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Chapter two

The Passage du Pont-Neuf

A week after his marriage, Camille told his mother about his plans for the future.

‘Until now, you have planned my life for me,’ Camille said rudely. ‘I’ve taken all the medicines that you have given me and I’ve never complained. I’m a married man now, but you still treat me like a child. I want things to be different. There’s going to be a change in all our lives. I’m going to live in Paris. You and Therese are coming with me!’

Madame Raquin was very surprised. ‘My dear Camille, I’ve lived in Vernon all my life’ she said. ‘I’ve worked hard and made a good home for us here in the country. I don’t want to live in Paris.’

‘But I do,’ Camille replied. ‘That is what I want. We will leave Vernon at the end of the month.’

No one asked Therese what she wanted.

Madame Raquin did not sleep well that night. But she thought carefully about her son’s words. She wanted Camille to be happy. Then she would be happy too. Soon Madame Raquin had a plan of her own.

‘This is what we will do,’ she said cheerfully the next morning at breakfast. ‘I’ll go to Paris tomorrow. I’ll look for a small drapers shop that we can rent. Therese and I can work in the shop. It will keep us busy. You can work, if you want to, Camille, or you can just enjoy yourself in Paris.’

‘I’ll get a job,’ Camille said. He wanted to be a clerk in a big, important office. He wanted to talk to other young men.

Madame Raquin went to Paris the next day. A friend had told her about a drapers shop in the centre of the city. The shop was in a little arcade called the Passage du Pont-Neuf.

Paris was big and noisy. Madame Raquin was frightened by the busy streets, the big shops and the crowds of people. At last she found the Passage du Pont-Neuf.

The little arcade was narrow and dark. And the little drapers shop was dark too. But Madame Raquin felt safe there and the business was being sold very cheaply. The shop’s rent was not expensive and the rooms above the shop could be rented cheaply too. Madame Raquin decided that her little family could live very comfortably in the Passage du Pont-Neuf.

By the time that Madame Raquin got back to Vernon, she was feeling very cheerful and excited. She was happy to have her own business again and every night she talked about her plans.

‘Oh, my dear Therese, we’ll all be so happy living in that little arcade,’ Madame Raquin said. ‘It’s a quiet place, but it’s in the centre of Paris. There are three fine rooms and a kitchen above the shop. The shop itself will keep us both busy! We’ll arrange our goods in the very best ways. And our name will be painted on the front of the shop in red letters: Raquin - Drapers.

‘The arcade is always full of people,’ Madame Raquin went on. ‘We’ll have lots of customers all day. We’ll never be bored!’

As Madame Raquin talked to her niece, she forgot that the shop was small and dark. As usual, Therese said nothing.

She waited to see the place herself.

Not long after this conversation, the Raquins left their peaceful home in Vernon and went to live in Paris.

The Passage du Pont-Neuf was a dark, narrow arcade between two high black walls. The arcade was about two metres wide and thirty metres long. It was paved with damp, cracked stones and its glass roof was black with dirt. During the day, very little light came through the roof of the arcade. In the evening, the narrow passage was lit by three square lanterns. The lanterns gave a strange yellow light. When the wind blew, the lanterns made shadows that moved along the walls.

Narrow shops were built along the left wall of the arcade. These little shops were dark and damp. The shop windows were made of squares of dirty green glass. It was almost impossible to see the goods - cheap clothes, old books, toys and paper - that were inside the shops. On the right wall of the arcade there were narrow cupboards. Many kinds of different goods lay on the dirty brown shelves of these cupboards.

No one walked slowly through the Passage du Pont-Neuf. No one went there to enjoy shopping. Servants and tradespeople hurried through the passage. They always wanted to get somewhere else quickly. Their shoes made a loud noise on the stone paving.

When Therese went into the drapers shop for the first time, she felt sick and ill. The dark, damp place felt like an open grave. The girl stood and looked at everything in the narrow little shop. There was a counter on one side and a spiral staircase on the other. All round the walls, there were green boxes, and cupboards with glass doors.

Therese went slowly up the spiral staircase to the rooms above the shop. There was a sitting-room, two bedrooms and a very small kitchen. In the sitting-room, there was a stove and a table, with four chairs standing round it. Everything was old and dirty.

Therese walked into each room and then sat down in despair. Her body was stiff with shock and horror. She felt cold and dead inside. She wanted to cry, but she could not. This awful place - this narrow shop and these few small rooms - was her new home. She was going to live here for the rest of her life!

Madame Raquin knew that she had made a mistake. She knew that she should not have rented the shop. But she tried to speak cheerfully to Camille and Therese.

‘The arcade looks dark because the sun isn’t shining today,’ she said. ‘And the shop’s dirty now, but we can soon clean it. Choose some new wallpaper for the rooms upstairs, Therese. We can get new curtains and carpets too. We’ll put flowers in every room, my dear!’

‘Why should we do that?’ Therese said sadly. ‘We’ll be comfortable as we are. We don’t have to change anything.’

‘The place is all right,’ Camille said to his mother. ‘We’ll only be upstairs in the evenings. I’ll be at my office all day. You and Therese will be busy in the shop all day. You won’t be bored.’

Camille looked forward to leaving the Passage du Pont- Neuf every morning. He was going to work in a warm and comfortable office every day. Every evening, he would come home, eat his dinner and go to bed early.

Madame Raquin arranged all the furniture in the rooms above the shop. Then she cleaned the shop. It was a month before Camille got a job. But while he was looking for work, he stayed away from the shop all day. He did not return home until the evening. At last he found a job as a clerk with the Orleans Railway Company. He was going to earn one hundred francs a month. The young man was delighted.

Camille left home at eight o’clock every morning. He enjoyed the long walk to his office, along the banks of the River Seine. He enjoyed his time away from the shop, his mother and Therese. Everything in Paris pleased the stupid young man. In the evenings, he walked very slowly back to the Passage du Pont-Neuf.

Madame Raquin and Therese sat behind the counter of the dark little shop, day after day. Madame Raquin often fell asleep and the tabby cat, Francois, slept on the counter beside her. Therese sat quietly, without moving. Her pale face became paler and paler. She never complained.

Cheap clothes, women’s hats and stockings were for sale in the little drapers shop. There were piles of green wool. There were knitting-needles, boxes of buttons and cheap ribbons. Madame Raquin tried to arrange all of the goods in an interesting way, but business was bad. There were not many customers and the shop did not make much money.

Therese smiled sadly when she served the poor girls who were their customers. Madame Raquin talked to everyone cheerfully. The customers always wanted Madame Raquin to serve them.

Days passed and every day was the same. And for Therese Raquin, every morning was the start of another boring day in the Passage du Pont-Neuf. The cheap goods in the shop became damp and dirty. Therese saw the dark, sad days going on and on to the end of her life. Every evening, she sat silently upstairs in the sitting-room. At ten o’clock, Madame Raquin went downstairs to lock the door of the shop. When she came up the stairs again, she kissed her son and his wife, and went happily into her bedroom. Francois, the cat, went to sit on his chair in the kitchen. Then the family went to bed.

Therese followed Camille into their bedroom. Every evening, she walked across the room and opened the window.

She stood there for a minute, looking out at the high, black wall. Then she closed the shutters and turned towards her husband and their cold bed.

One day in the week was different from the others. Every Thursday evening, the Raquins had visitors. Thursday evening was the most important time of the week. The Raquins and their visitors played dominoes, talked and drank tea. The visitors left late in the evening and the Raquins did not go to bed until eleven o’clock.

Their visitors were always the same people. The first was Old Michaud. He had known Madame Raquin in Vernon and he had been the Police Commissioner there. He was now retired and living in Paris. One wet day, soon after they had moved to Paris, Michaud had met Madame Raquin outside her shop. He was soon visiting the Raquin family every Thursday.

After a few weeks, Michaud brought his son Olivier, who worked in the police department, to the drapers shop. Olivier was a tall, thin young man, about thirty years old. Suzanne, Olivier’s pale little wife, came with him.

Grivet was a friend of Camille. He worked for the Orleans Railway Company with Camille. Grivet was an important man in the railway’s office and Camille respected him. Camille hoped that, one day, he would get Grivet’s job.

Every Thursday evening was the same. At seven o’clock, Madame Raquin went into the sitting-room and lit the fire in the stove. Then she put a big lamp in the middle of the table. Beside the lamp, Camille put the box of dominoes. Chairs were moved from along the walls and put round the table. Then Madame Raquin prepared the cups and saucers for tea.

At eight o’clock exactly, Old Michaud and Grivet met outside the little shop and went inside. Then everyone went up the spiral staircase to the sitting-room. sat down round the table, and waited for Olivier Michaud and his wife. They always arrived late.

When all the guests were in the sitting-room, Madame Raquin gave everyone some tea. Then Camille took the dominoes out of the box, put them on the table, and the game began.

The only sound came from the dominoes as they were moved about on the table. At the end of every game, the players talked about it for a few minutes. Then there was silence as the next game began.

Thursday evenings were terrible for Therese. She hated their visitors and she hated playing dominoes. Therese was so unhappy that she played the game badly. This made Camille angry with her.

Therese would often pick up Francois, the big tabby cat, and hold him in her arms Sometimes Therese said that she had a headache and could not play. Then she would sit, half-asleep, with her elbow on the table and her hand against her face.

Therese stared at the people round the table and their ugly faces made her half-mad. She could see them clearly in the yellow light of the lamp. Old Michaud’s face was pale, with red blotches on it. He was a very old man, and in the light of the lamp, he looked half-dead. Grivet’s stupid face was narrow and he had round eyes and thin lips. Olivier had a small head on his long, stiff body. Suzanne’s face, with its small eyes and pale lips, was soft and white.

‘None of these people seem alive,’ thought Therese. ‘They are like ghosts.’

Therese found it difficult to breathe in the quiet room and this terrified her. She sometimes had a feeling that they were all buried together, deep under the ground.

There was a little bell on the door of the shop. It rang every time that a customer entered. Every Thursday evening, Therese hoped that a customer would come into the shop. She listened for the sound of the shop-bell. When she heard it, she would run downstairs and stay in the shop for as long as possible. The damp air of the shop cooled the heat of her face and hands. She would sit down behind the counter in her usual place, and forget everything.

Camille was angry when his wife left the sitting-room. After a time, he would go to the top of the stairs and shout down to Therese.

‘What are you doing down there?’ he would say. ‘The customer went a long time ago. Come up at once! Grivet has just won another game and we need you up here!’

Then Therese would get up slowly and return to her place at the table in the sitting-room. She would pick up the tabby cat and hold him in her arms. At eleven o’clock, the four visitors would leave the Passage du Pont-Neuf. Then Madame Raquin would lock the door of the shop and walk slowly back up the stairs.