THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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put her hand to her neck. She took three long breaths; then, she sat down again, turning her back to me, without a word, without a tear.
I had shaken her hair loose. Upon the nape of her neck I perceived a bluish trace, made darker by the shadow of her locks which half concealed her shoulders. My tears blinded me, my heart was full of strong and tender compassion. I wept over myself who had just ill treated a woman, I wept over Laurence whose bones I had heard cry out beneath my fingers. My entire being was a prey to keen remorse; my tortured soul despairingly sought to repair what could never be forgotten. I recoiled, in disgust and fright, from the wild beast which I had felt awaken and die within me; I suffered from terror, shame and pity.
I approached Laurence; I clasped my arms around her, whispering in her ear, in a doleful and caressing tone. I know not what I said to her. My heart was full and I emptied it. My words were a long prayer, ardent and humble, meek and violent, overflowing with pride and baseness. I spoke of the past, of the present, of the future; I told the story of my heart, without the least reserve; I probed the utmost depths of my being, in order that I might hide nothing. I had need of pardon, I had also need of pardoning my companion. I accused Laurence, I demanded loyalty and frankness of her. I told her how much she had made me weep. I did not address reproaches to her the better to excuse myself; my lips opened in spite of me, all the present filled me, my daily thoughts united in a single tender and resigned complaint, free from even the least trace of anger, the least trace of animosity. My reproaches and confessions were mingled with sudden outpourings of love and tenderness; I spoke the puerile and indescribable language of excitement, soaring to the very sky, dragging myself along the ground; I made use of the adorable and ridiculous poesy of children and lovers; I was mad, passionate, intoxicated. And I went on thus, as in a dream, questioning, answering, speaking in a deep and regular voice, pressing Laurence against my bosom. For a whole hour I heard the words which, of themselves, flowed from my mouth, gentle, touching; I solaced myself by listening to this penetrating music; it seemed to me that my poor, wounded heart was rocking itself and putting itself to sleep.
Laurence, impassible, her eyes open, stared at the wall. My voice did not appear to reach her. She sat there as mute, as dead, as if she had been in the midst of thick darkness, in the midst of profound silence. Her hard forehead, her cold and tightly closed lips, announced her firm resolution not to listen, not to reply.
Then, I felt a keen desire to obtain a word from this woman. I would have given my blood to hear the sound of Laurence’s voice; all my being went out towards her, conjured her, begged her with clasped hands, to speak, to utter but a single syllable. I wept at her silence; a sort of vague uneasiness gained upon me as she became more sullen, more impenetrable. I felt myself gliding towards madness, towards a fixed idea; I had imperious need of a response; I made superhuman efforts, uttered prayers and threats, to obtain the satisfaction of this need which was devouring me. I multiplied my questions, emphasized my demands and changed the form of my interrogations, rendering them more urgent; I had recourse to all my gentleness, to all my violence, imploring, ordering, speaking in a caressing and submissive tone, then allowing myself to be carried away by anger, and afterwards making myself more humble, more insinuating still. Laurence, without a quiver, without a glance, seemed to ignore my presence. All my will, all my furious desire, to make her speak broke against the pitiless deafness of this creature who refused to listen to me.
This woman was escaping from me. I saw an insurmountable barrier between her and me. I held her form tightly clasped, I felt that form abandon itself with disdain to my embrace. But I could not open that soul and take possession of it; the heart and the mind had hidden themselves away; I pressed only a lifeless rag, so weary, so dull, that it was as nothing in my arms. And I loved this limp rag, I wished to keep it. I clung with despair to the sole creature who remained to me in the world, I exacted that she should belong to me, I had the fury of a miser when I thought that I was about to be robbed of her and that she was quite willing to allow herself to be stolen. I rebelled, I summoned all my strength to defend my own. And I was pressing a corpse to my bosom, an unknown thing which was a stranger to me and which I could not understand. Oh! brothers, you are ignorant of this suffering, of these bursts of love for an inanimate statue, of this cold resistance on the part of an adored being, of this silence in answer to so many sobs, of this voluntary death which might love, which one supplicates with all his eloquence and which loves not.
When my voice failed me, when I despaired of ever animating Laurence, I laid my head upon her breast, my ear against her heart. There, leaning on this woman, my eyes open, staring at the wick of the candle which was burning to a coal, I spent the night in thinking. I heard the rattle in Marie’s throat, broken by fits of coughing, which came to me through the partition, lulling my thoughts.
I thought. I listened to the regular beating of Laurence’s heart. I knew that nothing was there but a wave of blood; I said to myself that I was following in their rhythm the sounds of a well regulated machine, and that the voice which reached me was only the ticking of an unconscious clock, obeying a mere spring. And, nevertheless, I was disturbed; I would have liked to take the machine apart, to search out and study its most minute pieces; I thought seriously, in my delirium, of opening the breast upon which my head reposed, of removing the heart that I might see why it beat so gently and so regularly.
Marie’s rattle continued, and Laurence’s heart beat almost in my head. On hearing these two sounds, which were sometimes mingled together and made but one, I thought of life.
I know not why an insatiable longing for innocence pursues me in my abasement. I have constantly in my brain the thought of immaculate purity, lofty, inaccessible, and this thought awakens more biting in the depths of each of my fits of despair.
While I leaned my head upon Laurence’s faded bosom, I said to myself that woman was born for a single love.
There is the truth, the only possible marriage. My soul is so exacting that it wishes all the creature it loves, in her infancy, in her sleep, in her entire life. It goes so far as to accuse dreams, so far as to declare that a sweetheart is guilty who has received in a vision the kiss of a shadowy adorer.
All young girls, even the purest and most sincere, have been the recipients of attentions from the phantom lovers of their dreams; those demons have held them in their arms, have made their innocent flesh quiver, have given them the first caresses. Hence, when they find husbands, they are no longer innocent, they no longer possess holy ignorance.
As for me, I wished my bride to come to me as she had left the hands of God; I wished her spotless, refined, not yet alive, and I would awaken her. She would live in me, she would know me alone, she would have no recollections save those which came to her through me. She would realize the divine dream of an eternal marriage of the soul and body, drawing everything from itself. But when a woman’s lips have known other lips, when she has trembled like a leaf at the kisses of others, love can be nothing but daily anguish, hourly jealousy. Laurence does not belong to me, she belongs to her remembrances; she twists in my arms, thinking, perhaps, of former tendernesses; she is constantly escaping from me; she has a whole life which has not been mine; she and I are not one flesh. I love her and tear myself; I sob at the sight of this creature whom I do not possess, whom I can no longer possess in her entirety.
The candle smoked, the chamber was full of thick, yellowish air. I heard the rattling in Marie’s throat, now coming to me through the partition in jerky sounds. I listened to Laurence’s heart, but could not understand its language. This heart spoke, without doubt, an unknown tongue; I held my breath, I gave my intelligence altogether to it, but I utterly failed to grasp its meaning. Perhaps it was relating to me the past of my wretched and treacherous companion, her story of shame and misery. It beat slowly and ironically, letting the syllables fall from it with an effort; it made no haste to finish, it seemed to take delight in the recital of the horrible tale. I divined at times what it might be saying. I had ignored the past, I had refused to become acquainted with it, I had striven to forget it; but it voluntarily evoked itself, it presented itself to my mind such as it must have been. I knew what infamies it was necessary for me to imagine; but, amid the ignorance in which I had shut myself up, I, without doubt, went beyond the real and fell into a nightmare, exaggerating the evil. At this hour, I wished to know everything, to obtain a complete revelation of the