Germinal - Emile Zola [231]
Jeanlin, now back home in his robber’s den, flung himself down on the hay and muttered in a weary voice:
‘Phew! Lydie and Bébert will just have to wait for me. I’ve got to have an hour’s kip.’
Étienne had blown out the candle, of which only a tiny stub remained. He, too, was completely exhausted, but he did not feel sleepy since painful nightmarish thoughts were hammering away inside his head. Soon only one remained, a single tormenting question that nagged away at him but which he could not answer: why had he not stabbed Chaval when he had held him at knifepoint? And why had this child just slit a soldier’s throat without even knowing his name? It all undermined his revolutionary notions about being prepared to kill, about having the right to kill. Did this mean he was a coward? Over in the hay the child had begun to snore, like a drunk, as though he had binged on slaughter. And Étienne felt disgust and irritation at knowing the boy was there and at having to listen to him. Suddenly he gave a shudder, he had just felt the breath of fear on his face. It was as though a faint ripple of air, like a sob, had issued from the depths of the earth. The picture of the young soldier lying there beneath the rocks with his rifle by his side sent shivers down his spine and made his hair stand on end. It was ridiculous, but the whole mine seemed to fill with the sound of voices, and he had to relight the candle; he only regained his composure once he could see the empty roadways in its pale glow.
For a further quarter of an hour he pondered things, still wrestling with the same question, his eyes fixed on the burning wick. Then there was a sizzling sound, the wick drowned in wax, and everything was once more plunged into darkness. His shudders returned, and he felt like hitting Jeanlin to stop him snoring so loudly. The proximity of the boy became so intolerable that he fled, filled with a desperate need for fresh air, and rushed through the roadways and up the shaft as though he could hear a ghost panting at his heels.
Back on the surface, amid the ruins of Réquillart, Étienne could at last breathe freely. Since he hadn’t dared to kill, he would have to die himself, and the prospect of his own death, which had already vaguely occurred to him, now loomed once more and lodged firmly in his mind, like one last hope. If he died a valiant death, if he died for the revolution, that would be the end of it, that would resolve things one way or another, for good or ill, it would mean he didn’t have to think about the matter any further. If the comrades were going to attack the Belgians, he would make sure he was in the front line, and with a bit of luck he might get shot. And so it was with a resolute step that he returned to Le Voreux to see what was going on. Two o’clock struck, and the sound of voices could be heard coming noisily from the deputies’ room, which had been taken over by the military guards. The sentry’s disappearance had caused a considerable stir; they had gone to wake the captain, and in the end, after a careful inspection of the scene, it was decided that the soldier must have deserted. As Étienne listened from the shadows, he remembered the republican captain the young soldier had told him about. Supposing he could be persuaded to come over to the people’s side? The troops would carry their guns reversed, and that could prove to be a general signal for the wholesale slaughter of the bourgeois. A new dream took hold of him. He forgot all about dying and continued to stand there in the mud, for hour after hour; and as the drizzle from the thaw settled on his shoulders, he was filled with the feverish hope that victory might yet be possible.
He kept an eye out for the Belgians until five o’clock. Then he realized