The Kill - Emile Zola [156]
The path these gentlemen set out to follow was in terrible condition. It had rained all night. The soggy ground had turned into a river of mud between crumbling buildings, following a line marked out on earth so soft that carts hauling rubble sank in up to their axles. On either side stood sections of wall shattered by pickaxes. Tall buildings had been gutted so that their blanched entrails showed: empty stair-wells and gaping rooms hung in the air like the smashed drawers of some huge, ugly bureau. No sight could be sadder than the wallpaper in the bedrooms five or six stories up, yellow or blue squares now in tatters marking the places under the roofs where poor, wretched garrets had been—tiny holes that had once housed someone’s entire existence. Ribbons of flue pipe, depressingly black in color and with sharp elbows, climbed bare walls side by side. A forgotten weathervane made a grating sound as it rotated close to the edge of one roof, while half-detached gutters hung down like rags. And the chasm continued on into the ruins like a breach opened by cannon fire. The path of the roadway, still hard to make out, was filled with debris and marked by mounds of earth and deep puddles; on it went beneath gray skies, enveloped in a sinister cloud of falling plaster dust and lined by black ribbons of flue pipe, which were like the badges worn by mourners.
The visiting gentlemen, with their carefully polished boots, frock coats, and top hats, injected a singular note into this muddy landscape of brown filth in which the only things that moved were sallow workmen, horses spattered with mud all the way up their flanks, and wagons whose sides were completely coated with dust. They walked single file, jumping from stone to stone while mostly avoiding pools of liquid filth, but occasionally sinking in up to their ankles, which made them swear out loud and shake their feet. Saccard had suggested taking the rue de Charonne, which would have made it unnecessary to traverse this area of excavation, but unfortunately the committee had a number of buildings to visit up and down the lengthy boulevard. Driven by curiosity, they had decided to set a course right through the heart of the construction. In any case, it interested them greatly. At times one of them would stop and balance himself on a chunk of plaster lying in a rut, look up, and call the attention of the others to a gaping floor, a piece of flue pipe hanging in the air, or a beam that had fallen onto a neighboring roof. This razed section of city at the end of the rue du Temple actually struck them as quite funny.
“Now there’s something really unusual,” said M. de Mareuil. “Look up there, Saccard, at that kitchen. There’s still an old frying pan hanging over the stove. . . . I can make it out quite clearly.”
But the physician, his cigar clamped between his teeth, had planted himself in front of a demolished house, of which nothing remained but the rooms on the ground floor, now filled with rubble from the floors above. Only one section of wall rose above the heap of debris. To knock this wall down at one go, a rope had been wound around it, and thirty workmen were now pulling on that line.
“They won’t get it that way,” the doctor mumbled. “They’re pulling too much to the left.”
The other four men had retraced their steps in order to watch the wall come down. All five stared intently with bated breath as they waited, thrilled at the prospect of witnessing the collapse. The workers let the rope go slack and then suddenly gave another tug, shouting, “Heave, ho!”
“They won’t get it,” the doctor repeated.
Then, after a few seconds of anxious waiting, one of the businessmen gleefully shouted, “It’s moving, it’s moving!”
When the wall finally gave way, collapsing with a terrifying rumble that raised a cloud of plaster dust, the five gentlemen of the committee smiled at one another. They were enchanted. A fine powder settled onto their coats, turning their arms and shoulders white.
Now, as the men went back to picking their way among the