Germinal - Emile Zola [106]
From then on Étienne underwent a gradual transformation. An instinctive fastidiousness about his personal appearance and a taste for comfortable living, both hitherto dormant beneath his destitution, now declared themselves, and led to the purchase of some good-quality clothes. He treated himself to a fine pair of boots, and at once he was a leader; the village began to rally to him. There now came moments of delicious gratification for his self-esteem, as he drank deep of these first, heady draughts of popularity: to lead like this, to command, when he was still so young, indeed until recently a mere labourer, it all filled him with pride and fed his dream of an imminent revolution in which he would have his role to play. His facial expression changed, he grew solemn and began to enjoy the sound of his own voice; and burgeoning ambition added fiery urgency to his theorizing and prompted thoughts of combat.
Meanwhile autumn was drawing on, and the October chill had turned the little village gardens the colour of rust. Behind the scraggy lilac bushes pit-boys had ceased to pin putters to the shed roof; all that was to be seen were a few winter plants, cabbages covered in pearly beads of frost, leeks and winter greens. Once again the rain beat down on the red roof tiles and gushed into the water-butts beneath the gutters with the roar of a torrent. In every house the iron stove stayed permanently lit, repeatedly stoked with coal and poisoning the close atmosphere of the parlour. Another season of grinding poverty had begun.
On one of the first of these frosty October nights Étienne was feeling so excited after all the talk downstairs that he could not get to sleep. He had watched Catherine slip into bed and blow out the candle. She, too, seemed restless, a prey to one of her occasional fits of modesty when she still undressed in such clumsy haste that she uncovered herself even more. She lay in the darkness with the stillness of a corpse; but he knew she could not sleep any more than he could; and he could sense her thinking of him, just as he was thinking of her. Never had this silent exchange of their being unsettled them so. Minutes went by, and neither stirred; only their breathing betrayed them, coming in awkward snatches as they strove to control it. Twice he was on the point of going over and taking her. It was daft to want each other so much and never do anything about it. Why be so set against their own desire? The children were asleep, she wanted it, here and now, he knew for certain that she was breathless with the expectation of it, that she would wrap him in her arms, silently, with her mouth tight shut. Nearly an hour went by. He did not go over and take her, and she did not turn towards him, for fear of summoning him. And the longer they lived in each other’s pocket, the more a barrier grew up between them, feelings of embarrassment and distaste, a sense of the proprieties of friendship, none of which they could have explained even to themselves.
IV
‘Look,’ said La Maheude, ‘since you’re going to Montsou to collect your wages, can you bring me back a pound of coffee and a kilo of sugar?’
Maheu was in the middle of stitching up one of his shoes, to save on the repair.
‘All right,’ he muttered, without pausing in his task.
‘And maybe you’d drop in at the butcher’s, too?…And get us a bit of veal, eh? It’s so long since we had any.’
This time