Part 41

Yet, before this threat, their instinct fought back, a fever for life revived them. He, violently, began to dig at the shale with the hook of his lamp, while she helped him with her nails. They hollowed out a kind of raised ledge, and when they had hauled themselves up onto it, they found themselves seated, legs dangling, backs bent, for the vault forced them to lower their heads. The water now only froze their heels; but they soon felt its cold cut off their ankles, their calves, their knees, in an invincible and ceaseless motion. The ledge, poorly leveled, soaked up a slime so sticky that they had to hold on tightly so as not to slip. It was the end; how long would they wait, reduced to this niche where they dared not risk a movement, exhausted, starving, having neither bread nor light? And above all they suffered from the darkness, which kept them from seeing death approach. A great silence reigned, the mine gorged with water no longer stirred. They had now, beneath them, only the sensation of that sea, swelling, from the depths of the galleries, its silent tide.

The hours succeeded one another, all equally black, without their being able to measure their exact duration, ever more lost in the reckoning of time. Their torments, which should have lengthened the minutes, swept them away, swift. They believed themselves enclosed only two days and a night, when in reality the third day was already ending. All hope of rescue had gone; no one knew them to be there, no one had the power to descend; and hunger would finish them, if the flooding spared them. One last time, they had thought to beat the rallying signal; but the stone was submerged. Besides, who would hear them?

Catherine, resigned, had leaned her aching head against the seam, when a start made her sit up.

"Listen!" she said.

At first, Étienne thought she spoke of the small sound of the water still rising. He lied, he wanted to reassure her.

"It is me you hear, I am moving my legs."

"No, no, not that... Over there, listen!"

And she pressed her ear to the coal. He understood, he did as she did. An awaiting of some seconds stifled them. Then, very far off, very faint, they heard three blows, widely spaced. But they still doubted, their ears rang, perhaps it was crackings in the bed. And they knew not with what to strike in answer.

Étienne had an idea.

"You have your clogs. Take your feet out, tap with your heels."

She tapped, she beat the miners' rally; and they listened, and they distinguished again the three blows, far away. Twenty times they began anew, twenty times the blows answered. They wept, they embraced, at risk of losing their balance. At last, the comrades were there, they were coming. It was an overflow of joy and love that swept away the torments of waiting, the rage of long-useless calls, as if the rescuers had but to split the rock with a finger, to free them.

"Eh!" she cried gaily, "isn't it luck that I leaned my head!"

"Oh! you have an ear!" said he in turn. "Me, I heard nothing."

From that moment, they took turns, always one of them listened, ready to correspond, at the least signal. They soon caught the sounds of picks: the approach works were beginning, a gallery was being opened. Not a sound escaped them. But their joy fell. In vain they laughed, to deceive one another, despair gradually took hold of them again. At first, they poured out explanations: one was evidently coming by Réquillart, the gallery descended into the bed, perhaps several were being opened, for there were three men at the cutting. Then they spoke less, they ended by falling silent, when they came to calculate the enormous mass that separated them from the comrades. Mute, they continued their reflections, they counted the days and days a worker would take to pierce such a block. Never would they be reached soon enough, they would be dead twenty times over. And, gloomy, not daring to exchange a word in this redoubled anguish, they answered the calls with a roll of clogs, without hope, keeping only the mechanical need to tell the others they still lived.

One day, two days, passed. They had been at the bottom six days. The water, halted at their knees, rose nor fell; and their legs seemed to melt, in that ice bath. For an hour, they could well draw them up; but the position then became so awkward, that they were twisted with atrocious cramps and had to let the heels fall back. Every ten minutes, they hoisted themselves with a jerk of the loins, onto the slippery rock. The fractures of the coal caved in their spine, they felt at the nape a fixed and intense pain, from having to hold it constantly bent, so as not to crack their skull. And the suffocation grew, the air driven back by the water compressed itself in the sort of bell where they were enclosed. Their voices, muffled, seemed to come from very far. Ringings of the ears declared themselves, they heard the peals of a furious tocsin, the gallop of a herd under a hail shower, endless.

At first, Catherine suffered horribly from hunger. She raised to her throat her poor clenched hands, she had great hollow gasps, a continuous, rending plaint, as if pincers had torn her stomach. Étienne, strangled by the same torture, groped feverishly in the darkness, when, near him, his fingers met a piece of the timbering, half-rotten, which his nails crumbled. And he gave a handful to the putter, who swallowed it greedily. For two days, they lived on that worm-eaten wood, they devoured it entirely, despairing to have finished it, scraping themselves to try to bite into the others, still solid, and whose fibers resisted. Their supplice increased, they raged at not being able to chew the cloth of their clothes. A leather belt that gripped his waist relieved them a little. He cut small pieces of it with his teeth, and she ground them, stubbornly swallowing them. That occupied their jaws, gave them the illusion they were eating. Then, when the belt was done, they returned to the cloth, sucking it for hours.

But, soon, these violent crises calmed, hunger was no more than a deep, dull pain, the slow and progressive fainting even, of their strength. No doubt, they would have succumbed, if they had not had water, as much as they wished. They simply bent down, drank in the hollow of their hand; and that twenty times, burned by such a thirst, that all that water could not quench it.

The seventh day, Catherine was leaning to drink, when her hand struck a floating body before her.

"Say, look... What is it?"

Étienne felt about in the darkness.

"I don't understand, it would seem the curtain of an air door."

She drank, but as she drew a second gulp, the body came back to strike her hand. And she gave a terrible cry.

"It is him, my God!"

"Who?"

"Him, you know well?... I felt his mustache."

It was the corpse of Chaval, risen from the incline, pushed to them by the flood. Étienne stretched his arm, felt also the mustache, the crushed nose; and a shudder of repulsion and fear shook him. Seized with abominable nausea, Catherine had spat the water remaining in her mouth. She believed she had just drunk blood, that all that deep water before her was now the blood of that man.

"Wait," stammered Étienne, "I will send him away."

He gave a kick to the corpse, which moved off. But, soon, they felt it again tapping their legs.

"God damn! go away then!"

And, the third time, Étienne had to leave it. Some current brought it back. Chaval would not leave, would be with them, against them. He was a frightful companion, who finished poisoning the air. All that day, they did not drink, struggling, preferring to die; and, only the next day, suffering decided them: they pushed the body aside at each gulp, they drank nonetheless. It was no use breaking his head, for him to return between him and her, stubborn in his jealousy. To the end, he would be there, even dead, to keep them from being together.

Another day, and another day. Étienne, at each shiver of the water, received a slight blow from the man he had killed, the simple jostle of a neighbor who recalled his presence. And, every time, he started. Continually, he saw him, swollen, greened, with his red mustaches, in his crushed face. Then, he no longer remembered, he had not killed him, the other was swimming and would bite him. Catherine, now, was shaken by fits of tears, long, endless, after which a prostration annihilated her. She ended by falling into a state of invincible somnolence. He woke her, she stammered words, she fell asleep again at once, without even lifting the lids; and, for fear she would drown, he had passed an arm around her waist. It was, he now, who answered the comrades. The sounds of picks drew near, he heard them behind his back. But his strength diminished also, he had lost all courage to tap. They knew them there, why tire further? It no longer interested him, that one might come. In the stupefaction of his waiting, he was, for hours, forgetting what he waited for.

A relief comforted them a little. The water lowered, the body of Chaval moved away. For nine days, they had worked at their deliverance, and they made, for the first time, some steps in the gallery, when an frightful commotion threw them to the ground. They sought each other, they remained in each other's arms, mad, understanding not, believing the catastrophe recommenced. Nothing stirred more, the sound of picks had ceased.

In the corner where they sat, side by side, Catherine gave a slight laugh.

"It must be nice outside... Come, let us leave here."

Étienne, at first, struggled against this madness. But a contagion shook his firmer head, he lost the just sense of the real. All their senses falsified, above all those of Catherine, agitated with fever, tormented now by a need for words and gestures. The ringings in her ears had become murmurs of running water, songs of birds; and she felt a violent perfume of crushed grasses, and she saw clearly, great yellow spots flew before her eyes, so wide, that she believed herself outside, near the canal, in the wheat, on a fine sunny day.

"Eh? is it hot!... Take me then, let us stay together, oh! always, always!"

He held her tight, she caressed against him, longly, continuing in a chatter of a happy girl:

"Were we ever silly to wait so long! Right away, I would have liked you, and you did not understand, you sulked... Then, you remember, at our place, at night, when we did not sleep, nose in the air, listening to us breathe, with the big desire to take each other?"

He was won by her gaiety, he joked the memories of their mute tenderness.

"You beat me once, yes, yes! slaps on both cheeks!"

"It is that I loved you," she murmured. "You see, I defended myself from thinking of you, I told myself it was quite finished; and, deep down, I knew that one day or another we would get together... There was only need of an occasion, some happy chance, wasn't it?"

A shudder froze him, he wanted to shake off this dream, then he repeated slowly:

"Nothing is ever finished, it suffices a little happiness for all to begin again."

"Then, you keep me, it is the good stroke, this time?"

And, fainting, she slipped. She was so weak, that her muffled voice went out. Frightened, he had held her against his heart.

"You suffer?"

She straightened, astonished.

"No, not at all... Why?"

But this question had woke her from her dream. She looked wildly at the darkness, she wrung her hands, in a new fit of sobs.

"My God! my God! how dark it is!"

No longer were the wheat, nor the smell of grasses, nor the song of larks, nor the great yellow sun; it was the caved-in mine, flooded, the stinking night, the funereal dripping of this vault where they had rattled for so many days. The perversion of her senses increased its horror now, she was taken again by the superstitions of her childhood, she saw the Black Man, the old dead miner who returned in the pit to twist the neck of naughty girls.

"Listen, did you hear?"

"No, nothing, I hear nothing."

"Yes, the Man, you know?... Look! he is there... The earth has let go all the blood of the seam, to avenge itself for having had an artery cut; and he is there, you see him, look! blacker than the night... Oh! I am afraid, oh! I am afraid!"

She fell silent, shivering. Then, in a very low voice, she continued:

"No, it is always the other."

"What other?"

"The one who is with us, the one who is no more."

The image of Chaval haunted her, and she spoke of him confusedly, she told their dog's life, the single day he had shown gentle, at Jean-Bart, the other days of foolishness and slaps, when he killed her with his caresses, after having beaten her black and blue.

"I tell you he comes, that he will keep us from going together again!... His jealousy takes him again... Oh! send him away, oh! keep me, keep me entirely!"

With a bound, she had hung on him, she sought his mouth and passionately pressed hers to it. The darkness lit up, she saw the sun again, she found a calmed laugh of a lover. He, trembling to feel her thus against his flesh, half-naked under the jacket and the ragged trousers, seized her, in a reawakening of his virility. And it was at last their wedding night, at the bottom of that tomb, on that bed of mud, the need to not die before having had their happiness, the stubborn need to live, to make of life one last time. They loved each other in the despair of all, in death.

Afterwards, there was nothing more. Étienne was seated on the ground, always in the same corner, and he had Catherine on his knees, lying, immobile. Hours, hours passed. He long believed she slept; then, he touched her, she was very cold, she was dead. Yet, he did not move, for fear of waking her. The idea that he had had her first, and that she might be with child, softened him. Other ideas, the wish to leave with her, the joy of what they would do both later, returned at moments, but so vague, that they seemed barely to graze his brow, like the very breath of sleep. He weakened, there remained to him only the strength of a small gesture, a slow movement of the hand, to assure himself she was well there, like a sleeping child, in her frozen stiffness. All was annihilated, night itself had sunk, he was nowhere, outside of space, outside of time. Something well tapped beside his head, blows whose violence drew near; but he had first the laziness to go answer, numbed by an immense fatigue; and, now, he no longer knew, he only dreamed she walked before him and that he heard the light clack of her clogs. Two days passed, she had not stirred, he touched her with his mechanical gesture, reassured to feel her so quiet.

Étienne felt a jolt. Voices rumbled, rocks rolled to his feet. When he glimpsed a lamp, he wept. His blinking eyes followed the light, he never tired of seeing it, in ecstasy before that reddish point which barely stained the darkness. But comrades carried him off, he let them introduce, between his clenched teeth, spoonfuls of broth. It was only in the gallery of Réquillart that he recognized someone, the engineer Négrel, standing before him; and these two men who despised each other, the revolted worker, the skeptical chief, threw themselves into each other's arms, sobbed with great sobs, in the profound upheaval of all the humanity that was in them. It was an immense sadness, the misery of generations, the excess of pain where life can fall.

By daylight, the Maheude, prostrate near dead Catherine, threw a cry, then another, then another, great very long plaints, incessant. Several corpses were already brought up and aligned on the ground: Chaval whom one believed knocked out under a cave-in, a young miner and two getters equally smashed, skull empty of brain, belly swollen with water. Women, in the crowd, lost reason, tore their skirts, scratched their faces. When he was at last taken out, after having been accustomed to lamps and fed a little, Étienne appeared wasted, hair all white; and one drew back, one shuddered before this old man. The Maheude stopped crying, to look at him stupidly, with her great fixed eyes.

VI

It was four in the morning. The fresh April night was warming with the approach of day. In the limpid sky, the stars wavered, while a dawn light purpled the east. And the black countryside, dozing, had barely a shiver, that vague rumor which precedes waking.

Étienne, in long strides, followed the Vandame road. He had just spent six weeks at Montsou, in a hospital bed. Still yellow and very thin, he had felt the strength to leave, and he left. The Company, still trembling for its pits, proceeding with successive dismissals, had warned him it could not keep him. It offered him besides a relief of a hundred francs, with the paternal advice to quit mine work, too hard for him henceforth. But he had refused the hundred francs. Already, a reply from Pluchart, a letter where the travel money was found, called him to Paris. It was his old dream realized. The eve, on leaving the hospital, he had slept at the Bon-Joyeux, at widow Désir's. And he rose at dawn, a single wish remained to him, to say farewell to the comrades, before going to take the eight o'clock train, at Marchiennes.

An instant, on the road which was turning pink, Étienne stopped. It was good to breathe that so pure air of the early spring. The morning promised superb. Slowly, the day grew, the life of the earth rose with the sun. And he set off again, striking hard his cornel-wood stick, looking far off at the plain emerging from the vapors of the night. He had seen no one again, the Maheude had come once to the hospital, then had not been able to return no doubt. But he knew that all the coron of the Two-Hundred-and-Forty now descended at Jean-Bart, and that she herself had taken up work there.

Little by little, the deserted roads peopled, colliers continually passed near Étienne, face pale, silent. The Company, it was said, abused its triumph. After two months and a half of strike, vanquished by hunger, when they had returned to the pits, they had had to accept the timbering rate, that disguised wage cut, execrable now, bloodied with the blood of comrades. One stole from them an hour of work, one made them lie to their oath of not submitting, and this imposed perjury remained across their throat, like a pocket of gall. Work recommenced everywhere, at Mirou, at Madeleine, at Crèvecoeur, at the Victoire. Everywhere, in the mist of morning, along the roads drowned in darkness, the herd trampled, files of men trotting nose to the earth, like cattle led to the slaughterhouse. They shivered under their thin cloth clothes, they crossed the arms, rolled the loins, swelled the back, which the flint, lodged between shirt and jacket, made hunchbacked. And, in this return en masse, in these mute shadows, all black, without a laugh, without a sideways glance, one felt the teeth clenched with anger, the heart swollen with hate, the unique resignation to the necessity of the belly.

The more he neared the pit, the more Étienne saw their number grow. Almost all walked isolated, those who came in groups followed in file, already worn out, weary of others and of themselves. He glimpsed one, very old, whose eyes shone, like coals, under a livid brow. Another, a young one, breathed, with a contained breath of tempest. Many had their clogs in hand; and one barely heard on the ground the soft noise of their big woolen socks. It was an endless trickle, a debacle, a forced march of a beaten army, ever going head low, sullenly enraged at the need to take up the struggle and avenge themselves.

When Étienne arrived, Jean-Bart was emerging from shadow, the lanterns hung on the trestles still burned, in the nascent dawn. Above the obscure buildings, an escape rose like a white aigrette, delicately tinted with carmine. He passed by the screening staircase, to go to the pit-bottom.

The descent was beginning, workers were coming up from the cabin. An instant, he remained immobile, in that clamor and that agitation. Rollings of tubs shook the cast-iron flags, the bobbins turned, unrolled the cables, amid the bursts of the speaking-trumpet, the ringing of bells, the mallet blows on the signal block; and he found again the monster swallowing its ration of human flesh, the cages emerging, plunging again, engulfing loads of men, without a stop, with the easy throat-cry of a voracious giant. Since his accident, he had a nervous horror of the mine. Those cages sinking drew his entrails. He had to turn his head, the shaft exasperated him.

But, in the vast still-dark hall, which the exhausted lanterns lit with a dubious clarity, he glimpsed no friendly face. The miners who waited there, barefoot, lamp in hand, looked at him with their big uneasy eyes, then lowered the brow, drew back with an air of shame. They, no doubt, knew him, and they had no more rancor against him, they seemed on the contrary to fear him, reddening at the idea that he reproached them for being cowards. This attitude swelled his heart, he forgot that these wretches had stoned him, he began again the dream of changing them into heroes, of directing the people, that force of nature which devoured itself.

A cage embarked men, the batch disappeared, and as others arrived, he at last saw one of his lieutenants of the strike, a brave who had sworn to die.

"You too!" he murmured, stricken.

The other paled, lips trembling; then, with a gesture of excuse:

"What would you have? I have a wife."

Now, in the new flood come up from the cabin, he recognized them all.

"You too! you too! you too!"

And all shuddered, stammered in a stifled voice:

"I have a mother... I have children... There must be bread."

The cage did not reappear, they awaited it, gloomy, in such suffering of their defeat, that their glances avoided meeting, obstinately fixed on the shaft.

"And the Maheude?" asked Étienne.

They answered not. One made sign she was going to come. Others raised their arms, trembling with pity: ah! the poor woman! what misery! Silence continued, and when the comrade held out his hand to them, to say farewell, all squeezed it strongly, all put in that mute clasp the rage of having yielded, the feverish hope of revenge. The cage was there, they embarked, they sank, eaten by the gulf.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”