Germinal - Emile Zola [24]
‘So long as we’ve got something to eat!’ Étienne muttered again.
‘That’s just what I say. As long as there’s bread to eat, we’ll survive.’
Bonnemort fell silent, his gaze directed towards the village where gleams of light were beginning to appear one after the other.
Four o’clock was chiming on the Montsou clock-tower. The cold was getting even sharper.
‘So it’s rich then, is it, this Company of yours?’ Étienne went on.
The old man’s shoulders rose in a shrug and then sagged as though beneath an avalanche of gold coins.
‘Oh, yes, it’s rich all right…though maybe not as rich as the one next door, the one at Anzin.6 But it’s got millions and millions all the same…They’ve lost count. Nineteen pits they have, with thirteen producing coal – like Le Voreux, La Victoire, Crèvecœur, Mirou, Saint-Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel and the others – and then six for drainage or ventilation, like Réquillart…Ten thousand workers, concessions stretching over sixty-seven communes, a production level of five thousand tons a day, a railway linking all the pits, and workshops, and factories!…Oh, yes, there’s plenty of money around all right!’
The big yellow horse pricked his ears at the sound of tubs rumbling across the trestles. They must have fixed the cage down below, the banksmen had returned to work. As he harnessed his horse for the downward journey, the driver added softly, addressing the animal:
‘Mustn’t get into the habit of standing about nattering, eh, you lazy old thing!…If Monsieur Hennebeau knew how you were wasting your time!’
Étienne was staring pensively into the night.
‘So the mine belongs to Monsieur Hennebeau, does it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ the old man explained. ‘He’s only the colliery manager. He gets paid just like the rest of us.’
The young man pointed towards the vast expanse of darkness:
‘So who owns all this, then?’
But Bonnemort was temporarily seized by another coughing fit of such violence that he could not catch his breath. At length, having spat and wiped the black spittle from his lips, he answered above the strengthening wind:
‘What’s that? Who owns it all?…Nobody knows exactly…People just…’
And with a wave of his hand he gestured towards an indeterminate point in the gloom, a remote, unknown place inhabited by these ‘people’ on whose behalf the Maheu family had been working the seams for over a century.
His voice had assumed a tone of almost religious awe, as though he were talking about some forbidden temple that concealed the squat and sated deity to whom they all offered up their flesh but whom no one had ever seen.
‘But if we at least had enough to eat,’ Étienne said for the third time, without apparent connection.
‘That’s true enough! If there was always enough bread to eat, we’d be laughing!’
The horse had set off, and the driver in turn disappeared, dragging his ailing limbs. The tippler-operator had not stirred and continued to sit there hunched in a ball, his chin thrust between his knees, staring into the void with wide, expressionless eyes.
Étienne picked up his bundle but lingered a while longer. He could feel the icy blasts of wind on his back while his chest roasted in the heat from the fire. Perhaps he should try at the pit all the same, the old man might be mistaken; and anyway he was past caring now, he’d take whatever they gave him. Where else could he go, what else could he do, when so many people round about were starving and out of work? Was he to end up like a stray dog, a dead carcass lying behind some wall or other? And yet something made him hesitate, a fear of Le Voreux itself, out here in the middle of this open plain that lay buried in thick darkness. With each gust the