Germinal - Emile Zola [242]
But one house among all the others, that of the Maheus, remained especially dark and silent, plunged in overwhelming grief. Since she had accompanied her husband’s body to the cemetery, La Maheude had not said a word to anyone. After the shooting she had let Étienne bring Catherine home with them, half dead and covered in mud; and as she was undressing her in front of the young man before putting her to bed, she had imagined for a moment that she, too, had returned with a bullet in her stomach, for there were large blood stains on her shirt. But she soon realized why; the flow of puberty had finally broken through under the shock of this terrible day. Ah, what a marvellous stroke of good fortune this menstruation was! A fine blessing indeed to be able to make babies for gendarmes to slaughter in their turn! But she did not speak to Catherine, any more than she spoke to Étienne for that matter. He was now sharing a bed with Jeanlin, at the risk of being arrested, having been seized with such dread at the idea of returning to the dark depths of Réquillart that he preferred prison: the prospect of that horrific blackness after all these deaths made him shudder, and he was secretly afraid of the young soldier at rest down there beneath the rocks. Indeed, amid the torment of his defeat, he dreamed of prison as a place of refuge; but nobody even gave him a thought, and time dragged as he endeavoured in vain to find ways of tiring himself out. Occasionally, however, La Maheude would look at them both with an air of resentment, as though she were asking them what they were doing in her house.
Once more they all found themselves sleeping on top of each other. Old Bonnemort had the bed the two little ones used to sleep in, and they slept with Catherine now that poor Alzire was no longer there to stick her hump into her big sister’s ribs. It was when they went to bed that La Maheude most sensed the emptiness of the house, in the cold of her own bed that was now too large. Vainly she clutched Estelle to her, to fill the gap, but she was no substitute for her husband; and she wept silently for hours at a time. Then the days began to pass as before: still no bread, and yet no opportunity either to die once and for all; just scraps picked up here and there which did the poor the disservice of keeping them alive. Nothing about their lives had changed, it was simply that her husband wasn’t there any more.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Étienne, thoroughly depressed by the spectacle of this silent woman, left the parlour and walked slowly down the cobbled street through the village. The inactivity was difficult to bear and had prompted him to take endless walks, with his arms by his side, head down, always tormented by the one single thought. He had been trudging along like this for half an hour when he became aware, from an increase in his own sense of discomfort, that the comrades were coming out on to their doorsteps to watch him. What little popularity he still enjoyed had vanished with the first rifle shot, and now wherever he went he was met with blazing eyes that burned into his back as he passed. Each time he looked up, he saw men standing with a menacing air, or women peering from behind their curtains; and, confronted by their as yet unvoiced accusations and the suppressed anger evident in these staring eyes that were widened still further by hunger and tears, he became so ill at ease that he could scarcely walk. And behind him the mute reproach continued to intensify. He was so afraid that the entire village might appear on their doorsteps and scream