‘Oh, you really shouldn’t have bothered!’ La Pierronne exclaimed when La Maheude handed her the coffee. ‘There was no hurry.’
She was twenty-eight and considered the prettiest woman in the village, with brown hair, a low forehead, big eyes and a small mouth – and always well turned out, as clean and dainty as a cat. Moreover, since she had not had any children she still had a fine bust. Her mother, La Bruúlé, the widow of a hewer who had been killed in the mine, had sent her daughter to work in a factory, determined that she should not marry a collier; and so she had still not got over her fury that, rather late in the day, this same daughter had gone and married Pierron, who was a widower to boot and already had a girl of eight. And yet it was a happy marriage, despite all the stories and gossip about the husband’s obliging ways and the lovers his wife had taken: they had not a penny of debt, they ate meat twice a week, and their house was so spick and span that you could have seen your face in the saucepans. As if that were not enough, they knew the right people, and the Company had authorized La Pierronne to sell sweets and biscuits, which she displayed in jars along two shelves behind her window. This made her a profit of six or seven sous a day, and sometimes twelve on Sundays. The only exceptions to this general felicity were La Bruúlé herself, a revolutionary of the old school who ranted and raved and demanded revenge on the bosses for killing her husband, and little Lydie, who got smacked rather too often as a consequence of the family’s more lively exchanges.
‘What a big girl we are already!’ said La Pierronne, cooing at Estelle.
‘Oh, the trouble they cause! Don’t get me started!’ La Maheude said. ‘You’re lucky you don’t have any. At least you can keep things clean and tidy.’
Even though everything was tidy in her own house and she did the washing every Saturday, she cast an envious housewifely eye round this room that was so bright and cheerful, stylish even, with its gilt vases on the sideboard, its mirror and its three framed prints.
She had found La Pierronne drinking coffee on her own, since the rest of her family was at the pit.
‘You will stay and have a glass with me, won’t you?’ she said.
‘No, thanks, I’ve just had mine.’
‘What does that matter?’
And nor did it matter. Quietly the women sipped their coffee. As they looked out between the jars of biscuits and sweets, their gaze fell on the houses opposite and on the row of windows, each with its own little curtains, whose varying degrees of whiteness bespoke differing degrees of domestic virtue. The Levaques’ curtains were very dirty and looked more like tea-towels that had been used to clean the saucepans.
‘How can people live in such filth!’ muttered La Pierronne.
That was enough for La Maheude: there was no stopping her now. Oh, if she’d had a lodger like Bouteloup, she’d soon have shown them how to make ends meet! As long as you went about it the right way, having a lodger could be a great advantage. Except that you should never sleep with them. Though in this case the husband drank and beat his wife and was forever chasing the girls who sang at the cafés in Montsou.
La Pierronne assumed an expression of profound disgust. You could catch all sorts of things from those singers. There was one at Joiselle who’d infected an entire pit.
‘But I’m surprised you’ve let your son go with their daughter.’
‘Well, I know, but you try and stop them!…Their garden is right next to ours. Every summer Zacharie was always behind the lilac with Philoméne, or else on top of the shed and not caring a blind bit who saw them. You couldn’t draw water from the well without catching them at it.’
In a crowded village where everyone lived cheek by jowl it was a common story. Flung together at a young age, its boys and girls soon went to the bad, having their end away, as they put it,1 on the low sloping roof of the shed as soon as darkness fell. This was where the putters conceived their first baby, that is if they couldn’t be bothered to go as far as Réquillart or the cornfields. It didn’t matter, though, they got married eventually. It was only the mothers who were cross when their sons started too early, because once the lad was married he stopped bringing money home to his family.
‘If I were you, I’d sooner they got it over with,’ La Pierronne observed in her wisdom. ‘Your Zacharie’s put her in the family way twice already, and they’ll simply go somewhere else to do it…Whichever way you look at it, the money’s gone.’
La Maheude was furious and spread her hands wide:
‘What an idea! I’d sooner put a curse on them if they went and did it again…Zacharie should show us a bit of consideration, shouldn’t he? He’s cost us money after all, and it’s time he paid some of it back before he saddles himself with a wife…What would become of us, I ask you, if our children all started working for other people straight away? We might as well curl up and die!’
Gradually she calmed down.
‘As a general rule, I mean. We’ll just have to wait and see…It’s good and strong, this coffee of yours. You obviously put the right amount in.’
After a quarter of an hour of further gossiping she made her escape, lamenting that she hadn’t yet made the men their soup. Outside the children were returning to school, and one or two women had appeared on their doorsteps and were watching Mme Hennebeau walking along a row of houses pointing things out to her guests. This visit was beginning to create something of a stir throughout the village. The stoneman stopped digging for a moment, and across the gardens a pair of hens started clucking anxiously.
On her way home La Maheude ran into La Levaque, who was standing outside ready to pounce on Dr Vanderhaghen, the Company doctor, as he went past. He was a harrassed little man who had too much to do and tended to conduct his consultations on the run.
‘Doctor, I can’t sleep,’ she said, ‘I ache all over…I really need to see you about it.’
It was his habit to address all the women with brusque familiarity, and he replied without stopping:
‘Don’t bother me now. Too much coffee, that’s your problem.’
‘And my husband, Doctor’ – it was La Maheude’s turn now – ‘you really must come and see him…He’s still got those pains in his legs.’
‘You’re the one who’s wearing him out! Now let me get on.’
The two women were left stranded, gazing after the doctor as he made his escape.
‘Won’t you come in,’ La Levaque continued, after they had shrugged at each other in despair. ‘I’ve got something to tell you…And I’m sure you’d like a spot of coffee. It’s freshly made.’
La Maheude wanted to say no but was powerless to do so. Oh well! Perhaps just a mouthful all the same, to be polite. And in she went.
The parlour was black with dirt: there were greasy stains on the floor and walls, and the table and dresser were thick with grime. The stench of a slatternly household caught at La Maheude’s throat. Sitting beside the fire, with his elbows on the table and his nose in a plate, was Bouteloup, still young-looking at thirty-five, a big, placid fellow with broad, square shoulders. He was finishing off the remains of some stew. Standing close beside him was little Achille, the elder of Philoméne’s pair, who was already two, and he was staring at Bouteloup with the mute entreaty of a greedy animal. From time to time the lodger, a thoroughly soft-hearted sort in spite of his imposing brown beard, would put a piece of meat in the boy’s mouth.
‘Wait till I sweeten it a bit,’ said La Levaque, as she put some brown sugar straight into the coffee-pot.
Six years older than Bouteloup, she looked terrible, like used goods. Her breasts sagged round her belly and her belly round her thighs. Her face was squashed-looking, with grey whiskers, and she never combed her hair. He had accepted her the way she was and inspected her no more closely than he did his soup to see if it had hairs in it or his bed to see if the sheets had been changed in the last three months. She was included in the rent and, as her husband was fond of repeating, honest dealings made honest friends.
‘Anyway, here’s what I wanted to tell you,’ she continued. ‘Apparently La Pierronne was seen out and about last night near the First Estate. The gentleman in question – and you know who I mean! – was waiting for her behind Rasseneur’s, and off they went together along the canal…How about that, eh? And her a married woman!’
‘Heavens!’ said La Maheude. ‘Pierron used to give the overman rabbits before he was married, but now it’s obviously cheaper to lend him his wife.’
Bouteloup guffawed loudly and tossed a crumb of gravy-soaked bread into Achille’s mouth. The two neighbours continued to vent their feelings about La Pierronne: a flirt, they said, no prettier than the next woman, always inspecting her various orifices, and forever washing and anointing herself with creams. Still, it was her husband’s business. If that’s how he wanted things. Some men were so ambitious they’d wipe their boss’s backside just to hear him say ‘thank you’. And so they would have continued had they not been interrupted by the arrival of a neighbour who was returning a nine-month-old baby. This was Désirée, Philoméne’s second. Philoméne herself, who ate her lunch at the screening-shed, had arranged for the woman to bring the little girl to her there so that she could suckle it while she sat down for a moment on a pile of coal.
‘I can’t leave my one for a single minute or she howls the place down,’ La Maheude said, looking at Estelle, who had gone to sleep in her arms.
But there was no escaping the moment of reckoning which she had seen looming in La Levaque’s eyes for a while now.
‘Look here, it’s time we did something.’
At the beginning, without a word being said, the two mothers had agreed not to have a marriage. Just as Zacharie’s mother wanted to have his fortnight’s wages coming in for as long as possible, so Philoméne’s mother was equally incensed at the idea of giving up her daughter’s. There was no hurry. La Levaque had even preferred to look after the baby herself, while there was only one of them; but as soon as he started getting older and eating proper food, and then another one had arrived, she found herself getting the worst of the bargain, and she was pushing for the marriage with the urgency of a woman who has no intention of remaining out of pocket.
‘Zacharie has avoided being called up for military service,’ she continued, ‘so there’s nothing left to stop them…When shall we say?’
‘Let’s wait for the better weather,’ La Maheude replied awkwardly. ‘This whole business is a nuisance! If only they could have waited till they were married before going together like that…! You know, honestly, I think I’d strangle Catherine if I found out she’d done anything silly.’
La Levaque shrugged.
‘Oh, don’t you worry. She’ll go the same way as all the others.’
Bouteloup, with the calm air of one who is free to do as he pleases in his own house, rummaged in the dresser in search of bread. Vegetables for Levaque’s soup were lying on the corner of the table, half-peeled leeks and potatoes which had been picked up and put down a dozen times or more in the course of this ceaseless chatter. Having just set to once more, La Levaque now proceeded to abandon them yet again and posted herself at the window.
‘And what have we here?…My goodness, it’s Mme Hennebeau with some people or other. They’re just going into La Pierronne’s.’
At once the pair of them started in again on La Pierronne. Oh, but of course, wouldn’t you know! The minute the Company wanted to show people round the village, they took them straight to her house because it was so spick and span. No doubt they weren’t told about all the goings-on with the overman. Anyone can be spick and span if they’ve got lovers who earn three thousand francs and get their accommodation and heating free, not to mention all the other perks. Spick and span on the surface maybe, but underneath…And all the time the visitors were in there, the two women rattled on about La Pierronne.
‘They’re coming out now,’ La Levaque said eventually. ‘They must be doing the rounds…Look, love, I think they’re coming over to your place.’
La Maheude was aghast. What if Alzire hadn’t wiped the table? And what about her own soup? She hadn’t made it yet! With a rapid goodbye she rushed round to her own house without a glance to right or left.
But everything was spotlessly clean. When she saw that her mother was not coming back, Alzire had donned a tea-towel for an apron and solemnly begun to make the soup. She had pulled up the last leeks from the garden and picked some sorrel, and now she was carefully washing the vegetables; over the fire a large cauldron of water was heating up for the men’s bath when they got home. Henri and Lénore happened to be quiet, since they were busy tearing up an old calendar. Bonnemort sat silently smoking his pipe.
La Maheude was still trying to catch her breath when Mme Hennebeau knocked on the door.
‘May we, my good woman?’
Tall, blonde, a little full in the figure having reached her matronly prime at the age of forty, Mme Hennebeau smiled with forced affability and endeavoured to conceal her fear that she might dirty the bronze silk outfit she was wearing under a black velvet cape.
‘Come in, come in,’ she urged her guests. ‘We shan’t be in anyone’s way…Well, now! Look how clean everything is again. And this good woman has seven children! All our households are like this…As I was explaining, the Company lets the house to them for six francs a month. One large room on the ground floor, two bedrooms upstairs, a cellar and a garden.’
The man with the ribbon in his buttonhole and the lady in the fur coat, having arrived by the Paris train that morning, gazed about them blankly and seemed rather dazed by this sudden exposure to unfamiliar surroundings.
‘And a garden, too,’ the lady kept saying. ‘Really one could live here oneself it’s so charming.’
‘We give them all the coal they need and more,’ Mme Hennebeau continued. ‘A doctor visits them twice a week; and when they’re old, they’re paid a pension even though no deduction is ever made from their wages towards it.’
‘It’s Eldorado. A land of milk and honey!’ the gentleman muttered, quite entranced.
La Maheude had hastened to offer them all a seat. The ladies declined the offer. Mme Hennebeau was already growing tired of this visit, happy one minute to alleviate the tedium of her exile by playing this role of zoo guide, and then immediately repulsed by the vague odour of poverty that hung everywhere, despite the cleanliness of the carefully selected houses she dared to enter. In any case all she did was to repeat a series of stock phrases; she never otherwise bothered her head about all these workers toiling and suffering at her gates.
‘What lovely children!’ the lady in the fur coat said softly, while thinking them perfectly frightful with their excessively large heads and their mops of straw-coloured hair.
La Maheude had to say how old each of them was, and then they politely asked her about Estelle too. As a mark of respect old Bonnemort had taken the pipe from his mouth; but he still presented a rather worrying sight, ravaged as he had so clearly been by forty years of working down the mine, with his stiff legs, crumpled body and ashen face; and when he was seized by a violent coughing fit, he thought he had better go and spit outside, thinking that his black phlegm might upset people.
Alzire was the star of the show. What a pretty little housewife, with her tea-towel for an apron! They complimented her mother on having a little girl who was so grown-up for her age. And though nobody mentioned the hump, they could not help staring at the poor little cripple with uneasy sympathy.
‘Now,’ said Mme Hennebeau, resting her case, ‘if anyone in Paris asks you about our villages, you can tell them. Never noisier than it is now, people living proper family lives, with everybody healthy and happy as you can see. It’s the sort of place where you could come for a holiday, with clean air and lots of peace and quiet.’
‘It’s wonderful, wonderful!’ the gentleman exclaimed in one last burst of enthusiasm.
They left the house with the spellbound air of people emerging from a freak s
how; and La Maheude, having shown them out, lingered on the doorstep to watch them slowly depart, talking at the top of their voices. The streets had filled, and they had to make their way through knots of women who had been drawn by the news of their visit and had passed the word from house to house along the way.
Indeed La Levaque had intercepted La Pierronne outside her own doorway when the latter arrived to see what was going on. Both women professed surprise and disapproval. Well, really, were these people perhaps proposing to spend the night at the Maheus’? It wouldn’t be much fun for them, though!
‘Never a penny to their name, despite all the money they earn! But what can you do? If you’ve got bad habits…!’
‘Someone just told me that she went to beg from the bourgeois at La Piolaine this morning, and that Maigrat gave her food even though he’d refused her before…Of course, we know how Maigrat gets paid, don’t we?’
‘With her? No, no! That would take more courage than he’s got…No, it’s Catherine he gets paid with.’
‘Well, would you believe it? And her with the nerve to tell me just a few moments ago that she’d sooner strangle Catherine if she did that sort of thing!…As if that tall fellow Chaval hadn’t already had her on the shed roof many moons ago!’