Germinal - Emile Zola [79]
‘Oh well, let’s eat anyway…They’re old enough to find their own way home. But it’s a shame about the salad!’
V
At Rasseneur’s Étienne had eaten some soup and then gone up to the tiny room he was to occupy in the attic, overlooking Le Voreux, where he fell exhausted on to the bed still fully dressed. In two days he had had less than four hours’ sleep. When he woke up at dusk, he was momentarily at a loss, unable to remember where he was; and he felt so groggy and ill that he struggled to his feet with the intention of getting some fresh air before having dinner and going to bed for the night.
Outside the weather was becoming much milder: the sooty sky was turning copper and threatening one of the long, steady downpours that are so common in this part of northern France and which can always be predicted from the warm moisture in the air. Night was falling, and great swathes of murk were enveloping the remoter reaches of the plain. The lowering sky seemed to be dissolving into black dust over this immense sea of reddish earth, and not a single breath of wind stirred the darkness at this hour. It was like the scene of some drab and sorry burial.
Étienne simply walked, at random and with no other aim than to clear his head. When he passed Le Voreux, already sunk in darkness at the bottom of its hollow and as yet unlit by a single lantern, he paused a moment to watch the day shift coming out. It was presumably six o’clock because stonemen, onsetters and stablemen were heading off in small groups and mingling with the blurred shapes of the women from the screening-shed, who were laughing in the gloom.
First came La Brûlé and her son-in-law Pierron. She was having a row with him because he hadn’t stood up for her during an argument with a supervisor over her tally of stones.
‘Bloody wimp! God! Call yourself a man, do you, crawling to those bastards like that? They’ll have us all for breakfast, they will.’
Pierron was calmly following her, making no reply. Eventually he said:
‘So I should have jumped the boss, should I? Thanks. A great way to get myself into trouble.’
‘Show him your backside, then!’ she shouted. ‘Christ Almighty! If only that daughter of mine had listened to me!…As if it wasn’t enough that they killed her father for me, now you want me to thank them too. Well, not me. I’ll have their guts for bloody garters.’
Their voices died away. Étienne watched her depart, with her hooked nose and her straggling white hair and her long, skinny arms that were gesticulating furiously. But behind him the sound of two young voices caught his ear. He had recognized Zacharie, who had been waiting there and had now been joined by his friend Mouquet.
‘Are you coming?’ asked the latter. ‘We’re just going to get something to eat and then head for the Volcano.’
‘Maybe later. I’m busy.’
‘How do you mean?’
Mouquet turned and saw Philomène coming out of the screening-shed. He thought he understood.
‘Oh, I see, that’s it…Well, I’m off then.’
‘Yes, all right. I’ll catch up with you later.’
As he departed, Mouquet ran into his father, old Mouque, who was also coming out of Le Voreux; and the two men exchanged a simple ‘hallo’ before the son took the main road and the father made off along the canal.
Zacharie was already pushing a reluctant Philomène towards the same deserted towpath. No, she was in a hurry, some other time; and they quarrelled, as though they’d been married for years. It wasn’t much fun only ever seeing each other out of doors like this, especially in the winter when the ground’s wet and there’s no corn to lie on.
‘No, it’s not a case of that,’ he muttered impatiently. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
He put his arm round her waist and led her gently forward. When they had reached the shadow of the spoil-heap, he asked if she had any money on her.
‘What for?’ she demanded.
Then he started mumbling something about owing two francs and