The Beast Within - Emile Zola [209]
Although he didn’t usually talk when driving the engine, he was teasing Pecqueux, who had been allowed to stay with him as his fireman.
‘What’s up with you?’ he was saying. ‘How come you’re so wide awake? Have you given up drinking?’
It was true, Pecqueux seemed for once to be perfectly sober, and not at all his usual jovial self.
‘You have to be wide awake,’ he answered gruffly, ‘if you want to see what’s going on around you!’
Jacques looked at him uneasily, as if there were something on his conscience. The week before, he had enjoyed the favours of Pecqueux’s mistress, the redoubtable Philomène, who had been pestering him for some time, like a scrawny cat on heat. He had taken her, not for sexual gratification, but to find out whether, having satisfied his desire to kill, he was finally cured. Could he make love to Philomène without wanting to slit her throat? He had made love to her twice already, and there had been no sign of his old malady, not a flicker, nothing. Without him realizing it, his present good humour and happy, relaxed manner must have been due to the pleasure of discovering that he was now no different from other men.
Pecqueux had opened the firebox door to put on more coal, but Jacques stopped him.
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to overdo it. She’s running well.’
Pecqueux started to mutter and swear.
‘Running well, is she? Call this running well! She’s a load of rubbish! She’s bloody useless! When I think what we got out of La Lison! She did what you asked her to do! All this lousy thing’s worth is a kick up the arse!’
Jacques didn’t want to lose his temper, so he said nothing. But he knew that the old menage à trois was a thing of the past. With the death of La Lison, the close, working partnership between him, his colleague and the locomotive had gone for good. They argued over the least little thing — a nut that was too tight, a shovelful of coal not put on properly. He would have to tread carefully where Philomène was concerned; he didn’t want it to come to open war between him and his fireman, when the two of them had to work together in such a confined space. Until now, Pecqueux had been devoted to Jacques, like a faithful dog, and would have done anything for him, grateful for being left to his own devices, allowed to have the occasional nap and finish the leftovers in Jacques’s lunch box. The two of them had lived together like brothers, resolutely facing the constant dangers of their job and understanding each other without the need for words. If they could no longer get on together, life was going to be hell, having to work side by side so closely, at daggers drawn. Only the week before, the Company had had to separate the driver and fireman of the Cherbourg express, because of a quarrel over a woman, the driver having physically attacked the fireman for not following instructions. They had come to blows, and there had been a fight, on the footplate itself, in complete disregard of the trainload of passengers they were carrying behind them.
Twice Pecqueux opened the firebox door and threw on more coal, deliberately trying to antagonize his driver. Jacques pretended not to notice, keeping his eye on the controls, each time carefully putting the injector on to reduce the pressure. The air was so soft, the night was warm and there was a lovely fresh breeze as the train sped along! When the train reached Le Havre at five past eleven, the two men cleaned down the locomotive, apparently the best of friends as always.
Just as they were leaving the engine shed and setting off for the Rue François-Mazeline to get some sleep, a voice called them: ‘Hey, you two, what’s the rush? Why don’t you come in for a minute?’
It was Philomène; she must have been looking out for Jacques from the door of her brother’s house. She seemed put out when she saw that he was with Pecqueux; she only decided to call them because she wanted to speak to her new lover, even if it meant doing so in front of her old one.