Germinal - Emile Zola [156]
‘Bloody little toad!’ Étienne swore as he gasped for breath. ‘Where the hell’s he going?’
Twice he had nearly fallen. His feet kept slipping on the damp wood. If only he’d had a candle like Jeanlin; but as it was, he kept banging into things, and his only guide was the faint glimmer of light vanishing beneath him. He was already on his twentieth ladder, and still they were going down. Then he began to count them one by one: twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, down he went, down and down. His head was nearly exploding in the boiling heat, it was like sinking into an oven. At last he reached a loading-bay, where he caught sight of the candle disappearing at the far end of a roadway. Thirty ladders: that meant about two hundred and ten metres.
‘How long’s this going to go on?’ Étienne wondered to himself. ‘I bet he holes up in the stable.’
But the road that led away on the left towards the stable was blocked by a rock-fall. They were off again, and this time the terrain was even more difficult and dangerous. Startled bats flitted about and clung to the roof of the loading-bay. He had to hurry so as not to lose sight of the light, and rushed into a roadway after it; but where the child was able to wriggle through easily with the suppleness of a snake, he could only squeeze past, bruising his arms and legs as he went. Like all old mine workings, this particular roadway had narrowed and was continuing to get narrower by the day from the constant pressure of the earth; and in places it was no bigger than a tube, which would eventually disappear of its own accord. As a result of this gradual strangulation the timbering had split and its jagged edges presented a real danger, threatening to saw through his flesh or to impale him on the points of its sword-like splinters as he went by. He had to exercise the greatest care as he edged forward on his knees or stomach, groping in the darkness ahead of him. Suddenly a swarm of rats ran over the top of him, dashing the length of his body in terrified flight.
‘Christ Almighty! Are we nearly there yet?’ he groaned crossly, gasping for breath, every bone in his body aching.
They were there. After a kilometre the passage widened, and they reached a part of the road that was still remarkably well preserved. It was the terminus of the old haulage road, which had been hollowed out against the grain of the rock and looked like a natural grotto. Étienne had to stop, for he could see Jeanlin up ahead setting his candle down between two rocks and generally making himself comfortable with the calm, relieved air of a man who is glad to be home. The place had been thoroughly fitted out and turned into a cosy dwelling. In one corner a pile of hay provided a soft bed; some old timbers had been stacked to make a table, and on it there was everything, from bread and apples to half-empty bottles of gin. It was a real robber’s den, full of plunder amassed over many weeks, and useless plunder too, like the soap and polish that had been stolen for the sheer hell of it. And all alone in the middle of his spoils sat little, selfish Jeanlin, gloating like some pirate king.
‘You don’t give a bloody damn, do you?’ Étienne shouted, having caught his breath. ‘You just come down here and stuff your face while the rest of us up there are busy starving to death, is that it?’
Jeanlin, dumbstruck, was trembling. But when he recognized Étienne, he quickly recovered his equanimity.
‘Would you like to join me?’ he said eventually. ‘A nice piece of grilled cod, perhaps?…Look.’
He was still clutching his dried cod and had begun to scrape the fly dirt off it with a shiny new knife, one of those small, bone-handled sheath-knives that have mottoes