‘Now don’t be angry!’ he said, forestalling any question or reproach. ‘Yesterday I had a lecture at Preuilly in the morning and a meeting at Valençay in the evening. Today it was lunch in Marchiennes, with Sauvagnat…And then I finally managed to get a cab. I’m exhausted, just listen to my voice. But never mind, I shall speak just the same.’
He had reached the door of the Jolly Fellow when he suddenly remembered something.
‘Heavens! I nearly forgot the membership cards! Right fools we’d look!’
He returned to the cab, which the coachman was now backing into a shed, removed a small black wooden chest from the baggage compartment and tucked it under his arm before walking back.
A beaming Étienne followed after him while Rasseneur, at a loss, didn’t even venture to hold out his hand. But already Pluchart had grasped it and was making passing reference to his letter. What a funny thing to suggest! Not hold the meeting? You should always hold a meeting if you could. Widow Desire asked if she could get him anything, but he declined. No need! He could speak without having a drink first. But time was pressing, he wanted to make it to Joiselle that evening and sort things out with Legoujeux. And so the whole group entered the hall together. Maheu and Levaque, arriving late, followed them in. The door was locked so that they could ‘make themselves at home’, which had the laughter-merchants guffawing even louder when Zacharie asked Mouquet at the top of his voice if this meant they were all going to get a screw.
A hundred or so miners were waiting on the benches in the stuffy hall, where the warm odours remaining from the most recent dance rose from the wooden floor. People were whispering and turning round in their seats as the new arrivals came and occupied the empty places. They eyed the gentleman from Lille, whose frock-coat surprised and unsettled them.
But immediately Étienne moved that a committee be appointed. He proposed some names, and others raised their hands in approval. Pluchart was elected chairman, and as his assistants they chose Maheu and Étienne himself. Chairs were moved around, and the committee took up position. They lost the chairman for a moment, but he had only disappeared under the table to stow the wooden chest that he had been hanging on to until then. When he resurfaced, he banged his fist gently on the table to call the meeting to order; and then, in a hoarse voice, he began:
‘Citizens…’
A small side-door opened, and he had to pause. It was Widow Desire, who had gone round by the kitchen and brought back six glasses of beer on a tray.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she whispered. ‘Talking makes a man thirsty.’
Maheu took the tray and Pluchart was able to continue. He said how touched he was to receive such a warm welcome from the workers of Montsou, and he apologized for being late, telling them about his sore throat and how tired he was. Then he gave way to Citizen Rasseneur, who had asked for the floor.
Rasseneur had already taken up position beside the table, next to the beers. He had turned a chair round to use it as a rostrum. He seemed very emotional, and cleared his throat before launching forth in a loud voice:
‘Comrades…’
The reason for his influence over the colliers lay in the ease with which he spoke and the genial way he could go on talking to them for hours on end and never flagged. He didn’t attempt any hand gestures but just plodded smilingly on, drowning them in his words until they were all so dazed that to a man they would shout: ‘Yes, yes, it’s true, you’re right!’ Yet that day, from the moment he opened his mouth, he had sensed an unspoken hostility. And so he proceeded cautiously, confining himself to saying how they must continue the strike, waiting for the applause before he attacked the International. Yes, indeed, honour meant that they could not yield to the Company’s demands; and yet what suffering, what suffering, what terrible times lay ahead if they had to hold out much longer! And without explicitly calling for an end to the strike, he set about weakening their resolve, painting a picture of starving villages and asking where the supporters of the strike were hoping to find the resources with which to continue. Three or four friends tried to show their support, but this only accentuated the cold silence of the remainder and the growing irritation and disapproval with which his speech was being received. Then, despairing of winning them over, he lost his temper and started predicting disaster if they allowed their heads to be turned by strangers who had come to agitate. By now two thirds of the men were on their feet, angrily trying to shut him up if all he was going to do was insult them and treat them like naughty children. But on he went despite the uproar, taking repeated swigs of beer and shouting that no man alive could stop him doing his duty!
Pluchart had stood up. Having no bell, he banged loudly on the table and repeated in a strangled voice:
‘Citizens! Citizens!’
Eventually he managed to restore some order and put the matter to the meeting, which voted to withdraw Rasseneur’s right to speak. Those delegates who had represented the different pits during the talks with M. Hennebeau gave the lead, and the rest of the men, their heads full of all the new ideas and goaded to a frenzy by hunger, followed. The result of the vote was a foregone conclusion.
‘It’s all right for you, you bastard. You’ve got food!’ screamed Levaque, shaking his fist at Rasseneur.
Étienne had leaned over behind Pluchart to calm Maheu, who had gone very red in the face in his fury at the hypocrisy of Rasseneur’s speech.
‘Citizens,’ said Pluchart. ‘Allow me to say something.’
There was complete silence. He spoke. His voice sounded hoarse and strained, but with his busy schedule he was used to it: laryngitis was all part of the programme. Gradually he began to increase the volume, and some touching sounds he made. With arms spread wide and shoulders dipping to the rhythm of his phrasing, he displayed a preacher’s eloquence, dropping his voice at the end of each sentence to a kind of religious hush and gradually convincing his listeners by the insistence of his rolling cadence.
He delivered his set speech on how marvellous the International was and the benefits it could provide, for this was how he usually chose to present it at venues where he was speaking for the first time. He explained how its aim was the emancipation of the workers, and he described its grandiose structure, with the commune at the bottom, then the province, above that the nation, and lastly, at the very summit, humanity in general. His arms moved slowly through the air, piling level upon level and constructing the vast cathedral of the future. Then he spoke about how the organization was run: he read out its statutes, talked about the congresses, drew attention to the way the scope of its activities was growing, how its agenda had moved beyond the debate about pay and was now focused on dissolving social distinctions and abolishing the very notion of a wage-earning class. No more nationalities! The workers of the world united in the common pursuit of justice, sweeping away the dead wood of the bourgeoisie and finally creating the free society in which he who works not, reaps not! He was now bellowing, and his breath set the streamers fluttering beneath the smoke-stained ceiling, itself so low that it magnified the sound of his voice.
Heads began to nod in waves of unison. One or two men called out:
‘That’s the way!…We’re with you!’
Pluchart went on. Within three years they would have conquered the world. And he listed the countries that had been conquered already. People everywhere were rushing to join. No new religion had ever made so many converts so quickly. Later, once they were the masters, it would be their turn to lay down the law, and then the bosses could have a taste of their own medicine for once.
‘Yes! Yes!…The bosses can go down the pits!’
He motioned to them to be silent. Now he was coming to the question of strikes. In principle he was against them: they took too long to have an effect and in fact just made life worse for the workers. Things would be better arranged in future, but for the moment – and when there was just no other way – you had to accept them, because at least they had the merit of disrupting capitalism.
And in that kind of situation, as he pointed out, the International could be a godsend for strikers. He gave examples: one from Paris, when the bronze-founders went on strike and the bosses had met all their demands immediately because they were terrified at the news that the International was sending aid; another from the London branch, which had saved the miners at one colliery by paying for the repatriation of a team of Belgian pitmen brought over by the mine-owner. You had only to join and the companies started running scared, and that way the workers became part of labour’s great army, ready to die for one another rather than remain the slaves of capitalist society.
He was interrupted by applause. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, refusing the glass of beer that Maheu wanted to pass him. When he tried to continue, he was prevented by further applause.
‘That should do it!’ he said quickly to Étienne. ‘They’ve heard enough…Quick! The cards!’
He had dived under the table and soon re-emerged with the little black chest.
‘Citizens!’ he shouted above the noise, ‘here are the membership cards. If your delegates will come forward, I will give them some to hand round…We can settle up later.’
Rasseneur rushed forward and started protesting again. Étienne for his part was getting worried because he, too, had a speech to make. There was complete chaos. Levaque was punching the air, ready for a fight. Maheu was on his feet saying something that nobody could hear a word of. And as the uproar increased, dust rose from the floor, the dust of dances past, fouling the air with the reek of pit-boys and putters.
Suddenly the side-door opened, and Widow Desire stood there, her stomach and bust filling the doorway as she boomed:
‘Quiet, for God’s sake!…The men in blue are here.’
The local superintendent had turned up, rather belatedly, with the intention of breaking up the meeting and reporting the matter to his superiors. He was accompanied by four gendarmes. For the previous five minutes Widow Desire had been trying to delay them on her doorstep, telling them that it was her house and she had a perfect right to invite what friends she pleased. But then they had pushed their way in, so she had hurried to come and warn her brood.
‘You’d better come this way,’ she continued. ‘There’s a bloody gendarme watching the yard. But don’t worry, you can get out into the alley through my woodshed…Get a move on, for heaven’s sake!’
Already the superintendent was banging his fist on the main door to the hall; and since no one was opening it, he was threatening to break it down. He must have had inside information because he was shouting that the meeting was illegal on account of the fact that a large number of miners present had no letter of invitation.
Inside the hall confusion mounted. They couldn’t leave just like that, they hadn’t even voted yet, neither about joining the International nor about continuing the strike. Everybody was trying to speak at once. Eventually the chairman hit on the idea of voting by acclamation. Hands shot up, and the delegates hastily declared that they were joining on behalf of their absent comrades. Thus did the ten thousand miners of Montsou become members of the International.
Meanwhile the rout had begun. To cover their retreat Widow Desire had gone over to stand with her back to the main door, and she could feel the police slamming their rifle-butts into it behind her. The miners were clambering over the benches and streaming out through the kitchen and woodshed one after another. Rasseneur was one of the first to disappear, followed by Levaque, who had completely forgotten how he had insulted him earlier and was now hoping to cadge a beer, just to steady his nerves. Étienne, having grabbed the little chest, was waiting behind with Pluchart and Maheu, for whom it was a point of honour to be the last out. Just as they were leaving, the lock finally gave, and the superintendent found himself in the presence of Widow Desire and the further obstacle of her stomach and bust.
‘A lot of good that’s done you, smashing the place up like this,’ she said. ‘You can see perfectly well there’s nobody here!’
The superintendent was of the ponderous sort: he disliked fuss and simply warned her that if she weren’t careful, he’d lock her up. And off he went to make his report, taking the four gendarmes with him, while Zacharie and Mouquet jeered at them, so impressed by their comrades’ clever escape that they were not afraid to mock the arm of the law.
Outside in the alleyway Étienne broke into a run, despite the encumbrance of the wooden chest, and the others followed. He suddenly remembered Pierron and asked why they hadn’t seen him. Maheu, running beside him, replied that he’d been ill: a convenient illness, too, otherwise known as the fear of being implicated. They tried to persuade Pluchart to stay for a while but, without breaking step, he told them that he must be off at once to Joiselle, where Legoujeux was waiting for instructions. So they shouted goodbye as they continued to race through Montsou as fast as their legs could carry them. They talked in snatches between gasping for breath. Étienne and Maheu were laughing happily, certain now of victory: once the International had sent them aid, the Company would be begging them to go back to work. And in this surge of hope, amid the sound of these stampeding boots clattering over the cobbled streets, there was something else, something dark and savage, like a wind of violence that would soon be whipping every village in every corner of the coal-field into a storm of frenzy.
V
Another fortnight went by. It was now early January, and cold mists numbed the vast plain. Things were worse than they had ever been: with food increasingly scarce, each hour that passed was bringing the villages closer to death. Four thousand francs from the International in London had barely provided bread for three days. Since then, nothing. The failure of their one great hope was undermining everyone’s courage. Who could they count on now if even their brothers were going to abandon them to their fate? They felt completely lost, all alone in the world and surrounded by the deep midwinter.
By Tuesday Village Two Hundred and Forty had run out of everything. Étienne had been working round the clock with the delegates: they undertook collections, they organized public meetings, they tried to recruit new members in the neighbouring towns, even as far away as Paris. Their efforts had little effect. At the beginning they had succeeded in arousing public concern, but now, as the strike dragged quietly on without dramatic incident, people were gradually losing interest. Such meagre donations as they did raise were scarcely enough to support the most destitute families. Others survived by pawning their clothes or selling off their household effects one by one. Everything was disappearing in the direction of the second-hand dealers, whether it was the wool stuffing out of their mattresses, or kitchen utensils, or even furniture. For a brief moment they thought they were saved when the small shopkeepers in Montsou started offering credit as a way of taking back customers from Maigrat, who had been gradually putting them out of business; and for one week Verdonck the grocer and Carouble and Smelten the two bakers had virtually held open house; but the credit they gave didn’t go very far, and the three of them then stopped giving it. The bailiffs were pleased, but the net result for the miners was a burden of debt that was to weigh on them for a long time to come. With no more credit available anywhere and not even an old saucepan left to sell, they might as well lie down and die in a corner like so many mangy dogs.
Étienne would have sold his flesh. He had stopped taking his secretarial salary and pawned his smart woollen coat and trousers in Marchiennes, happy to be able to keep the Maheus’ pot on the boil. All he had left were his boots, which he had kept, he said, so that his kicks would hurt. His major regret was that the strike had come too soon, before his provident fund had had time to accumulate. For him that was the only explanation for why they were in the present disastrous situation: come the day when they had saved enough money to fund their struggle, the workers would surely triumph over the bosses. And he remembered how Souvarine had accused the Company of provoking the strike so as to destroy the fund while it was still small.
The si
ght of the village and all these wretched people without food or coal upset him deeply, and he preferred to absent himself on long, tiring walks. One evening, as he was passing Réquillart on his way home, he came on an old woman who had collapsed by the side of the road and was presumably suffering from starvation. When he had lifted her into a sitting position, he called out to a girl he had seen on the other side of the fence.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, recognizing La Mouquette. ‘Give me a hand, will you? We need to give her something to drink.’
Tears welled in La Mouquette’s eyes, and she ran into her house, the rickety shack that her father had constructed amid the ruins. She was back in a trice with some gin and a loaf of bread. The gin revived the old woman, who gnawed greedily at the loaf without saying a word. She was the mother of one of the miners and lived in a village over towards Cougny; she had collapsed here on her way back from Joiselle, where she had gone in vain to try and borrow ten sous from a sister of hers. After she had eaten, she tottered off in a daze.
Étienne remained behind in the waste ground of Réquillart, with its tumbledown sheds that were gradually disappearing beneath the brambles.
‘Won’t you come in and have a drink?’ La Mouquette asked him cheerfully.
And when he hesitated:
‘So you’re still afraid of me, are you?’
Won over by her laughter, he followed her in. He was touched by how readily she had given the old woman her bread. She didn’t want to receive him in her father’s room and so she led him into her own, where she immediately poured out two small glasses of gin. Her room was very clean and tidy, and he complimented her on it. In fact the family seemed well provided for: her father was still working as a stableman at Le Voreux; and she herself, not being the sort to stand idly by, had started taking in laundry, which earned her thirty sous a day. Just because you enjoy a laugh with the lads doesn’t mean you’re lazy.