Therese Raquin, by Emile Zola - extract

Therese Raquin, by Emile Zola - extract

     In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Therese Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867. It is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness and revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence.

Extract

1

     At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, if you follow it away from the river, you find the Passage du Pont-Neuf, a sort of dark, narrow corridor linking the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine.1 This passageway is, at most, thirty paces long and two wide, paved with yellowish, worn stones which have come loose and constantly give off an acrid dampness. The glass roof, sloping at a right angle, is black with grime.

     On fair summer days when the sun bums down heavily on the streets, a whitish light penetrates the dirty panes of glass and lurks miserably about the arcade. On foul winter days, on a foggy morning, the glass roof casts only shadows over the slimy paving: mean, soiled shadows.

     Built into the left wall are dark, low, flattened shops which exhale the dank air of cellars. There are secondhand booksellers, toyshops and paper merchants whose displays sleep dimly in the shades, grey with dust. The little square panes of the shop windows cast strange, greenish reflections on the goods inside. Behind them, the shops are full of darkness, gloomy holes in which weird figures move around.

     On the right, along the whole length of the passageway, there is a wall, against which the shopkeepers opposite have set up narrow cupboards; nameless objects, goods forgotten for twenty years, lie there on narrow shelves painted a repellent shade of brown. A woman selling costume jewellery does business from one of the cupboards, offering rings at fifteen sous,' delicately placed on a bed of blue velvet at the bottom of a mahogany box.

     Above the glass roof, the wall extends, black, crudely rendered, as though stricken with leprosy and crisscrossed with scars.

     This Passage du Pont-Neuf is not a place for strolling. People use it to avoid making a detour, to gain a few minutes. Down it walk busy folk whose only thought is to march briskly straight ahead. You see apprentices in their aprons, seamstresses delivering their finished work, and men and women with parcels under their arms. You also see old men lurking in the dreary light of the glass roof, and gangs of little children who come running here after school to kick up a row, banging their clogs on the pavement. The crisp, hurried sound of footsteps on stone rings out all day long with irritating irregularity. No one speaks, no one stops; all these people are speeding past on their business, walking quickly along with downcast eyes, without sparing a single glance for the displays of goods. The shopkeepers look suspiciously at any passer-by who by a miracle happens to pause in front of their windows.

     In the evening, the arcade is lit by three gaslights enclosed in heavy, square lanterns. These hang down from the glass roof, on which they cast patches of yellowish light, spreading pale circles of luminescence around them that shimmer and appear to vanish from time to time. The passageway looks as though it might really be a hiding-place for cutthroats; great shadows spread across the paving and damp draughts blow in from the street; it has the appearance of an underground gallery dimly lit by three funerary lanterns. The shopkeepers make do with nothing more than the meagre illumination that the gas lamps cast on their windows. Inside the shops, they merely set up a lamp with a shade on a corner of the counter, which allows passers-by to detect what is lurking at the back of these holes where darkness inhabits even in daytime. Along the dingy line of windows, that of a paper merchant shines out: the yellow flames of two shale-oil lamps burn into the blackness. And, on the opposite side, a candle stuck into the glass mantle of an oil lamp puts glimmering stars in the box of costume jewellery. The woman who owns the shop is dozing at the back of her cupboard, with her hands wrapped in a shawl.

     A few years ago, facing this jewellers', there was a shop with bottle-green woodwork oozing humidity from every crack. The sign was a long narrow plank with the word Haberdashery in black; and, on one of the glass panes in the door, was a woman's name in red letters: Therese Raquin. Window displays on either side reached far back into the shop, lined with blue paper. In daylight, all that the eye could see was these windows, in a soft chiaroscuro. On one side, there were a few articles of clothing: fluted tulle bonnets at two or three francs apiece; muslin sleeves and collars; and woollens, stockings, socks and braces. Each item, yellow with age, hung pitifully from a wire hook, so that the window, from top to bottom, was full of whitish rags that took on a mournful appearance in the transparent gloom. The brand-new bonnets shone whiter, making bald patches against the blue paper lining the window, while the coloured stockings, hanging from a rail, struck dark notes against the pale, dim emptiness of the muslin.

     On the other side, behind a narrower window, were piled large skeins of green wool, black buttons sewn on to white cards, boxes of every size and colour, hairnets with steel drops stretched across circles of bluish paper, fans of knitting needles, tapestry patterns and reels of ribbon -a pile of dull, washed-out objects that had doubtless been reposing in this same spot for five or six years. All the colours had faded to a dirty grey in this cupboard rotten with dust and damp.

     Around midday, in summer, when the sun's rays burned down redly on the squares and streets around, you could make out the serious, pale face of a young woman behind the bonnets in the other window. Her profile stood out dimly against the blackness of the shop. A long, narrow, sharp nose reached down from the short, low forehead; her lips were two slender lines of pale pink; and her short but strong chin was attached to the neck by a supple, plump curve. You could not see her body, which was shrouded in gloom; only the profile of the face was visible, dull white, with a wide-open, black eye pierced in it, seeming to be crushed under the weight of a thick, dark mass of hair. There it stayed for hours on end, calm and motionless, between two bonnets on which the damp rails had left two lines of rust.

     In the evening, when the lamp was lit, you could see the inside of the shop. It was longer across than it was deep. At one end, there was a little counter, while at the other a spiral staircase led up to the rooms on the first floor. Against the walls stood display cases, cupboards and lines of green boxes; four chairs and a table completed the furniture. The room seemed naked and cold; the merchandise was packed up and squeezed into comers, instead of lying around here and there with its cheerful mixture of colours.

     Normally, there were two women sitting behind the counter: the young woman with the serious face and an old one who would smile as she dozed. The latter was about sixty, with a placid, chubby face that turned pale under the light of the lamp. A large tabby cat would crouch at one end of the counter, watching her as she slept.

     Further on, sitting on a chair, a man of some thirty years would be reading or chatting to the young woman in a low voice. He was small, puny and listless in manner, with a thin beard and his face covered in freckles: he looked like a sickly, spoiled child.

     Shortly before ten o'clock, the old woman would wake up. They shut the shop and the whole family went upstairs to bed. The tabby purred as it followed its masters, rubbing its head against each banister as it went.

     Upstairs, the house consisted of three rooms. The staircase opened into a dining room that also served as a sitting room. On the left was a porcelain stove in an alcove, with a sideboard opposite. Then there were chairs along the walls and a round table, fully open, occupying the middle. At the back, behind a glazed partition, was a dark kitchen. There were two bedrooms, one on either side of this living room.

     The old woman, after kissing her son and daughter-in-law, would retire to her room. The cat slept on a chair in the kitchen. The couple went into their own room; this had a second door, leading to a staircase, which opened into the arcade through a dark, narrow alleyway.

     The husband, constantly shivering with fever, would go to bed, while the young woman opened the window to close the shutters. She used to stay there for a few minutes, facing the great black wall with its crude rendering, which rose up and extended beyond the glass roof of the gallery. She would cast a vague glance at this wall and silently go to bed in her turn, with an air of contemptuous indifference.

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