Part 19

Étienne, however, had risen, affecting to stir the half-extinguished fire, so as not to hinder the explanation. But their glances met; he found her pale, worn out, pretty nevertheless, with her very bright eyes in her sun-tanned face; and he experienced a singular feeling—his resentment was gone, he would simply have liked her to be happy, with that man whom she had preferred to himself. It was a need to still occupy himself with her, a desire to go to Montsou and force the other to show some consideration. But she saw only pity in this tenderness that still offered itself; he must despise her, to look at her in that fashion. Then her heart contracted so painfully that she choked, unable to stammer further words of excuse.

“That's right, you'd better hold your tongue,” resumed the Maheude implacably. “If you've come back to stay, come in; otherwise, clear off at once, and count yourself lucky I'm busy, for I'd have already kicked you somewhere.”

As if this threat were suddenly fulfilled, Catherine received, full in the behind, a kick delivered with such violence that she was stunned with surprise and pain. It was Chaval, who had sprung in through the open door, and was giving her the kick of a vicious beast. For a minute past he had been watching her from outside.

“Ah! you slut,” he roared, “I followed you, I knew well you were coming back here to get fucked up to the nose! And you're the one who pays for it, eh? You're treating him to coffee with my money!”

The Maheude and Étienne, stupefied, did not move. With a furious gesture Chaval was driving Catherine toward the door.

“Will you get out, for God's sake!”

And as she took refuge in a corner, he turned again upon the mother.

“A fine job, keeping house, while your whoring daughter is upstairs, legs in the air!”

At last he seized Catherine's wrist, shaking her, dragging her outside. At the door he turned once more toward the Maheude, nailed to her chair. She had forgotten to tuck in her breast. Estelle had fallen asleep, her nose slipped forward into the woolen skirt; and the enormous breast hung, free and bare, like the udder of a powerful cow.

“When the daughter isn't there, it's the mother who gets plugged,” cried Chaval. “Go on, show him your meat! Your blackguard of a lodger isn't squeamish!”

Thereupon Étienne would have slapped the fellow's face. The fear of rousing the settlement with a fight had restrained him from tearing Catherine from his hands. But now a rage seized him in turn, and the two men found themselves face to face, blood in their eyes. It was an old hatred, a jealousy long unavowed, bursting forth. Now one of the two must devour the other.

“Take care!” muttered Étienne, his teeth clenched. “I'll have your skin.”

“Try it!” answered Chaval.

They looked at each other again for some seconds, so close that their hot breath burned their faces. And it was Catherine, suppliant, who took her lover's hand again to draw him away. She pulled him out of the settlement, fleeing without turning her head.

“What a brute!” murmured Étienne, violently shutting the door, agitated with such anger that he had to sit down again.

Opposite him the Maheude had not stirred. She made a large gesture, and a silence fell, painful and heavy with the things they did not say. In spite of his effort, his eyes kept coming back to her throat, to that flow of white flesh whose nakedness now embarrassed him. No doubt she was forty, and deformed, like a good female who has bred too much; but many still desired her, broad, solid, with her large long face of a former pretty girl. Slowly, with a tranquil air, she had taken her breast in both hands and was tucking it in. A pink corner persisted; she pushed it back with her finger, then buttoned up, now all black, sagging in her old jacket.

“He's a pig,” she said at last. “It takes a filthy pig to have such disgusting ideas… Me, I don't care! It wasn't worth an answer.”

Then, in a frank voice, she added, without taking her eyes from the young man:

“I have my faults, of course, but I haven't that one… There have been only two men who touched me, a hewer formerly, at fifteen, and Maheu afterward. If he'd left me like the other, well! I don't quite know what would have happened; and I'm not so proud of having behaved well with him since our marriage, because when one hasn't done wrong, it's often for lack of opportunity… Only, I say what is, and I know neighbors who couldn't say as much, eh?”

“That's very true,” replied Étienne, rising.

And he went out, while she made up her mind to relight the fire, after laying the sleeping Estelle on two chairs. If the father caught and sold a fish, they would make soup at least.

Outside, night was already falling, a freezing night; and with lowered head Étienne walked, seized with a black sadness. It was no longer anger against the man, nor pity for the poor ill-treated girl. The brutal scene faded, drowned, threw him back upon the suffering of all, upon the abominations of misery. He saw again the settlement without bread, those women, those little ones who would not eat that evening, all that people struggling, empty-bellied. And the doubt with which he was sometimes touched awoke in him, in the frightful melancholy of the twilight, torturing him with an uneasiness he had never felt so violent. What terrible responsibility he had taken upon himself! Was he going to push them further, make them persist in resistance, now that there was neither money nor credit? And what would be the end, if no help came, if hunger broke their courage? Suddenly he had the vision of disaster: children dying, mothers sobbing, while the men, haggard and wasted, went down again into the pits. He walked on, his feet stumbling on the stones; the idea that the Company would be the stronger, and that he would have made the comrades' misfortune, filled him with an insupportable anguish.

When he raised his head, he saw that he was before the Voreux. The dark mass of the buildings grew heavier under the increasing shadows. In the midst of the deserted yard, blocked with great motionless shadows, it might have been a corner of an abandoned fortress. As soon as the drawing engine stopped, the soul went out of the walls. At this night hour nothing lived there any more, not a lantern, not a voice; and the escape of the pump itself was but a distant rattle, come from no one knew where, in that annihilation of the whole pit.

Étienne looked, and the blood rose again to his heart. If the workmen suffered hunger, the Company was eating into its millions. Why should it be the stronger, in this war of labor against capital? At any rate, victory would cost it dear. Its corpses would be counted afterward. He was seized again with a fury of battle, with the fierce need to make an end of misery, even at the price of death. It was as well that the settlement should perish at a blow, if one was to go on perishing in detail, of famine and injustice. Ill-digested readings came back to him, examples of peoples who had burned their cities to stop the enemy, vague stories where mothers saved children from slavery by breaking their heads on the pavement, where men let themselves die of inanition rather than eat the bread of tyrants. This exalted him; a red gaiety detached itself from his crisis of black sadness, chasing doubt, making him ashamed of that hour's cowardice. And in this reawakening of his faith, gusts of pride reappeared and bore him higher—the joy of being the chief, of seeing himself obeyed even to sacrifice, the enlarged dream of his power, the evening of triumph. Already he imagined a scene of simple grandeur, his refusal of power, authority restored to the hands of the people, when he should be master.

But he woke, he started at the voice of Maheu, who was telling him his luck, a superb trout caught and sold for three francs. There would be soup. Then he let the comrade return alone to the settlement, telling him he followed; and he went in to sit down at the Avantage, he waited for a customer to leave in order to warn Rasseneur plainly that he was going to write to Pluchart to come at once. His resolution was taken; he wished to organize a private meeting, for victory seemed certain to him, if the Montsou colliers adhered en masse to the International.

IV

It was at the Bon-Joyeux, at the widow Désir's, that the private meeting was organized, for Thursday at two o'clock. The widow, outraged at the miseries inflicted on her children the colliers, could not calm down, especially since her cabaret was emptying. Never had a strike been less thirsty; the drunkards shut themselves up at home, for fear of disobeying the order of prudence. Thus Montsou, which swarmed with people on fair days, stretched its broad street, mute and dreary, with an air of desolation. No more beer flowing from counters and bellies; the gutters were dry. On the pavement, at the Casimir shop and at the Progress tavern, one saw only the pale faces of the barkeepers questioning the road; then, in Montsou itself, the whole line lay deserted, from the Lenfant tavern to the Tison tavern, by way of the Piquette tavern and the Tête-Coupée shop; only the Saint-Éloi tavern, frequented by overseers, still poured a few mugs; and solitude gained even the Volcan, whose ladies were idle, for want of amateurs, although they had lowered their price from ten sous to five sous, given the hardness of the times. It was a real mourning that broke the heart of the whole country.

“God damn!” cried the widow Désir, slapping her thighs with both hands, “it's the gendarmes' fault! Let them throw me in prison if they want, but I've got to plague them!”

For her, all authorities, all masters, were gendarmes—a term of general contempt, in which she wrapped the enemies of the people. And she had received Étienne's request with transport: her whole house belonged to the miners, she would lend the ballroom gratis, she would launch the invitations herself, since the law required it. Besides, so much the better if the law wasn't pleased! they'd see her face. The next day the young man brought her some fifty letters to sign, which he had had copied by the writing neighbors of the settlement; and these letters were sent, into the pits, to the delegates and to men of whom they were sure. The avowed agenda was to discuss the continuation of the strike; but in reality they expected Pluchart, they counted on a speech from him, to carry the mass adhesion to the International.

On Thursday morning Étienne grew uneasy at not seeing his former foreman arrive, who had promised by telegram to be there Wednesday evening. What was happening? He was distressed not to be able to confer with him before the meeting. At nine o'clock he went to Montsou, thinking the mechanic might have gone there directly, without stopping at the Voreux.

“No, I haven't seen your friend,” answered the widow Désir. “But all is ready, come and see.”

She led him into the ballroom. The decoration was the same: garlands supporting a crown of painted paper flowers at the ceiling, and gilt cardboard shields lining the walls with names of saints and holy women. Only, the musicians' platform had been replaced by a table and three chairs, in a corner; and, set aslant, benches furnished the room.

“It's perfect,” declared Étienne.

“And, you know,” resumed the widow, “you're at home. Yell as much as you please… The gendarmes'll have to step over my body if they come.”

In spite of his uneasiness, he could not help smiling as he looked at her, so vast did she seem to him, with a pair of breasts of which one alone demanded a man to be kissed; which made it said that now, of the six sweethearts a week, she took two every evening, because of the work.

But Étienne was surprised to see Rasseneur and Souvarine enter; and as the widow left the three of them in the empty hall, he cried:

“Why, it's you already!”

Souvarine, who had worked the night at the Voreux, the engine-men not being on strike, came simply out of curiosity. As for Rasseneur, he seemed embarrassed for two days; his fat round face had lost its good-natured laugh.

“Pluchart hasn't arrived, I'm very uneasy,” added Étienne.

The tavern-keeper turned away his eyes and answered between his teeth:

“That doesn't surprise me, I expect him no more.”

“How so?”

Then he decided, he looked the other in the face, and with a brave air:

“It's that I too sent him a letter, if you want me to tell you; and in that letter I begged him not to come… Yes, I think we ought to do our business ourselves, without addressing strangers.”

Étienne, beside himself, trembling with anger, eyes in eyes with the comrade, repeated stammering:

“You did that! you did that!”

“I did that, perfectly! And yet you know if I trust Pluchart! He's a sharp one and a solid one, one can march with him… But, see here, I don't give a damn for your ideas! Politics, government, all that, I don't give a damn! What I desire is that the miner be better treated. I worked at the bottom for twenty years, I sweated there so much misery and fatigue that I swore to obtain comforts for the poor devils who are still there; and, I feel it well, you'll obtain nothing at all with your stories, you're going to make the worker's lot still more miserable… When he's forced by hunger to go down again, they'll salt him worse, the Company'll pay him with a cudgel, like an escaped dog they make go back to the kennel… That's what I want to prevent, d'you hear!”

He raised his voice, belly forward, planted squarely on his thick legs. And all his nature of a reasonable and patient man confessed itself in clear phrases, which flowed abundant, without effort. Wasn't it stupid to believe one could change the world at a blow, put the workers in the masters' place, share the money like an apple? It would take thousands and thousands of years for that perhaps to come about. So, let them leave him in peace with miracles! The wisest party, when one didn't want to break one's nose, was to march straight, to demand possible reforms, to improve at last the lot of the workers, on every occasion. Thus, he himself undertook, if he looked after it, to bring the Company to better conditions; whereas, go to the devil! they'd all perish there, by persisting.

Étienne had let him speak, his word cut by indignation. Then he cried:

“God damn! haven't you blood in your veins?”

For an instant he would have slapped him; and, to resist the temptation, he launched himself into the room with great strides, he relieved his fury on the benches, through which he opened a passage.

“Shut the door at least,” remarked Souvarine. “There's no need to be heard.”

After going himself to shut it, he sat quietly on one of the platform chairs. He had rolled a cigarette, he looked at the other two with his soft fine eye, his lips pinched by a thin smile.

“When you get angry, it gets nowhere,” resumed Rasseneur judiciously. “I thought at first you had good sense. It was very well to recommend calm to the comrades, to force them not to stir from home, to use your power finally for the maintenance of order. And now, there you are going to throw them into the mess!”

At each of his crossings amid the benches, Étienne came back toward the tavern-keeper, seized him by the shoulders, shook him, crying his answers in his face.

“But, thunder of God! I'm willing to be calm. Yes, I imposed a discipline on them! yes, I still advise them not to move! Only, one mustn't make fools of us, at last!… You're happy to stay cold. Me, there are hours when I feel my head going.”

It was, on his side, a confession. He mocked his illusions as a neophyte, his religious dream of a city where justice would soon reign, among men become brothers. A fine means truly, to fold one's arms and wait, if one wanted to see men eat each other to the end of the world, like wolves. No! one must meddle, otherwise injustice would be eternal, always the rich would suck the poor's blood. Also he did not forgive himself the stupidity of having once said that politics must be banished from the social question. He knew nothing then, and since he had read, he had studied. Now his ideas were ripe, he boasted of having a system. Yet he explained it badly, in phrases whose confusion kept something of all the theories traversed and successively abandoned. At the summit stood the idea of Karl Marx: capital was the result of spoliation, labor had the duty and the right to reconquer that stolen wealth. In practice, he had first, with Proudhon, been taken by the chimera of mutual credit, of a vast exchange bank suppressing intermediaries; then the cooperative societies of Lassalle, endowed by the State, gradually transforming the earth into a single industrial city, had passioned him, until the day disgust came to him before the difficulty of control; and he had lately arrived at collectivism, he demanded that all instruments of labor be restored to the collectivity. But this remained vague; he did not know how to realize this new dream, still hindered by the scruples of his sensibility and reason, not daring to risk the absolute affirmations of the sectaries. He was simply at the point of saying that it was a matter of seizing the government, before all. Afterward, one would see.

“But what's the matter with you? why go over to the bourgeois?” he continued violently, coming to plant himself before the tavern-keeper. “You yourself said it: something's got to blow!”

Rasseneur reddened slightly.

“Yes, I said it. And if it blows, you'll see I'm no more cowardly than another… Only, I refuse to be with those who increase the mess, to fish a position out of it.”

In his turn Étienne flushed. The two men cried no more, become sour and spiteful, won by the cold of their rivalry. It was, at bottom, what exasperated the systems, throwing one into a revolutionary exaggeration, pushing the other to an affectation of prudence, carrying them in spite of themselves beyond their true ideas, into those fatalities of roles one does not choose oneself. And Souvarine, who listened to them, let show, on his blonde girl's face, a silent contempt, the crushing contempt of the man ready to give his life, obscurely, without even drawing the glory of martyrdom from it.

“So it's for me you say that?” asked Étienne. “Are you jealous?”

“Jealous of what?” answered Rasseneur. “I don't set myself up as a great man, I don't seek to create a section at Montsou, to become its secretary.”

The other would have interrupted him, but he added:

“Be frank! you don't give a damn for the International, you simply burn to be at our head, to play the gentleman corresponding with the famous Federal Council of the North!”

A silence reigned. Étienne, trembling, resumed:

“That's good… I thought I had nothing to reproach myself with. Always I consulted you, for I knew you had fought here, long before me. But since you can't bear anyone at your side, I'll act alone from now on… And first, I warn you the meeting will take place, even if Pluchart doesn't come, and the comrades will adhere in spite of you.”

“Oh! adhere,” murmured the tavern-keeper, “that's not done… They'll have to be persuaded to pay the subscription.”

“Not at all. The International grants time to workers on strike. We'll pay later, and it is she who, immediately, will come to our aid.”

Rasseneur, thereupon, flared up.

“Well! we'll see… I'm in on your meeting, and I'll speak. Yes, I won't let you turn the friends' heads, I'll enlighten them on their true interests. We'll know which they mean to follow, me, whom they've known for thirty years, or you, who have upset everything among us in less than a year… No! no! leave me alone! it's now who'll crush the other!”

And he went out, making the door slam. The flower garlands trembled at the ceiling, the gilt shields jumped against the walls. Then the great hall fell back to its heavy peace.

Souvarine smoked with his soft air, seated before the table. After walking a moment in silence, Étienne relieved himself at length. Was it his fault if they dropped that big idler to come to him? and he defended himself from having sought popularity, he did not even know how all that had come about, the good friendship of the settlement, the miners' confidence, the power he had over them, at this hour. He was indignant at being accused of wanting to push into the mess through ambition; he struck his breast, protesting his brotherhood.

Abruptly he stopped before Souvarine, he cried:

“See here, if I knew I cost a friend a drop of blood, I'd clear out straight to America!”

The engine-man shrugged his shoulders, and a smile again thinned his lips.

“Oh! blood,” murmured he, “what does it matter? the earth has need of it.”

Étienne, calming, took a chair and leaned his elbows on the other side of the table. That blonde face, whose dreamy eyes sometimes grew wild with a red clarity, unsettled him, exercised a singular action on his will. Without the comrade speaking, won by that very silence, he felt himself gradually absorbed.

“Come, tell me, what would you do in my place? Am I not right to want to act?… The best, isn't it? is to join this Association.”

Souvarine, after slowly blowing a jet of smoke, answered with his favorite word:

“Yes, nonsense! but, meanwhile, it's still something… Besides, their International is going to march soon. He's seeing to it.”

“Who?”

“Him!”

He had pronounced this word half-voice, with an air of religious fervor, casting a glance toward the East. It was of the master he spoke, of Bakunin the exterminator.

“He alone can give the bludgeon blow,” he continued, “while your scholars are cowards, with their evolution… Before three years, the International, under his orders, must crush the old world.”

Étienne strained his ears, very attentive. He burned to instruct himself, to understand this cult of destruction, on which the engine-man let fall only rare obscure words, as if he kept its mysteries to himself.

“But finally explain to me… What is your aim?”

“To destroy all… No more nations, no more governments, no more property, no more God nor worship.”

“I understand well. Only, where does that lead you?”

“To the primitive and formless commune, to a new world, to the recommencement of all.”

“And the means of execution? how do you count on going about it?”

“By fire, by poison, by the dagger. The brigand is the true hero, the popular avenger, the revolutionist in action, without phrases drawn from books. A series of frightful outrages must terrify the powerful and awaken the people.”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”