Germinal (28 page)

‘Quite right, quite right,' Maheu said slowly. ‘You'd be better off with a family.'

Just then a shout went up, Levaque had knocked over all the skittles with one shot. Amid the uproar Mouque and Bonnemort stood staring at the ground, deep in appreciative silence. The general delight at the shot gave rise to various jokes, especially when the participants caught sight of La Mouquette's beaming face looking over the hedge. Having been wandering about outside for the past hour, she had finally plucked up the courage to approach when she heard the laughter.

‘What, all on your own?' shouted Levaque. ‘Where have all your boyfriends gone, then?'

‘I've chucked them all,' she replied with brazen cheerfulness. ‘And I'm looking for a new one.'

Everyone volunteered and chatted her up with improper suggestions. She shook her head and laughed even louder, pretending coyly to resist. In any case her father was present
throughout this exchange of banter, even if he was still gazing at the fallen skittles.

‘Go on with you!' Levaque persisted, glancing at Étienne, ‘We all know who you're after, my girl!…But you'll have to take him by force.'

Étienne now joined in the fun. It was indeed him that the putter had her eye on. But he said no; she was good fun, all right, but he didn't fancy her in the slightest. For a few minutes longer she stood there by the hedge, staring at him with her big eyes; then slowly she departed, with a serious expression on her face all of a sudden as though she were finding the hot sunshine too much to bear.

Étienne had now resumed his conversation with Maheu, lowering his voice and explaining to him at length about how the Montsou colliers needed to set up a provident fund.

‘The Company says it wouldn't stop us,' he insisted, ‘so what is there to be afraid of? All we've got is the pension they give us, and since we don't contribute to it, they can dish them out just as they feel like it. Well, their grace and favour's all very fine, but it would be sensible to back it up it with a mutual aid association which we could at least count on in cases of urgent need.'

He went into the details and explained how it would be organized, promising to do all the hard work himself.

‘Well, all right, I'm in favour,' Maheu said at length, now persuaded. ‘But it's the others…You'll have to convince the others.'

Levaque had won, and they abandoned the skittles to down their beer. But Maheu refused a second: later maybe, the day was still young. He had just remembered Pierron. Where could he be? At Lenfant's bar in all likelihood. Having persuaded Étienne and Levaque to join him, the three of them set off for Montsou just as a new group of people came and took over the skittle-alley at the Advantage.

As they made their way along the road, they had to call in at Casimir's bar first and then at the Progress. Comrades hailed them through the open doors: how could they say no! Each stop meant having a beer, two if they returned the round. They would stay for ten minutes, exchange a few words, and then begin
again further on, always perfectly well behaved, knowing just how much beer they could take and only sorry that they had to piss it out as fast they took it in, as clear as the water from a spring. At Lenfant's they ran straight into Pierron, who was just finishing his second beer and who then drank a third rather than refuse to have one with them. Naturally they had one themselves. There were four of them now, and they set off to see if Zacharie might perhaps be at Tison's. The place was empty, so they ordered a beer and waited to see if he would turn up. Next they thought of the Saint-Éloi, where Richomme the deputy bought them a round, and then they drifted on from bar to bar with no particular aim in view other than to have a bit of a wander.

‘Let's go to the Volcano!' Levaque said suddenly, now thoroughly well oiled.

The others laughed, unsure whether to agree, but then followed their comrade through the growing crowds who had come for the
ducasse
. In the long, narrow room at the Volcano, on a platform of wooden planks that had been erected at the far end, five singers – the worst that the prostitute population of Lille could provide – were busy parading themselves, monstrously grotesque in their gestures and their
décolletage
; and the customers paid ten sous whenever they fancied having one of them behind the platform. They were mostly putter lads and banksmen, but there were pit-boys of fourteen too; in short the entire youth of the pits, and all of them drinking more gin than beer. A few older miners tried their luck also, these being the local womanizers whose home life was not quite what it might be.

Once their party was seated round a small table, Étienne buttonholed Levaque to explain his idea about the provident fund. He had all the proselytizing zeal of the newly converted who believe they are on a mission.

‘Each member could easily afford to contribute twenty sous a month,' he repeated. ‘Once all those twenty sous had mounted up over four or five years, we'd have a sizeable sum; and when you've got money, you can do anything, can't you? Whatever the circumstances…Eh? What do you say?'

‘Well, I've nothing against the idea,' Levaque replied absently. ‘We must talk about it again some time.'

He had his eyes on an enormous blonde girl, and when Maheu and Pierron finished their beers and suggested they leave rather than wait for the next song, he insisted on remaining behind.

Étienne followed them outside, where he found La Mouquette; she appeared to be following them. She was always there watching him with her big, staring eyes and laughing in her good-natured way as though to say: ‘Do you want to?' Étienne made a joke of it and shrugged, whereupon she gestured angrily and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Where's Chaval?' asked Pierron.

‘That's a point,' Maheu replied. ‘He's sure to be at Piquette's…Let's go and see.'

But as the three of them arrived at Piquette's, there was a fight going on at the door and they stopped. Zacharie was brandishing his fist at a stocky, placid-looking fellow, a Walloon
³
nailer, while Chaval stood watching with his hands in his pockets.

‘Look, there's Chaval,' Maheu said. ‘He's with Catherine.'

For five long hours Maheu's daughter and her lover had been strolling about the fair. All the way into Montsou, along the broad street that winds its way down between low, brightly painted houses, there had been a constant flow of people, streaming along in the sunshine like a colony of ants, tiny specks in the vastness of the bare and empty plain. The ubiquitous black mud had dried, and a cloud of black dust rose into the air where it was blown along like a storm-cloud. On each side of the road the bars were crammed with people, and the tables spilled out on to the pavement where there was a double row of stalls, a kind of open-air bazaar selling scarves and mirrors for the girls, knives and caps for the lads, as well as various sweet things such as biscuits and sugared almonds. Archery was going on in front of the church, and people were playing bowls opposite the Company yards. At the corner of the road to Joiselle, beside the Board of Directors' office, a piece of ground had been fenced off with planks, and people were crowding round watching a cockfight between two large, red cockerels with iron spurs on their legs and bloody gashes in their necks. Further on,
at Maigrat's, there was billiards, with aprons and trousers for prizes. And everywhere there were long silences as the throng quietly drank and guzzled in a mute orgy of indigestion. Quantity upon quantity of beer and chips was gradually consumed in the sweltering heat, itself made hotter still by all the frying-pans sizzling in the open air.

Chaval bought Catherine a mirror for nineteen sous and a scarf for three francs. As they went up and down the rows they kept bumping into Mouque and Bonnemort, who had come to see the fair and were slowly trudging through it, side by side, deep in thought. But another chance encounter made them cross, as they caught sight of Jeanlin inciting Bébert and Lydie to steal some bottles of gin from a temporary bar which had been set up on the edge of some waste ground. All Catherine could do was give her brother a clout, for Lydie had already fled clutching a bottle. Those little devils would end up in prison one day.

Then they came to the Severed Head, and Chaval thought he would take Catherine in to watch a songbird competition which had been advertised on the door for the past week. Fifteen nailers had turned up from the nail-works at Marchiennes, each with a dozen cages; and these little cages, each one covered so that the sightless bird inside remained quite still, were already in place, hanging from a fence in the yard. The object was to see which bird would repeat its song the greatest number of times in one hour. Each nailer would stand next to his own cages, recording the tally on a slate and keeping an eye on his neighbours just as they kept an eye on him. And then the birds began: the
chichouïeux
with their deeper note, the
batisecouics
with their high-pitched trill, all of them hesitant at first, venturing only a few snatches of song, then gradually getting each other going, increasing the tempo, and eventually becoming so carried away by the spirit of competition that some of them actually fell off their perch and died. The nailers would urge them on roughly, shouting at them in Walloon to keep singing, more, more, just one last little burst of song; while the spectators, a hundred or more of them, stood there in silence, riveted, surrounded by this infernal music of a hundred and eighty
finches all repeating the same song at different intervals. A
batisecouic
won first prize, which was a metal coffee-pot.

Catherine and Chaval were still there when Zacharie and Philomène arrived. They shook hands and stood around together. But suddenly Zacharie flew into a rage when he caught a nailer, who had come along with his comrades out of curiosity, pinching his sister in the thigh. Catherine went bright red and told him to be quiet, terrified at the prospect of a punch-up and all these nailers rounding on Chaval if he were to make an issue of them pinching her. She had felt the man's hand all right but thought it better not to say anything. But her lover simply sneered at him, and the four of them left; the matter seemed to be forgotten. Hardly had they arrived at Piquette's for another drink, however, than the nailer showed up again, quite unconcerned, laughing in their faces with an air of provocation. Zacharie, his family honour at stake, had promptly set upon the insolent man.

‘That's my sister, you bastard!…You wait and see if I don't bloody teach you some respect!'

People rushed to separate the two men, while Chaval, who had remained very calm, reacted as before:

‘Leave him be. This is my business. And as far as I'm concerned, he can go to hell!'

Maheu arrived with his group, and he tried to comfort Catherine and Philomène, who were already in tears. By now people were laughing, and the nailer had gone. Piquette's was Chaval's local, and so to help everyone forget about the incident he ordered a round. Étienne found himself clinking glasses with Catherine, and they all drank together, the father, the daughter and her lover, the son and his mistress, all politely saying: ‘Cheers everyone!' Then Pierron insisted on buying his round, and everyone seemed to be on the best of terms when Zacharie flew into a rage again on catching sight of his friend Mouquet. He shouted to him to come and help him sort that nailer out, as he put it.

‘I've got to get the bastard!…Here, Chaval, you and Catherine look after Philomène for me, will you? I'll be back.'

Now it was Maheu's turn to buy a round. After all, it wasn't
such a bad thing if the lad wanted to stick up for his sister. But Philomène, who had calmed down when she saw Mouquet arrive, just shook her head. You could be sure the buggers had gone off to the Volcano together.

Come the evening on
ducasse
days, everyone would end up at the Jolly Fellow. This dance-hall was run by Widow Desire, a stout matron of fifty who was as round as a barrel but still so full of energy that she had six lovers, one for each day of the week, she used to say, and all six at once on Sundays. She referred to the miners as her children in fond remembrance of the river of beer she had poured down them over the past thirty years; and she also liked to boast that no putter ever got pregnant without having first had a spot of slap and tickle at the Jolly Fellow. The place consisted of two rooms: the bar itself, where the counter and tables were, and then, on the same level but through a broad archway, the dance-hall. This was a huge room, with an area of wooden floor-boards in the middle surrounded by brick. The only decoration was provided by garlands of paper flowers strung from opposite corners of the ceiling and joined together in the middle by a wreath of matching flowers. Round the walls ran a line of gilt shields bearing the names of saints, like St Éloi, the patron saint of ironworkers, St Crispin, the patron saint of cobblers, St Barbe, the patron saint of miners, in fact the whole calendar of saints celebrated by tradesmen's guilds. The ceiling was so low that the three musicians sitting on the stage, itself no bigger than a pulpit, banged their heads on it. To light the room in the evenings four paraffin lamps were hung, one in each corner.

That Sunday there was dancing from five o'clock onwards, when daylight was still streaming through the windows. But it was nearer seven by the time the rooms filled up with people. Outside a storm was gathering: the wind had got up and was stirring large clouds of black dust, which got into everybody's eyes and sizzled in the frying-pans. Maheu, Étienne and Pierron had come to the Jolly Fellow in search of somewhere to sit and found Chaval dancing with Catherine while Philomène stood watching on her own. Neither Levaque nor Zacharie had reappeared. Since there were no benches round the dance-floor,
Catherine came and sat at her father's table between dances. They called Philomène over, but she said she preferred to stand. The light was fading, the musicians were in full swing, and all that could be seen was a flurry of hips and busts and a general flailing of arms. There was a roar when the four lamps arrived, and suddenly everything was lit up, the red faces, the tumbling hair clinging to wet skin, the swirling skirts fanning the air with the pungent smell of sweating couples. Maheu drew Étienne's attention to La Mouquette, round and plump like a bladder of lard, who was gyrating wildly in the arms of a tall, thin banksman. She must have decided to make do with someone else.