Germinal - Emile Zola [253]
‘It’s only me,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just going out for a breath of air. It’s too stuffy in here.’
‘Oh! All right.’
And La Maheude went back to sleep. For a time Catherine dared not move. Eventually she went downstairs to the parlour, where she took the slice of bread she had kept from a loaf given them by a lady from Montsou and cut it in half. Then they quietly shut the front door and departed.
Souvarine had remained standing at the corner of the road, near the Advantage. For the past half-hour he had been watching the miners return to work, a jumble of vague shapes in the darkness, tramping past like a herd. He was counting them, as a butcher might count his animals as they enter the abattoir; and he was surprised by how many there were, for, pessimistic though he was, he had not foreseen that there would be quite so many cowards. The queue showed no sign of coming to an end; and as he stood there in the bitter cold, his teeth clenched and his eyes shining, his body stiffened.
But he gave a start. Among the men filing past, whose faces he could not make out, he had nevertheless just recognized one by the way he walked. He stepped forward and stopped him.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Étienne was so startled that instead of answering him he stammered out:
‘Goodness! I thought you’d left!’
Then he admitted that he was returning to the mine. Yes, all right, he had sworn not to; but what sort of life was it to be standing about with your hands in your pockets waiting for things that might take another hundred years to come about. Besides, he had personal reasons.
Souvarine was shaking as he listened to him. Then he grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him in the direction of the village.
‘Go home! I insist. Do you hear me?’
But just then Catherine stepped forward, and he recognized her too. Étienne was busy protesting that it was nobody’s place but his own to judge his conduct. Souvarine looked from the girl to the comrade, and then stepped back and gestured in sudden resignation. Once a woman had got under a man’s skin, he was done for, he might as well die. Perhaps Souvarine had a sudden memory of his mistress, back there in Moscow, the mistress who had been hanged, severing the last tie that bound his flesh and setting him free to dispose of the lives of others and of his own. He said simply:
‘On you go.’
Embarrassed, Étienne lingered, searching for a friendly word in order not to part on this note.
‘So are you still planning to leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, give me your hand, mate. Good luck, and no hard feelings.’
Souvarine held out an ice-cold hand. No friend, no girl.
‘This time it is goodbye.’
‘Yes, goodbye.’
And, standing there motionless in the darkness, Souvarine watched as Étienne and Catherine entered Le Voreux.
III
At four o’clock they began to go down. Dansaert in person had installed himself in the clerk’s office in the lamp-room, where he wrote down the name of each miner who stepped forward and then handed him a lamp. He accepted everybody back without comment, just as the notices had promised. Nevertheless, when he saw Étienne and Catherine standing at the window, he gave a start and went red in the face. He opened his mouth, on the point of refusing to take them on again, but was then content to gloat mockingly: aha! and how are the mighty fallen! So the Company must be doing something right if the scourge of Montsou was back wanting to earn his daily bread? Silently Étienne took his lamp and climbed the stairs to the pit-shaft with Catherine.
But it was here, at the pit-head, that Catherine feared there would be abuse from the comrades. Sure enough, the moment they walked in she spotted Chaval in the middle of twenty or so miners waiting for an empty cage. He started walking towards her with a furious look on his face but caught sight of Étienne and stopped. Then he affected to sneer and started shrugging his shoulders in a theatrical manner. Oh, fine, fine! What did he bloody care anyway! Étienne was welcome to her, he’d warmed