Germinal - Emile Zola [88]
Spring had arrived. Coming up out of the mine-shaft one day Étienne had caught the full blast of a warm April breeze on his face, a lovely smell of fresh earth, tender green shoots and pure, clean air; and now, every time he came up, spring felt even warmer and smelled still sweeter after ten hours spent working in the eternal winter down below, where no summer sunshine ever penetrated to banish the darkness and the damp. The days were drawing out and by May he was going down at sunrise, when Le Voreux would be bathed in the vermilion light of a powdery dawn and the white steam from the drainage-pump would turn pink as it rose into the sky. No one shivered now. Warm air wafted in from across the distant plain, while way up in the sky the larks would sing. Later, at three o’clock, he would be blinded by the dazzling hot sun, which seemed to have set the horizon ablaze and turned the grimy, coal-stained brickwork red. By June the corn was already high, a bluish green against the blacker green of the beet. It was like a boundless sea that seemed to swell and stretch with every day that passed, rippling in the faintest breeze, and in the evening it surprised him sometimes as if he could distinguish the new growth it had achieved even since morning. Along the canal the poplars sprouted leaves like plumes. Weeds overran the spoil-heap, and flowers carpeted the meadows. As he toiled away beneath the earth, groaning with effort and exhaustion, here were the seeds of life germinating and springing up out of the soil.
These days, whenever Étienne went for a stroll in the evening, it was no longer behind the spoil-heap that he came upon young couples. Now he would follow their tracks through the fields, and he could tell where the lovebirds were nesting from the movement of the ripening ears of corn or the tall red poppies. Zacharie and Philomène went back there out of habit, like an old married couple; La Brûlé, in her endless chasing after Lydie, was constantly running her to ground there with Jeanlin, the pair of them so deeply dug in that she had practically to step on them before they would take flight; and as for La Mouquette, she seemed to have lairs all over the place. It was impossible to cross a field without seeing her head ducking down and then just her legs sticking up as she lay pinned to the ground. As far as Étienne was concerned, they could all do as they pleased, except on the evenings when he came across Catherine and Chaval. Twice he saw them drop down in the middle of a field when they spotted him coming, and not a stalk moved afterwards. On another occasion, when he was walking along a narrow path, he saw Catherine’s crystal-clear eyes appear just above the corn and then sink from view. After that the whole vast plain seemed much too small a place, and he preferred to spend his evenings at Rasseneur’s bar, the Advantage.
‘A beer, please, Madame Rasseneur…No, I shan’t be going out this evening. I’m exhausted.’
And then he would turn towards a comrade who was sitting in his usual place at the far table, his head resting against the wall.
‘How about you, Souvarine?’
‘No, nothing, thanks.’
Étienne had got to know Souvarine by virtue of living there in close proximity with him. He worked as a mechanic at Le Voreux, and he rented the furnished room next to his in the attic. He must have been thirty or so, slim, blond, with delicate features framed by thick hair and a light beard. His white, pointed teeth, his small mouth and