Germinal - Emile Zola [20]
A sunken path led away from the road, and the vision vanished. To the man’s right was a wooden fence, more like a wall, made from thick planks and running alongside a railway line; to his left rose a grass embankment topped by a jumble of gables, apparently the low, uniform roof-tops of a village. He walked on a further two hundred paces or so. Abruptly, at a turn in the path, the fires reappeared close by him, but he was still at a loss to explain how they could be burning so high up in this dead sky, like smouldering moons. But at ground level something else had caught his attention, some large, heavy mass, a huddled heap of buildings from which rose the outline of a factory chimney. Gleams of light could be seen here and there through grime-coated windows, while outside five or six paltry lanterns hung from a series of wooden structures whose blackened timbers seemed to be vaguely aligned in the shape of gigantic trestles. From the midst of this fantastical apparition, wreathed in smoke and darkness, rose the sound of a solitary voice; long, deep gasps of puffing steam, invisible to the eye.
And then the man realized that it was a coal-mine. His misgivings returned. What was the point? There wouldn’t be any work. Eventually, instead of heading towards the buildings, he ventured to climb the spoil-heap to where the three coal fires stood burning in cast-iron baskets, offering warmth and light to people as they went about their work. The stonemen must have worked late, because the spoil was still being removed. He could now hear the banksmen pushing their trains of coal-tubs along the top of the trestles, and in the light from each fire he could see moving shadows tipping up each tub.
‘Hallo,’ he said, as he walked towards one of the braziers.
Standing with his back to it was the driver, an old man in a purple woollen jersey and a rabbit-skin cap. His horse, a large yellow animal, stood waiting with the immobility of stone as the six tubs it had just hauled up were emptied. The workman in charge of the tippler, a skinny, red-headed fellow, was taking his time about it and looked half asleep as he activated the lever. Above them the wind was blowing harder than ever, gusting in great icy blasts like the strokes of a scythe.
‘Hallo,’ the driver replied.
There was a silence. Sensing the wariness with which he was being observed, the man introduced himself at once.
‘I’m Étienne Lantier, I’m a mechanic. I don’t suppose there’s any work here?’
The fire lit up his features; he must have been about twenty-one, a handsome, swarthy sort, thin-limbed but strong-looking all the same.
The driver, reassured, shook his head.
‘No, no work for a mechanic…We had two of them come by yesterday. There’s nothing to be had.’
A sudden squall interrupted the two men. Then, pointing down at the dark huddle of buildings at the foot of the spoil-heap, Étienne asked:
‘It is a coal-pit, isn’t it?’
This time the old man was unable to reply, choked by a violent fit of coughing. At length he spat, and his spittle left a black stain on the crimson ground.
‘Yes, it’s a pit all right. Le Voreux 2…Look, the miners’ village is just over there.’
It was his turn to point, and he gestured through the darkness to the village whose roof-tops Étienne had glimpsed earlier. But the six tubs were empty now, and so the old man followed after them on his stiff rheumatic legs, not even needing to crack the whip: his big yellow horse had set off automatically and was plodding forward between the rails, hauling the tubs behind it. A fresh gust of wind ruffled its coat.
Le Voreux was