Germinal by Émile Zola (reading well .TXT) 📖
- Author: Émile Zola
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At the same hour Étienne, who was not asleep, was disturbed by a slight sound in the thick night of the room. He distinguished the low breath of the children, and the snoring of Bonnemort and Maheude; while Jeanlin near him was breathing with a prolonged flute-like whistle. No doubt he had dreamed, and he was turning back when the noise began again. It was the creaking of a palliasse, the stifled effort of someone who is getting up. Then he imagined that Catherine must be ill.
“I say, is it you? What is the matter?” he asked in a low voice.
No one replied, and the snoring of the others continued. For five minutes nothing stirred. Then there was fresh creaking. Feeling certain this time that he was not mistaken, he crossed the room, putting his hands out into the darkness to feel the opposite bed. He was surprised to find the young girl sitting up, holding in her breath, awake and on the watch.
“Well! why don’t you reply? What are you doing, then?”
At last she said:
“I’m getting up.”
“Getting up at this hour?”
“Yes, I’m going back to work at the pit.”
Étienne felt deeply moved, and sat down on the edge of the palliasse, while Catherine explained her reasons to him. She suffered too much by living thus in idleness, feeling continual looks of reproach weighing on her; she would rather run the risk of being knocked about down there by Chaval. And if her mother refused to take her money when she brought it, well! she was big enough to act for herself and make her own soup.
“Go away; I want to dress. And don’t say anything, will you, if you want to be kind?”
But he remained near her; he had put his arms round her waist in a caress of grief and pity. Pressed one against the other in their shirts, they could feel the warmth of each other’s naked flesh, at the edge of this bed, still moist with the night’s sleep. She had at first tried to free herself; then she began to cry quietly, in her turn taking him by the neck to press him against her in a despairing clasp. And they remained, without any further desires, with the past of their unfortunate love, which they had not been able to satisfy. Was it, then, done with for ever? Would they never dare to love each other some day, now that they were free? It only needed a little happiness to dissipate their shame—that awkwardness which prevented them from coming together because of all sorts of ideas which they themselves could not read clearly.
“Go to bed again,” she whispered. “I don’t want to light up, it would wake mother. It is time; leave me.”
He could not hear; he was pressing her wildly, with a heart drowned in immense sadness. The need for peace, an irresistible need for happiness, was carrying him away; and he saw himself married, in a neat little house, with no other ambition than to live and to die there, both of them together. He would be satisfied with bread; and if there were only enough for one, she should have it. What was the good of anything else? Was there anything in life worth more?
But she was unfolding her naked arms.
“Please, leave me.”
Then, in a sudden impulse, he said in her ear:
“Wait, I’m coming with you.”
And he was himself surprised at what he had said. He had sworn never to go down again; whence then came this sudden decision, arising from his lips without thought of his, without even a moment’s discussion? There was now such calm within him, so complete a cure of his doubts, that he persisted like a man saved by chance, who has at last found the only harbour from his torment. So he refused to listen to her when she became alarmed, understanding that he was devoting himself for her and fearing the ill words which would greet him at the pit. He laughed at everything; the placards promised pardon and that was enough.
“I want to work; that’s my idea. Let us dress and make no noise.”
They dressed themselves in the darkness, with a thousand precautions. She had secretly prepared her miner’s clothes the evening before; he took a jacket and breeches from the cupboard; and they did not wash themselves for fear of knocking the bowl. All were asleep, but they had to cross the narrow passage where the mother slept. When they started, as ill luck would have it, they stumbled against a chair. She woke and asked drowsily:
“Eh! what is it?”
Catherine had stopped, trembling, and violently pressing Étienne’s hand.
“It’s me; don’t trouble yourself,” he said. “I feel stifled and am going outside to breathe a bit.”
“Very well.”
And Maheude fell asleep again. Catherine dared not stir. At last she went down into the parlour and divided a slice of bread-and-butter which she had reserved from a loaf given by a Montsou lady. Then they softly closed the door and went away.
Souvarine had remained standing near the Avantage, at the corner of the road. For half an hour he had been looking at the colliers who were returning to work in the darkness, passing by with the dull tramp of a herd. He was counting them, as a butcher counts his beasts at the entrance to the slaughter-house, and he was surprised at their number; even his pessimism had not foreseen that the number of cowards would have been so great. The stream continued to pass by, and he grew stiff, very cold, with clenched teeth and bright eyes.
But he started. Among the men passing by, whose faces he could not distinguish, he had just recognized one by his walk. He came forward and stopped him.
“Where are you going to?”
Étienne, in surprise, instead of replying, stammered:
“What! you’ve not set out yet!”
Then he confessed he was going back to the pit. No doubt he had sworn; only it could not be called life to wait with folded arms for things which would perhaps happen in a hundred years; and, besides, reasons of his own had decided him.
Souvarine had listened to him, shuddering. He seized him by the shoulder, and pushed him towards the settlement.
“Go home again; I want you to. Do you understand?” But Catherine having approached, he recognized her also. Étienne protested, declaring that he allowed no one to judge his conduct. And the engineman’s eyes went from the young girl to her companion, while he stepped back with a sudden, relinquishing movement. When there was a woman in a man’s heart, that man was done for; he might die. Perhaps he saw again in a rapid vision his mistress hanging over there at Moscow that last link cut from his flesh, which had rendered him free of the lives of others and of his own life. He said simply:
“Go.”
Étienne, feeling awkward, was delaying, and trying to find some friendly word, so as not to separate in this manner.
“Then you’re still going?”
“Yes.”
“Well, give me your hand, old chap. A pleasant journey, and no ill feeling.”
The other stretched out an icy hand. Neither friend nor wife.
“Good-bye for good this time.”
“Yes, good-bye.”
And Souvarine, standing motionless in the darkness, watched Étienne and Catherine entering the Voreux.
AT four o’clock the descent began. Dansaert, who was personally installed at the marker’s office in the lamp cabin, wrote down the name of each worker who presented himself and had a lamp given to him. He took them all, without remark, keeping to the promise of the placards. When, however, he noticed Étienne and Catherine at the wicket, he started and became very red, and was opening his mouth to refuse their names; then, he contented himself with the triumph, and a jeer. Ah! ah! so the strong man was thrown? The Company was, then, in luck since the terrible Montsou wrestler had come back to it to ask for bread? Étienne silently took his lamp and went towards the shaft with the putter.
But it was there, in the receiving-room, that Catherine feared the mates’ bad words. At the very entrance she recognized Chaval, in the midst of some twenty miners, waiting till a cage was free. He came furiously towards her, but the sight of Étienne stopped him. Then he affected to sneer with an offensive shrug of the shoulders.
Very good! he didn’t care a hang, since the other had come to occupy the place that was still warm; good riddance! It only concerned the gentleman if he liked the leavings; and beneath the exhibition of this contempt he was again seized by a tremor of jealousy, and his eyes flamed. For the rest, the mates did not stir, standing silent, with eyes lowered. They contented themselves with casting a sidelong look at the new-comers; then, dejected and without anger, they again stared fixedly at the mouth of the shaft, with their lamps in their hands, shivering beneath their thin jackets, in the constant draughts of this large room. At last the cage was wedged on to the keeps, and they were ordered to get in. Catherine and Étienne were squeezed in one tram, already containing Pierron and two pikemen. Beside them, in the other tram, Chaval was loudly saying to Father Mouque that the directors had made a mistake in not taking advantage of the opportunity to free the pits of the blackguards who were corrupting them; but the old groom, who had already fallen back into the dog-like resignation of his existence, no longer grew angry over the death of his children, and simply replied by a gesture of conciliation.
The cage freed itself and slipped down into the darkness. No one spoke. Suddenly, when they were in the middle third of the descent, there was a terrible jarring. The iron creaked, and the men were thrown on to each other.
“By God!” growled Étienne, “are they going to flatten us? We shall end by being left here for good, with their confounded tubbing. And they talk about having repaired it!”
The cage had, however, cleared the obstacle. It was now descending beneath so violent a rain, like a storm, that the workmen anxiously listened to the pouring. A number of leaks must then have appeared in the caulking of the joints.
Pierron, who had been working for several days, when asked about it did not like to show his fear, which might be considered as an attack on the management, so he only replied:
“Oh, no danger! it’s always like that. No doubt they’ve not had time to caulk the leaks.”
The torrent was roaring over their heads, and they at last reached the pit-eye beneath a veritable waterspout. Not one of the captains had thought of climbing up the ladders to investigate the matter. The pump would be enough, the carpenters would examine the joints the following night. The reorganization of work in the galleries gave considerable trouble. Before allowing the pikemen to return to their hewing cells, the engineer had decided that for the first five days all the men should execute certain works of consolidation which were extremely urgent. Landslips were threatening everywhere; the passages had suffered to such an extent that the timbering had to be repaired along a length of several hundred metres. Gangs of ten men were therefore formed below, each beneath the control of a captain. Then they were set to work at the most damaged spots. When the descent was complete, it was found that three hundred and twenty-two miners had gone down, about half of those
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