Germinal (51 page)

Behind her Catherine heard a pit-boy counting the ladders, which made her want to count them too. They had already climbed fifteen, and they were coming to a loading-bay. But just at that moment she bumped into Chaval's legs. He swore and told her to be more careful. One by one, the whole column of people slowed to a halt. What now? What had happened? Everyone found their voices again and started asking frightened questions. Their anxiety had been increasing ever since they had left the bottom, and the closer they drew to the daylight the more they were gripped by fear about what would happen to them once they reached the surface. Someone said they had to go back down, the ladders were broken. This was what everyone had been afraid of, that they might find themselves marooned in the void. Another explanation was passed down from mouth to mouth: a hewer had slipped and fallen from a ladder. Nobody knew what to believe, and the shouting prevented them from hearing properly. Were they all going to spend the night there? Eventually, without them being any the wiser, they began to climb again, in the same slow, laborious way as before, amid the rumble of feet and the bobbing of lamps. No doubt the broken ladders were further up!

By the thirty-second ladder, as they were passing a third loading-bay, Catherine felt her arms and legs grow stiff. At first
she had sensed a slight prickling of the skin. Now she could no longer feel the wood and metal beneath her hands and feet. Her muscles ached, and the pain, slight at first, was gradually becoming more acute. In her dazed state she remembered Grandpa Bonnemort's stories about the days when there was no proper ladder shaft and girls of ten would carry the coal up on their shoulders by means of ladders that were completely unprotected and simply placed against the wall of the shaft; so that when one of them slipped or even a piece of coal just fell out of a basket, three or four children would be sent flying, head first. The cramp was becoming unbearable, she would never make it to the top.

Further delays allowed her some respite. But these repeated waves of panic passing down the ladders eventually made her dizzy. Above and below her she could hear that people were having increasing difficulty in breathing: the interminable ascent was beginning to make them giddy, and like everyone else she wanted to be sick. Fighting for air, she felt almost drunk on the darkness, and the walls of the shaft seemed to press maddeningly against her flesh. The wet conditions made her shiver, as large drops of water fell on her sweat-drenched body. They were nearing the water table, and the water was raining down so heavily that it threatened to put out the lamps.

Twice Chaval asked Catherine a question but received no reply. What was she up to down there? Had she lost her tongue? She could at least tell him if she was all right. They had been climbing for half an hour now, but so laboriously that they had reached only the fifty-ninth ladder. Forty-three to go. Catherine eventually gasped that she was just about managing. He would have called her a lazy bitch again if she had told him how exhausted she was. The iron on the rungs must be biting into her feet, because she felt as though they were being sawn through to the bone. Each time she moved her hands up the ladder she expected to see them lose their grip and come away so raw and stiff that she could no longer clench her fingers; and she felt as though she were falling backwards, as though her arms and hips had been wrenched from their sockets by the constant effort. What she found most difficult was the lack of angle on the
ladders, the fact that they were almost vertical and that she had to pull herself up by her wrists with her stomach pressed hard against the wood. The sound of people gasping for breath now drowned out the tramping of feet; and a vast wheezing, made ten times louder by the partitioning of the shaft, rose from the bottom and died away at the top. There was a groan of pain, then word came down that a pit-boy had cracked his head underneath one of the platform landings.

And up Catherine went. They passed the water-table. The deluge had ceased, and now the cellar-like air was thick with mist and the musty stench of old iron and rotting wood. She persisted in counting quietly and mechanically to herself under her breath: eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, nineteen to go. Only the steady rhythm of the repeated numbers kept her going, for she had ceased to be conscious of her movements. When she looked up, the lamps spiralled into the distance. Her blood was draining away, and she felt as though she were dying, as though the merest draught would send her flying. The worst of it was that people were now pushing and shoving their way up from below, and the whole column was on the stampede, yielding in its exhaustion to growing anger and a desperate need to see daylight again. The first comrades were out of the shaft, so no ladders had been smashed; but the thought that they still could be – to prevent the remainder from getting out while others were already up there breathing the fresh air – was enough to drive them into a frenzy. And when there was a further hold-up, people started cursing and continued to climb anyway, elbowing others aside or clambering over them in a general free-for-all.

Then Catherine fell. She had shouted out Chaval's name in one last desperate appeal. He didn't hear her, he was too busy fighting and kicking a comrade's ribs with his heels to make sure he stayed ahead of him. She was trodden underfoot. In her unconscious state she dreamed that she was one of the young putters from long ago and that a piece of coal had dropped out of a basket above her and pitched her into the shaft like a sparrow felled by a stone. Only five ladders remained to be climbed, and so far it had taken them nearly an hour. She had no memory of how she reached the surface, borne aloft on
people's shoulders and prevented from falling only by the narrowness of the shaft. Suddenly she found herself in the blinding sunlight surrounded by a noisy crowd of people who were all jeering at her.

That morning, since before daybreak, there had been a stirring in the villages, a stirring which was now growing and spreading along the highways and byways of the entire region. But the miners had not been able to set out as planned because it was rumoured that the plain was being patrolled by dragoons and gendarmes. It was said that they had arrived from Douai during the night, and some accused Rasseneur of having betrayed the comrades by warning M. Hennebeau; one putter even swore blind that she had seen his servant taking the message to the telegraph office. The miners clenched their fists and watched out for the soldiers behind their shutters in the pale light of dawn.

At about seven-thirty, as the sun was rising, another rumour circulated, which reassured the impatient. It had been a false alarm, simply a military exercise of the kind that the general had occasionally ordered during the strike at the request of the Prefect in Lille. The strikers hated this particular official, whom they accused of having double-crossed them by promising to act as a go-between, when in fact all he had done was to parade troops through Montsou every week to keep the miners in their place. So when the dragoons and gendarmes quietly departed in the direction of Marchiennes, having been content to deafen every village with the noise of their horses trotting past on the hard ground, the miners scoffed at this naïve Prefect whose troops took to their heels the moment things looked like hotting up. Until nine o'clock they stood around in front of their houses, as cheerful and peaceful as can be, watching until the back of the last harmless gendarme disappeared down the road. Meanwhile the bourgeois of Montsou remained safely tucked up in their warm beds. At the manager's house Mme Hennebeau
had just been seen leaving in her carriage, presumably having left M. Hennebeau at work, for the place was all shut up and silent, seemingly deserted. Not a single pit was under armed guard, which demonstrated a fatal lack of foresight at this perilous moment and just the sort of natural stupidity that occurs at times of impending disaster, the very thing a government fails to think of when it needs to be paying attention to the practicalities of the situation. And nine o'clock was striking when the colliers finally set out along the Vandame road for the meeting-place that had been agreed on the previous evening in the forest.

In any case Étienne realized at once that he was not going to get the three thousand comrades at Jean-Bart he had been counting on. Many people thought that the demonstration had been postponed, but the worst of it was that two or three groups of men were already on their way and would compromise the cause if, like it or not, he wasn't there to lead them. Nearly a hundred had left before daybreak and had presumably taken shelter in the forest under the beech trees while they waited for everyone else. Étienne went up to consult Souvarine, who merely shrugged: ten good strong men and true could achieve more than a mob; and he went back to reading his book, having declined to take any part in the proceedings. There would be more sentimental nonsense no doubt, whereas all that was needed was to set fire to Montsou, which was a perfectly straightforward matter. As Étienne left the house by the front path, he saw a pale Rasseneur sitting by the stove while his wife, looking taller than she was because of her perennial black dress, was firmly and politely giving him a piece of her mind.

Maheu thought that they ought to keep their word. An appointed meeting of this sort was sacrosanct. Nevertheless a night's sleep had calmed everyone down; he himself was afraid that something bad might happen, and he argued that it was their duty to turn up and make sure that the comrades remained within the law. La Maheude nodded in agreement. Étienne kept complacently insisting that they must act in a revolutionary manner but without threatening anyone's life. Before leaving he refused his share in a loaf of bread he had been given the night
before, along with a bottle of gin; but he did drink three quick tots, just to keep out the cold, and even took a full flask of it with him. Alzire would look after the little ones. Old Bonnemort's invalid legs were feeling the effects of last night's exertions, and he had remained in bed.

They thought it wiser not to leave together. Jeanlin was long gone. Maheu and La Maheude went in one direction, heading for Montsou by an indirect route, while Étienne made for the forest, where he expected to join his comrades. On the way he caught up with a party of women, among whom he recognized La Brûlé and La Levaque: as they walked along, they were eating some chestnuts which La Mouquette had brought them, and swallowing the husks so that they stayed down better. But Étienne found no one in the forest, the comrades were already at Jean-Bart. So he started running and reached the pit just as Levaque and a hundred others entered the yard. Miners were straggling in from every direction, the Maheus by the main road, the women from across the fields, all of them unarmed and leaderless, gravitating there naturally like a stream overflowing down a slope. Étienne spotted Jeanlin perched up on a gangway as though he were waiting for the show to begin. He quickened his pace and entered the yard with the leading group. There were barely three hundred of them altogether.

The men faltered when Deneulin appeared at the top of the steps leading to the pit-head.

‘What do you want?' he asked loudly.

Having seen the carriage depart with his daughters gaily bidding him farewell, he had returned to the pit, filled with renewed unease. Yet everything seemed to be in order: the workers had gone down, the extraction of coal was proceeding, and he was beginning to take heart once more as he chatted with the overman when someone told him about the approaching strikers. He had at once taken up a position by the window in the screening-shed; and as the swelling crowd poured into the yard, he was immediately aware of his powerlessness. How could he defend these buildings that were open on all sides to anyone who cared to enter? He could barely have mustered twenty workers to protect him. He was lost.

‘What do you want?' he asked again, pale with suppressed anger and trying hard to put a brave face on his defeat.

There was jostling and muttering among the crowd. Eventually Étienne stepped forward and said:

We mean you no harm, sir. But all work must stop.'

Deneulin replied to him as if he were quite clearly an idiot.

‘What good do you think you'll do by stopping work here? You might as well shoot me in the back, point blank…Yes, my men are below, and they're not coming up unless you kill me first.'

This plain speaking caused an uproar. Maheu had to restrain Levaque, who lunged forward with a menacing air, while Étienne continued to parley, trying to convince Deneulin of the legitimacy of their revolutionary action. But the latter's response was that everyone had the right to work. And anyway he wasn't about to discuss such nonsense, he intended to be the master on his own premises. His only regret was that he didn't have four gendarmes there to rid him of this riff-raff.

‘Of course, I can see it's my own fault. I deserve what I get. Force is the only way with fellows like you. It's the same with the government. It thinks it can buy you off with concessions, but you'll simply shoot it dead the moment it gives you the arms.'

Étienne was shaking but still managing to restrain himself. He lowered his voice:

‘I would ask you, sir, to order your men up. I cannot answer for what my comrades may do. You have it in your power to avoid a disaster.'

‘No. You can go to hell! Anyway, who are you? You're not one of my men, you've no business with me…And the whole lot of you are no better than thieves and bandits, rampaging round the countryside like this robbing people of their property.'

His voice was now drowned by shouting, and the women in particular hurled insults at him. But he continued to hold firm, and it was a relief to be able to speak his authoritarian mind so frankly. Since he was ruined whatever happened, he considered it cowardly to engage in useless platitudes. But the numbers were continually growing, there were now nearly five hundred
miners advancing towards the door, and he was just about to be set upon when his overman dragged him back.