‘Maheu and associates,’ said the clerk, ‘the Filonnière seam, coal-face number seven.’
He checked his lists, which were compiled from the notebooks in which the deputies recorded the number of tubs per team per day. Then he said again:
‘Maheu and associates, the Filonnière seam, coal-face number seven…One hundred and thirty-five francs.’
The cashier paid him.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ Maheu stammered in disbelief. ‘Are you sure there hasn’t been some mistake?’
He looked at the paltry sum where it lay, and his blood ran cold. Yes, he had expected his pay to be low, but it couldn’t be that low, or else he hadn’t counted right. Once Zacharie, Étienne and Chaval’s replacement had each had their share, he’d be left with no more than fifty francs for himself, his father, Catherine and Jeanlin.
‘No, no, there’s no mistake,’ the official replied. ‘Two Sundays and four days’ lay-off have to be deducted, which leaves you nine days’ work.’
Maheu made the calculation, totting up the figures under his breath: nine days meant roughly thirty francs for himself, eighteen for Catherine and nine for Jeanlin. Old Bonnemort was due pay for only three days. Even so, if you added on the ninety francs for Zacharie and the other two, it surely all came to more.
‘And don’t forget the fines,’ the clerk concluded. ‘Twenty francs off for defective timbering.’
Maheu gestured in despair. Twenty francs’ worth of fines, and four days laid off! So it was right. To think that he’d once collected up to a hundred and fifty for a fortnight’s work, when old Bonnemort was still working and before Zacharie had left home.
‘Do you want it or not?’ the clerk shouted impatiently. ‘You can see there are people waiting…If you don’t want it, you’ve only got to say.’
As Maheu’s large, trembling hand reached out for the money, the official stopped him.
‘Wait, your name’s down here. Toussaint Maheu, isn’t it?…The Company Secretary wants to see you. You can go in now, he’s free.’
Bewildered, Maheu found himself in an office full of old mahogany furniture and drapes of faded green cord. For five minutes he listened to the Company Secretary, a tall, pale man, who remained seated and spoke to him over the piles of papers on his desk. But the pounding in Maheu’s ears prevented him from hearing properly. He vaguely grasped that it was about his father, whose retirement pension of a hundred and fifty francs – due to anyone over fifty with forty years’ service – was coming up for assessment. Then the Company Secretary’s voice seemed to harden. He was being reprimanded, accused of meddling in politics, and there were references to his lodger and the provident fund; in short, he was being advised not to get mixed up in all this foolishness, especially as he was one of the best workers in the pit. He wanted to protest but he couldn’t get the words out, and he stood there nervously twisting his cap in his hands before mumbling on his way out:
‘Certainly, sir…I can assure the Company Secretary that…’
Outside, where Étienne was waiting for him, Maheu exploded.
‘I’m a bloody hopeless fool, I should have answered him back!…Not even enough to buy bread, and then I have to listen to all that nonsense! But you’re right, it’s you he’s got it in for. He says people’s minds have been poisoned. But what the hell can we do? He’s quite right. Knuckle down and be grateful, it’s the only sensible thing.’
Maheu fell silent, torn between anger and apprehension. Étienne brooded darkly. Once again they found themselves among the groups of men blocking the roadway, and the discontent was growing, a muttering of otherwise peaceable men, without violence of gesture but rumbling like a terrible, gathering storm over the dense throng. The few who could count had done the sums, and word was spreading about the two centimes the Company would gain on the timbering, causing even the most level-headed among them to warm with outrage. But more than anything it was a feeling of fury at the disastrously low pay, the fury of hungry people rebelling against lay-offs sand fines. Already they lacked enough to eat, so what was to become of them if their pay was cut even further? In the bars people voiced their anger openly, which left their throats so dry that what little money they had received remained where it lay on the counter.
Neither Étienne nor Maheu said a word on the way home from Montsou. When her husband walked in, La Maheude, alone with the children, could see at once that he was empty-handed.
‘Well, that’s nice!’ she said. ‘What about my coffee and the sugar and the meat? A piece of veal wouldn’t have broken the bank, would it?’
He remained silent, desperately trying to choke back his feelings. Then the heavy features of a man toughened by years of working down the mines began to swell with despair, and large tears sprang from his eyes, falling like warm rain. He slumped on a chair, crying like a child, and threw the fifty francs on to the table.
‘There,’ he stammered, ‘see what I’ve brought you…And that’s for the work all of us did.’
La Maheude looked at Étienne and noted his silent air of defeat. Then she, too, wept. How was she to feed nine people for a fortnight on fifty francs? Her eldest had left home, the old man could scarcely move his legs any more: soon they’d all be dead. Alzire threw her arms round her mother’s neck, appalled by her tears. Estelle was wailing, Lénore and Henri sobbed.
And soon, from all over the village, the same cry of anguish went up. The men were back now, and every household was grieving over the catastrophe of their depleted pay. Doors opened, women appeared, screaming into the open air as though their laments could not be contained beneath the ceilings of their cramped homes. A fine drizzle was falling, but they didn’t feel it as they called out to each other from the pavements and held out the palms of their hands to show how little money they had received.
‘Look what they’ve given him. It’s a bloody joke, isn’t it?’
‘What about me? I’ve not even got enough to buy the fortnight’s bread.’
‘And me! You can count it if you like. I’m just going to have to sell my blouses again.’
La Maheude had gone outside like the others. A group formed round La Levaque, who was shouting the loudest; for her drunkard of a husband hadn’t even come home yet, and she could guess that whether the pay was large or small, it would simply melt away at the Volcano. Philomène was keeping an eye out for Maheu, so Zacharie wouldn’t get his hands on the money first. La Pierronne was the only one who seemed fairly calm, since that mealy-mouthed informer Pierron had managed as always, God knows how, to have more hours recorded in the deputy’s notebook than his fellow-miners. But La Brûlé thought her son-in-law a gutless coward for it, and she was among the women raising hell, standing there in the middle of the group, thin and erect, brandishing her fist in the direction of Montsou.
‘To think,’ she said loudly, without mentioning the Hennebeaus by name, ‘that I saw their maid go past this morning in a carriage!…Yes, the cook in a carriage and pair. Off to Marchiennes to buy some fish, I shouldn’t wonder!’
There was uproar at this, and renewed abuse. They were indignant at the thought of that maid in her white apron being driven to market in the neighbouring town in her master’s carriage. The workers might be dying of hunger, but of course they still had to have their fish, didn’t they? Well, they just might not be eating fish for much longer: one day it would be the turn of the poor. The ideas that Étienne had sown were beginning to take root and grow, burgeoning in this cry of revolt. People were impatient for the promised land, in a hurry for their share of happiness and to reach beyond the horizon of poverty that enclosed them like a tomb. The injustice of it all was becoming too great, and if the bread was now to be snatched from their mouths, they would finally demand their rights. The women especially would like to have launched an immediate assault upon the city on a hill, upon that terminus of Progress where people were poor no longer. Though night had almost fallen and the rain was coming down hard, they continued to fill the village
with their tears, surrounded by the shrieking of their unruly children.
That evening, in the Advantage ,the decision was taken to strike. Rasseneur had ceased to oppose it, and Souvarine accepted it as a first step. Étienne summed the matter up: if it was a strike the Company wanted, then a strike they could have.
V
A week passed, and work continued in an atmosphere of sullen wariness as people awaited the coming battle.
In the Maheu household the fortnight in prospect promised to be even more difficult than the last, which made La Maheude increasingly sour despite her good sense and even temper. And then hadn’t Catherine taken it into her head to spend the night away from home! She’d come back the next morning so exhausted and ill after this escapade that she hadn’t been able to go to the pit; she cried and said it wasn’t her fault, that Chaval had prevented her from coming home by threatening to beat her up if she tried to run away from him. He was becoming violently jealous now and wanted to stop her returning to Étienne’s bed, which, he said, he knew full well her family made her share. La Maheude was furious and, having forbidden her daughter to see such a brute again, she threatened to go to Montsou and slap his face for him. None of which stopped it being one day’s pay less. As for Catherine, now that she had got herself a man she preferred not to swap him.
Two days later there was another drama. On Monday and Tuesday Jeanlin did a bunk, and all the time everyone thought he was quietly working away at Le Voreux he was actually out on the loose with Bébert and Lydie, roaming the marshes and the Vandame forest. He was the ringleader, and nobody ever discovered quite what manner of precocious and larcenous games the three of them got up to. He himself received a heavy punishment, a thrashing from his mother, which she conducted out in the street and in front of the terrified child population of the village. Had anyone ever seen the like? A child of hers! Who’d cost her money since the day it was born, who should now be earning its keep! And her outrage carried the memory of her own harsh childhood, the heritage of destitution which made her see every child in the brood as a future breadwinner.
That morning, when Catherine and the men left for the pit, La Maheude raised herself up in bed and shouted to Jeanlin:
‘And if you try it again, you little brat, I’ll thrash the living daylights out of you.’
It was hard going at Maheu’s new coal-face. The Filonnière seam narrowed so much at this point that the hewers were wedged between the face itself and the ceiling and kept grazing their elbows as they extracted the coal. Also it was becoming very wet, and with every hour that passed they became more and more anxious about being flooded by one of those sudden torrents that can burst through the rock and sweep a man away. The previous day, when Étienne was pulling his pick out of the rock, having driven it in hard, water suddenly spurted out from a spring and hit him in the face; but this was no more than an early warning, and it simply left the coal-face wetter and muckier than before. Anyway he hardly ever thought about the possibility of an accident now and simply worked away down there with his comrades, oblivious to the danger. They lived in firedamp, not even noticing how it weighed on their eyelids and veiled their eyelashes like a cobweb. Sometimes, when the flame in their lamps turned paler and bluer, they did think about it, and one of the miners would put his ear to the seam and listen to the faint hiss of the gas, which sounded as though air bubbles were fizzing from each crack in the rock. But rock-falls were the one real and constant threat since, apart from the fact that the timbering was botched from being done in a hurry, the earth itself was unstable on account of the water running through it.
Three times that day Maheu had been forced to make them strengthen the timbering. It was half past two, and it would soon be time to return to the surface. Étienne, lying on his side, was just finishing cutting out a block of coal when a distant rumble of thunder shook the entire mine.
‘What the hell’s that?’ he shouted, dropping his pick to listen.
He thought the whole road was caving in behind him.
But already Maheu was slithering down the slope of the coal-face and shouting:
‘It’s a fall! Quick! Hurry!’
They all slid down as fast as they could, in a rush of anxious concern for their fellow-miners. A terrible silence had fallen, and the lamps bobbed up and down in their hands as they raced along the roads in single file, bending so low that it was almost as if they were galloping on all fours. Without slackening speed they exchanged rapid question and answer: whereabouts? Up here by the coal-faces? No, it came from lower down! Near the haulage roadway more like! When they reached the chimney, they plunged down it one on top of the other, heedless of the bruises.
Jeanlin, his bottom still red from the previous day’s thrashing, had not tried to escape his work that day. He was busy trotting along barefoot behind his train, shutting the ventilation doors one by one. Sometimes, when he thought there were no deputies around, he would climb up on to the last tub, which he’d been told not to do in case he fell asleep on it. But his main source of amusement was, each time the train pulled in to let another one pass, to set off and find Bébert, who was up at the front holding the reins. He would sneak up on him, without his lamp, and pinch him hard, or else he would play tricks on him, looking like some evil monkey with his yellow hair and big ears and his thin, pointed face with its little green eyes that glowed in the dark. Unnaturally precocious for his years, he seemed to have the instinctual intelligence and quick dexterity of some freakish human runt which had reverted to its original animal state.
That afternoon Mouque brought Battle along to do his stint with the pit-boys; and while the horse was taking a breather in a siding, Jeanlin crept up behind Bébert and asked:
‘What’s wrong with the old nag, stopping dead like that?…He’ll make me break a leg one day.’
Bébert could not answer; he was having to restrain Battle, who was becoming excited at the approach of the other train. The horse had caught the scent in the distance of his comrade, Trumpet, for whom he had developed a deep affection ever since the day he had seen him arrive at pit-bottom. His was the warm compassion of an elderly philosopher wanting to comfort a young friend by imbuing him with his own patience and resignation; for Trumpet had not been able to adapt, and he hauled his tubs with reluctance, head down, blinded by the dark, and in constant longing for the sunshine. So each time Battle met him, he would stretch out his head, snort and give him an encouraging lick.
‘Christ Almighty!’ swore Bébert. ‘There they go again, slobbering all over each other.’
Once Trumpet had passed, he replied to Jeanlin’s question about Battle:
‘The old fellow’s got the wind up, that’s why. When he stops like that, it’s because he senses something’s wrong, like a rock in the way or a hole. He takes care of himself, he does, wants to make sure he comes to no harm. Today there must be something up beyond that door. He keeps pushing it and then not moving an inch…Have you noticed anything?’
‘No,’ said Jeanlin. ‘There’s a lot of water, though. I’m up to my knees in it.’
The train set off again. And on the next trip Battle once again pushed the ventilation door open with his head and just stood there, whinnying and trembling. All at once he made up his mind and went through.
Jeanlin had hung back to close the door. He stooped to peer at the pool of water he was wading through; then he raised his lamp and saw that the timbers were sagging under the weight of a spring seeping down. At that moment a hewer, whose name was Berloque but whom everyone called Chicot, was on his way back from his coal-face, anxious to be with his wife, who was in labour. He, too, stopped to look at the timbering. And suddenly, just as Jeanlin was about to rush off after his train, there had been an almighty crack, and man and boy were buried beneath the rock-fall.
There was a long silence. The draught created by the fall was pushing thick clouds of dust along the roads. Blinded and choking for air, the miners were on their way down from every part of
the mine, even from the most distant workings. Their lamps bobbed about but barely illuminated these black men racing along like moles in a run. When the first of them reached the rock-fall, they shouted out loudly to summon their comrades. A second group had come from the coal-faces beyond and found themselves on the other side of the mass of earth blocking the roadway. It was immediately obvious that at most ten metres of roof had caved in. The damage was not serious. But their blood ran cold when they heard the sound of groaning coming from beneath the rubble.
Bébert had abandoned his train and was running towards them, shouting:
‘Jeanlin’s under there! Jeanlin’s under there!’
At that precise moment Maheu came tumbling down the chimney with Zacharie and Étienne. He was beside himself with despair and helplessness, and could only keep swearing:
‘Christ! Christ! Christ!’
Catherine, Lydie and La Mouquette had also rushed up and now stood there sobbing, screaming with terror in the midst of this appalling mayhem, which the darkness made only more terrible. People tried to quieten them, but they were panicking and screamed louder with each groan they heard.
Richomme, the deputy, had arrived at the double, dismayed to find that neither Négrel the engineer nor Dansaert was down in the pit. He put his ear to the rocks to listen and eventually declared that the groans were not the groans of a child. It must be a man under there, no question about it. Twenty times already Maheu had called for Jeanlin. Not a whisper. The lad must have been crushed to death.
And on the groaning went, unvarying. People spoke to the dying man and asked his name. A groan was the only reply.
‘Come on, quick,’ urged Richomme, having already organized the rescue operation. ‘There’ll be time for talking later.’
The miners attacked the rock-fall from both sides with pick and shovel. Chaval worked in silence alongside Maheu and Étienne, while Zacharie saw to the removal of the rubble. The end of the shift had come and gone, and no one had eaten; but you didn’t go home to your soup when there were comrades in danger. However, it occurred to them that they would be worried in the village if no one came home, and it was suggested that the women should go back. But neither Catherine nor La Mouquette nor even Lydie would budge from the spot, so desperate were they to know the worst and busy helping to clear away the earth. Hence Levaque accepted the job of telling people about the rock-fall and how there had been just a small amount of damage that needed repairing. It was nearly four o’clock, and in less than an hour the miners had done the equivalent of a day’s work: half the earth would already have been cleared if further pieces of rock had not fallen from the roof of the road. Maheu worked away in such a frenzy of stubborn determination that he angrily waved another man away when he offered to relieve him for a moment.