The Beast Within (43 page)

He became more and more breathless. Perhaps it was simply the weight of Séverine on his arm that was preventing him from sleeping. He gently freed himself from her and, without waking her, placed her beside him. Immediately he felt more at ease and began to breathe more freely, thinking that at last he was about to drop off to sleep. But once again those unseen fingers opened his eyelids; in the darkness he saw the murder re-enacted, in all its gory detail. The knife went in; the body jerked. Streaks of blood stained the night; the wound in the throat gaped wide open, like an axe mark in a tree. He gave up the struggle and lay on his back; the nightmare must run its course. He could hear the wheels of his mind turning. His brain groaned in its effort to make sense of the thoughts that assailed him. They came from far back, from his childhood. He had thought he was cured. For months, ever since he had first possessed Séverine, there had been no sign of his old craving; and now, after listening to this tale of murder, whispered into his ear as she lay naked against him, their bodies intertwined, it had returned, more intense than ever. He moved away from her so that she was not touching him; the least contact with her flesh sent a fire running through him. He felt a terrible burning along his back, as if the mattress he lay on had become a bed of coals. There was a pricking sensation in his neck, like red-hot needles. He tried putting his hands outside the bedclothes, but they quickly became frozen and made him shiver. His hands frightened him; he drew them back under the bedclothes and clasped them together across his stomach, finally sliding them under his buttocks to pin them down, as if he were afraid they might do something awful, something he had no wish to do but did all the same.

Every time the cuckoo clock struck the hour, Jacques counted. Four o‘clock, five o’clock, six o’clock. He longed for day to come; he hoped that the dawn might chase this nightmare away. Again he turned towards the windows, peering at the glass for the first sign of daylight. But all he could see was the pale reflection of the snow. At a quarter to five he had heard the train arrive from Le Havre. It was only forty minutes late; the line was obviously clear again. It was not until after seven that he saw the windows begin to whiten, and a pale milky glimmer slowly filtered into the room. At last the light returned; a strange half-light in which the furniture seemed to be floating. The stove reappeared, then the cupboard and the sideboard. He could still not close his eyes; in fact they ached from trying to see in the dark. Suddenly, even before it was completely light and before he could actually see it, he sensed, on the table beside him, the presence of the knife he had used to cut the cake the night before. And now, this knife was all he could see, a little knife with a pointed blade. As it grew lighter, all the light coming in through the two windows was reflected in that one small blade. He was so frightened of his hands that he thrust them further beneath him; he could feel them growing restless, defying him, asserting their will. Were these hands his own? He must have inherited them from someone else. They must have been passed down by some remote ancestor from the days when men strangled wild beasts in the forest!

In order not to see the knife, Jacques turned over towards Séverine. She was sleeping peacefully, utterly exhausted, breathing like a child. Her thick, black hair was undone and fell down over her shoulders like a dark pillow. Between the strands of hair, under her chin, he saw her throat, delicate, milky white with just a trace of pink. He looked at her as though she were a stranger. Yet he adored her; he carried her image with him wherever he went and never stopped desiring her, even when he was driving his train. So much so that one day he had woken up as if from a dream to find himself driving at full speed through a station with the signals at red. He could not take his eyes away from her white throat; he was seized with a sudden, irresistible fascination. He was still fully aware of what was happening and to his horror he felt himself being compelled to take the knife from the table and plunge it to the hilt into this woman’s flesh. He heard the thud of the blade as it went in; he saw the body jerk three times and then go stiff as the blood flowed from the wound. He tried desperately to put the nightmare from his mind, but with every second that passed his resolve was weakening, as if it were being drowned by this one obsession and driven towards that distant shore where one accepts defeat and surrenders to instinct. Everything became a blur; his hands had defiantly overcome his attempt to hide them and had freed themselves. He realized only too well that he was no longer in control of them and that if he continued to gaze at Séverine they would have their way and kill her. With one final effort he threw himself out of the bed and fell rolling on the floor like someone who was drunk. He picked himself up, but his feet got caught in the clothes that Séverine had left lying there, and he nearly fell down again. He lurched about, desperately looking for his own clothes. His one thought was to get dressed, take the knife and go and kill some other woman out in the street. The urge was too strong to resist; he had to kill someone. But he couldn’t find his trousers; he had them in his hand three times before realizing what they were. He had great difficulty trying to put his shoes on. Although it was now broad daylight, the room seemed to be filled with a red mist, like dawn on a cold, foggy morning, when everything appears hazy. He was shaking uncontrollably. He had finally managed to get dressed. He had taken the knife and hidden it up his sleeve, determined to go out and kill the first woman he met in the street, when he heard a movement from the bed and a long drawn-out sigh. He stood by the table, rooted to the spot, his face turning white.

Séverine was waking up.

‘What is it, darling? Do you have to go so soon?’

He didn’t answer her or look at her, hoping she would go back to sleep.

‘Where are you going to, darling?’

‘I won’t be long,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go to the station. Go back to sleep.’

She was still very drowsy and had closed her eyes again.

‘I’m so tired,’ she murmured. ‘So tired. Come and kiss me before you go, darling.’

Jacques did not move. He knew that he only had to turn round with the knife in his hand and take one look at her lying naked in bed, with her hair undone, so delicate, so pretty, and the will-power that restrained him would collapse. His hand would rise of its own accord and plunge the knife into her throat.

‘Kiss me, darling ...’

Her voice faded to a whisper; she murmured that she loved him and fell quietly back to sleep. In desperation, he opened the door and fled.

It was eight o‘clock when Jacques found himself outside in the Rue d’Amsterdam. The snow had not yet been cleared away; the footsteps of the few people that were about could scarcely be heard. He immediately spotted an old woman, but she disappeared round a corner into the Rue de Londres. He didn’t follow her. He almost bumped into two men as he walked down towards the Place du Havre, clutching the knife, with the blade hidden up his sleeve. A girl of about fourteen emerged from a house on the other side of the street, and he crossed over towards her, only to see her disappear into a baker’s shop next door. He was too impatient to wait for her to come out and continued his search further on down the street. From the minute he had left the room with the knife in his hand he had become a different person, another being, a creature he had often felt stirring within him, a strange visitor from the distant past, consumed by an inborn desire to kill. It had killed before and it wanted to kill again. Everything around him appeared to Jacques as if in a dream; he had only one thought in his mind. He must kill. His normal day-to-day life no longer existed; he moved through the streets like a sleepwalker, with no recollection of the past and no sense of the future, driven by this one overriding obsession. He had become an automaton. He was no longer himself. Two women brushed past him as they came up from behind. He quickened his step and had just caught them up when they stopped to talk to a man. The three of them stood laughing and chatting. Once again he had been thwarted. Another woman walked past, and he followed her. She was dark-skinned and looked ill. She wore a thin shawl and was obviously very poor; she walked slowly, on her way to some thankless, underpaid job, no doubt; she was certainly in no rush to get there. She looked desperately sad. Jacques had chosen his victim and walked after her. He was in no hurry. He was looking for a place where it would be easy to attack her. She must have noticed that she was being followed because she turned and looked at him, with a look of unspeakable sadness, amazed that anyone should want anything from her. He followed her along the Rue du Havre. Twice she turned to look at him, making him hold back as he was taking his knife out to stab her. She had such a pathetic, pleading look in her eyes. He decided he would wait until she stepped off the pavement a little further on. That was where he would strike. Then suddenly he turned round and began to follow another woman, who was walking in the opposite direction. There was no reason why; it was not something he chose to do. She simply happened to be walking past at the time.

He followed her back towards the station. She walked quickly, with little, short steps, her shoes tapping on the pavement; she was extremely pretty, twenty years old at the most, very shapely, with blonde hair and beautiful bright eyes that seemed to have a permanent smile in them. She didn’t even notice that someone was following her. She must have been in a hurry because she ran up the steps from the Cour du Havre into the main hall, dashed over to the booking office for the circle line and hurriedly ordered a first-class ticket to Auteuil. Jacques did likewise and followed her through the waiting rooms and out on to the platform to her compartment. He got in and sat beside her. The train left at once.

‘I’ve got plenty of time,’ he thought. ‘I’ll kill her in the tunnel.’

Sitting opposite them, however, was an old lady, the only other passenger in the compartment. She recognized the young woman.

‘Why, fancy seeing you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where are you off to so early?’

The young woman raised her hands in a gesture of mock despair.

‘You can’t do anything without running into someone, can you?’ she said with a laugh. ‘I hope you won’t give me away ... It’s my husband’s birthday tomorrow. I waited for him to leave for the office and caught the first train I could. I’m going to Auteuil. There’s a market garden there where he saw an orchid that he really wanted ... I’m going to buy it for him as a surprise.’

The old lady nodded approvingly.

‘And how’s the little baby?’ she asked.

‘She’s a joy! I weaned her last week. You should see her eat her soup! In fact we’re all very well. It’s scandalous!’

She laughed again, more loudly, showing her white teeth between her blood-red lips. Jacques was sitting on her right, holding the knife hidden against his leg. He was in just the right position to stab her, he thought to himself. All he had to do was raise his arm and turn towards her; it would be perfect. But as the train ran into the Batignolles tunnel he thought of her bonnet-strings. They’re tied under her chin, he thought. They’ll get in the way. I want to be certain.

The two women chatted happily away to each other.

‘I can see you’re very happy.’

‘Happy! I’ve never felt happier! It’s like a dream come true! Two years ago I was nothing. Do you remember? It was so dull living with my aunt, and I didn’t have a penny to my name. When he came to see me my heart would be all of a flutter. I was so in love with him. He was so handsome and so rich ... And now he’s mine! He’s my husband! And we’ve got our little baby! I can’t believe it!’

Jacques was carefully inspecting the way her bonnet-strings were tied. He saw that beneath the knot she wore a large gold medallion on a black neckband. He worked out what he was going to do.

‘I’ll grab her by the neck with my left hand and turn her head round so that the medallion’s not in the way,’ he thought to himself. ‘Then I can get at her throat.’

The train was constantly stopping and starting. They had passed through two short tunnels, at Courcelles and at Neuilly. Any minute now! It would not take more than a second!

‘Did you go to the seaside this summer?’ the old lady asked.

‘Yes, we spent six weeks in Brittany, miles from anywhere. It was heaven! Then during September we stayed at my father-in-law’s in Poitou; he owns a lot of woodland down there.’

‘And aren’t you going to the Midi for winter?’

‘Yes, we’ll be at Cannes from the fifteenth ... The house is already booked. It’s got a really lovely garden facing the sea. We’ve sent someone on ahead to get things ready ... It’s not that we don’t like the cold, but it’s so nice to be in the sun ... We shall be back in March. Next year we’re going to stay in Paris. In a couple of years’ time, when baby’s grown up, we’ll do some travelling. I don’t know, life seems one long holiday!’
⁸

She seemed to be brimming over with happiness, so happy in fact that she turned towards Jacques, a man she had never met, and smiled at him. As she did so, the bow on her bonnet-strings shifted, the medallion slipped to one side, and he saw her neck, rosy pink, with a little hollow at its base that formed a patch of golden shadow.

Jacques’s fingers tightened on the handle of the knife; he had made his decision.

‘That’s where I’ll do it,’ he thought to himself. ‘In the tunnel, just before Passy! We’re nearly there!’

But when the train stopped at Trocadéro, a railway employee who knew him got into the compartment and started telling him about an engine driver and his fireman who had been convicted of stealing coal. Everything started to become confused; later, Jacques was never able to piece together exactly what happened. The woman sitting next to him had carried on laughing, radiating such happiness that it worked its way into him and calmed him down. Perhaps he had stayed on the train with the two women until it reached Auteuil, but he couldn’t recall them getting off. He ended up finding himself walking along the Seine, but how he got there he didn’t know. What he did remember very clearly was standing on the bank of the river and throwing away the knife, which he had kept tucked inside his sleeve. After that he could remember nothing. His mind was a blank; he was totally empty. The creature that had taken hold of him was no more; it had gone when he threw away the knife. He must have carried on walking for hours, following streets, crossing squares, going wherever his legs took him. People and houses slipped past him like ghosts. He must have gone somewhere to eat; he recalled a room crowded with people, and white plates on the tables. He also retained a vivid image of a red poster in an empty shop window. After that, all he was aware of was a black abyss, a void, in which there was neither time nor space, and where, for centuries perhaps, he had lain unconscious.