Germinal - Emile Zola [41]
‘Little worm! Hasn’t even got the strength of a girl!…And make sure you fill that tub! What’s the matter with you, then? Don’t want to hurt your arms or what?…I bloody warn you, I’ll have that ten sous off you if you get one of ours rejected!’
Étienne was careful not to reply, being so far only too happy to have found this forced labour and quite ready to acquiesce in the brutal hierarchy of the skilled and the unskilled worker. But he was at the end of his tether: his feet were bleeding, his arms and legs were contorted with horrible cramps, and his upper body seemed to be wrapped in a tight band of iron. Fortunately it was ten o’clock, and the team decided to stop for lunch.
Maheu had a watch with him, though he never bothered to look at it. Down in this starless night he could tell the time to the nearest five minutes. Everyone put their shirts and jackets back on and came down from the coal-face. Now they squatted on their heels, elbows tight against their sides, in the position that is so habitual for miners that they adopt it even when outside the mine, which means they never feel the need of a stone or a beam to sit on. Having each taken out their piece, they solemnly bit into the thick slice of bread and exchanged a desultory word about that morning’s work. Catherine, who had remained standing, at length went over to Étienne, who was stretched out across the rails a short distance away from them, leaning his back against the timbering. There was a spot there which was almost dry.
‘Aren’t you eating?’ she asked with her mouth full, her piece in her hand.
Then she remembered that the lad had been wandering about on a dark night without a penny to his name and perhaps even without any food.
‘Would you like some of mine?’
And when he refused, swearing to her that he wasn’t hungry, his voice trembling from the griping pain in his stomach, she insisted cheerfully:
‘Oh well, if it puts you off!…But look, I’ve only eaten out of this side. You can have the other bit.’
Already she had broken the piece in two. Taking his half, he had to stop himself from devouring it in one gulp; and he placed his elbows on his thighs so as to hide his trembling from her. Calmly treating him as simply another fellow-worker, she had just lain down on her front beside him, and with her chin cupped in one hand she was slowly eating her bread with the other. Their two lamps were on the ground between them, lighting them up.
Catherine watched him for a moment in silence. She must have found him good-looking, with his delicate features and black moustache. She had a vague smile on her face, a smile of pleasure.
‘So you’re a mechanic then, and the railway sacked you?…Why was that?’
‘Because I hit my boss.’
She was astonished to hear this: it offended her own inbred belief that one should be subordinate and do what one’s told.
‘To be honest, I’d been drinking,’ he continued, ‘and when I drink, I just get mad, with myself, with everybody…It’s a fact. I can’t even have two tiny glasses of the stuff without wanting to have a go at someone…And then I’m ill for the next couple of days.’
‘Then you mustn’t drink,’ she said in a serious voice.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I know what I’m like!’
And he shook his head; he hated alcohol with the hatred of one who was the last in a long line of drunks and who suffered in his flesh from this wild, drink-sodden inheritance, to such an extent that the merest drop had become the equivalent of poison for him.
‘But it’s because of Mother that I’m fed up at being sacked,’ he said, having swallowed a mouthful of bread. ‘She’s not in a good way, and I used to be able to send her a five-franc piece from time to time.’
‘Where does your mother live, then?’
‘Paris…She’s a laundry-woman, in the rue de la Goutte d’Or.’3
There was a silence. When he thought of these things, a pale gleam flickered across his dark eyes, a brief moment of apprehension at the lesion whose unknown consequences he harboured within his young, healthy body.4 For a moment he was lost in contemplation of the dark reaches of the mine;