Germinal - Emile Zola [249]
‘Twice I wanted to shout out, to leap over all those people and be near her. But where was the use? One man less is one man less fighting for the cause; and each time she looked over at me with those big, wide eyes of hers, I could see she was telling me not to.’
He coughed again.
‘That last day, in the square, I was there…It was raining, and the clumsy idiots started panicking because it was raining so hard. It had taken them twenty minutes to hang four others: the rope broke, and they couldn’t manage to finish the fourth off…Annouchka was standing there, waiting. She couldn’t see me and kept trying to find me in the crowd. I climbed up on to a milestone, and then she saw me. Our eyes never left each other. After she was dead, she still looked at me…I waved my hat and left.’
Again there was silence. The white avenue of the canal seemed to unfurl without end, and the two men walked on with the same muffled tread, as though each had returned to his own private world. At the horizon the pale water seemed to pierce the sky with a thin wedge of light.
‘That was our punishment,’ Souvarine continued in a hard voice. ‘We were guilty of loving each other…Yes, it’s a good thing she’s dead. Heroes will be born out of the blood she shed, and there is no weakness left in my heart…Ah yes, nothing, no parents, no girl, no friend, nothing to make my hand hesitate come the day when I shall have either to take other people’s lives or else lay down my own!’
Étienne had stopped, shivering in the cold night air. He made no comment but simply said:
‘We’ve come quite far. Shall we go back?’
Slowly they began to make their way back towards Le Voreux, and after a few metres Étienne added:
‘Have you seen the new notices?’
He was referring to some more large yellow posters that the Company had had pasted up that morning. Their message was plainer and more conciliatory, promising to re-employ all dismissed miners who returned to work the next day. Everything would be forgotten, and the pardon extended even to those who had been mostly closely involved.
‘Yes, I’ve seen them,’ Souvarine replied.
‘Well? What do you think?’
‘I think it’s all over…The herd will go back. You’re all too cowardly.’
Étienne roundly defended the comrades; one man alone can be brave, but a starving crowd is powerless. Little by little they had returned to Le Voreux; and as they reached the black hulk of the pit, he carried on talking, swearing that he himself would never go down the mine again, although he forgave those who would. Then, since there had been a rumour that the joiners had not had time to repair the tubbing in the pit-shaft, he wanted to find out about it. Was it true? Had the pressure of the earth on the wooden casing round the shaft made it bulge so much that one of the extraction cages actually rubbed against it over a distance of more than five metres? Souvarine, who had gone quiet again, replied briefly. He had just been working there the day before, and the cage did indeed catch the side, so much so that the operators had even had to make it go twice as fast just to get it past that spot. But when this was pointed out to the bosses, they all made the same irritated reply: it was coal that was needed, they could do the shoring later.
‘Imagine if it gave way!’ Étienne murmured. ‘Some fun we’d have then!’
Staring through the shadows at the vague outline of the pit, Souvarine quietly concluded:
‘Well, the comrades will soon know about it if it does give way, seeing as you’re advising them to go back down.’
The church clock at Montsou was just striking nine; and when Étienne said that he was going home to bed, Souvarine added, without even holding out his hand:
‘Well then, goodbye. I’m leaving.’
‘Leaving? What do you mean?’
‘Yes, I’ve asked for my cards. I’m off.’
Astonished and hurt, Étienne stared at him. Two whole hours walking together, and now he tells him! And all so cool and calm, when the mere announcement of this sudden separation had made his own heart miss a beat. They had got to know each other, they had been through difficult