Germinal - Emile Zola [229]
Rooted to the spot in astonishment, Étienne continued to watch. His intended shout vanished back into his chest. Above him the spoil-heap was deserted, and no shadowy figure was now to be seen outlined against the stampeding clouds. He ran up as fast as he could and found Jeanlin crouching beside the body, which lay flat on its back with arms outstretched. In the bright moonlight the red trousers and grey overcoat stood out starkly against the snow. Not a drop of blood had fallen: the knife was still lodged in the man’s throat up to the hilt.
In a fit of unthinking rage he knocked the boy over with his fist beside the corpse.
‘Why on earth did you do that?’ he stammered in disbelief.
Jeanlin struggled to his knees and crawled away on all fours, arching his bony spine like a cat. His large ears and jutting jaw were quivering, and his eyes blazed with the excitement of his dirty deed.
‘In God’s name, why did you do that?’
‘Dunno. Just felt like it.’
It was the only reply he could manage. For three days now he had felt like it. The idea had been tormenting him, and he had thought about it so much that it had made his head hurt, right there, behind the eyes. And anyway why should he give a damn about these bloody soldiers who’d only come to make a nuisance of themselves in the miners’ backyard? Having heard all the rousing speeches in the forest and the calls to death and destruction throughout the pits, he had retained five or six key words, which he repeated to himself like a child playing at revolutions. And that was all he knew, nobody had put him up to it, he had thought of it all by himself, just like he sometimes fancied stealing onions from a field.
Étienne was appalled at the idea of these criminal urges quietly seething inside the child’s head, and he gave him a kick to send him packing, as though he were a dumb animal. He was afraid that they might have heard the sentry’s muffled cry from the guardroom at Le Voreux, and each time the moon came out from behind a cloud he would glance over towards the pit. But nothing had stirred, so he bent over and touched the man’s hands, which were gradually turning to ice; and he listened in vain to the silent heart beneath the greatcoat. All that could be seen of the knife was the bone handle, on which a romantic motto was carved in black letters: the simple word ‘Love’.
His eyes travelled up from the throat to the face. All of a sudden he recognized the young soldier: it was Jules, the raw recruit he had spoken to one morning. And he felt an enormous wave of pity at the sight of this fair, gentle face all covered in freckles. The blue eyes were wide open, gazing at the sky with that fixed stare Étienne had seen before as he scanned the horizon searching for his native soil. Where was this Plogoff that had appeared to him as in a sundrenched vision? Somewhere over yonder. Far away the sea would be roaring on this stormy night. Perhaps this gale that was passing so high above them had already swept across his moorland. Two women would be standing there, the mother and the sister, holding on to their bonnets in the wind and gazing into the distance as if they, too, might see