Germinal (56 page)

But his jibe was lost amid the tempest of the shouting, gesticulating mob. The women had now come into view, almost a thousand of them, with their straggling hair that had come loose during all the rushing about, and with their ragged clothes revealing patches of bare flesh, the nakedness of female bodies weary of giving birth to tomorrow's starving children. Some carried a baby in their arms, which they would wave about in the air as though it were an emblem of grief and vengeance. Others, young and full-breasted, like warriors going off to war, were brandishing sticks; and the old frights were screaming so loudly that the sinews in their scraggy necks seemed as though they might snap. Then the men came spilling out on to the road, two thousand of them in a solid raging mass, pit-boys, hewers and banksmen moving along as one, and so tightly bunched together that their faded trousers and ragged jerseys all merged into a single mud-brown blur. Their eyes were blazing, and their mouths were no more than black empty holes as they sang ‘La Marseillaise',
¹
the words of which were audible only as an indistinct bellowing accompanied by the sound of clogs clattering over the hard ground. Above the men's heads, carried upright amid the bristling array of crowbars, an axe went past; and against the clear sky this single axe, as though it were the mob's banner, stood out sharply like the blade of the guillotine.

‘What terrible faces!' Mme Hennebeau stammered.

‘I'm damned if I recognize a single one of them!' Négrel said under his breath. ‘Where on earth have all these blackguards come from?'

It was indeed true that anger and starvation had combined,
after the past two months of suffering, and this wild stampede from pit to pit, to turn the placid features of the Montsou miners into the ravenous jaws of wild beasts. At that moment the sun was setting, and its last rays of dark-crimson light were turning the plain blood red. The road seemed to flow with blood as the men and women raced past, and they too appeared to drip with blood, like butchers in the midst of slaughter.

‘What a wonderful sight!' said Lucie and Jeanne softly, as the artist in each of them was moved by the horrible beauty of the scene.

They were frightened all the same, and they retreated towards Mme Hennebeau, who was leaning against a trough for support. She was gripped with cold fear at the thought that they might be killed if anyone so much as caught a glimpse of them between the planks of these rickety doors. Négrel, too, felt the colour drain from his face, this man who was usually so brave but who was now seized by a terror which he was powerless to overcome, a terror laced with the threat of the unknown. In the hay Cécile remained perfectly still. As for the others, though they tried to look away, they could not help watching.

And what they saw was a vision in red, a vision of the revolution that would come and sweep them all away, without fail, one murderous night before the century was out. Yes, one night the masses would slip their leash and seethe through the highways and byways just like this, unchecked; bourgeois blood would flow, their severed heads would be paraded for all to see, their coffers would be emptied, and their gold scattered far and wide. The women would howl, and the men would have the jaws of wolves, gaping wide and ready to bite. Yes, it would be just like this, the same tatters and rags, the same thunderous clatter of clogs, the same terrible rabble with its foul breath and dirt-stained skin, overrunning the place like a barbarian horde and sweeping the old order away. There would be conflagration, and in every town and city not one stone would be left standing upon another; and when the great feasting and the orgies were done, and when the poor had emptied the rich man's cellars and flayed his womenfolk alive, they would all go back to living in the woods like savages. There would be nothing left, not a penny
of their fortunes would remain, not a single deed of property nor bill of contract, until such day perhaps as a new order might come to take the place of the old. Yes, this was what was passing along the road at this very minute, like a force of nature, and they felt it hit them in the face like a violent blast of wind.

A loud cry went up, drowning out ‘La Marseillaise':

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

Lucie and Jeanne clung to Mme Hennebeau, who had nearly passed out, while Négrel stood in front of them as though to protect them with his body. Was this the night when the old order would finally crumble? What they saw next rendered them quite speechless. The main body of the mob was moving away, leaving only some stragglers, when La Mouquette emerged on to the road. She had been taking her time, watching out for any bourgeois at a window or a garden gate; and when she spotted one, being unable to spit in their face, she would treat them to what was for her the supreme expression of her contempt. Now, having presumably just seen one, she suddenly lifted her skirts and showed them her buttocks, proffering her enormous naked bottom in the dying rays of the sun. And there was nothing at all obscene about this bottom nor anything comic in its uncompromising display.

Everyone vanished, and the mob flowed on towards Montsou, following each bend in the road and passing between the squat, gaily-coloured houses. The carriage was brought out of the yard, but the coachman refused to take responsibility for conveying Madame and the young ladies safely home as long as the strikers were blocking the road. The worst of it was that there was no other way back.

‘But we simply must get home. Dinner will be waiting for us,' said Mme Hennebeau, quite beside herself and maddened by fear. ‘On top of everything these beastly workers have chosen the very day that I am entertaining guests. Really! And then they expect to be treated better!'

Lucie and Jeanne were busy trying to drag Cécile from the hay but she kept refusing to move, believing that the wild savages were still going past and insisting that she had no desire to watch. But eventually they all resumed their seats in the
carriage, and it now occurred to Négrel, who had remounted, that they could go round by the back lanes of Réquillart.

‘Go carefully,' he told the coachman, ‘the road is atrocious. If there are gangs preventing you rejoining the main highway afterwards, then stop behind the old pit. We'll walk home from there – we can use the side-gate – and then you can go and find somewhere to put the carriage and horses, an inn with a coach-shed perhaps.'

Off they set. In the distance the mob was now streaming through Montsou. Having twice seen gendarmes and dragoons go by, the local inhabitants were in a terrible panic. Appalling stories were going the rounds, and there was talk of handwritten posters telling the bourgeois that they were about to get a knife in their bellies; nobody had seen them, but this did not stop anyone from quoting them verbatim. At the notary's house the panic was at its height, for he had just received an anonymous letter through the post warning him that a barrel of gunpowder had been hidden in his cellar ready to blow him up if he did not immediately declare himself on the side of the people.

The Grégoires, whose visit had been prolonged by the arrival of this letter, were just in the middle of discussing it and deciding that it must be a practical joke when the arrival of the invading mob finally reduced the household to a state of blind terror. They themselves, however, remained smiling. Lifting a corner of the curtain they looked outside, but they refused to concede that there was any danger, certain as they were that everything would end amicably. Five o'clock struck, there was still time for them to wait for the coast to clear before proceeding across the road to have dinner at the Hennebeaus', where Cécile would no doubt already be waiting for them following her safe return. But nobody else in Montsou seemed to share their confidence: people were running about madly, doors and windows were being slammed shut. On the opposite side of the road they caught sight of Maigrat busy barricading his shop with a great array of iron bars, and he was so pale and shaken that his slip of a wife had to tighten the nuts herself.

The mob had come to a halt outside the manager's house, and the cry went up once more:

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

M. Hennebeau was standing at the window when Hippolyte came in to close the shutters, in case any windows were broken by stones. He closed all the others on the ground floor to the same end and then went up to the first floor, from where a squeaking of handles could be heard and the sound of shutters being banged to one by one. Unfortunately the bay window in the basement kitchen could not be similarly protected, which was a cause for some concern given the glowing red coals burning beneath the saucepans and the spit.

Wanting to observe what was going on, M. Hennebeau made his way up to the second floor and, without thinking, into Paul's bedroom: being on the left-hand side of the house, it was the best place because it afforded a clear view down the road as far as the Company yards. And there he stood, behind the shutters, overlooking the crowd. But once again his attention was caught by the state of the room: the wash-stand had been tidied and cleaned, and the bed was now cold, its crisp sheets neatly tucked in. All the rage he had felt that afternoon and the furious row he had conducted in total silence inside his own head had now given way to an immense fatigue. His whole being was like this room, cooler, swept clean of the morning's filth, and restored to its usual state of propriety. Why cause a scandal? Had anything changed between them? His wife had simply taken one more lover, and it barely made matters worse that she should have chosen him from among the family; indeed perhaps it was even better that she had, for it preserved appearances. How pathetic he had been, he thought, remembering his wild fit of jealousy. How ridiculous he had been, pounding the bed with his fists like that! He had already put up with one man, so why not this one too! It would mean only that he despised her that little bit more. It all left a bitter taste in his mouth, the terrible pointlessness of everything, the endless pain and suffering of living, the shame at himself for still adoring and wanting the woman in the midst of this filth, which he was doing nothing to prevent.

Beneath the window, the shouting rang out with renewed violence.

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

‘Fools!' M. Hennebeau muttered between clenched teeth.

He could hear them shouting abuse about his fat salary and his fat belly, calling him a dirty pig who never did a day's work and who ate himself sick on fine food while the workers were being starved to death. The women had seen the kitchen, and a storm of curses was unleashed by the sight of pheasants roasting and by the rich aroma of sauces that tormented their empty stomachs. Oh, those bourgeois scum! One day they'd stuff 'em with champagne and truffles till their guts burst!

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

‘You fools!' M. Hennebeau said again. ‘I suppose you think I'm happy!'

He was filled with anger at these people who did not understand. He would gladly have swapped his fat salary just to have their thick skin and their unproblematic sex. If only he could sit them down at his table and let them gorge themselves on pheasant while he went off to fornicate behind the hedges, screwing girls and not giving a damn who had screwed them before him. He would have given everything, his education, his security, his life of luxury, his managerial powers, if he could just, for one single day, have been the lowliest among his own employees, master of his own flesh and enough of a boor to beat his wife and pleasure himself with the woman next door. And he wished, too, that he was starving to death, that his own belly was empty and writhed with the kind of cramp that makes your head spin: perhaps that way he could have put an end to his own interminable misery. Oh to live like an animal, to have no possessions, to roam the cornfields with the ugliest, dirtiest putter, and to wish for nothing else!

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

Then he lost his temper and burst out furiously above the din:

‘Bread! Do you think that's all that matters, you fools?'

He had all the bread he could eat, but that didn't stop him groaning with pain. His household was in ruins, his whole life a source of grief. The very thought of it choked him, and he gave what sounded like the gasp of a dying man. Things didn't
go right just because you had bread. Who was idiot enough to think that happiness in this world comes from having a share of its wealth? These starry-eyed revolutionaries could destroy society and build another one if they liked, but it wouldn't add one jot to the sum total of human joy. They could hand out a slice of bread to every man, woman and child, but not one of them would be the slightest bit less miserable. Indeed they would be spreading yet more unhappiness across the face of the earth, for the fact was that one day even the dogs would howl in despair when they had finally stirred everyone from the tranquillity of sated instinct and raised them to the higher suffering of unfulfilled desire. No, the only good in life lay in not being – or, if one had to be, then in being a tree, a stone, or even less than that, the grain of sand that cannot bleed beneath the grinding heel of a passer-by.

And in his frustration and torment tears filled M. Hennebeau's eyes and began to course in burning drops down the length of his cheeks. The road was fading from view in the gathering dusk when the first stones began to rain against the front wall of the house. No longer angry at these starving people, maddened only by the running sore of his heart, he continued to mutter through his tears:

‘You fools! You fools!'

But the cry of empty stomachs was louder, and the howling rose like a raging tempest, sweeping all before it:

‘We want bread! We want bread!'

Being slapped by Catherine had sobered Étienne up, and he had continued to lead the comrades. But as he urged them on towards Montsou in his hoarse voice, he could hear another voice within him, the voice of reason, asking in astonishment what the point of it all was. He had not meant for any of this to happen, so how had it come about that, having set off for Jean-Bart with
the intention of keeping a cool head and preventing disaster, he now found himself ending a day of mounting violence by laying siege to the manager's house?