Germinal (54 page)

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

As it happened, a retired deputy ran a canteen at La Victoire. Doubtless he had taken fright, because his booth was deserted. When the women returned from the lamp-room and the men had finished tearing up the railway, they all attacked the canteen, and its shutters soon gave way. There was no bread there, only two pieces of raw meat and a sack of potatoes. But in the course of their looting they came across fifty bottles of gin, which vanished like water into sand.

Étienne, having emptied his flask, was able to refill it. He was gradually succumbing to that ugly form of drunkenness that comes from drinking on an empty stomach, and it was turning his eyes bloodshot and causing him to bare his teeth, like a wolf's, between his pale lips. Suddenly he realized that in the general commotion Chaval had escaped. He cursed, and men ran off and seized the fugitive where he was hiding with Catherine behind the woodpile.

‘You fucking bastard!' Étienne screamed. ‘You're afraid of getting into trouble, aren't you? Back there in the forest you
were the one who wanted to call out the mechanics and shut down the pumps, and here you are now trying to land us all in the shit…Well, by God, we're going to go back to Gaston-Marie, and you're going to smash that pump. Yes you are, you can bloody well smash it!'

He really was drunk now, for here he was dispatching his men against the very pump he had saved from destruction some hours earlier.

‘Gaston-Marie! Gaston-Marie!'

Everyone cheered and began to rush off. Some men grabbed Chaval by the shoulders, hustling him forward roughly while he continued to demand a wash.

‘Clear off, I tell you!' Maheu shouted at Catherine, who had also begun to run with them again.

This time she did not even falter, but raised her burning eyes to her father's and continued to run.

Once more the mob cut a swathe across the open plain. It was now retracing its steps, along the long straight highways and across fields that had grown bigger and bigger over the years. It was four o'clock: the sun was setting on the horizon, and the shadows cast by the horde and its wild gesticulations fell across the frozen ground.

They avoided Montsou by joining the Joiselle road higher up, and in order to save having to go round by La Fourche-aux-Bœufs they came past the walls of La Piolaine. By chance the Grégoires had just left, meaning to visit a notary before going on to dine at the Hennebeaus', where they were to collect Cécile. The place seemed sunk in slumber, with its deserted avenue of limes, and its orchard and kitchen-garden both stripped bare by winter. Nothing stirred in the house, and the closed windows were steamed up with the warmth inside: the deep silence exuded a sense of well-being and good cheer, a patriarchal aura of comfortable beds and good food, all bespeaking the well-regulated happiness in which its owners lived out their lives.

Without breaking step the mob cast sullen glances through the iron railings and along the perimeter walls topped with broken bottles. Again the cry went up:

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

Only the dogs replied, a pair of Great Danes with tawny coats, who barked ferociously and stood on their hind legs baring their teeth. And behind a closed shutter there were just the two maids – Mélanie the cook and Honorine the housemaid – who had been drawn there by the noise of the chanting and now stood sweating with fear, deathly pale at the sight of these savages marching past. They fell to their knees and thought their last hour had come when they heard a single stone breaking a pane of glass in a nearby window. This was one of Jeanlin's little jokes: he had made a sling out of a piece of rope, and it was his way of leaving his calling card at the Grégoires'. Already he had started blowing his horn again, and as the mob receded into the distance its cry grew fainter and fainter:

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

They arrived at Gaston-Marie in even bigger numbers than before, more than two and a half thousand maniacs bent on destruction and sweeping everything before them with the accumulated energy of a torrent in spate. Gendarmes had been there an hour earlier and then departed in the direction of Saint-Thomas; some farm labourers had given them false information, and they had left in such a hurry that they hadn't even taken the precaution of leaving a squad of men to guard the pit. In less than a quarter of an hour, the fire-grates were emptied, the boilers drained and the buildings invaded and ransacked. But it was the pump they were really after. It wasn't enough for it to give out a last gasp of steam and stop working, they had to throw themselves at it as though it were a living person they wanted to kill.

‘Right, you go first!' Étienne insisted, as he thrust a hammer into Chaval's hand. ‘Come on, you took the oath like the rest of us!'

Chaval was shaking and backing away. In the general scrimmage the hammer fell to the ground, and the comrades, who could wait no longer, began to smash the pump with their crowbars or bricks or whatever came to hand. Some of them even broke their sticks over it. The screws worked loose, and the steel and brass plating began to come apart, as though the pump were being torn limb from limb. One mighty blow with
a pickaxe shattered the cast-iron casing, the water spurted out, and the chamber emptied out completely, giving one last gurgle like a death rattle.

That was that. The mob found itself outside once again, still in a state of demented fury, and pushing and shoving behind Étienne, who was refusing to let go of Chaval.

‘Death to the scab! Throw him down the shaft!'

The wretched man was white in the face and, with the obsessive stubbornness of an imbecile, kept repeating absently that he needed a wash.

‘Well if that's your problem,' said La Levaque, ‘here's your sink!'

There was a pool where water had previously leaked from the pump. It was white with a thick coat of ice; and having pushed him towards it, they broke the ice and forced him to plunge his head into the extremely cold water.

‘In you go!' La Brûlé urged. ‘God damn it! If you won't do it yourself, we'll soon bloody make you…And now you can have a drink too. Yes, that's right, just like the animals! With your snout in the trough!'

He was forced to drink, crouching on all fours. Everybody joined in the cruel laughter. One woman pulled his ears, while another threw a pile of dung in his face, having gathered it fresh from the road. His old jersey hung off him in shreds. And with a wild look in his eye he kept jerking forward, trying to break loose and run away.

Maheu had helped to push him forward, and La Maheude was among the women attacking him, both of them eager to satisfy their long-standing sense of grievance against him; and La Mouquette herself, who usually remained on good terms with her former lovers, was furious with this one, shouting at him that he was a useless bastard and threatening to remove his trousers to see if he could still call himself a man.

Étienne told her to be quiet.

‘Enough! There's no need for everyone to join in…Come on, you. What do you say we sort this out once and for all?'

His fists were clenched, and his eyes blazed with murderous fury as his drunkenness turned into an urge to kill.

‘Are you ready? One of us has got to die. Give him a knife someone. I've got mine here.'

Catherine, on the point of collapse, stared at him in horror. She remembered what he had told her about wanting to kill someone whenever he drank, and how the third glass was enough to make him turn nasty, thanks to all the poison his drunkard parents had already deposited in his system. At once she leaped forward and slapped him with both her girlish hands, choking with indignation and screaming in his face:

‘Coward! Coward! Coward!…Haven't you done enough? First you treat him in this revolting way and now you're going to kill him when he can't even stand up!'

She turned to her father and mother and to everyone else standing there.

‘You're all cowards! Cowards!…Go on, you can kill me too! I'll scratch your eyes out if you try and lay a finger on him. You cowards!'

She had taken up position in front of her man, ready to defend him, forgetting how he hit her, forgetting their life of misery together, mindful only that since he had taken her she belonged to him and that it brought shame on her that he should be abused like this.

Étienne had turned white when the girl slapped him. At first he had almost struck her back. Then, running a hand over his face with the gesture of somebody sobering up, he broke the deep silence and said to Chaval:

‘She's right, that's enough…Bugger off!'

At once Chaval took to his heels, and Catherine raced off after him. The crowd stood rooted to the spot and stared as they disappeared round a bend in the road. But La Maheude muttered:

‘That was a mistake. You should have kept him with us. He's bound to do the dirty on us somehow.'

But the mob had set off again. It was nearly five o'clock, and at the edge of the horizon the sun, like red-hot embers, was setting the immense plain ablaze. A passing pedlar told them that the dragoons were on their way and were now in the vicinity of Crèvecœur. So they turned back, and a new rallying cry went up:

‘To Montsou! Let's get the manager!…We want bread! We want bread!'

M. Hennebeau had gone to the study window to see his wife depart in the carriage for lunch at Marchiennes. For a moment he had watched Négrel riding at the trot beside the carriage door, and then he had quietly gone back to his desk and sat down. The house seemed empty when neither his wife nor his nephew filled it with the sound of their existence. Indeed on this particular day, with the coachman away driving Madame and with Rose the new maid having the day off until five, the only ones left were the manservant, Hippolyte, who was drifting about from room to room in his slippers, and the cook, who had been busy since dawn doing battle with her saucepans, completely preoccupied by the dinner party that her master and mistress were giving that evening. M. Hennebeau was thus looking forward to a day's uninterrupted work in the peace and quiet of the deserted house.

At about nine, although he had received orders to admit no one, Hippolyte took the liberty of announcing Dansaert, who had news. Only then did M. Hennebeau learn of the meeting that had taken place on the previous evening in the forest; and the details were so precise that, as he listened, his thoughts turned to La Pierronne and her amours, which were such common knowledge that two or three anonymous letters would arrive each week denouncing the overman's excesses. Clearly the husband had talked, for the intelligence being imparted carried the whiff of pillow talk. M. Hennebeau even took advantage of this opportunity to convey that he was fully in the picture, going no further than to recommend caution, for fear of a scandal. Nonplussed at being ticked off in the middle of his report, Dansaert spluttered denials and excuses as meanwhile his large nose confessed his guilt by turning immediately scarlet. But he did not protest too vigorously, for actually he was pleased
to have got off so lightly; normally the manager was sternly implacable on this subject, quite the man of rectitude when it came to an employee having fun with a pretty girl from the mine. They continued to discuss the strike: this meeting in the forest was no more than another piece of bravado, they were under no serious threat. In any case things were bound to be quiet in the villages for the next few days, given that the appearance of the military that morning would duly have instilled some fear and respect.

Nevertheless, once he found himself alone again, M. Hennebeau was on the point of sending a message to the Prefect. Only a reluctance to reveal his anxiety unnecessarily caused him to hold back. He was already cross with himself for his lack of judgement in telling all who cared to listen, including even writing to the Board, that the strike would last a fortnight at most. It had now been dragging on for nearly two months, much to his surprise; and he despaired. With each day that passed he felt diminished, compromised by it, and he needed to think of some great coup if he were ever to return to favour among the members of the Board. He had in fact asked them for instructions in the event that fighting broke out. He had not yet had a reply and was expecting one by the afternoon post. So he kept telling himself that there would be time enough then to send off telegrams requesting the military to occupy the pits, if such proved to be the gentlemen's decision. In his view it would mean outright war, with bloodshed and people getting killed, and despite his customary decisiveness such a responsibility weighed on him.

He worked quietly until eleven, to the accompaniment of no other sound in the deserted house than that of Hippolyte's polishing stick in a distant first-floor room. Then he received two telegrams in quick succession, one informing him that Jean-Bart had been invaded by the Montsou mob, and the second telling him about the severed cables, the emptied furnaces and all the rest of the damage. He did not understand. What were the strikers doing attacking Deneulin instead of one of the Company's mines? In any case they could wreck Vandame all they liked, it simply helped him in his plan to take it over. So at
midday he had lunch, alone in the vast dining-room and served in silence by Hippolyte, oblivious even to the shuffle of his slippers. The solitude only added to the gloominess of his thoughts, and his blood ran cold when a deputy, having run all the way, was shown in and told him about the mob's march on Mirou. Almost immediately, as he was finishing his coffee, a telegram informed him that Madeleine and Crèvecœur were now threatened in their turn. He was thoroughly unsure how to proceed. He was expecting the post at two o'clock. Should he ask for troops at once? Or was it better to do nothing and wait until he had received the Board's instructions? He went back to his study, intending to read through a note to the Prefect he had asked Négrel to draft the day before. But he could not put his hand on it and thought that perhaps the young man had left it in his bedroom, where he often did his writing at night. Still undecided and wholly preoccupied by the thought of this note, he hurried upstairs to look for it.