Germinal - Emile Zola [225]
But Étienne, clenching his teeth and drawing himself up to his full, diminutive height, was fighting like a boxer, using his fists to protect his face and chest; and he waited for his openings, jabbing away fiercely as though his arms were tightly coiled springs.
At first they did each other little harm. The violent windmill action of the one and the cool waiting game of the other both served to prolong the encounter. A chair was knocked over, and their heavy shoes crunched on the white sand strewn over the flagstone floor. But eventually the two men were winded and could be heard gasping for breath, while their red faces began to swell as though there were braziers inside and the flames could be seen through the bright holes that were their eyes.
‘Take that!’ screamed Chaval. ‘Bull’s eye!’
And, indeed, like a flail launched at an angle, his fist had caught his opponent’s shoulder. Étienne stifled a groan of pain, and the only sound was a dull thud as his muscles absorbed the bruising blow. And he responded with a straight punch to the chest, which would have floored the other man if he hadn’t been leaping about like a goat. All the same the punch caught him on his left side, and so hard that he staggered and had to catch his breath. When he felt his arms grow limp with the pain, he flew into a rage and started lashing out with his feet like an animal, trying to rip Étienne’s stomach open with his heel.
‘And that one’s for your guts!’ he spluttered in a choking voice. ‘It’s time your innards were pulled.’
Étienne dodged the kick and was so outraged by this infringement of the rules of fair combat that he broke his silence:
‘Shut your mouth, you brute! And no kicking, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll get a chair and knock your brains out!’
The fight now grew fiercer. Rasseneur was sickened and would again have tried to intervene if his wife had not dissuaded him with a stern look: surely two customers were entitled to settle their differences here? So he had merely placed himself in front of the fireplace, for fear they might topple in. With his usual calm air Souvarine had rolled himself a cigarette, but he omitted to light it. Catherine was still standing motionless against the wall: only her hands had moved, rising unbidden to her waist, where they had writhed and begun to tear at her dress in recurrent spasms of nervous anxiety. It took her all her strength not to cry out, not to be the death of one man by proclaiming her preference for the other, though in fact she was so distraught that she no longer knew which one that might be.
Chaval soon grew weary, and he was now drenched in sweat and hitting out at random. Despite his anger Étienne kept up his guard and parried most of the punches, although some did get through. His ear was split, and Chaval’s nail had gouged out a piece of his neck, which smarted so much that he, too, started cursing and swearing as he tried to land one of his direct blows to the chest. Once again Chaval leaped out of the way; but he had bent forward in the process, and Étienne’s fist hit him in the face, flattening his nose and closing an eye. Blood spurted from his nostrils at once, and the eye swelled up and turned blue. Blinded by this red stream and dazed by the blow to his skull, the wretched man was wildly beating the air when another punch straight to the chest finished him off. There was a cracking sound, and he fell backwards on to the floor with a heavy thud like a sack of plaster dumped off a cart.
Étienne waited.
‘Get up. We can start again if you want.’
Chaval made no reply, but after lying there dazed for a few seconds he began to stir and to stretch his limbs. He struggled painfully to his knees, where he paused bent double for a moment while his hand rummaged in his pocket on some invisible errand. Then, as he got to his feet,