Part 15

And as he turned his back, after having said yes with a nod, the two men made up their minds to enter the Yards.

The cashier's office was a small rectangular room, divided in two by a wire screen. On the benches along the walls, five or six miners were waiting; while the cashier, helped by a clerk, was paying another, standing before the wicket, his cap in his hand. Above the left bench, a yellow poster had been pasted up, quite fresh against the smoky grey of the plaster; and it was there that, since morning, men had been continually filing past. They came in two or three at a time, stood rooted, then went away without a word, with a shrug of the shoulders, as if someone had broken their backs.

There were just two colliers in front of the poster, a young man with the square head of a brute, an old man very thin, his face dulled by age. Neither knew how to read, the young man was spelling out loud, moving his lips, the old man was content to stare stupidly. Many came in like that, to see, without understanding.

“Read us that, will you,” said Maheu to his companion, who was not much good at reading either.

Then Étienne began to read the poster. It was a notice from the Company to the miners of all the pits. It warned them that, in view of the little care taken with timbering, weary of imposing useless fines, it had resolved to apply a new method of payment, for the cutting of coal. Henceforth, it would pay for timbering separately, by the cubic metre of wood brought down and used, basing this on the quantity necessary for good work. The price of the tub of cut coal would naturally be lowered, in a proportion of from fifty centimes to forty, depending moreover on the nature and distance of the workings. And a rather obscure calculation tried to establish that this reduction of ten centimes would be exactly compensated by the price of timbering. Besides, the Company added that, wishing to give everyone time to convince themselves of the advantages presented by this new method, it intended only to apply it starting on Monday, December 1st.

“If you'd read a bit less loud, back there!” cried the cashier. “We can't hear ourselves.”

Étienne finished his reading, ignoring the remark. His voice trembled, and when he had done, all continued to stare fixedly at the poster. The old miner and the young man seemed to be waiting still; then, they left, their backs broken.

“God damn it!” muttered Maheu.

He and his companion had sat down. Absorbed, heads low, while the procession continued opposite the yellow paper, they calculated. Were they making fools of them! never would they make up, with the timbering, the ten centimes reduced on the tub. At most they would get eight centimes, and that was two centimes the Company was stealing from them, not counting the time that careful work would take them. So that was where it wanted to get to, this disguised wage cut! It was making savings out of its miners' pockets.

“God damn it, god damn it!” repeated Maheu, raising his head. “We're bastards if we accept that!”

But the wicket was free, he went up to be paid. The bargaining heads alone presented themselves at the cashier's, then shared the money among their men, which saved time.

“Maheu and partners,” said the clerk, “Filonnière seam, working number seven.”

He was searching on the lists, which were drawn up by going through the booklets, where the deputy-overmen, each day and by workplace, noted the number of tubs extracted. Then, he repeated:

“Maheu and partners, Filonnière seam, working number seven... One hundred thirty-five francs.”

The cashier paid.

“Beg pardon, sir,” stammered the stunned hewer, “are you sure you're not mistaken?”

He looked at the little money, without picking it up, chilled by a small shiver running to his heart. Certainly, he expected a bad pay, but it could not come to so little, or he must have counted wrong. When he had given their share to Zacharie, to Étienne and to the other comrade who replaced Chaval, there would remain for him at most fifty francs, for him, his father, Catherine and Jeanlin.

“No, no, I'm not mistaken,” resumed the employee. “You must take off two Sundays and four days of stoppage: so, that makes nine days of work for you.”

Maheu followed this calculation, adding up under his breath: nine days gave him about thirty francs, eighteen to Catherine, nine to Jeanlin. As for old Bonnemort, he had only three days. Anyway, adding the ninety francs of Zacharie and the two comrades, that surely made more.

“And don't forget the fines,” finished the clerk. “Twenty francs of fines for defective timbering.”

The hewer made a gesture of despair. Twenty francs of fines, four days of stoppage! Then, the account was right. To think he had brought home even fortnights of a hundred fifty francs, when old Bonnemort worked and Zacharie was not yet married!

“Are you going to take it or not?” cried the impatient cashier. “You see someone else is waiting... If you don't want it, say so.”

As Maheu decided to pick up the money with his big trembling hand, the employee held him back.

“Wait, I have your name here. Toussaint Maheu, isn't it?... The chief secretary wants to speak to you. Go in, he's alone.”

Dazed, the worker found himself in a study, furnished with old mahogany, hung with faded green rep. And he listened for five minutes to the chief secretary, a tall pale gentleman, who spoke to him over the papers on his desk, without getting up. But the buzzing in his ears kept him from hearing. He vaguely understood that it was a question of his father, whose retirement was going to be looked into, for the pension of a hundred fifty francs, fifty years of age and forty years of service. Then, it seemed to him the secretary's voice grew harder. It was a reprimand, he was accused of concerning himself with politics, an allusion was made to his landlord and the benefit society; finally, he was advised not to compromise himself in these follies, he who was one of the best workers of the pit. He wanted to protest, could only pronounce disconnected words, twisted his cap between his feverish fingers, and withdrew, stammering:

“Certainly, Mr. Secretary... I assure Mr. Secretary...”

Outside, when he found Étienne waiting for him, he burst out.

“I'm a bastard, I should have answered!... Not enough to eat bread, and nonsense besides! Yes, it's against you he's got it, he told me the settlement was poisoned... And what to do? god damn it! bend the back, say thank you. He's right, that's the wisest.”

Maheu fell silent, torn between anger and fear. Étienne mused with a dark air. Again, they crossed the groups blocking the street. Exasperation grew, a calm people's exasperation, a rumbling murmur of storm, without violent gestures, terrible above this heavy mass. A few heads that knew how to count had done the sum, and the two centimes gained by the Company on the timber circulated, inflamed the hardest skulls. But it was above all the rage at this disastrous pay, the revolt of hunger, against the stoppage and the fines. Already they were eating no more, what would become of them, if wages were lowered again? In the taverns, they grew angry out loud, anger dried their throats so much, that the little money received stayed on the counters.

From Montsou to the settlement, Étienne and Maheu exchanged not a word. When the latter came in, the Maheude, who was alone with the children, noticed right away that his hands were empty.

“Well, you're a nice one!” she said. “And my coffee, and my sugar, and the meat? A bit of veal wouldn't have ruined you.”

He did not answer, strangled by an emotion he pushed back down. Then, in this thick face of a man hardened to mine work, there was a swelling of despair, and big tears burst from his eyes, fell in warm rain. He had collapsed on a chair, he wept like a child, throwing the fifty francs on the table.

“Here!” he stammered, “that's what I bring you... It's all our work.”

The Maheude looked at Étienne, saw him mute and overwhelmed. Then, she wept too. How to feed nine people, with fifty francs for a fortnight? Her eldest had left them, the old man could no longer move his legs: it was death soon. Alzire threw herself on her mother's neck, distraught to hear her cry. Estelle howled, Lénore and Henri sobbed.

And, from the whole settlement, soon rose the same cry of misery. The men had come home, each household lamented before the disaster of this bad pay. Doors reopened, women appeared, crying outside, as if their complaints could not fit under the ceilings of the closed houses. A fine rain fell, but they did not feel it, they called to each other on the pavements, they showed, in the hollow of their hand, the money received.

“Look! they gave him that, isn't that making fools of people?”

“Me, see! I haven't even enough to pay for the fortnight's bread.”

“And me either! count a bit, I'll have to sell my shirts again.”

The Maheude had gone out like the others. A group formed around Levaque, who cried the loudest; for her drunken lout of a husband had not even reappeared, she guessed that, big or small, the pay would melt at the Volcano. Philomène watched Maheu, so that Zacharie would not touch the change. And there was only Pierronne who seemed calm enough, that sneak Pierron always arranging, no one knew how, to have, on the deputy's booklet, more hours than the comrades. But the Brûlé found that cowardly on the part of her son-in-law, she was with those who grew angry, thin and straight in the middle of the group, her fist stretched toward Montsou.

“To think,” she cried without naming the Hennebeaus, “that I saw, this morning, their maid pass in a carriage!... Yes, the cook in the two-horse carriage, going to Marchiennes to get fish, sure thing!”

A clamour rose, the violences began again. This maid in a white apron, driven to the market of the neighbouring town in the masters' carriage, stirred up indignation. When the workers were dying of hunger, they needed fish all the same? They perhaps would not always eat fish: the turn of the poor world would come. And the ideas sown by Étienne grew, widened in this cry of revolt. It was impatience before the promised golden age, the haste to have one's share of happiness, beyond this horizon of misery, closed like a tomb. Injustice became too great, they would end by demanding their right, since the bread was being taken from their mouths. The women especially would have liked to storm in, right away, this ideal city of progress, where there would be no more wretches. It was nearly night, and the rain redoubled, yet they still filled the settlement with their tears, amid the whimpering scatter of the children.

In the evening, at the Advantage, the strike was decided. Rasseneur no longer fought it, and Souvarine accepted it as a first step. In a word, Étienne summed up the situation: if she definitely wanted the strike, the Company would have the strike.

V

A week passed, the work continued, suspicious and gloomy, in expectation of the conflict.

At the Maheus', the fortnight promised to be even leaner. Also the Maheude grew bitter, despite her moderation and good sense. Had not her daughter Catherine taken it into her head to stay out a night? The next morning, she had come home so tired, so sick from this adventure, that she could not go to the pit; and she wept, she told that it was not her fault, for it was Chaval who had kept her, threatening to beat her, if she ran away. He was going mad with jealousy, he wanted to stop her from going back into Étienne's bed, where he well knew, he said, the family made her sleep. Furious, the Maheude, after forbidding her daughter to see such a brute again, spoke of going to slap him at Montsou. But it was nonetheless a lost day, and the little one, now that she had this lover, liked still better not to change him.

Two days later, there was another story. On Monday and Tuesday, Jeanlin, whom they believed at the Voreux, quietly at work, slipped away, took a tramp through the marshes and the Vandame forest, with Bébert and Lydie. He had led them astray, never was it known to what robberies, to what games of precocious children they had given themselves all three. He received a sound correction, a spanking his mother gave him outside, on the pavement, before the terrified brats of the settlement. Had one ever seen that? children of hers, who had cost since their birth, who should be bringing in now! And, in this cry, there was the memory of her hard youth, hereditary misery making of each little one of the litter a breadwinner for later.

That morning, when the men and the girl left for the pit, the Maheude raised herself from her bed to say to Jeanlin:

“You know, if you start again, wicked bugger, I'll take the skin off your arse!”

At Maheu's new workplace, the work was painful. This part of the Filonnière seam was thinning out, to the point that the hewers, crushed between the wall and the roof, scraped their elbows, in the cutting. Besides, it became very damp, they dreaded hourly a water burst, one of those sudden torrents that crack the rocks and carry off the men. The day before, Étienne, as he violently drove in his pick and pulled it out, had received in the face the jet of a spring; but it was only an alarm, the working had simply remained wetter and unhealthier. Besides, he scarcely thought of possible accidents, he forgot himself there now with the comrades, careless of peril. They lived in the firedamp, without even feeling its weight on the eyelids, the spiderweb haze it left on the lashes. Sometimes when the lamp flames paled and blued more, one thought of it, a miner put his head against the seam, to listen for the little noise of the gas, a noise of air bubbles bubbling at each crack. But the continual threat was the falls: for, besides the insufficiency of the timbering, always botched too fast, the earths did not hold, soaked by the waters.

Three times in the day, Maheu had had to have the timber consolidated. It was half past two, the men were about to go up. Lying on his side, Étienne was finishing the cutting of a block, when a distant rumble of thunder shook the whole mine.

“What's that?” he cried, letting go his pick to listen.

He had thought the gallery was collapsing behind his back.

But already Maheu was letting himself slide down the slope of the working, saying:

“It's a fall... Quick! quick!”

All tumbled down, rushed, carried by a surge of anxious brotherhood. The lamps danced in their fists, in the deathly silence that had fallen; they ran in file along the ways, backs bent, as if they had galloped on all fours; and, without slowing this gallop, they questioned each other, threw brief answers: where then? in the workings perhaps? no, it came from below! at the haulage rather! When they arrived at the shaft, they plunged in, they fell one on the other, without caring for the bruises.

Jeanlin, his skin still red from the spanking of the day before, had not slipped away from the pit, that day. He trotted barefoot behind his train, closed one by one the air doors; and, sometimes, when he did not dread meeting a deputy, he climbed on the last tub, which was forbidden him, for fear he would fall asleep there. But his great distraction was, each time the train stopped to let another pass, to go find Bébert at the head, who held the reins. He arrived sneakily, without his lamp, pinched the comrade to blood, invented nasty monkey tricks, with his yellow hair, his big ears, his thin snout, lit by little green eyes, shining in the dark. Of a sickly precocity, he seemed to have the obscure intelligence and the lively address of a human abortion, returning to original animality.

In the afternoon, Mouque brought to the haulage Bataille, whose turn of duty it was; and, as the horse was puffing in a siding, Jeanlin, who had slipped up to Bébert, asked him:

“What's wrong with that old nag, stopping short?... He'll get my legs broken.”

Bébert could not answer, he had to hold Bataille, who was frisking at the approach of the other train. The horse had recognised from afar, by scent, his comrade Trompette, for whom he had taken a great tenderness, since the day he had seen him land in the pit. One would have said the affectionate pity of an old philosopher, desirous of relieving a young friend, giving him his resignation and his patience; for Trompette did not acclimatise, pulled his tubs without zest, remained head low, blinded by night, with the constant regret of the sun. Also, each time Bataille met him, he stretched his neck, shaking himself, wetting him with an encouraging caress.

“God damn it!” swore Bébert, “there they go sucking each other's hide again!”

Then, when Trompette had passed, he answered about Bataille:

“Go on, he's cunning, the old one!... When he stops like that, it's that he scents a bother, a stone or a hole; and he looks after himself, he won't break nothing... Today, I don't know what he can have, there, past the door. He pushes it and stays rooted on his feet... Did you feel anything?”

“No,” said Jeanlin. “There's water, it's up to my knees.”

The train set off again. And, on the next trip, when he had opened the air door with a toss of the head, Bataille again refused to advance, neighing, trembling. At last, he decided, shot off at a run.

Jeanlin, who was closing the door, had stayed behind. He bent down, looked at the pool where he was splashing; then, raising his lamp, he noticed that the timber had buckled, under the continual oozing of a spring. Just then, a hewer, a man named Berloque called Chicot, was coming from his working, in a hurry to see his wife, who was in childbirth. He too stopped, examined the timbering. And, all at once, as the little one was about to dart off to rejoin his train, a frightful cracking was heard, the fall had swallowed the man and the child.

There was a great silence. Pushed by the wind of the fall, a thick dust rose in the ways. And, blinded, stifled, the miners came down from all sides, from the furthest workplaces, with their dancing lamps, which lit poorly this gallop of black men, at the bottom of these mole holes. When the first ones bumped against the fall, they cried, called the comrades. A second band, come by the bottom working, found itself on the other side of the earths, whose mass blocked the gallery. Right away, it was established that the roof had caved in over some ten metres at most. The damage was nothing serious. But hearts tightened, when a death rattle came from the rubble.

Bébert, letting go his train, came running repeating:

“Jeanlin is underneath! Jeanlin is underneath!”

Maheu, at that very moment, was tumbling down the shaft, with Zacharie and Étienne. He was seized with a fury of despair, he let out only oaths.

“God damn it! god damn it! god damn it!”

Catherine, Lydie, the Mouquette, who had galloped too, began to sob, to howl with fright, amid the frightful disorder, which the darkness increased. They wanted to silence them, they grew wild, howled louder, at each rattle.

The deputy Richomme had arrived at a run, desolate that neither the engineer Négrel, nor Dansaert, were at the pit. His ear stuck to the rocks, he listened; and he ended by saying that these plaints were not a child's plaints. A man was there, for sure. Twenty times already, Maheu had called Jeanlin. Not a breath sounded. The little one must be crushed.

And still the rattle continued, monotonous. They spoke to the dying man, asked him his name. The rattle alone answered.

“Hurry!” repeated Richomme, who had already organised the rescue. “We'll talk after.”

On both sides, the miners attacked the fall, with pick and shovel. Chaval worked without a word, beside Maheu and Étienne; while Zacharie directed the carrying away of the earth. The hour of leaving had come, none had eaten; but they did not go for the soup, as long as comrades were in peril. However, it was thought that the settlement would worry, if it saw no one return, and it was proposed to send the women back there. Neither Catherine, nor the Mouquette, nor even Lydie, would move away, nailed by the need to know, helping with the clearing. Then, Levaque accepted the errand of announcing up there the fall, a simple damage being repaired. It was near four o'clock, the workers in less than an hour had done a day's work: already half the earths should have been removed, if new rocks had not slipped from the roof. Maheu persisted with such rage, that he refused with a terrible gesture, when another came to relieve him a moment.

“Gently!” said at last Richomme. “We're getting there... We mustn't finish them off.”

Indeed, the rattle became more and more distinct. It was this continual rattle that guided the workers; and, now, it seemed to breathe under the very picks. Suddenly, it ceased.

All, silent, looked at each other, shivering to have felt the cold of death pass, in the darkness. They picked, soaked with sweat, muscles strained to breaking. A foot was met, then they removed the earth with the hands, freed the limbs one by one. The head had not suffered. Lamps lit it, and the name of Chicot went round. He was quite warm, the spine broken by a rock.

“Wrap him in a blanket, and put him on a tub,” commanded the deputy. “The kid now, hurry!”

Maheu gave a last blow, and an opening was made, they communicated with the men who were clearing the fall, on the other side. They cried, they had just found Jeanlin fainted, both legs broken, still breathing. It was the father who brought the little one in his arms; and, jaws clenched, he still let out only god damn its! to say his grief; while Catherine and the other women had started howling again.

They quickly formed the procession. Bébert had brought back Bataille, whom they harnessed to the two tubs: in the first, lay the corpse of Chicot, held by Étienne; in the second, Maheu had sat, carrying on his knees the unconscious Jeanlin, covered with a scrap of wool, torn from an air door. And they set off, at a walk. On each tub, a lamp made a red star. Then, behind, followed the tail of the miners, some fifty shadows in file. Now, fatigue crushed them, they dragged their feet, slipped in the mud, with the mournful bereavement of a herd struck by epidemic. It took near half an hour to arrive at the landing. This convoy under the earth, amid the thick darkness, never ended, along the galleries that forked, turned, unrolled.

At the landing, Richomme, come ahead, had given order that an empty cage be kept. Pierron at once packed the two tubs. In one, Maheu stayed with his little wounded on his knees, while, in the other, Étienne was to hold, between his arms, the corpse of Chicot, so that it might stay. When the workers had piled up at the other levels, the cage rose. It took two minutes. The rain of the shaft lining fell very cold, the men looked up, impatient to see the day again.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”