Part 4

But the father shrugged his shoulders. Ah! nonsense! collapse! And then, it wouldn't be the first time, they would get through it all the same. He ended by losing his temper, and sent his son back to the coal face.

All of them, moreover, were stretching their limbs. Levaque, lying on his back, was swearing as he examined his left thumb, which a falling sandstone had just scraped to the blood. Chaval, furiously, was taking off his shirt, baring his chest, to be less hot. They were already black with coal, coated with a fine dust that the sweat diluted, making it run in streams and pools. And Maheu was the first to begin tapping again, lower down, his head close to the rock. Now the drop fell on his forehead, so persistent, that he thought he could feel it boring a hole through the bones of his skull.

--You mustn't pay attention, Catherine explained to Étienne. They always shout.

And she resumed her lesson, like an obliging girl. Each loaded tub arrived at daylight just as it left the face, marked with a special token so that the receiver could put it to the account of the stall. Also, great care had to be taken to fill it and to take only clean coal: otherwise, it was refused at the weighing.

The young man, whose eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness, looked at her, still pale, with her chlorotic complexion; and he could not have said her age, he gave her twelve years, so frail did she seem to him. Yet he felt her older, with a boy's freedom, a naive effrontery, which embarrassed him a little: she did not please him, he found too childish her pallid Pierrot face, tight at the temples by the kerchief. But what astonished him was the strength of this child, a nervous strength in which much skill entered. She filled her tub faster than he, with small regular and rapid strokes of the shovel; she then pushed it to the incline, with a single slow push, without jolts, passing at ease under the low rocks. He, was knocking himself about, derailing, remaining in distress.

In truth, it was no convenient path. There were some sixty metres from the face to the incline; and the way, which the miners of the cut at ground level had not yet widened, was a veritable gallery, of very uneven roof, swollen with continual bumps: at certain places, the loaded tub passed just, the hauler had to flatten himself, push on his knees, not to split his head. Besides, the timber was already bending and breaking. One saw them, broken in the middle, in long pale rents, like too weak crutches. One had to take care not to scrape oneself on these breaks; and, under the slow crushing which made oak logs thick as the thigh burst, one slipped along flat on the belly, with the dull uneasiness of hearing one's back crack suddenly.

--Again! said Catherine, laughing.

Étienne's tub had just derailed, at the most difficult passage. He could not manage to roll straight, on those rails which warped in the damp earth; and he swore, he lost his temper, fought furiously with the wheels, which he could not, despite exaggerated efforts, put back in place.

--Wait, resumed the young girl. If you get angry, it will never work.

Adroitly, she had slipped in, had backed her rump under the tub; and, with a heave of the loins, she lifted it and replaced it. The weight was seven hundred kilograms. He, surprised, ashamed, stammered excuses.

She had to show him how to spread his legs, to brace his feet against the timber, on both sides of the gallery, to give himself solid points of support. The body had to be bent, the arms stiff, so as to push with all the muscles, the shoulders and the hips. During one journey, he followed her, saw her glide, the croup taut, the fists so low, that she seemed to trot on all fours, like one of those dwarf beasts that work in circuses. She sweated, panted, cracked her joints, but without a complaint, with the indifference of habit, as if common misery was for all to live thus bent. And he could not do the same, his shoes hindered him, his body broke, walking in that way, the head low. At the end of a few minutes, this position became a torture, an intolerable anguish, so painful, that he would get on his knees a moment, to straighten up and breathe.

Then, at the incline, it was a new chore. She taught him to quickly send off his tub. At the top and bottom of this incline, which served all the faces, from one landing to another, was a boy, the brakeman above, the receiver below. These good-for-nothings of twelve to fifteen years shouted abominable words at each other; and, to warn them, one had to yell still more violent ones. Then, as soon as there was an empty tub to send up, the receiver gave the signal, the hauler sent off her full tub, whose weight made the other rise, when the brakeman loosened his brake. Below, in the bottom gallery, the trains were formed which the horses rolled to the shaft.

--Holloa! damned jades! cried Catherine in the incline, entirely timbered, a hundred metres long, which resounded like a gigantic speaking-trumpet.

The boys must have been resting, for neither answered. At all levels, the haulage stopped. A thin girlish voice ended by saying:

--There's one on the Mouquette, sure!

Enormous laughs rumbled, the haulers of the whole seam held their bellies.

--Who is it? asked Étienne of Catherine.

The latter named him little Lydie, a hussy who knew more and who pushed her tub as stiffly as a woman, despite her doll's arms. As for the Mouquette, she was well capable of being with both boys at once.

But the receiver's voice rose, crying to send off. No doubt, a deputy was passing below. The haulage resumed at the nine levels, one heard only the regular calls of the boys and the snorting of the haulers arriving at the incline, smoking like overburdened mares. It was the fit of bestiality which blew in the pit, the sudden desire of the male, when a miner met one of those girls on all fours, the loins in the air, bursting with her hips her boy's breeches.

And, at each journey, Étienne found again at the bottom the suffocation of the face, the dull and broken cadence of the picks, the great painful sighs of the hewers obstinate at their task. All four had stripped naked, confounded in the coal, soaked with black mud up to the kerchief. For a moment, they had had to free Maheu who was rattling, remove the planks to make the coal slide on the way. Zacharie and Levaque were raging against the seam, which was becoming hard, they said, which was going to make the conditions of their bargain disastrous. Chaval turned, remained a moment on his back, to insult Étienne, whose presence, decidedly, exasperated him.

--You snake! hasn't the strength of a girl!... And will you fill your tub! Eh? it's to spare your arms... Goddamn! I'll keep the ten sous, if you make us have one refused!

The young man avoided answering, too happy until then to have found this convict's work, accepting the brutal hierarchy of the laborer and the master workman. But he could go no more, the feet in blood, the limbs twisted with atrocious cramps, the trunk squeezed in an iron belt. Happily, it was ten o'clock, the stall decided to eat.

Maheu had a watch which he did not even look at. At the bottom of this starless night, never did he mistake by five minutes. All put on their shirt and their jacket again. Then, descended from the face, they squatted, the elbows to the flanks, the buttocks on their heels, in that posture so habitual to miners, that they keep it even outside the mine, without feeling the need of a pavement or a beam to sit on. And each, having taken out his bread, bit gravely at the thick slice, letting fall rare words on the morning's work. Catherine, remained standing, ended by joining Étienne, who had stretched further off, across the rails, the back against the timber. There was there a nearly dry place.

--You're not eating? she asked, the mouth full, her bread in the hand.

Then, she remembered this boy wandering in the night, without a sou, without a bit of bread perhaps.

--Will you share with me?

And, as he refused, swearing he was not hungry, the voice trembling from the tearing of his stomach, she continued gaily:

--Ah! if you're disgusted!... But, look! I've only bitten on this side, I'll give you that one.

Already, she had broken the slices in two. The young man, taking his half, restrained himself not to devour it at once; and he placed his arms on his thighs, so that she might not see their trembling. With her tranquil air of good comrade, she had just lain near him, flat on the belly, the chin in one hand, eating with the other slowly. Their lamps, between them, lit them.

Catherine looked at him a moment in silence. She must have found him pretty, with his fine face and his black mustaches. Vaguely, she smiled with pleasure.

--So, you're an engine-driver, and they sent you away from your railway... Why?

--Because I had slapped my chief.

She remained stupefied, upset in her hereditary ideas of subordination, of passive obedience.

--I must say I had drunk, he continued, and when I drink, that makes me mad, I would eat myself and I would eat others... Yes, I can't swallow two small glasses, without having the need to eat a man... Then, I am sick for two days.

--You mustn't drink, she said seriously.

--Ah! don't be afraid, I know myself!

And he shook his head, he had a hatred of brandy, the hatred of the last child of a race of drunkards, who suffered in his flesh from all that alcohol-soaked and deranged ancestry, to the point that the least drop had become for him a poison.

--It's because of mamma that it annoys me to have been put in the street, he said after swallowing a mouthful. Mamma isn't happy, and I sent her from time to time a hundred-sou piece.

--Where is your mother then?

--In Paris... Washerwoman, rue de la Goutte-d'Or.

There was a silence. When he thought of these things, a wavering paled his black eyes, the short anguish of the lesion whose unknown he brooded, in his fine youth's health. An instant, he remained the looks drowned at the bottom of the mine's darkness; and, at that depth, under the weight and suffocation of the earth, he saw again his childhood, his mother still pretty and brave, abandoned by his father, then taken back after marrying another, living between the two men who ate her, rolling with them to the gutter, in wine, in filth. It was there, he remembered the street, details came back to him: the dirty linen in the middle of the shop, and drunkards that made the house stink, and slaps to break the jaws.

--Now, he resumed in a slow voice, it's not with thirty sous that I'll be able to make her presents... She's going to die of misery, that's sure.

He had a desperate shrug, he bit again into his slice.

--Will you drink? asked Catherine who was uncorking her gourd. Oh! it's coffee, it won't do you harm... One suffocates, when one swallows like that.

But he refused: it was quite enough to have taken half his bread. Yet, she insisted with a good-hearted air, she ended by saying:

--Well! I drink before you, since you're so polite... Only, you can't refuse now, that would be nasty.

And she held out her gourd to him. She had risen on her knees, he saw her very near him, lit by the two lamps. Why then had he found her ugly? Now that she was black, the face powdered with fine coal, she seemed to him of a singular charm. In that face invaded by shadow, the teeth of the too-large mouth burst with whiteness, the eyes widened, shone with a greenish reflection, like a she-cat's eyes. A lock of red hair, which had escaped the kerchief, tickled her ear and made her laugh. She no longer seemed so young, she could well be fourteen after all.

--To please you, he said, drinking and returning the gourd.

She swallowed a second gulp, forced him to take one too, wanting to share, she said; and this slender neck, which went from one mouth to the other, amused them. He, suddenly, had asked himself if he should not seize her in his arms, to kiss her on the lips. She had big lips of a pale pink, quickened by the coal, which tormented him with a growing desire. But he dared not, intimidated before her, having had at Lille only girls, and of the lowest kind, ignoring how one should go about with a workwoman still in her family.

--You must be fourteen then? he asked, after returning to his bread.

She was astonished, almost angered.

--What! fourteen! but I'm fifteen!... It's true, I'm not stout. The girls, in our family, don't grow very fast.

He continued to question her, she told all, without effrontery or shame. Besides, she was ignorant of nothing of man nor of woman, although he felt her virgin of body, and child-virgin, retarded in the maturity of her sex by the bad-air and fatigue milieu where she lived. When he came back to the Mouquette, to embarrass her, she told frightful stories, the voice calm, very gay. Ah! that one did fine ones! And, as he wished to know if she herself had no sweetheart, she answered joking that she did not want to contradict her mother, but that it would happen forcibly one day. Her shoulders had curved, she shivered a little in the cold of her clothes soaked with sweat, the resigned and sweet mine, ready to undergo things and men.

--It's that one finds, sweethearts, when one lives all together, isn't it?

--Surely.

--And then, it does harm to no one... One says nothing to the priest.

--Oh! the priest, I don't care!... But there is the Black Man.

--What, the Black Man?

--The old miner who comes back in the pit and who wrings the neck of naughty girls.

He looked at her, fearing she might mock him.

--You believe those silly things, you know nothing then?

--Yes indeed, I, I know how to read and write... That's useful in our family, for in papa and mamma's time, one didn't learn.

She was decidedly very nice. When she would have finished her slice, he would take her and kiss her on her big pink lips. It was a resolution of a timid, a thought of violence which strangled his voice. Those boy's clothes, that jacket and that breeches on that girl's flesh, excited him and hindered him. He, had swallowed his last mouthful. He drank at the gourd, returned it to her so that she might empty it. Now, the moment to act had come, and he threw an uneasy glance toward the miners, at the bottom, when a shadow blocked the gallery.

For an instant, Chaval, standing, had looked at them from afar. He advanced, assured himself that Maheu could not see him; and, as Catherine had remained on the ground, on her seat, he seized her by the shoulders, threw back her head, crushed her mouth under a brutal kiss, quietly, affecting not to concern himself with Étienne. There was, in that kiss, a taking of possession, a sort of jealous decision.

However, the young girl had revolted.

--Let me go, do you hear!

He held her head, he looked her in the depths of the eyes. His red mustaches and goatee flamed in his black face, with the big aquiline nose. And he let her go at last, and he went away, without saying a word.

A shiver had frozen Étienne. It was stupid to have waited. Certainly, no, now, he would not kiss her, for she would perhaps believe he wanted to do like the other. In his wounded vanity, he felt a true despair.

--Why did you lie? he said in a low voice. He's your sweetheart.

--But no, I swear to you! she cried. There's nothing between us. Sometimes, he wants to joke... Even he's not from here, it's six months since he arrived from the Pas-de-Calais.

Both had risen, one was going to set to work again. When she saw him so cold, she seemed vexed. No doubt, she found him prettier than the other, she would have preferred him perhaps. The idea of a kindness, of a consolation worried her; and, as the young man, astonished, examined his lamp which burned blue, with a large pale ruff, she tried at least to distract him.

--Come, that I show you something, she murmured with an air of good friendship.

When she had led him to the bottom of the face, she made him notice a crevice, in the coal. A slight bubbling escaped from it, a little noise, like a bird's whistle.

--Put your hand, you feel the wind... It's firedamp.

He remained surprised. That was all, this terrible thing which made everything blow up? She laughed, she said there was much of it that day, for the flame of the lamps to be so blue.

--When you'll have finished chattering, lazy ones! cried the rough voice of Maheu.

Catherine and Étienne hastened to fill their tubs and pushed them to the incline, the spine stiff, crawling under the humped roof of the way. From the second journey, sweat flooded them and their bones cracked again.

In the face, the hewers' work had resumed. Often, they shortened the meal, not to cool off; and their breads, eaten thus far from the sun, with a mute voracity, loaded their stomach with lead. Stretched on the flank, they tapped harder, they had only the fixed idea to complete a large number of tubs. All disappeared in this rage of gain disputed so rudely. They ceased to feel the water which streamed and swelled their limbs, the cramps of forced attitudes, the suffocation of the darkness, where they paled like plants put in a cellar. Yet, as the day advanced, the air poisoned itself more, heated with the smoke of the lamps, the pestilence of the breaths, the asphyxia of the firedamp, hindering on the eyes like spider webs, and which alone the night's ventilation must sweep away. Them, at the bottom of their mole-hole, under the weight of the earth, having no more breath in their burning chests, always tapped.

V

Maheu, without looking at his watch left in his jacket, stopped and said:

--Soon one o'clock... Zacharie, is it done?

The young man had been timbering for an instant. In the middle of his task, he had remained on his back, the eyes vague, dreaming of the games of dominoes he had made the eve. He awoke, he answered:

--Yes, that'll do, we'll see tomorrow.

And he returned to take his place at the face. Levaque and Chaval, them too, let go the pick. There was a rest. All wiped their face on their bare arms, looking at the rock of the roof, whose schistose masses were cracking. They talked little but of their work.

--Another chance, murmured Chaval, to have fallen on earths that collapse!... They didn't take account of that, in the bargain.

--Rogues! grunted Levaque. They seek only to screw us.

Zacharie began to laugh. He didn't care a damn for work and the rest, but it amused him to hear the Company taken hold of. With his placid air, Maheu explained that the nature of the grounds changed every twenty metres. One had to be just, one could foresee nothing. Then, the two others continuing to rail against the chiefs, he became uneasy, he looked around him.

--Hush! that's enough!

--You're right, said Levaque, who also lowered his voice. It's unhealthy.

An obsession of spies haunted them, even at that depth, as if the shareholders' coal, still in the seam, had had ears.

--No matter, added very loud Chaval with an air of defiance, that if this pig of Dansaert speaks to me on the tone of the other day, I stick a brick in his belly... I don't prevent him, me, from paying himself the blondes who have fine skin.

This time, Zacharie burst out. The loves of the master-deputy and of the Pierronne were the continual jest of the pit. Catherine herself, leaning on her shovel, at the bottom of the face, held her sides and put Étienne in the know with a phrase; while Maheu got angry, seized with a fear he no longer hid.

--Eh? you'll be quiet!... Wait to be alone, if you want harm to happen to you.

He was still speaking, when a noise of steps came from the upper gallery. Almost at once, the engineer of the pit, little Négrel, as the workers named him among themselves, appeared at the top of the face, accompanied by Dansaert, the master-deputy.

--When I said it! murmured Maheu. There's always some there, coming out of the earth.

Paul Négrel, nephew of M. Hennebeau, was a lad of twenty-six, slim and pretty, with curled hair and brown mustaches. His pointed nose, his lively eyes, gave him an air of amiable ferret, of a skeptical intelligence, which changed into a cutting authority, in his relations with the workers. He was dressed like them, smeared like them with coal; and, to reduce them to respect, he showed a courage to break his bones, passing by the most difficult places, always the first under the falls and in the firedamp blasts.

--We're there, aren't we? Dansaert, asked he.

The master-deputy, a Belgian with thick face, with the gross sensual nose, answered with an exaggerated politeness:

--Yes, Mr. Négrel... Here is the man they hired this morning.

Both had let themselves slide in the middle of the face. They had Étienne brought up. The engineer raised his lamp, looked at him, without questioning him.

--That's good, said he at last. I don't much like picking up unknowns on the roads... Especially, don't begin again.

And he listened not to the explanations they gave him, the necessities of the work, the desire to replace the women by boys, for the haulage. He had set to studying the roof, while the hewers resumed their picks. Suddenly, he cried:

--I say, Maheu, are you making fun of the world!... You're all going to stay there, goddamn!

--Oh! it's solid, answered quietly the worker.

--How! solid!... But the rock is already settling, and you plant timber at more than two metres, with an air of regret! Ah! you are all the same, you would let your skull be flattened, rather than leave the seam, to put to timbering the time needed!... I beg you to shore that at once. Double the timber, do you hear!

And, before the bad will of the miners who discussed, saying they were good judges of their safety, he lost his temper.

--Come now! when you'll have the head crushed, is it you who will bear the consequences? Not at all! it will be the Company, which will have to make you pensions, to you or to your wives... I repeat to you that you are known: to have two tubs more in the evening, you would give your skins.

Maheu, despite the anger of which he was little by little gained, said again composedly:

--If we were paid enough, we would timber better.

The engineer shrugged his shoulders, without answering. He had finished descending along the face, he concluded only from below:

--You have an hour left, put yourselves all to the task; and I warn you that the stall has three francs fine.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”