Germinal - Emile Zola [130]
Eventually a pensive M. Hennebeau rose to his feet, preparing to send them away. Everyone else stood up also. Étienne gently nudged Maheu in the elbow, and he began to speak, awkward and tongue-tied once more:
‘Well, if that’s all you have to say in reply, sir…We shall tell the others that you reject our terms.’
‘But, my dear fellow,’ exclaimed M. Hennebeau, ‘I have rejected nothing!…I am just a paid employee, like you. I have no more say in what is decided than the youngest pit-boy. I receive my instructions, and my sole function is to see that they are properly carried out. I have said to you what I thought it my duty to say to you, but I should certainly refrain from deciding the matter…You have brought me your demands, I shall pass them on to the Board of Directors, and I shall let you know how it responds.’
He spoke with the correctness of the senior administrator taking care not to become involved in the issues and deploying the soulless courtesy of a simple instrument of authority. And now the miners looked at him with suspicion, wondering what his game was, what it might pay him to lie, what ways he might have of lining his own pocket, positioned as he was like this between them and the true masters. A devious sort, perhaps, since he was paid like a worker and yet he lived so well!
Étienne risked a further intervention:
‘But you must see how regrettable it is, sir, that we cannot plead our case in person. There are many things we could explain and reasons we could give that inevitably you wouldn’t know about yourself…If only we knew who to talk to!’
M. Hennebeau was not angry. In fact he smiled:
‘Ah well now, if you’re not going to have confidence in me, that complicates matters…It would mean you having to try elsewhere.’
The men’s eyes followed as he gestured vaguely in the direction of one of the drawing-room windows. Where was ‘elsewhere’? Paris probably. But they didn’t quite know, and wherever it was, it seemed like a distant, forbidding place, some remote and sacred region where that unknown deity squatted on its throne deep in the inner recesses of its temple. They would never ever set eyes on this god, they just sensed it, as a force weighing from afar on the ten thousand colliers of Montsou. And when the manager spoke, this force was behind him, concealed and speaking in oracles.
They felt defeated. Even Étienne shrugged as though to say they would do better to leave. M. Hennebeau gave Maheu a friendly tap on the arm and asked him news of Jeanlin.
‘That was a harsh lesson all right, and to think you’re the one who defends the bad timbering!…Think it over, my friends, and you’ll soon see that a strike would be a disaster for everyone concerned. Within a week you’ll all be starving to death. How are you going to manage?…Anyway, I’m counting on your good sense, and I’m sure you’ll be going back down by next Monday at the latest.’
They all took their leave, tramping out of the room like a herd of animals, with their heads bowed and offering not a word of response to this prospect of surrender. As he saw them out, the manager had perforce to summarize their meeting: on one side the Company and its new rates, on the other the workers with their demand for an increase of five centimes per tub. And, so that they should be under no illusion, he felt obliged to warn them that the Board of Directors would certainly reject their terms.
‘And think twice before you do anything silly,’ he said again, uneasy at their silence.
Out in the hall Pierron made a very low bow while Levaque made a point of putting his cap back on. Maheu was searching for something more to say, but once again Étienne gave him a nudge. And off