Part 22

But what sent them thus, from Montsou to Marchiennes, constantly along the roads, with the eyes of young wolves, was a growing need for marauding. Jeanlin remained the captain of these expeditions, hurling the troop upon every prey, ravaging the onion fields, plundering the orchards, attacking the market stalls. In the country, they accused the striking miners, they spoke of a vast organized band. One day even, he had forced Lydie to steal from her mother, he had got her to bring him two dozen barley sugars which Pierronne kept in a jar, on one of the shelves of her window; and the little girl, beaten black and blue, had not betrayed him, so much did she tremble before his authority. The worst was that he took the lion's share. Bébert, likewise, had to hand over the booty, happy if the captain did not box his ears, to keep it all.

For some time, Jeanlin had been abusing his power. He beat Lydie as one beats a lawful wife, and he profited from Bébert's credulity to engage him in unpleasant adventures, much amused to make a fool of this big boy, stronger than himself, who could have knocked him senseless with one punch. He despised them both, treated them as slaves, told them he had for his mistress a princess, before whom they were unworthy to appear. And, in fact, for a week he had been disappearing suddenly, at the end of a street, at the turn of a path, wherever he happened to be, after ordering them, with a terrible air, to return to the settlement. First, he pocketed the booty.

It was, moreover, what happened that evening.

--Give it here, he said, snatching the cod from his comrade's hands, when they all three stopped, at a bend in the road, near Réquillart.

Bébert protested.

--I want some, you know. It was me who took it.

--Eh, what? he cried. You'll have some if I give you some, and not tonight, sure enough: tomorrow, if there's any left.

He cuffed Lydie, he planted them one and the other in line, like soldiers at present arms. Then, passing behind them:

--Now, you're going to stay there five minutes, without turning round... God damn it! if you turn round, there'll be beasts that'll eat you... And then you'll go straight home, and if Bébert touches Lydie on the way, I'll know, I'll slap your faces.

Then, he vanished into the depth of the shadow, with such lightness, that one did not even hear the sound of his bare feet. The two children remained motionless during the five minutes, without looking behind, for fear of receiving a slap from the invisible. Slowly, a great affection had been born between them, in their common terror. He, always, thought of taking her, of holding her very tight in his arms, as he saw others do; and she too, would have liked it well, for it would have been a change, to be thus gently caressed. But neither he nor she would have allowed themselves to disobey. When they went off, although the night was very black, they did not even kiss, they walked side by side, touched and despairing, certain that, if they touched each other, the captain from behind would lengthen them with slaps.

Étienne, at the same hour, had entered Réquillart. The day before, Mouquette had begged him to come back, and he was coming back, ashamed, taken with a taste he refused to admit to himself, for this girl who adored him like a Jesus. It was, besides, with the intention of breaking it off. He would see her, he would explain to her that she must no longer pursue him, because of the comrades. One was hardly in joy, it lacked honesty, to treat oneself to such sweetness, when the world was starving to death. And, not having found her at home, he had decided to wait for her, he watched the shadows go by.

Beneath the ruined belfry, the old pit opened, half obstructed. A straight beam, holding a piece of roofing, had the profile of a gallows, above the black hole; and, in the burst masonry of the curbstones, two trees grew, a rowan and a plane tree, which seemed to rise from the depths of the earth. It was a corner of wild abandonment, the grassy and hairy entrance of a gulf, encumbered with old wood, planted with sloes and hawthorns, which the warblers peopled with their nests, in spring. Wishing to avoid heavy maintenance costs, the Company, for ten years, had proposed to fill in this dead shaft; but it waited to have installed a ventilator at the Voreux, for the airing fireplace of the two pits, which communicated, was placed at the foot of Réquillart, whose old drainage shaft served as a chimney. They had contented themselves with consolidating the tubbing of the level with crosspieces placed across, barring extraction, and they had abandoned the upper galleries, to watch only the bottom gallery, in which flamed the hell furnace, the enormous coal brazier, with so powerful a draw, that the call of air made the wind blow in tempest, from one end to the other of the neighboring pit. By prudence, so that one could still go up and down, the order was given to maintain the ladder shaft; only, no one concerned themselves with it, the ladders rotted with damp, landings had already collapsed. Above, a great bramble blocked the entrance to the shaft; and as the first ladder had lost rungs, it was necessary, to reach it, to hang from a root of the rowan, then let oneself fall at random, into the dark.

Étienne waited, hidden behind a bush, when he heard, among the branches, a long rustling. He thought it was the frightened flight of a grass snake. But the sudden gleam of a match astonished him, and he remained stupefied, recognizing Jeanlin who lit a candle and who sank into the earth. So vivid a curiosity seized him, that he approached the hole: the child had disappeared, a weak light came from the second landing. He hesitated an instant, then let himself roll, holding to the roots, thought he would make the jump of the five hundred twenty-four meters that the pit measured, ended nevertheless by feeling a rung. And he descended softly. Jeanlin must have heard nothing, Étienne still saw, below him, the light sink, while the shadow of the little one, colossal and troubling, danced, with the hitching of his crippled legs. He gamboled, with a monkey's skill to catch himself with hands, feet, chin, when rungs were missing. The ladders, of seven meters, succeeded one another, some still solid, others shaky, creaking, near to breaking; the narrow landings filed past, greened, so rotten, that one walked as on moss; and, as one descended, the heat was suffocating, a heat of an oven, which came from the drawing shaft, happily little active since the strike, for in time of work, when the fireplace ate its five thousand kilograms of coal per day, one could not have risked oneself there, without roasting one's hair.

--What god-damned toad! swore Étienne suffocated, where the devil is he going?

Twice, he had nearly toppled. His feet slipped on the damp wood. At least, if he had had a candle like the child; but he knocked himself every minute, he was guided only by the vague gleam, fleeing below him. It was surely the twentieth ladder already, and the descent continued. Then, he counted them: twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, and he sank, and he sank always. An ardent baking swelled his head, he thought he was falling into a furnace. At last, he arrived at a landing, and he perceived the candle which fled to the bottom of a gallery. Thirty ladders, that made about two hundred ten meters.

--Is he going to lead me about much longer? he thought. It's surely in the stable that he's hiding.

But, to the left, the way which led to the stable was barred by a fall of rock. The journey recommenced, more painful and more dangerous. Bats, startled, fluttered, stuck to the vault of the landing. He had to hasten so as not to lose sight of the light, he threw himself into the same gallery; only, where the child passed at ease, with his snake's suppleness, he could not slip without bruising his limbs. This gallery, like all the old ways, had narrowed, narrowed still each day, under the continual push of the ground; and there was no longer, at certain places, but a pipe, which must end by erasing itself. In this work of strangling, the burst woods, torn, became a peril, threatened to saw his flesh, to string him in passing, on the point of their splinters, sharp as swords. He advanced only with caution, on his knees or on his belly, feeling the shadow before him. Suddenly, a band of rats trampled him, ran from his nape to his feet, in a gallop of flight.

--Thunder of God! are we there at last? he growled, his back broken, out of breath.

They were there. At the end of a kilometer, the pipe widened, one fell into a part of way admirably preserved. It was the bottom of the old hauling way, cut through the seam, like a natural grotto. He had to stop, he saw from afar the child who had just placed his candle between two stones, and who was making himself at ease, with a tranquil and relieved air, like a happy man returning home. A complete installation changed this bit of gallery into a comfortable dwelling. On the ground, in a corner, a heap of hay made a soft bed; on old woods, planted in the form of a table, there was everything, bread, apples, opened liters of genever: a true rascally cave, the booty heaped since weeks, even useless booty, soap and shoe polish, stolen for the pleasure of stealing. And the little one, all alone amid these plunders, enjoyed himself like a selfish brigand.

--Say, are you making fun of the world? cried Étienne, when he had breathed a moment. You come down to stuff yourself here, when we are dying of hunger up there?

Jeanlin, dumbfounded, trembled. But, recognizing the young man, he calmed down quickly.

--Want to dine with me? he ended by saying. Eh? a bit of grilled cod?... You'll see.

He had not let go of his cod, and had set about properly scraping off the fly droppings, with a fine new knife, one of those little dagger-knives with a bone handle, where mottoes are inscribed. This one bore the word "Love," simply.

--You have a pretty knife, remarked Étienne.

--It's a gift from Lydie, answered Jeanlin, who neglected to add that Lydie had stolen it, on his order, from a peddler of Montsou, in front of the Tête-Coupée tavern.

Then, as he still scraped, he added with a proud air:

--Isn't it that one is well at home?... It's a bit warmer than up there, and it smells ever so much better!

Étienne had sat down, curious to make him talk. He no longer had anger, an interest took him, for this child rake, so brave and so industrious in his vices. And, in fact, he tasted a well-being, at the bottom of this hole: the heat was no longer too strong, an even temperature reigned there outside the seasons, of a tepidness of bath, while the rough December chapped on the earth the skin of the wretches. In aging, the galleries purified themselves of harmful gases, all the firedamp had gone, one felt there now only the odor of old fermented woods, a subtle odor of ether, as if sharpened with a point of clove. These woods, besides, became amusing to see, of a yellowed pallor of marble, fringed with whitish laces, of flocculent vegetations which seemed to drape them with a passementerie of silk and pearls. Others bristled with mushrooms. And there were flights of white butterflies, flies and snow spiders, a discolored population, forever ignorant of the sun.

--So, you aren't afraid? asked Étienne.

Jeanlin looked at him, astonished.

--Afraid of what? since I'm all alone.

But the cod was scraped at last. He lit a small wood fire, spread the embers and grilled it. Then he cut a bread in two. It was a terrible salty treat, exquisite all the same for solid stomachs.

Étienne had accepted his share.

--It no longer surprises me, if you fatten, while we all grow thin. Do you know it's filthy to stuff yourself!... And the others, you don't think of them?

--Why, are the others too stupid!

--Besides, you're right to hide, for if your father learned you steal, he'd fix you.

--As if the bourgeois don't steal from us! It's you who always say it. When I filched that bread at Maigrat's, it was surely a bread he owed us.

The young man was silent, his mouth full, troubled. He looked at him, with his snout, his green eyes, his big ears, in his degeneration of a stunted creature with obscure intelligence and a savage's cunning, slowly retaken by the ancient animality. The mine, which had made him, had just finished him, by breaking his legs.

--And Lydie, asked Étienne again, do you bring her here, sometimes?

Jeanlin had a contemptuous laugh.

--The little one, ah! no, for example!... Women, they chatter.

And he continued to laugh, full of an immense disdain for Lydie and Bébert. Never had one seen children so silly. The idea that they swallowed all his lies, and that they went off empty-handed, while he ate the cod, in the warm, tickled his sides with delight. Then, he concluded, with the gravity of a little philosopher:

--Better to be alone, one is always in agreement.

Étienne had finished his bread. He drank a gulp of genever. For an instant, he had asked himself if he would not badly repay Jeanlin's hospitality, by bringing him to daylight by an ear, and by forbidding him to maraud further, under threat of telling all to his father. But, in examining this deep retreat, an idea worked him: who knows if he would not have need of it, for the comrades or for himself, in case things went bad, up there? He made the child swear not to sleep out, as happened to him sometimes, when he forgot himself in his hay; and, taking a bit of candle, he went off first, he left him to tidy his house quietly.

Mouquette was in despair waiting for him, seated on a beam, despite the great cold. When she caught sight of him, she jumped at his neck; and it was as if he plunged a knife into her heart, when he told her his will to see her no more. My God! why? did she not love him enough? Fearing to succumb himself to the desire to enter her house, he drew her toward the road, he explained to her, as gently as possible, that she compromised him in the eyes of the comrades, that she compromised the cause of politics. She wondered, what could that matter to politics? At last, the thought came to her that he was ashamed to know her; besides, she was not hurt by it, it was natural; and she offered him to receive a slap before the world, to seem to break it off. But he would see her again, just a little time, now and then. Wildly, she begged him, she swore to hide, she would not keep him five minutes. He, very moved, still refused. It must be. Then, in leaving her, he wished at least to kiss her. Step by step, they had arrived at the first houses of Montsou, and they held each other full armed, under the broad round moon, when a woman passed near them, with a sudden start, as if she had stumbled against a stone.

--Who is it? asked Étienne uneasy.

--It's Catherine, answered Mouquette. She's coming back from Jean-Bart.

The woman, now, went off, her head low, her legs weak, with a very weary air. And the young man looked at her, despairing to have been seen by her, his heart broken with a causeless remorse. Was she not with a man? had she not made him suffer the same suffering, there, on this Réquillart road, when she gave herself to that man? But that, despite all, desolated him, to have given her back the like.

--Want me to tell you? murmured Mouquette in tears, when she left. If you don't want me, it's that you want another.

The next day, the weather was superb, a clear frosty sky, one of those fine winter days, where the hard earth sounds like crystal under the feet. At one o'clock, Jeanlin had slipped away; but he had to wait for Bébert behind the church, and they nearly left without Lydie, whom her mother had again locked in the cellar. She had just been made to come out and a basket put on her arm, with the order that, if she did not bring it back full of dandelions, she would be locked up with the rats, for the whole night. Also, taken with fear, she wanted to go to the greens at once. Jeanlin turned her from it: they would see later. For a long time, Pologne, Rasseneur's big doe-rabbit, had been worrying him. He was passing in front of the Avantage, when, just then, the rabbit came out on the road. He seized her by the ears with a bound, stuffed her into the little girl's basket; and all three galloped. They were going to have fine fun, making her run like a dog, to the forest.

But they stopped, to look at Zacharie and Mouquet, who, after drinking a mug with two other comrades, began their great game of crosse. The stake was a new cap and a red scarf, deposited at Rasseneur's. The four players, two by two, put to the bargaining the first round, from the Voreux to the Paillot farm, near three kilometers; and it was Zacharie who carried it, he bet in seven strokes, while Mouquet asked eight. They had placed the cholette, the little boxwood egg, on the pavement, a point in the air. All held their crosse, the mallet with oblique iron, the long handle furnished with a tightly drawn string. Two o'clock was striking as they set off. Zacharie, magisterially, for his first stroke composed of a series of three, launched the cholette more than four hundred meters, across the beet fields; for it was forbidden to chole in the villages and on the roads, where people had been killed. Mouquet, solid too, decholed with so rough an arm, that his single stroke brought the ball back a hundred fifty meters. And the game continued, one side choling, the other decholing, always at a running pace, the feet bruised by the frozen edges of the plowed lands.

At first, Jeanlin, Bébert and Lydie had galloped behind the players, enthusiastic at the great strokes. Then, the idea of Pologne whom they shook in the basket came back to them; and, leaving the game in open country, they had taken out the rabbit, curious to see if she ran fast. She decamped, they threw themselves behind her, it was a hunt of an hour, at full legs, with continual dodges, yells to frighten her, big arms opened and closed on the void. If she had not had a beginning of pregnancy, never would they have caught her.

As they puffed, oaths made them turn the head. They had just fallen back into the game of crosse, it was Zacharie who had nearly split his brother's skull. The players were at the fourth round: from the Paillot farm, they had flown to the Four-Crossroads, then from the Four-Crossroads to Montoire; and, now, they were going in six strokes from Montoire to the Pré-des-Vaches. That made two leagues and a half in an hour; still they had drunk mugs at the Vincent tavern and at the Three-Wise-Men shop. Mouquet, this time, held the hand. He had two strokes to chole, his victory was sure, when Zacharie, who used his right laughing, decholed with so much skill, that the cholette rolled into a deep ditch. Mouquet's partner could not get it out, it was a disaster. All four cried, the game grew passionate, for they were even, they had to begin again. From the Pré-des-Vaches, there were not two kilometers to the point of the Herbes-Rousses: in five strokes. Over there, they would refresh themselves at Lerenard's.

But Jeanlin had an idea. He let them go, he took a string from his pocket, which he tied to a paw of Pologne, the left hind paw. And that was very amusing, the rabbit ran before the three urchins, dragging the thigh, hitching herself in so lamentable a fashion, that never had they laughed so much. Then, they tied her by the neck, so that she would gallop; and, as she tired, they dragged her, on the belly, on the back, a true little carriage. It had lasted more than an hour, she was rattling, when they put her quickly back in the basket, hearing near the Cruchot wood the choleurs, whose game they cut once again.

Now, Zacharie, Mouquet and the two others swallowed the kilometers, without other rest than the time to empty mugs, in all the cabarets they gave themselves as goal. From the Herbes-Rousses, they had flown to Buchy, then to the Cross-of-Stone, then to Chamblay. The earth sounded under the scattering of their feet, galloping without respite at the tail of the cholette, which rebounded on the ice: it was a good time, one did not sink in, one ran only the risk of breaking one's legs. In the dry air, the great strokes of crosse cracked, like gunshots. The muscular hands squeezed the stringed handle, the whole body threw itself, as to knock down an ox; and that for hours, from one end to the other of the plain, over the ditches, the hedges, the banks of the roads, the low walls of the enclosures. One had to have good bellows in the chest and iron hinges in the knees. The hewers unwound themselves from the mine with passion. There were madmen of twenty-five years who made ten leagues. At forty, one no longer choled, one was too heavy.

Five o'clock struck, the twilight was already coming. One more round, to the Vandame forest, to decide who won the cap and the scarf; and Zacharie joked, with his jeering indifference of politics: it would be funny to fall over there, in the middle of the comrades. As for Jeanlin, since leaving the settlement, he aimed at the forest, with his air of beating the fields. With an indignant gesture, he threatened Lydie, who, worked by remorse and fear, spoke of returning to the Voreux to gather her dandelions: were they going to miss the meeting? he wanted to hear what the old ones would say. He pushed Bébert, he proposed to enliven the bit of road, to the trees, by untying Pologne and pursuing her with stones. His dull idea was to kill her, a covetousness came to him to carry her off and eat her, at the bottom of his Réquillart hole. The rabbit took up her course, nose wrinkled, ears flattened; a stone peeled her back, another cut her tail; and, despite the growing shadow, she would have stayed there, if the urchins had not perceived, in the center of a clearing, Étienne and Maheu standing. Wildly, they threw themselves on the beast, put her back in the basket. Almost at the same minute, Zacharie, Mouquet and the two others, giving the last stroke of crosse, launched the cholette, which rolled a few meters from the clearing. They fell all in full rendezvous.

In the whole country, by the roads, by the paths of the bare plain, it was, since the twilight, a long making-way, a flowing of silent shadows, slipping isolated, going off in groups, toward the violetting groves of the forest. Each settlement emptied itself, the women and the children themselves departed as for a walk, under the great clear sky. Now, the roads became obscure, one no longer distinguished this crowd in march, which glided to the same goal, one felt it only, trampling, confused, carried by a single soul. Between the hedges, among the bushes, there was only a light rustling, a vague rumor of the voices of the night.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”