On Thursday morning Étienne was getting worried because his old foreman had still not arrived, having sent a message promising to be there by Wednesday evening. What could have happened? He was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to have a word with him in private before the meeting to discuss how they were going to proceed. By nine o’clock Étienne was already in Montsou, thinking that perhaps Pluchart had gone straight there without stopping at Le Voreux.
‘No, I haven’t seen your friend yet,’ said Widow Desire. ‘But everything’s ready. Come and see.’
She led him into the dance-hall. The decorations were still the same: on the ceiling the streamers holding up a wreath of paper flowers, and along the walls the line of gold cardboard shields bearing the names of saints. But the stage for the musicians had been replaced by a table and three chairs set in one corner, and benches had been arranged in diagonal rows across the rest of the room.
‘Perfect,’ declared Étienne.
‘And just make yourself at home, you understand,’ Widow Desire went on. ‘Make as much noise as you please…And if the men in blue try to come in, it’ll be over my dead body!’
Despite his anxiety he could not help smiling at the sight of her. How could one embrace such a vast woman, when one of her breasts alone was more than enough for any man; which was why people said that she had started having her six weekday lovers two at a time, so they could help each other with the task.
To Étienne’s surprise Rasseneur and Souvarine walked in; and as Widow Desire departed and left the three of them alone in the large empty hall, he exclaimed:
‘You’re early, aren’t you?’
Souvarine had worked the night shift at Le Voreux – the mechanics were not on strike – and had come out of simple curiosity. As for Rasseneur, he had been looking ill at ease for the past two days, and his big round face had lost its ready smile.
‘Pluchart’s not here yet,’ Étienne went on. ‘I’m extremely worried.’
Rasseneur looked away and mumbled:
‘I’m not surprised. I don’t think he’ll be coming.’
‘What do you mean?’
Then Rasseneur made up his mind and, looking Étienne in the eye, announced defiantly:
‘Because I, too, wrote him a letter, if you must know, and asked him not to come…That’s right. It seems to me we ought to handle these things on our own and not go bringing strangers into it.’
Étienne was beside himself, trembling with rage as he stared at his comrade and stammered:
‘You didn’t! You can’t have!’
‘I certainly can – and I did. And as you know, it’s not that I don’t trust Pluchart either! He’s a clever one all right, and solid with it, someone you can count on…But the point is I don’t give a damn about all these fancy ideas of yours! All this stuff about politics and the government, I just don’t give a tuppenny damn. What I want is better treatment for the miners. I worked down the mine for twenty years, and I promised myself – after all that sweat and toil just to end up poor and exhausted the whole time – that I’d try and make things better, somehow, for the poor buggers that are still down there. And all I can say is, you’ll get nowhere with all this bloody nonsense of yours, all you’ll succeed in doing is making the worker’s lot even more bloody miserable than it already is…When he’s finally so hungry that he’s forced to go back, they’ll just make things worse for him. That’ll be his reward. The Company’ll kick him while he’s down, and kick him hard, like a dog being put back in its kennel after it’s got out…And that’s what I want to prevent! Understood?’
As he stood there foursquare on his stout legs, belly out, he began to raise his voice. Here was the patient man of reason speaking his mind in plain language, and the words just poured out of him without his even having to think about them. Didn’t they realize it was just plain daft to think you could change the world overnight, to think the workers could take the place of the bosses and share out the cash as if it were an apple or something. It would take an eternity before that ever happened, and even then! If it was miracles they were after, forget it! The only sensible thing to do if they didn’t want to end up with a bloody nose was to keep their eye on the real issue, to take every opportunity that presented itself to demand reforms that were possible, things that would actually improve the worker’s lot. If it was left to him, he had no doubt he could get the Company to bring in better working conditions; whereas with everyone digging their heels in like this, they were all going to bloody die, thank you very much!
Speechless with indignation, Étienne had let him go on. But now he shouted:
‘Christ Almighty! Have you got no feelings at all?’
For a moment he was on the verge of hitting him; but to stop himself he walked off, taking his fury out on the benches as he cleared a path through the hall.
‘You might at least shut the door, you two,’ observed Souvarine. ‘We don’t need everyone to hear.’
After going to shut it himself, he came back and sat down quietly on one of the chairs by the table. He had rolled a cigarette and now sat watching the two men with the usual gentle, intelligent look in his eyes and a thin, pursed smile on his lips.
‘You can get as cross as you like,’ Rasseneur continued evenly, ‘but it won’t get us anywhere. I used to think you were sensible. That was a good idea of yours to get the comrades to keep out of trouble, making them stay at home like that, using your influence to maintain law and order. But now you’re all set to land them in it!’
After each trip across the hall Étienne would return to where Rasseneur was standing, grab him by the shoulders and shake him, screaming in his face with each reply:
‘Bloody hell! I do want us to keep out of trouble. Yes, I did impose discipline on them! And yes, I am still telling them to stay calm. But only just as long as people don’t walk all over us…Good for you if you can stay all calm and collected. There are times when I feel as though my head’s going to blow off.’
Now it was his turn to speak his mind. He laughed at his earlier idealism, his schoolboy vision of a brave new world in which justice would reign and men would be brothers. But the one way to make sure that men were at each other’s throats until the end of time was to sit back and wait for things to happen. No! You had to get involved, otherwise injustice would never end and the rich would forever be sucking the blood of the poor. Which was why he couldn’t forgive himself for having once been stupid enough to advocate keeping politics out of the ‘social question’. He knew nothing then, whereas he had since read things, studied things. His ideas had matured now, and he liked to think that he had a system which would work. Nevertheless he explained it badly, in a muddle of statements which bore the trace of all the theories he had encountered and abandoned along the way. At the centre was still the idea put forward by Karl Marx: capital was the result of theft, and labour had the duty and the right to recover this stolen wealth. As to putting this into practice, Étienne had at first been seduced, like Proudhon, by the attractions of mutual credit, of one vast clearing bank that would cut out all the middlemen; then it had been Lassalle’s idea of co-operative societies,1 funded by the State, which would gradually transform the earth into one great big industrial city, and he had been wildly in favour of this until the day he was finally put off by the problem of controls; and recently he had been coming round to collectivism, which called for the means of production to be returned into the ownership of the collective. But this was all still somewhat vague, and he couldn’t quite see how to achieve this new goal, prevented as he was by scruples of humanity and common sense from enjoying the fanatic’s ability to advance ideas with uncompromising conviction. For the moment his line was simply that what they had to do first was take power. Afterwards they’d see.
‘But what on earth’s got into you? Why have you gone over to the bourgeois?’ Étienne continued angrily, as he returned once more to confront Rasseneur. ‘You used to say it yourself: things can’t go on li
ke this!’
Rasseneur flushed slightly.
‘Yes, that’s what I used to say. And if things do get rough, you’ll soon see that I’m no more of a coward than the next man…Only I refuse to support people who are busy making matters worse so they can exploit the situation.’
It was Étienne’s turn to colour. The two men had stopped shouting, and there was now bitterness and ill-will in their cold hostility. Antagonism breeds extremism, and it was turning one into the zealous revolutionary and the other into an excessive advocate of caution, taking them beyond what they really thought and forcing them to adopt positions of which they then became prisoners. And the expression on Souvarine’s fair, girlish face as he listened to them was one of silent disdain, the crushing contempt of one who is ready to sacrifice his own life, anonymously, without even the glory of being a martyr.
‘That’s aimed at me, I suppose?’ Étienne inquired. ‘Jealous, are you?’
‘Jealous of what?’ Rasseneur retorted. ‘I’m not claiming to be anyone special. I’m not the one trying to create a branch of the International at Montsou just so he can be secretary of it.’
Étienne was about to interrupt, but Rasseneur forestalled him:
‘Admit it! You don’t give a damn about the International. You just want to be our leader and play the educated gentleman who corresponds with the wonderful Federal Council for the Département du Nord.’
There was silence. Étienne quivered:
‘Very well, then…I thought I’d been careful not to act out of turn. I’ve always consulted you, because I knew you’d been involved in the struggle here long before I came. But no, since you obviously can’t stand to work with anyone else, I shall now act alone…And I can tell you for a start that this meeting’s going to go ahead, with or without Pluchart, and that the comrades will join whether you like it or not.’
‘Oh, will they?’ Rasseneur muttered under his breath. ‘We’ll soon see about that…You’ll have to persuade them to pay their subscription first.’
‘Not at all. The International lets men on strike defer their subscription. We can pay later. But it will come to our aid immediately.’
With this Rasseneur lost his temper:
‘Fine. We’ll see, then…I’m coming to this meeting of yours, and I’m going to speak. These are my friends, and I’m not going to let you turn their heads. I’ll show them where their real interests lie. And then we’ll see who they intend to listen to. Me, who they’ve known this past thirty years, or you, who’s made a bloody mess of everything in less than one…No, that’s enough. Not another bloody word. This time it’s to the death.’
And out he went, slamming the door behind him. The paper streamers shook beneath the ceiling, and the gold-coloured shields bounced against the walls. Then a heavy silence fell in the large hall.
Souvarine was still sitting at the table, quietly smoking. Étienne paced up and down for a moment in silence, and then out it poured. Was it his fault if the men were deserting that fat, lazy bastard and siding with him now? He hadn’t set out to be popular, he didn’t really even know how it had come about, why everyone in the village looked on him as a friend, why the miners trusted him, why he had such power over them at present. He was indignant at the accusation that he was making matters worse so as to further his ambitions, and he thumped his chest by way of protesting solidarity with his brothers.
Suddenly he stopped in front of Souvarine and said loudly:
‘You know, if I thought a friend of mine was going to lose so much as a single drop of blood over this, I’d emigrate to America this very minute.’
Souvarine shrugged, and his lips parted once more in a thin smile:
‘Oh, blood,’ he said softly. ‘What does that matter? It’s good for the soil.’
Étienne began to calm down and went and sat opposite Souvarine, propping his elbows on the table. He was unnerved by his fair complexion and those dreamy eyes that would occasionally turn red and assume a look of wild savagery. In some curious way they seemed to sap his will. Without his comrade even needing to speak, indeed overpowered by his very silence, Étienne felt as though he were gradually being absorbed by him.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘what would you do if you were in my position? Aren’t I right to want to make things happen?…And joining the International is the best thing for us, isn’t it?’
Souvarine slowly exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and then replied with his favourite word:
‘Nonsense. All nonsense. But for the moment it’s better than nothing. What’s more, that International of theirs will soon be on the move. He’s taking a hand in it now.’
He had spoken the word in a hushed voice and with an expression of religious fervour on his face as he glanced towards the east. He was talking about the Master, about Bakunin, the exterminator.2
‘He’s the only one who can deliver the real hammer-blow,’ Souvarine continued, ‘whereas these intellectuals of yours with all their talk of gradual change are just cowards…Under his leadership the International will have crushed the old order within three years.’
Étienne was listening with rapt attention. He was longing to learn more, to understand this cult of destruction that Souvarine only rarely and darkly referred to, as though he wanted to keep its mysteries for himself.
‘So, come on then…What exactly is your objective?’
‘To destroy everything…No more nations, no more governments, no more property, no more God or religion.’
‘I see. But where does that lead?’
‘To community in its basic, unstructured form, to a new world order, to a new beginning in everything.’
‘And how is it to be done? How are you planning to go about it?’
‘By fire, sword and poison. The criminal is the real hero, the avenger of the people, the revolutionary in action, and not just someone who trots out phrases he’s learned from books. What we need is a whole succession of horrific attacks that will terrify those in power and rouse the people from their slumber.’
While he spoke, Souvarine presented an awesome sight. As though in the grip of an ecstatic vision, he almost levitated from his chair; a mystic flame shone from his pale eyes, and his delicate hands clenched the edge of the table as though they would crush it. Étienne watched him, afraid, remembering some of the things Souvarine had semi-confided in him about the Tsar’s palaces being mined, and police chiefs being hunted to their deaths like wild boar, and how a mistress of his, the only woman he had ever loved, had been hanged one rainy morning in Moscow while he stood in the crowd and kissed her goodbye with his eyes.
‘No, no,’ said Étienne under his breath, waving his hand as though to banish these appalling scenes. ‘We aren’t that desperate here yet. Murder? Arson? Never. It’s monstrous and unjust. The comrades would soon get their hands on whoever did it and strangle them!’
In any case he still didn’t understand. There was something in his blood that made him reject this dark prospect of global destruction, of a world where everything was scythed down like a field of rye. What would happen afterwards? How would the peoples of the earth rise again? He wanted to know.
‘Explain to me what you have in mind. The rest of us want to know where we’re headed.’
Then, with that dreamy, distant look in his eye again, Souvarine quietly concluded:
‘Any rational analysis of the future is criminal, because it prevents things from being simply destroyed. It impedes the Revolution.’
That made Étienne laugh, despite the fact that it also sent shivers down his spine. For the rest he readily acknowledged the good sense in some of these ideas, which attracted him by their terrifying simplicity. But it would hand the advantage to Rasseneur if they were to tell the comrades this sort of thing. They had to be practical.
Widow Desire came in to offer them some lunch. They accepted and went through to the bar area, which was closed off from the hall during the week by a sliding partition.
W
hen they had finished their omelette and cheese, Souvarine wanted to leave; and when Étienne tried to make him stay, he said:
‘What’s the point? To listen to you all talking nonsense?…I’ve heard enough for one day, thanks!’
He departed with his customary air of quiet determination, a cigarette between his lips.
Étienne was becoming increasingly worried. It was now one o’clock: clearly Pluchart was going to let him down. By half past one the delegates began to appear, and he had to receive them because he wanted to vet them as they entered in case the Company had sent its usual spies along. He examined each letter of invitation and scrutinized each man carefully as he came past, although in fact many were able to get in without the letter since if he knew them already they were automatically allowed in. At the stroke of two he saw Rasseneur arrive and go to the bar, where he took his time finishing his pipe and talking to people. This impudent show of unflappability succeeded in irritating him, especially as one or two humorists had turned up just for the laugh, such as Zacharie, Mouquet and some others. This bunch didn’t care a jot about the strike and just found it hilarious to have nothing to do; and as they sat at their tables spending their last few coins on a glass of beer, they sneered and made fun of the comrades who were seriously committed to the strike, and who walked away, determined to hold their tongues despite their annoyance.
Another quarter of an hour went by. The men in the hall were growing restive. Eventually, having given up hope, Étienne braced himself for action. And he was just about to enter the hall when Widow Desire shouted from the front entrance where she had been keeping a lookout:
‘Wait, your gentleman’s here!’
It was indeed Pluchart. He arrived in a carriage drawn by a broken-down nag. At once he jumped down on to the road, a thin, foppish-looking man with a disproportionately large, square head, and wearing the Sunday best of a well-to-do artisan beneath his black woollen coat. It was five years since he had last touched a metalworker’s file, and he took great care of his appearance, his hair especially, as well as great pride in his skills as an orator; but manual labour had left him stiff in the joints, and the nails on his large hands had not grown back after all the metalwork. As someone who liked to keep busy, he served his ambitions by criss-crossing the region in the relentless diffusion of his political ideas.