Germinal - Emile Zola [108]
‘What a thought!’ Rasseneur muttered. ‘But why? It’s not in the Company’s interest to have a strike, nor in the workers’. It would be better to come to some agreement.’
This was the sensible way forward. He was always the one for making reasonable demands. In fact, since the sudden popularity of his former lodger, he had been rather overdoing his line about politics and the art of the possible, and how people who wanted ‘everything, and now!’ got nothing. He was a jovial man, the typical beer-drinker with a fat belly, but deep down he felt a growing jealousy, which was not helped by the fall in his trade: the workers from Le Voreux were coming into his bar less and less to have a drink and listen to him, which meant that sometimes he even found himself defending the Company and forgetting his resentment at having been sacked when he was a miner.
‘So you’re against a strike?’ Mme Rasseneur shouted over from the counter.
And when he energetically said ‘yes’, she cut him short.
‘Pah! You’ve no guts. You should listen to these two gentlemen.’
Deep in thought, Étienne was gazing down at the beer she had brought him. Eventually he looked up:
‘Everything our friend here says is perfectly possible, and we simply will have to strike if they force us to it…As it happens, Pluchart’s recently sent me some sound advice on the subject. He’s against a strike, too, because the workers suffer as much as the bosses but end up with nothing to show for it. Except that he sees the strike as a great opportunity to get our men involved in his grand plan…Here’s his letter, in fact.’
Sure enough, Pluchart, despairing of the Montsou miners’ sceptical attitude towards the International, was hoping to see them join en masse if a dispute were to set them at odds with the Company. Despite all his efforts, Étienne had failed to get a single person to join, though he had mainly been using his influence in the cause of his own provident fund, which had been much better received. But the fund was still so small that it would, as Souvarine said, be quickly exhausted; and then, inevitably, the strikers would rush to join the Workers’ Association, in the hope that their brothers throughout the world would come to their aid.
‘How much have you got in the fund?’ asked Rasseneur.
‘Barely three thousand francs,’ Étienne replied. ‘And, you know, management asked to see me the day before yesterday. Oh, they were all nice and polite, and kept saying they wouldn’t prevent their workers from setting up a contingency fund. But I could see they wanted to run it themselves…Whatever happens, we’re in for a fight over it.’
Rasseneur had begun to pace up and down, and gave a whistle of contempt. Three thousand francs! What good was that, for heaven’s sake? It wouldn’t even provide six days’ worth of bread, and if they were going to count on foreigners, people who lived in England, well, they might as well roll over now and hold their tongues. No, really, this talk of a strike was just daft.
And so, for the first time, bitter words were exchanged between the two men who were normally of one mind in their hatred of capital.
‘So, what do you think?’ Étienne asked again, turning towards Souvarine.
The latter replied with his usual pithy scorn.
‘Strikes? More nonsense.’
Then, breaking the angry silence that had now fallen, he added gently:
‘Mind you, I don’t say you shouldn’t, if you fancy it. A strike ruins some and kills others, which at least makes for a few less in the world…Only at that rate it would take a thousand years to renew the world. Why not start by blowing up Death Row for me!’
With his slender hand he gestured towards the buildings at Le Voreux, which could be seen through the open door. Then he was interrupted by unforeseen drama: Poland, his plump pet rabbit, had ventured outside but come bounding back in to avoid the stones being hurled by a gang of pit-boys; and in her terror she was cowering against his legs, ears back, tail tucked in, scratching and begging to be picked up. He laid her on his lap, under the