Part 10

As he drank his coffee, still without a shirt on, Maheu told his wife about the engineer's anger over the timbering. He had calmed down, relaxed, and he listened with a nod of approval to the Maheude's sensible advice, which showed great good sense in such matters. She kept repeating that you gained nothing by stubbornly opposing the Company. She then spoke to him of Madame Hennebeau's visit. Without saying so, both were proud of it.

--Can we come down? asked Catherine from the top of the stairs.

--Yes, yes, your father is drying.

The young girl had on her Sunday dress, an old popeline dress of dark blue, already faded and worn at the folds. She wore a very simple black tulle bonnet.

--Well! you've dressed up... Where are you off to?

--I'm going to Montsou to buy a ribbon for my bonnet... I took off the old one, it was too dirty.

--So you've got money, have you?

--No, it's Mouquette who promised to lend me ten sous.

The mother let her go. But at the door, she called her back.

--Listen, don't go buying your ribbon at Maigrat's... he'd cheat you and think we're rolling in gold.

The father, who had squatted before the fire to dry his neck and armpits the faster, merely added:

--Try not to loiter on the roads at night.

In the afternoon, Maheu worked in his garden. He had already sown potatoes, beans, peas there; and since the day before he had been hardening off cabbage and lettuce plants, which he now began to transplant. This bit of garden supplied them with vegetables, except potatoes, of which they never had enough. Besides, he understood cultivation very well and even managed to grow artichokes, which the neighbors treated as showing off. As he prepared his bed, Levaque happened to come and smoke a pipe in his own plot, looking at some romaine lettuces that Bouteloup had planted that morning; for without the lodger's courage in digging, he would hardly have grown anything there but nettles. And the conversation started across the trellis. Levaque, rested and excited from having beaten his wife, tried in vain to drag Maheu off to Rasseneur's. Come now, did a mug frighten him? They'd have a game of skittles, loiter a moment with the comrades, then go home to dinner. That was life, after coming up from the pit. No doubt there was no harm in it, but Maheu was stubborn: if he didn't transplant his lettuces, they'd be wilted the next day. At bottom, he refused out of wisdom, not wanting to ask his wife for a single penny from the remainder of the hundred sous.

Five o'clock was striking when the Pierronne came to find out if her Lydie had run off with Jeanlin. Levaque answered that it must be something like that, for Bébert too had disappeared; and those young rascals were always up to mischief together. When Maheu had reassured them, speaking of the dandelion salad, he and the comrade began to tease the young woman, with the bluntness of good-natured fellows. She grew angry, but did not leave, tickled deep down by the coarse words, which made her cry out, hands on her belly. To her rescue came a thin woman whose stammering rage resembled a hen's cackle. Others, farther off, in doorways, took fright with an easy familiarity. Now school was closed, all the brats were wandering about, a swarming of little beings piping, rolling, fighting; while the fathers who were not at the tavern remained in groups of three or four, squatting on their heels as at the bottom of the mine, smoking pipes with rare words, sheltered by a wall. The Pierronne left in a fury when Levaque tried to feel whether her thigh was firm; and he himself decided to go alone to Rasseneur's, while Maheu was still planting.

Daylight fell abruptly, the Maheude lit the lamp, irritated that neither the girl nor the boys were home. She would have wagered on it: never could they manage to have the one meal together where they might all be around the table. Then too, it was the dandelion salad she was waiting for. What could the little devil be gathering at this hour, in that oven-dark! A salad would go so well with the ratatouille she was letting simmer on the fire, potatoes, leeks, sorrel, stewed with fried onion! The whole house smelled of it, the fried onion, that good odor which quickly turns rancid and penetrates the bricks of the coron with such a poisoning that one scents it from afar in the countryside, at this violent smell of poor cooking.

Maheu, when he left the garden at nightfall, dozed off at once on a chair, head against the wall. As soon as he sat down in the evening, he slept. The cuckoo clock struck seven, Henri and Lénore had just broken a plate in insisting on helping Alzire, who was laying the table, when old Bonnemort came home first, eager to dine and return to the pit. Then the Maheude woke Maheu.

--Let's eat, never mind!... They're big enough to find their way home. The annoying part is the salad!

V

At Rasseneur's, after eating a soup, Étienne, gone up into the narrow room he was to occupy under the roof, opposite the Voreux, had fallen on his bed, fully dressed, knocked out by fatigue. In two days he had not slept four hours. When he woke at dusk, he remained dazed for a moment, not recognizing where he was; and he felt such discomfort, such heaviness of head, that he painfully got to his feet, with the idea of taking the air, before dining and going to bed for the night.

Outside, the weather was ever milder, the sooty sky turned coppery, charged with one of those long northern rains whose approach one felt in the humid warmth of the air. Night came in great smokes, drowning the lost distances of the plain. Over this immense sea of reddish lands, the low sky seemed to melt into black dust, without a breath of wind at that hour to animate the shadows. It was of a dead, wan mournfulness of burial.

Étienne walked ahead of himself, at random, having no other aim than to shake off his fever. When he passed before the Voreux, already darkened at the bottom of its hollow, and of which not a single lantern yet shone, he stopped a moment, to see the day laborers come out. Surely six o'clock was striking, millers, loaders at the pithead, stableboys were leaving in bands, mixed with the screening girls, vague and laughing in the shadow.

First came the Brûlé and her son-in-law Pierron. She was scolding him, because he had not backed her up, in a dispute with an overseer, over her tally of stones.

--Oh! damn slacker, go on! if it's allowed to be a man and flatten yourself like that before one of those bastards who eat us up!

Pierron followed her peacefully, without answering. He ended by saying:

--Maybe we should have jumped the boss. Thanks! just to get trouble!

--Bend over then! she cried. Ah! God damn! if my daughter had listened to me!... Isn't it enough they killed the father, you'd maybe like me to say thank you. No, see, I'll have their hides!

The voices were lost, Étienne watched her disappear, with her eagle nose, her white hair blown loose, her long thin arms gesticulating furiously. But behind him, the conversation of two young men made him prick up his ears. He had recognized Zacharie, who was waiting there, and whom his friend Mouquet had just accosted.

--Are you coming? asked the latter. We're eating a snack, then we're off to the Volcan.

--In a bit, I've business.

--What business?

The miller turned and caught sight of Philomène coming out of the screening. He thought he understood.

--Ah! right, that's it... Then I'll go on ahead.

--Yes, I'll catch up with you.

Mouquet, as he left, met his father, old Mouque, who was also coming out of the Voreux; and the two men simply said good evening, the son took the main road, while the father slipped along the canal.

Already Zacharie was pushing Philomène into that same out-of-the-way path, despite her resistance. She was in a hurry, another time; and they were quarreling like an old married couple. It was no fun, seeing each other only outdoors, especially in winter, when the ground is wet and you haven't the wheat to lie down in.

--But no, that's not it, he murmured impatiently. I've something to tell you.

He held her by the waist, led her gently. Then, when they were in the shadow of the slag heap, he wanted to know if she had money.

--What for? she asked.

He then got muddled, spoke of a two-franc debt that would despair his family.

--Hush!... I saw Mouquet, you're off to the Volcan again, where there are those filthy singer women.

He defended himself, thumped his chest, gave his word of honor. Then, as she shrugged, he said abruptly:

--Come with us, if it amuses you... You see you don't bother me. For what I want of them, singers!... Will you come?

--And the little one? she answered. Can you stir about, with a child that's always crying?... Let me go home, I bet they're not getting on at home.

But he held her back, he begged. Come now, it was so as not to look foolish before Mouquet, to whom he'd promised. A man couldn't, every evening, go to bed like the chickens. Vanquished, she had tucked up a flap of her bodice, was cutting with her nail the thread and pulling ten-sous pieces from a corner of the hem. For fear of being robbed by her mother, she hid there the earnings of the extra hours she worked at the pit.

--I've five, see, she said. I'll give you three... Only, you must swear to me you'll get your mother to marry us. Enough of this life in the air! Besides, mama reproaches me for every mouthful I eat... Swear, swear first.

She spoke in her soft voice of a tall sickly girl, without passion, simply weary of her existence. He swore, cried that it was a promised thing, sacred; then, when he held the three pieces, he kissed her, tickled her, made her laugh, and he would have pushed things to the end, in that corner of the slag heap which was the winter chamber of their old household, if she had not repeated no, that it would give her no pleasure. She went back to the coron alone, while he cut across the fields, to rejoin his comrade.

Étienne, mechanically, had followed them from afar, without understanding, believing it a simple rendezvous. The girls were precocious, at the pits; and he remembered the workers of Lille, whom he waited for behind the factories, those bands of girls spoiled from fourteen years on, in the abandonments of misery. But another meeting surprised him more. He stopped.

It was at the foot of the slag heap, in a hollow where big stones had slipped, little Jeanlin violently snubbing Lydie and Bébert, seated one at his right, the other at his left.

--Huh? what d'you say?... I'll add a slap for each of you, me, if you complain... Who had the idea, come on!

Indeed, Jeanlin had had an idea. After rolling for an hour along the canal, in the meadows gathering dandelions with the other two, he had just thought, before the heap of salad, that they'd never eat all that at his place; and, instead of going back to the coron, he had gone to Montsou, keeping Bébert to stand watch, pushing Lydie to ring at the bourgeois houses, where she offered the dandelions. He said, already experienced, that girls sold whatever they wanted. In the heat of trade, the whole heap had gone; but the little girl had made eleven sous. And now, hands clean, all three were dividing the gain.

--It's unfair! declared Bébert. Got to divide in three... If you keep seven sous, we'll only have two each.

--How unfair? replied Jeanlin furiously. I picked more, first off!

The other usually submitted, with a fearful admiration, a credulity that continually made him victim. Older and stronger, he even let himself be slapped. But this time, the idea of all that money excited him to resistance.

--Ain't that so, Lydie, he's robbing us... If he don't share, we'll tell his mother.

Thereupon Jeanlin put his fist under his nose.

--Say that again. It's me who'll go tell at your place that you sold the salad to mama... And then, you bloody fool, can I divide eleven sous in three? you try, smarty... There's two sous each. Hurry up and take them or I put them back in my pocket.

Tamed, Bébert accepted the two sous. Lydie, trembling, had said nothing, for she felt, before Jeanlin, a fear and a tenderness of a little beaten wife. As he held out the two sous, she advanced her hand with a submissive laugh. But he suddenly thought better.

--Huh? what'll you do with all that?... Your mother'll surely pinch it, if you don't know how to hide it... Better I keep it for you. When you need money, you'll ask me.

And the nine sous disappeared. To shut her mouth, he had grabbed her laughing, was rolling with her on the slag heap. She was his little wife, they tried together, in the black corners, the love they heard and saw at home, behind the partitions, through the door cracks. They knew everything, but could hardly, too young, fumbling, playing, for hours, at games of vicious little dogs. He called that "playing papa and mama"; and when he led her off, she scampered, let herself be caught with the delicious trembling of instinct, often angry, but always yielding in expectation of something that never came.

As Bébert was not admitted to those parties, and got a shove as soon as he wanted to touch Lydie, he remained ill at ease, worked by anger and discomfort, when the other two amused themselves, which they did not scruple to do before him. So he had but one idea, to frighten them, disturb them, crying that they were being watched.

--It's done for, here's a man looking!

This time he did not lie, it was Étienne deciding to continue his way. The children bounded off, fled, and he passed, rounding the slag heap, following the canal, amused by the fine fright of those rascals. No doubt it was too soon at their age; but what of it? they saw so much, heard such stiff things, one would have had to tie them to keep them in. At bottom however, Étienne grew sad.

A hundred paces farther, he again fell upon couples. He was arriving at Réquillart, and there, around the old ruined pit, all the girls of Montsou roamed with their lovers. It was the common rendezvous, the out-of-the-way deserted corner, where the pit girls came to make their first child, when they dared not risk it on the carin. The broken fences opened to each the old yard, changed into a waste ground, obstructed by the debris of two sheds that had collapsed, and by the carcasses of great headframes left standing. Disused tubs trailed, old timbers half-rotted piled in heaps; while a thick vegetation reconquered this corner of earth, spread in thick grass, sprang up in already sturdy young trees. So each girl found herself at home, there were lost holes for all, the lads tumbled them on the beams, behind the wood, in the tubs. One lodged all the same, elbow to elbow, without minding the neighbors. And it seemed as if it were, around the extinguished engine, near this weary shaft done with disgorging coal, a revenge of creation, free love which, under the whip of instinct, planted children in the bellies of those girls, barely women.

Yet a keeper lived there, old Mouque, to whom the Company abandoned, almost under the destroyed belfry, two rooms, which the expected fall of the last timbers threatened with continual crushing. He had even had to shore up part of the ceiling; and he lived there very well, in family, he and Mouquet in one room, the Mouquette in the other. As the windows no longer had a single pane, he had decided to stop them up by nailing boards: one couldn't see clear, but it was warm. Besides, this keeper kept nothing, went to tend his horses at the Voreux, never concerned himself with the ruins of Réquillart, of which only the shaft was kept to serve as a chimney for a fireplace, which aired the neighboring pit.

And thus father Mouque ended his aging, amid loves. From ten years, the Mouquette had tumbled in all the corners of the rubble, not as a startled and still green tomboy like Lydie, but as a girl already fat, good for bearded boys. The father had nothing to say, for she showed respectful, never introduced a lover to him. Then, he was used to such accidents. When he went to the Voreux or came back, each time he came out of his hole, he could not risk a foot, without setting it on a couple, in the grass; and it was worse, if he wanted to gather wood for his soup, or seek burdock for his rabbit, at the other end of the close: then, he saw rise, one by one, the greedy noses of all the girls of Montsou, while he had to beware of stumbling against the legs, stretched at ground level of the paths. Moreover, little by little, those meetings disturbed no one, neither him who simply took care not to fall, nor the girls whom he left to finish their business, withdrawing with discreet small steps, as a peaceful good man before the things of nature. Only, just as they knew him by now, he had equally ended by knowing them, as one knows the roguish magpies that debauch in the pear trees of the gardens. Ah! this youth, how it took, how it stuffed itself! Sometimes, he shook his chin with silent regrets, turning from the noisy wenches, blowing too loud, in the depth of the shadows. One thing only put him in a humor: two lovers had taken the bad habit of kissing against the wall of his room. It wasn't that it kept him from sleeping, but they pushed so hard, that in the long run they degraded the wall.

Every evening, old Mouque received the visit of his friend, father Bonnemort, who, regularly, before his dinner, took the same walk. The two old men scarcely spoke to each other, exchanged barely ten words, during the half hour they spent together. But it cheered them, to be thus, to think of old things, which they chewed over in common, without needing to talk of them. At Réquillart, they sat on a beam, side by side, let fall a word, then set off into their reveries, nose toward the earth. No doubt they became young again. Around them, lads hiked up their sweethearts, kisses and laughs whispered, a warm smell of girls rose, in the coolness of crushed herbs. It was already behind the pit, forty-three years earlier, that father Bonnemort had taken his wife, a herscheuse so frail, that he set her on a tub, to kiss her at ease. Ah! that was long ago! And the two old men, shaking their heads, at last parted, often even without saying good evening.

That evening however, as Étienne arrived, father Bonnemort, who was rising from the beam, to return to the coron, said to Mouque:

--Good night, old fellow!... Say, did you know the Roussie?

Mouque remained a moment mute, nodded his shoulders, then, going into his house:

--Good night, good night, old fellow!

Étienne, in his turn, came to sit on the beam. His sadness increased, without his knowing why. The old man, whose back he watched disappear, reminded him of his arrival that morning, the flood of words that the irritation of the wind had wrung from this silent one. What misery! and all these girls, worn out with fatigue, who were still foolish enough, in the evening, to manufacture little ones, flesh for toil and suffering! Never would it end, if they kept filling themselves with starve-to-deaths. Ought they not rather have stopped their bellies, clenched their thighs, as at the approach of misfortune? Perhaps he was but confusedly stirring these morose ideas in the boredom of being alone, when the others, at that hour, were going off two by two to take pleasure. The mild weather stifled him a little, rare drops of rain fell on his feverish hands. Yes, all went that way, it was stronger than reason.

Just then, as Étienne remained seated, motionless in the shadow, a couple descending from Montsou brushed him without seeing him, entering the waste ground of Réquillart. The girl, a virgin surely, struggled, resisted, with low supplications, whispered; while the boy, mute, pushed her nonetheless toward the shadows of a corner of shed, left standing, under which old rotten ropes were piled. It was Catherine and the tall Chaval. But Étienne had not recognized them in passing, and he followed them with his eyes, watched for the end of the story, taken by a sensuality, which changed the course of his reflections. Why should he have intervened? when girls say no, it's that they like to be stuffed first.

On leaving the coron of the Two Hundred and Forty, Catherine had gone to Montsou by the pavement. Since the age of ten, since she earned her living at the pit, she ran thus alone about the country, in the complete freedom of the miner families; and, if no man had had her, at fifteen, it was thanks to the late awakening of her puberty, whose crisis she still awaited. When she was before the Company's Yards, she crossed the street and entered a washerwoman's, where she was certain to find the Mouquette; for the latter lived there, with women who treated themselves to rounds of coffee, from morning to evening. But she had a disappointment, the Mouquette, precisely, had treated in her turn, so well that she could not lend the promised ten sous. To console her, she was vainly offered a glass of hot coffee. She would not even have her comrade borrow from another woman. A thought of economy had come to her, a sort of superstitious fear, the certainty that, if she bought it now, this ribbon would bring her misfortune.

She hastened to take the road back to the coron, and she was at the last houses of Montsou, when a man, at the door of the Piquette tavern, called her.

--Eh! Catherine, where are you running so fast?

It was the tall Chaval. She was put out, not that he displeased her, but because she was not in a laughing mood.

--Come in and drink something... A little glass of sweet wine, will you?

Gently, she refused: night was falling, they were expecting her at home. He, had advanced, begged in a low voice, in the middle of the street. His idea, for long, was to decide her to go up into the room he occupied on the first floor of the Piquette tavern, a fine room which had a big bed, for a household. So he frightened her, that she always refused. She, good girl, laughed, said she would go up the week the children don't grow. Then, from one thing to another, she came, without knowing how, to speak of the blue ribbon she had not been able to buy.

--But I'll pay for one for you, me! he cried.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”