Germinal - Emile Zola [30]
‘Hallo there!’ said a man who was just leaving the house next door. ‘We can go together.’
It was Levaque, with his son Bébert, a lad of twelve who was a great friend of Jeanlin’s. Catherine was astonished and stifled a giggle as she whispered in Zacharie’s ear: How about that, eh? Didn’t Bouteloup even wait for the husband to leave any more!
Throughout the village the lights were going out. A last door slammed shut, and the whole place went back to sleep as the women and small children resumed their rest in beds where there was now more room. Meanwhile, from the dark, silent village to the puffing steam of Le Voreux, a long line of shadows moved slowly forward in the gusting wind, the miners on their way to work, shoulders hunched and superfluous arms folded across their chests. On their backs the ‘pieces’ bulged like humps. Shivering with cold in their thin clothes they made no effort to hurry but quietly tramped along, strung out like a straggling herd of animals.
III
Étienne, having finally come down from the spoil-heap, had just walked into Le Voreux; and whenever he asked if there was work, everyone just shook their head and told him to wait for the overman. He was left to wander about the dimly lit buildings that were full of black, empty spaces and a disturbingly complex array of different rooms and levels. Having climbed a dark, half-derelict staircase he had found himself on a rickety overhead gangway and then made his way across the screening-shed where it was so completely dark that he had to stretch out his arms in order to avoid bumping into anything. Suddenly, right in front of him, two enormous yellow eyes appeared, like holes in the blackness. He was now standing under the headgear, at the very mouth of the mine-shaft, where the coal was unloaded after it had been brought up.
One of the older deputies, called Richomme, a large fellow with the face of a friendly policeman and a wide grey moustache, happened to be passing on his way to the checkweighman’s office.
‘Don’t suppose you could do with another pair of hands round here, could you? I’ll take whatever there is,’ Étienne asked once more.
Richomme was about to say ‘no’; but then he paused and gave the same answer as the others, before walking on:
‘Wait for Monsieur Dansaert. He’s the overman.’
Four lanterns had been installed here, and the reflectors, which were designed to throw all the light back down towards the shaft, shone brightly on the iron railings, on the levers, which operated the signals and the cage keeps, and on the wooden guides between which the two cages moved up and down. Everything else in the vast, nave-like hall was lost in darkness, and huge shadows seemed to float back and forth. Only the lamp-room at the far end was ablaze with light, while a lamp in the checkweighman’s office glowed weakly, like a star on the verge of extinction. Production had just resumed. The flooring of cast-iron plates rumbled like permanent thunder beneath the unceasing passage of the coal-tubs; and as the banksmen rolled them across, the human outline of their long, curved spines stood out amid the ceaseless commotion of these black and noisy things.
Étienne stood for a moment, deafened and blinded, and chilled to the bone by the draughts coming from every direction. Then he moved forward a few paces, drawn by the gleaming steel and brass of the winding-engine, which had now become visible. It was set back some twenty-five metres from the shaft and housed at a higher level; and there it sat so securely fixed on its base of solid brick that even when it was working at full steam and producing every one of its four hundred horse-power, the walls did not so much as quiver with the action of its huge crank rod as it rose and plunged in gentle, well-oiled motion. The engineman standing by the operating lever was listening out for the signal bells while his eyes were fixed on the indicator panel where the different levels of the mineshaft were marked on a vertical groove. Beside this groove, lead weights attached to strings