The Beast Within - Emile Zola [117]
One night in July, in order to reach Le Havre on time at five past eleven, Jacques had had to work La Lison hard. The stifling heat seemed to have made her lazy. A storm had been following the train all the way from Rouen, running alongside them on their left up the Seine valley, with great, blinding flashes of lightning. Jacques kept looking anxiously over his shoulder; he had arranged to meet Séverine that night and he was worried that if the storm broke it would prevent her from leaving her apartment. Having successfully reached Le Havre ahead of the storm, he was becoming impatient with the passengers, who seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time getting off the train.
Roubaud was on night duty and was standing on the platform.
‘You’re in a hurry to get to bed,’ he said, laughing. ‘Sleep well!’
‘Thanks!’ Jacques replied.
Jacques backed the train on to a siding, gave a blast on the whistle and moved off towards the engine shed. The huge folding doors stood open, and La Lison disappeared inside. The shed was a sort of covered gallery some seventy metres long with two tracks running through it, capable of housing six locomotives. Inside, it was very dark, with four gas lamps that gave hardly any light and seemed to make it darker still, by casting long, flickering shadows. From time to time great flashes of lightning could be seen through the skylights and the windows high up on both walls, revealing, as if in the light of a huge fire, the cracks in the brickwork, the beams covered in soot and the general woebegone air of neglect and disrepair. Two other locomotives were already in the shed, cold and asleep.
Pecqueux immediately began to put the fire out, raking it vigorously and sending a shower of burning cinders into the ash-pit below.
‘I’m starving,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get something to eat. Are you coming?’
Jacques made no answer. Although he was in a hurry, he didn’t want to leave La Lison before the fire had been dropped and the boiler drained. It was a regular routine and, being a man who took his job seriously, he never departed from it. When he had time, he didn’t leave until he had thoroughly inspected the locomotive and properly wiped it down, with the sort of care one might spend on grooming a favourite horse.
The water from the boiler gushed into the ash-pit. Only when his work was finished did Jacques answer Pecqueux.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s be off!’
He was interrupted by a violent clap of thunder. The windows were so clearly silhouetted against the fiery sky that you could have counted the broken panes of glass, and there were plenty of them. Along the left-hand side of the shed stood a row of vices used for repair work. A piece of sheet metal propped up against them resounded with a mighty clang, like a bell being struck. A great crack had appeared in the framework of the old roof.
‘Bloody hell!’ was all Pecqueux could say.
Jacques raised his hands in despair. There was nothing more they could do, especially as the rain was now pouring in torrents on to the shed. The storm threatened to smash the windows in the roof. There must have been broken panes of glass up there too because rain was falling on La Lison in great splashes. A howling gale blew in through the open doors, and it seemed as if the shell of the old building was about to be lifted off the ground.
Pecqueux had been getting the engine ready for its next shift.
‘There we are,’ he said. ‘We’ll be able to see things better tomorrow. That’ll do for now.’ Then, remembering that he still felt hungry, he said: ‘Let’s go and eat. It’s raining too much to walk back to our rooms.’
The canteen adjoined the engine shed, whereas the house which the Company rented as a dormitory for drivers and firemen staying overnight in Le Havre was some distance away in the Rue François-Mazeline. In weather like this, they would have been soaked to the skin by the time they got there.
Jacques resigned himself to accompanying Pecqueux, who had picked up the driver’s little