‘Shh!…Here they come.’
Whereupon, with quiet and unobtrusive curiosity, La Levaque and La Pierronne had been content to watch out of the corner of their eyes as the visitors left the house. Then they quickly beckoned to La Maheude, who was still carrying Estelle round on her arm, and the three of them stood there together and watched the well-dressed backs of Mme Hennebeau and her guests as they departed. When they had gone thirty paces, the gossiping began again in renewed earnest.
‘That’s some money those women are wearing. Worth more than them, at any rate!’
‘You’re telling me…I don’t know who the other one is, but I wouldn’t give tuppence for the one from round here, despite all that meat on her. There are stories…’
‘Oh? What stories?’
‘About all the men she’s had, of course!…First, there’s the engineer…’
That scrawny little runt!…Pah! there’s nothing on him, she’d lose him between the sheets.’
‘What’s it to you if that’s how she likes it?…But I don’t trust ladies like them, with that look of disgust on their face as though they’d always rather be somewhere else…Look at the way she waggles her backside as if she despised the lot of us. It’s just not decent.’
The visitors were continuing to stroll along at the same leisurely pace, still chatting away, when a barouche drew up on the road outside the church. A gentleman in his late forties stepped down, dressed in a tight-fitting black frock-coat. He had very dark skin, and his face bore the look of an authoritarian and a stickler.
‘The husband!’ murmured La Levaque, lowering her voice as if he could have heard her from where he stood, and gripped by the same deferential fear that the manager inspired in his ten thousand workers. ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? The man looks like a cuckold!’
By now the whole village was out on the streets. As the women’s curiosity grew, the various little groups of them gradually merged into a crowd, while gaggles of snotty-nosed children stood about gawping on the pavements. For one brief moment even the pale head of the schoolteacher could be seen peering over the school fence. The man digging in the gardens rested his foot on his spade and stared, wide-eyed. And the rasping whispers of muttered gossip grew louder and louder, like a gust of wind whistling through dry leaves.
People had congregated in especially large numbers outside La Levaque’s house. Two more women had joined them, then ten, then twenty. La Pierronne thought it prudent to remain silent for now too many ears were listening. La Maheude, being one of the more sensible among them, was also content just to watch. In order to quieten Estelle, who had woken up and begun to scream, she had calmly exposed a breast like an obliging animal ready to give suck, and this now hung down and lolled from side to side, as though elongated by the steady supply of milk welling like a spring within. After M. Hennebeau had helped the ladies into the back of the carriage and it had departed in the direction of Marchiennes, there was a final burst of chatter, with all the women gesticulating and shouting in each other’s faces like an anthill that has been turned upside down.
But then the clock struck three. Bouteloup and the other stonemen had left for work. Suddenly, at the corner by the church, the first miners could be seen returning from the pit, faces black, clothes sopping wet, with their arms folded across their chests and their shoulders hunched. Whereupon all the women rushed off home, a stampede of panic-stricken housewives caught out by too much gossiping and too much coffee. And soon all that could be heard was one single cry, fraught with the remonstrations to come:
‘Oh my God! The soup! I haven’t made the soup!’
IV
When Maheu returned home, having left Étienne at Rasseneur’s, he found Catherine, Zacharie and Jeanlin seated at the table finishing their soup. They were so hungry after they got back from the pit that they ate as they were, in their wet clothes, without even bothering to wash. Nobody waited for anyone else; the table was permanently laid from morning till night, and there was always someone sitting there having a meal as and when the working day permitted.
From the door Maheu caught sight of the groceries. He said nothing, but his worried face lit up. All morning the thought of the empty dresser and a house without coffee or butter had been troubling him, and as he tapped away at the seam in the stifling, airless heat of the coal-face, he kept having sharp pangs of anxiety. How would his wife have got on? And what were they going to do if she came back empty-handed? But here they were with everything they needed. She would tell him all about it later. He laughed with relief.
Already Catherine and Jeanlin had got up from the table and were drinking their coffee standing; while Zacharie, still hungry after his soup, was cutting himself a large slice of bread, which he spread with butter. He could perfectly well see the brawn laid out on a plate, but he didn’t touch it; if there was only one portion, it meant the meat was for Father. They had all washed their soup down with a large swig of fresh water, that clear, refreshing liquid that serves so well when money is short.
‘I haven’t got any beer,’ said La Maheude, after Father had sat down in his turn. ‘I wanted to keep a bit of money back…But if you want, Alzire can go and fetch you a pint.’
He beamed at her. What, she had money left over, too!
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ve had some already. That’ll do me fine.’
And Maheu slowly began, spoonful by spoonful, to devour the soggy mass of bread, potatoes, leeks and sorrel piled up in the small basin he used for a plate. Still holding Estelle, La Maheude helped Alzire make sure that her father had everything he wanted, passing him the butter and the brawn too, and putting his coffee back on the stove so that it would be nice and hot for him.
Meanwhile beside the fire the ablutions began, in a half-barrel that had been turned into a bath-tub. Catherine, who went first, had filled it with warm water; and she calmly undressed, removing her cap, her jacket, her trousers and finally her shirt, just as she had since she was eight years old and having grown up to see no harm in it. She would simply turn away and, with her front towards the fire, rub herself vigorously with black soap. Nobody took any notice of her, even Lénore and Henri were no longer curious to see how she was shaped. Once she was clean she went upstairs completely naked, leaving her wet shirt and the rest of her clothes in a heap on the floor. But then a quarrel broke out between the two brothers. Jeanlin had quickly jumped into the tub, on the grounds that Zacharie was still eating; and now his brother was shoving him out of the way, claiming that it was his turn and shouting that just because he was kind enough to let Catherine get washed first, that didn’t mean he was going to wash in the dirty water left by little boys, especially as you could have filled every inkwell in the school each time this particular little boy had been in it. Eventually they had a bath together, also facing the fire, and they even helped each other get clean and rubbed each other’s backs. Then, like their sister, they disappeared upstairs completely naked.
‘The mess they make!’ muttered La Maheude, picking the clothes off the floor in order to hang them up to dry. ‘Alzire, mop up a bit, will you?’
But she was interrupted by a row going on on the other side of the wall. A man was cursing and swearing, a woman was crying, and there were sounds of a battle going on, with a shuffling and stamping of feet and a dull thumping sound as though someone were punching an empty marrow.
‘The usual song and dance,’ Maheu observed calmly, as he scraped the bottom of his basin with his spoon. ‘Funny, though. Bouteloup said the soup was ready.’
‘Ready indeed!’ said La Maheude. ‘I saw the vegetables still sitting on the table, not even peeled yet.’
The shouting grew louder, and there was a terrible thud, which shook the wall, followed by a long silence.
Then, swallowing a last spoonful, Maheu said with an air of calm and judicial finality:
‘If the soup wasn’t ready, it’s understandable.’
And having downed a full glass of water h
e attacked the brawn. He cut small squares off it, which he speared with the end of his knife and ate off his bread, without a fork. Nobody spoke while Father was eating. He preferred to eat in silence; he didn’t recognize it as Maigrat’s usual brawn, it must have come from elsewhere, but he asked no questions. He simply inquired whether the old man was still asleep upstairs. No, Grandpa had gone out for his usual walk. Then silence once more.
But the smell of meat had attracted the attention of Lénore and Henri, who were having fun making streams on the floor with the spilled bathwater. They both came and stood next to their father, the little boy in front of his sister. Their eyes followed each piece, watching expectantly as it left the plate and staring in consternation as it disappeared into his mouth. Seeing how they turned pale and licked their lips, their father eventually realized how desperate they were to have some.
‘Have the children had any?’ he asked.
When his wife hesitated:
‘You know I don’t like it. It’s unfair. And it puts me off my food to have them hanging round me begging for scraps.’
‘Of course they’ve had some!’ she shouted angrily. ‘But if you listened to them, you could give them your share and everyone else’s and they’d still be stuffing themselves till they burst…Tell him, Alzire. We’ve all had some brawn, haven’t we?’
‘Of course we have, Mummy,’ replied the little hunch-backed girl, who in such circumstances could lie with truly adult aplomb.
Lénore and Henri stood there shocked, outraged by such a barefaced fib, when they themselves got thrashed if they didn’t tell the truth. Their little hearts rose up, and they longed to protest that they had not been present when the others had eaten theirs.
‘Off you go now,’ their mother repeated as she herded them to the other end of the room. ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves, always sticking your nose in your father’s plate like that. And anyway, what if he were the only one who could have some? He’s been out working, hasn’t he, whereas all you good-for-nothing little scamps do is cost money. And cost more than you ought to boot!’
Maheu called them back. He sat Lénore on his left knee, Henri on his right; then he finished off the brawn with them as though they were having a doll’s party. He cut each of them their share, in little pieces. The children devoured them with glee.
When he had finished, he said to his wife:
‘No, don’t pour my coffee just yet. I’ll have a wash first…Here, give me a hand with this dirty water.’
They grabbed hold of the tub by its handles and were emptying it into the drain outside the front door when Jeanlin came down dressed in dry clothes. He was wearing trousers and a woollen jacket, which were both too big for him, tired and faded hand-me-downs from his brother. Seeing him try to sneak out of the open door, his mother stopped him.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Out.’
‘Out where?…You just listen to me. I want you to go and pick some dandelions for tonight’s salad. Do you understand? And if you don’t come back with that salad, you’ll have me to reckon with.’
‘Yes, yes, all right.’
Jeanlin departed, hands in pockets, dragging his feet and, though he was only a skinny ten-year-old, rolling his puny shoulders like an old miner. Then Zacharie came down rather more carefully dressed, wearing a tight-fitting black woollen jumper with blue stripes. His father shouted at him not to be late back; and off he went with a silent nod of the head, his pipe clenched between his teeth.
Once more the tub was full of warm water. Slowly Maheu removed his jacket. One glance, and Alzire was already taking Lénore and Henri away to play outside. Father didn’t like washing in front of his family, which was the practice in many other households throughout the village. Not that he had anything against it; he just felt that splashing about together was fine for children.
‘What are you doing up there?’ La Maheude called up the stairs.
‘I’m mending the dress I tore yesterday,’ Catherine replied.
‘All right…But don’t come down. Your father’s having his wash.’
So Maheu and his wife were alone. La Maheude had finally brought herself to perch Estelle on a chair, and, by a miracle, finding herself next to the fire, the child didn’t wail and simply turned to gaze at her parents with the vague expression of a little creature that does not yet have thoughts. Maheu, now fully undressed, had crouched in front of the tub and dipped his head in the water before rubbing it with the black soap that, after centuries of use, had taken the colour out of these people’s hair and turned it yellow. Then he got into the water and soaped his chest, stomach, arms and legs, scrubbing them energetically with both hands. His wife stood watching.
‘I saw that look,’ she began, ‘when you came home…You were wondering how on earth we’d manage, eh? Those groceries certainly put a smile back on your face…Can you believe it, the bourgeois at La Piolaine didn’t give me so much as a sou. Oh, they’re kind all right, they gave me clothes for the little ones, but I was ashamed to be begging from them. It sticks in my throat when I have to ask like that.’
She paused for a moment to wedge Estelle more securely on her chair in case she fell off. Maheu continued to scrub away at his skin. He didn’t seek to anticipate her account with a question, for the story interested him and he was waiting patiently to learn what had happened.
‘And of course – sorry, I should have said – Maigrat had already refused me, oh yes, flatly refused me, the way you kick a dog out the door…So you can see what fun I was having! Woollen clothes are all very well for keeping you warm but they don’t exactly fill your stomach, do they?’
He looked up but still remained silent. Nothing at La Piolaine, nothing from Maigrat: so then, how? But already she had rolled up her sleeves as usual to wash his back and the other parts of him he found it difficult to reach. And he liked her to soap him and rub him all over as hard as she could. She picked up the soap and, as she started scouring his shoulders, he braced himself against her movements.
‘So I went back to Maigrat’s and told him what I thought of him! Oh yes, did I tell him what I thought of him!…How he must have a heart of stone, and how he’d come to a bad end if there were any justice in the world…He didn’t like it. He wouldn’t even look me in the face. I’m sure he wished he was somewhere else…’
From his back she had moved down to his buttocks. Now completely absorbed in her task she pressed on into the clefts, scouring every inch of his body and making it gleam the way her three saucepans gleamed following one of her Saturday cleaning sessions. But she was sweating profusely after all this ferocious scrubbing, as if she had been pummelled herself, and she was so breathless that she could hardly get the words out.
‘He accused me of being a parasite in the end…Still, we’ll have enough bread to see us through to Saturday, and the best of it is that he lent me a hundred sous…He let me have the butter as well, and the coffee and chicory, and I was even going to ask for the brawn and the potatoes, but I could see he was starting to look unhappy…So I spent seven sous on the brawn and eighteen on the potatoes, which leaves me three francs seventy-five sous for a stew and a pot roast…How about that, eh? Not what you’d call a wasted morning, I think.’
She was drying him now, patting away with a rag at the last obstinate patches of moisture. Maheu, happy and without a thought for the morrow, gave a loud laugh and grabbed her in his arms.
‘Let go of me, you brute! You’re all wet, you’re soaking me…But I just hope Maigrat hasn’t got the wrong idea – ’
She was about to tell him about Catherine but stopped. Why bother Father with it? They’d never hear the end of it if she did.
‘What wrong idea?’ he asked.
‘The idea he can rip us off, of course. Catherine had better have a careful look at the bill.’
He grabbed hold of her again, and this time he didn’t let go. His bath always ended like this: her rough scrubbing would excite him, and whe
n she towelled him down it made the hair on his arms and chest tingle. Moreover, as for all the comrades in the village, it was their ‘playtime’, the hour of the day when more babies than enough were started into life. For at night there was always family present. Roguishly he pushed her towards the table: couldn’t a fellow enjoy his one good moment in the day, what he called ‘having his pudding’ – and a pudding that didn’t cost anything! She in turn struggled playfully to escape, wriggling her waist and bust in vain.
‘Stop being so silly, for heaven’s sake…And with Estelle sitting there looking at us! Wait till I turn her round!’
When he had got off her, Maheu simply pulled on some dry trousers. Once he was clean and had had his bit of fun with his wife, he liked to leave his chest bare like this for a while. On his skin, which was as white as that of an anaemic girl, the cuts and scratches made by the coal had left what looked like tattoos –‘graft marks’ the miners call them – and he seemed proud of them as he displayed his broad torso and thick arms, which gleamed like blue-veined marble. In summer all the miners sat out on their doorsteps like this. Even now, despite the damp weather, he went out for a moment and shouted some ribald remark to a similarly bare-chested comrade on the other side of the gardens. Other men came out also. And the children playing on the pavements looked up and laughed with them, joining in the general joy as all this tired workmen’s flesh was given its airing.
While he drank his coffee, having still not put on his shirt, Maheu told his wife how angry the engineer had been about the timbering. He felt relaxed now, all tension gone, and he listened with approving nods to the wise advice being given by La Maheude, who always showed great good sense in matters of this kind. She was forever repeating that there was nothing to be gained by confronting the Company head on. Then she told him about Mme Hennebeau’s visit. Though they said nothing, it made them both feel proud.
‘Is it all right to come down?’ Catherine asked from the top of the stairs.