Thérèse Raquin (Vintage Classics) by Emile Zola & Adam Thorpe

Author:Emile Zola & Adam Thorpe
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2013-10-02T23:00:00+00:00

XIX

NEVERTHELESS, THE SECRET work of Thérèse and Laurent brought results. Thérèse had adopted a gloomy, despairing attitude which troubled Madame Raquin after a few days. The old haberdasher wanted to know what saddened her niece so. And then the young woman played the role of inconsolable widow exquisitely; she spoke of boredom, depression, nervous pains, without being specific. When her aunt urged her on with questions, she replied that she was fine, that she had no notion what was weighing her down so, that she would cry without knowing why. And she was all constant fits of breathlessness, wan and heart-breaking smiles, crushing silences of emptiness and desperation. Faced with this young woman closed in on herself, who appeared to be dying slowly of an unknown malady, Madame Raquin eventually grew seriously alarmed; she had no one else in the world but her niece, and she would pray to God each night that He might preserve this child so she would be there to close her eyes on her deathbed. A touch of selfishness was mixed in with this final affection of her old age. When she came to think how she might lose Thérèse and die alone in the depths of the dank shop in the passageway, she felt the sad little comforts that helped her go on living were under threat. From then on, her eyes never left her niece, and she studied the young woman’s sorrow with dread, asking herself what on earth she could do to cure her of this mute despair.

Given the seriousness of the situation, she reckoned she should seek the advice of her old friend Michaud. One Thursday evening she kept him back in the shop and told him her fears.

‘Why of course,’ the old man answered her with the frank brutality of his old job, ‘I’ve noticed for ages that Thérèse sulks, and I know perfectly well why her face looks so yellow and surly.’

‘You know why?’ said the haberdasher. ‘Quick, tell me. If only we could make her better!’

‘Oh, the treatment is easy,’ Michaud went on with a laugh. ‘Your niece is bored because she’s been alone at night in her room for almost two years. She’s in need of a husband; you can see it in her eyes.’

The ex-commissioner’s brutal frankness hit Madame Raquin painfully hard. She thought that the wound still bleeding inside her since the appalling accident at Saint-Ouen bled just as keenly and just as cruelly, deep in the young widow’s heart. With her son dead, it seemed to her that no other husband could possibly exist for her niece. And now here was Michaud asserting, with a coarse laugh, that Thérèse was ill from want of a husband.

‘Marry her off as soon as possible,’ he said as he went out, ‘if you don’t wish to see her dry up completely. Such is my advice, dear lady, and it is good advice, believe me.’

Madame Raquin could not adjust straightaway to the idea that her son was already forgotten.

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