Germinal (19 page)

As she reached the Company's yards, with its vast array of workshops and warehouses, La Maheude thought it best to take Henri and Lénore each by the hand, one on her left and one on her right. Ahead lay the large house where M. Hennebeau, the manager, lived, a sort of vast chalet set back from the road behind an iron gate and a garden with some scraggy-looking trees. At that moment a carriage had drawn up outside the front door bearing a lady in a fur coat and a gentleman who wore a medal ribbon in his buttonhole. They were evidently visitors from Paris who had just arrived at Marchiennes station, for Mme Hennebeau, who had now appeared in the half-light of the hallway, gave a cry of joyful surprise.

‘Come on, you two lazybones, keep going!' La Maheude scolded, dragging the two children forward as they floundered in the mud.

She was nearing Maigrat's shop and beginning to feel very apprehensive. Maigrat lived right next to M. Hennebeau, with just a wall separating his small house from the manager's residence; and he ran a wholesale store, a long building which
opened on to the road like a shop but without the shop-front. He stocked everything, groceries, cold meats, fruit, and sold anything from bread and beer to pots and pans. Having previously worked as a supervisor at Le Voreux, he had started out with a modest little shop; then, with some assistance from his former bosses, his turnover had grown and gradually driven the retailers of Montsou out of business. He was able to bring a whole range of goods under one roof, and the substantial customer base in the mining villages allowed him to cut prices and extend more generous credit. But he remained in the Company's pocket, for they had built his little house and shop for him.

‘It's me again, Monsieur Maigrat,' La Maheude said humbly, for he happened at that moment to be standing at his door.

He looked at her and made no reply. He was a fat man, with a cold, polite manner, and he prided himself on never going back on a decision.

‘Please, you can't send me away again like you did yesterday. We've simply got to have bread to eat between now and Saturday…Yes, I know, we've owed you sixty francs for the past two years.'

She explained the situation in short, halting sentences. The debt was a long-standing one, which they had incurred during the last strike. Twenty times or more they had promised to pay it off, but it was impossible, they simply could not manage to spare the forty sous to give him every fortnight. Added to which she'd had a spot of bad luck the day before yesterday; she'd had to pay a cobbler twenty francs because he'd threatened to call the bailiffs in. And that was why they hadn't a penny to their name at the minute. Otherwise they could have managed till Saturday just the same as everyone else.

Maigrat stood there, arms crossed above his bulging paunch, and shook his head each time she pleaded:

‘Just two loaves, Monsieur Maigrat. I'm a reasonable woman, I'm not asking for coffee or anything…Just two three-pound loaves a day.'

‘No!' he shouted finally, at the top of his voice.

His wife had appeared on the scene, a scrawny creature who
spent her days bent over the ledger not so much as daring to lift her head. She darted away, alarmed by the sight of this unfortunate woman turning towards her with a desperate, beseeching look in her eyes. People said that she regularly vacated the marital bed when the putters came shopping. Indeed it was common knowledge: when a miner needed more credit, he had only to send round his daughter or his wife, no matter whether they were pretty or plain, just as long as they were obliging.

La Maheude, who was still staring imploringly at Maigrat, felt embarrassed to be subjected to the pale gleam of his little eyes as they undressed her. It made her angry. Fair enough, perhaps, when she was still young, before she'd had seven children, but now…And she left, dragging Lénore and Henri away from the walnut shells they were collecting from the gutter where they'd been thrown.

‘This will bring you bad luck, Monsieur Maigrat. Just you wait and see.'

Now her only chance was the bourgeois at La Piolaine. If they didn't part with a hundred sous, then she and her family might as well all lie down and die. She had turned left on to the track that led to Joiselle. The Board's office stood here, at the corner of the road, a veritable palace of brick where the bigwigs from Paris all came to hold their grand dinners every autumn, together with princes and generals and various people in the government. As she walked along she was already mentally spending the hundred sous: first bread, then some coffee; after that, a quarter kilo of butter, and a bushel of potatoes for the morning soup and the vegetable stew in the evening; and lastly perhaps a little brawn, because Maheu needed his meat.

The priest at Montsou, Father Joire, was passing by, holding up his cassock with the fastidiousness of some large and well-nourished cat that does not wish to get itself wet. He was a gentle sort and affected to take no interest in anything in the hope that he might anger neither the workers nor their bosses.

‘Good-morning, Father.'

He kept on walking, smiling at the children and leaving her stranded in the middle of the road. She had no religion, but she
had momentarily imagined that this priest might be about to give her something.

And off they went again, through the black, sticky mud. They still had two kilometres to go, and the little ones, rather put out and no longer finding this fun, needed more and more to be dragged. To the right and left of the road followed a succession of yet more derelict patches of waste ground surrounded by rotting fences and yet more smoke-stained factory buildings bristling with tall chimneys. When they reached open country, the vast, flat earth spread out before them, an ocean of brown, upturned soil stretching away to the purple line of the Vandame forest on the horizon and without even a single tree to suggest the presence of a mast upon its waves.

‘Mummy, Mummy, carry me.'

And she carried them each in turn. There were puddles in the pot-holed road, and she had to hitch up her skirt so as not to be all dirty when they arrived. Three times she nearly fell, the damned cobblestones were so slippery. And when they finally came out at the front steps of the house, two enormous dogs rushed at them, barking so loudly that the little ones started screaming with fright. The coachman had to use his whip.

‘Leave your clogs here and come in,' said Honorine.

In the dining-room mother and children stood stock-still, dazed by the sudden warmth and feeling very uncomfortable at being stared at by this old gentleman and this old lady stretched out in their armchairs.

‘My child,' said the latter, ‘it's time for your little deed.'

The Grégoires delegated the distribution of alms to Cécile. It was their idea of giving her a good education. One had to be charitable, they said, their house was God's house. Moreover, they flattered themselves that they were intelligent about their charity, being forever concerned that they should not be duped and encourage evil ways. Hence they never gave money, never! Not so much as ten sous, not even two sous, because, of course, as everyone knew, the moment you gave the poor so much as two sous, they drank them. And so their alms were always given in kind, and particularly in the form of warm clothing, which they distributed to destitute children during the winter.

‘Oh, the poor little darlings!' cried Cécile. ‘Just look how pale they are after their long walk in the cold!…Honorine, quick, go and fetch the parcel. It's in my wardrobe.'

The servants, too, looked at these poor wretches with that compassion tinged with guilt which is felt by those who know where their next meal is coming from. While the chambermaid went upstairs, the cook, not thinking, set the remainder of the brioche down on the table and stood there aimlessly.

‘As it happens,' Cécile said, ‘I've still got two wool dresses and some scarves. Oh, the little darlings will be lovely and warm in them, you'll see.'

La Maheude found her tongue at last and stammered:

‘Thank you very much, Mademoiselle…You are all very kind…'

Her eyes had filled with tears. She thought the five-franc piece was now secure, and her only worry was how she should ask for it if it wasn't offered. The maid had still not returned and there was a moment of embarrassed silence. The little ones clung to their mother's skirts and gazed wide-eyed at the brioche.

‘Are these your only two?' asked Mme Grégoire, for something to say.

‘Oh no, Madame. I have seven.'

M. Grégoire, who had gone back to reading his newspaper, gave an indignant start:

‘Seven children? But whatever for, in God's name?' ‘It's unwise,' the old lady said softly.

La Maheude gestured vaguely by way of apology. What could you do? It wasn't something you thought about, a child just came along, naturally. And then when it was grown, it brought in some money and generally kept things going. In their house, for example, they could have managed if it weren't for Grandpa who was getting all stiff and for the fact that out of the whole bunch of them only her eldest daughter and two of her sons were yet old enough to work down the mine. But you still had to feed the little ones all the same, even though they didn't do anything.

‘So,' Mme Grégoire continued, ‘have you all been working in the mine for long?'

La Maheude's wan face lit up in a grin:

‘Oh, yes, indeed we have…Myself, I worked down the mine till I was twenty. When I had my second, the doctor said it would be the death of me, because apparently it was doing something nasty to my bones. Anyway, that's when I got married, and then there was enough for me to do round the house…But on my husband's side now…They've been working down the mine since for ever. As far back as my grandfather's grandfather…well, no one knows exactly, but since the very start anyway, when they began digging for coal over at Réquillart.'

M. Grégoire gazed pensively at this woman and her pitiful children, at their waxen flesh and their colourless hair, at the process of degeneration evident in their stunted growth, at the anaemia that was gradually eating away at them, at the baleful ugliness of the starving. There was another silence, and all that could be heard was the sound of the coal burning and releasing the occasional spurt of gas. The moist, warm air in the room was heavy with the cosiness of domestic ease that brings peaceful slumber to contented bourgeois hearths.

‘What can she be doing?' cried Cécile impatiently. ‘Mélanie, do go up and tell her that the parcel is at the bottom of the wardrobe, on the left.'

Meanwhile M. Grégoire voiced aloud the conclusions to which he had been brought by the sight of these hungry people.

‘Life can be hard, it is very true; but, my good woman, it must be said that the workers are not always sensible…I mean, for example, instead of putting a few sous to one side the way countryfolk do, the miners just drink and run up debts, so that in the end there's nothing left for them to feed their families on.'

‘Monsieur is quite right,' La Maheude replied evenly. ‘We don't always follow the straight and narrow. That's what I keep telling those good-for-nothings when they start complaining…But I'm one of the lucky ones, my husband doesn't drink. Mind you, sometimes, when there's a party on a Sunday night, he'll have a few too many; but it never goes any further than that. And what's so good about him is that before we married he used to drink like a bloody fish, if you'll pardon the expression
…And yet, you know, his being sensible like that doesn't really get us any further. There are days, like today for instance, when you could turn out every drawer in our house and you wouldn't find a single coin.'

She wanted to get them thinking about the five-franc piece, and she continued in her flat monotone, explaining to them how they had come to be in such serious debt, how it had all begun, in small stages at first, and then grown to the point where it consumed everything they had. They'd make their regular repayments every fortnight, but then one day they'd find themselves behind with the instalments, and that was it, they never managed to catch up again. The gap got wider and wider, and then the men got fed up working when it didn't even allow them to pay off their debts. Stuff that for a lark, they'd say! If things went on like this, they'd never be clear till the day they died. Anyway, people needed to see the whole picture: a collier needed his beer simply to clear the soot from his throat. That was how it started, and then when things went badly he'd never be out of the bar. So perhaps, not that anyone was to blame, mind, but all the same, perhaps the workers were just not paid enough.

‘But,' said Mme Grégoire, ‘I thought the Company paid for your rent and heating.'

La Maheude cast a sideways glance at the coal blazing in the fireplace.

‘Oh, yes, they give us coal all right. It's not wonderful, but at least it burns…As for the rent, it's only six francs a month, which may not seem very much but sometimes it's mighty hard to find…Like today, for example, you could search me till the cows come home but you wouldn't find a single sou on me. Where there's nothing, there's nothing.'

The lady and gentleman fell silent, and as they reclined comfortably in their armchairs they began to find this display of poverty increasingly tiresome and upsetting. Afraid that she had offended them, La Maheude added with the calm and equitable air of a practical woman:

‘Not that I'm complaining, of course. That's how things are, one's got to make the best of it. Especially as even if we were to try and do something about it, we probably wouldn't manage
to change anything anyway…The wisest thing in the end, don't you think, Monsieur, Madame, is to try and go about your business honestly and accept the place where the good Lord has put you.'

M. Grégoire agreed heartily.

‘With such sentiments as those, my good woman, one can rise above misfortune.'