Germinal - Emile Zola [50]
Suddenly he was blinded. The ascent had been so swift that he was left stunned by the daylight, and his eyelids quivered in the brightness to which he had already grown so unaccustomed. But it was a relief all the same to feel the cage lock into its keeps. A banksman opened the gate, and a stream of workmen poured out of the tubs.
‘Hey, Mouquet,’ Zacharie whispered in the banksman’s ear. ‘Are we off to the Volcano tonight?’
The Volcano was a café in Montsou which offered musical entertainments. Mouquet winked with his left eye, and a broad grin spread across his face. Short and stocky like his father, he had the cheeky look of a fun-loving lad who grabs what’s going without a thought for the morrow. La Mouquette was just then coming out of the cage, and he gave her an enormous whack across the bottom as a mark of brotherly affection.
Étienne hardly recognized the tall nave of the pit-head, which had previously seemed so sinister in the eerie, flickering light of the lanterns. Now it just looked bare and dirty. A grubby light filtered through the dusty windows. The one exception, at the far end, was the winding-engine with all its gleaming brasswork; otherwise the greasy steel cables flew up and down like ribbons that had been steeped in ink, while the pulleys up above in their enormous iron framework, the cages and the tubs, the whole prodigal array of metal, made the place seem dingy by lending it the harsh grey tones of old scrap. The sheets of cast-iron flooring shook beneath the ceaseless rumble of the wheels, and from the coal in the tubs rose a fine dust which turned everything black, the floor, the walls, even the beams high up in the headgear.
Meanwhile Chaval had gone to find out how many tokens had been marked up for them on the board in the checkweigh-man’s little glass-fronted office, and he came back furious. He had seen that two of their tubs had been refused, one because it hadn’t contained the regulation amount of coal, the other because some of the coal had been dirty.
‘The perfect end to a perfect day!’ he fumed. ‘Another twenty sous docked!…But of course we have to take on bloody layabouts who don’t know their arse from their elbow.’
He shot a meaningful glance at Étienne, who was tempted to reply with his fists. But why bother, he thought, if he was leaving? In fact this decided the matter for him.
‘The first day’s always difficult,’ Maheu said diplomatically. ‘He’ll manage it better tomorrow.’
No one was placated, and in their bitterness they were all still spoiling for a fight. As they were leaving their lamps in the lamp-room, Levaque had an altercation with the lamp-man, accusing him of not having cleaned his lamp properly for him. They only began to calm down a little when they reached the changing-room, where the fire was still burning. In fact somebody must have stoked it too much because the stove was red hot and casting blood-red reflections on to the wall, which made it seem as though the vast windowless room were ablaze. There were grunts of pleasure as backs were toasted from a distance, steaming like bowls of soup. Once the back was done, it was time for the front. La Mouquette had calmly pulled her breeches down to dry her shirt. Some boys were making fun of her, and there was a burst of laughter when she suddenly showed them her bottom, which for her was the ultimate expression of contempt.
‘I’m off,’ said Chaval, who had put his tools away in his locker.
Nobody moved. Only La Mouquette hurried after him, on the pretext that they were both heading in the direction of Montsou. But the joking continued, for everyone knew he didn’t fancy her any more.
Meanwhile Catherine’s thoughts had been elsewhere, and she had just whispered something to her father. He looked surprised, and