The Beast Within (35 page)

Then came the first quarrel. Although she had not yet come to hate him, Séverine was finding Roubaud more and more difficult to put up with. She felt as if he were a weight bearing down on her whole life; but for the constant burden of his presence, she would have been free and happy. She had no regrets about deceiving him. After all, it was his fault; hadn’t he more or less forced her into it? As they gradually drifted apart, they each tried to overcome the disruption in their lives, seeking consolation or distraction in their own different ways. If he had his cards, she was entitled to have a lover. But what really annoyed her, what she simply could not come to terms with, was finding herself short of money as a result of his continual losses. Her housekeeping money was now being squandered at the café on the Cours Napoléon, and she sometimes couldn’t see her way clear to paying the laundry bill. She had to do without all sorts of little comforts and items of clothing. That evening, they had quarrelled over a pair of shoes she needed to buy. Roubaud was about to leave and couldn’t find a knife to cut himself a slice of bread. So he had taken a knife from the sideboard drawer. It was the murder weapon. She looked him straight in the eyes as he refused to give her the fifteen francs she wanted for the shoes. He didn’t have the money and he had no idea where he could find it. But she was insistent and asked him again. He refused a second time, becoming more and more exasperated. Suddenly, she pointed to the place under the floor, where the ghostly spoils still lay hidden. There was some money there, she said, and she wanted some of it. Roubaud turned pale; the knife fell with a clatter into the drawer. For a moment she thought he was going to hit her. He came towards her, muttering that the money down there could rot, that he’d sooner cut his hand off than take any of it. He clenched his fists and threatened to beat her if she tried to take the floorboard up or steal a single centime while he was out. He would never touch it! Never! It was dead and buried! Séverine, too, had turned pale. The thought of groping around under the floorboards made her feel faint. They might end up poor, they might be starving, but the money would stay where it was. They never mentioned it again, even when they were really hard up. But every time they chanced to walk on that part of the floor, the burning sensation in their foot got worse. They ended up always walking round it.

Other arguments followed, about La Croix-de-Maufras. Why hadn’t the house been sold? Each accused the other of doing nothing to get things moving. Roubaud still refused to have anything to do with it, whilst Séverine, on the odd occasions she wrote to the Misards, received only vague information in reply; no one had shown any interest in it, the fruit trees had failed and the vegetables wouldn’t grow because there was nobody to water them. In the weeks following the crisis, the Roubauds had lived blissfully free from care. But things were changing; it seemed that all their troubles were about to begin again. The seeds of discontent - the hidden money, the secret lover - had begun to sprout, forcing them apart and setting them against each other. They grew to dislike each other more and more. Their life together was becoming a torment.

What was more, by a singular stroke of ill fortune, they began to have further trouble with their neighbours. A new spate of gossip and argument had broken out. Philomène had recently had a slanging match with Madame Lebleu, who accused her of selling her a chicken that had died of fowl pest. The real reason for their disagreement, however, was that Philomène had now developed a friendship with Séverine. One night, Pecqueux had seen Séverine in Jacques’s arms. Because Pecqueux was Jacques’s fireman, Philomène had overcome her earlier dislike of Séverine, having discovered that she was Jacques’s mistress, and was doing her utmost to be pleasant towards her. She prided herself on being a friend of the most attractive and incontestably the most refined lady at the station and had turned against the cashier’s wife, that old bag as she called her, whose sole aim in life was to make trouble. She blamed her for everything and went around telling everyone that the apartment overlooking the street belonged by rights to the Roubauds and that it was outrageous that it had not been returned to them. So things were not going well for Madame Lebleu. She also risked getting into serious trouble because of her constant spying on Mademoiselle Guichon in the hope of catching her with the stationmaster. She still hadn’t succeeded but she had been foolish enough to get herself caught with her ear glued to their doors. Monsieur Dabadie, furious at this eavesdropping, had told Moulin, the other assistant stationmaster, that if Roubaud wished to reapply for the apartment, he would be happy to endorse his application. Moulin, who was normally not one for gossip, had repeated this to everyone on the corridor. Feelings had run very high, and at one point things had nearly come to blows.

Amidst all this growing unpleasantness, there was only one day that Séverine looked forward to - Friday. In her quietly determined way, she had invented an excuse for getting away. It was the first thing that came into her head; she had a pain in her knee and needed to see a specialist. So every Friday since October, she had been taking the 6.40 express in the morning, which was always driven by Jacques, and had spent the day with him in Paris, coming back in the evening on the 6.30. Initially she felt obliged to inform her husband how her knee was progressing; some days it felt better and some days it felt worse. But after a while, realizing that he wasn’t even listening, she had simply given up mentioning it. Sometimes she looked at him and wondered whether he knew. How was it possible that someone so fiercely jealous, someone who had demanded bloody retribution and killed in a blind rage, could accept that she had taken a lover? She couldn’t understand it. She thought he must be turning stupid.

It was a bitterly cold December night. Séverine had waited up very late for her husband to come home. The next day was Friday, and she had to be up before dawn to catch the train to Paris. She had got into the habit of getting everything ready beforehand, setting out her clothes so that she could dress the minute she got up. Eventually she went to bed, falling asleep at about one o’clock. Roubaud had still not returned. Already twice before, he had not arrived back until the small hours. He had become totally addicted to his passion for cards and seemed unable to drag himself away from the café, where a little back room had been set aside especially. It had become a veritable gambling den and large sums of money were being wagered at écarté.
⁵
Séverine was quite happy to have the bed to herself; with the bed covers tucked warmly around her, she fell into a deep sleep, dreaming about the delights of the day to come.

It was almost three in the morning when she was woken by a strange noise. She had no idea what it could have been, thought she must have been dreaming and went back to sleep. But then she heard heavy thuds and the sound of wood creaking, as if someone were trying to force open a door. Suddenly there was a loud thump and the sound of something snapping, which made her sit bolt upright in her bed. She was terrified and convinced that someone was trying to break in from the corridor outside. For a whole minute she sat not daring to move, straining her ears to listen. Eventually plucking up her courage, she got out of bed to investigate. She walked noiselessly across the room on her bare feet and quietly inched open the bedroom door. She was wearing only her nightdress; she was so cold that she had turned white and was shivering. The sight which now greeted her eyes in the dining room made her stand rooted to the ground in terror and amazement.

Roubaud was on the floor, lying on his stomach and leaning on his elbows. He had prised open the edge of the parquet floor with a chisel. He had placed a candle beside him, and its light cast a huge shadow on the ceiling. He was leaning over the hole, which ran like a black slit across the parquet floor, peering inside it. His eyes seemed to start from his head. The blood had run to his cheeks and turned them purple; his face was the face of a murderer. Wildly, he thrust his hand under the floorboard, but found nothing. He was shaking with fear and had to bring the candle nearer. There, down in the hole, he saw the purse, the banknotes and the watch.

Séverine let out a cry. Roubaud turned round, terrified. For a moment he didn’t recognize her. He must have thought she was a ghost, standing there in her white nightdress with big frightened eyes.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

He realized that it was Séverine but made no answer, merely grunting in reply. He looked at her. Her presence annoyed him; he wished she would go back to bed. What could he say? Seeing her standing in front of him, shivering, with nothing on, all he wanted to do was to hit her.

‘So that’s your game!’ she continued. ‘You refuse to buy me shoes and then you help yourself to his money, because you’ve lost at cards!’

Roubaud lost his temper. Was she still going to carry on ruining his life and stand in the way of his pleasures? He no longer desired her, and making love had become a torment. He was getting his enjoyment elsewhere and didn’t need her any more. He reached down into the hole again and took out the purse containing the three gold hundred-franc coins. Having put the floorboard back in place with his heel, he came towards her.

‘You’re making my life a misery,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll do what I like. Do I ask you what you get up to in Paris?’

With a furious shrug of the shoulders he went back to the café, leaving the candle burning on the floor.

Séverine picked it up and went back to bed, frozen to the marrow. She left the candle burning, unable to get back to sleep, her eyes wide open, counting the minutes until it was time to catch her train.

It was now perfectly clear to her that Roubaud had steadily deteriorated, as if the crime had seeped into him, eating him away and dissolving all links between them, and that he knew.

That Friday, passengers intending to catch the 6.40 express at Le Havre awoke with cries of dismay. Snow had been falling thick and fast since midnight, and the streets were ankle deep.

In the station, the train was ready to leave; seven carriages, three second class and four first, and
La Lison
steaming and ready to go. When Jacques and Pecqueux had arrived at the engine shed to inspect the locomotive at half past five, they couldn’t believe how much snow had fallen. And the sky was still black, with more snow to come. They stood on the footplate listening for the whistle to proceed, looking out in front of them through the gaping mouth of the train shed and watching the snowflakes falling swiftly and silently, streaking the darkness with a shimmer of white.

‘I’m blowed if I can see the signal,’ the driver muttered.

‘We’ll be lucky to get through!’ said the fireman.

Roubaud was standing on the platform with his lamp, having arrived that minute to begin his shift. There were dark rings under his eyes, which kept closing from fatigue as he supervised the departure. Jacques asked him if he knew anything about the state of the line; he came over to him, shook his hand and said that he had received no report so far. At that moment Séverine came down the steps wrapped in a heavy overcoat. Roubaud led her to a first-class compartment and helped her to get in. He must have noticed the look of affection and anxiety that the two lovers exchanged. Yet it didn’t occur to him to tell his wife that it was unwise to leave in weather like this and that she would do better to postpone her trip.

Other passengers were beginning to arrive, all muffled up and carrying luggage, jostling to get to the train in the terrible morning cold. With snow still clinging to their boots, they quickly shut the carriage doors and barricaded themselves in. The platform remained empty, dimly lit by the fitful glimmer of a few gas lamps; the headlamp on the locomotive, fixed to the base of the chimney, gleamed like a giant eye, casting its broad beam of light into the darkness.

Roubaud raised his lamp to give the signal for departure. The guard blew his whistle, and Jacques gave a whistle in reply. He opened the regulator and eased the reversing wheel forward. They were off. Roubaud stood for a minute quietly watching the train as it disappeared into the storm.

‘Listen!’ Jacques said to Pecqueux. ‘I don’t want any messing about today.’

He had noticed that, like Roubaud, his companion also seemed to be falling asleep on his feet; the result of a night on the tiles no doubt.

‘Don’t worry,’ muttered Pecqueux. ‘I’ll be fine.’

As soon as the train emerged from the covered roof of the station, the two men were exposed to the snow. The wind was blowing from the east and it caught the locomotive head on, sending the snow in great swirls directly towards it. At first, standing behind the weather shield dressed in thick woollen clothes and with their eyes protected by goggles, Jacques and Pecqueux didn’t find things too difficult. But the light from the headlamp blazing out into the night seemed to be swallowed up in dense clouds of whiteness. Instead of being lit up for two or three hundred metres ahead, the track seemed to come towards them out of a milky fog, with objects suddenly appearing only when they were very close to, as if from the depths of a dream. What most worried Jacques was the realization, as they passed the signal at the first section box, that, as he had feared, it would be impossible to see a signal at red from the regulation distance. So progress was extremely cautious. Yet he couldn’t afford to go too slowly; there was already tremendous wind resistance, and it would be equally dangerous if the train fell too far behind schedule.

La Lison
maintained a steady speed all the way to Harfleur. As yet, Jacques wasn’t too worried about the depth of the snow; it was sixty centimetres deep at the most and the snowplough could easily clear a depth of one metre.
¹
His principal concern was to keep the train running at speed. He knew that, as well as remaining sober and making sure his locomotive was kept in good condition, the mark of a good driver was to be able to keep his engine running smoothly and steadily while maintaining full pressure. In fact Jacques’s one weakness was an obstinate unwillingness to bring his train to a stop. He sometimes even ignored signals, fully confident that he had
La Lison
under control. Occasionally he would get carried away and deliberately run over detonators.
²
He said it was like treading on someone’s corns! It had twice earned him a week’s suspension. On this occasion, however, he sensed that the situation was fraught with danger. The thought that his beloved Séverine was with him and that her life was in his hands increased his resolve to press on regardless down the iron highway that led to Paris, braving every obstacle that might confront him.