GERMINAL
PART III
CHAPTER III
TOWARDS the middle of August, Étienne
settled with the Maheus, Zacharie having married
and obtained from the Company a vacant house in
the settlement for Philoméne and the two
children. During the first days, the young man
experienced some constraint in the presence of
Catherine. There was a constant intimacy, as he
everywhere replaced the elder brother, sharing
Jeanlin's bed over against the big sister's.
Going to bed and getting up he had to dress and
undress near her, and see her take off and put on
her garments. When the last skirt fell from her,
she appeared of pallid whiteness, that transparent
snow of anaemic blondes; and he experienced a
constant emotion in finding her, with hands and
face already spoilt, as white as if dipped in milk
from her heels to her neck, where the line of tan
stood out sharply like a necklace of amber. He
pretended to turn away; but little by little he
knew her: the feet at first which his lowered eyes
met; then a glimpse of a knee when she slid
beneath the coverlet; then her bosom with little
rigid breasts as she leant over the bowl in the
morning. She would hasten without looking at him,
and in ten seconds was undressed and stretched
beside Alzire, with so supple and snake-like a
movement that he had scarcely taken off his shoes
when she disappeared, turning her back and only
showing her heavy knot of hair.
She never had any reason to be angry with him. If
a sort of obsession made him watch her in spite of
himself at the moment when she lay down, he
avoided all practical jokes or dangerous pastimes.
The parents were there, and besides he still had
for her a feeling, half of friendship and half of
spite, which prevented him from treating her as a
girl to be desired, in the midst of the
abandonment of their now common life in dressing,
at meals, during work, where nothing of them
remained secret, not even their most intimate
needs. All the modesty of the family had taken
refuge in the daily bath, for which the young girl
now went upstairs alone, while the men bathed
below one after the other.
At the end of the first month, Étienne and
Catherine seemed no longer to see each other when
in the evening, before extinguishing the candle,
they moved about the room, undressed. She had
ceased to hasten, and resumed her old custom of
doing up her hair at the edge of her bed, while
her arms, raised in the air, lifted her chemise to
her thighs, and he, without his trousers,
sometimes helped her, looking for the hairpins
that she had lost. Custom killed the shame of
being naked; they found it natural to be like
this, for they were doing no harm, and it was not
their fault if there was only one room for so many
people. Sometimes, however, a trouble came over
them suddenly, at moments when they had no guilty
thought. After some nights when he had not seen
her pale body, he suddenly saw her white all over,
with a whiteness which shook him with a shiver,
which obliged him to turn away for fear of
yielding to the desire to take her. On other
evenings, without any apparent reason, she would
be overcome by a panic of modesty and hasten to
slip between the sheets as if she felt the hands
of this lad seizing her. Then, when the candle
was out, they both knew that they were not
sleeping but were thinking of each other in spite
of their weariness. This made them restless and
sulky all the following day; they liked best the
tranquil evenings when they could behave together
like comrades.
Étienne only complained of Jeanlin, who
slept curled up. Alzire slept lightly, and
Lénore and Henri were found in the morning,
in each other's arms, exactly as they had gone to
sleep. In the dark house there was no other sound
than the snoring of Maheu and Maheude, rolling out
at regular intervals like a forge bellows. On the
whole, Étienne was better off than at
Rasseneur's; the bed was tolerable and the sheets
were changed every month. He had better soup,
too, and only suffered from the rarity of meat.
But they were all in the same condition, and for
forty-five francs he could not demand rabbit to
every meal. These forty-five francs helped the
family and enabled them to make both ends meet,
though always leaving some small debts and
arrears; so the Maheus were grateful to their
lodger; his linen was washed and mended, his
buttons sewn on, and his affairs kept in order; in
fact he felt all around him a woman's neatness and
care.
It was at this time that Étienne began to
understand the ideas that were buzzing in his
brain. Up till then he had only felt an
instinctive revolt in the midst of the
inarticulate fermentation among his mates. All
sorts of confused questions came before him: Why
are some miserable? why are others rich? why are
the former beneath the heel of the latter without
hope of ever taking their place? And his first
stage was to understand his ignorance. A secret
shame, a hidden annoyance, gnawed him from that
time; he knew nothing, he dared not talk about
these things which were working in him like a
passion--the equality of all men, and the equity
which demanded a fair division of the earth's
wealth. He thus took to the methodless study of
those who in ignorance feel the fascination of
knowledge. He now kept up a regular
correspondence with Pluchart, who was better
educated than himself and more advanced in the
Socialist movement. He had books sent to him, and
his ill-digested reading still further excited his
brain, especially a medical book entitled
L'Hygiéne du mineur, in which
a Belgian doctor had summed up the evils of which
the people in coal mines were dying; without
counting treatises on political economy,
incomprehensible in their technical dryness,
Anarchist pamphlets which upset his ideas, and old
numbers of newspapers which he preserved as
irrefutable arguments for possible discussions.
Souvarine also lent him books, and the work on
Co-operative Societies had made him dream for a
month of a universal exchange association
abolishing money and basing the whole social life
on work. The shame of his ignorance left him, and
a certain pride came to him now that he felt
himself thinking.
During these first months Étienne retained
the ecstasy of a novice; his heart was bursting
with generous indignation against the oppressors,
and looking forward to the approaching triumph of
the oppressed. He had not yet manufactured a
system, his reading had been too vague.
Rasseneur's practical demands were mixed up in his
mind with Souvarine's violent and destructive
methods, and when he came out of the Avantage,
where he was to be found nearly every day railing
with them against the Company, he walked as if in
a dream, assisting at a radical regeneration of
nations to be effected without one broken window
or a single drop of blood. The methods of
execution remained obscure; he preferred to think
that things would go very well, for he lost his
head as soon as he tried to formulate a programme
of reconstruction. He even showed himself full of
illogical moderation; he often said that we must
banish politics from the social question, a phrase
which he had read and which seemed a useful one to
repeat among the phlegmatic colliers with whom he
lived.
Every evening now, at the Maheus', they delayed
half an hour before going up to bed.
Étienne always introduced the same subject.
As his nature became more refined he found himself
wounded by the promiscuity of the settlement.
Were they beasts to be thus penned together in the
midst of the fields, so tightly packed that one
could not change one's shirt without exhibiting
one's backside to the neighbours? And how bad it
was for health; and boys and girls were forced to
grow corrupt together.
"Lord!" replied Maheu, "if there
were more money there would be more comfort. All
the same it's true enough that it's good for no
one to live piled up like that. It always ends
with making the men drunk and the girls
big-bellied."
And the family began to talk, each having his say,
while the petroleum lamp vitiated the air of the
room, already stinking of fried onion. No, life
was certainly not a joke. One had to work like a
brute at labour which was once a punishment for
convicts; one left one's skin there oftener than
was one's turn, all that without even getting meat
on the table in the evening. No doubt one had
one's feed; one ate, indeed, but so little, just
enough to suffer without dying, overcome with
debts and pursued as if one had stolen the bread.
When Sunday came one slept from weariness. The
only pleasures were to get drunk and to get a
child with one's wife; then the beer swelled the
belly, and the child, later on, left you to go to
the dogs. No, it was certainly not a joke.
Then Maheude joined in.
"The bother is, you see, when you have to say
to yourself that it won't change. When you're
young you think that happiness will come some
time, you hope for things; and then the
wretchedness begins always over again, and you get
shut up in it. Now, I don't wish harm to any one,
but there are times when this injustice makes me
mad."
There was silence; they were all breathing with
the vague discomfort of this closed-in horizon.
Father Bonnemort only, if he was there, opened his
eyes with surprise, for in his time people used
not to worry about things; they were born in the
coal and they hammered at the seam, without asking
for more; while now there was an air stirring
which made the colliers ambitious.
"It don't do to spit at anything," he
murmured. "A good glass is a good glass. As
to the masters, they're often rascals; but there
always will be masters, won't there? What's the
use of racking your brains over those
things?"
Étienne at once became animated. What!
The worker was to be forbidden to think! Why!
that was just it; things would change now because
the worker had begun to think. In the old man's
time the miner lived in the mine like a brute,
like a machine for extracting coal, always under
the earth, with ears and eyes stopped to outward
events. So the rich, who governed, found it easy
to sell him and buy him, and to devour his flesh;
he did not even know what was going on. But now
the miner was waking up down there, germinating in
the earth just as a grain germinates; and some
fine day he would spring up in the midst of the
fields: yes, men would spring up, an army of men
who would re-establish justice. Is it not true
that all citizens are equal since the Revolution,
because they vote together? Why should the worker
remain the slave of the master who pays him? The
big companies with their machines were crushing
everything, and one no longer had against them the
ancient guarantees when people of the same trade,
united in a body, were able to defend themselves.
It was for that, by God, and for no other reason,
that all would burst up one day, thanks to
education. One had only to look into the
settlement itself: the grandfathers could not sign
their names, the fathers could do so, and as for
the sons, they read and wrote like schoolmasters.
Ah! it was springing up, it was springing up,
little by little, a rough harvest of men who would
ripen in the sun! From the moment when they were
no longer each of them stuck to his place for his
whole existence, and when they had the ambition to
take a neighbour's place, why should they not hit
out with their fists and try for the mastery?
Maheu was shaken but remained full of doubts.
"As soon as you move they give you back your
certificate," he said. "The old man is
right; it will always be the miner who gets all
the trouble, without a chance of a leg of mutton
now and then as a reward."
Maheude, who had been silent for a while, awoke as
from a dream.
"But if what the priests tell is true, if the
poor people in this world become the rich ones in
the next!"
A burst of laughter interrupted her; even the
children shrugged their shoulders, being
incredulous in the open air, keeping a secret fear
of ghosts in the pit, but glad of the empty sky.
"Ah! bosh! the priests!" exclaimed
Maheu. "If they believed that, they'd eat
less and work more, so as to reserve a better
place for themselves up there. No, when one's
dead, one's dead."
Maheude sighed deeply.
"Oh, Lord, Lord!"
Then her hands fell on to her knees with a gesture
of immense dejection:
"Then if that's true, we are done for, we
are."
They all looked at one another. Father Bonnemort
spat into his handkerchief, while Maheu sat with
his extinguished pipe, which he had forgotten, in
his mouth. Alzire listened between Lénore
and Henri, who were sleeping on the edge of the
table. But Catherine, with her chin in her hand,
never took her large clear eyes off Étienne
while he was protesting, declaring his faith, and
opening out the enchanting future of his social
dream. Around them the settlement was asleep; one
only heard the stray cries of a child or the
complaints of a belated drunkard. In the parlour
the clock ticked slowly, and a damp freshness
arose from the sanded floor in spite of the stuffy
air.
"Fine ideas!" said the young man;
"why do you need a good God and his paradise
to make you happy? Haven't you got it in your own
power to make yourselves happy on earth?"
With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on.
The closed horizon was bursting out; a gap of
light was opening in the sombre lives of these
poor people. The eternal wretchedness, beginning
over and over again, the brutalizing labour, the
fate of a beast who gives his wool and has his
throat cut, all the misfortune disappeared, as
though swept away by a great flood of sunlight;
and beneath the dazzling gleam of fairyland
justice descended from heaven. Since the good God
was dead, justice would assure the happiness of
men, and equality and brotherhood would reign. A
new society would spring up in a day just as in
dreams, an immense town with the splendour of a
mirage, in which each citizen lived by his work,
and took his share in the common joys. The old
rotten world had fallen to dust; a young humanity
purged from its crimes formed but a single nation
of workers, having for their motto: "To each
according to his deserts, and to each desert
according to its performance." And this dream
grew continually larger and more beautiful and
more seductive as it mounted higher in the
impossible.
At first Maheude refused to listen, possessed by a
deep dread. No, no, it was too beautiful; it
would not do to embark upon these ideas, for they
made life seem abominable afterwards, and one
would have destroyed everything in the effort to
be happy. When she saw Maheu's eyes shine, and
that he was troubled and won over, she became
restless, and exclaimed, interrupting
Étienne:
"Don't listen, my man! You can see he's only
telling us fairy-tales. Do you think the
bourgeois would ever consent to work as we
do?"
But little by little the charm worked on her also.
Her imagination was aroused and she smiled at
last, entering his marvellous world of hope. It
was so sweet to forget for a while the sad
reality! When one lives like the beasts with face
bent towards the earth, one needs a corner of
falsehood where one can amuse oneself by regaling
on the things one will never possess. And what
made her enthusiastic and brought her into
agreement with the young man was the idea of
justice.
"Now, there you're right!" she
exclaimed. "When a thing's just I don't mind
being cut to pieces for it. And it's true enough!
it would be just for us to have a turn."
Then Maheu ventured to become excited.
"Blast it all! I am not rich, but I would
give five francs to keep alive to see that. What
a hustling, eh? Will it be soon? And how can we
set about it?"
Étienne began talking again. The old
social system was cracking; it could not last more
than a few months, he affirmed roundly. As to the
methods of execution, he spoke more vaguely,
mixing up his reading, and fearing before ignorant
hearers to enter on explanations where he might
lose himself. All the systems had their share in
it, softened by the certainty of easy triumph, a
universal kiss which would bring to an end all
class misunderstandings; without taking count,
however, of the thick-heads among the masters and
bourgeois whom it would perhaps be necessary to
bring to reason by force. And the Maheus looked
as if they understood, approving and accepting
miraculous solutions with the blind faith of new
believers, like those Christians of the early days
of the Church, who awaited the coming of a perfect
society on the dunghill of the ancient world.
Little Alzire picked up a few words, and imagined
happiness under the form of a very warm house,
where children could play and eat as long as they
liked. Catherine, without moving, her chin always
resting in her hand, kept her eyes fixed on
Étienne, and when he stopped a slight
shudder passed over her, and she was quite pale as
if she felt the cold.
But Maheude looked at the clock.
"Past nine! Can it be possible? We shall
never get up to-morrow."
And the Maheus left the table with hearts ill at
ease and in despair. It seemed to them that they
had just been rich and that they had now suddenly
fallen back into the mud. Father Bonnemort, who
was setting out for the pit, growled that those
sort of stories wouldn't make the soup better;
while the others went upstairs in single file,
noticing the dampness of the walls and the
pestiferous stuffiness of the air. Upstairs, amid
the heavy slumber of the settlement when Catherine
had got into bed last and blown out the candle,
Étienne heard her tossing feverishly before
getting to sleep.
Often at these conversations the neighbours came
in: Levaque, who grew excited at the idea of a
general sharing; Pierron, who prudently went to
bed as soon as they attacked the Company. At long
intervals Zacharie came in for a moment; but
politics bored him, he preferred to go off and
drink a glass at the Avantage. As to Chaval, he
would go to extremes and wanted to draw blood.
Nearly every evening he passed an hour with the
Maheus; in this assiduity there was a certain
unconfessed jealousy, the fear that he would be
robbed of Catherine. This girl, of whom he was
already growing tired, had become precious to him
now that a man slept near her and could take her
at night.
Étienne's influence increased; he gradually
revolutionized the settlement. His propaganda was
unseen, and all the more sure since he was growing
in the estimation of all. Maheude,
notwithstanding the caution of a prudent
housekeeper, treated him with consideration, as a
young man who paid regularly and neither drank nor
gambled, with his nose always in a book; she
spread abroad his reputation among the neighbours
as an educated lad, a reputation which they abused
by asking him to write their letters. He was a
sort of business man, charged with correspondence
and consulted by households in affairs of
difficulty. Since September he had thus at last
been able to establish his famous provident fund,
which was still very precarious, only including
the inhabitants of the settlement; but he hoped to
be able to obtain the adhesion of the miners at
all the pits, especially if the Company, which had
remained passive, continued not to interfere. He
had been made secretary of the association and he
even received a small salary for the clerking.
This made him almost rich. If a married miner can
with difficulty make both ends meet, a sober lad
who has no burdens can even manage to save.
From this time a slow transformation took place in
Étienne. Certain instincts of refinement
and comfort which had slept during his poverty
were now revealed. He began to buy cloth
garments; he also bought a pair of elegant boots;
he became a big man. The whole settlement grouped
round him. The satisfaction of his self-love was
delicious; he became intoxicated with this first
enjoyment of popularity; to be at the head of
others, to command, he who was so young, and but
the day before had been a mere labourer, this
filled him with pride, and enlarged his dream of
an approaching revolution in which he was to play
a part. His face changed: he became serious and
put on airs, while his growing ambition inflamed
his theories and pushed him to ideas of violence.
But autumn was advancing, and the October cold had
blighted the little gardens of the settlement.
Behind the thin lilacs the trammers no longer
tumbled the putters over on the shed, and only the
winter vegetables remained, the cabbages pearled
with white frost, the leeks and the salads. Once
more the rains were beating down on the red tiles
and flowing down into the tubs beneath the gutters
with the sound of a torrent. In every house the
stove piled up with coal was never cold, and
poisoned the close parlours. It was the season of
wretchedness beginning once more.
In October, on one of the first frosty nights,
Étienne, feverish after his conversation
below, could not sleep. He had seen Catherine
glide beneath the coverlet and then blow out the
candle. She also appeared to be quite overcome,
and tormented by one of those fits of modesty
which still made her hasten sometimes, and so
awkwardly that she only uncovered herself more.
In the darkness she lay as though dead; but he
knew that she also was awake, and he felt that she
was thinking of him just as he was thinking of
her: this mute exchange of their beings had never
before filled them with such trouble. The minutes
went by and neither he nor she moved, only their
breathing was embarrassed in spite of their
efforts to retain it. Twice over he was on the
point of rising and taking her. It was idiotic to
have such a strong desire for each other and never
to satisfy it. Why should they thus sulk against
what they desired? The children were asleep, she
was quite willing; he was certain that she was
waiting for him, stifling, and that she would
close her arms round him in silence with clenched
teeth. Nearly an hour passed. He did not go to
take her, and she did not turn round for fear of
calling him. The more they lived side by side,
the more a barrier was raised of shames,
repugnancies, delicacies of friendship, which they
could not explain even to themselves.