But she began to despair: being naked brought no relief. What else could she remove? The buzzing in her ears was deafening, and she felt as though her temples were caught in a vice. She slumped to her knees. She had the impression that her lamp, wedged into the coal on the tub, was about to go out; and in her confused mind she clung to the thought that she must turn up the wick. Twice she tried to examine the lamp, and twice, as she set it on the ground in front of her, it dimmed as if it, too, were wanting for oxygen. Suddenly the lamp went out. Then everything began to spin in the darkness, a millstone was whirring round in her head, and her heart slowed and stopped, numbed by the immense torpor that had overtaken her limbs. She had fallen backwards and lay dying on the ground in the asphyxiating air.
‘Damn me if she’s not bloodly dawdling again!’ grumbled Chaval.
He listened from the top of the coal-face but heard no sound of wheels.
‘Catherine! I know you, you sly bitch!’
The sound of his voice vanished down the dark roadway, and not a breath could be heard in response.
‘Have I got to come and chase after you?’
Nothing stirred, and there was still the same deathly silence. Furious, he climbed down and began to run along the road, holding up his lamp but going so fast that he nearly tripped over Catherine’s body, which was blocking the way. He stared at it open-mouthed. What was the matter with her? She wasn’t pretending, was she, just so she could have a quick nap? But when he lowered his lamp to shine it in her face, it threatened to go out. He raised it and lowered it again, and finally he realized: the air must be bad. His rage had subsided, and the miner’s instinctive devotion to a comrade in danger took over. Already he had shouted for someone to bring his shirt, and now he seized the girl’s naked, lifeless body and lifted it as high as he possibly could. Once they had thrown his and Catherine’s clothes over his shoulders, he set off at the run, holding his burden up with one hand and carrying their two lamps with the other. The long roadways unwound as he raced ahead, taking a right here, a left there, searching for the cold, life-giving air of the plain coming from the ventilator. At length the sound of a spring brought him to a halt: some water was streaming through a crack in the rock. He found himself at a crossroads in the main haulage roadway which had once served Gaston-Marie. Here the ventilator was blowing up a storm, and the air was so cold that he even shivered after setting Catherine down on the ground, propped against some timbers. Her eyes were shut, and she was still unconscious.
‘Come on, Catherine. For God’s sake, a joke’s a joke…Here, don’t you move while I go and dip this in a bit of water.’
It frightened him to see her so limp. Nevertheless he was able to wet his shirt in the stream and bathe her face. She seemed for all the world to be dead, as though this slight, girlish body on which puberty was hesitating to place its mark were down here because it had already been buried. Then a shudder ran through her, through her undeveloped breasts and her belly down to the slender thighs of this poor, wretched girl who had been deflowered before her time. She opened her eyes and muttered:
‘I’m cold.’
‘Ah, that’s better! That’s more like it!’ Chaval exclaimed with relief.
He dressed her, passing the shirt easily over her head but cursing as he struggled to get her trousers on, for she could do little to help herself. Still dazed, she did not understand where she was nor why she had been naked. When she remembered, she was filled with shame. How on earth had she dared take everything off! She questioned Chaval: had anyone seen her like that, without so much as a neckerchief round her waist to cover her? Being fond of a laugh and given to making up stories, he told her how their comrades had all stood in a line as he brought her past. And what had possessed her to take him seriously when he’d told her to take her clothes off! Then he gave her his word that he had carried her there so fast that his comrades could not even have known whether her bum was round or square!
‘Blimey but it’s cold,’ he said, as he too got dressed again.
She had never known him be so nice. Usually for every kind word he spoke to her, she got two insults as well. How good it would have been to live in harmony together! In her state of exhausted lassitude she felt a warm fondness for him. She smiled and said softly:
‘Give me a kiss.’
He kissed her and lay down beside her to wait until she was ready to walk.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you were wrong to shout at me back there, because I just couldn’t go on any more. Even at the face it’s cooler. But if you knew how baking hot it is along at the other end of the road!’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘We’d be better off under the trees…But you, poor girl, it’s difficult for you working this section. I can see that.’
She was so touched to hear him agree that she put on a show of bravery.
‘Oh, I just had a weak turn. Anyway the air’s bad today…But you’ll soon see if I’m a sly one or not. If you’ve got to work, you’ve got to work. Isn’t that right? I’d rather die than not do my fair share.’
There was silence. He had his arm round her waist, holding her to his chest so that no harm should come to her. And while she already felt strong enough to return to the coal-face, she preferred to revel in the moment.
‘Only I wish,’ she went on very quietly, ‘that you could be kinder to me…If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.’
And she began to cry softly.
‘But I do love you,’ he protested, ‘or I wouldn’t have taken you to live with me.’
She simply nodded. Often men took women just so that they could have them for themselves, not caring a button whether they were happy or not. Her tears were flowing more hotly now as she thought with despair of the good life she could have had if she had ended up with someone else, someone who would always have had his arm round her waist like this. Someone else? And dimly she could perceive this person in the midst of her distress. But that was finished and done with now, and all she wanted was to be able to spend her life with the man she was with, just as long as he didn’t always treat her so roughly.
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘just try sometimes to be like you are now.’
Her sobbing stopped her from saying more, and he kissed her again.
‘You silly thing!…Look, I promise to be nice to you. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m any worse than the next man.’
She looked at him and began to smile again through her tears. Perhaps he was right: you didn’t come across many happy women. Then, although she only half believed his promise, she gave herself up to the joy of seeing him be nice to her. My God, if only it could have lasted! They were now in each other’s arms again; and while they were still holding each other in one long embrace, the sound of approaching footsteps brought them quickly to their feet. Three comrades who had seen them go past were coming to see if they were all right.
They all set off together. It was nearly ten o’clock, and they chose a cool spot to eat their lunch before going back to the sweltering heat at the coal-face. But just as they were finishing their sandwiches and about to take a swig of coffee from their flasks, they were alarmed by the sound of voices coming from far off in the mine. What could it be? Had there been another accident? They got to their feet and ran to find out. Hewers, putters and pit-boys were streaming past in the opposite direction, but nobody knew anything; everyone was shouting, it must be some terrible disaster. Panic was gradually beginning to spread throughout the mine, and shadowy figures emerged terrified from the roadways, their lamps bobbing into view before disappearing again into the darkness. Where was it? Why wouldn’t anyone say?
Suddenly a deputy rushed past shouting:
‘They’re cutting the cables! They’re cutting the cables!’
Then the panic took hold, and people were rushing madly along the dark roads. Everyone was completely bewildered. Why would anyone cut the cables? And who was cutting them, when there were workers still bel
ow? It seemed monstrous.
But the voice of another deputy rang out before it, too, vanished.
‘The Montsou crowd are cutting the cables! Everybody out!’
When he had grasped what was happening, Chaval stopped Catherine dead. His legs had gone quite weak at the thought that they might encounter the Montsou men if they went up. So they had come after all then, and there was he thinking they’d been stopped by the gendarmes! For a moment he thought of retracing their steps and going back up via Gaston-Marie; but that shaft was no longer in working order. He cursed, not knowing what to do, and trying to hide his fear, and he kept saying that there was no point running so fast. People were hardly going to leave them down here.
The deputy’s voice could be heard again, getting closer.
‘Everybody out. Use the ladders! Use the ladders!’
And so Chaval was swept along by his comrades. He started bullying Catherine, accusing her of not running fast enough. Did she want them to be left behind in the mine so that they could starve to death? Because those Montsou bastards were quite capable of smashing the ladders before everyone had got out. The voicing of this terrible possibility proved to be the last straw, and everyone around them began to career wildly along the roadways in a mad race to see who could get to the ladders first and go up before the others. Men were shouting that the ladders had already been smashed and that nobody would get out. And when groups of terrified people started pouring into pit-bottom there was a wholesale rush for the ladders, with everyone trying to squeeze through the narrow door to the emergency shaft all at the same time. Meanwhile an old stableman who had wisely just led the horses back to their stall looked on with the contemptuous indifference of one who was used to spending his nights down the pit and was quite certain that some way would always be found to get him out.
‘For Christ’s sake, would you go in front of me!’ Chaval shouted at Catherine. ‘At least that way I can catch you if you fall.’
Dazed and completely out of breath after this three-kilometre dash, which had once more soaked her in sweat, Catherine allowed herself to be swept along by the crowd, oblivious to what was happening. Then Chaval tugged her arm so hard he nearly broke it, and she let out a cry of pain and began to cry. He had forgotten his promise already, she would never be happy.
‘You must go first!’ he screamed at her.
But she was too frightened of him. If she went first, he would keep pushing and shoving her all the time. So she resisted, and their comrades pushed them aside in their mad rush. The water that seeped into the shaft was falling in large drops, and the floor of pit-bottom, suspended above the bougnou, a muddy pit some ten metres deep, was vibrating under the weight of all these trampling feet. And it was indeed at Jean-Bart that there had been a terrible accident two years previously when a cable had snapped and sent a cage hurtling down into the sump, drowning two men. Everybody remembered and was thinking that they might all end up down there if too many people crowded on to the floor at once.
‘Bugger it, then!’ Chaval shouted. ‘Die if you want to. And good riddance!’
He began climbing, and she followed.
From bottom to top there were one hundred and two ladders, each approximately seven metres long and standing on a narrow platform that filled the width of the shaft. A square hole in each landing was just wide enough to let a man’s shoulders through. It was like a squashed chimney some seven hundred metres high, between the outer wall of the main shaft and the lining of the winding-shaft, a damp, dark, endless tube in which the ladders stood almost vertically one above the other at regular intervals. It took a strong man twenty-five minutes to climb this giant column, though in fact it was used only in emergencies.
At first Catherine climbed cheerfully enough. Her bare feet were used to the sharpness of the coal along the roadway floors, and so the protective iron edging on the square rungs did not bother her. Her hands, hardened by pushing tubs, grasped the uprights easily enough even though they were too thick for her grip. Indeed this unexpected climb helped to occupy her mind and to take her out of her misery, as she became one of a long, snaking line of people coiling and hoisting its way upwards, three to a ladder, so long a line indeed that the head of the snake would emerge at the top while the tail was still dragging over the sump at the bottom. But they were not there yet, and the people at the top could scarcely have reached a third of the way up. Nobody was talking now, and the only sound was the dull rumble and thud of feet; and the lamps spaced out at regular intervals looked like an unravelling string of wandering stars.
Behind her Catherine heard a pit-boy counting the ladders, which made her want to count them too. They had already climbed fifteen, and they were coming to a loading-bay. But just at that moment she bumped into Chaval’s legs. He swore and told her to be more careful. One by one, the whole column of people slowed to a halt. What now? What had happened? Everyone found their voices again and started asking frightened questions. Their anxiety had been increasing ever since they had left the bottom, and the closer they drew to the daylight the more they were gripped by fear about what would happen to them once they reached the surface. Someone said they had to go back down, the ladders were broken. This was what everyone had been afraid of, that they might find themselves marooned in the void. Another explanation was passed down from mouth to mouth: a hewer had slipped and fallen from a ladder. Nobody knew what to believe, and the shouting prevented them from hearing properly. Were they all going to spend the night there? Eventually, without them being any the wiser, they began to climb again, in the same slow, laborious way as before, amid the rumble of feet and the bobbing of lamps. No doubt the broken ladders were further up!
By the thirty-second ladder, as they were passing a third loading-bay, Catherine felt her arms and legs grow stiff. At first she had sensed a slight prickling of the skin. Now she could no longer feel the wood and metal beneath her hands and feet. Her muscles ached, and the pain, slight at first, was gradually becoming more acute. In her dazed state she remembered Grandpa Bonnemort’s stories about the days when there was no proper ladder shaft and girls of ten would carry the coal up on their shoulders by means of ladders that were completely unprotected and simply placed against the wall of the shaft; so that when one of them slipped or even a piece of coal just fell out of a basket, three or four children would be sent flying, head first. The cramp was becoming unbearable, she would never make it to the top.
Further delays allowed her some respite. But these repeated waves of panic passing down the ladders eventually made her dizzy. Above and below her she could hear that people were having increasing difficulty in breathing: the interminable ascent was beginning to make them giddy, and like everyone else she wanted to be sick. Fighting for air, she felt almost drunk on the darkness, and the walls of the shaft seemed to press maddeningly against her flesh. The wet conditions made her shiver, as large drops of water fell on her sweat-drenched body. They were nearing the water table, and the water was raining down so heavily that it threatened to put out the lamps.
Twice Chaval asked Catherine a question but received no reply. What was she up to down there? Had she lost her tongue? She could at least tell him if she was all right. They had been climbing for half an hour now, but so laboriously that they had reached only the fifty-ninth ladder. Forty-three to go. Catherine eventually gasped that she was just about managing. He would have called her a lazy bitch again if she had told him how exhausted she was. The iron on the rungs must be biting into her feet, because she felt as though they were being sawn through to the bone. Each time she moved her hands up the ladder she expected to see them lose their grip and come away so raw and stiff that she could no longer clench her fingers; and she felt as though she were falling backwards, as though her arms and hips had been wrenched from their sockets by the constant effort. What she found most difficult was the lack of angle on the ladders, the fact that they were almost vertical and that she had to pull herself up by her wrists with her sto
mach pressed hard against the wood. The sound of people gasping for breath now drowned out the tramping of feet; and a vast wheezing, made ten times louder by the partitioning of the shaft, rose from the bottom and died away at the top. There was a groan of pain, then word came down that a pit-boy had cracked his head underneath one of the platform landings.
And up Catherine went. They passed the water-table. The deluge had ceased, and now the cellar-like air was thick with mist and the musty stench of old iron and rotting wood. She persisted in counting quietly and mechanically to herself under her breath: eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three, nineteen to go. Only the steady rhythm of the repeated numbers kept her going, for she had ceased to be conscious of her movements. When she looked up, the lamps spiralled into the distance. Her blood was draining away, and she felt as though she were dying, as though the merest draught would send her flying. The worst of it was that people were now pushing and shoving their way up from below, and the whole column was on the stampede, yielding in its exhaustion to growing anger and a desperate need to see daylight again. The first comrades were out of the shaft, so no ladders had been smashed; but the thought that they still could be – to prevent the remainder from getting out while others were already up there breathing the fresh air – was enough to drive them into a frenzy. And when there was a further hold-up, people started cursing and continued to climb anyway, elbowing others aside or clambering over them in a general free-for-all.