Germinal - Emile Zola [73]
Indeed La Levaque had intercepted La Pierronne outside her own doorway when the latter arrived to see what was going on. Both women professed surprise and disapproval. Well, really, were these people perhaps proposing to spend the night at the Maheus’? It wouldn’t be much fun for them, though!
‘Never a penny to their name, despite all the money they earn! But what can you do? If you’ve got bad habits…!’
‘Someone just told me that she went to beg from the bourgeois at La Piolaine this morning, and that Maigrat gave her food even though he’d refused her before…Of course, we know how Maigrat gets paid, don’t we?’
‘With her? No, no! That would take more courage than he’s got…No, it’s Catherine he gets paid with.’
‘Well, would you believe it? And her with the nerve to tell me just a few moments ago that she’d sooner strangle Catherine if she did that sort of thing!…As if that tall fellow Chaval hadn’t already had her on the shed roof many moons ago!’
‘Shh!…Here they come.’
Whereupon, with quiet and unobtrusive curiosity, La Levaque and La Pierronne had been content to watch out of the corner of their eyes as the visitors left the house. Then they quickly beckoned to La Maheude, who was still carrying Estelle round on her arm, and the three of them stood there together and watched the well-dressed backs of Mme Hennebeau and her guests as they departed. When they had gone thirty paces, the gossiping began again in renewed earnest.
‘That’s some money those women are wearing. Worth more than them, at any rate!’
‘You’re telling me…I don’t know who the other one is, but I wouldn’t give tuppence for the one from round here, despite all that meat on her. There are stories…’
‘Oh? What stories?’
‘About all the men she’s had, of course!…First, there’s the engineer…’
That scrawny little runt!…Pah! there’s nothing on him, she’d lose him between the sheets.’
‘What’s it to you if that’s how she likes it?…But I don’t trust ladies like them, with that look of disgust on their face as though they’d always rather be somewhere else…Look at the way she waggles her backside as if she despised the lot of us. It’s just not decent.’
The visitors were continuing to stroll along at the same leisurely pace, still chatting away, when a barouche drew up on the road outside the church. A gentleman in his late forties stepped down, dressed in a tight-fitting black frock-coat. He had very dark skin, and his face bore the look of an authoritarian and a stickler.
‘The husband!’ murmured La Levaque, lowering her voice as if he could have heard her from where he stood, and gripped by the same deferential fear that the manager inspired in his ten thousand workers. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? The man looks like a cuckold!’
By now the whole village was out on the streets. As the women’s curiosity grew, the various little groups of them gradually merged into a crowd, while gaggles of snotty-nosed children stood about gawping on the pavements. For one brief moment even the pale head of the schoolteacher could be seen peering over the school fence. The man digging in the gardens rested his foot on his spade and stared, wide-eyed. And the rasping whispers of muttered gossip grew louder and louder, like a gust of wind whistling through dry leaves.
People had congregated in especially large numbers outside La Levaque’s house. Two more women had joined them, then ten, then twenty. La Pierronne thought it prudent to remain silent for now too many ears were listening. La Maheude, being one of the more sensible among them, was also content just to watch. In order to quieten Estelle, who had woken up and begun to scream, she had calmly exposed a breast like an obliging animal ready to give