Germinal - Emile Zola [101]
They lived in ceaseless and intimate proximity, for he was taking the elder brother’s place in all things and shared a bed with Jeanlin, just beside his big sister’s. In the mornings, and at night, he had to dress and undress next to her, and he could see her too as she removed her clothes or put them on again. When the last underskirt fell to the floor, there she would be in all her pale whiteness, with that snowy transparency of skin characteristic of the fair-haired anaemic; and he never failed to be shocked at seeing her so white (when her hands and face were already stained), as if she had been dipped in milk from her heels right up to her neck, where the hauling-rope had left its mark like an amber necklace. He pretended to look away, but gradually he came to know her: first the feet, visible to his lowered gaze; then a knee, glimpsed as she slid beneath the blanket; and later her firm little breasts as she bent over the wash-basin in the mornings. While she seemed to pay him no heed, she would nevertheless undress as quickly as possible and in no time was lying next to Alzire, having slithered into bed so fast, like a snake, that he had hardly got his shoes off before she was vanishing from view, with her back towards him and only her thick bun now to be seen.
Moreover, she never had call to complain. Though a kind of obsession drove him, in spite of himself, to watch out for the moment when she got into bed, he never made smutty remarks, and he kept his hands to himself. Her parents were near by, and anyway the mixture of friendship and resentment he felt on her account prevented him from treating her as a girl to be desired, surrounded as they were by the unreserve of their newly shared existence, washing and eating and working side by side, with nothing left to hide, not even their most intimate personal needs. The last bastion of the family’s modesty was the daily bath, which Catherine now took alone upstairs while the men bathed in turn down below.
And so by the end of the first month it was as though Étienne and Catherine had ceased to notice each other, as they wandered about at bedtime in a state of undress before putting out the candle. She no longer hurried as she took off her clothes, and she had resumed her old practice of sitting on the edge of the bed while she put her hair up, causing her nightdress to ride up her thighs as she stretched her arms above her head; and sometimes, even with no trousers on, he would help her look for lost hairpins. Habit overcame the shame of their nakedness; it felt quite natural to them, for after all they meant no harm by it, and it wasn’t their fault if there was only one room for so many people. Yet there were moments when they would suddenly find it disturbing, and this when they were not even thinking improper thoughts. Having taken no notice of her pale skin for several nights, he would suddenly see her again in all her whiteness, that whiteness which made him tremble and turn away, for fear he might yield to his desire to take her. On other occasions, and for no apparent reason, she would suddenly feel coy and start avoiding him, sliding quickly under the sheets as if she had felt the young man’s hands take hold of her. Then, when the candle was out, they would know that neither of them was able to sleep and that they were thinking of each other, despite their exhaustion. And that left them feeling irritable and out of sorts the next day, because they much preferred the quiet evenings when they could relax together and be just good friends.
Étienne’s only cause for complaint was Jeanlin, who slept curled up like a gun dog. Alzire breathed gently as she slept, while in the mornings Lénore and Henri would still be lying in each other’s arms exactly as they had been put to bed the night before. Amid the darkness the only other sound in the house was of Maheu and La Maheude snoring, rumbling at regular intervals like bellows in a forge. All in all Étienne was more comfortable here than he had been