Germinal (42 page)

‘You'd better come this way,' she continued. ‘There's a bloody gendarme watching the yard. But don't worry, you can get out into the alley through my woodshed…Get a move on, for heaven's sake!'

Already the superintendent was banging his fist on the main door to the hall; and since no one was opening it, he was threatening to break it down. He must have had inside information because he was shouting that the meeting was illegal on account of the fact that a large number of miners present had no letter of invitation.

Inside the hall confusion mounted. They couldn't leave just like that, they hadn't even voted yet, neither about joining the International nor about continuing the strike. Everybody was trying to speak at once. Eventually the chairman hit on the idea of voting by acclamation. Hands shot up, and the delegates
hastily declared that they were joining on behalf of their absent comrades. Thus did the ten thousand miners of Montsou become members of the International.

Meanwhile the rout had begun. To cover their retreat Widow Desire had gone over to stand with her back to the main door, and she could feel the police slamming their rifle-butts into it behind her. The miners were clambering over the benches and streaming out through the kitchen and woodshed one after another. Rasseneur was one of the first to disappear, followed by Levaque, who had completely forgotten how he had insulted him earlier and was now hoping to cadge a beer, just to steady his nerves. Étienne, having grabbed the little chest, was waiting behind with Pluchart and Maheu, for whom it was a point of honour to be the last out. Just as they were leaving, the lock finally gave, and the superintendent found himself in the presence of Widow Desire and the further obstacle of her stomach and bust.

‘A lot of good that's done you, smashing the place up like this,' she said. ‘You can see perfectly well there's nobody here!'

The superintendent was of the ponderous sort: he disliked fuss and simply warned her that if she weren't careful, he'd lock her up. And off he went to make his report, taking the four gendarmes with him, while Zacharie and Mouquet jeered at them, so impressed by their comrades' clever escape that they were not afraid to mock the arm of the law.

Outside in the alleyway Étienne broke into a run, despite the encumbrance of the wooden chest, and the others followed. He suddenly remembered Pierron and asked why they hadn't seen him. Maheu, running beside him, replied that he'd been ill: a convenient illness, too, otherwise known as the fear of being implicated. They tried to persuade Pluchart to stay for a while but, without breaking step, he told them that he must be off at once to Joiselle, where Legoujeux was waiting for instructions. So they shouted goodbye as they continued to race through Montsou as fast as their legs could carry them. They talked in snatches between gasping for breath. Étienne and Maheu were laughing happily, certain now of victory: once the International had sent them aid, the Company would be begging them to go
back to work. And in this surge of hope, amid the sound of these stampeding boots clattering over the cobbled streets, there was something else, something dark and savage, like a wind of violence that would soon be whipping every village in every corner of the coal-field into a storm of frenzy.

Another fortnight went by. It was now early January, and cold mists numbed the vast plain. Things were worse than they had ever been: with food increasingly scarce, each hour that passed was bringing the villages closer to death. Four thousand francs from the International in London had barely provided bread for three days. Since then, nothing. The failure of their one great hope was undermining everyone's courage. Who could they count on now if even their brothers were going to abandon them to their fate? They felt completely lost, all alone in the world and surrounded by the deep midwinter.

By Tuesday Village Two Hundred and Forty had run out of everything. Étienne had been working round the clock with the delegates: they undertook collections, they organized public meetings, they tried to recruit new members in the neighbouring towns, even as far away as Paris. Their efforts had little effect. At the beginning they had succeeded in arousing public concern, but now, as the strike dragged quietly on without dramatic incident, people were gradually losing interest. Such meagre donations as they did raise were scarcely enough to support the most destitute families. Others survived by pawning their clothes or selling off their household effects one by one. Everything was disappearing in the direction of the second-hand dealers, whether it was the wool stuffing out of their mattresses, or kitchen utensils, or even furniture. For a brief moment they thought they were saved when the small shopkeepers in Montsou started offering credit as a way of taking back customers from Maigrat, who had been gradually putting them out of business; and for one week Verdonck the grocer and Carouble
and Smelten the two bakers had virtually held open house; but the credit they gave didn't go very far, and the three of them then stopped giving it. The bailiffs were pleased, but the net result for the miners was a burden of debt that was to weigh on them for a long time to come. With no more credit available anywhere and not even an old saucepan left to sell, they might as well lie down and die in a corner like so many mangy dogs.

Étienne would have sold his flesh. He had stopped taking his secretarial salary and pawned his smart woollen coat and trousers in Marchiennes, happy to be able to keep the Maheus' pot on the boil. All he had left were his boots, which he had kept, he said, so that his kicks would hurt. His major regret was that the strike had come too soon, before his provident fund had had time to accumulate. For him that was the only explanation for why they were in the present disastrous situation: come the day when they had saved enough money to fund their struggle, the workers would surely triumph over the bosses. And he remembered how Souvarine had accused the Company of provoking the strike so as to destroy the fund while it was still small.

The sight of the village and all these wretched people without food or coal upset him deeply, and he preferred to absent himself on long, tiring walks. One evening, as he was passing Réquillart on his way home, he came on an old woman who had collapsed by the side of the road and was presumably suffering from starvation. When he had lifted her into a sitting position, he called out to a girl he had seen on the other side of the fence.

‘Oh, it's you,' he said, recognizing La Mouquette. ‘Give me a hand, will you? We need to give her something to drink.'

Tears welled in La Mouquette's eyes, and she ran into her house, the rickety shack that her father had constructed amid the ruins. She was back in a trice with some gin and a loaf of bread. The gin revived the old woman, who gnawed greedily at the loaf without saying a word. She was the mother of one of the miners and lived in a village over towards Cougny; she had collapsed here on her way back from Joiselle, where she had gone in vain to try and borrow ten sous from a sister of hers. After she had eaten, she tottered off in a daze.

Étienne remained behind in the waste ground of Réquillart, with its tumbledown sheds that were gradually disappearing beneath the brambles.

‘Won't you come in and have a drink?' La Mouquette asked him cheerfully.

And when he hesitated:

‘So you're still afraid of me, are you?'

Won over by her laughter, he followed her in. He was touched by how readily she had given the old woman her bread. She didn't want to receive him in her father's room and so she led him into her own, where she immediately poured out two small glasses of gin. Her room was very clean and tidy, and he complimented her on it. In fact the family seemed well provided for: her father was still working as a stableman at Le Voreux; and she herself, not being the sort to stand idly by, had started taking in laundry, which earned her thirty sous a day. Just because you enjoy a laugh with the lads doesn't mean you're lazy.

‘What is it?' she said softly, as she came and put her arms round his waist. ‘Don't you like me, then?'

She had said this so appealingly that he, too, couldn't help laughing.

‘But I do like you,' he replied.

‘No, you don't, not the way I mean…You know how much I want to. Please? It would make me so happy!'

She meant it all right; she'd been asking him for the past six months. He gazed at her as she clung to him tightly with trembling arms, her face raised towards him in such amorous entreaty that he was deeply affected. There was nothing pretty about her big round face, with its yellowish, coal-stained complexion; but a flame glowed in her eyes, and a magical quivering of desire turned her skin as pink as a child's. And so, being presented with such a humble, eager offer of her person, he simply could not refuse any longer.

‘Yes! You
do
want to!' she stammered in delight, ‘You really do!'

And she gave herself clumsily, in a kind of virginal swoon, as though this were her first time and she had never known any other man. Later, when he was leaving, she was the one who
was full of gratitude, and she kept thanking him and kissing his hands.

Étienne was a little ashamed of this piece of good fortune. Men did not brag about having La Mouquette. As he made his way home he promised himself that there would be no repeat. And yet he remembered her fondly, she was a fine girl.

In any case, when he reached the village, news of a serious kind soon drove all thought of the episode from his head. It was rumoured that the Company would perhaps agree to a further concession if the members of the deputation would make a new approach to the manager. At least this was the word from the deputies. The truth was that the mines were suffering even more than the miners as a result of the stand-off. The stubbornness of both parties was wreaking increasing damage: while labour was dying of hunger, capital was bleeding to death. Each day's stoppage meant the loss of hundreds of thousands of francs. The machine that lies idle is a machine that is dying. The plant and equipment were deteriorating, and the money invested in them was draining away like water into the sand. Since the meagre stockpiles of coal had started disappearing from the pit-yards, customers had been talking of obtaining their supplies from Belgium; and that posed a threat for the future. But what worried the Company most, and what it was most careful to conceal, was the growing damage to the roadways and coal-faces. There weren't enough deputies to keep up with the repairs; timbering was giving way all over the place, and there were rock-falls almost by the hour. The damage was soon so extensive that it would require long months of repair work before they could start hewing coal again. Stories were already going round: at Crèvecœur three hundred metres of road had subsided in one piece, blocking access to the Cinq-Paumes seam; at Madeleine, the Maugrétout seam was breaking up and filling with water. Management was refusing to confirm the stories when two disasters happened in quick succession which forced them to come clean. One morning, near La Piolaine, they found that a crevasse had opened above Mirou's northern roadway, where there had been a rock-fall the day before. The next day part of Le Voreux subsided and sent such a tremor under one whole
corner of the neighbourhood that two houses had nearly vanished completely.

Étienne and the delegates were reluctant to make a move without knowing the intentions of the Board of Directors. When they tried to find out from Dansaert, he ducked their questions: certainly the Board deplored the misunderstandings that had arisen, and it would do everything in its power to resolve the issues: but he would not be more specific. Eventually the men decided that they would go and see M. Hennebeau so as not to find themselves in the wrong later on and be accused of having refused to allow the Company a chance to admit the error of its ways. But they promised themselves that they would make no concessions and that they would still continue to insist on the conditions they had set, which were the only fair ones.

The meeting took place on Tuesday morning, the day when the village finally found itself staring into the abyss. The encounter was less cordial than the first. Once more it was Maheu who spoke, explaining that his comrades had sent them to inquire if the gentlemen had anything new to say to them. At first M. Hennebeau pretended to be surprised: he had not received any new instructions, and there could be no change in the position as long as the miners persisted in this detestable protest of theirs. This unbending and authoritarian attitude had the worst possible effect, to the extent that even if the delegates had come to the meeting in the most conciliatory frame of mind the manner of their reception would have been enough to stiffen their resistance. Then the manager indicated his willingness to explore a possible basis for compromise: for example, the workers might accept to be paid separately for the timbering and the Company would increase payment by the two centimes which they were alleged to be gaining from the new system. Of course this offer was being made on his own initiative, nothing had been decided, though he flattered himself that he would succeed in getting Paris to agree to this concession. But the delegates refused and restated their terms: the old system to remain, and an increase of five centimes per tub. Then M. Hennebeau admitted that he did have the power to negotiate directly, and he urged them to accept for the sake of their starving wives and children. But the
men stared resolutely at the floor and said no, still no, fiercely shaking their heads. The meeting ended abruptly. M. Hennebeau slammed the doors, while Étienne, Maheu and the others made their way home, their heavy boots thudding over the cobbles with the silent rage of defeated men who have been pushed as far as they will go.

About two o'clock it was the women's turn to try one last approach to Maigrat. Their only remaining hope was to talk the man round and extract another week's credit from him. The idea came from La Maheude, who tended to rely too often on people's goodness. She persuaded La Brûlé and La Levaque to go with her; La Pierronne excused herself on the grounds that she had to stay and look after Pierron, who was still not well. Other women joined the group, which numbered about twenty. When the bourgeois of Montsou saw them arriving, a line of sombre, wretched-looking women taking up the whole width of the road, they shook their heads with misgiving. Doors were shut, and one lady hid her silver. It was the first time they had been seen like this, and it was a very grave sign indeed: things usually went from bad to worse once the women took to the highways. There was a terrible scene at Maigrat's. At first he had ushered them in with with a sneering laugh, affecting to believe that they had come to pay their debts; how kind of them to have arranged to come all together like this, and just so they could return all his money at once! Then, when La Maheude began to speak, he pretended to fly into a rage. What kind of a joke was this? More credit? Did they want him to end up sleeping in the gutter? No, not a single potato, not so much as a single crumb of bread! He suggested they try Verdonck the grocer or Carouble and Smelten the bakers, for wasn't that where they took their custom now? The women listened to him with an air of frightened humility, apologizing to him and watching his eyes for any sign that he might relent. Instead he started on his usual banter, offering La Brûlé his whole shop if she would have him. They were all so cowed that they laughed; and La Levaque went one better by declaring that she personally was ready and willing. But he became rough with them again and herded them towards the door. When they went on begging him, he shoved one of them
aside. Outside in the street the other women were accusing him of being a Company stooge, and La Maheude raised her arms to the sky in vengeful outrage, calling death down upon him and screaming that such a man did not deserve to eat.