Germinal (65 page)

‘Don't come any further. If he sees you, it'll just mean another row.'

The church clock was striking eleven. The bar was closed, but light could be seen through chinks in the shutters.

‘Goodbye,' she murmured.

She had given him her hand but he refused to let go of it, and it was only by slow, determined effort that she managed to retrieve it and depart. Without a backward glance she unlatched the little sidedoor and let herself in. He did not leave, however, but continued to stand there, on the very same spot, staring at the house and anxiously wondering what was happening inside. He listened intently, dreading that he might hear the howling screams of a woman being beaten. But the house remained dark and silent, and all he saw was a light appearing at a firstfloor window; and when this window opened and he recognized the slender shadow leaning out into the road, he stepped forward.

Then Catherine whispered very softly:

‘He's not back yet. I'm going to bed…Please go away, please.'

Étienne left. The thaw was gathering pace: water was streaming from the roofs, and a damp sweat seemed to be running off every wall and fence throughout the jumble of industrial buildings that stretched away into the darkness on this side of the town. His first thought was to make for Réquillart; ill with exhaustion and sick at heart, he wanted nothing more than to disappear into the void below ground. But then he remembered Le Voreux and thought about the Belgian workers who were about to go down, and the comrades in the village who were fed up with the continual presence of the soldiers and determined not to have outsiders working in their pit. And so once more he walked along the canal, through the puddles of melted snow.

As he reached the spoil-heap, the moon was riding high. He looked up at the sky and saw the clouds scudding past, whipped along by the great wind that was blowing up there; but now they were whiter, unravelling in thin streaks and passing over the face of the moon with the blurred transparency of troubled water; and they followed so fast one upon the other that the moon was veiled only for a moment and kept reappearing again in all its clarity.

His eyes filled with this brilliance, Étienne was just lowering his gaze when he caught sight of something on top of the spoil-heap. The sentry, frozen stiff by the cold, was now walking
up and down, twenty-five paces towards Marchiennes and then back in the direction of Montsou. The white flash of the bayonet could be seen above his dark silhouette, itself sharply etched against the pallor of the sky. But what had attracted Étienne's attention, over behind the hut where Bonnemort used to shelter on stormy nights, was a moving shadow, an animal crawling stealthily forward, which he at once recognized as Jeanlin, with his long, supple back like a ferret's. Unable to be seen by the sentry, the little devil was no doubt about to play some trick on him, for he was always going on about the soldiers and asking when they would ever be rid of these murderers who had been sent here to shoot the people.

For a moment Étienne wondered if he should call out to him, to stop him doing anything silly. Just as the moon went behind a cloud, he had seen him getting ready to pounce; but then the moon came out again, and the child was still crouching there. On each occasion the sentry would come as far as the hut, then turn on his heels and walk away. Suddenly, just as another cloud cast everything into darkness, Jeanlin sprang on to the sentry's shoulders in one enormous bound, like a wild cat, clung on by his nails, and plunged his opened knife into the man's throat from behind. The soldier's horsehair collar obstructed the blade, and Jeanlin had to press the handle in with both hands and pull it towards him using the full weight of his body. He was used to slitting chicken's throats, having caught them unawares behind some farm building. It was all over so quickly that the only sound in the darkness was a muffled cry, followed by the clatter of the gun as it fell to the ground. The moon was already gleaming a brilliant white once more.

Rooted to the spot in astonishment, Étienne continued to watch. His intended shout vanished back into his chest. Above him the spoil-heap was deserted, and no shadowy figure was now to be seen outlined against the stampeding clouds. He ran up as fast as he could and found Jeanlin crouching beside the body, which lay flat on its back with arms outstretched. In the bright moonlight the red trousers and grey overcoat stood out starkly against the snow. Not a drop of blood had fallen: the knife was still lodged in the man's throat up to the hilt.

In a fit of unthinking rage he knocked the boy over with his fist beside the corpse.

‘Why on earth did you do that?' he stammered in disbelief.

Jeanlin struggled to his knees and crawled away on all fours, arching his bony spine like a cat. His large ears and jutting jaw were quivering, and his eyes blazed with the excitement of his dirty deed.

‘In God's name, why did you do that?'

‘Dunno. Just felt like it.'

It was the only reply he could manage. For three days now he had felt like it. The idea had been tormenting him, and he had thought about it so much that it had made his head hurt, right there, behind the eyes. And anyway why should he give a damn about these bloody soldiers who'd only come to make a nuisance of themselves in the miners' backyard? Having heard all the rousing speeches in the forest and the calls to death and destruction throughout the pits, he had retained five or six key words, which he repeated to himself like a child playing at revolutions. And that was all he knew, nobody had put him up to it, he had thought of it all by himself, just like he sometimes fancied stealing onions from a field.

Étienne was appalled at the idea of these criminal urges quietly seething inside the child's head, and he gave him a kick to send him packing, as though he were a dumb animal. He was afraid that they might have heard the sentry's muffled cry from the guardroom at Le Voreux, and each time the moon came out from behind a cloud he would glance over towards the pit. But nothing had stirred, so he bent over and touched the man's hands, which were gradually turning to ice; and he listened in vain to the silent heart beneath the greatcoat. All that could be seen of the knife was the bone handle, on which a romantic motto was carved in black letters: the simple word ‘Love'.

His eyes travelled up from the throat to the face. All of a sudden he recognized the young soldier: it was Jules, the raw recruit he had spoken to one morning. And he felt an enormous wave of pity at the sight of this fair, gentle face all covered in freckles. The blue eyes were wide open, gazing at the sky with that fixed stare Étienne had seen before as he scanned the
horizon searching for his native soil. Where was this Plogoff that had appeared to him as in a sundrenched vision? Somewhere over yonder. Far away the sea would be roaring on this stormy night. Perhaps this gale that was passing so high above them had already swept across his moorland. Two women would be standing there, the mother and the sister, holding on to their bonnets in the wind and gazing into the distance as if they, too, might see far enough and discover what the boy was doing all those miles away. Now they would wait for ever. What a truly dreadful thing it was that poor devils should kill each other like this and all on account of the rich!

But they would have to get rid of the body, and at first Étienne considered throwing it into the canal. But he was deterred by the thought that it would certainly be found. He then became extremely worried; time was ticking by, what should he do? He had a sudden inspiration: if he could carry it as far as Réquillart, he could bury it there for all eternity.

‘Come over here,' he ordered Jeanlin.

The child was wary.

‘No, you'll only hit me again. Anyway, I've got something to do. Bye.'

He had indeed arranged to meet Bébert and Lydie, at a secret hidingplace they'd made for themselves under the timberstack at Le Voreux. It was all to be a big adventure, sleeping away from home so as to be part of the action if people started stoning the living daylights out of the Belgians when they tried to go down the pit.

‘Do as I say,' Étienne insisted. ‘Come over here, or I'll call the soldiers and they'll cut your head off.'

As Jeanlin was making up his mind, Étienne rolled up his handkerchief and wrapped it tightly round the soldier's neck, leaving the knife in place because it was stopping the blood from pouring out. The snow was melting, and the ground bore no traces of blood nor signs of a struggle.

‘Take his legs.'

Jeanlin grabbed the legs, while Étienne slung the rifle over his shoulder and took hold of the body under the arms. Slowly the pair of them made their way down the spoil-heap, trying hard
not to dislodge any rocks. Fortunately the moon had gone in. But as they were going along the side of the canal, it came out again and shone brightly; it was a miracle the guards at Le Voreux didn't see them. They hurried on in silence, but the swaying of the corpse made progress difficult, and they were forced to set it down every hundred metres. At the corner of the lane leading to Réquillart a sudden noise struck terror into their hearts, and they only just had time to hide behind a wall before a patrol came past. Further on they bumped into a man, but he was drunk and went on his way cursing and swearing at them. But finally they reached the old mine, drenched in sweat and in such a state that their teeth were chattering.

Étienne had realized already that it would not be easy to manhandle the body down the shaft. It was a nasty job. First, Jeanlin had to lower the body from above while he hung from the bushes and guided it down past the first two ladders, where some of the rungs were broken. Then with each new ladder he had to repeat the same manœuvre, climbing down ahead and then taking it in his arms; and there were thirty ladders in all, two hundred and ten metres in which to feel the body continually falling into his arms. The rifle was rubbing on his spine, and he had stopped the lad from fetching his one bit of candle, which he was jealously preserving. What would have been the point? The light would only have been a further encumbrance in the confined space. All the same, when they finally reached the loadingbay, completely out of breath, he did send the boy off to get it. He sat down and waited in the darkness, next to the corpse, his heart pounding.

As soon as Jeanlin came back with the candle, Étienne asked his advice, for the child had explored every inch of these old workings, down to the narrow clefts, which were impossible for a grown man to pass through. They set off again, dragging the dead man behind them for nearly a kilometre through a maze of ruined roadways. Eventually the roof began to sink lower, and they found themselves on their knees beneath some crumbling rock that was held up only by some half-broken timbering. The space had the dimensions of a long box, and they laid the young soldier down in it as though it were a coffin, placing the
rifle alongside him; then they gave the props a few hefty kicks with the backs of their heels to break them completely, even though they themselves risked being buried alive. The rock gave way at once, and they barely had time to crawl free on their hands and knees. Unable to resist a last look, Étienne saw the roof gradually collapse and slowly crush the corpse beneath its enormous weight. And then that was all that was left, just the earth's solid mass.

Jeanlin, now back home in his robber's den, flung himself down on the hay and muttered in a weary voice:

‘Phew! Lydie and Bébert will just have to wait for me. I've got to have an hour's kip.'

Étienne had blown out the candle, of which only a tiny stub remained. He, too, was completely exhausted, but he did not feel sleepy since painful nightmarish thoughts were hammering away inside his head. Soon only one remained, a single tormenting question that nagged away at him but which he could not answer: why had he not stabbed Chaval when he had held him at knifepoint? And why had this child just slit a soldier's throat without even knowing his name? It all undermined his revolutionary notions about being prepared to kill, about having the right to kill. Did this mean he was a coward? Over in the hay the child had begun to snore, like a drunk, as though he had binged on slaughter. And Étienne felt disgust and irritation at knowing the boy was there and at having to listen to him. Suddenly he gave a shudder, he had just felt the breath of fear on his face. It was as though a faint ripple of air, like a sob, had issued from the depths of the earth. The picture of the young soldier lying there beneath the rocks with his rifle by his side sent shivers down his spine and made his hair stand on end. It was ridiculous, but the whole mine seemed to fill with the sound of voices, and he had to relight the candle; he only regained his composure once he could see the empty roadways in its pale glow.

For a further quarter of an hour he pondered things, still wrestling with the same question, his eyes fixed on the burning wick. Then there was a sizzling sound, the wick drowned in wax, and everything was once more plunged into darkness. His
shudders returned, and he felt like hitting Jeanlin to stop him snoring so loudly. The proximity of the boy became so intolerable that he fled, filled with a desperate need for fresh air, and rushed through the roadways and up the shaft as though he could hear a ghost panting at his heels.

Back on the surface, amid the ruins of Réquillart, Étienne could at last breathe freely. Since he hadn't dared to kill, he would have to die himself, and the prospect of his own death, which had already vaguely occurred to him, now loomed once more and lodged firmly in his mind, like one last hope. If he died a valiant death, if he died for the revolution, that would be the end of it, that would resolve things one way or another, for good or ill, it would mean he didn't have to think about the matter any further. If the comrades were going to attack the Belgians, he would make sure he was in the front line, and with a bit of luck he might get shot. And so it was with a resolute step that he returned to Le Voreux to see what was going on. Two o'clock struck, and the sound of voices could be heard coming noisily from the deputies' room, which had been taken over by the military guards. The sentry's disappearance had caused a considerable stir; they had gone to wake the captain, and in the end, after a careful inspection of the scene, it was decided that the soldier must have deserted. As Étienne listened from the shadows, he remembered the republican captain the young soldier had told him about. Supposing he could be persuaded to come over to the people's side? The troops would carry their guns reversed, and that could prove to be a general signal for the wholesale slaughter of the bourgeois. A new dream took hold of him. He forgot all about dying and continued to stand there in the mud, for hour after hour; and as the drizzle from the thaw settled on his shoulders, he was filled with the feverish hope that victory might yet be possible.