Germinal - Emile Zola [149]
The journey back to the village was a sorry affair. When the women returned home empty-handed, the men looked at them and then lowered their eyes. That was that: the day would end without so much as a spoonful of soup, and thereafter the days stretched into icy darkness without a single glimmer of hope. They had chosen this path themselves, and no one spoke of surrender. Such an extreme of poverty simply hardened their resistance, like cornered animals silently resolved to die at the bottom of their lairs rather than come out. Who would have dared be the first to talk of giving in? They had all promised their comrades to stick together, and stick together they would, just like they did down the pit when somebody was trapped under a rock-fall. It was what you did, and there was nowhere better than the pit for learning how to put up with things: you could manage without food for a week if you’d been swallowing fire and water since the age of twelve. And in this way their commitment to each other was accompanied by a sense of military pride, the self-respect of men who were proud of their job and who vied for the honour of self-sacrifice in their daily struggle to stay alive.
In the Maheu household that evening was a terrible one. They sat in silence round the dying fire, a smoking heap of their last remaining cinders. Having emptied the mattresses handful by handful, they had finally decided two days ago to sell the cuckoo clock for three francs; and the room seemed bare and dead without its familiar ticking. The only superfluous item left was the pink cardboard box in the middle of the dresser, a present from Maheu which La Maheude treasured as though it were a jewel. The two good chairs had already gone, and old Bonnemort and the children squeezed together on a mouldy old bench which they had brought in from the garden. The pale twilight seemed to add to the cold.
‘What’s to be done?’ La Maheude kept saying, squatting beside the stove.
Étienne, standing, was looking at the pictures of the Emperor and Empress stuck to the wall. He would have torn them down long ago if the family had not wanted to keep them for decoration. And so he muttered between clenched teeth:
‘It’s odd to think that we wouldn’t get a penny out of those two useless individuals, but here they are watching us as we die.’
‘Why don’t I pawn the box?’ La Maheude continued after some hesitation, looking pale as she said it.
Maheu, perched on the edge of the table, legs dangling and head bowed, immediately sat up:
‘No, I won’t have it.’
La Maheude struggled to her feet and began to walk round the room. How in God’s name had it come to this? Not a crumb of bread in the dresser, nothing left to sell, and not the semblance of a notion how they could lay their hands on a loaf of bread! And a fire that was about to go out! She vented her anger on Alzire, whom she had that morning sent to look for cinders on the spoil-heap and who had returned empty-handed, saying that the Company had forbidden any further scavenging. What the hell did they care what the Company said? As if it were robbing anyone if they picked up tiny, forgotten pieces of coal. The little girl tearfully explained that a man had threatened to hit her, and then she promised to go back the next day even if she did