Germinal - Emile Zola [53]
A sudden look of deep distrust passed over Rasseneur’s broad features. He glanced at Étienne and replied, without even bothering to look sorry:
‘Both my rooms are taken. I can’t help you.’
Étienne was expecting this refusal, but it hurt him all the same, and he was surprised suddenly to feel disappointed at the prospect of leaving. No matter. Leave he would, as soon as he had his thirty sous. The miner who had been drinking at another table had now departed. Others came in, one by one, to clear the grime from their throats before setting off once more with the same rolling gait. It was like a mere ablution, bringing neither joy nor stimulus, only the mute satisfaction of a need.
‘So. Nothing to report, then?’ Rasseneur inquired in a meaningful way as Maheu sipped what was left of his beer.
Maheu looked around him and, seeing only Étienne, said:
‘Only that there’s been another bloody row…Yeah, about the timbering.’
He related what had happened. The blood had rushed to Rasseneur’s face, which seemed to swell as burning excitement blazed in his eyes and cheeks.
‘Well, now! The minute they decide to cut the rate, they’re sunk.’
The presence of Étienne made him uneasy. Nevertheless he continued, watching him out of the corner of his eye as he did so. He spoke obliquely, leaving certain things unsaid. Without naming them he talked about the manager, Monsieur Hennebeau, and his wife, and his nephew, young Négrel, and he said how things could not go on like this, how one fine morning the lid would blow off. The poverty and suffering had spread too far, and he alluded to all the factories that were closing down and all the workers that were being laid off. He’d been giving away over six pounds of bread a day for the past month. Only yesterday he’d heard that Monsieur Deneulin, a local mine-owner, doubted whether he could survive. What’s more he’d just received a letter from Lille full of worrying news.
‘You know,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘from that person you met here one evening.’
But he was interrupted. His wife now appeared, a tall, thin, intense woman with a long nose and purple cheeks. When it came to politics, she was much more radical than her husband.
‘You mean the letter from Pluchart,’ she said. ‘Ah now, if he were in charge, we’d soon see some improvements round the place.’
Étienne had been listening for some time. He understood fully what was being said, and he was becoming increasingly excited by all this talk of poverty and revenge.
Hearing this name suddenly blurted out like that gave him a start.
‘I know Pluchart,’ he said out loud, as though having not quite meant to.
All eyes were upon him, and so he was obliged to add:
‘Yes, I’m a mechanic, and he was my foreman at Lille…A very capable man. I often used to have chats with him.’
Rasseneur studied him again; his expression rapidly changed, and at once he became friendly. Eventually he said to his wife:
‘Maheu’s brought along Monsieur here, who’s one of his putters. He wondered if we had a room for him and could give him a fortnight’s credit.’
The matter was then settled in a moment. One room was in fact free, the occupant had left that morning. Now thoroughly roused, Rasseneur warmed to his theme and kept saying that he was only asking the bosses for what was possible,2 that he wasn’t like all the others who demanded things that were too difficult to achieve. His wife shrugged: they should insist on their rights, no more, no less.
‘Good night. I’m off,’ Maheu broke in. ‘None of that’s going to stop people working down the pit, and as long as they do there’ll be those that die of it…Look at you, for example. You’ve been as fit as a fiddle ever since you left three years ago.’
‘It’s true. I do feel a lot better,’ declared Rasseneur complacently.
Étienne walked to the door to thank Maheu as he left; but the latter simply nodded silently, and the young man watched him trudge back up the road to the village. Mme Rasseneur was serving customers and asked him to wait a moment so that she could take him to his