Germinal (67 page)

But then there was a disturbance in the crowd, and an old woman was suddenly ejected at the front. It was La Brûlé, looking terrifyingly thin, her arms and neck bare, who had arrived in such great haste that her grey hair was tumbling down over her eyes:

‘Thank God for that. I made it!' she stammered, gasping for breath. ‘That damned toady Pierron locked me in the cellar!'

And without further ado she rounded on the troops, spewing abuse from her blackened mouth:

‘You lousy bunch of sods! Always licking your masters' boots, aren't you, but never afraid to attack the poor. Oh no!'

Then everyone else joined in, and the insults flew thick and fast. Some still shouted: ‘Long live the squaddies! Throw the officer down the shaft!' But soon there was only one cry: ‘Down with the army!' These men who had listened impassively, without a flicker of expression, to the appeals to brotherly solidarity and the friendly attempts to make them change sides remained no less passive and unflinching under the barrage of bad language. Behind them the captain had drawn his sword; and as the crowd pressed closer and closer, threatening to crush them against the wall, he ordered his men to present bayonets. They obeyed, and a double row of steel points descended in front of the strikers' chests.

‘You filthy bastards!' screamed La Brûlé as she retreated.

But already everybody was returning to the charge, drunk on their heedlessness of death. Women rushed forward, and La Maheude and La Levaque screamed:

‘Kill us, then! Come on, kill us! But we want our rights!'

At the risk of getting cut to shreds, Levaque had grabbed a bunch of three bayonets with his bare hands and was pulling them towards him in an attempt to pull them off; in his anger he became ten times as strong and managed to twist them. Bouteloup, meanwhile, standing to one side and annoyed at having come with his friend, calmly looked on.

‘Come on, you buggers,' Maheu kept saying. ‘Come on, let's see what you're made of.'

He unbuttoned his jacket and opened his shirt, exposing his naked, hairy chest with its tattoos of coal-stains. He pressed himself against the points of the bayonets, forcing the soldiers to recoil and presenting an awesome spectacle of insolent bravado. One point had pricked him near the nipple, and it seemed to madden him so much that he kept trying to make it go deeper in, till he could hear his ribs crack.

‘Admit it! You'd never dare…There are ten thousand more on their way. You can kill us if you like, but you'll have ten thousand more to kill after that.'

The soldiers' position was becoming critical, for they had received strict orders not to use their weapons except as a last resort. How were they supposed to stop these crazy people skewering themselves to death? Moreover they had less and less room to move, and they were now backed up against the wall without any means of retreating further. Nevertheless this small squad of soldiers, a handful of men against the rising tide of miners, was still holding firm and coolly obeying their captain's brief commands. As he stood there nervously, tight-lipped, his eyes shining, his one fear was that his men would be provoked by all this abuse. Already a young sergeant, a tall, thin chap, was blinking in an alarming manner, and his apology of a moustache was bristling. Near by a seasoned veteran with a skin tanned by umpteen campaigns had turned pale on seeing his bayonet twisted like a straw. Another man, a recent recruit no doubt, who still smelled of the ploughfield, flushed crimson every time he heard himself called a sod or a bastard. And there was no let-up in the violence of the intimidation, of the clenched fists and the foul language, of all the threats and accusations that were thrown in their faces by the shovelful. It took every ounce of military discipline to keep the men standing there like this in gloomy, disdainful silence as they carried out their orders without the shadow of an expression on their faces.

A showdown was seeming inevitable when suddenly Richomme, the deputy, appeared behind the soldiers with his white hair, looking like a friendly policeman. He was deeply shaken, and said loudly:

‘In God's name, this is idiocy! We really must stop this nonsense!'

And he thrust himself between the bayonets and the miners.

‘Comrades, listen to me…You know that I used to be one of the workers, that I've always been one of you. Well, by God, I promise you that if you don't get fairly treated, I'll speak to the bosses myself and tell them loud and clear…But this is all getting out of hand. It doesn't do any good at all screaming bad
language at these fine men and trying to get a hole in your belly.'

They listened, and they hesitated. But just then, unfortunately, the sharp features of young Négrel appeared up at the window. He was no doubt afraid that he might be accused of sending a deputy instead of daring to go down himself, and he tried to make himself heard. But the sound of his voice was lost amid such a terrible uproar that he had to back away from the window at once, shrugging as he did so. From then on Richomme could try as he might to appeal to them on his own behalf and to insist that the only way to settle the matter was by talking it through man to man, but still they rejected him, for he was now suspect. Nevertheless he persevered and stood his ground:

‘God help me, they can smash my head in if they like, but if you're going to carry on with this madness, I'm not going to desert you.'

Étienne, whose assistance he had sought as he tried to make them see reason, gestured helplessly. It was too late, there were more than five hundred of them now, and not just the hardliners who had raced to the mine determined to get rid of the Belgians. Some people had simply come for the show, while the laddish contingent thought the confrontation was a great lark. In the middle of one group, some way off, Zacharie and Philomène were watching as though it were a display, and so unconcerned that they had even brought the two children, Achille and Désirée, along to watch. A new wave of people was arriving from Réquillart, including Mouquet and La Mouquette; Mouquet immediately went over and clapped his mate Zacharie on the shoulder with a laugh, while his sister, who was very worked up, rushed forward to join the troublemakers in the front row.

Meanwhile, with each minute that passed, the captain kept looking towards the Montsou road. The reinforcements he had requested had not yet arrived, and his sixty men could not hold out much longer. Eventually it occurred to him to stage a show of strength, and he ordered his men to load their rifles in full view of the crowd. The soldiers duly obeyed, but the crowd continued to grow restive, and there was much brave talk and mockery.

‘Oh, look. It's time for target-practice. They
will
be tired!' sneered the women, La Brûlé, La Levaque and the others.

La Maheude was still carrying Estelle, who had woken up and now started crying; and as she clutched the child's tiny frame to her chest, she walked up so close to the sergeant that he asked her what she thought she was doing bringing a poor little thing like that along with her.

‘What do you bloody care?' she replied. ‘Shoot her, if you dare.'

The men shook their heads in contempt. Nobody believed that anyone would fire on them.

‘They've only got blanks anyway,' said Levaque.

‘You'd think we were bloody Cossacks!' shouted Maheu. ‘You're not going to shoot your own countrymen, for God's sake!'

Others kept saying they'd served in the Crimea
¹
and that a bit of lead had never frightened anyone, and they all continued to push forward towards the rifles. If the soldiers had fired at that moment, the mob would have been mown down.

Now in the front row, La Mouquette was almost speechless with indignation at the thought that the soldiers might want to put a bullet through a woman's skin. She had spat out her full repertoire of foul language at them and still could think of no obscenity that was sufficiently demeaning, when suddenly, having only this one last deadly insult to fling in the squad's face, she decided to display her bottom. She hoisted her skirts with both hands, bent forward and exposed a huge, round expanse of flesh.

‘Here, take a look at this! Even this is too good for you, you dirty bastards!'

She bent over double and swivelled from side to side so that each should have his share, and with each thrust of her bottom she said:

‘One for the officer! And one for the sergeant! And one for the squaddies!'

There were gales of laughter; Bébert and Lydie were in fits, and even Étienne, despite his grim forebodings, applauded this offensive exhibition of naked flesh. Everyone, the hardliners as
well as the jokers, was now jeering at the soldiers as though they had actually been spattered with filth; and only Catherine, standing over to one side on a pile of old timbering, remained silent as she sensed the gall rising to her throat and the warm fire of hate gradually spreading through her body.

But then a scuffle broke out. In order to calm his men's nerves the captain had decided to take some prisoners. La Mouquette jumped up in an instant and darted away between the comrades' legs. Three miners, including Levaque, were seized from among the worst troublemakers and placed under guard in the deputies' office.

From up above Négrel and Dansaert were shouting at the captain to come in and take refuge with them. He refused, aware that the doors had no locks and that when the buildings were stormed he would suffer the ignominy of being disarmed. Already his small detachment of men was beginning to mutter crossly about not running away from a miserable rabble in clogs. Once again the sixty men stood with their backs to the wall, rifles loaded, and faced the mob.

At first people pulled back a little, and there was complete silence. The show of force had taken the strikers by surprise and left them nonplussed. Then a cry went up, demanding the immediate release of the prisoners: some even claimed they were being murdered. And then, quite unprompted but acting as one in their common need for vengeance, they all rushed over to the nearby stacks of bricks, which were made on the premises out of the local marly clay. Children carried them one by one, women filled their skirts with them, and soon everyone had a pile of ammunition at their feet. The stoning began.

La Brûlé was the first to take up position. She broke each brick across her bony knee and then, with both hands, hurled the two pieces at once. La Lévaque was nearly wrenching her arm out of its socket, so fat and flabby that she had to go right up close in order to hit the target, despite the entreaties of Bouteloup, who kept pulling her back, hoping to take her home now that her husband was out of the way. All the women were getting very excited. La Mouquette had got tired of cutting herself trying to break the bricks across her thighs, which were
too fleshy, and decided to throw them whole instead. Even some of the children joined the line, and Bébert was showing Lydie how to chuck them underarm. It was like a hailstorm, with enormous hailstones thudding to the ground. Suddenly Catherine appeared in the midst of these furies, brandishing broken bricks and throwing them as hard as she could with her small arms. She could not have said why, but she felt an absolute, desperate need to slaughter. Was this filthy bloody existence of theirs never going to end? She had had enough, enough of being slapped and thrown out by her man, enough of tramping along muddy roads like a lost dog, not even able to ask her father for a bowl of soup when he was starving to death just like her. Things never got better, ever since she could remember they had only got worse; and she broke the bricks and just threw them, wanting to destroy everything and anything, her eyes so blinded by rage that she couldn't even see whose jaws she was smashing.

Étienne, who was still standing in front of the soldiers, nearly had his head split open. His ear began to swell up, and he turned round and was shocked to realize that the brick had come from the frenzied hands of Catherine; and, even though he could get killed, he just stood there watching her. Many people were standing like that, with their arms by their sides, absorbed in the spectacle of the battle. Mouquet was assessing the throws as though he were at a cork-tossing contest: good shot! bad luck! He was laughing away and nudging Zacharie, who was having an argument with Philomène because he had smacked Achille and Désirée and refused to lift them on to his shoulders so that they could see better. In the background the road was lined with crowds of onlookers. At the top of the hill, at the entrance to the village, old Bonnemort had just appeared: he had hobbled there on his stick but was now standing still, silhouetted against the rust-coloured sky.

As soon as the bricks started flying, Richomme had again intervened between the soldiers and the miners, entreating one side and rallying the other, heedless of the danger and so distraught that huge tears were running down his cheeks. Nobody could hear what he was saying amid the uproar, they just saw the quivering of his grey moustache.

But the hail of bricks was getting thicker, for the men were now following the women's example.

Just then La Maheude noticed Maheu, who was hanging back with a grim look on his face.

‘What's up with you?' she shouted to him. ‘Are you scared? You're not going to let your comrades be taken to prison, are you?…Oh, if it weren't for this kid, I'd soon show you how to do it!'

Estelle was hanging on to her neck and screaming, preventing her from joining La Brûlé and the others. When Maheu seemed not to hear, she kicked some bricks over towards his feet.

‘For God's sake, take some. Have I got to spit in your face to give you the courage?'

The blood rushed to his cheeks, and he broke some bricks and threw them. She whipped him on so hard that it made his head spin, baying at him from behind and urging him to the kill, all the while nearly suffocating the child across her chest with her tensed arms; and he kept moving forward until eventually he stood directly in front of the rifles.