Monomaniac (La bête humaine) — Section 21
"Yes," said he approvingly, "perfectly."
When they at last went to sleep, it was not daylight, but a streak of dawn began to whiten the gloom that had hidden them from one another, as if both had been wrapped in a black mantle.
He slept like a top until ten o'clock, without a dream; and, when he opened his eyes, he was alone.
Séverine was dressing in her own apartment, on the other side of the landing.
A sheet of clear sun entered through the window of the room occupied by Jacques, showing up the red curtains of the bedstead, the red paper on the walls, all that red with which the place was flaming; while the house tottered in the thunder of a train that had just sped past.
It must have been this train that awakened him.
Bedazzled by the glare of light, he looked at the sun, at the streaming crimson surroundings amidst which he found himself; then he recollected: the matter was settled, it was the next night that he would kill, when this great sun had disappeared.
The day passed as had been arranged by Séverine and Jacques.
Before breakfast, she requested Misard to take the telegram for her husband to Doinville; and at about three o'clock, as Cabuche was there, Jacques openly made his preparations for departure.
As he was leaving to catch the 4. 15 train from Barentin, Cabuche, having nothing to do, feeling himself drawn to the other by his secret passion, happy to find in the sweetheart something in common with the woman he was in love with himself, accompanied the driver to the station.
Jacques reached Rouen at 4. 40, and, getting down, found accommodation at a small inn near the railway kept by a woman from the same neighbourhood as himself.
He spoke of looking up his comrades on the morrow, before proceeding to Paris to resume duty.
But he said he felt very tired, having presumed too much on his strength; and, at six o'clock, he went off to bed, in a room he had taken on the ground floor, which had a window opening on a deserted alley.
Ten minutes later, he was on the road to La Croix-de-Maufras, having got out of this window without being seen, and taken good care to close the shutters, so as to be able to secretly return the same way.
It was not until a quarter after nine that Jacques found himself before the solitary house standing aslant beside the line, in the distress of its abandonment.
The night was very dark, not a glimmer could be distinguished on the hermetically closed front.
And Jacques again felt that painful blow in his heart, that feeling of frightful sadness which seemed like the presentiment of the evil that awaited him there.
As had been arranged with Séverine, he threw three small pebbles against a shutter of the red room; then he went to the back of the house where a door at last silently opened.
Having closed it behind him, he followed the light footsteps that went feeling their way up the staircase.
But when he reached the bedroom, and by the light of a large lamp burning on the corner of a table perceived the bed in disorder, the clothes of the young woman thrown on a chair, and herself in a dressing-gown, with her volume of hair arranged for the night, coiled on the top of her head, leaving her neck bare, he stood motionless with surprise.
"What!"
he exclaimed; "you had gone to bed?"
"Of course," she answered, "that is much better.
An idea struck me.
You see, when he arrives and I go down, as I am to open the door to him, he will have still less cause to be distrustful.
I shall tell him I have a headache.
Misard already knows I am not well.
And this will permit me to affirm that I never left this room when they find him to-morrow, down there, on the line."
But Jacques shuddered, and lost his temper.
"No, no," said he, "dress yourself.
You must be up.
You cannot remain as you are."
She was astonished, and began to laugh.
"But why, my darling?"
she inquired.
"Do not be anxious, I can assure you I do not feel at all cold.
Just see how warm I am!"
She advanced towards him in a caressing manner, to take him by the shoulders, and in raising her arms displayed her bosom through the dressing-gown she had neglected to fasten, and the night-dress that had come undone.
But as he drew back, in increasing irritation, she became docile.
"Do not be angry," said she, "I will get between the sheets again, and then you will have no reason to be afraid that I shall catch cold."
When she was in bed, with the clothes up to her chin, he seemed more calm.
And she continued talking quietly, explaining how she had arranged everything in her head.
"As soon as he knocks," she said, "I shall go down and open the door.
First of all, I had the idea of letting him come up here, where you would be in waiting for him.
But to get his body below again, would have caused complications; and, besides, this room has a parquetry floor, whereas the vestibule is tiled, and I shall easily be able to wash it if there should be any spots.
Just before you came, as I was undressing, I thought of a novel I had read, in which the author relates that one man to kill another stripped himself.
Do you understand?
A wash afterwards, and the clothes are free from any spots.
What do you say?
Supposing we were to do the same?"
He looked at her in bewilderment.
But she had her gentle face, her clear eyes of a little girl, and was simply thinking of arranging the plan perfectly, in order to ensure success.
All this passed through his head.
But her suggestion, the idea of being bespattered with the blood of the murder, brought on his abominable shiver which shook him to the bones.
"No, no!"
he answered.
"Do you wish us to act like savages?
Why not devour his heart as well?
How you must hate him!"
Her face suddenly became clouded.
This remark took her from her thoughts of prudent preparation, to reveal to her the horror of the deed.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she said: "I have suffered too much for the last few months, to have much affection for him.
I have repeated a hundred times over: anything rather than remain another week with this man.
But you are right.
It is frightful to come to that, we really must want to be happy together.
Anyhow, we will go down without a light.
You will stand behind the door, and when I have opened, and he has come in, you will do what you like.
If I interfere, it is only to help you; it is so that you may not have all the trouble yourself.
I am arranging the thing as well as I can."
He went to the table where he saw the knife, the weapon that had already been used by the husband, and which she had evidently placed there, so that he might strike him in his turn with it.
The wide open blade shone beneath the lamp.
Jacques took it up and examined it.
She watched him, but said nothing.
As he held the weapon in his hand there was no need to speak to him about it.
And she only opened her lips when he had laid it down again on the table.
"Listen, my darling," she continued, "I am not urging you on to it, am I?
There is still time.
Go away, if you do not feel you can do it."
But he became obstinate, and with a violent gesture exclaimed: "Do you take me for a coward?
This time it is settled.
I have sworn."
At that moment, the house was set rocking by the thunder of a train, which passed like a thunderbolt, and so close to the room that it seemed to go through it in its roar, and Jacques added: "There is his train.
The through train to Paris.
He got down at Barentin, and will be here in half an hour."
Neither Jacques nor Séverine made any further remark for some time.
In their minds they saw this man advancing through the night along the narrow paths.
Jacques had begun to walk up and down the room, as if counting the steps of the other whom each stride brought a little nearer.
Another, another; and, at the last one, he would be in ambush behind the vestibule door, and would drive the knife into his neck the moment he entered.
Séverine, still with the bedclothes up to her chin, lying on her back, with her great eyes motionless, watched him going and coming, her mind lulled by the cadence of his walk, which reached her like the echo of distant footsteps over there.
They came without pause, one after the other, and nothing would now stop them.
When the sufficient number had been taken, she would spring out of bed, and go down to open the door, with bare feet and without a light.
"Is it you, my dear?
Come in, I went to bed!"
she would say.
And he would not even answer.
He would sink down in the obscurity with his throat gashed open.
Again a train went by.
One on the down-line this time, the slow train which passed La Croix-de-Maufras five minutes after the other.
Jacques stopped in his walk, surprised.
Only five minutes had expired!
How long the half hour would be!
He experienced the necessity of keeping on the move, and resumed striding from one end of the room to the other.
He began to feel anxious, and was already communing with himself: would he be able to do it?
He was familiar with the progress of the phenomenon within him, from having followed it on more than ten different occasions; first of all a certainty, an absolute resolution to kill;
then a weight in the hollow of the chest, a chill in feet and hands;
and all at once the loss of vigour, the impotence of the will to act upon the muscles which had become inert.
In order to gain energy by reasoning, he repeated what he had said to himself so often: it was his interest to suppress this man--the fortune awaiting him in America, the possession of the woman he loved.
The worst of it was, that on finding the latter so scantily clothed a few moments before, he verily believed the enterprise would again come to naught; for, as soon as the old shiver returned, he ceased to have command over himself.
For an instant he had trembled in presence of the temptation which became too great: she offering herself, and the open knife lying there.
But now he felt strong, girded for the effort.
He could do it.
And he continued waiting for the man, striding up and down the apartment from door to window, passing at each turn beside the bed which he would not look at.
Séverine continued to lie still in that bed.
With her head motionless on the pillow, she now watched him come and go in a seesaw motion of the eyes.
She also felt anxious, agitated with the fear that this night his courage again would fail him.
Polish off this business and begin anew, that was all she wanted.
She was entirely for the one who held her, and heartless for the other whom she had never cared for.
They were getting rid of him because he was in the way.
Nothing could be more natural; and she had to reflect, to be touched by the abomination of the crime.
As soon as the vision of blood and the horrible complications disappeared, she resumed her smiling serenity with her innocent, tender, and docile face.
Nevertheless, she, who thought she knew Jacques, was astonished at what she observed.
He had his round head of a handsome young man, his curly hair, his coal black moustache, his brown eyes sparkling with gold; but his lower jaw advanced so prominently, with a sort of biting expression, that it disfigured him.
He had just now looked at her as he passed, as if in spite of himself; and the brilliancy of his eyes became deadened with a ruddy cloud, while at the same time he started backward in a recoil of all his frame.
Why did he avoid her?
Could it be because he was losing his courage, once more?
Latterly, ignorant of the constant danger of death threatening her while in his company, she had attributed her instinctive fright, for which there was no apparent cause, to the presentiment of an approaching rupture.
The conviction abruptly took firm hold of her, that if presently he found himself unable to strike, he would flee never to return.
After that she made up her mind that he would kill, and that she would know how to give him strength, should he need it.
At this moment another train passed: an interminably long goods train, whose extensive string of trucks seemed to be rolling on for ever in the oppressive silence that reigned in the apartment.
And, leaning on her elbow, she waited until this tempestuous disturbance became lost in the depth of the slumbering country.
"Another quarter of an hour," said Jacques, aloud.
"He has passed Bécourt Wood and is half-way.
Ah!
how long it is to wait!"
But, as he returned towards the window, he found Séverine standing in front of the bed.
"Suppose we go down with the lamp?"
she suggested.
"You can see the spot where you will place yourself.
I will show you how I shall open the door, and the movement you will have to make."
He drew back, trembling.
"No, no!"
he exclaimed.
"No lamp!"
"But just listen," she continued, "we will hide it afterwards.
You see we must form an idea of the position."
"No, no!"
he repeated.
"Get into bed again."
Instead of obeying, she advanced towards him with the invincible, despotic smile of the woman who knows herself to be all powerful.
When she held him in her arms, he would give way, he would do as she desired; and she continued talking in a caressing voice to conquer him.
"Come, my darling," she said, "what is the matter with you?
One would think you were afraid of me.
As soon as I approach you seem to avoid me.
But if you only knew how much I need to lean on you at this time, to feel you there, that we are absolutely of the same mind for ever and ever.
Do you understand?"
She at last made him retreat with his back to the table, and he could not flee further.
He looked at her in the bright light of the lamp.
Never had he seen her as she was then, with the front of her night-dress in disorder, and her hair coiled up so high that her neck was quite bare.
He was choking, struggling, already in a fury, quite giddy with the flood of blood that rushed to his head, at the same moment as the abominable shiver fell upon him.
And he remembered that the knife was there behind him, on the table.
He instinctively felt it there, he had only to stretch out his hand.
By an effort he still managed to stammer: "Go back to bed, I implore you."
But she continued to approach until she came close to him.
"Kiss me," she exclaimed, "kiss me with all the love you feel for me!
That will give us courage.
Ah!
yes, courage, we are in need of it!
We must love in a different way to others, stronger than others to do what we are about to do.
Kiss me with all your heart, with all your soul!"
He no longer breathed.
He felt as if he was being strangled.
The clamour of a multitude in his brain prevented him from hearing; while biting fire behind the ears burnt holes in his head, gained his arms, his legs, drove him from his own body, in the frantic rush of that other one--the invading brute.
His hands were about to escape from his control in the frenzy excited by this feminine semi-nudity.
The bare bosom pressing against his clothes, the neck so white, so delicate, extended in irresistible temptation, at last plunged him into a state of furious giddiness, over-powering, tearing away, annihilating his will.
"Kiss me, my darling," she repeated, "while we have still a minute left.
He will be here, you know.
He might knock from one moment to another, now, if he has walked quick.
As you will not go downstairs to arrange matters beforehand, do not fail to bear this in mind: I shall let him in.
You will be behind the door; and do not wait, do it at once!
Oh!
at once, to get it over!
I love you so fondly, we shall be so happy!
He is nothing but a wicked man, who makes me suffer, and who is the sole obstacle to our happiness.
Kiss me, oh!
so hard, so hard!
Kiss me as if you were going to devour me, so that nothing may remain of me beyond yourself!"
Jacques, feeling behind him with his right hand, had secured the knife without turning round.
And for a moment he remained in the same position tightening his grasp on the weapon.
Could the feeling that had come over him be a return of that thirst to avenge those very ancient offences, the exact recollection of which escaped him, that rancour amassed from male to male since the first deception in the depths of the caverns?
He fixed his wild eyes on Séverine.
He now only required to lay her dead on her back, like a prey torn from others.
The gate of terror opened on the dark sexual chasm.
Love, even unto death.
Destroy, to have more absolute possession.
"Kiss me, kiss me!"
she pleaded.
She presented her submissive face in imploring tenderness, displaying her bare neck at the part where it voluptuously met the bosom.
And he, seeing her white skin as in a burst of flame, raised his fist armed with the knife.
But she perceived the flash of the blade and started back, gaping in surprise and terror.
"Jacques, Jacques!"
she cried; "me?
Good God!
Why?"
With set teeth and answering not a word, he pursued her.
A brief struggle brought her again beside the bed.
She shrank from him, haggard, without defence, her night-dress in shreds.
"Why?
good God!
Why?"
she continued asking.
His fist came down, and the knife stuck the inquiry in her throat.
In striking, he twisted the blade round in a frightful compulsion of the hand which satisfied itself.
It was the same blow as President Grandmorin had received, inflicted at the same place, and with the same fury.
Did she shriek?
He never knew.
The Paris express flew by at this moment with such violence and rapidity that it shook the floor; and Séverine was dead, as if struck down in this tempestuous blast.
Jacques, standing motionless, now looked at her, stretched at his feet before the bed.
The riot of the train was dying away in the distance as he gazed upon her in the oppressive silence of the red bedroom.
On the ground, amidst those red hangings, those red curtains, she bled profusely.
A crimson stream trickled down between her breasts, spreading over the abdomen to one of the lower limbs, whence it fell in great drops upon the floor.
Her night-dress, rent half asunder, was drenched with it.
He could never have believed she had so much blood.
But what retained him there, haunted, was the abominable look of terror that the face of this pretty, gentle, docile woman took in death.
The black hair stood on end as a helmet of horror, dark as night.
The blue eyes, immeasurably wide open, were still inquiring, aghast, terrified at the mystery.
Why?
why had he murdered her?
And she had just been reduced to nothing, carried off in the fatality of murder, a creature irresponsible, whom life had rolled from vice into blood, and who had remained tender and innocent notwithstanding, for she had never understood.
Jacques was astonished.
He heard the sniffing of animals, the grunting of wild boars, the roaring of lions; and he became calm, it was himself breathing.
At last!
at last!
he had gratified his thirst--he had killed!
Yes; he had done that.
He felt elevated by ungovernable joy, by intense delight at the full satisfaction of his everlasting desire.
He experienced surprising pride, an aggrandisement of his male sovereignty.
He had slaughtered the woman.
He possessed her as he had so long desired to possess her, entirely to the point of destroying her.
She had ceased to belong, she never would belong any more to anybody.
And a bitter recollection recurred to him, that of the other murdered victim, the corpse of President Grandmorin which he had seen on that terrible night five hundred yards from the house.
This delicate body before him, so white, striped with red, was the same human shred, the broken puppet, the limp rag that a knife makes of a creature.
Yes, that was it.
He had killed, and he had this thing on the ground.
She had just been hurled down like the other; but on her back, the left arm doubled under her right side, twisted, half-torn from her shoulder.
Was it not on the night when the body of the President was found that with heart beating fit to burst, he had sworn to dare in his turn, in a prurience for murder which exasperated him like a concupiscence at the sight of the slaughtered man?
Ah!
if he could only have the pluck, satisfy himself, drive in the knife!
This had germinated and developed within him obscurely.
For a year, not an hour had gone by without him having advanced towards the inevitable result.
Even with his arms about the neck of this woman, and amidst her kisses, the secret work was approaching its termination; and the two murders had become united.
Did
not the one show the logic of the other?
The clatter of a house falling down, a jolting of the floor drew Jacques from his gaping contemplation of the dead woman.
Were the doors flying into splinters?
Had people arrived to arrest him?
He looked around, but only to find dull, silent solitude.
Ah!
yes; another train!
But the man who would be knocking at the door below, the man whom he wished to kill!
He had completely forgotten him.
If he regretted nothing, he already judged himself an idiot.
What!
what had happened?
The woman he loved, who loved him passionately, was lying on the floor with her throat cut; while the husband, the obstacle to his happiness, was still alive, and still advancing step by step in the obscurity.
He had been unable to wait for this man, who for months had been so sparing of the scruples of his education, and of the ideas of humanity slowly acquired and transmitted; with contempt for his own interest, he had just been carried away by the heredity of violence, by that craving to commit murder, which in the primitive forests threw animal upon animal.
Does anyone kill as the result of reasoning?
People only kill by an impulse of blood and nerves--the necessity to live, the joy of being strong.
He now merely experienced the lassitude of one satiated.
Then he became scared and endeavoured to understand, but without finding anything else than astonishment and the bitter sadness of the irreparable as a result of his gratified passion.
The sight of the unfortunate creature, who still gazed at him with her look of terrified interrogation, became atrocious.
Wishing to turn away his eyes, he abruptly felt the sensation of another white form rising up at the foot of the bed.
Could this be the double of the murdered woman?
Then he recognised Flore.
She had already returned, while he had the fever after the accident.
Doubtless she was triumphant, at this moment, at being avenged.
He turned icy cold with terror.
He asked himself what he could be thinking of, to loiter thus in this room.
He had killed, he was gorged, satiated, intoxicated with the dreadful wine of crime.
Stumbling against the knife which had remained on the ground, he fled, rolling down the stairs.
He opened the front door giving on the perron, as if the small one would not have been sufficiently wide, and dashed out into the pitch-dark night where his furious gallop became lost.
He never turned round.
The dubious-looking house, set down aslant at the edge of the line, remained open and desolate behind him, in its abandonment of death.
Cabuche, that night as on the others, had found his way through the hedge, and was prowling under the window of Séverine.
He knew very well that Roubaud was expected, and was not astonished at the light filtering through a chink in one of the shutters.
But this man bounding from the top of the steps, this frantic gallop like that of an animal tearing away into the country, struck him dumbfounded with surprise.
It was already too late to pursue the fugitive, and the quarryman remained bewildered, full of uneasiness and hesitation before the open door, gaping upon the black hole formed by the vestibule.
What had occurred?
Should he enter?
The heavy silence, the absolute stillness while the lamp continued burning in the upper room, gave him pangs of anguish.
At last, making up his mind, he groped his way upstairs.
Before the door of the red bedroom, which had also been left open, he stopped.
In the placid light, he seemed to perceive in the distance a heap of petticoats lying at the foot of the bedstead.
No doubt Séverine was undressed.
He called gently to her, feeling alarmed, while his veins began throbbing violently.
Then he caught sight of the blood, and understood.
With a terrible cry that came from his lacerated heart, he sprang forward.
Great God!
It was she, assassinated, struck down there in her pitiful nudity.
He thought her still rattling, and felt such despair, such painful shame at seeing her quite nude in her agony; that he lifted her in a fraternal transport, in his open arms, and, placing her on the bed, drew the sheet over her.
But in this clasp, the only tenderness between them, he covered his chest and both his hands with blood.
