Germinal - Emile Zola [68]
The table was covered: one parcel of clothes, two loaves of bread, potatoes, butter, coffee, chicory and half a pound of brawn.
‘Oh, yes, the soup,’ said La Maheude wearily. ‘We’d need to go and pick some sorrel and pull up some leeks…No, I’ll make some later for the men…Put some potatoes on to boil just now, and we’ll have them with a bit of butter…And some coffee, too, eh? Don’t forget the coffee!’
But then she suddenly remembered the brioche. She looked at Lénore and Henri, who were now fighting on the floor, for they had already recovered their strength and their spirits, and she saw that their hands were empty. The greedy little things had quietly eaten the lot on the way home! She gave them a smack just as Alzire, who was hanging the cooking-pot over the fire, tried to mollify her.
‘Leave them be, Mum. If you’re thinking of me, I really don’t mind about the brioche. They were hungry, what with walking all that way.’
Midday struck, and the sound of clogs could be heard as the children came out of school. The potatoes were ready, and the coffee, to which more than an equivalent amount of chicory had been added to supplement it, was gurgling through the filter in large drops. They cleared a corner of the table, but only La Maheude took her food there, since the three children were happy to eat off their knees; and as the little boy ate with mute intent, he kept turning round to look at the brawn, excited by the greasepaper wrapping but not saying a word.
La Maheude was sipping her coffee, her hands clenched round the glass to warm them, when old Bonnemort came downstairs. Usually he got up later, and his lunch would be waiting for him on the stove. But today he started grumbling because there was no soup. Then, after his daughter-in-law had told him that beggars can’t be choosers, he ate his potatoes in silence. From time to time he would get up and go and spit into the ashes, by way of keeping the place clean. Then he would return to his chair and sit there in a slumped heap, rolling the food round at the back of his mouth, with his head bowed and a vacant expression on his face.
‘Oh, Mum, I forgot, next door came round – ’
Her mother cut her short:
‘I’m not talking to that woman.’
She was still seething with resentment against La Levaque, who had pleaded poverty the day before and refused to lend her a sou, whereas she happened to know that La Levaque had plenty of money just then, seeing as Bouteloup, her lodger, had paid her his fortnight in advance. People in the village rarely lent money to each other.
‘But that reminds me,’ La Maheude continued. ‘Put a millful of coffee in some paper, and I’ll take it round to La Pierronne. She lent me some the day before yesterday.’
When her daughter had prepared the package, she told Alzire that she would be back at once to start cooking the men’s soup. Then off she went with Estelle in her arms, leaving old Bonnemort slowly chewing his potatoes, and Lénore and Henri fighting over the peelings that had fallen on the floor.
Rather than go round by the street, La Maheude cut straight across the gardens just in case La Levaque should try to speak to her. As it happened, her own garden backed on to the Pierrons’, and there was a hole in the dilapidated trellis through which they were able to visit each other. The shared well was located there, serving four households. Next to it, behind a sorry clump of lilac, was the carin, a low shed full of old tools where they also reared a succession of rabbits to be eaten on special occasions. One o’clock struck, coffee-time, when not a soul was to be seen at window or door – except for one man, one of the stonemen, who was digging his little vegetable patch until it was time to go to work. He did not look up. But as La Maheude reached the row of houses on the other side, she was surprised to see a gentleman and two ladies come past the church. She stopped for a moment and then recognized them: it was Mme Hennebeau, who was showing her guests round the village, the