Germinal - Emile Zola [279]
On the seventh day Catherine was leaning forward to drink when her hand knocked against something floating in front of her.
‘Here, what’s this?’
Étienne felt around in the darkness.
‘I don’t know. It seems to be the cover of a ventilation door.’ She drank the water, but as she was taking a second mouthful, the object touched her hand again. And she gave a terrible shriek:
‘Oh, my God! It’s him!’
‘Who?
‘Him. You know. I could feel his moustache.’
It was Chaval’s body, which had floated up the incline towards them on the rising water. Étienne stretched out his arm and felt the moustache and the crushed nose; and he shuddered with revulsion and fear. Catherine suddenly felt terribly sick and spat out the rest of the water. It was as though she’d just been drinking blood, as though the deep pool in front of her was actually a pool of this man’s blood.
‘Hold on,’ Étienne stammered, ‘I’ll soon get rid of him.’
He pushed the body away with his foot. But soon they could feel it bumping against their legs again.
‘For Christ’s sake, go away!’
But after a third attempt Étienne had to let it be. Some current must be bringing it back all the time. Chaval was refusing to leave; he wanted to be with them, to be right up close to them. He was a gruesome companion, and his presence made the air even fouler. All through that day they went without water, resisting the need and believing they would rather die than drink it, and only on the following day did the pain finally change their minds: they would push the body away each time they took a mouthful, but drink they did. They might as well not have bothered smashing his skull in if he was now going to come between them again, as stubbornly jealous as ever. Even though he was dead, he would always be with them, to the bitter end, preventing them from ever being alone together.
Another day went by, and another. With each little wave Étienne could feel the man he had killed gently bumping against him in the water, like a companion nudging him quietly to remind him of his presence. And each time he would give a shudder. He kept seeing him in his mind’s eye, all green and bloated, with his squashed face and his red moustache. Then he couldn’t remember any more and began to think he hadn’t killed him, that this was Chaval swimming in the water and about to bite him. Catherine now cried constantly for long periods at a time, after which she would lapse, exhausted, into semi-consciousness. Eventually she fell into a deep sleep from which it was impossible to rouse her. Étienne would wake her up, and she would mumble incoherently before going straight back to sleep, sometimes without even opening her eyes; and he had now put his arm round her waist in case she slid off and drowned. It fell to him to reply to the comrades. The sound of the picks was getting closer, from somewhere behind his back. But his own strength was failing, and he had lost the will to tap. They knew they were there, so why tire himself out further? He no longer cared whether they came or not. The long wait had left him in such a dazed state that for hours at a time he would quite forget what it was he was actually waiting for.
There was one crumb of comfort. The water was going down, and Chaval’s body drifted away. The rescue party had been at work for nine days now, and Étienne and Catherine were just taking their first steps along the roadway again when a horrifying explosion threw them to the ground. They groped for each other in the dark and then huddled together, terrified out of their wits, uncomprehending, thinking that disaster had struck once more. Nothing stirred, and the sound of the picks had stopped.
In the corner where they were sitting side by side, Catherine gave a little laugh:
‘It must be lovely outside…Come on, let’s go and see.’
At first Étienne fought against this delusion, but even his stronger head found it catching, and he lost all grip on reality. Their five senses were beginning