Germinal - Emile Zola [76]
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Out.’
‘Out where?…You just listen to me. I want you to go and pick some dandelions for tonight’s salad. Do you understand? And if you don’t come back with that salad, you’ll have me to reckon with.’
‘Yes, yes, all right.’
Jeanlin departed, hands in pockets, dragging his feet and, though he was only a skinny ten-year-old, rolling his puny shoulders like an old miner. Then Zacharie came down rather more carefully dressed, wearing a tight-fitting black woollen jumper with blue stripes. His father shouted at him not to be late back; and off he went with a silent nod of the head, his pipe clenched between his teeth.
Once more the tub was full of warm water. Slowly Maheu removed his jacket. One glance, and Alzire was already taking Lénore and Henri away to play outside. Father didn’t like washing in front of his family, which was the practice in many other households throughout the village. Not that he had anything against it; he just felt that splashing about together was fine for children.
‘What are you doing up there?’ La Maheude called up the stairs.
‘I’m mending the dress I tore yesterday,’ Catherine replied.
‘All right…But don’t come down. Your father’s having his wash.’
So Maheu and his wife were alone. La Maheude had finally brought herself to perch Estelle on a chair, and, by a miracle, finding herself next to the fire, the child didn’t wail and simply turned to gaze at her parents with the vague expression of a little creature that does not yet have thoughts. Maheu, now fully undressed, had crouched in front of the tub and dipped his head in the water before rubbing it with the black soap that, after centuries of use, had taken the colour out of these people’s hair and turned it yellow. Then he got into the water and soaped his chest, stomach, arms and legs, scrubbing them energetically with both hands. His wife stood watching.
‘I saw that look,’ she began, ‘when you came home…You were wondering how on earth we’d manage, eh? Those groceries certainly put a smile back on your face…Can you believe it, the bourgeois at La Piolaine didn’t give me so much as a sou. Oh, they’re kind all right, they gave me clothes for the little ones, but I was ashamed to be begging from them. It sticks in my throat when I have to ask like that.’
She paused for a moment to wedge Estelle more securely on her chair in case she fell off. Maheu continued to scrub away at his skin. He didn’t seek to anticipate her account with a question, for the story interested him and he was waiting patiently to learn what had happened.
‘And of course – sorry, I should have said – Maigrat had already refused me, oh yes, flatly refused me, the way you kick a dog out the door…So you can see what fun I was having! Woollen clothes are all very well for keeping you warm but they don’t exactly fill your stomach, do they?’
He looked up but still remained silent. Nothing at La Piolaine, nothing from Maigrat: so then, how? But already she had rolled up her sleeves as usual to wash his back and the other parts of him he found it difficult to reach. And he liked her to soap him and rub him all over as hard as she could. She picked up the soap and, as she started scouring his shoulders, he braced himself against her movements.
‘So I went back to Maigrat’s and told him what I thought of him! Oh yes, did I tell him what I thought of him!…How he must have a heart of stone, and how he’d come to a bad end if there were any justice in the world…He didn’t like it. He wouldn’t even look me in the face. I’m sure he wished he was somewhere else…’
From his back she had moved down to his buttocks. Now completely absorbed in her task she pressed on into the clefts, scouring every inch of his body and making it gleam the way her three saucepans gleamed following one of her Saturday cleaning sessions. But she was sweating