Germinal - Emile Zola [117]
The wagon went past; and behind it La Maheude caught sight of her husband accompanying the stretcher. When they had set it down at her door and she saw that Jeanlin was alive and that his legs were broken, she felt such sudden relief that instead of crying she began to choke and splutter with anger:
‘Now we’ve seen everything! Now they’re going to cripple our children for us! Both legs, for God’s sake. And just what am I supposed to do with him?’
‘Be quiet!’ said Dr Vanderhaghen, who had come to bandage Jeanlin. ‘Would you rather he were still lying at the bottom of the pit?’
Alzire, Lénore and Henri were all in tears, but La Maheude was growing more and more angry. As she helped them take the injured child upstairs and supplied the doctor with what he needed, she kept cursing fate and asking where in God’s name she was supposed to find the money to feed the sick. Wasn’t it enough for the old man to lose the use of his legs? No, now it was the lad’s turn! And on she went, while all the time other, heart-rending screams of lament could be heard coming from a nearby house: Chicot’s wife and children were grieving over his dead body. It was pitch dark now, and the exhausted miners were finally able to have their soup. And a grim silence fell upon the village, punctuated only by these cries of anguish.
Three weeks went by. Amputation had been avoided; Jeanlin would keep both his legs, but he would always have a limp. Following an inquiry the Company had resigned itself to making the family a grant of fifty francs. It also undertook to find the young cripple a surface job as soon as he had recovered. Nevertheless it all meant that they had even less money now, especially as Maheu had experienced such a shock that he fell ill with a high temperature.
He had been back at work since Thursday, and it was now Sunday. That evening Étienne mentioned the imminence of 1 December and wondered anxiously whether the Company would carry out its threat. They stayed up till ten waiting for Catherine, who must have been with Chaval. But she did not return. La Maheude was furious and without a word locked the door. Disturbed by her empty bed – for Alzire hardly took up any room at all – Étienne found it hard to get to sleep.
Next day, still no Catherine; and it was only in the afternoon, at the end of the shift, that the Maheus learned that Chaval was going to keep Catherine. He made such awful scenes all the time that she had decided to live with him. To avoid the inevitable recriminations he had immediately quit Le Voreux and signed on at Jean-Bart, M. Deneulin’s pit, where Catherine followed him as a putter. The new couple continued none the less to live in Montsou, at Piquette’s.
At first Maheu talked about going off to punch the fellow and to fetch his daughter home if he had to kick her up the backside all the way. Then he gestured resignedly: what was the use? It always turned out this way, you couldn’t stop girls pairing up with someone when they took a notion to it. Better to wait patiently for them to marry. But La Maheude was not for taking the matter so calmly.
‘Now tell me. Did I ever hit her when she took up with this Chaval?’ she shouted at Étienne, who looked vey pale and listened to her in silence. ‘Come on, answer me, you’re a reasonable man…We left her to her own devices, didn’t we? Because, God help us, they all do it in the end. Like me, for example. I was expecting when Father married me. But I didn’t run away from home, did I? I wasn’t the sort to play a dirty trick like that and go handing my pay over to a man who didn’t need it, and before I was even of age…It just sickens you, really it does!…I mean in the end people will simply stop having children.’
And as Étienne would still only nod by way of reply, she persisted.