GERMINAL
PART VI
CHAPTER IV
WHEN they came out of Rasseneur's, Étienne
and Catherine walked on in silence. The thaw was
beginning, a slow cold thaw which stained the snow
without melting it. In the livid sky a full
moon could be faintly seen behind great clouds,
black rags driven furiously by a tempestuous wind
far above; and on the earth no breath was
stirring, nothing could be heard but drippings
from the roofs, the falling of white lumps with a
soft thud.
Étienne was embarrassed by this woman who
had been given to him, and in his disquiet he
could find nothing to say. The idea of taking her
with him to hide at Réquillart seemed
absurd. He had proposed to lead her back to the
settlement, to her parents' house, but she had
refused in terror. No, no! anything rather than
be a burden on them once more after having behaved
so badly to them! And neither of them spoke any
more; they tramped on at random through the roads
which were becoming rivers of mud. At first they
went down towards the Voreux; then they turned to
the right and passed between the pit-bank and the
canal.
"But you'll have to sleep somewhere," he
said at last. "Now, if I only had a room, I
could easily take you----"
But a curious spasm of timidity interrupted him.
The past came back to him, their old longings for
each other, and the delicacies and the shames
which had prevented them from coming together.
Did he still desire her, that he felt so troubled,
gradually warmed at the heart by a fresh longing?
The recollection of the blows she had dealt him at
Gaston-Marie now attracted him instead of filling
him with spite. And he was surprised; the idea of
taking her to Réquillart was becoming quite
natural and easy to execute.
"Now, come, decide; where would you like me
to take you? You must hate me very much to refuse
to come with me!"
She was following him slowly, delayed by the
painful slipping of her sabots into the ruts; and
without raising her head she murmured:
"I have enough trouble, good God! don't give
me any more. What good would it do us, what you
ask, now that I have a lover and you have a woman
yourself?"
She meant Mouquette. She believed that he still
went with this girl, as the rumour ran for the
last fortnight; and when he swore to her that it
was not so she shook her head, for she remembered
the evening when she had seen them eagerly kissing
each other.
"Isn't it a pity, all this nonsense?" he
whispered, stopping. "We might understand
each other so well."
She shuddered slightly and replied:
"Never mind, you've nothing to be sorry for;
you don't lose much. If you knew what a trumpery
thing I am--no bigger than two ha'porth of butter,
so ill made that I shall never become a woman,
sure enough!"
And she went on freely accusing herself, as though
the long delay of her puberty had been her own
fault. In spite of the man whom she had had, this
lessened her, placed her among the urchins. One
has some excuse, at any rate, when one can produce
a child.
"My poor little one!" said
Étienne, with deep pity, in a very low
voice.
They were at the foot of the pit-bank, hidden in
the shadow of the enormous pile. An inky cloud
was just then passing over the moon; they could no
longer even distinguish their faces, their breaths
were mingled, their lips were seeking each other
for that kiss which had tormented them with desire
for months. But suddenly the moon reappeared, and
they saw the sentinel above them, at the top of
the rocks white with light, standing out erect on
the Voreux. And before they had kissed an emotion
of modesty separated them, that old modesty in
which there was something of anger, a vague
repugnance, and much friendship. They set out
again heavily, up to their ankles in mud.
"Then it's settled. You don't want to have
anything to do with me?" asked
Étienne.
"No," she said. "You after Chaval;
and after you another, eh? No, that disgusts me;
it doesn't give me any pleasure. What's the use
of doing it?"
They were silent, and walked some hundred paces
without exchanging a word.
"But, anyhow, do you know where to go
to?" he said again. "I can't leave you
out in a night like this."
She replied, simply:
"I'm going back. Chaval is my man. I have
nowhere else to sleep but with him."
"But he will beat you to death."
There was silence again. She had shrugged her
shoulders in resignation. He would beat her, and
when he was tired of beating her he would stop.
Was not that better than to roam the streets like
a vagabond? Then she was used to blows; she said,
to console herself, that eight out of ten girls
were no better off than she was. If her lover
married her some day it would, all the same, be
very nice of him.
Étienne and Catherine were moving
mechanically towards Montsou, and as they came
nearer their silences grew longer. It was as
though they had never before been together. He
could find no argument to convince her, in spite
of the deep vexation which he felt at seeing her
go back to Chaval. His heart was breaking, he had
nothing better to offer than an existence of
wretchedness and flight, a night with no tomorrow
should a soldier's bullet go through his head.
Perhaps, after all, it was wiser to suffer what he
was suffering rather than risk a fresh suffering.
So he led her back to her lover's, with sunken
head, and made no protest when she stopped him on
the main road, at the corner of the Yards, twenty
metres from the Estaminet Piquette, saying:
"Don't come any farther. If he sees you it
will only make things worse."
Eleven o'clock struck at the church. The
estaminet was closed, but gleams came through the
cracks.
"Good-bye," she murmured.
She had given him her hand; he kept it, and she
had to draw it away painfully, with a slow effort,
to leave him. Without turning her head, she went
in through the little latched door. But he did
not turn away, standing at the same place with his
eyes on the house, anxious as to what was passing
within. He listened, trembling lest he should
hear the cries of a beaten woman. The house
remained black and silent; he only saw a light
appear at a first-floor window, and as this window
opened, and he recognized the thin shadow that was
leaning over the road, he came near.
Catherine then whispered very low:
"He's not come back. I'm going to bed.
Please go away."
Étienne went off. The thaw was increasing;
a regular shower was falling from the roofs, a
moist sweat flowed down the walls, the palings,
the whole confused mass of this industrial
district lost in night. At first he turned
towards Réquillart, sick with fatigue and
sadness, having no other desire except to
disappear under the earth and to be annihilated
there. Then the idea of the Voreux occurred to
him again. He thought of the Belgian workmen who
were going down, of his mates at the settlement,
exasperated against the soldiers and resolved not
to tolerate strangers in their pit. And he passed
again along the canal through the puddles of
melted snow.
As he stood once more near the pit-bank the moon
was shining brightly. He raised his eyes and
gazed at the sky. The clouds were galloping by,
whipped on by the strong wind which was blowing up
there; but they were growing white, and ravelling
out thinly with the misty transparency of troubled
water over the moon's face. They succeeded each
other so rapidly that the moon, veiled at moments,
constantly reappeared in limpid clearness.
With gaze full of this pure brightness,
Étienne was lowering his head, when a
spectacle on the summit of the pit-bank attracted
his attention. The sentinel, stiffened by cold,
was walking up and down, taking twenty-five paces
towards Marchiennes, and then returning towards
Montsou. The white glitter of his bayonet could
be seen above his black silhouette, which stood
out clearly against the pale sky. But what
interested the young man, behind the cabin where
Bonnemort used to take shelter on tempestuous
nights, was a moving shadow--a crouching beast in
ambush--which he immediately recognized as
Jeanlin, with his long flexible spine like a
marten's. The sentinel could not see him. That
brigand of a child was certainly preparing some
practical joke, for he was still furious against
the soldiers, and asking when they were going to
be freed from these murderers who had been sent
here with guns to kill people.
For a moment Étienne thought of calling him
to prevent the execution of some stupid trick.
The moon was hidden. He had seen him draw himself
up ready to spring; but the moon reappeared, and
the child remained crouching. At every turn the
sentinel came as far as the cabin, then turned his
back and walked in the opposite direction. And
suddenly, as a cloud threw its shadow, Jeanlin
leapt on to the soldier's shoulders with the great
bound of a wild cat, and gripping him with his
claws buried his large open knife in his throat.
The horse-hair collar resisted; he had to apply
both hands to the handle and hang on with all the
weight of his body. He had often bled fowls which
he had found behind farms. It was so rapid that
there was only a stifled cry in the night, while
the musket fell with the sound of old iron.
Already the moon was shining again.
Motionless with stupor, Étienne was still
gazing. A shout had been choked in his chest.
Above, the pit-bank was vacant; no shadow was any
longer visible against the wild flight of clouds.
He ran up and found Jeanlin on all fours before
the corpse, which was lying back with extended
arms. Beneath the limpid light the red trousers
and grey overcoat contrasted harshly with the
snow. Not a drop of blood had flowed, the knife
was still in the throat up to the handle. With a
furious, unreasoning blow of the fist he knocked
the child down beside the body.
"What have you done that for?" he
stammered wildly. Jeanlin picked himself up and
rested on his hands, with a feline movement of his
thin spine; his large ears, his green eyes, his
prominent jaws were quivering and aflame with the
shock of his deadly blow.
"By God! why have you done this?"
"I don't know; I wanted to."
He persisted in this reply. For three days he had
wanted to. It tormented him, it made his head
ache behind his ears, because he thought about it
so much. Need one be so particular with these
damned soldiers who were worrying the colliers in
their own homes? Of the violent speeches he had
heard in the forest, the cries of destruction and
death shouted among the pits, five or six words
had remained with him, and these he repeated like
a street urchin playing at revolution. And he
knew no more; no one had urged him on, it had come
to him of itself, just as the desire to steal
onions from a field came to him.
Startled at this obscure growth of crime in the
recesses of this childish brain, Étienne
again pushed him away with a kick, like an
unconscious animal. He trembled lest the guard at
the Voreux had heard the sentinel's stifled cry,
and looked towards the pit every time the moon was
uncovered. But nothing stirred, and he bent down,
felt the hands that were gradually becoming icy,
and listened to the heart, which had stopped
beneath the overcoat. Only the bone handle of the
knife could be seen with the motto on it, the
simple word "Amour," 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 deep pity came over him in front of
this fair gentle face, marked with freckles. The
blue eyes, wide open, were gazing at the sky with
that fixed gaze with which he had before seen him
searching the horizon for the country of his
birth. Where was it, that Plogof which had
appeared to him beneath the dazzling sun? Over
there, over there! The sea was moaning afar on
this tempestuous night. That wind passing above
had perhaps swept over the moors. Two women
perhaps were standing there, the mother and the
sister, clutching their wind-blown coifs, gazing
as if they could see what was now happening to the
little fellow through the leagues which separated
them. They would always wait for him now. What
an abominable thing it is for poor devils to kill
each other for the sake of the rich!
But this corpse had to be disposed of.
Étienne at first thought of throwing it
into the canal, but was deterred from this by the
certainty that it would be found there. His
anxiety became extreme, every minute was of
importance; what decision should he take? He had
a sudden inspiration: if he could carry the body
as far as Réquillart, he would be able to
bury it there for ever.
"Come here," he said to Jeanlin.
The child was suspicious.
"No, you want to beat me. And then I have
business. Good night."
In fact, he had given a rendezvous to
Bébert and Lydie in a hiding-place, a hole
arranged under the wood supply at the Voreux. It
had been arranged to sleep out, so as to be there
if the Belgians' bones were to be broken by
stoning when they went down the pit.
"Listen!" repeated Étienne.
"Come here, or I shall call the soldiers, who
will cut your head off."
And as Jeanlin was making up his mind, he rolled
his handkerchief, and bound the soldier's neck
tightly, without drawing out the knife, so as to
prevent the blood from flowing. The snow was
melting; on the soil there was neither a red patch
nor the footmarks of a struggle.
"Take the legs!"
Jeanlin took the legs, while Étienne seized
the shoulders, after having fastened the gun
behind his back, and then they both slowly
descended the pit-bank, trying to avoid rolling
any rocks down. Fortunately the moon was hidden.
But as they passed along the canal it reappeared
brightly, and it was a miracle that the guard did
not see them. Silently they hastened on, hindered
by the swinging of the corpse, and obliged to
place it on the ground every hundred metres. At
the corner of the Réquillart lane they
heard a sound which froze them with terror, and
they only had time to hide behind a wall to avoid
a patrol. Farther on, a man came across them, but
he was drunk, and moved away abusing them. At
last they reached the old pit, bathed in
perspiration, and so exhausted that their teeth
were chattering.
Étienne had guessed that it would not be
easy to get the soldier down the ladder shaft. It
was an awful task. First of all Jeanlin, standing
above, had to let the body slide down, while
Étienne, hanging on to the bushes, had to
accompany it to enable it to pass the first two
ladders where the rungs were broken. Afterwards,
at every ladder, he had to perform the same
manoeuvre over again, going down first, then
receiving the body in his arms; and he had thus,
down thirty ladders, two hundred and ten metres,
to feel it constantly falling over him. The gun
scraped his spine; he had not allowed the child to
go for the candle-end, which he preserved
avariciously. What was the use? The light would
only embarrass them in this narrow tube. When
they arrived at the pit-eye, however, out of
breath, he sent the youngster for the candle. He
then sat down and waited for him in the darkness,
near the body, with heart beating violently. As
soon as Jeanlin reappeared with the light,
Étienne consulted with him, for the child
had explored these old workings, even to the
cracks through which men could not pass. They set
out again, dragging the dead body for nearly a
kilometre, through a maze of ruinous galleries.
At last the roof became low, and they found
themselves kneeling beneath a sandy rock supported
by half-broken planks. It was a sort of long
chest in which they laid the little soldier as in
a coffin; they placed his gun by his side; then
with vigorous blows of their heels they broke the
timber at the risk of being buried themselves.
Immediately the rock gave way, and they scarcely
had time to crawl back on their elbows and knees.
When Étienne returned, seized by the desire
to look once more, the roof was still falling in,
slowly crushing the body beneath its enormous
weight. And then there was nothing more left,
nothing but the vast mass of the earth.
Jeanlin, having returned to his own corner, his
little cavern of villainy, was stretching himself
out on the hay, overcome by weariness, and
murmuring:
"Heighho! the brats must wait for me; I'm
going to have an hour's sleep."
Étienne had blown out the candle, of which
there was only a small end left. He also was worn
out, but he was not sleepy; painful nightmare
thoughts were beating like hammers in his skull.
Only one at last remained, torturing him and
fatiguing him with a question to which he could
not reply: Why had he not struck Chaval when he
held him beneath the knife? and why had this
child just killed a soldier whose very name he did
not know? It shook his revolutionary beliefs, the
courage to kill, the right to kill. Was he, then,
a coward? In the hay the child had begun snoring,
the snoring of a drunken man, as if he were
sleeping off the intoxication of his murder.
Étienne was disgusted and irritated; it
hurt him to know that the boy was there and to
hear him. Suddenly he started, a breath of fear
passed over his face. A light rustling, a sob,
seemed to him to have come out of the depths of
the earth. The image of the little soldier, lying
over there with his gun beneath the rocks, froze
his back and made his hair stand up. It was
idiotic, the whole mine seemed to be filled with
voices; he had to light the candle again, and only
grew calm on seeing the emptiness of the galleries
by this pale light.
For another quarter of an hour he reflected, still
absorbed in the same struggle, his eyes fixed on
the burning wick. But there was a spluttering,
the wick was going out, and everything fell back
into darkness. He shuddered again; he could have
boxed Jeanlin's ears, to keep him from snoring so
loudly. The neighbourhood of the child became so
unbearable that he escaped, tormented by the need
for fresh air, hastening through the galleries and
up the passage, as though he could hear a shadow,
panting, at his heels.
Up above, in the midst of the ruins of
Réquillart, Étienne was at last able
to breathe freely. Since he dared not kill, it
was for him to die; and this idea of death, which
had already touched him, came again and fixed
itself in his head, as a last hope. To die
bravely, to die for the revolution, that would end
everything, would settle his account, good or bad,
and prevent him from thinking more. If the men
attacked the Borains, he would be in the first
rank, and would have a good chance of getting a
bad blow. It was with firmer step that he
returned to prowl around the Voreux. Two o'clock
struck, and the loud noise of voices was coming
from the captains' room, where the guards who
watched over the pit were posted. The
disappearance of the sentinel had overcome the
guards with surprise; they had gone to arouse the
captain, and after a careful examination of the
place, they concluded that it must be a case of
desertion. Hiding in the shade, Étienne
recollected this republican captain of whom the
little soldier had spoken. Who knows if he might
not be persuaded to pass over to the people's
side! The troop would raise their rifles, and
that would be the signal for a massacre of the
bourgeois. A new dream took possession of him; he
thought no more of dying, but remained for hours
with his feet in the mud, and a drizzle from the
thaw falling on his shoulders, filled by the
feverish hope that victory was still possible.
Up to five o'clock he watched for the Borains.
Then he perceived that the Company had cunningly
arranged that they should sleep at the Voreux.
The descent had begun, and the few strikers from
the Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement who had been
posted as scouts had not yet warned their mates.
It was he who told them of the trick, and they set
out running, while he waited behind the pit-bank,
on the towing-path. Six o'clock struck, and the
earthy sky was growing pale and lighting up with a
reddish dawn, when the Abbé Ranvier came
along a path, holding up his cassock above his
thin legs. Every Monday he went to say an early
mass at a convent chapel on the other side of the
pit.
"Good morning, my friend," he shouted in
a loud voice, after staring at the young man with
his flaming eyes.
But Étienne did not reply. Far away
between the Voreux platforms he had just seen a
woman pass, and he rushed forward anxiously, for
he thought he recognized Catherine. Since
midnight, Catherine had been walking about the
thawing roads. Chaval, on coming back and finding
her in bed, had knocked her out with a blow. He
shouted to her to go at once by the door if she
did not wish to go by the window; and scarcely
dressed, in tears, and bruised by kicks in her
legs, she had been obliged to go down, pushed
outside by a final thrust. This sudden separation
dazed her, and she sat down on a stone, looking up
at the house, still expecting that he would call
her back. It was not possible; he would surely
look for her and tell her to come back when he saw
her thus shivering and abandoned, with no one to
take her in.
At the end of two hours she made up her mind,
dying of cold and as motionless as a dog thrown
into the street. She left Montsou, then retraced
her steps, but dared neither to call from the
pathway nor to knock at the door. At last she
went off by the main road to the right with the
idea of going to the settlement, to her parents'
house. But when she reached it she was seized by
such shame that she rushed away along the gardens
for fear of being recognized by someone, in spite
of the heavy sleep which weighed on all eyes
behind the closed shutters. And after that she
wandered about, frightened at the slightest noise,
trembling lest she should be seized and led away
as a strumpet to that house at Marchiennes, the
threat of which had haunted her like nightmare for
months. Twice she stumbled against the Voreux,
but terrified at the loud voices of the guard, she
ran away out of breath, looking behind her to see
if she was being pursued. The Réquillart
lane was always full of drunken men; she went back
to it, however, with the vague hope of meeting
there him she had repelled a few hours earlier.
Chaval had to go down that morning, and this
thought brought Catherine again towards the pit,
though she felt that it would be useless to speak
to him: all was over between them. There was no
work going on at Jean-Bart, and he had sworn to
kill her if she worked again at the Voreux, where
he feared that she would compromise him, So what
was to be done?--to go elsewhere, to die of
hunger, to yield beneath the blows of every man
who might pass? She dragged herself along,
tottering amid the ruts, with aching legs and mud
up to her spine. The thaw had now filled the
streets with a flood of mire. She waded through
it, still walking, not daring to look for a stone
to sit on.
Day appeared. Catherine had just recognized the
back of Chaval, who was cautiously going round the
pit-bank, when she noticed Lydie and Bébert
putting their noses out of their hiding-place
beneath the wood supply. They had passed the
night there in ambush, without going home, since
Jeanlin's order was to await him; and while this
latter was sleeping off the drunkenness of his
murder at Réquillart, the two children were
lying in each other's arms to keep warm. The wind
blew between the planks of chestnut and oak, and
they rolled themselves up as in some wood-cutter's
abandoned hut. Lydie did not dare to speak aloud
the sufferings of a small beaten woman, any more
than Bébert found courage to complain of
the captain's blows which made his cheeks swell;
but the captain was really abusing his power,
risking their bones in mad marauding expeditions
while refusing to share the booty. Their hearts
rose in revolt, and they had at last embraced each
other in spite of his orders, careless of that box
of the ears from the invisible with which he had
threatened them. It never came, so they went on
kissing each other softly, with no idea of
anything else, putting into that caress the
passion they had long struggled against--the whole
of their martyred and tender natures. All night
through they had thus kept each other warm, so
happy, at the bottom of this secret hole, that
they could not remember that they had ever been so
happy before--not even on St. Barbara's day, when
they had eaten fritters and drunk wine.
The sudden sound of a bugle made Catherine start.
She raised herself, and saw the Voreux guards
taking up their arms. Étienne arrived
running; Bébert and Lydie jumped out of
their hiding-place with a. leap. And over there,
beneath the growing daylight, a band of men and
women were coming from the settlement,
gesticulating wildly with anger.