Germinal - Emile Zola [237]
‘God help me, they can smash my head in if they like, but if you’re going to carry on with this madness, I’m not going to desert you.’
Étienne, whose assistance he had sought as he tried to make them see reason, gestured helplessly. It was too late, there were more than five hundred of them now, and not just the hardliners who had raced to the mine determined to get rid of the Belgians. Some people had simply come for the show, while the laddish contingent thought the confrontation was a great lark. In the middle of one group, some way off, Zacharie and Philomène were watching as though it were a display, and so unconcerned that they had even brought the two children, Achille and Désirée, along to watch. A new wave of people was arriving from Réquillart, including Mouquet and La Mouquette; Mouquet immediately went over and clapped his mate Zacharie on the shoulder with a laugh, while his sister, who was very worked up, rushed forward to join the troublemakers in the front row.
Meanwhile, with each minute that passed, the captain kept looking towards the Montsou road. The reinforcements he had requested had not yet arrived, and his sixty men could not hold out much longer. Eventually it occurred to him to stage a show of strength, and he ordered his men to load their rifles in full view of the crowd. The soldiers duly obeyed, but the crowd continued to grow restive, and there was much brave talk and mockery.
‘Oh, look. It’s time for target-practice. They will be tired!’ sneered the women, La Brûlé, La Levaque and the others.
La Maheude was still carrying Estelle, who had woken up and now started crying; and as she clutched the child’s tiny frame to her chest, she walked up so close to the sergeant that he asked her what she thought she was doing bringing a poor little thing like that along with her.
‘What do you bloody care?’ she replied. ‘Shoot her, if you dare.’
The men shook their heads in contempt. Nobody believed that anyone would fire on them.
‘They’ve only got blanks anyway,’ said Levaque.
‘You’d think we were bloody Cossacks!’ shouted Maheu. ‘You’re not going to shoot your own countrymen, for God’s sake!’
Others kept saying they’d served in the Crimea1 and that a bit of lead had never frightened anyone, and they all continued to push forward towards the rifles. If the soldiers had fired at that moment, the mob would have been mown down.
Now in the front row, La Mouquette was almost speechless with indignation at the thought that the soldiers might want to put a bullet through a woman’s skin. She had spat out her full repertoire of foul language at them and still could think of no obscenity that was sufficiently demeaning, when suddenly, having only this one last deadly insult to fling in the squad’s face, she decided to display her bottom. She hoisted her skirts with both hands, bent forward and exposed a huge, round expanse of flesh.
‘Here, take a look at this! Even this is too good for you, you dirty bastards!’
She bent over double and swivelled from side to side so that each should have his share, and with each thrust of her bottom she said:
‘One for the officer! And one for the sergeant! And one for the squaddies!’
There were gales of laughter; Bébert and Lydie were in fits, and even Étienne, despite his grim forebodings, applauded this offensive exhibition of naked flesh. Everyone, the hardliners as well as the jokers, was now jeering at the soldiers as though they had actually been spattered with filth; and only Catherine, standing over to one side on a pile of old timbering, remained silent as she sensed the gall rising to her throat and the warm fire of hate gradually spreading through her body.
But then a scuffle broke out. In order to calm his men’s nerves the captain had decided to take some prisoners. La Mouquette jumped up in an instant and darted away between the comrades’ legs. Three