Germinal - Emile Zola [236]
‘You filthy bastards!’ screamed La Brûlé as she retreated.
But already everybody was returning to the charge, drunk on their heedlessness of death. Women rushed forward, and La Maheude and La Levaque screamed:
‘Kill us, then! Come on, kill us! But we want our rights!’
At the risk of getting cut to shreds, Levaque had grabbed a bunch of three bayonets with his bare hands and was pulling them towards him in an attempt to pull them off; in his anger he became ten times as strong and managed to twist them. Bouteloup, meanwhile, standing to one side and annoyed at having come with his friend, calmly looked on.
‘Come on, you buggers,’ Maheu kept saying. ‘Come on, let’s see what you’re made of.’
He unbuttoned his jacket and opened his shirt, exposing his naked, hairy chest with its tattoos of coal-stains. He pressed himself against the points of the bayonets, forcing the soldiers to recoil and presenting an awesome spectacle of insolent bravado. One point had pricked him near the nipple, and it seemed to madden him so much that he kept trying to make it go deeper in, till he could hear his ribs crack.
‘Admit it! You’d never dare…There are ten thousand more on their way. You can kill us if you like, but you’ll have ten thousand more to kill after that.’
The soldiers’ position was becoming critical, for they had received strict orders not to use their weapons except as a last resort. How were they supposed to stop these crazy people skewering themselves to death? Moreover they had less and less room to move, and they were now backed up against the wall without any means of retreating further. Nevertheless this small squad of soldiers, a handful of men against the rising tide of miners, was still holding firm and coolly obeying their captain’s brief commands. As he stood there nervously, tight-lipped, his eyes shining, his one fear was that his men would be provoked by all this abuse. Already a young sergeant, a tall, thin chap, was blinking in an alarming manner, and his apology of a moustache was bristling. Near by a seasoned veteran with a skin tanned by umpteen campaigns had turned pale on seeing his bayonet twisted like a straw. Another man, a recent recruit no doubt, who still smelled of the ploughfield, flushed crimson every time he heard himself called a sod or a bastard. And there was no let-up in the violence of the intimidation, of the clenched fists and the foul language, of all the threats and accusations that were thrown in their faces by the shovelful. It took every ounce of military discipline to keep the men standing there like this in gloomy, disdainful silence as they carried out their orders without the shadow of an expression on their faces.
A showdown was seeming inevitable when suddenly Richomme, the deputy, appeared behind the soldiers with his white hair, looking like a friendly policeman. He was deeply shaken, and said loudly:
‘In God’s name, this is idiocy! We really must stop this nonsense!’
And he thrust himself between the bayonets and the miners.
‘Comrades, listen to me…You know that I used to be one of the workers, that I’ve always been one of you. Well, by God, I promise you that if you don’t get fairly treated, I’ll speak to the bosses myself and tell them loud and clear…But this is all getting out of hand. It doesn’t do any good at all screaming bad language at these fine men and trying to get a hole in your belly.’
They listened, and they hesitated. But just then, unfortunately, the sharp features of young Négrel appeared up at the window. He was no doubt afraid that he might be accused of sending a deputy instead of daring to go down himself, and he tried to make himself heard. But the sound of his voice was lost amid such a terrible uproar that he had to back away from the window at once, shrugging as he did so. From then on Richomme could try as he might to appeal to them on his