Germinal - Emile Zola [138]
‘No, I haven’t seen your friend yet,’ said Widow Desire. ‘But everything’s ready. Come and see.’
She led him into the dance-hall. The decorations were still the same: on the ceiling the streamers holding up a wreath of paper flowers, and along the walls the line of gold cardboard shields bearing the names of saints. But the stage for the musicians had been replaced by a table and three chairs set in one corner, and benches had been arranged in diagonal rows across the rest of the room.
‘Perfect,’ declared Étienne.
‘And just make yourself at home, you understand,’ Widow Desire went on. ‘Make as much noise as you please…And if the men in blue try to come in, it’ll be over my dead body!’
Despite his anxiety he could not help smiling at the sight of her. How could one embrace such a vast woman, when one of her breasts alone was more than enough for any man; which was why people said that she had started having her six weekday lovers two at a time, so they could help each other with the task.
To Étienne’s surprise Rasseneur and Souvarine walked in; and as Widow Desire departed and left the three of them alone in the large empty hall, he exclaimed:
‘You’re early, aren’t you?’
Souvarine had worked the night shift at Le Voreux – the mechanics were not on strike – and had come out of simple curiosity. As for Rasseneur, he had been looking ill at ease for the past two days, and his big round face had lost its ready smile.
‘Pluchart’s not here yet,’ Étienne went on. ‘I’m extremely worried.’
Rasseneur looked away and mumbled:
‘I’m not surprised. I don’t think he’ll be coming.’
‘What do you mean?’
Then Rasseneur made up his mind and, looking Étienne in the eye, announced defiantly:
‘Because I, too, wrote him a letter, if you must know, and asked him not to come…That’s right. It seems to me we ought to handle these things on our own and not go bringing strangers into it.’
Étienne was beside himself, trembling with rage as he stared at his comrade and stammered:
‘You didn’t! You can’t have!’
‘I certainly can – and I did. And as you know, it’s not that I don’t trust Pluchart either! He’s a clever one all right, and solid with it, someone you can count on…But the point is I don’t give a damn about all these fancy ideas of yours! All this stuff about politics and the government, I just don’t give a tuppenny damn. What I want is better treatment for the miners. I worked down the mine for twenty years, and I promised myself – after all that sweat and toil just to end up poor and exhausted the whole time – that I’d try and make things better, somehow, for the poor buggers that are still down there. And all I can say is, you’ll get nowhere with all this bloody nonsense of yours, all you’ll succeed in doing is making the worker’s lot even more bloody miserable than it already is…When he’s finally so hungry that he’s forced to go back, they’ll just make things worse for him. That’ll be his reward. The Company’ll kick him while he’s down, and kick him hard, like a dog being put back in its kennel after it’s got out…And that’s what I want to prevent! Understood?’
As he stood there foursquare on his stout legs, belly out, he began to raise his voice. Here was the patient man of reason speaking his mind in plain language, and the words just poured out of him without his even having to think about them. Didn’t they realize it was just plain daft to think you could change the world overnight, to think the workers could take the place of the bosses and share out the cash as if it were an apple or something. It would take an eternity before that ever happened, and even then! If it was miracles they were after, forget it! The only sensible thing to do if they didn’t want to end up with a