Germinal - Emile Zola [276]
‘Get off. You’re crushing me.’
Étienne was shaking, having pressed his forehead against the timbering in order not to see. He leaped towards them in a fury.
‘Leave her alone, for Christ’s sake!’
‘It’s none of your business,’ said Chaval. ‘She’s my woman. I can do what I bloody like with her!’
He grabbed hold of her again and held her tight in his arms, out of bravado, crushing his red moustache against her mouth:
‘Leave us in peace, will you! Why don’t you bugger off over there for a while.’
But Étienne, white-lipped, shouted:
‘If you don’t leave her alone, so help me I’ll throttle you.’
Chaval was on his feet in a flash, realizing from the piercing tone in Étienne’s voice that he meant to have the matter out once and for all. Death seemed to be a long time coming: one of them would have to make way for the other here and now. It was their old enmity showing its face again, down beneath the earth where soon they would both be laid to rest; and yet there was so little room to move that they couldn’t even brandish their fists without grazing them on the rock.
‘You’d better watch out,’ growled Chaval. ‘This time I’m going to have you.’
At that, Étienne went mad. His eyes clouded over with a red mist, and his throat bulged as the blood rushed to his head. He was seized with the need to kill, an irresistible, physical need like a tickle of phlegm in the throat that brings on a violent, unstoppable fit of coughing. It rose up and burst forth, beyond his power to control it, under the impulse of the hereditary flaw within him. He grabbed hold of a lump of shale in the wall, loosened it and tore it free. It was large and heavy. Using both hands and with superhuman strength, he brought it crashing down on Chaval’s skull.
He did not even have time to jump back. He fell where he was, his face smashed, his skull split open. His brains had spattered against the roof, and a jet of purple was pouring from the wound like water spurting from a spring. A pool formed immediately, reflecting the hazy star of the lamp. Dark shadow filled the walled cave, and the body on the ground looked like the black hump of a pile of coal.
Étienne leaned over him, wide-eyed, and stared. So it was done, he had killed. The memory of all his past struggles came confusedly to his mind, memories of his long, futile battle against the poison that lay dormant in every sinew of his body, the alcohol which had slowly accumulated over the generations in his family’s blood. And yet if he was drunk now, it could only be on hunger: his parents’ alcoholism had sufficed at one remove. His hair stood on end at the horror of this murder and, though all his upbringing was against it, his heart was racing with joy, the sheer animal joy of a sated appetite. And then he felt an upsurge of pride, the pride of the fittest. He had suddenly remembered the young soldier, his throat slit with a knife, killed by a child. Now he, too, had killed.
Catherine had got to her feet, and she gave a loud shriek.
‘My God! He’s dead!’
‘Are you sorry?’ Étienne asked fiercely.
She was gasping for breath, at a loss for words. Then she swayed and flung herself into his arms.
‘Oh, kill me too! Let’s both of us die!’
She wrapped her arms round his shoulders and hugged him tight, as he hugged her; and together they hoped that they were about to die. But death was in no hurry, and they loosened their embrace. Then, as she hid her eyes, he dragged the poor wretch across the ground and pushed him down the incline, to clear the cramped space they still had to live in. Life would have been impossible with that corpse under their feet. But they were horrified to hear the body land with a splash. What? Had the flood filled the hole up already? Then they caught sight of it, overflowing into their roadway.
And so the struggle began again. They had lit the last lamp, and in its dwindling light they could see the floodwater steadily, stubbornly, rising. It reached their ankles, then their knees. The road sloped