Germinal - Emile Zola [175]
But she began to despair: being naked brought no relief. What else could she remove? The buzzing in her ears was deafening, and she felt as though her temples were caught in a vice. She slumped to her knees. She had the impression that her lamp, wedged into the coal on the tub, was about to go out; and in her confused mind she clung to the thought that she must turn up the wick. Twice she tried to examine the lamp, and twice, as she set it on the ground in front of her, it dimmed as if it, too, were wanting for oxygen. Suddenly the lamp went out. Then everything began to spin in the darkness, a millstone was whirring round in her head, and her heart slowed and stopped, numbed by the immense torpor that had overtaken her limbs. She had fallen backwards and lay dying on the ground in the asphyxiating air.
‘Damn me if she’s not bloodly dawdling again!’ grumbled Chaval.
He listened from the top of the coal-face but heard no sound of wheels.
‘Catherine! I know you, you sly bitch!’
The sound of his voice vanished down the dark roadway, and not a breath could be heard in response.
‘Have I got to come and chase after you?’
Nothing stirred, and there was still the same deathly silence. Furious, he climbed down and began to run along the road, holding up his lamp but going so fast that he nearly tripped over Catherine’s body, which was blocking the way. He stared at it open-mouthed. What was the matter with her? She wasn’t pretending, was she, just so she could have a quick nap? But when he lowered his lamp to shine it in her face, it threatened to go out. He raised it and lowered it again, and finally he realized: the air must be bad. His rage had subsided, and the miner’s instinctive devotion to a comrade in danger took over. Already he had shouted for someone to bring his shirt, and now he seized the girl’s naked, lifeless body and lifted it as high as he possibly could. Once they had thrown his and Catherine’s clothes over his shoulders, he set off at the run, holding his burden up with one hand and carrying their two lamps with the other. The long roadways unwound as he raced ahead, taking a right here, a left there, searching for the cold, life-giving air of the plain coming from the ventilator. At length the sound of a spring brought him to a halt: some water was streaming through a crack in the rock. He found himself at a crossroads in the main haulage roadway which had once served Gaston-Marie. Here the ventilator was blowing up a storm, and the air was so cold that he even shivered after setting Catherine down on the ground, propped against some timbers. Her eyes were shut, and she was still unconscious.
‘Come on, Catherine. For God’s sake, a joke’s a joke…Here, don’t you move while I go and dip this in a bit of water.’
It frightened him to see her so limp. Nevertheless he was able to wet his shirt in the stream and bathe her face. She seemed for all the world to be dead, as though this slight, girlish body on which puberty was hesitating to place its mark were down here because it had already been buried. Then a shudder ran through her, through her undeveloped breasts and her belly down to the slender thighs of this poor, wretched girl who had been deflowered before her time. She opened her eyes and muttered:
‘I’m cold.’
‘Ah, that’s better! That’s more like it!’ Chaval exclaimed with relief.
He dressed her, passing the shirt easily over her head but cursing as he struggled to get her trousers on, for she could do little to help herself. Still dazed, she did not understand where she was nor why she had been naked. When she remembered, she was filled with shame. How on earth had she dared take everything off! She questioned Chaval: had anyone seen her like that, without so much as a neckerchief round her waist