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By Root 1585 0

now emerging as though from a landscape of dream, and while he lingered at the brazier warming his sore, chapped hands, Étienne took in the scene. He was able to locate each part of the pit: the screening-shed with its asphalt roof; the headgear over the pit-shaft; the huge engine-house; and the square tower containing the drainage-pump. Hunkered in a hollow in the ground, with its squat brick buildings and a chimney that poked up like a menacing horn, the pit looked to him like some monstrous and voracious beast crouching there ready to gobble everyone up. As he stared at it, he began thinking about himself and the vagrant life he had been living for the past week in search of work: he saw himself back in Lille, in his railway workshop, hitting his boss and being fired and then getting turned away wherever he went. On Saturday he had arrived in Marchiennes. He had heard there was work at Les Forges, the ironworks; but there’d been nothing, neither at Les Forges nor at Sonneville’s, and he’d had to spend the Sunday hidden under a woodpile in a cartwright’s yard, from where the watchman had just evicted him at two o’clock that morning. He had nothing, not a penny to his name, not even a crust of bread. So what was he supposed to do now, wandering the highways and byways like this with nowhere to go and not even the slightest idea where to find shelter from the wind? Yes, it was a pit all right: he could see the paved yard in the light of the few lanterns hanging there, and the sudden opening of a door had allowed him a glimpse of the boiler fires blazing with light. Gradually he worked out what everything was, even that noise of the pump letting off steam, a slow, deep, insistent puffing that sounded as though the monster were congested and fighting for breath.

Hunched over his machine, the tippler-operator had not even looked up at Étienne, who was just going over to pick up his small bundle where he had dropped it when a fit of coughing signalled the return of the driver. He and his yellow horse could be seen slowly emerging from the darkness, having hauled up six more tub-loads.

‘Are there any factories in Montsou?’ Étienne asked.

The old man spat black phlegm and shouted back above the wind:

‘Oh, we’ve got the factories all right. You should have seen them three or four years ago. Things were humming then. You couldn’t find enough men to work in them, and folk had never earned as much in their lives…And here we all are having to tighten our belts again. Things are in a bad way round these parts now, what with people being laid off and workshops closing down all over the place…Well, maybe it isn’t the Emperor’s fault, but what does he want to go off fighting in America3 for? Not to mention the animals that are dying of cholera,4 and the people too for that matter.’

Both men continued to share their grievances in short, breathless bursts of speech. Étienne described his week of fruitless searching. What was he supposed to do? Starve to death? The roads would soon be full of beggars. Yes, the old man agreed, things weren’t looking good at all. In God’s name, it just wasn’t right turning so many Christian souls out on to the streets like that.

‘There’s no meat some days.’

‘Even bread would do!’

‘That’s true. If only we had some bread!’

Their voices were lost in the bleak howl of the wind as squalling gusts snatched their words away.

‘It’s like this,’ the driver continued at the top of his voice, turning to face south. ‘In Montsou over there…’

Stretching out his hand once more, he indicated various invisible points in the darkness, naming each one as he did so. Over in Montsou the Fauvelle sugar-refinery was still working, but the Hoton refinery had just laid off some of its men, and of the remainder only the Dutilleul flour-mill and the factory at Bleuze that made cables for the mines were managing to keep going. Then, with a broad sweep towards the north, his arm took in a whole half of the horizon: the Sonneville construction works had received only a third of its usual number of orders; of the three blast-furnaces