Germinal - Emile Zola [159]
At first Jeanlin, Bébert and Lydie had run along behind the players, excited by the spectacle of these mighty drives. Then they remembered that Poland was in the basket they were jolting about, and so, abandoning the game in the middle of the countryside, they released the rabbit to see how fast she could run. And off she went, with the three of them in hot pursuit; and they chased her hard for an hour, twisting and turning, yelling their heads off to scare her in one direction or another, throwing their arms wide to catch her only to end up clutching at thin air. If she hadn’t been in the early stages of pregnancy, they would never have caught her.
As they were catching their breath, the sound of cursing made them look round. They had ended up back in the middle of the game of crosse, and Zacharie had just nearly split his brother’s skull open. The players were on their fourth leg: from Paillot Farm they had headed towards Quatre-Chemins, from Quatre-Chemins towards Montoire, and now they were trying to get from Montoire to Pré-des-Vaches in six strokes. That meant they had covered two and a half leagues in one hour, not to mention stopping for a few beers at Vincent’s bar and then at the Three Wise Men. Mouquet had won the bidding this time. He had two strokes left and was certain of victory, when Zacharie, gleefully exploiting the rules, drove back so accurately that the cholette rolled into a deep ditch. Mouquet’s playing partner could not get it out, and all was lost. The four of them were shouting their heads off and getting more and more worked up, for the scores were level. They would have to start a new leg. From Pré-des-Vaches it was only two kilometres to the tip of Les Herbes-Rousses, a matter of five strokes. And there they could have a drink at Lerenard’s.
But Jeanlin had other ideas. He let the players go on ahead and then took a piece of string from his pocket and tied it to Poland’s left hind paw. And what fun that was, with the rabbit running along in front of the three young rascals, hoisting its thigh and limping in such a pathetic fashion that they had never laughed so much in their lives. Then they tied the string round her neck so that she could run properly; and when she became tired, they dragged her along on her stomach or her back as if she were a toy on wheels. This lasted more than an hour, and the rabbit was almost gasping her last when they shoved her quickly back in the basket having heard the players near Cruchot wood. Once again they had strayed into the path of their game.
By this stage Zacharie, Mouquet and the other two men were covering enormous distances, pausing only to have a beer in every bar they fixed on as their goal. From Les Herbes-Rousses they had made for Buchy, then La Croix-de-Pierre, then Chamblay. The earth rang out beneath their feet as they raced along in relentless pursuit of the cholette, which kept bouncing off the ice. The weather was perfect: there was no mud to get stuck in, and the only risk was a broken leg. In the dry air the cholette exploded off their mallets like gunfire. Their muscular hands gripped the twine-bound handles, and with their whole bodies they launched themselves into the drive as though an ox were to be slain; and so they continued, for hour upon hour, from one end of the plain to the other, over ditches and hedges, over road embankments and low boundary walls. You needed stout bellows in your chest and iron hinges in your knees. For the hewers it was a wonderful way of stretching their legs after all the time spent underground. There were some fanatics of twenty-five who could cover ten leagues in a game. But by the age of forty you stopped; you were just too heavy.
Five o’clock struck, and dusk was already falling. Just one more leg, as far as the forest of Vandame, a decider to see who would get the cap and scarf; and Zacharie, with his satirical indifference