Part 33

At first, they did each other little harm. The one's noisy swinging of his arms, the other's cold waiting, prolonged the struggle. A chair was overturned, their heavy shoes crushed the white sand strewn upon the flagstones. But they grew short of breath at length, and the snoring of their breath was heard, while their red faces swelled as if from an inner fire, whose flames one saw through the bright hollows of their eyes.

"Touched!" yelled Chaval. "I've got you, on your carcass!"

Indeed, his fist, like a flail launched sideways, had plowed his adversary's shoulder. The latter stifled a groan of pain; there was only a dull sound, the muffled bruising of muscles. And he answered with a straight blow full in the chest, which would have caved in the other, had he not dodged it, in his continual goat-leaps. Yet the blow caught him on the left side, so roughly still, that he staggered, his breath cut short. A rage seized him, at feeling his arms grow slack in suffering, and he kicked like a beast, aiming at the belly to rip it open with his heel.

"Take that! For your guts!" he stammered in his strangled voice. "I've got to unwind them in the sun!"

Étienne avoided the kick, so indignant at this breach of the rules of fair fight, that he broke his silence.

"Shut up, brute! And no feet, for God's sake! or I'll take a chair to smash your skull!"

Then the battle worsened. Rasseneur, revolted, would have intervened again, but for his wife's severe look, which held him back: had not two customers the right to settle a matter among themselves? He had simply placed himself before the fireplace, for he feared to see them tumble into the fire. Souvarine, with his peaceful air, had rolled a cigarette, which he nevertheless forgot to light. Against the wall, Catherine remained motionless; only her hands, unconscious, had risen to her waist; and there they had twisted, tearing the fabric of her dress, in regular crampings. All her effort was not to cry out, not to kill one of them by crying her preference, so distraught besides, that she no longer even knew which she preferred.

Soon Chaval exhausted himself, bathed in sweat, striking at random. Despite his anger, Étienne continued to cover himself, parried almost all the blows, a few of which grazed him. His ear was split, a fingernail carried off a flap of skin from his neck, and in such a burning that he swore in his turn, launching one of his terrible straight blows. Once more Chaval dodged his chest with a leap; but he had bent down, the fist caught him in the face, crushed the nose, sunk in an eye. At once a jet of blood sprang from the nostrils, the eye swelled, tumefied, bluish. And the wretch, blinded by this red flood, stunned by the shock to his skull, beat the air with his wild arms, when another blow, full in the chest at last, finished him. There was a cracking, he fell on his back, with the heavy fall of a sack of plaster being unloaded.

Étienne waited.

"Get up. If you want more, we'll start again."

Without answering, Chaval, after a few seconds of stupefaction, stirred on the ground, stretched his limbs. He gathered himself up with difficulty, remained a moment on his knees, in a ball, doing with his hand, deep in his pocket, a work that was not seen. Then, when he was on his feet, he rushed again, his throat swollen with a savage yell.

But Catherine had seen; and, in spite of herself, a great cry came from her heart and astonished her, like the avowal of a preference unknown to herself.

"Look out! He's got his knife!"

Étienne had only had time to parry the first blow with his arm. The wool of the knit was cut by the thick blade, one of those blades that a brass ferrule fixes in a boxwood handle. Already he had seized Chaval's wrist, a frightful struggle began, he feeling himself lost if he let go, the other giving jerks, to free himself and strike. The weapon sank little by little, their stiffened limbs tired, twice Étienne had the cold sensation of steel against his skin; and he had to make a supreme effort, he crushed the wrist in such a grip, that the knife slipped from the open hand. Both had thrown themselves to the ground, it was he who picked it up, who brandished it in his turn. He held Chaval overthrown under his knee, he threatened to open his throat.

"Ah! God-damned traitor, you're going to pass!"

An abominable voice, within him, deafened him. It rose from his bowels, beat in his head with hammer-blows, a sudden madness of murder, a need to taste blood. Never had the crisis shaken him thus. Yet he was not drunk. And he struggled against the hereditary evil, with the desperate shiver of a madman of love who struggles on the edge of rape. He ended by conquering himself, he flung the knife behind him, stammering in a hoarse voice:

"Get up, go away!"

This time Rasseneur had precipitated himself, but without daring too much to risk himself between them, for fear of catching a bad blow. He did not want anyone to be murdered in his house, he was so angry that his wife, upright at the counter, pointed out to him that he always cried out too soon. Souvarine, who had nearly received the knife in his legs, decided to light his cigarette. Was it over then? Catherine still looked, stupid before the two men, both alive.

"Go away!" repeated Étienne. "Go away or I'll finish you!"

Chaval got up, wiped with the back of his hand the blood that kept flowing from his nose; and, his jaw smeared with red, his eye bruised, he went off dragging his legs, in the rage of his defeat. Mechanically, Catherine followed him. Then he straightened, his hatred burst in a flood of filth.

"Ah! no, ah! no, since it's him you want, sleep with him, dirty cur! And don't set foot in my place again, if you care for your skin!"

He slammed the door violently. A great silence reigned in the warm room, where one heard the little roar of the coal. On the floor, there remained only the overturned chair and a rain of blood, whose drops the sand of the flagstones drank.

IV

When they came out of Rasseneur's, Étienne and Catherine walked in silence. The thaw was beginning, a cold and slow thaw, which soiled the snow without melting it. In the livid sky, one guessed the full moon, behind great clouds, black rags that a storm-wind rolled furiously, very high; and, on the earth, no breath blew, one heard only the dripping of the roofs, from which white packets fell, of a soft fall.

Étienne, embarrassed by this woman who was given him, found nothing to say, in his unease. The idea of taking her and hiding her with him, at Réquillart, seemed absurd to him. He had wanted to lead her to the coron, to her parents; but she had refused, with an air of terror: no, no, anything rather than put herself back on their hands, after leaving them so vilely! And neither spoke any more, they tramped at random, by the paths which were changing into rivers of mud. First, they had gone down toward the Voreux; then they turned to the right, they passed between the spoil-heap and the canal.

"You must sleep somewhere though," he said at last. "Me, if I only had a room, I'd take you along..."

But a fit of singular timidity interrupted him. Their past came back to him, their great desires of former times, and the delicacies, and the shames which had kept them from going together. Did he still want her, to feel so troubled, little by little heated at heart by a new longing?

The memory of the slaps she had given him, at Gaston-Marie, excited him now, instead of filling him with rancor. And he remained surprised, the idea of taking her at Réquillart became quite natural and easy to execute.

"Come, decide, where do you want me to take you?... You must hate me then, that you refuse to be with me?"

She followed him slowly, delayed by the painful slidings of her clogs in the ruts; and, without raising her head, she murmured:

"I have enough sorrow, my God! don't give me more. What good would it do us, what you ask, today that I have a lover and that you yourself have a woman?"

It was of Mouquette she spoke. She believed him with that girl, as the rumor had run for a fortnight; and, when he swore to her that no, she shook her head, she recalled the evening when she had seen them kiss full on the mouth.

"Isn't it a pity, all that foolishness?" he resumed half-voice, stopping. "We would have got on so well together!"

She gave a little shiver, she answered:

"Go, regret nothing, you lose little enough, if you knew what a wreck I am, hardly bigger than two sous of butter, so badly built that I'll never become a woman, sure!"

And she continued freely, she accused herself as of a fault of this long delay of her puberty. That, despite the man she had had, diminished her, relegated her among the little girls. One still has an excuse, when one can make a child.

"My poor little one!" said Étienne very low, seized with great pity.

They were at the foot of the spoil-heap, hidden in the shadow of the enormous pile. An ink-cloud was just passing over the moon, they no longer distinguished even their faces, and their breaths mingled, their lips sought each other, for that kiss whose desire had tormented them for months. But, suddenly, the moon reappeared, they saw above them, atop the white rocks of light, the sentry detached from the Voreux, upright. And, without their having at last kissed, a modesty separated them, that ancient modesty where there was anger, a vague repugnance and much friendship. They set off again heavily, in the mire up to the ankles.

"It's decided, you won't?" asked Étienne.

"No," said she. "You, after Chaval, eh? and, after you, another... No, it disgusts me, I take no pleasure in it, what for then?"

They were silent, walked a hundred steps or so, without exchanging a word.

"Do you at least know where you're going?" he resumed. "I can't leave you outside on such a night."

She answered simply:

"I'm going home, Chaval is my man, I've no business sleeping elsewhere than with him."

"But he'll beat you to death!"

Silence began again. She had given a resigned shrug. He would beat her, and when he was tired of beating her, he would stop: wasn't that better, than roaming the roads like a tramp? Besides, she was used to slaps, she said, to console herself, that, of ten girls, eight didn't fare better than she. If her lover married her someday, it would still be very kind of him.

Étienne and Catherine had mechanically directed themselves toward Montsou, and as they drew near it, their silences grew longer. It was as if they were no longer together already. He, found nothing to convince her, despite the great sorrow he felt at seeing her go back with Chaval. His heart broke, he had hardly better to offer, an existence of misery and flight, a night without tomorrow, if a soldier's bullet broke his head. Perhaps, indeed, it was wiser to suffer what one suffered, without attempting another suffering. And he took her back to her lover, head low, and he had no protest, when, on the high road, she stopped him at the corner of the Chantiers, twenty meters from the Piquette tavern, saying:

"Don't come any farther. If he saw you, that would make more ugly."

Eleven struck at the church, the tavern was closed, but gleams passed through the cracks.

"Farewell," she murmured.

She had given him her hand, he kept it, and she had to withdraw it painfully, with a slow effort, to leave him. Without turning her head, she went in by the small door, with its latch. But he did not move away, standing in the same place, eyes on the house, anxious at what was happening there. He strained his ear, he trembled to hear yells of a beaten woman. The house remained black and silent, he only saw a window on the first floor light up; and, as this window opened and he recognized the slim shadow leaning over the road, he advanced.

Catherine, then, breathed in a very low voice:

"He's not home, I'm going to bed... I beg you, go away!"

Étienne went off. The thaw increased, a rush of shower fell from the roofs, a sweat of humidity flowed from the walls, the palisades, all the confused masses of this industrial suburb, lost in the night. First, he directed himself toward Réquillart, sick with fatigue and sadness, having only the need to disappear under the earth, to annihilate himself there. Then, the idea of the Voreux took him again, he was thinking of the Belgian workers who were going to descend, of the comrades of the coron exasperated against the soldiers, resolved not to tolerate strangers in their pit. And he skirted the canal again, amid pools of melted snow.

As he found himself near the spoil-heap, the moon showed very clear. He raised his eyes, looked at the sky, where passed the gallop of the clouds, under the whip-strokes of the great wind that blew up there; but they whitened, they frayed, thinner, of a transparency muddied with troubled water on the face of the moon; and they succeeded so rapid that the star, veiled at moments, reappeared without cease in its limpidity.

His gaze filled with that pure clarity, Étienne lowered his head, when a sight, at the top of the spoil-heap, stopped him. The sentry, stiffened by the cold, walked there now, made twenty-five steps turned toward Marchiennes, then came back turned toward Montsou. One saw the white flame of the bayonet, above that black silhouette, which cut sharply against the pallor of the sky. And what interested the young man, was, behind the cabin where Bonnemort took shelter during stormy nights, a moving shadow, a creeping and watchful beast, which he at once recognized for Jeanlin, by his weasel's back, long and boneless. The sentry could not perceive him, this child-brigand was surely preparing a prank, for he had not got over the soldiers, he asked when one would be rid of those assassins, sent with rifles to kill the world.

An instant, Étienne hesitated to call him, to keep him from doing some folly. The moon had hidden, he had seen him gather himself, ready to spring; but the moon reappeared, and the child remained crouched. At each turn, the sentry advanced to the cabin, then turned his back and set off again. And, suddenly, as a cloud cast its darkness, Jeanlin jumped on the soldier's shoulders, with an enormous bound of a wild cat, clung there with his claws, drove into his throat his wide-open knife. The horsehair collar resisted, he had to press with both hands on the handle, hang from it with all the weight of his body. Often, he had bled chickens, which he surprised behind the farms. It was so rapid, that there was only in the night a stifled cry, while the rifle fell with a clatter of iron. Already, the moon, very white, shone.

Immobile with stupor, Étienne still looked. The call strangled in the depth of his chest. Above, the spoil-heap was empty, no shadow detached itself more against the frightened flight of the clouds. And he went up at a run, he found Jeanlin on all fours, before the corpse, sprawled backward, arms outspread. In the snow, under the limpid light, the red trousers and gray greatcoat cut harshly. Not a drop of blood had flowed, the knife was still in the throat, up to the handle.

With an unreasoning, furious fist, he knocked the child down near the body.

"Why did you do that?" he stammered distraught.

Jeanlin gathered himself, dragged on his hands, with the feline hump of his lean back; and his large ears, his green eyes, his jutting jaws, quivered and flamed, in the shock of his evil deed.

"God's name! why did you do that?"

"I don't know, I felt like it."

He was stuck at this answer. For three days, he had felt like it. It tormented him, his head ached from it, there, behind the ears, so much he thought of it. Was one to stand on ceremony, with those pig-soldiers who bothered the colliers at home? Violent speeches in the forest, cries of devastation and death hurled across the pits, five or six words had stayed with him, which he repeated as a lad playing at revolution. And he knew no more, no one had pushed him, it had come to him all alone, as came to him the wish to steal onions in a field.

Étienne, appalled at this deaf vegetation of crime in the depth of that child's skull, chased him again, with a kick, as an unconscious beast. He trembled lest the Voreux post had heard the stifled cry of the sentry, he threw a glance toward the pit, each time the moon uncovered. But nothing had moved, and he bent, he felt the little-by-little freezing hands, he listened to the heart, stopped under the greatcoat. One saw, of the knife, only the bone handle, where the gallant motto, that simple word: "Amour," was engraved in black letters.

His eyes went from the throat to the face. Suddenly, he recognized the little soldier: it was Jules, the recruit, with whom he had talked, one morning. And a great pity seized him, before this sweet blond face, peppered with freckles. The blue eyes, widely open, looked at the sky, with that fixed gaze with which he had seen him seek the native land at the horizon. Where was it, that Plogof, which appeared to him in a dazzle of sun? Yonder, yonder. The sea howled afar, through this hurricane night. This wind that passed so high, had perhaps blown over the moor. Two women stood, the mother, the sister, holding their blown-away head-dresses, looking, they too, as if they could see what the little one was doing at that hour, beyond the leagues that separated them. They would wait for him always, now. What an abominable thing, to kill each other among poor devils, for the rich!

But the corpse must be made to disappear, Étienne first thought to throw it into the canal. The certainty that it would be found there, turned him from it. Then, his anxiety became extreme, the minutes pressed, what decision to take? He had a sudden inspiration: if he could carry the body to Réquillart, he would know how to bury it there forever.

"Come here," he said to Jeanlin.

The child was wary.

"No, you want to beat me. And then, I've business. Good night."

Indeed, he had given rendezvous to Bébert and Lydie, in a hiding-place, a hole arranged under the wood supply, at the Voreux. It was a whole big party, to stay out, to be in it, if they broke the Belgians' bones with stones, when they descended.

"Listen," repeated Étienne, "come here, or I'll call the soldiers, who'll cut off your head."

And, as Jeanlin decided, he rolled his handkerchief, bandaged strongly the soldier's neck, without withdrawing the knife, which kept the blood from flowing. The snow was melting, there was, on the ground, neither red pool nor trampling of struggle.

"Take the legs."

Jeanlin took the legs, Étienne gripped the shoulders, after having tied the rifle behind his back; and both, slowly, descended the spoil-heap, trying not to make the rocks tumble. Happily, the moon had veiled itself. But, as they slipped along the canal, it reappeared very clear: it was a miracle if the post did not see them. Silent, they hastened, embarrassed by the tossing of the corpse, obliged to set it on the ground every hundred meters. At the corner of the Réquillart lane, a noise froze them, they had only time to hide behind a wall, to avoid a patrol. Farther, a man surprised them, but he was drunk, he went off insulting them. And they arrived at last at the old pit, covered with sweat, so upset, that their teeth chattered.

Étienne had well suspected it would not be easy to pass the soldier through the shaft of ladders. It was an atrocious task. First, he had to have Jeanlin, left above, let the body slide, while he, hung to the brambles, accompanied it, to help it cross the first two landings, where some rungs were broken. Next, at each ladder, he had to begin the same maneuver, descend ahead, then receive it in his arms; and he thus had thirty ladders, two hundred ten meters, to feel it continually fall on him. The rifle scraped his spine, he had not wanted the child to go fetch the candle-end, which he kept as a miser. What good? the light would embarrass them, in that narrow tube. Yet, when they arrived at the landing-shaft room, out of breath, he sent the little one to get the candle. He had sat down, he waited for him amid the shadows, near the body, his heart beating in great strokes.

As soon as Jeanlin reappeared with light, Étienne consulted him, for the child had burrowed these old works, to the cracks where men could not pass. They set off again, they dragged the dead nearly a kilometer, through a maze of ruined galleries. At last, the roof lowered, they found themselves kneeling, under a crumbled rock, sustained by half-broken timbers. It was a sort of long box, where they laid the little soldier as in a coffin; they placed the rifle against his flank; then, with great heel-strokes, they finished breaking the timbers, at the risk of remaining there themselves. At once, the rock split, they had barely time to crawl on elbows and knees. When Étienne turned, seized with the need to see, the settling of the roof continued, slowly crushing the body, under the enormous push. And there was nothing more, nothing but the deep mass of the earth.

Jeanlin, back at his place, in his corner of wicked cavern, sprawled on the hay, murmuring, broken with weariness:

"Damn! the kids'll wait for me, I'm going to sleep an hour."

Étienne had blown out the candle, of which only a small bit remained. He too was bruised, but he was not sleepy, painful nightmare thoughts hammered like hammers in his skull. One alone soon remained, torturing, wearying him with a question he could not answer: why had he not struck Chaval, when he held him under the knife? and why had this child just slit a soldier's throat, whose name he did not even know? That upset his revolutionary beliefs, the courage to kill, the right to kill. Was it then that he was a coward? In the hay, the child had begun to snore, with a drunkard's snore, as if he were curing the drunkenness of his murder. And, repelled, irritated, Étienne suffered to know him there, to hear him. Suddenly, he started, the breath of fear had passed over his face. A light rustle, a sob seemed to him to have come from the depths of the earth. The image of the little soldier, laid yonder with his rifle, under the rocks, chilled his back and made his hair stand. It was imbecile, the whole mine was filling with voices, he had to relight the candle, he calmed only on seeing the emptiness of the galleries, at that pale clarity.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”