Part 31

But Étienne, the following night, despaired again. The Company had too strong a backbone to be broken so easily: it could lose millions, and later it would make them up on the workers, by whittling away their bread. That night, having pushed on as far as Jean-Bart, he guessed the truth, when an overseer told him they were talking of ceding Vandame to Montsou. It was, so they said, at Deneulin's, a pitiful poverty, the poverty of the rich, the father sick with helplessness, aged by the care of money, the daughters struggling amid the suppliers, trying to save their shirts. One suffered less in the starving mining villages than in that bourgeois house, where they hid to drink water. Work had not resumed at Jean-Bart, and they had had to replace the pump at Gaston-Marie; not to mention that, despite all the haste, a beginning of flooding had occurred, which required great expense. Deneulin had finally risked his request for a loan of a hundred thousand francs from the Grégoires, whose refusal, moreover expected, had finished him: if they refused, it was out of affection, to spare him an impossible struggle; and they gave him the advice to sell. He still said no, violently. It enraged him to pay the costs of the strike, he first hoped to die of it, blood to the head, neck strangled by apoplexy. Then, what to do? he had listened to the offers. They quibbled with him, they depreciated that superb prey, that repaired pit, equipped anew, where the lack of advances alone paralyzed the working. He would be lucky still if he got from it enough to pay off his creditors. He had, for two days, struggled against the managers planted at Montsou, furious at the calm way they abused his difficulties, shouting never at them, in his resounding voice. And the matter rested there, they had gone back to Paris to patiently await his last gasp. Étienne scented this compensation for the disasters, seized again with discouragement before the invincible power of big capital, so strong in battle, that they fattened on defeat by eating the corpses of the small, fallen at their side.

The next day, happily, Jeanlin brought him good news. At the Voreux, the pit lining threatened to burst, the waters filtered from all the joints; and they had had to put a team of carpenters to the repair, in great haste. ***446***

Until then, Étienne had avoided the Voreux, troubled by the eternal black silhouette of the sentry, planted on the spoil heap, above the plain. One could not avoid her, she dominated, she was, in the air, like the flag of the regiment. Toward three in the morning, the sky grew dark, he went to the pit, where comrades explained to him the bad state of the lining: even their idea was that there was urgency to redo it entirely, which would have stopped the extraction for three months. For a long time, he wandered listening to the carpenters' mallets tap in the pit. This rejoiced his heart, this wound that had to be dressed.

At daybreak, when he came back in, he found the sentry on the spoil heap. This time, she would certainly see him. He walked, thinking of those soldiers, taken from the people, and whom they armed against the people. How the triumph of the revolution would have become easy, if the army had suddenly declared for it! It sufficed that the worker, that the peasant, in the barracks, remembered his origin. It was the supreme peril, the great terror, whose teeth chattered in the bourgeois, when they thought of a possible defection of the troops. In two hours, they would be swept away, exterminated, with the enjoyments and the abominations of their iniquitous life. Already, they said that entire regiments were found infected with socialism. Was it true? would justice come, thanks to the cartridges distributed by the bourgeoisie? And, leaping to another hope, the young man dreamed that the regiment whose posts guarded the pits, went over to the strike, shot the Company in a body and finally gave the mine to the miners.

He then noticed that he was climbing the spoil heap, his head buzzing with these reflections. Why would he not talk with this soldier? He would know the color of his ideas. With an indifferent air, he continued to approach, as if he had been gleaning the old wood, left in the debris. The sentry remained motionless.

--Huh? comrade, a damned weather! said Étienne at last. I think we are going to have snow.

It was a little soldier, very blond, with a gentle pale face, riddled with freckles. He had, in his greatcoat, the awkwardness of a recruit.

--Yes, all the same, I think, he murmured.

And, with his blue eyes, he looked long at the livid sky, that smoky dawn, whose soot weighed like lead, far off, over the plain.

--How stupid they are, to plant you there, to freeze your bones! continued Étienne. If one would not say they are expecting the Cossacks!... Besides, there is always a wind blowing, here!

The little soldier shivered without complaining. There was indeed a cabin of dry stones, where old Bonnemort took shelter, on nights of hurricane; but, the order being not to leave the top of the spoil heap, the soldier did not move from it, his hands so stiff with cold, that he no longer felt his weapon. He belonged to the post of sixty men who guarded the Voreux; and, as this cruel watch came back frequently, he had already nearly stayed there, his feet dead. The trade wanted that, a passive obedience finished benumbing him, he answered questions with the stammered words of a sleeping child.

In vain, for a quarter of an hour, Étienne tried to make him talk about politics. He said yes, he said no, without seeming to understand; comrades told that the captain was republican; as for him, he had no idea, it was all the same to him. If he was commanded to fire, he would fire, so as not to be punished. The worker listened to him, seized with the people's hatred against the army, against those brothers whose heart they changed, by sticking a red trouser on their behind.

--So, what is your name?

--Jules.

--And where are you from?

--From Plogof, over there.

At random, he had stretched out his arm. It was in Brittany, he knew no more of it. His little pale face animated, he began to laugh, warmed.

--I have my mother and my sister. They are surely waiting for me. Ah! it won't be for tomorrow... When I left, they accompanied me to Pont-l'Abbé. We had taken the horse from the Lepalmecs, it nearly broke its legs at the bottom of the Audierne descent. Cousin Charles was waiting for us with sausages, but the women cried too much, that stuck in our throats... Ah! my God! ah! my God! how far away, it is, our home!

His eyes grew moist, without his ceasing to laugh. The deserted moor of Plogof, that savage point of the Raz beaten by tempests, appeared to him in a dazzlement of sun, at the pink season of the heather.

--Tell me, he asked, if I have no punishments, do you think they will give me a month's leave, in two years?

Then Étienne spoke of Provence, which he had left very small. The day grew, flakes of snow began to fly in the earthy sky. And he finally became uneasy, on seeing Jeanlin who wandered amid the brambles, with the stupefied air of seeing him up there. With a gesture, the child hailed him. What was the use of this dream of fraternizing with the soldiers? It would take years and years still, his useless attempt desolated him, as if he had counted on succeeding. But, suddenly, he understood Jeanlin's gesture: they were coming to relieve the sentry; and he went away, he ran back in to burrow at Réquillart, his heart broken once more by the certainty of defeat; while the lad, galloping near him, accused that dirty trooper bitch of having called the post to fire on them.

At the top of the spoil heap, Jules had remained motionless, his gaze lost in the falling snow. The sergeant approached with his men, the regulation cries were exchanged.

--Who goes there?... Advance to the rallying word!

And one heard the heavy steps set off again, sounding as in conquered country. Despite the growing day, nothing moved in the mining villages, the colliers were silent and enraged themselves, under the military boot.

II

For two days, the snow had fallen; it had stopped in the morning, an intense frost glazed the immense sheet; and this black country, with ink roads, with walls and trees powdered with the dust of coal, was all white, of a unique whiteness, to the infinite. Under the snow, the coron of the Two Hundred and Forty lay, as disappeared. Not a smoke came from the roofs. The houses without fire, as cold as the stones of the roads, did not melt the thick layer on the tiles. It was no more than a quarry of white slabs, in the white plain, a vision of dead village, draped in its shroud. Along the streets, the patrols that passed had alone left the muddy slush of their tramping.

At the Maheus', the last shovelful of cinders had been burned since the day before; and one must no longer think of gleaning on the spoil heap, in this terrible weather, when the sparrows themselves found not a blade of grass. Alzire, for having persisted, her poor hands digging the snow, was dying. La Maheude had had to wrap her in a scrap of blanket, awaiting doctor Vanderhaghen, whom she had already gone to see twice, without being able to meet him; the maid had however just promised that Monsieur would pass at the coron before night, and the mother watched, standing before the window, while the little sick girl, who had wanted to come down, shivered on a chair, with the illusion that it was warmer there, near the cooled stove. Old Bonnemort, opposite, his legs recovered, seemed to sleep. Neither Lénore nor Henri had come back, beating the roads in company with Jeanlin, to ask for sous. Across the bare room, Maheu alone walked heavily, stumbled at each turn against the wall, with the stupid air of a beast that no longer sees its cage. The oil was also finished; but the reflection of the snow, outside, remained so white, that it vaguely lit the room, despite the fallen night.

There was a noise of clogs, and La Levaque pushed the door in a gust of wind, beside herself, crying from the threshold to La Maheude:

--So, it's you who said I forced my lodger to give me twenty sous, when he slept with me!

The other shrugged her shoulders.

--You annoy me, I said nothing... Besides, who told you that?

--I was told you said it, you don't need to know... Even you said you heard us doing our filth behind your partition, and that the dirt piled up at our place because I was always on my back... Say again you didn't say it, huh!

Each day, quarrels broke out, following the continual gossip of the women. Especially between households that lodged door to door, the spats and reconciliations were daily. But never had a spite so bitter thrown them one against the others. Since the strike, hunger exasperated resentments, they had the need to hit: an explanation between two gossips ended in a slaughter between the two men.

Just then, Levaque arrived in his turn, dragging Bouteloup by force.

--Here is the comrade, let him say a bit if he gave twenty sous to my wife, to sleep with.

The lodger, hiding his frightened gentleness in his great beard, protested, stammered.

--Oh! that, no, never nothing, never!

Thereupon, Levaque became threatening, his fist under Maheu's nose.

--You know, that doesn't suit me. When one has a wife like that, one breaks her back... So you believe what she said?

--But, goddamn! cried Maheu, furious at being pulled from his dejection, what is all this gossip again? Haven't we enough of our miseries? Leave me in peace or I hit!... And, first, who said my wife said it?

--Who said it?... It's La Pierronne who said it.

La Maheude burst into a shrill laugh; and, returning toward La Levaque:

--Ah! it's La Pierronne... Well! I can tell you what she said to me, to me. Yes! she told me you slept with your two men, one below and the other on top!

Thenceforth, it was no longer possible to agree. All grew angry, the Levaques sent back as answer to the Maheus that La Pierronne had said many other things about them, and that they had sold Catherine, and that they had rotted together, down to the little ones, with a filth taken by Étienne at the Volcan.

--She said that, she said that, roared Maheu. That's fine! I'm going there, and if she says she said it, I'll slap my hand on her mug.

He had rushed outside, the Levaques followed him to testify, while Bouteloup, having horror of disputes, went back in furtively. Lit by the explanation, La Maheude was also going out, when a plaint of Alzire retained her. She crossed the ends of the blanket on the shivering body of the little one, she went back to plant herself before the window, her eyes lost. And this doctor who did not arrive!

At the door of the Pierrons, Maheu and the Levaques met Lydie, who tramped in the snow. The house was closed, a thread of light passed through the crack of a shutter; and the child answered first with embarrassment the questions: no, her papa was not there, he had gone to the washhouse to join Mother Brûlé, to bring back the packet of linen. She grew troubled then, refused to say what her mama was doing. Finally, she let it all out, in a sly laugh of rancor: her mama had flung her to the door, because M. Dansaert was there, and she prevented them from talking. He, since the morning, walked in the coron, with two gendarmes, trying to recruit workers, pressing on the weak, announcing everywhere that, if they did not go down Monday at the Voreux, the Company was decided to hire Borains. And, as night fell, he had sent back the gendarmes, finding La Pierronne alone; then, he had stayed at her place to drink a glass of gin, before the good fire.

--Hush! be quiet, we must see them! murmured Levaque, with a laugh of lewdness. We'll explain ourselves in a moment... Go away, you, little bitch!

Lydie stepped back a few paces, while he put an eye to the crack of the shutter. He stifled little cries, his spine swelled, in a quiver. In her turn, La Levaque looked; but she said, as taken with colic, that it disgusted her. Maheu, who had pushed her, wanting to see also, declared one got one's money's worth. And they began again, in file, each his peep, as at the comedy. The room, shining with cleanliness, was gay with the great fire; there were cakes on the table, with a bottle and glasses; finally, a real wedding. So well that what they saw in there ended by exasperating the two men, who, in other circumstances, would have laughed at it six months. That she got stuffed to the throat, skirts in the air, was funny. But, goddamn! wasn't it filthy, to pay oneself that before such a great fire, and to give oneself strength with biscuits, when the comrades had neither a scrap of bread, nor a cinder of coal?

--There's papa! cried Lydie, fleeing.

Pierron came back tranquilly from the washhouse, the packet of linen on a shoulder. Right away, Maheu interpellated him.

--Say, I was told your wife said I had sold Catherine and that we had all rotted at home... And, at your place, what does he pay you for her, your wife, the gentleman who is in the process of wearing her skin?

Stunned, Pierron did not understand, when La Pierronne, taken with fear on hearing the tumult of voices, lost her head to the point of half-opening the door, to see what was happening. She was seen all red, the bodice open, the skirt still hiked up, caught at the waist; while, in the back, Dansaert was desperately pulling up his trousers. The head-foreman fled, disappeared, trembling that such a story might reach the director's ears. Then, it was a frightful scandal, laughs, hoots, insults.

--You who always say the others are dirty, cried La Levaque at La Pierronne, it's not surprising you are clean, if you get scrubbed by the bosses!

--Ah! she likes to talk! resumed Levaque. There's a slut who said my wife slept with me and the lodger, one below and the other on top!... Yes, yes, I was told you said it.

But La Pierronne, calmed, held her own against the coarse words, very contemptuous, in her certainty of being the prettiest and the richest.

--I said what I said, leave me in peace, huh!... Does that concern you, my affairs, pack of jealous ones who bear us ill, because we put money in the savings bank! Go on, go on, you can say what you will, my husband knows well why Monsieur Dansaert was at our place.

Indeed, Pierron grew angry, defended his wife. The quarrel turned, they treated him as a sellout, a spy, a dog of the Company, accused him of locking himself in to gorge on the good pieces, which the bosses paid him for his treacheries. He, replied, claimed that Maheu had slipped threats under his door, a paper where were found two death's-head bones crossed, with a dagger above. And this necessarily ended in a massacre between the men, like all the women's quarrels, since hunger enraged the gentlest. Maheu and Levaque had rushed at Pierron with fists, they had to be separated.

Blood flowed in streams from his son-in-law's nose, when La Brûlé, in her turn, arrived from the washhouse. Put in the know, she contented herself with saying:

--That pig dishonors me.

The street became deserted again, not a shadow stained the naked whiteness of the snow; and the coron, fallen back to its immobility of death, was bursting with hunger under the intense cold.

--And the doctor? asked Maheu, closing the door.

--Not come, answered La Maheude, always standing before the window.

--The little ones are back?

--No, not back.

Maheu took up his heavy walk, from one wall to the other, with his air of a stunned ox. Stiff on his chair, father Bonnemort had not even raised his head. Alzire neither said anything, tried not to tremble, to spare them pain; but, despite her courage to suffer, she trembled so strongly at moments, that one heard against the blanket the shiver of her thin body of an infirm little girl; while, with her big open eyes, she looked at the ceiling at the pale reflection of the all-white gardens, which lit the room with a moonlight gleam.

It was, now, the last agony, the house emptied, fallen to final destitution. The ticking of the mattresses had followed the wool at the old-clothes dealer's; then, the sheets had gone, the linen, all that could be sold. One evening, they had sold for two sous a handkerchief of the grandfather. Tears flowed, at each object of the poor household of which they had to part, and the mother still lamented having carried one day, in her skirt, the pink cardboard box, the old gift of her man, as one would carry a child, to get rid of it under a door. They were naked, they had no more to sell than their skin, so worn, so compromised, that no one would have given a farthing for it. So they did not even take the trouble to search, they knew there was nothing, that it was the end of all, that they must hope for neither a candle, nor a piece of coal, nor a potato; and they waited to die of it, they got angry only for the children, for this useless cruelty revolted them, of having given the little one a disease, before strangling her.

--At last, here he is! said La Maheude.

A black shape passed before the window. The door opened. But it was not doctor Vanderhaghen, they recognized the new curate, Abbé Ranvier, who did not seem surprised to fall into this dead house, without light, without fire, without bread. Already, he came out of three other neighboring houses, going from family to family, recruiting men of good will, as Dansaert with his gendarmes; and, right away, he explained himself, with his feverish voice of a sectary.

--Why did you not come to mass on Sunday, my children? You are wrong, the Church alone can save you... Come, promise me to come next Sunday.

Maheu, after having looked at him, had gone back to walking, heavily, without a word. It was La Maheude who answered.

--To mass, Monsieur the curate, what for? Does not the good God mock us?... See! what has my little one, who is there, trembling with fever, done to him? We had not enough misery, had we? he had to make her sick to me, when I cannot even give her a cup of hot herbal tea.

Then, standing, the priest spoke long. He exploited the strike, this frightful misery, this exasperated rancor of hunger, with the ardor of a missionary who preaches to savages, for the glory of his religion. He said that the Church was with the poor, that it would one day make justice triumph, calling the anger of God upon the iniquities of the rich. And that day would dawn soon, for the rich had taken the place of God, had come to govern without God, in their impious theft of power. But, if the workers wanted the just sharing of the goods of the earth, they must entrust themselves right away to the hands of the priests, as at the death of Jesus the little and the humble had grouped around the apostles. What force would the pope have, of what army would the clergy dispose, when he commanded the innumerable crowd of workers! In a week, one would purge the world of the wicked, one would chase the unworthy masters, it would be finally the true reign of God, each rewarded according to his merits, the law of work regulating universal happiness.

La Maheude, who listened to him, believed she heard Étienne, at the autumn vigils, when he announced to them the end of their ills. Only, she had always mistrusted cassocks.

--It is very fine, what you tell there, Monsieur the curate, she said. But that means you no longer agree with the bourgeois... All our other curates dined at the Management, and threatened us with the devil, as soon as we asked for bread.

He began again, he spoke of the deplorable misunderstanding between the Church and the people. Now, in veiled phrases, he struck at the town curates, at the bishops, at the high clergy, replete with enjoyment, gorged with domination, making pact with the liberal bourgeoisie, in the imbecility of its blindness, without seeing that it was this bourgeoisie which dispossessed it of the empire of the world. Deliverance would come from the country priests, all would rise to reestablish the kingdom of Christ, with the help of the wretched; and he seemed already at their head, he straightened his bony stature, as a band chief, as a revolutionary of the Gospel, his eyes filled with such a light, that they lit the dark room. This ardent preaching carried him off in mystical words, for long the poor folks no longer understood him.

--There is no need for so many words, grumbled suddenly Maheu, you would have done better to begin by bringing us a bread.

--Come Sunday to mass, cried the priest, God will provide for all!

And he went away, he entered to catechize the Levaques in their turn, so high in his dream of the final triumph of the Church, having such disdain for facts, that he ran thus the corons, without alms, his hands empty across this army dying of hunger, as a poor devil himself who regarded suffering as the goad of salvation.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”