Germinal - Emile Zola [92]
It was towards the beginning of July that Étienne’s situation took a turn for the better. A chance occurrence had interrupted the endless, monotonous routine of life down the mine: the teams working the Guillaume seam had come across a so-called jumbling, a disturbance in the rock stratum, which meant that they were certainly nearing a fault; and, sure enough, they soon discovered the fault itself, which the engineers had had no inkling of despite their extensive knowledge of the terrain. The life of the mine was turned upside down, and people talked about nothing else but how the seam had vanished, with the section beyond the fault having no doubt settled lower in the earth. The old hands were already beginning to sniff the air like clever dogs at the prospect of a hunt for new coal. But the mining teams couldn’t just stand around doing nothing while they waited for it to be found, and already notices had gone up announcing that the Company would be auctioning off new contracts.6
One day, at the end of the shift, Maheu walked along with Étienne and offered him a place in his team as a hewer, to replace Levaque, who was joining another team. It had all been agreed with the engineer and the overman, who had said they were very pleased with the young man’s work. For Étienne it was simply a matter of accepting this rapid promotion, and he was gratified by Maheu’s growing respect for him.
That evening they both went back to the pit to study the notices. The contracts being put up for auction were in the Filonnière seam, off Le Voreux’s north roadway. They did not seem very attractive propositions, and Maheu shook his head as Étienne read out the conditions of sale to him. When they were below ground the next day, Maheu duly took him to the seam to show him how far it was from pit-bottom and to point out the crumbling rock, the thinness of the seam, and the hardness of the coal. Still, if you wanted to eat, you had to work. So on the following Sunday they attended the auction, which took place in the changing-room and, in the absence of the divisional engineer, was presided over by the pit engineer and the overman. Five or six hundred colliers were there, facing the small platform that had been set up in one corner; and the contracts were sold off at such a speed that all they could hear was a dull roar of people talking and of bids being shouted and drowned out by further bids.
For a moment Maheu was afraid he wouldn’t get any of the forty contracts being offered by the Company. All his rivals were bidding lower and lower rates of pay for themselves: they were rattled by the rumours of an impending crisis and panicking at the prospect of being out of a job. The engineer, Négrel, took his time in the face of this fierce bidding in order to allow the offers to fall as low as possible, while Dansaert tried to hurry things along by lying to everyone about what excellent deals they had just made. In order to secure fifty metres of seam, Maheu was obliged to compete with a comrade who was every bit as determined as he was. One after the other each of them reduced his bid by one centime per tub; and if Maheu eventually emerged the victor, it was only by reducing his men’s pay to such a level that Richomme, the deputy, who was standing behind him muttering angrily under his breath, nudged him with his elbow and complained crossly that at that price he’d never be able to make ends meet.
As they left, Étienne was swearing and cursing. He exploded when he saw Chaval on his way back from the cornfields with Catherine, calmly sauntering along and happy to leave it to Catherine’s father to deal with the serious