Part 13

For five long hours, the pit girl and her sweetheart had been strolling through the fair. Along the road to Montsou, that wide street of low, gaudily painted houses winding down the slope, there rolled beneath the sun a flood of people, like a trail of ants lost in the bare nakedness of the plain. The eternal black mud had dried, a black dust rose and flew like a storm cloud. On either side the taverns were bursting with folk, stretching their tables out to the pavement, where a double row of pedlars stood—open-air bazaars, scarves and mirrors for the girls, knives and caps for the boys; not to mention the sweets, sugared almonds and biscuits. In front of the church they were shooting at a target with bows. There were games of bowls opposite the Yards. At the corner of the Joiselle road, beside the Excise office, inside a boarded enclosure, a crowd was surging to watch a cockfight, two big red cocks, armed with iron spurs, their torn throats bleeding. Farther on, at Maigrat's, they were winning aprons and trousers at billiards. And there were long silences; the mob drank, stuffed itself without a cry, a mute indigestion of beer and fried potatoes spread in the heavy heat, which the frying-pans boiling in the open air made still more stifling.

Chaval bought Catherine a mirror for nineteen sous and a scarf for three francs. At every turn they met Mouque and Bonnemort, who had come to the feast and, thoughtful, were crossing it side by side on their heavy legs. But another meeting enraged them: they caught sight of Jeanlin urging Bébert and Lydie to steal the gin bottles from a chance booth set up at the edge of a waste ground. Catherine could only slap her brother; the little girl was already scampering off with a bottle. Those devilish children would end in the convict prison.

Then, on arriving in front of the Cut-Head tavern, Chaval had the idea of taking his sweetheart inside, to witness a finch contest advertised on the door for a week past. Fifteen nail-makers, from the nail works of Marchiennes, had answered the call, each with a dozen cages; and the little dark cages, where the blinded finches stayed motionless, were already hung on a fence in the tavern yard. The point was to count which bird, in one hour, should repeat the phrase of its song the most times. Each nail-maker, with a slate, stood near his cages, marking, watching his neighbours, himself watched. And the finches had started, the 'chichouïeux' with the fatter song, the 'batisecouics' of shrill sonority, at first timid, risking only rare phrases, then spurring one another on, quickening the rhythm, then at last carried away by such a rage of emulation that one could see them drop and die. Violently the nail-makers whipped them on with their voices, shouting to them in Walloon to sing again, again, one more little turn; while the spectators, a hundred people, remained mute and passionate amid that infernal music of a hundred and eighty finches all repeating the same cadence, out of time. It was a 'batisecouic' that won the first prize, a coffee-pot of beaten iron.

Catherine and Chaval were there when Zacharie and Philomène came in. They shook hands and stayed together. But suddenly Zacharie flew into a rage on catching a nail-maker, drawn there by curiosity with his mates, pinching his sister's thighs; and she, very red, was hushing him, trembling at the thought of a slaughter, of all those nail-makers falling on Chaval if he would not let her be pinched. She had felt the man well enough, she said nothing, out of prudence. Besides, her sweetheart was content to sneer; all four went out, the affair seemed over. And scarcely had they stepped into Piquette's for a mug, when the nail-maker reappeared, making fun of them, blowing in their faces with an air of provocation. Zacharie, outraged in his family feeling, had flung himself on the insolent fellow.

'That's my sister, you swine!... Wait, goddamn you! I'll teach you to respect her!'

They rushed between the two men, while Chaval, very calm, kept repeating:

'Let be, it's my business... I tell you I don't give a damn for him!'

Maheu was arriving with his party, and he quieted Catherine and Philomène, already in tears. They were laughing now in the crowd; the nail-maker had vanished. To drown it all, Chaval, who was at home in Piquette's tavern, stood drinks. Étienne had to clink mugs with Catherine; all drank together, the father, the daughter and her sweetheart, the son and his mistress, politely saying: 'To the company's health!' Then Pierron insisted on paying his round. And they were all very friendly, when Zacharie was seized again with rage at the sight of his mate Mouquet. He called him to go and, as he put it, settle his account with the nail-maker.

'I've got to do for him!... Here, Chaval, keep Philomène with Catherine. I'll be back.'

Maheu in his turn stood drinks. After all, if the lad wanted to avenge his sister, it was no bad example. But ever since she had seen Mouquet, Philomène, reassured, shook her head. Sure enough, the two rascals had slipped off to the Volcano.

On fair evenings the feast ended at the ball of the Bon-Joyeux. This ball was kept by Widow Désir, a strapping mother of fifty, round as a barrel, but so green that she still had six sweethearts—one for each day of the week, she said, and all six together on Sundays. She called all the colliers her children, touched at the thought of the river of beer she had poured them these thirty years; and she boasted too that not a pit girl grew big without first, beforehand, loosening her legs at her house. The Bon-Joyeux consisted of two rooms: the tavern, where were the counter and tables; then, opening on the same level through a wide bay, the ballroom, a vast apartment boarded only in the middle, brick-paved around. A decoration adorned it: two garlands of paper flowers crossing from one corner of the ceiling to the other, joined at the centre by a crown of the same flowers; while along the walls ran gilt escutcheons bearing the names of saints—Saint Eloi, patron of ironworkers, Saint Crispin, patron of shoemakers, Saint Barbara, patron of miners, the whole calendar of the trades. The ceiling was so low that the three musicians, in their loft no bigger than a pulpit, cracked their heads. To light it of an evening, four oil-lamps were hung at the four corners of the ball.

That Sunday, from five o'clock they were dancing in the full daylight of the windows. But it was towards seven that the rooms filled. Outside, a storm wind had risen, blowing great black dust that blinded folk and crackled in the frying-pans. Maheu, Étienne and Pierron, come in to sit down, had just found Chaval at the Bon-Joyeux, dancing with Catherine, while Philomène, quite alone, watched them. Neither Levaque nor Zacharie had reappeared. As there were no benches around the ball, Catherine, after each dance, rested at her father's table. They called Philomène, but she was better standing. Day was fading; the three musicians were in a fury; one saw in the room only the swaying of hips and breasts amid a confusion of arms. A clamour greeted the four lamps, and suddenly all was lit—red faces, hair uncombed and stuck to the skin, flying skirts sweeping the strong smell of sweating couples. Maheu showed Étienne the Mouquette, who, round and fat as a bladder of lard, was whirling furiously in the arms of a tall lean miller: she must have consoled herself and taken a man.

At last, it was eight o'clock when the Maheude appeared, Estelle at her breast and followed by her brood, Alzire, Henri and Lénore. She had come straight to find her man there, fearing no mistake. They would sup later; no one was hungry, stomachs drowned in coffee, thickened with beer. Other women arrived; there was whispering at the sight of the Levaque, behind the Maheude, with Bouteloup, leading by the hand Achille and Désirée, Philomène's little ones. And the two neighbours seemed very much at one; one turned, spoke with the other. On the way there had been a long explanation; the Maheude had resigned herself to Zacharie's marriage, grieved to lose her eldest's earnings, but beaten by the reason that she could not keep him longer without injustice. So she tried to put a good face on it, her heart anxious, like a housewife wondering how she would make both ends meet, now that the best of her purse was beginning to go.

'Sit here, neighbour,' said she, pointing to a table near the one where Maheu drank with Étienne and Pierron.

'Isn't my husband with you?' asked the Levaque.

The mates told her he would be back. Everyone packed in—Bouteloup, the youngsters—so tight amid the crush of drinkers that the two tables made but one. They called for mugs. At sight of her mother and children, Philomène had decided to come near. She took a chair, seemed glad to learn she was to be married at last; then, as they looked for Zacharie, she answered in her soft voice:

'I'm waiting for him; he's about there.'

Maheu had exchanged a glance with his wife. So she consented? He grew serious, smoked in silence. He too was seized with the worry of tomorrow, before the ingratitude of those children who would marry one by one, leaving their parents in misery.

They danced on; a closing quadrille drowned the ball in a russet dust; the walls cracked; a cornet blew shrill whistles like a locomotive in distress; and when the dancers stopped they steamed like horses.

'Do you remember?' said the Levaque, bending to the Maheude's ear, 'you who talked of strangling Catherine if she made a fool of herself!'

Chaval was bringing Catherine back to the family table, and both, standing behind the father, finished their mug.

'Bah!' murmured the Maheude with a resigned air, 'one says that... But what reassures me is that she can't have a child, ah! that I'm quite sure of!... Just think if she were to lie in too, that one, and I forced to marry her! What should we eat then?'

Now it was a polka the cornet was whistling; and while the deafening began again, Maheu quietly told his wife an idea. Why should they not take a lodger—Étienne, for instance, who was looking for board? They would have room, since Zacharie was leaving them, and the money they lost on that side they would partly regain on the other. The Maheude's face brightened: no doubt, a good idea, it must be arranged. She seemed saved from hunger once more; her good humour returned so lively that she ordered a fresh round of mugs.

Étienne, meanwhile, tried to indoctrinate Pierron, explaining his project of a benefit fund. He had got him to promise adherence, when he imprudently revealed his real aim.

'And if we strike, you see the use of this fund. We snap our fingers at the Company; we find there the first money to hold out against it... Eh? Is it agreed, are you in?'

Pierron had lowered his eyes, paling. He stammered:

'I'll think it over... When you behave well, that's the best relief fund.'

Then Maheu took Étienne aside and proposed, straight out, like an honest fellow, to take him as lodger. The young man accepted likewise, very eager to live in the settlement, to be more with the mates. The matter was settled in three words; the Maheude declared they would wait for the children's wedding.

And just then Zacharie came back at last, with Mouquet and Levaque. All three brought the smells of the Volcano—a breath of gin, a musky sourness of ill-kept girls. They were very drunk, pleased with themselves, nudging and sniggering. When he heard he was to be married at last, Zacharie laughed so hard he choked. Calmly Philomène declared she liked him better laughing than crying. As there was no chair left, Bouteloup had drawn back to yield half his to Levaque. And he, suddenly very tender at seeing them all there, family-like, called for beer once more.

'Goddamn it! we don't enjoy ourselves so often!' he bawled.

Till ten o'clock they stayed. Women kept arriving, to fetch and take home their men; bands of children trailed after; and the mothers no longer minded, pulling out dugs long and blond as oat-sacks, smearing the chubby babes with milk; while the toddlers, already walking, gorged with beer and on all fours under the tables, relieved themselves without shame. It was a rising sea of beer—the widow Désir's casks burst open, the beer rounding bellies, flowing everywhere, from the nose, the eyes and elsewhere. They swelled so in the heap that each had a shoulder or a knee in the neighbour's place, all merry, expanded at feeling one another's elbows. A continuous laugh held mouths open, split to the ears. It was oven heat; they cooked, made themselves easy, flesh abroad, gilded in the thick pipe-smoke; and the only inconvenience was to step aside—a girl would rise now and then, go to the back by the pump, tuck up and return. Under the paper garlands the dancers no longer saw one another, so they sweated; which encouraged the lads to tumble the pit girls, at random with the heaves of the loins. But when a strapping wench fell with a man atop her, the cornet covered their fall with its mad ringing, the stamp of feet rolled them as if the ball had caved in on them.

Someone passing warned Pierron that his daughter Lydie was asleep at the door, across the pavement. She had drunk her share of the stolen bottle, she was drunk, and he had to carry her off on his neck, while Jeanlin and Bébert, steadier, followed at a distance, finding it rare fun. That was the signal for departure; families left the Bon-Joyeux; the Maheus and the Levaques made up their minds to go back to the settlement. At that moment old Bonnemort and old Mouque were also quitting Montsou, with the same sleepwalker's step, stubborn in the silence of their memories. And they all went home together, crossed the fair for the last time—the frying-pans freezing over, the taverns whence the last mugs flowed in streams to the middle of the road. The storm still threatened; laughs rose when they had left the lit houses, to lose themselves in the black country. A burning breath came from the ripe corn; many children must have been made that night. They straggled into the settlement. Neither Levaques nor Maheus supped with appetite, and the latter were asleep as they finished their morning boiled meat.

Étienne had taken Chaval to drink yet more at Rasseneur's.

'I'm in!' said Chaval, when the mate had explained the benefit-fund affair. 'Put it there, you're a good 'un!'

A beginning of drunkenness made Étienne's eyes blaze. He cried:

'Yes, let's agree... You see, as for me, for justice I'd give all—drink and girls. There's only one thing warms my heart, and that's the thought we're going to sweep away the bourgeois.'

III

Towards the middle of August, Étienne installed himself at the Maheus', when Zacharie, married, could obtain from the Company, for Philomène and her two children, a free house in the settlement; and at first the young man felt a constraint before Catherine.

It was a intimacy of every minute; he replaced the eldest brother everywhere, shared Jeanlin's bed, facing the big sister's bed. At bedtime, at rising, he had to undress and dress near her, saw her herself take off and put on her clothes. When the last petticoat fell, she showed of a pale whiteness, of that transparent snow of anaemic blondes; and he felt a continual emotion at finding her so white, the hands and face already spoiled, as if steeped in milk from heel to neck, where the line of tan cut sharply in an amber collar. He affected to turn away; but he came to know her by degrees: the feet first, which his lowered eyes met; then a knee glimpsed as she slipped under the cover; then the breast with small rigid nipples, as soon as she leaned in the morning over the bowl. She, without looking at him, yet hurried, was in ten seconds undressed and stretched beside Alzire, with so supple a movement of a snake that he had scarce drawn off his shoes when she vanished, turning her back, showing only her heavy chignon.

Never, besides, had she cause to be angry. If a sort of obsession made him, despite himself, watch with his eye the instant she lay down, he avoided jests, dangerous liberties. The parents were there; and he kept for her besides a feeling made of friendship and resentment, which kept him from treating her as a girl to be desired, amid the abandon of their life grown common—at the toilet, at meals, during work—with nothing of them secret, not even the intimate needs. All the family's modesty had taken refuge in the daily washing, to which the young girl now proceeded alone in the upper room, while the men bathed below, one after the other.

And, at the end of the first month, Étienne and Catherine seemed already not to see one another, when in the evening, before putting out the candle, they moved undressed about the room. She had ceased to hurry; she took up her old habit of knotting her hair at the edge of her bed, arms raised, drawing her shift to her thighs; and he, without breeches, sometimes helped her, sought the pins she lost. Habit killed the shame of nakedness; they found it natural to be so, for they did no harm and it was not their fault if there was but one room for so many. Troubles, however, came back to them suddenly, at moments when they thought of nothing blameworthy. After no longer seeing the pallor of her body for whole evenings, he would suddenly see her all white again, of that whiteness which shook him with a shiver, which forced him to turn away, for fear of yielding to the wish to take her. She, on other evenings, without apparent reason, fell into a modest flutter, fled, slipped between the sheets, as if she had felt the hands of that lad seize her. Then, the candle out, they understood they did not sleep, that they thought of one another, despite their fatigue. That left them uneasy and sulky all the next day, for they preferred the quiet evenings, when they made free as mates.

Étienne complained chiefly of Jeanlin, who slept curled like a dog. Alzire breathed a light breath; one found Lénore and Henri in the morning in one another's arms, as they had been put to bed. In the black house there was no other sound than the snores of Maheu and the Maheude, rolling at regular intervals like forge-bellows. On the whole, Étienne was better off than at Rasseneur's; the bed was not bad, and the sheets were changed once a month. He ate better soup too; he suffered only from the scarcity of meat. But all were in that case; he could not expect, for forty-five francs board, a rabbit at every meal. Those forty-five francs helped the family; they ended by making both ends meet, always leaving small debts behind; and the Maheus showed gratitude to their lodger—his linen was washed, mended, his buttons sewn on, his things set in order; in short, he felt about him the cleanliness and good care of a woman.

It was the time when Étienne heard the ideas buzzing in his skull. Till then he had had only the revolt of instinct, amid the dull fermentation of the mates. All sorts of confused questions presented themselves: why the misery of some? why the wealth of others? why these under the heel of those, without hope of ever taking their place? And his first step was to understand his ignorance. A secret shame, a hidden grief gnawed him thenceforth: he knew nothing; he dared not talk of these things that passionate him—the equality of all men, the equity that would have the goods of the earth shared among them. So he took to study with the methodless taste of ignorants maddened for science. Now he was in regular correspondence with Pluchart, better taught, well launched in the socialist movement. He had books sent him, whose ill-digested reading finished by exalting him: a medical book especially, _The Miner's Hygiene_, where a Belgian doctor had summed up the ills whereof the folk of the coal-fields die; not to mention treatises of political economy of incomprehensible technical aridity, anarchist pamphlets that turned him upside down, old newspaper numbers he kept afterwards as irrefutable arguments in possible discussions. Souvarine, besides, lent him volumes too, and the work on Cooperative Societies had made him dream for a month of a universal exchange association, abolishing money, basing all social life on labour. The shame of his ignorance left him; there came to him a pride, since he felt himself think.

During these first months Étienne stayed at the ravishment of neophytes, his heart overflowing with generous indignations against the oppressors, throwing himself on the hope of the near triumph of the oppressed. He was not yet at forging himself a system, in the vagueness of his reading. The practical claims of Rasseneur mingled in him with the destructive violences of Souvarine; and when he left the Advantage tavern, where he continued almost daily to rail with them against the Company, he walked in a dream, he assisted at the radical regeneration of peoples, without that needing to cost a broken pane or a drop of blood. Moreover, the means of execution remained obscure; he preferred to believe things would go very well, for his head was lost as soon as he tried to formulate a programme of reconstruction. He showed himself even full of moderation and inconsistency; he would repeat sometimes that politics must be banished from the social question—a phrase he had read and that seemed good to say, in the milieu of phlegmatic colliers he lived among.

Now, every evening, at the Maheus', they lingered half an hour before going up to bed. Always Étienne took up the same talk. Since his nature had refined, he found himself more hurt by the promiscuities of the settlement. Were they beasts, to be thus penned, one against another, in the midst of the fields, so crowded they could not change their shirt without showing their backside to the neighbours! And how bad it was for health, and how the girls and boys there inevitably rotted together!

'Lord!' answered Maheu, 'if we had more money, we'd have more ease... All the same, it's true enough it's good for nobody, living one atop the other. It always ends with drunk men and big girls.'

“Stories of the world, in your language.”