Germinal (50 page)

What was wrong with her today? Never before had her legs felt so much as though they were made of jelly. It must be the bad air. The ventilation did not reach the end of this remote road, and the atmosphere was full of all manner of gases which gently fizzed from the coal with the sound of spring-water, and sometimes in such quantity that the lamps refused to burn; to say nothing of the firedamp, which everyone had ceased to care about since the seam blew so much of the stuff into the miners' faces from one week's end to the next. She knew all about this bad air – ‘dead air'
¹
the miners called it – which consisted of a lower layer of heavy gases that caused asphyxiation and an upper layer of light gases that spontaneously combusted and could blow up every coal-face in a pit, killing hundreds of men in one single thunderous blast. She had breathed in so much of it since she was a child that she was surprised not to be able to tolerate it better, but her ears were buzzing and her throat was on fire.

Unable to bear the heat any longer, she felt a desperate need to remove her shirt. The cloth was torturing her, and the merest crease seemed to cut into her and burn her flesh. She resisted the urge and made another attempt to push the tub, but she had to straighten up again. Then, all of a sudden, telling herself that
she would cover up at the relay-point, she stripped completely, untying the string and removing her shirt in such feverish haste that she would have torn her skin off, too, had she been able. Now completely naked and pitifully reduced to the level of an animal padding along a muddy path in search of food, she went about her work, her buttocks splattered in soot and her front covered in grime up to her belly, like a filth-covered mare between the shafts of a hansom cab. She was pushing the tub on all fours.

But she began to despair: being naked brought no relief. What else could she remove? The buzzing in her ears was deafening, and she felt as though her temples were caught in a vice. She slumped to her knees. She had the impression that her lamp, wedged into the coal on the tub, was about to go out; and in her confused mind she clung to the thought that she must turn up the wick. Twice she tried to examine the lamp, and twice, as she set it on the ground in front of her, it dimmed as if it, too, were wanting for oxygen. Suddenly the lamp went out. Then everything began to spin in the darkness, a millstone was whirring round in her head, and her heart slowed and stopped, numbed by the immense torpor that had overtaken her limbs. She had fallen backwards and lay dying on the ground in the asphyxiating air.

‘Damn me if she's not bloodly dawdling again!' grumbled Chaval.

He listened from the top of the coal-face but heard no sound of wheels.

‘Catherine! I know you, you sly bitch!'

The sound of his voice vanished down the dark roadway, and not a breath could be heard in response.

‘Have I got to come and chase after you?'

Nothing stirred, and there was still the same deathly silence. Furious, he climbed down and began to run along the road, holding up his lamp but going so fast that he nearly tripped over Catherine's body, which was blocking the way. He stared at it open-mouthed. What was the matter with her? She wasn't pretending, was she, just so she could have a quick nap? But when he lowered his lamp to shine it in her face, it threatened
to go out. He raised it and lowered it again, and finally he realized: the air must be bad. His rage had subsided, and the miner's instinctive devotion to a comrade in danger took over. Already he had shouted for someone to bring his shirt, and now he seized the girl's naked, lifeless body and lifted it as high as he possibly could. Once they had thrown his and Catherine's clothes over his shoulders, he set off at the run, holding his burden up with one hand and carrying their two lamps with the other. The long roadways unwound as he raced ahead, taking a right here, a left there, searching for the cold, life-giving air of the plain coming from the ventilator. At length the sound of a spring brought him to a halt: some water was streaming through a crack in the rock. He found himself at a crossroads in the main haulage roadway which had once served Gaston-Marie. Here the ventilator was blowing up a storm, and the air was so cold that he even shivered after setting Catherine down on the ground, propped against some timbers. Her eyes were shut, and she was still unconscious.

‘Come on, Catherine. For God's sake, a joke's a joke…Here, don't you move while I go and dip this in a bit of water.'

It frightened him to see her so limp. Nevertheless he was able to wet his shirt in the stream and bathe her face. She seemed for all the world to be dead, as though this slight, girlish body on which puberty was hesitating to place its mark were down here because it had already been buried. Then a shudder ran through her, through her undeveloped breasts and her belly down to the slender thighs of this poor, wretched girl who had been deflowered before her time. She opened her eyes and muttered:

‘I'm cold.'

‘Ah, that's better! That's more like it!' Chaval exclaimed with relief.

He dressed her, passing the shirt easily over her head but cursing as he struggled to get her trousers on, for she could do little to help herself. Still dazed, she did not understand where she was nor why she had been naked. When she remembered, she was filled with shame. How on earth had she dared take everything off! She questioned Chaval: had anyone seen her like
that, without so much as a neckerchief round her waist to cover her? Being fond of a laugh and given to making up stories, he told her how their comrades had all stood in a line as he brought her past. And what had possessed her to take him seriously when he'd told her to take her clothes off! Then he gave her his word that he had carried her there so fast that his comrades could not even have known whether her bum was round or square!

‘Blimey but it's cold,' he said, as he too got dressed again.

She had never known him be so nice. Usually for every kind word he spoke to her, she got two insults as well. How good it would have been to live in harmony together! In her state of exhausted lassitude she felt a warm fondness for him. She smiled and said softly:

‘Give me a kiss.'

He kissed her and lay down beside her to wait until she was ready to walk.

‘You know,' she said, ‘you were wrong to shout at me back there, because I just couldn't go on any more. Even at the face it's cooler. But if you knew how baking hot it is along at the other end of the road!'

‘I know,' he replied. ‘We'd be better off under the trees…But you, poor girl, it's difficult for you working this section. I can see that.'

She was so touched to hear him agree that she put on a show of bravery.

‘Oh, I just had a weak turn. Anyway the air's bad today…But you'll soon see if I'm a sly one or not. If you've got to work, you've got to work. Isn't that right? I'd rather die than not do my fair share.'

There was silence. He had his arm round her waist, holding her to his chest so that no harm should come to her. And while she already felt strong enough to return to the coal-face, she preferred to revel in the moment.

‘Only I wish,' she went on very quietly, ‘that you could be kinder to me…If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.'

And she began to cry softly.

‘But I do love you,' he protested, ‘or I wouldn't have taken you to live with me.'

She simply nodded. Often men took women just so that they could have them for themselves, not caring a button whether they were happy or not. Her tears were flowing more hotly now as she thought with despair of the good life she could have had if she had ended up with someone else, someone who would always have had his arm round her waist like this. Someone else? And dimly she could perceive this person in the midst of her distress. But that was finished and done with now, and all she wanted was to be able to spend her life with the man she was with, just as long as he didn't always treat her so roughly.

‘Well then,' she said, ‘just try sometimes to be like you are now.'

Her sobbing stopped her from saying more, and he kissed her again.

‘You silly thing!…Look, I promise to be nice to you. Anyway, it's not as if I'm any worse than the next man.'

She looked at him and began to smile again through her tears. Perhaps he was right: you didn't come across many happy women. Then, although she only half believed his promise, she gave herself up to the joy of seeing him be nice to her. My God, if only it could have lasted! They were now in each other's arms again; and while they were still holding each other in one long embrace, the sound of approaching footsteps brought them quickly to their feet. Three comrades who had seen them go past were coming to see if they were all right.

They all set off together. It was nearly ten o'clock, and they chose a cool spot to eat their lunch before going back to the sweltering heat at the coal-face. But just as they were finishing their sandwiches and about to take a swig of coffee from their flasks, they were alarmed by the sound of voices coming from far off in the mine. What could it be? Had there been another accident? They got to their feet and ran to find out. Hewers, putters and pit-boys were streaming past in the opposite direction, but nobody knew anything; everyone was shouting, it must be some terrible disaster. Panic was gradually beginning to spread throughout the mine, and shadowy figures emerged terrified from the roadways, their lamps bobbing into view
before disappearing again into the darkness. Where was it? Why wouldn't anyone say?

Suddenly a deputy rushed past shouting:

‘They're cutting the cables! They're cutting the cables!'

Then the panic took hold, and people were rushing madly along the dark roads. Everyone was completely bewildered. Why would anyone cut the cables? And who was cutting them, when there were workers still below? It seemed monstrous.

But the voice of another deputy rang out before it, too, vanished.

‘The Montsou crowd are cutting the cables! Everybody out!'

When he had grasped what was happening, Chaval stopped Catherine dead. His legs had gone quite weak at the thought that they might encounter the Montsou men if they went up. So they had come after all then, and there was he thinking they'd been stopped by the gendarmes! For a moment he thought of retracing their steps and going back up via Gaston-Marie; but that shaft was no longer in working order. He cursed, not knowing what to do, and trying to hide his fear, and he kept saying that there was no point running so fast. People were hardly going to leave them down here.

The deputy's voice could be heard again, getting closer.

‘Everybody out. Use the ladders! Use the ladders!'

And so Chaval was swept along by his comrades. He started bullying Catherine, accusing her of not running fast enough. Did she want them to be left behind in the mine so that they could starve to death? Because those Montsou bastards were quite capable of smashing the ladders before everyone had got out. The voicing of this terrible possibility proved to be the last straw, and everyone around them began to career wildly along the roadways in a mad race to see who could get to the ladders first and go up before the others. Men were shouting that the ladders had already been smashed and that nobody would get out. And when groups of terrified people started pouring into pit-bottom there was a wholesale rush for the ladders, with everyone trying to squeeze through the narrow door to the emergency shaft all at the same time. Meanwhile an old stableman who had wisely just led the horses back to their stall looked
on with the contemptuous indifference of one who was used to spending his nights down the pit and was quite certain that some way would always be found to get him out.

‘For Christ's sake, would you go in front of me!' Chaval shouted at Catherine. ‘At least that way I can catch you if you fall.'

Dazed and completely out of breath after this three-kilometre dash, which had once more soaked her in sweat, Catherine allowed herself to be swept along by the crowd, oblivious to what was happening. Then Chaval tugged her arm so hard he nearly broke it, and she let out a cry of pain and began to cry. He had forgotten his promise already, she would never be happy.

‘You must go first!' he screamed at her.

But she was too frightened of him. If she went first, he would keep pushing and shoving her all the time. So she resisted, and their comrades pushed them aside in their mad rush. The water that seeped into the shaft was falling in large drops, and the floor of pit-bottom, suspended above the
bougnou
, a muddy pit some ten metres deep, was vibrating under the weight of all these trampling feet. And it was indeed at Jean-Bart that there had been a terrible accident two years previously when a cable had snapped and sent a cage hurtling down into the sump, drowning two men. Everybody remembered and was thinking that they might all end up down there if too many people crowded on to the floor at once.

‘Bugger it, then!' Chaval shouted. ‘Die if you want to. And good riddance!'

He began climbing, and she followed.

From bottom to top there were one hundred and two ladders, each approximately seven metres long and standing on a narrow platform that filled the width of the shaft. A square hole in each landing was just wide enough to let a man's shoulders through. It was like a squashed chimney some seven hundred metres high, between the outer wall of the main shaft and the lining of the winding-shaft, a damp, dark, endless tube in which the ladders stood almost vertically one above the other at regular intervals. It took a strong man twenty-five minutes to climb this giant column, though in fact it was used only in emergencies.

At first Catherine climbed cheerfully enough. Her bare feet were used to the sharpness of the coal along the roadway floors, and so the protective iron edging on the square rungs did not bother her. Her hands, hardened by pushing tubs, grasped the uprights easily enough even though they were too thick for her grip. Indeed this unexpected climb helped to occupy her mind and to take her out of her misery, as she became one of a long, snaking line of people coiling and hoisting its way upwards, three to a ladder, so long a line indeed that the head of the snake would emerge at the top while the tail was still dragging over the sump at the bottom. But they were not there yet, and the people at the top could scarcely have reached a third of the way up. Nobody was talking now, and the only sound was the dull rumble and thud of feet; and the lamps spaced out at regular intervals looked like an unravelling string of wandering stars.