Germinal - Emile Zola [221]
‘There. She’s gone now…The damned child’s died of starvation. And she’s not the only one either. I’ve just seen another, down the street…You all call me out, but there’s nothing I can do. Meat’s what you all need. That’ll cure you.’
Maheu, his fingers burned, had dropped the match; and darkness fell once more on the little corpse that was still warm. The doctor had rushed away. And in the blackness of the room all Étienne could hear was La Maheude sobbing and crying out again and again, in ceaseless funereal lament, for death to come:
‘Oh God, it’s my turn now, take me!…Dear God, take my husband, take the others, for pity’s sake. Please, no more!’
III
By eight o’clock that Sunday evening Souvarine was already the only one left in the saloon at the Advantage, sitting in his usual seat with his head against the wall. There wasn’t a miner now who could lay his hands on the two sous needed for a pint, and the bars had never had so few customers. So Mme Rasseneur, with nothing to do but sit at the counter, maintained a tetchy silence, while Rasseneur stood by the cast-iron stove with a pensive air, seemingly preoccupied with the russet smoke rising from the coal.
Suddenly the stuffy tranquillity characteristic of overheated rooms was broken by the sound of three sharp taps on a windowpane, and Souvarine looked round. He got to his feet, having identified the signal that Étienne had already used several times before as a way of attracting his attention whenever he saw him sitting at an empty table smoking his cigarette. But before Souvarine could reach the door, Rasseneur had opened it; and, having recognized the man standing there, thanks to the bright light from the window, he said:
‘What’s up? Are you afraid I’m going to inform on you?…Come on, you’ll be much more comfortable talking in here than out in the road.’
Étienne walked in. Mme Rasseneur politely offered him a beer, but he refused with a wave of his hand. Rasseneur went on:
‘I guessed long ago where you’ve been hiding. If I were a grass, like your friends say, I’d have had the gendarmes after you days ago.’
‘It’s all right, you don’t need to defend yourself,’ Étienne replied. ‘I know telling tales isn’t your style…People can have different ideas about things and still respect each other.’
Silence fell once more. Souvarine had returned to his seat, with his back to the wall, gazing absently at the smoke from his cigarette; but his restless fingers were fidgeting anxiously and he kept running them over his knees, searching for the warm fur of Poland, who was absent that evening. His uneasiness was quite unconscious, a sense of something missing even though he could not rightly say what it was.
Sitting on the other side of the table, Étienne said finally:
‘Le Voreux’s starting up again tomorrow morning. The Belgians have arrived with young Négrel.’
‘Yes, they brought them in after dark,’ murmured Rasseneur, who had remained standing. ‘Just as long as there’s no more bloodshed!’
Then, in a louder voice:
‘Look, I don’t want to start having an argument with you again, but things really are going to turn nasty if you all carry on being stubborn…It’s just the same with that International of yours, you know. I met Pluchart the day before yesterday in Lille…I had business to attend to there. That whole set-up of his is falling apart, it seems.’
He gave details. Having won over the workers of the world with a propaganda campaign that still had the bourgeoisie quaking in their shoes, the International was now being consumed by internal rivalries born of vanity and ambition, and day by day these were gradually destroying it. Ever since the anarchists