Germinal (73 page)

‘Names! Just tell us the names!' cried the women, their voices choked with tears.

Négrel appeared briefly and said:

‘As soon as we have the names, we'll let you know. But all is not lost. Everyone will be rescued…I'm on my way down.'

Then, in silent anguish, the crowd waited. And, indeed, with quiet bravery, the engineer was preparing to go down. He had had the cage unhitched and ordered a small tub to be attached to the end of the cable instead; and, suspecting that his lamp would be extinguished by the water, he instructed the men to hang another one underneath, where it would be protected.

Some deputies were helping with these preparations, shaking all over, their faces white and drained.

‘You're coming down with me, Dansaert,' Négrel said curtly.

But when he saw that none of them had the courage and watched the overman swaying on his feet, faint with terror, he brushed him aside with contempt.

‘On second thoughts, you'll only get in my way…I'd rather go alone.'

Already he had climbed into the narrow bucket dangling on the end of the cable; and, holding his lamp in one hand and the communication rope in the other, he called out to the operator himself:

‘Gently now!'

The engine started the pulleys turning, and Négrel disappeared down into the chasm, where the wretched souls could still be heard screaming.

At the top nothing had shifted, and he noted that the upper tubbing was in good condition. As he hung in the middle of the shaft, he swivelled this way and that, shining his light on the sides: so few of the joints were leaking that his lamp was unaffected. But when he reached the lower tubbing, at a depth of three hundred metres, it went out just as he had foreseen: a spurt of water had landed in the tub. From then on he could see only by the light of the lamp underneath, which preceded him into the darkness. Despite his cool nerve he shivered and turned pale at the sight of the full horror of the disaster. Only a few timber staves in the tubbing remained; the others had disappeared along with their frames. Behind them yawned huge cavities from which the yellow sand, as fine as flour, was pouring out in considerable quantities, while the waters of the Torrent, that
forgotten, underground sea with its own storms and wrecks, were gushing forth as though from an open sluice. He went lower, lost in the midst of these empty spaces that were now growing ever wider. The water spouting from the underground springs battered his tub and spun him round, and he was so poorly served by the red star of his lamp as it sped downwards that it was like seeing the streets and crossroads of some distant, ruined city when he gazed into the huge, dancing shadows. It would never be possible for human beings to work down here again, and he had but one hope left, that of rescuing the miners whose lives were in danger. The further he descended, the louder grew the screaming, but then he had to stop, for an impassable obstacle was blocking the shaft: a pile of tubbing staves, the broken beams of the cage-rails, and the shattered remains of the escape shaft partitions all lay in a tangled mass together with the splintered cable-guides that had once led to the pump. As he stared steadily down at the scene, his heart sinking, the screaming suddenly stopped. No doubt, faced with the rapidly rising flood, the poor people had fled into the roadways – if the water had not already filled their lungs.

Négrel was obliged to admit defeat and pulled on the rope in order to be returned to the surface. But then he signalled for another stop. He was still amazed by how suddenly the disaster had occurred, and he did not understand why. He wanted to find out, and started examining the pieces of tubbing that were still intact. From a distance he had been surprised by the scratches and dents in the wood. His lamp had almost gone out because of the wet, and so he felt around with his fingers and was able to make out very easily the saw marks and the drill holes, the whole, ghastly process of destruction. Quite clearly someone had wanted this disaster to happen. As he stared open-mouthed, these last pieces gave way and plunged down the shaft, frames and all, in a final moment of disintegration that nearly took him with it. His courage had vanished, and the thought of the man who had done this made his hair stand on end, chilling the blood in his veins with the awestruck dread of evil, as if the man were still there, like some monstrous presence in all this darkness, a witness to his own inordinate crime. He
screamed and pulled frantically on the rope. And it was high time he did so, for he noticed that a hundred metres above him the upper tubbing was starting to show signs of movement: the joints were opening up and the caulking beginning to give way, releasing streams of water. It was now only a matter of hours before the mine-shaft would lose its entire tubbing and cave in completely.

On the surface M. Hennebeau was anxiously waiting for Négrel.

‘Well? How does it look?' he asked.

But the engineer could not get the words out. He was on the point of collapse.

‘It's just not possible. Really, it's quite unheard of…Did you have a good look?'

Yes, Négrel nodded, glancing round warily. He did not want to explain further while some of the deputies were listening, and he led his uncle some ten metres away and then, having judged the distance insufficient, further away still. Speaking very softly in his ear, he told him about the sabotage, how the planks had been sawn and drilled, how the pit had had its throat slit and was now breathing its last. M. Hennebeau turned very pale and also lowered his voice, instinctively respecting the silence that attends the monstrousness of great crimes or wanton acts of immorality. There was no point in appearing to be frightened in front of Montsou's ten thousand miners: they would reflect on the consequences later. And the two men continued to whisper together, appalled by the thought that any man could have found the courage to go down the shaft, hang there in the void, and risk his life twenty times over in order to carry out this dreadful deed. They could not begin to grasp this mad bravery in the cause of destruction, and they refused to believe it, despite the evidence, just as people refuse to believe the stories of famous escapes and prisoners who must have sprouted wings and flown from windows that are thirty metres up.

When M. Hennebeau walked back over to the deputies, his face was twitching nervously. With a gesture of helplessness he gave the order for the pit to be evacuated at once. Everyone departed mournfully as though they were at a funeral, silently
abandoning the place while glancing back from time to time at the large, empty buildings, still standing there but now beyond salvation.

The manager and the engineer were the last to leave the pit-head, and the crowd greeted them with its noisy chant:

‘Give us the names! Give us the names!'

La Maheude had now arrived to join the other women. She remembered the noise in the night: her daughter and the lodger must have left together, and they were down there for certain. Having initially screamed that it was a good job and that the heartless cowards deserved to stay there, she had then rushed to the scene and was now standing in the front row, shivering with apprehension. In any case, she no longer dared to doubt the fact, as she realized from listening to the discussion going on around her about the identity of those still down there. Yes, yes, Catherine was one of them, and Étienne too; a comrade had seen them. But opinion was still divided as to the others. No, no, not him, more likely that other chap, or perhaps Chaval, even though one of the pit-boys swore blind he'd come up with him. La Levaque and La Pierronne had nobody in danger but shouted and wailed as loudly as the rest of the women. Zacharie had been one of the first up and, despite his usual air of cynicism, had embraced his wife and mother in tears. Having remained by La Maheude's side, he was sharing in her trembling anxiety and displaying unexpected depths of affection for his sister, refusing to believe that she was down there until management officially confirmed the fact.

‘Give us the names! For God's sake, tell us the names!'

Négrel shouted crossly at the supervisors in a loud voice:

‘Make them be quiet, for God's sake. Things are bad enough as they are. We don't know the damned names yet.'

Two hours had already gone by. In the initial panic nobody had thought of the other shaft, the old one at Réquillart. M. Hennebeau was just announcing that they were going to try and mount a rescue attempt from that direction when the word went round that five men had just escaped the flooding by climbing up the rickety ladders in the disused escape shaft. The name of Mouque was mentioned, which caused some surprise since
nobody had thought he was down there. But the story told by the five who had escaped brought further tears; fifteen comrades had been unable to follow them, having lost their way after being blocked by rock-falls. It would be impossible to rescue them now, for Réquillart was flooded to a depth of ten metres. They knew the names of all of them, and the air was filled with anguished lament as though an entire people had been slaughtered.

‘For God's sake, tell them to be quiet!' Négrel repeated furiously. ‘And make them stand back. Yes, yes, a hundred metres back. It's dangerous here. Push them back, push them back!'

The poor people had to be driven back by force. They in turn imagined fresh horrors and thought that this was an attempt to conceal further deaths from them; the deputies had to explain that the shaft was about to swallow up the entire mine. This prospect shocked them into silence, and eventually they began to inch backwards; but the number of guards had to be doubled in order to contain them, for despite themselves they kept coming forward again, as though irresistibly drawn to the scene. A thousand people were milling about in the road, and people were still flocking from the villages, and even from Montsou itself. Meanwhile the man up above on the spoil-heap, the fair-skinned man with the girlish face, smoked cigarette after cigarette to pass the time, and his pale eyes never left the pit.

Then the waiting began. It was midday: nobody had eaten, yet nobody left. Rust-coloured clouds passed slowly overhead in the dirty grey, overcast sky. Behind Rasseneur's hedge a large dog was barking fiercely, without respite, unsettled by this living, breathing crowd. The crowd itself had gradually spread out over the surrounding land and formed a circle around the pit at a distance of a hundred metres. At the centre of this empty space stood Le Voreux. Not a soul was left, not a sound was to be heard: it was deserted. The windows and doors had been left open, and through them one could see the abandoned interiors. A ginger cat, which had been left behind, sensing the danger in this solitude, leaped down from a stairway and fled. The boiler fires must have barely died down because small puffs of smoke continued to rise from the tall, brick chimney towards the dark
clouds above; and the weathercock on the headgear squeaked in the wind with a small, shrill cry, a sad, lonely voice amid all these vast buildings that were about to perish.

Two o'clock, and still no movement. M. Hennebeau, Négrel and other engineers who had hurried to the pit stood around in front of the crowd in a huddle of frock-coats and black hats. They, too, could not tear themselves away, though their legs were weary and they felt ill, sick at heart to be the helpless witnesses of such a disaster, and exchanging only the occasional whisper, as though they were standing by the bed of a dying man. The upper tubbing must have been in the last stages of disintegration now because they could hear sudden bangs followed by the clatter of something falling a long way and then a long silence: the gaping wound was getting wider, and the process of collapse that had begun further down was now steadily rising to the surface. Négrel was gripped with nervous impatience and kept wanting to take a look; and he was beginning to walk forward alone into that terrifying, empty space when they all grabbed him by the shoulders. What was the point? There was nothing he could do. Meanwhile a miner, one of the old hands, had got past the guards and raced across to the changing-room. But he calmly reappeared, having merely gone to fetch his clogs.

Three o'clock came. Still nothing. A shower of rain had soaked the crowd, but it had not retreated one step. Rasseneur's dog had started barking again. And it was not until about twenty past three that the earth was shaken with the first tremor. Le Voreux shook slightly, but it was stoutly built and held firm. But a second shock followed at once, and from the open mouths of the crowd came a long scream: the screening-shed with its pitch roof tottered twice and then came tumbling down with a terrible cracking sound. Under the enormous pressure the beams split and rubbed together so violently that they gave off showers of sparks. From then on the earth never ceased to shake, and there was tremor after tremor each time the ground shifted beneath the surface, like the rumblings of an erupting volcano. In the distance the dog had stopped barking and was now howling pitifully, as though heralding the shocks which it knew
to be coming; and the women and children, indeed everybody who was watching, could not refrain from a cry of distress each time they felt the earth move beneath them. In less than ten minutes the slate roof of the headgear fell in, the pit-head and the engine-house were split asunder, and a huge gap appeared in the wall. Then the noises stopped, the collapse halted, and once again there was a long silence.

For an hour Le Voreux remained like this, breached, as though it had been bombarded by some barbarian horde. The screaming had stopped, and the growing circle of onlookers simply watched. Beneath the pile of beams that had once been the screening-shed, they could see the shattered tipplers and the smashed and twisted hoppers. But the worst damage was at the pit-head, where bricks had come raining down and whole sections of wall had crumbled. The framework of iron girders that supported the winding-pulleys had given way, and half of it was now hanging down the shaft; one cage was suspended in mid-air, and a piece of severed cable was dangling loose; tubs, ladders, sheets of cast-iron flooring all lay in a jumbled heap. By some chance the lamp-room had remained intact, and one could see its bright rows of little lamps over to the left. And there at the far end of its demolished housing was the winding-engine, sitting foursquare on its plinth of masonry, its brasses gleaming, its thick steel rods looking like indestructible tendons, and its huge crank sticking up at an angle like the mighty knee of some recumbent giant reposing in the sure knowledge of his own strength.