Germinal - Emile Zola [216]
‘Shh! Be quiet, this we must see!’ Levaque whispered, giving a dirty laugh. ‘The other business can wait…And you can hop it, you little hussy!’
Lydie stepped back a few paces, while he put his eye to the crack in the shutter. He gave short muffled cries of exclamation as his back rose and shuddered. Then it was La Levaque’s turn to look; but she announced, as though she were about to vomit, that the whole thing was disgusting. Wanting to have a look, too, Maheu pushed her out of the way, and then declared that you certainly got value for money! And they repeated the process, each taking a turn to look, just like in a peep-show. The sitting-room, which was sparklingly clean, looked bright and cheerful with its roaring fire; there were cakes on the table, as well as a bottle and some glasses – quite a party, in fact. So much so that the sight of it all was enough to infuriate the two men, they who in other circumstances would have laughed at the episode for a good six months. The fact that she was lying there with her skirts in the air getting screwed for all she was worth was funny all right. But God Almighty if it wasn’t a rotten trick to be doing it in front of such a huge fire and after getting her strength up with all those biscuits when the comrades hadn’t a crumb of bread or a lump of coal to their name!
‘Here’s Father!’ cried Lydie as she made her escape.
Pierron was returning from the wash-house, minding his own business, with the bundle of washing over one shoulder. Maheu bearded him at once:
‘Here you! I’ve been told that your wife said I sold Catherine and that everyone in our house has got a dose of the clap…So, tell me, what’s he paying you for her, eh? You know who I mean, the fellow that’s screwing her stupid right at this very minute.’
Taken by surprise, Pierron was completely nonplussed when La Pierronne, alarmed by the sound of all these voices, forgot herself and opened the door a little to see what was going on. There she stood, all red, her bodice unbuttoned, her skirt still hitched up and tucked into her belt, while in the background Dansaert was desperately pulling on his trousers. The overman made his escape and disappeared from view, terrified that a story of this kind would soon reach the ears of the manager. Then all hell broke loose as people laughed and jeered and flung insults at each other.
‘And you’re the one who’s always saying how filthy everyone else is!’ La Levaque shouted at La Pierronne. ‘No wonder you’re so clean if you’re getting the bosses to scrub the floor for you!’
‘Oh, she’s a fine one to talk, she is!’ said Levaque, taking up the theme. ‘That’s the bitch who said my wife sleeps with me and the lodger together, one beneath and one on top!…Oh, yes, that’s what they told me you said.’
But La Pierronne had recovered her composure, and she listened unbowed to the insults and the crude remarks, thoroughly disdainful in the certainty that she was richer and prettier than any of them.
‘I said what I said, so now clear off…Do you hear me? What business is it of yours what I get up to? You’re all just jealous and resent us because we’ve got money to put in the bank! Oh, yes, you can say what you like, but my husband knows perfectly well why Monsieur Dansaert was in our house.’
And indeed by now Pierron was angrily defending his wife. So they rounded on him instead, calling him a lackey, a grass, the Company’s poodle, accusing him of locking himself in at home so that he could stuff himself on the choice morsels with which the bosses paid him for his treachery. He retaliated, claiming that Maheu had been slipping threatening notes under his door, one with a dagger and crossbones on it. And of course it all ended with the men fighting, just like all the other rows the women had started ever since hunger had turned even the mildest among them into a fury. Maheu and Levaque laid into Pierron with their fists, and they had to be dragged off him.
The blood was pouring from her son-in-law’s nose when La Br