings in Le Havre, and all that had occurred since, both the good and the bad. She drew close to him, so clo
se that he could feel the warmth of her breath.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t give myself to Henri, and I certainly couldn’t give myself to Cabuche. I couldn’t give myself to anyone ... And do you know why? I’ll tell you, because now I know, and I know I’m right. It’s because you have taken me ... taken all of me. What other word is there? You have taken me, like something you seize in both hands and carry away and use every minute of the day, a possession. Before you, I hadn’t belonged to anyone. But now I’m yours, and I’ll be yours for ever ... even if you don’t want me to be, and even if I don’t want to be either ... I don’t know how to explain it. It was simply the way we met. Other men frightened me ... disgusted me. But with you it has been wonderful, a blessing from heaven ... Jacques, you are the only one I love. I can never love anyone but you!’
She put out her arms to draw him towards her and was about to lay her head on his shoulder and offer her lips to his. But he took hold of her hands and held her away from him, panic-stricken and terrified, as he felt the old familiar tremor run through his body and the blood pulsing through his brain. He heard the same ringing in his ears, the same pounding and clamouring in his head as when he had his terrible attacks as a youth. For some time already, he had been unable to make love to Séverine in broad daylight or even by the light of a candle for fear that the mere sight of her might drive him mad. But now there was a lamp beside the bed, shining brightly on both of them, and the reason he was shaking and becoming so agitated was no doubt because he had glimpsed the white curve of her breasts, through the unfastened top of her dressing-gown.
Séverine continued to entreat him, with ever-increasing passion.
‘What does it matter if we have no future together? Even if I don’t expect you to change my life and I know that tomorrow will bring us the same problems and torments as before, I don’t care. I want nothing more than to live out my life and to share my suffering with you. We’ll go back to Le Havre. Things can carry on as they like. If only I can be with you for an hour from time to time, like this ... I haven’t slept for three nights. I’ve been lying in my room across the landing, longing to come and join you. But you’ve been so ill and you seemed so unhappy that I didn’t dare ... Let me stay with you tonight. It will be lovely, I promise you. I’ll curl up small so as not to disturb you. It’s the last night we shall be here ... in this house, away from everything. Listen! Not a sound! Nothing! No one will come. We’re on our own ... completely on our own. No one would know if we died in each other’s arms.’