The Beast Within - Emile Zola [188]
With her bare hands she tried to tear away the flooring of a carriage that was jammed between other pieces of wreckage. She ran back to the house and fetched the axe they used for splitting logs. Brandishing it like a woodcutter felling oak trees, she cut through the floorboards with a furious rain of blows. Everyone stood out of the way and let her get on with it, shouting to her to be careful. But the only person she could think about was Jacques, lying down there beneath a tangle of wheels and axles. She did not hear their warning; she was completely carried away, fearless and unstoppable. She cut away the carriage floor and, with blow after blow, forced aside the obstacles that barred her way. Her fair hair flew about her face, her blouse was torn open, and her arms were bare. She was like an awesome reaper, furiously scything her way through the havoc she herself had wrought. One final blow landed on an axle and split the axe-head in two. The others came over to help her as she moved aside the wheels that had been protecting Jacques and had undoubtedly saved him from being crushed to death. She lifted him up and carried him away in her arms.
‘Jacques! Jacques!’ she cried. ‘He’s breathing! He’s alive! Thank God! He’s alive! I saw him fall! I knew he was down there!’
Séverine ran after her, overcome with emotion. Together they laid him on the ground beside Henri, who was still totally stupefied, unable to comprehend where he was or what was going on around him. Pecqueux came over to them and stood looking at his driver; it was awful to see him in such a terrible condition. The two women kneeled down beside him, one on his left and the other on his right, supporting his head and peering anxiously at his face for the least movement.
Jacques eventually opened his eyes. He looked vaguely at each of them in turn, without seeming to recognize them. They meant nothing to him. Then, a few metres away, he caught sight of the dying locomotive. He was startled. He gazed at her steadily, his eyes flickering as the emotion welled up inside him. He recognized La Lison only too well. Everything came back to him — the two stones across the track, the terrible impact, the shudder that ran through the two of them. He might recover, but she would surely die. He couldn’t blame her for being slow to respond; she hadn’t been herself since they were caught in the blizzard. If she was no longer quite as agile, it wasn’t her fault; old age came to everyone, tiring the limbs and stiffening the joints. Seeing her lying there mortally wounded and about to expire, he was overcome with grief and willingly forgave her. She had only a few more minutes to live. She was already growing cold. The coal from her firebox fell to the ground as ash. The steam that had gushed so fiercely from her open flanks now leaked from her sides with a pathetic, whimpering sound, like a child crying. She lay on her back in a pool of black sludge, her gleaming metal-work spattered with dirt and grease; it was like the tragic end of a magnificent horse, accidentally knocked down in the street. For a while, as she lay there with her belly ripped open, they had watched the final throes of her stricken body — the pistons still beating like twin hearts, steam pulsing through her cylinders like blood in the veins. But now the piston rods gave only a spasmodic jerk, like two arms twitching involuntarily, in a last defiant assertion of life. Her soul was ebbing away, along with the power that had kept her alive — the store of living breath, which even now continued to seep from her. The mighty creature grew calmer, sank gradually into a gentle sleep and fell silent. She was dead. The twisted heap of iron, steel and brass, which was all that remained of the fallen giant, its body broken in two, its limbs torn apart, lying bruised and battered in the full glare of the sun, took on the pitiful appearance of an enormous human corpse, of a life that had been lived and then violently snatched away.
Realizing that La