Free The Beast Within by Émile Zola Page A

looked pinched and starved. He spoke very little, kept himself to himself, never lost his temper and was obsequiously polite to his superiors. He had gone back into his cabin to record the time of the train in his time-keeping book and to push the two buttons on the transmitter, one to pass the train on to the next section along the line and the other to open the line to the section which the train had just left.
    ‘You don’t know him,’ Aunt Phasie continued. ‘He’s putting something horrible in my food; I swear he is. I used to know how to stand up for myself. At one time, I could have made mincemeat of him, and now it’s him, that weakling, that scrap of nothing, that’s making mincemeat of me!’
    She poured out all her fears and hidden resentment, delighted at last to have someone she could confide in. Whatever had possessed her to get married again to a pathetic creature like him, with not a penny to his name and stingy as they come, and she five years older, with two daughters already, one six years old and one eight? It was ten years now since she had tied the knot, and not a minute had gone by when she didn’t regret it. Her life was a misery, stuck up there in the north, where it was perpetually cold, miles from anywhere, chilled to the bone, bored stiff, with no one to talk to, and not a neighbour within walking distance.
    Misard had been a plate-layer when she first met him, but now all he earned was a meagre twelve hundred francs as a section operator. She used to be paid fifty francs for looking after the level-crossing when she first got the job, but Flore had taken that over now. That was how it was and that was how it was going to remain. It was hopeless. All she knew for certain was that she was going to spend the rest of her days and die in this God-forsaken hole, with not a living soul to comfort her. What she didn’t tell him about were the good times she had had, the occasions, before she became ill, when her husband was away working as a plate-layer and she had stayed at home on her own with her daughters, to look after the level-crossing. In those days her good looks were known to everyone who worked on the railway from Rouen to Le Havre, and all the permanent way inspectors made a point of calling at the level-crossing to see her. She even had men competing for her attention — two foremen plate-layers from different gangs who kept coming back to inspect the crossing, to make sure that everything was in proper working order. Her husband didn’t seem to bother; he was always very pleasant to anyone who called, made himself scarce and came and went without noticing a thing. But these excitements were a thing of the past. All she did now was sit on her own for weeks and months on end, feeling herself getting weaker and weaker by the hour.
    ‘He’s after me,’ she said. ‘And he’ll finish me off, even if he is only a midget.’
    Suddenly a bell rang. She looked through the window with the same anxious look as before. It was the next section box down the line sending on a train for Paris; the needle on the section indicator in front of the window showed the direction in which it was travelling. Misard stopped the bell, came out of his cabin and gave two blasts on his horn to warn of the approaching train. Thereupon, Flore walked over to the gate, closed it and assumed her position, raising the flag in its leather holster high in the air. The train, an express, was hidden from view by a bend in the line, but it could be heard getting louder and louder as it came rumbling towards them. It went past like a clap of thunder, making the house shake, almost blowing it away in a mighty rush of wind. As soon as it had gone, Flore went back to her vegetables. Misard closed the up line after the train, and walked over to open the down line again, by changing the signal from red. A further ring on the bell and the movement of the other needle on his section indicator told him that the train which had