Germinal - Emile Zola [214]
‘I have a mother and sister back there. They can’t wait for me to come home, of course. Though it’ll be some time yet…When I left, they came with me as far as Pont-l’Abbé. We borrowed the horse from the Lepalmecs, and he nearly broke his legs on the journey down from Audierne. My cousin Charles met us with some sausages, but the women were crying so much we just couldn’t enjoy them…Oh God, oh God, how far away home seems now!’
Tears sprang to his eyes although he continued to laugh. He had a vision of the bleak Plogoff moorland and the wild, storm-wracked Pointe du Raz all bathed in dazzling sunshine, in the season of pink heather.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘if I behave myself, do you think I might get a month’s leave in two years’ time?’
Then Étienne talked about Provence, which he had left when he was very small. It was getting lighter now, and snowflakes were beginning to flutter down from a grubby sky. But eventually he became anxious when he saw Jeanlin prowling about among the brambles, amazed to see him up there. The boy was beckoning to him. Why dream of fraternizing with the military? It would take years and years, and his futile attempt depressed him, as though he had expected to succeed. But suddenly he understood what Jeanlin’s gesture meant: the sentry was about to be relieved. And so Étienne left to return to Réquillart, running to earth with a heavy heart once more at the certain prospect of defeat; and Jeanlin raced along beside him, accusing that dirty bastard of a soldier of calling out to the guard to shoot at them.
Up on the spoil-heap Jules had not moved, and he went on gazing out into the falling snow. The sergeant was approaching with his men, and the regulation calls were exchanged.
‘Who goes there?…Step forward! Password!’
Then heavy footsteps could be heard receding into the distance, like the ringing gait of a conqueror. Though it was now light, nothing stirred in the villages; and the miners continued to rage in silence beneath the jackboot.
II
Snow had been falling for two days. That morning it had stopped, and had now frozen hard in one vast sheet: the entire region, which had once been black, with its inky roads and its walls and trees covered in coal-dust, was now one single expanse of uniform whiteness stretching to infinity. Buried beneath the snow, Village Two Hundred and Forty seemed to have disappeared. Not a wisp of smoke was to be seen coming from its roof-tops. Without fires the houses were as cold as the stones in the road, and there was nothing to melt the thick layer of snow covering the tiles. The place looked like a quarry of white slabstones set in the midst of the white plain, like some vision of a dead village draped in a shroud. Along the streets only the passing patrols had trampled the snow into a muddy mess.
At the Maheus’ the last shovelful of gleanings from the spoil-heap had been burned the evening before; and in this terrible weather it was out of the question to think of fetching some more when even the sparrows were unable to find a blade of glass. Alzire, whose poor little hands had stubbornly scrabbled through the snow, was dying. La Maheude had had to wrap her in a scrap of blanket as she waited for Dr Vanderhaghen, whom she had been to see twice already without finding him in. The maid, however, had just promised her that the doctor would visit her in the village before dark, and so La Maheude was standing by the window watching out for him while the sick girl, who had insisted on coming downstairs, sat shivering on a chair in the fond belief that she was warmer there next to the cold stove. Opposite her sat old Bonnemort, his legs bad again, apparently asleep. Neither Lénore nor Henri was home yet, still out tramping the highways and byways with Jeanlin, asking people if they had any spare change. Only Maheu moved about, lumbering up and down the other side of the bare room and bumping into the wall each time with the dazed look of an animal that can no longer see the bars of its cage. The paraffin-oil, too, was finished; but