Germinal - Emile Zola [281]
Then there was nothing. Étienne sat on the ground, still in the same corner, with Catherine lying motionless across his knees. Hour after hour went by. For a long time he thought she was asleep, then he touched her: she was very cold. She was dead. And yet he did not move, for fear of waking her. The thought that he had been the first to have her as a woman, and that she could be pregnant, moved him. He had other thoughts, too, about wanting to go away with her and about the joyous things they would do together, but they were so vague that they seemed simply to stroke his brow like the gentle breath of sleep. He was growing weaker and could manage only the smallest movement, such as slowly raising his hand to stroke her cold, stiff body, making sure she was still there, like a child asleep on his lap. Everything was gradually fading into nothingness: the darkness itself had vanished, and he was nowhere, beyond time and space. Yes, there was a tapping sound just behind his head, and it was getting louder and louder; but to begin with he had felt so completely exhausted that he couldn’t be bothered to go and reply, and now he had no idea what was happening and kept dreaming that Catherine was walking ahead of him and that he was listening to the gentle clatter of her clogs. Two days went by: she hadn’t moved, and he stroked her automatically, glad to know that she was so peaceful.
Étienne felt a jolt. He could hear a rumble of voices, and rocks were rolling down to his feet. When he saw a lamp, he wept. His blinking eyes followed the light, and he couldn’t watch it enough, in ecstasy at the sight of this pinprick of reddish light which barely pierced the darkness. But now some comrades were lifting him up to carry him away, and he allowed them to pour spoonfuls of broth between his locked jaws. It was only when they reached the main Réquillart roadway that he recognized someone, Négrel the engineer, who was standing there in front of him; and these two men who despised each other, the rebellious worker and the sceptical boss, threw their arms round each other and sobbed their hearts out, both of them shaken to the very core of their humanity. And into their immense sadness entered all the misery of countless generations and all the excess of pain and grief that it is possible to know in this life.
Up above, La Maheude lay slumped by the side of Catherine’s body uttering one long, wailing scream after another in unceasing lament. Several other bodies had already been brought up and placed in a row on the ground; Chaval, who was presumed to have been crushed by a rock-fall, one pit-boy and two hewers whose bodies had been similarly smashed, their skulls now emptied of brains and their bellies swollen with water. Some women in the crowd were going out of their minds, tearing at their skirts and scratching themselves in the face. When they finally brought Étienne out, having accustomed him to the light of the lamps and fed him a little, he was no more than a skeleton, and his hair had turned completely white. People moved away, shuddering at the sight of this old man. La Maheude stopped screaming and gazed at him blankly with huge, staring eyes.
VI
It was four o’clock in the morning. The cool April night was warming with the coming of day. Up in the clear sky the stars were beginning to flicker and fade as the first light of dawn tinged the eastern horizon with purple. And the black countryside lay slumbering, as yet barely touched by the faint stirring that precedes the world’s awakening.
Étienne was striding along the Vandame road. He had just spent six weeks in hospital in Montsou. Still sallow-skinned and very thin, he had felt strong enough to leave, and leaving he was. The Company, still nervous about the safety of its pits and in the process of carrying out a series of dismissals,