Germinal - Emile Zola [206]
‘There! Eat that!…Go on, stuff yourself, like you used to stuff us!’
The abuse intensified as the dead man lay there motionless on his back, staring with his big wide eyes at the vast sky where darkness was falling. This earth stuffed into his mouth was the bread he had refused to let them have. And it was the only sort of bread he’d be eating from now on. Much good it had done him, starving the poor to death like that.
But the women had further scores to settle. They prowled round him, nostrils flaring, sizing him up like she-wolves. Each of them was trying to think of some terrible deed, some savage act of vengeance, which might relieve their pent-up fury.
The sour voice of La Brûlé was heard.
‘If he’s a tomcat, let’s cut him!’
‘Yes, yes. Cut him, cut him. The bastard’s used it once too often!’
Already La Mouquette was busy pulling his trousers off as La Levaque lifted his legs. And then, with her old, wizened hands, La Brûlé parted his naked thighs and seized hold of his now defunct manhood. She grabbed the whole thing in one hand and pulled, her bony spine tense with the effort, her long arms cracking. When the flabby skin refused to give, she had to pull even harder, but finally it came away in her hand, a lump of hairy, bleeding flesh which she proceeded to brandish in triumph:
‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’
Shrill voices acclaimed the terrible trophy with their imprecations.
‘That’s the last time you shove that up our daughters, you dirty sod!’
‘Yeah, no more of your payments in kind. No more spreading our legs just so we can each have a loaf of bread!’
‘That reminds me, I still owe you six francs. Would you like something on account? I’m game…if you feel up to it!’
This joke had them in fits of terrible laughter. They all pointed at the bloody lump of flesh as though it were some nasty animal that had harmed them and they had just crushed it to death and could gaze at its lifeless form, now wholly in their power. They spat on it and from jutting jaws poured out their furious contempt:
‘He can’t get it up! He can’t get it up!…Some man they’ll be burying!…You can rot in hell, you’re no good for anything now!’
La Brûlé then stuck the whole thing on the end of her stick, raised it aloft, and set off down the road carrying it like a flag, followed by the screaming horde of women. Blood dripped everywhere, and the miserable lump of flesh hung down like a piece of meat being displayed on a butcher’s stall. Up at the window Mme Maigrat had still not moved; but, caught in the last rays of the sun, the flaws in the glass distorted her pale features, and she seemed to be grinning. Having been beaten by a man who was unfaithful to her at every turn, and having spent her days bent double over a ledger from dawn till dusk, perhaps she was indeed laughing as the band of women rushed past with the remains of the evil beast stuck on the end of a stick.
This dreadful act of mutilation had been witnessed with frozen horror. Neither Étienne nor Maheu nor any of the others had had time to intervene: and now they remained where they were as the furies raced off into the distance. Faces began to appear at the doorway of Tison’s bar, Rasseneur, ashen with revulsion, and Zacharie and Philomène, both dumbstruck at what they had seen. The two old men, Bonnemort and Mouque, looked very grave and shook their heads. The only one sniggering was Jeanlin, who was elbowing Bébert in the ribs and trying to make Lydie look up. But the gaggle of women was already returning, doubling back on itself and now passing beneath the windows of the manager’s house. And there, behind the shutters, the fine ladies craned their necks to see. They had not been able to observe what had happened, which had been hidden from their view by the wall, and now that it was completely dark they could not make things out properly.
‘Whatever have they got on the end of that stick?’ asked Cécile, who had plucked up the courage to watch.
Lucie and Jeanne declared that it must be a