Текст книги "The Kill"

Автор книги: Émile Zola

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Saccard, newly arrived from his province, could not at first fathom the intricate depths of Mme Sidonie’s numerous occupations. Since he had done a year of law, she spoke to him one day about the three billion francs with an air of seriousness that left him with a poor opinion of her intelligence. She gave the apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques the once over, took Angèle’s measure at a glance, and did not reappear until her errands brought her back to the neighborhood and she felt a need to allude once more to the matter of the three billion francs. Angèle had been hooked by the story of the English debt. The saleswoman mounted her hobbyhorse and for an hour made the heavens rain with gold. This was the crack in her nimble mind, the tempting folly with which she compensated for a life squandered in squalid deals, the magical bait with which she bewitched not only herself but the most credulous of her clients. She was so convinced of her case, moreover, that she ended up speaking of the three billion as her own personal fortune, which sooner or later the judges must restore to its rightful owner. Her miserable black hat, garnished with faded violets swaying on stems of bare brass wire, was thus wreathed in a miraculous aureole. Angèle’s enormous eyes opened wide. On several occasions she spoke of her sister-in-law to her husband with respect, saying that Mme Sidonie might one day make them rich. Saccard shrugged. He had visited the boutique and the apartment on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière and had sniffed nothing but impending bankruptcy. He asked his brother’s opinion of their sister, but Eugène turned grave and replied only that he never saw her and knew her to be highly intelligent but perhaps a little disreputable. Some time later, however, as Saccard was returning to the rue de Penthièvre, he thought he saw Mme Sidonie’s black dress slip out of his brother’s apartment and scurry down the street. He ran after the woman in black but lost sight of her. The businesswoman’s appearance was of the unremarkable sort that is easily lost in a crowd. But the incident made an impression on him, and from that moment on he began to study his sister more carefully. It did not take him long to grasp the immensity of the labor performed by this pale, shapeless little woman, whose whole face seemed to melt into a covetous gaze. He respected her. She had the Rougon blood in her veins. He recognized the family’s characteristic appetite for money and craving for intrigue. But thanks to the milieu in which she had grown old—Paris, the city she had been obliged to scour in the morning in order to have black bread to eat at night—the common temperament had been warped to produce this strange hermaphrodite, this neutered female, this woman of affairs and procuress rolled into one.

When Saccard, having settled on a plan, set out in search of seed money, he naturally thought of his sister. She shook her head and sighed with an allusion to the three billion francs. But the clerk had no patience with her folly and cut her short whenever she brought up the matter of the Stuart debt. Daydreams of that sort in so practical a mind struck him as disgraceful. Mme Sidonie, whose convictions were impervious to the harshest sarcasms, went on to explain in the clearest of terms that since he had no collateral to offer, he would find it impossible to borrow a cent. This conversation took place in front of the Bourse,⁷ where she no doubt gambled with her savings. At around three o’clock you could be sure of finding her leaning against the railing on the left, on the side facing the post office, where she held court for characters as suspect and dubious as herself. Her brother was about to take his leave when she murmured wistfully, “Ah, if only you weren’t married.” This reticence, the full and precise meaning of which he did not wish to inquire into, put Saccard in an unusually reflective frame of mind.

Months passed. War had just been declared in Crimea.⁸ Paris, unmoved by hostilities in a faraway land, displayed far more enthusiasm for speculation and prostitution. Saccard, who had foreseen the rampant mania, looked on and gnawed his knuckles. The city was a giant forge, and each time a hammer struck gold on one of its anvils he quivered with rage and impatience. His mind and will were so fraught with tension that he lived as in a dream, teetering along the edges of rooftops like a sleepwalker in the grip of an idea he could not shake. He was therefore surprised and irritated one evening to find Angèle sick in her bed. His home life, as regular as clockwork, had gone awry, and this exasperated him as if fate had deliberately played him a dirty trick. Poor Angèle complained mildly; she had caught a chill. When the doctor arrived, he seemed quite worried. On the landing he told the husband that his wife had pneumonia and he could not answer for her life. From that moment on the clerk nursed the patient without a trace of anger. He stopped going to the office, remained at her side, and stared at her with an inscrutable expression as she slept, flushed with fever and short of breath. Mme Sidonie, despite her crushing workload, found time every evening to stop in and prepare a tisane,⁹ which she claimed would cure anything. To all her other professions she added that of a born nurse, pleased to be in close proximity to suffering, medications, and the kinds of anguished conversations that take place around the beds of the dying. She seemed taken, moreover, by a tender friendship for Angèle. She truly loved women and lavished them with a thousand kindnesses, no doubt for the pleasure they gave men. She treated them with the same delicate attention that merchants reserve for the most precious items on their shelves, called them “my darling, my beauty,” cooed over them and swooned before them like a lover before his mistress. Although Angèle was not the sort from whom she hoped to gain anything, she flattered her as she did the others, obedient to a general rule of conduct. When the young woman took to her bed, Mme Sidonie’s effusions turned maudlin, and she filled the silent bedroom with signs of her devotion. Her brother watched her move about the room with her lips pressed together as though devastated by unspoken grief.

The illness worsened. One evening the doctor let it be known that the patient would not last the night. Mme Sidonie had come early, looking preoccupied, and stared at Aristide and Angèle with watery eyes illuminated by brief flashes of fire. After the doctor left, she turned down the lamp, and deep silence ensued. Death slowly made its way into the hot, humid room, which the dying woman’s irregular breathing filled with a syncopated ticking like that of a clock about to run down. Mme Sidonie had given up on her potions, allowing the disease to do its work. She sat down in front of the fireplace next to her brother, who poked feverishly at the fire while casting involuntary glances at the bed. Then, as if overwhelmed by the heavy atmosphere and the distressing spectacle, he withdrew into the adjacent room. Little Clotilde, who had been left there, was sitting on a rug and playing very quietly with her doll. Saccard’s daughter smiled at him, but just then Mme Sidonie slipped into the room behind him and drew him off to a corner, where she spoke to him in a low voice. The door remained open, and a faint rattle could be heard in Angèle’s throat.

“Your poor wife,” the businesswoman sobbed. “I think the end is near. You heard the doctor?”

Saccard made no reply other than to bow his head in a mournful manner.

“She was a good woman,” his sister continued, speaking as though Angèle were already dead. “You can find women who are wealthier and more familiar with the ways of the world, but you’ll never find a heart like hers.”

Then she stopped and, wiping her eyes, seemed to be casting about for a way to change the subject. “Do you have something to say to me?” Saccard asked bluntly.

“Yes, I’ve been looking after your interests in regard to the matter we were discussing, and I think I’ve found . . . But at a time like this . . . My heart is breaking, you know.”

She wiped her eyes once more. Saccard, maintaining his composure, let her run through her act without saying a word. Finally she made up her mind to come right out with it: “There’s a young woman whose family would like to find her a husband immediately. The dear child finds herself in trouble. There’s an aunt who would be willing to make a sacrifice. . . .”

She cut herself short, still whimpering, her voice still tearful as though out of pity for poor Angèle. This was a way of making her brother impatient and compelling him to question her, so that she would not bear sole responsibility for the offer she had come to make. The clerk was indeed smoldering with irritation.

“Come on, finish what you were saying! Why do they want to find a husband for this girl?”

“She’s just out of boarding school,” the businesswoman rejoined in a plaintive voice. “She was visiting the country house of the parents of one of her friends when a man led her astray. The girl’s father learned of her crime only recently. He wanted her dead. To save the dear child, her aunt persuaded her to tell her father a tall tale. They’ve convinced him that the guilty party is an honorable young fellow who asks only to be allowed to atone for his momentary lapse.”

“So?” asked Saccard in a tone of surprise and apparent annoyance. “This fellow from the country is going to marry the girl?”

“No, he can’t. He’s already married.”

For a while nothing was said. Angèle’s rattle made a more doleful sound in the shivering air. Little Clotilde had stopped playing with her doll. She looked at Mme Sidonie and her father with her big, dreamy child’s eyes, as if she had understood their conversation. Saccard put a series of short questions to his sister:

“How old is the girl?”

“Nineteen.”

“Pregnant for how long?”

“Three months. There will no doubt be a miscarriage.”

“And the family is rich and respectable?”

“Old bourgeoisie. The father was a magistrate. A very nice fortune.”

“How much is the aunt willing to sacrifice?”

“A hundred thousand francs.”

Another silence ensued. Mme Sidonie had stopped weeping. She was doing business now, and her voice took on the metallic sound of a secondhand dealer haggling over a sale. Her brother looked at her with a sidelong glance and, after a moment’s hesitation, added, “And you? What do you want out of it?”

“We’ll see about that later,” she replied. “Someday you’ll do me a favor.”

She waited a few seconds, and then, since he said nothing, put it to him directly. “So, what have you decided? These poor women are desperate. They’re trying to avoid a scene. They’ve promised to tell the girl’s father the guilty man’s name tomorrow. . . . If you agree, I’ll send a messenger to them with your card.”

Saccard seemed to awaken from a dream. Thinking he heard a faint noise from the bedroom next door, he winced and turned in fright toward the source of the sound. “But I can’t,” he said in great distress, “you know very well that I can’t.”

Mme Sidonie fixed him with a cold and disdainful stare. All the Rougon blood in his veins, all his ardent desires, rushed to his head. He took a card from his wallet and gave it to his sister, who thrust it into an envelope after carefully scratching out the address. Then she went out. It was just past nine o’clock.

Saccard, left alone, went to the window and leaned his forehead against the frosted pane. Unconsciously he drummed the glass with his fingertips. But the night was so dark, the shadows outside hulked in such peculiar shapes, that he felt ill at ease and unthinkingly returned to the room in which Angèle lay dying. He had forgotten her, and it came as a horrible shock to find her sitting propped up against the pillows. Her eyes were wide open, and life seemed to have flooded back into her cheeks and lips. Little Clotilde, still clutching her doll, had sat down on the edge of the bed. The moment her father’s back was turned, she had hastily slipped into the bedroom from which she had been banished earlier, drawn there by the childish curiosity that was the source of all her joy. Saccard, his head still filled with his sister’s story, saw his dream dashed. A dreadful thought must have glared in his eyes. Angèle, seized by terror, tried to shrink back into the bed, pressing herself against the wall; but death had arrived, and this awakening in the throes of agony was only the final flaring up of the lamp before it went out for good. The dying woman could not move. She collapsed, still staring at her husband with wide-open eyes, as if to follow his movements. Saccard, who for a moment thought that fate had contrived some diabolical resurrection in order to keep him mired in misery, felt reassured on seeing that the wretched woman would be dead within the hour. Now all he felt was an intolerable malaise. Angèle’s eyes told him that she had overheard his conversation with Mme Sidonie and was afraid he would strangle her if she did not die quickly enough. Her eyes also expressed the horrified amazement of a sweet and inoffensive nature in its final hour recognizing the world’s infamy and shuddering at the thought of having spent long years at the side of a bandit. Little by little her eyes softened. She was no longer afraid, and she must have taken her wretched husband’s long and unremitting struggle against fate as the basis of an excuse. Saccard, pursued by the dying woman’s stare, which he read as a reproach, leaned against the furniture and groped for the shadows. Then, feeling faint, he sought to banish the nightmare that was driving him mad and advanced into the light. But Angèle motioned to him not to speak. She continued to stare at him with a look of terrified anguish, now mixed with a promise of forgiveness. At that point he bent down to take Clotilde in his arms and carry her into the other room. With a movement of her lips Angèle stopped him from doing this as well. She insisted that he remain with her. She went gently, without taking her eyes off him, and the paler he grew, the gentler her gaze became. Forgiveness came with her final sigh. She died as she had lived, softly, diffident in death as she had been in life. Saccard stood trembling before those lifeless eyes, which remained open and, inert though they now were, continued to pursue him. Little Clotilde rocked her doll gently on the edge of the sheet so as not to wake her mother.

By the time Mme Sidonie returned, it was all over. With the deft touch of a woman accustomed to performing this final act, she closed Angèle’s eyes, much to Saccard’s relief. Then, after putting the child to bed, she rapidly tidied up the death chamber. After lighting two candles on the dresser and carefully drawing the coverlet up to the dead woman’s chin, she looked around with a satisfied glance and stretched out in an armchair, where she slept until daybreak. Saccard spent the night in the next room writing letters announcing his wife’s death. From time to time he stopped what he was doing, mused about something else, and jotted down columns of figures on scraps of paper.

On the night of the burial, Mme Sidonie brought Saccard to her apartment, where important decisions were taken. The clerk made up his mind to send little Clotilde to live with one of his brothers, Pascal Rougon, an unmarried doctor in love with science who made his home in Plassans and who had several times offered to take in his niece in the hope of bringing a little joy to the silence of his scholarly abode. Mme Sidonie impressed on him that he could no longer go on living on the rue Saint-Jacques. She would rent an elegantly furnished apartment for him somewhere near the Hôtel de Ville for a period of one month. She would try to find an apartment in a decent building, so that the furniture would appear to be his. Meanwhile, the furniture from the rue Saint-Jacques apartment would be sold, so as to eliminate the last vestiges of the past. He would use the money to buy a suitable trousseau and clothing. Three days later, Clotilde was entrusted to an elderly lady who happened to be traveling south. And a triumphant Aristide Saccard—with his cheeks now a healthy crimson color and, though fortune had been smiling on him for just three days, with more flesh already on his bones—moved into a charming five-room apartment in an austere and respectable house on rue Payenne in the Marais,¹⁰ where he padded about in embroidered slippers. The apartment belonged to a young abbé, who had departed suddenly for Italy with orders to his serving woman to find a tenant. This servant was a friend of Mme Sidonie’s, who had something of a weakness for men of the cloth. She loved priests in the same way she loved women, by instinct, perhaps drawing certain uneasy parallels between cassocks and silk skirts. By this point Saccard was prepared. He composed his role with exquisite art and unflinchingly anticipated the difficulties and delicacies of the situation to which he had committed himself.

On the terrible night of Angèle’s death, Mme Sidonie faithfully if briefly recounted the calamity that had befallen the Béraud family. Its patriarch, M. Béraud Du Châtel, a tall, elderly man of sixty, was the last in a long and respectable bourgeois line whose pedigree could be traced back farther than that of many a noble clan. One of his ancestors had been a companion of Etienne Marcel.¹¹ In 1793, his father had died on the scaffold ¹² after welcoming the Revolution with all the enthusiasm of a bourgeois de Paris in whose veins flowed the city’s revolutionary blood. He himself was one of those Spartan republicans who dreamed of a government of thoroughgoing justice and sage liberty. After a lifetime in the magistracy, where he acquired the rigidity and severity associated with his profession, he resigned as chief judge after the coup d’état of 1851 because he had been unwilling to take part in the kangaroo courts that had discredited French justice by punishing those who had resisted the takeover. Since that time he had lived a withdrawn and solitary existence in his home on the tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, almost opposite the Hôtel Lambert. His wife had died young. Some private tragedy, the wound from which was still raw, made his already-grave judicial countenance even gloomier. He had a daughter, Renée, who had been eight when his wife passed away while giving birth to a second girl. The younger child, baptized Christine, had been taken in by one of his sisters, the wife of the notary Aubertot. Renée had been sent off to a convent school. Mme Aubertot, who had no children of her own, loved Christine like a daughter and raised her under her own roof. When her husband died, she returned the girl to her father’s home and lived there as companion to the silent old man and his smiling blonde daughter. Renée was left at boarding school. During school vacations she raised such a ruckus in the house that her aunt heaved a great sigh of relief on returning her to the Dames de la Visitation, in whose custody she had been from the age of eight. She did not leave the convent until she was nineteen, at which time she went to spend the summer with the parents of her good friend Adeline, who owned a fine estate in the Nivernais.¹³ When she returned home in October, her aunt Elisabeth was surprised to find her in a very pensive mood and profoundly sad. One night she found the girl sobbing into her pillow and writhing on her bed in anguish. In the throes of despair, the child told a heartrending tale: a man of forty, wealthy and married, whose young and charming wife was also staying at the house, had raped her in a field, and she had not dared to defend herself, nor would she have known how. This confession filled Aunt Elisabeth with terror. She blamed herself, as if she felt somehow an accomplice. Her preference for Christine weighed on her mind, and she believed that if she had kept Renée at home, the poor child would not have succumbed. To cope with her remorse, which her tender nature only compounded, she supported the wayward child. She bore the brunt of the father’s anger when the very zealousness of their efforts to conceal the terrible truth from him gave it away. In her alarmed state of anxiety she came up with the strange plan of arranging a marriage, which she hoped would fix everything, calming the wrath of Renée’s father and restoring the child to the ranks of respectable womanhood. She refused to see what was shameful about the plan or to acknowledge its inevitable consequences.

No one ever found out how Mme Sidonie had got wind of this stroke of fortune. The honor of the Bérauds had moldered in the bottom of her basket along with the overdue bills of the capital’s prostitutes. When she learned of the story, she all but forced her brother on the unfortunate family even as his wife lay dying. Aunt Elisabeth ended up believing that she owed a debt of gratitude to this woman, so gentle, so humble, and so devoted to Renée as to find the unfortunate girl a husband from her own family. The aunt’s first interview with Saccard took place in the apartment on the rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. The city-hall employee, who had come in through the carriage entrance on the rue Papillon, saw Mme Aubertot enter by way of the shop and the hidden staircase and immediately grasped the ingenious contrivance of the two entrances. He was as tactful and polite as could be. He treated the marriage as a business deal, but with the attitude of a man of the world settling a gambling debt. Aunt Elisabeth trembled a good deal more than he. She stammered and did not dare mention the hundred thousand francs she had promised him. It was he who brought up the matter of money, and he did so with the detachment of an attorney discussing the case of a client. In his view, a hundred thousand francs was a ridiculously small sum for Mademoiselle Renée’s prospective husband to bring to the marriage. He laid slight stress on the word “mademoiselle.” M. Béraud Du Châtel, already ill disposed toward his future son-in-law, would be all the more contemptuous if the prospective bridegroom appeared to be impoverished. The judge would accuse him of seducing his daughter for her fortune, and it might even occur to him to make private inquiries. Mme Aubertot, unsettled, not to say alarmed, by Saccard’s calm and polite presentation, lost her head and agreed to double the sum when he let it be known that with anything less than 200,000 francs in his pocket he would never dare to ask for Renée’s hand lest he be mistaken for a contemptible fortune-hunter. The worthy lady departed in a state of considerable confusion, not knowing what to think of a young man capable of such indignation yet willing to enter into such a bargain.

This first interview was followed by an official visit: Aunt Elisabeth called on Aristide Saccard in his apartment on the rue Payenne, this time on behalf of M. Béraud. The former magistrate had refused to see “that man,” as he referred to his daughter’s seducer, so long as he was not married to Renée, whom he had also banished from his home. Mme Aubertot had full powers to make all the arrangements. She seemed pleased to find the clerk ensconced in such luxurious surroundings, having been afraid that the brother of the rather bedraggled-looking Mme Sidonie might turn out to be a man of no refinement. He greeted her in a sumptuous dressing gown. These were the days when the adventurers who had swept to power in the wake of the December coup, having paid off their debts, flung their worn boots and frayed waistcoats into the sewers, shaved the week’s growth from their faces, and became proper gentlemen. Saccard had at last joined the gang. He now cleaned his nails and daubed himself with priceless powders and perfumes after his bath. He was stylish, and he changed tactics, affecting a prodigious lack of interest in the entire affair. When the old woman brought up the contract, he made a gesture as if to say that the whole thing was of no importance to him. For the past week he had been studying the Code¹⁴ and pondering a grave question on which his future freedom to wheel and deal would depend.

“If you please, let’s dispose of this disagreeable matter of money. . . . My view is that Mademoiselle Renée ought to retain control of her fortune and I of mine. The notary will take care of all that.”

Aunt Elisabeth approved of this way of looking at the matter. She had a vague sense that this young man had a grip of iron and felt some trepidation that he might want to lay hands on her niece’s dowry, which was her next order of business.

“My brother,” she said, “has a fortune consisting mainly of land and houses. He is not inclined to punish his daughter by reducing her share of his estate. He is giving her a property in the Sologne ¹⁵ estimated to be worth 300,000 francs, as well as a house in Paris valued at 200,000 francs.”

Saccard was dazzled. He had not anticipated figures like these. He turned away slightly in order to conceal the rush of blood to his face.

“That comes to 500,000 francs,” the aunt continued, “but I would be remiss if I hid the fact that the Sologne property yields only two percent.”

He smiled and again made a gesture indicating lack of interest, signifying that such a consideration could not possibly matter to him since he was declining to dip into his wife’s fortune in any way. Sitting in his armchair, he affected an attitude of charming indifference, absentmindedly balancing his slipper on his toe and seeming to listen purely out of politeness. Mme Aubertot, good soul that she was, spoke with difficulty, choosing her words carefully so as not to give offense.

“Lastly,” she went on, “I wish to make a gift to Renée. I have no child, my fortune will one day pass to my nieces, and I am not about to cut one of them off because she happens at present to be reduced to tears. Marriage gifts had already been decided for both of them. Renée’s consists of extensive holdings in land in the area of Charonne, to which I would conservatively attach a value of 200,000 francs. However—”

At the mention of “holdings in land,” Saccard gave a slight start. Still feigning indifference, he was now all ears. Aunt Elisabeth became flustered and seemed to have difficulty finding the right words. Turning red, she went on: “However, my wish is that the title to this land should pass to Renée’s first child. You will surely understand my intention: I do not want this child to be a burden to you someday. If the child should die, Renée would remain sole owner of the property.”

He took this without flinching, but his taut eyebrows hinted at the depth of his preoccupation. The mention of the Charonne properties had set off a whole new train of thought. Mme Aubertot, thinking she had hurt him by alluding to Renée’s child, was too flustered to go on with the conversation.

He broke the silence by reverting to the smiling, genial tone he had affected earlier. “You didn’t say what street the building valued at 200,000 francs is located on.”

“Rue de la Pépinière,” she replied, “near the corner of the rue d’Astorg.”

This simple sentence had a pronounced effect on him. He could no longer conceal his pleasure. He pulled his chair closer to the lady and spoke warmly to her with the volubility of his native Provence: “Dear lady, haven’t we said enough? Must we go on talking about all these wretched matters of money? . . . Hear me out. I shall be perfectly frank, because I should feel desperate if I failed to merit your esteem. Recently I lost my wife. I have two children on my hands. I’m a practical and reasonable man. By marrying your niece I shall be doing us all a favor. If you have anything against me now, you’ll forgive me once I’ve wiped away everyone’s tears and amassed enough wealth to ensure that even my great-grandchildren will be comfortable. Success is a golden flame that burns away any taint of impurity. I hope that one day M. Béraud himself will shake my hand and thank me.”

Carried away, he went on talking in this vein for quite some time, occasionally allowing a mocking cynicism to show beneath his cheerful air. He boasted of his brother the deputy and his father the tax collector in Plassans. In the end he won over Aunt Elisabeth, who could not suppress a feeling of joy that the drama through which she had been suffering for the past month was about to come to an almost happy conclusion thanks to this clever man’s skillful intervention. It was agreed that they would see the notary the following day.

After Mme Aubertot departed, Saccard went immediately to the Hôtel de Ville and spent the day there examining certain documents that had come to his attention. At the notary’s office, he raised a difficulty. Since all of Renée’s dowry was in real estate, he was afraid that it would cause her no end of trouble and therefore proposed that it might be best to sell at least the building on the rue de la Pépinière and invest the proceeds in her name in a government bond. Mme Aubertot wanted to refer this proposal to M. Béraud Du Châtel, who remained in seclusion. In the meantime, Saccard resumed his rounds into the evening hours. He went to the rue de la Pépinière and scurried about Paris with the pensive air of a general on the eve of a decisive battle. The next day, Mme Aubertot announced that M. Béraud Du Châtel had authorized her to make all necessary decisions. The contract was drawn up along the lines already discussed. Saccard was to contribute 200,000 francs to the household; for dowry Renée would receive the Sologne property and the building on the rue de la Pépinière, which she agreed to sell; and, furthermore, if her first child died, she was to remain sole owner of the Charonne properties that her aunt was giving her. The estates of the spouses were to be kept separate, with husband and wife each retaining full rights to administer their respective fortunes. Aunt Elisabeth listened attentively to the notary’s explanations and seemed satisfied that these arrangements would protect her niece’s independence by placing her property beyond the reach of any attempt to get hold of it. Saccard smiled vaguely each time he saw the good lady nod approval of another clause. The marriage was to take place at the earliest possible date.