Germinal (72 page)

But it was here, at the pit-head, that Catherine feared there would be abuse from the comrades. Sure enough, the moment they walked in she spotted Chaval in the middle of twenty or so miners waiting for an empty cage. He started walking towards her with a furious look on his face but caught sight of Étienne and stopped. Then he affected to sneer and started shrugging his shoulders in a theatrical manner. Oh, fine, fine! What did he bloody care anyway! Étienne was welcome to her, he'd warmed her up nicely for him! Good riddance! It was no skin off his nose if the gentleman preferred other people's cast-offs! But underneath this show of contempt he was quivering with jealous rage, and his eyes blazed. In fact nobody else reacted at all, and the comrades just stood there in silence, their eyes on the ground. They merely glanced over at the new arrivals, and then, demoralized and without anger, went back to staring fixedly at the entrance to the pit-shaft, clutching their lamps and shivering in their thin cotton jackets thanks to the perpetual draughts that blew in the large hall.

Eventually the cage settled on its keeps, and they were told to get in. Catherine and Étienne squeezed into a tub which already contained Pierron and two hewers. Next to them, in the other tub, Chaval was busy telling old Mouque at the top of his voice how wrong management was not to use the opportunity to rid the pits of a rotten apple or two; but the old stableman, who had reverted to his usual state of weary resignation at the dog's life he led, no longer felt angry about the death of his children and simply replied with a conciliatory gesture.

The cage was released, and they dropped quickly into the darkness. No one spoke. Suddenly, about two thirds of the way down, there was a terrible scraping noise. The ironwork creaked, and everyone was thrown on top of each other.

‘Christ Almighty!' Étienne muttered crossly. ‘Do they want to crush us to death? What with this bloody tubbing of theirs we'll never see daylight again. And they say they've fixed it!'

Nevertheless the cage had got past the obstacle. It was now
descending beneath such a heavy shower of water that the miners listened with some concern to the sound of it streaming down. Had the caulking sprung many new leaks?

They asked Pierron, who had been back at work for some days, but he didn't want to let on that he was afraid in case it was interpreted as criticism of the management; and so he replied:

‘Oh, there's no danger! It's always like this. They probably just haven't had time to caulk the
pichoux
.'

The torrential deluge roared down on top of them, and by the time they reached pit-bottom it was like being in the middle of a waterspout. Not one deputy thought of climbing up the ladders to take a look. The pump would do the trick, and the caulkers could inspect the joints the following night. As it was, they were having enough problems reorganizing the work in the roadways. Before letting the hewers return to their individual coal-faces, the engineer had decided that for the first five days everyone would carry out urgent shoring work. Rock-falls were threatening all over the place, and the main roads had suffered so badly that the timber supports needed replacing over stretches of several hundred metres. So at pit-bottom they were forming ten-man teams, each under the direction of a deputy, and then setting them to work at the worst-affected spots. Once everyone was down, there were three hundred and twenty-two of them, about half of the total workforce when the pit was in full production.

Chaval had just become the tenth member of the team that included Étienne and Catherine. It was no accident; he had hidden behind his comrades and then given the deputy no other option. This particular team set off to clear the far end of the northern roadway, nearly three kilometres away, where a rock-fall was blocking access to the Eighteen-Inch seam. They set to with their picks and shovels to remove the rubble. Étienne, Chaval and five others did the digging while Catherine and two pit-boys pushed the tubs full of spoil up to the incline. Nobody said much, as the deputy never left their side. Meanwhile Catherine's two lovers were on the point of coming to blows. Though busy muttering that he had no more use for the whore, Chaval
refused to leave her alone and kept knocking into her on the sly, with the result that Étienne had threatened to give him what for if he didn't leave her in peace. They glared ferociously at each other and had to be separated.

At about eight o'clock Dansaert came round to see how the work was progressing. He seemed to be in a foul mood, and he tore into the deputy: it was all wrong, the props needed to be replaced as you went along, the whole thing was a mess! And off he went, announcing he'd be back with the engineer. He had been expecting Négrel since the early morning and could not understand why he was so late.

Another hour went by. The deputy had stopped the men clearing the rubble and set everyone to the task of strengthening the roof. Even Catherine and the two pit-boys had stopped pushing their tubs and instead were getting the props ready and bringing them along. Here at the end of the roadway the team was like a remote outpost at the furthest point of the mine, and it was now completely cut off from the other workings. On three or four occasions they heard strange noises, like the sound of people running, and they looked up from their work. What was happening? It was as if all the roads were emptying, as if the comrades were already returning to the surface, and as fast as they possibly could. But the sounds faded away in the deep silence, and they resumed their task of ramming timber props under the ceiling, dazed by the deafening blows of the sledgehammer. Eventually they returned to clearing away the rocks, and the tubs began moving again.

Catherine returned from her first trip looking very frightened and saying that there was nobody left at the incline.

‘I called out, but there was no reply. Everybody's cleared off.'

Everyone was so shocked that they downed tools and ran. They were horrified at the thought of being left behind all alone in the pit like this so far from the shaft. They had kept only their lamps and ran along in single file, the men, the boys and Catherine. Even the deputy was panicking and shouting for help, more and more terrified by the silence and the endless series of deserted roadways. What was going on? Why wasn't there a soul to be seen? What could have happened to make
everyone vanish like this? Their terror increased with the uncertainty of the danger facing them, of the threat that they could sense but could not understand.

At length, as they were approaching pit-bottom, they were met by a stream of water blocking their path. At once they found themselves up to their knees; they could no longer run but instead had to wade through the water, all the while thinking that a minute's delay might cost them their lives.

‘God Almighty! The tubbing's burst!' cried Étienne. ‘I told you we'd never see daylight again!'

Ever since the miners had come down, Pierron had been extremely concerned as he watched the water pouring from the shaft in ever-greater quantities. As he helped two other men load tubs into the cages, he kept looking up: his face was splashed with large drops of water, and his ears rang with the roar of the tempest above him. But he became particularly anxious when he noticed that the
bougnou
, the ten-metre sump, was filling up beneath him; already the water was seeping up through the wooden planks and spilling out on to the cast-iron floor, proof that the pump could no longer keep up with the leaks. He could hear it panting away in exhausted gasps. He then warned Dansaert, who swore angrily and said they would have to wait for the engineer. Twice he mentioned it again, but all he got by way of reply was an exasperated shrug of the shoulders. So the water was rising. What was he supposed to do about it?

Mouque appeared with Battle, leading him to work; and he had to hold on to him with both hands, for the usually sleepy old horse had suddenly reared up, straining his neck towards the shaft and whinnying at the prospect of death.

‘What's up, my philosopher friend? What's the matter?…The rain, is it? Come on now, it's no concern of yours.'

But the animal was quivering all over, and Mouque had to drag him off towards the haulage road.

Almost at the same instant as Mouque and Battle were disappearing down a roadway, there was a loud crack up above, followed by the prolonged clatter of something falling. A piece of tubbing had come away and was bouncing off the walls of
the shaft as it fell the hundred and eighty metres to the bottom. Pierron and the other onsetters were able to get clear in time so that the oak plank crushed only an empty tub. At the same time a great sheet of water came hurtling down, as though a dyke had burst. Dansaert wanted to climb up and take a look; but even as he spoke, a second piece came tumbling down. Terrified, and with disaster staring him in the face, he hesitated no longer but gave the order to return to the surface and dispatched the deputies to raise the alarm throughout the mine.

There followed a terrible stampede. Miners came streaming out of every roadway, pushing and shoving as they made for the cages, crushing each other and ready to kill the next man if they could just get taken up at once. Some had tried to go up by the escape shaft, but they came back down again shouting that it was already blocked. With each cage that departed the nightmare began for those who remained: that one had got past all right, but who could say if the next one would, what with all the debris now blocking the shaft? Up above them the tubbing must have been continuing to disintegrate because, amid the continuous and growing roar of cascading water, they heard a series of muffled explosions, which was the timbers splitting and bursting. One cage was soon out of action: it had been severely dented and would no longer run smoothly on the guides, which in any case had probably been broken. The other was catching so badly that the cable was bound to snap soon. And there were still a hundred men to be got out, all of them screaming their heads off and struggling to get nearest to a cage, each one covered in blood and soaked to the skin. Two men were killed by falling planks. A third, who had grabbed hold of the cage from below, had fallen fifty metres and disappeared into the sump.

Dansaert, meanwhile, was trying to restore order. Armed with a pick, he was threatening to smash the skull of the first man who disobeyed him; and he endeavoured to get everyone to form a queue, shouting out that the onsetters would be the last to leave once they had seen their comrades safely away. Nobody was listening to him, indeed he had just stopped a pale and frightened Pierron from being one of the first to make his
escape. Each time the cage left he had to strike him to make him stand back. But his own teeth were chattering; a minute longer, and they'd all be buried alive: everything was giving way up there, it was as though a river had burst its banks, and bits of tubbing were raining down murderously on those below. A few miners were still left when, crazed with fear, he jumped into a tub and let Pierron jump in behind him. The cage rose.

At that very moment Étienne and Chaval's team reached pit-bottom. They saw the cage disappear and rushed forward; but they were driven back as the tubbing finally gave way altogether. The shaft was blocked, the cage would not be coming down again. Catherine was sobbing, and Chaval swore till he choked. There were twenty of them left: were those bloody bosses just going to abandon them here like this? Old Mouque, having led Battle slowly back, was still standing there holding him by the bridle; and the pair of them, the old man and the horse, gazed in astonishment at the speed with which the floodwater was rising. Already it had reached thigh level. Étienne said nothing but gritted his teeth and picked Catherine up in his arms. And the twenty of them were screaming, their faces upturned, twenty people stubbornly gazing like imbeciles at a shaft that was now a collapsed hole in the ground spewing forth a river and from which there could be no further hope of rescue.

On emerging into the daylight Dansaert saw Négrel hurrying towards him. As luck would have it, Mme Hennebeau had kept him at home since first thing that morning because she wanted to look through some catalogues with a view to choosing some wedding presents for Cécile. It was now ten o'clock.

‘So what's happening?' he shouted while still some way off.

‘The pit's done for,' replied the overman.

He blurted out the story of the disaster, while the engineer listened in disbelief and gave a shrug. Who'd ever heard of tubbing coming apart of its own accord like that? They must be exaggerating, he would have to take a look.

‘Presumably there's nobody still down there?'

Dansaert looked shifty. No, nobody. At least he hoped not. Still, some miners might have got delayed.

‘But in God's name why did you come up, then? You don't just leave your men like that!'

He immediately gave orders for the lamps to be counted. Three hundred and twenty-two had been issued that morning, and only two hundred and fifty-five had been handed in. However, several miners admitted that they had left theirs behind after dropping them in the general panic. They tried to have a roll-call, but it was impossible to establish precise figures: some miners had already rushed away, others did not hear their names. Nobody could agree on who was missing. Twenty of them perhaps, or forty. But for Négrel one thing was clear: there were still men below. If you leaned over the edge of the shaft, you could make out their screams coming up through the debris from the collapsed tubbing, despite the noise of the falling water.

Négrel's first thoughts were to send for M. Hennebeau and to shut the pit. But it was too late: miners had already raced off to Village Two Hundred and Forty as though they were being pursued by the collapsing mine itself and had spread alarm through every household. Groups of women and an assortment of old men and children were all rushing down the hill towards them, sobbing and screaming. They had to be driven back, and a cordon of supervisors was detailed to hold them off so as to prevent them from hampering operations. Many of the workers who had come up from the mine were still standing there in a daze, oblivious to the fact that they might change their clothes, and frozen with fear as they contemplated this terrifying hole in which they had nearly lost their lives. Distraught women milled round them, quoting names and besieging them with questions. Had so-and-so been down there? And this person? And that person? They had no idea and simply mumbled, shivering violently and making wild gestures as though to ward off some ghastly vision that haunted them. The crowd was growing rapidly, and the sound of wailing filled the surrounding roads. Up on the spoil-heap, in Bonnemort's shelter, a man was sitting on the ground: it was Souvarine, who had stayed to watch.