Germinal (16 page)

But then a large man of thirty-eight appeared, with a round, clean-shaven face and an easy smile. This was Rasseneur, a one-time hewer who had been dismissed by the Company three years previously following a strike. He had been an excellent worker, and he was articulate, always taking the lead when it came to protesting and eventually ending up as the leader of the malcontents. His wife already ran a beer-shop, as did many miners' wives; and when he found himself out on his ear, he became a full-time landlord, scraped together some money, and set up in business directly opposite Le Voreux as an act of provocation towards the Company. The business was prospering now: his bar had become something of a meeting-place, and this allowed him to cash in on the anger he had been gradually inciting in the hearts of his erstwhile comrades.

‘This is the lad I took on this morning,' Maheu explained at once. ‘Is either of your rooms free? And could you let him have things on tick for the first fortnight?'

A sudden look of deep distrust passed over Rasseneur's broad features. He glanced at Étienne and replied, without even bothering to look sorry:

‘Both my rooms are taken. I can't help you.'

Étienne was expecting this refusal, but it hurt him all the same, and he was surprised suddenly to feel disappointed at the prospect of leaving. No matter. Leave he would, as soon as he had his thirty sous. The miner who had been drinking at another
table had now departed. Others came in, one by one, to clear the grime from their throats before setting off once more with the same rolling gait. It was like a mere ablution, bringing neither joy nor stimulus, only the mute satisfaction of a need.

‘So. Nothing to report, then?' Rasseneur inquired in a meaningful way as Maheu sipped what was left of his beer.

Maheu looked around him and, seeing only Étienne, said:

‘Only that there's been another bloody row…Yeah, about the timbering.'

He related what had happened. The blood had rushed to Rasseneur's face, which seemed to swell as burning excitement blazed in his eyes and cheeks.

‘Well, now! The minute they decide to cut the rate, they're sunk.'

The presence of Étienne made him uneasy. Nevertheless he continued, watching him out of the corner of his eye as he did so. He spoke obliquely, leaving certain things unsaid. Without naming them he talked about the manager, Monsieur Hennebeau, and his wife, and his nephew, young Négrel, and he said how things could not go on like this, how one fine morning the lid would blow off. The poverty and suffering had spread too far, and he alluded to all the factories that were closing down and all the workers that were being laid off. He'd been giving away over six pounds of bread a day for the past month. Only yesterday he'd heard that Monsieur Deneulin, a local mine-owner, doubted whether he could survive. What's more he'd just received a letter from Lille full of worrying news.

‘You know,' he muttered under his breath, ‘from that person you met here one evening.'

But he was interrupted. His wife now appeared, a tall, thin, intense woman with a long nose and purple cheeks. When it came to politics, she was much more radical than her husband.

‘You mean the letter from Pluchart,' she said. ‘Ah now, if he were in charge, we'd soon see some improvements round the place.'

Étienne had been listening for some time. He understood fully what was being said, and he was becoming increasingly excited by all this talk of poverty and revenge.

Hearing this name suddenly blurted out like that gave him a start.

‘I know Pluchart,' he said out loud, as though having not quite meant to.

All eyes were upon him, and so he was obliged to add:

‘Yes, I'm a mechanic, and he was my foreman at Lille…A very capable man. I often used to have chats with him.'

Rasseneur studied him again; his expression rapidly changed, and at once he became friendly. Eventually he said to his wife:

‘Maheu's brought along Monsieur here, who's one of his putters. He wondered if we had a room for him and could give him a fortnight's credit.'

The matter was then settled in a moment. One room was in fact free, the occupant had left that morning. Now thoroughly roused, Rasseneur warmed to his theme and kept saying that he was only asking the bosses for what was possible,
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that he wasn't like all the others who demanded things that were too difficult to achieve. His wife shrugged: they should insist on their rights, no more, no less.

‘Good night. I'm off,' Maheu broke in. ‘None of that's going to stop people working down the pit, and as long as they do there'll be those that die of it…Look at you, for example. You've been as fit as a fiddle ever since you left three years ago.'

‘It's true. I do feel a lot better,' declared Rasseneur complacently.

Étienne walked to the door to thank Maheu as he left; but the latter simply nodded silently, and the young man watched him trudge back up the road to the village. Mme Rasseneur was serving customers and asked him to wait a moment so that she could take him to his room where he could get cleaned up. Should he stay? He was having doubts again, a sinking feeling that made him look back fondly on the freedom and fresh air of the open road where the pain of hunger was mixed with the joy of being one's own boss. He felt as though he had already been living there for years, from the moment of his arrival on the spoil-heap in the middle of a howling gale to the hours spent underground lying flat on his belly in those black roads. He was loath to go down again: it was unjust and the work was too
hard, and his pride as a human being revolted at the thought of being treated like some animal that can be blinded and crushed.

As Étienne was debating what to do, his eyes wandered over the immense plain and gradually began to take in what they saw. He was surprised, he hadn't pictured a panorama like this when old Bonnemort had gestured towards it in the darkness. In front of him, certainly, he again saw Le Voreux, tucked away in a hollow with its buildings of brick and timber, its pitch-covered screening-shed, the headgear with its slate roof, the winding-house and the tall, pale-red chimney, all squatting there with a malevolent air. But the pit-yard spread out much further around the buildings than he had imagined, seemingly transformed into a pool of ink by the lapping waves of stockpiled coal. It was bristling with the tall trestles that carried the overhead rails, and at one end it was completely taken over by piles of timber, which lay there like the harvest from a forest newly razed to the ground. Over to the right, the view was obstructed by the spoil-heap, which looked like some colossal barricade placed there by giants. The oldest part of it was already covered in grass, while at the other end it was being eaten away by an internal fire, which had been smouldering for a year now and gave off a thick pall of smoke. Long rust-red streaks oozed like blood from its ghost-grey surface of sandstone and shale. Beyond it stretched the fields, endless fields of corn and beet, which were bare at this time of the year, and marshes covered in rough vegetation and punctuated with a few stunted willows, and then the distant meadows divided by thin rows of poplar. In the far distance, tiny patches of white indicated towns, Marchiennes to the north, Montsou to the south; while over to the east the forest of Vandame marked the edge of the horizon with the purple line of its denuded trees. And beneath the wan sky, in the dull light of a winter's afternoon, it seemed as if all the blackness of Le Voreux and its swirling coal-dust had settled on the plain, like powder on the trees, like sand on the roads, like seed upon the earth.

As Étienne continued to gaze, what surprised him most was a canal, which he had not seen during the night. Constructed out of the river Scarpe, this canal ran in a straight line from Le
Voreux to Marchiennes, a ribbon of matt silver some two leagues long. Like an avenue raised above the low-lying ground and lined with trees, it stretched away into the distance in an endless vista of green banks and pale water, of gliding barges and vermilion sterns. Next to the pit was a landing-stage where boats were moored ready to be filled directly from the tubs that ran along the overhead rails. There the canal took a sharp turn before cutting diagonally across the marshes; and this geometrically precise stretch of water seemed to represent the very soul of the empty plain, cutting across it like a major highway and bearing away its iron and coal.

Étienne's gaze travelled from the canal back up to the village, which had been built on a plateau, but he could make out only the red tiles of the roofs. Then it moved back down towards Le Voreux and came to rest at the bottom of the muddy slope, lingering on two enormous piles of bricks which had been cast and baked on site. Here a branch of the Company's railway line passed behind a fence and led into the pit. By now the last batch of stonemen would be going down. A solitary wagon being pushed by some workmen gave a piercing screech. But the darkness and the mystery had gone, and with them the inexplicable rumblings and the sudden flaring of unfamiliar stars. In the distance the tall blast-furnaces and the coke-ovens had been pale since dawn. All that remained from before was the ceaseless panting of the drainage-pump; but as he listened to the long, deep gasps of the ogre whose hunger could never be satisfied, this time he could see the grey steam rising.

Then, suddenly, Étienne made up his mind. Perhaps he imagined he'd caught another glimpse of Catherine's bright eyes, up there at the entry to the village. Or perhaps it was the wind of revolt beginning to blow from the direction of Le Voreux. He could not tell. He simply wanted to go down the mine again, to suffer and to struggle; and he thought angrily of those ‘people' Bonnemort had told him about, and of the squat and sated deity to whom ten thousand starving men and women daily offered up their flesh without ever knowing who or what this god might be.

The Grégoire property, La Piolaine, was to be found two kilometres east of Montsou, on the road to Joiselle. It was a tall, square house of no particular style, dating from the beginning of the previous century. Of the vast estates that had originally belonged to it only some thirty hectares remained, which were surrounded by walls and easy to maintain. The orchard and kitchen garden enjoyed especial renown, since their fruit and vegetables were celebrated as the finest in the region. For the rest, there was no parkland, but a little wood served in its stead. The avenue of old limes, a vault of foliage running three hundred metres from the gate to the front steps, was one of the sights on this bare and empty plain, where the number of large trees to be found between Marchiennes and Beaugnies was sufficiently small to be calculated exactly.

That morning the Grégoires had risen at eight o'clock. Generally they did not stir until one hour later, for they were devoted to sleep; but the storm during the night had left them too restive. After her husband had gone out at once to see if the high wind had caused any damage, Mme Grégoire had simply come down to the kitchen in her slippers and flannel dressing-gown. She was short and plump, and although she was already fifty-eight, she still had a big baby face; and beneath the dazzling whiteness of her hair she wore an expression of wide-eyed surprise.

‘Mélanie,' she said to the cook, ‘you might perhaps make that brioche this morning, since the dough is ready. Mademoiselle Cécile will not be up for another half-hour yet, and she could have some with her chocolate…It would be a nice surprise for her, don't you think?'

The cook, a thin, elderly woman who had been with them for thirty years, began to laugh.

‘Yes, indeed, that would be a lovely surprise for her…My stove's burning nicely, and the oven must be warm by now. And Honorine can give me a hand.'

Honorine was a girl of twenty whom they had taken in as a child and brought up, and she now worked as a housemaid.
Apart from these two women, the only other servants were the coachman Francis, who did the heavy work, and a gardener and his wife, who looked after the flowers, the fruit and vegetables, and the farmyard animals. And since the household was run on patriarchal lines in a spirit of gentle informality, this small community lived together on the best of terms.

Mme Grégoire, who had planned the brioche surprise while she was lying in bed, now waited to see the dough placed in the oven. The kitchen was huge, and judging by its extreme cleanliness and the great battery of dishes, saucepans and utensils with which it was filled, it was evidently the most important room in the house. It smelled deliciously of good food. The shelves and cupboards were overflowing with provisions.

‘And make sure it's nice and golden brown, won't you?' Mme Grégoire reminded them as she departed into the dining-room.

Despite the presence of a central-heating system, which warmed the whole house, a coal fire was burning cheerfully in the grate. Otherwise there was no sign of luxury; just a large table, some chairs and a mahogany sideboard. Two deep armchairs alone bore witness to a desire for comfort and to long hours of tranquil digestion. They never used the drawing-room and preferred to sit here surrounded by cosy domesticity.

M. Grégoire had just returned. He was wearing his thick, fustian jacket, and he looked pink himself for his sixty years, with his strong features and an honest, kindly face wreathed in curls of snowy white hair. He had spoken to the coachman and the gardener; no major damage to report, just one chimney-pot down. Every morning he liked to cast an eye over La Piolaine, which was not large enough to give much cause for concern and yet afforded him all the pleasures of ownership.

‘What's the matter with Cécile?' he inquired. ‘Isn't she getting up today?'

‘I really don't know,' his wife replied. ‘I did think I heard her moving about.'

The table had been laid with three bowls on the white tablecloth. Honorine was sent to see what had become of Mademoiselle. But she came back down almost at once, stifling her giggles and lowering her voice as if she were still up in the bedroom.