‘Yes, yes, your father’s drying off now.’
The girl was dressed in her Sunday best, an old, dark-blue poplin dress that was faded and worn at the pleats. She was wearing a bonnet of simple black tulle.
‘Goodness! You’re all dressed up…Where are you off to?’
‘I’m going into Montsou to buy a ribbon for my bonnet…I took the old one out, it was filthy.’
‘Have you got some money?’
‘No, but La Mouquette’s promised to lend me ten sous.’
Her mother let her go. But when she reached the door, she called to her.
‘By the way, don’t buy your ribbon at Maigrat’s…He’ll only rip you off, and anyway he’ll think we’ve got money to burn.’
Her father, who had squatted down in front of the fire to dry his neck and armpits more quickly, merely added:
‘And don’t be still wandering the streets after dark.’
That afternoon Maheu worked in his garden. He had already sown his potatoes, beans and peas; and he began to put in some cabbage and lettuce plants that he had heeled in the day before. This little patch of garden provided them with all the vegetables they needed, except for potatoes, of which there were never enough. He was good at gardening as it happened and even managed to grow artichokes, which his neighbours regarded as showing off. While he was preparing his bed, Levaque had chosen that moment to come and smoke his pipe in his own patch, and he was now inspecting the romaine lettuce which Bouteloup had planted that morning; for if it hadn’t been for the lodger’s determination with the spade, there would have been nothing but nettles growing there. And so they began to chat across the trellis fence. Refreshed and invigorated after beating his wife, Levaque tried unsuccessfully to drag Maheu off to Rasseneur’s. Come on, one pint wouldn’t do him any harm, would it? They could have a game of skittles, wander round with the comrades for a bit, and then come home for their dinner. This was what people generally did after work, and no doubt there wasn’t any harm in it, but Maheu stubbornly refused: if he didn’t get his lettuce plants in, they’d have withered by the next day. In fact he was being good: he didn’t want to ask his wife for a single sou out of what she had left of the hundred she’d borrowed.
The clock was striking five when La Pierronne came to see if it was Jeanlin that her Lydie had gone off with. Levaque told her that something of the sort must have happened for Bébert, too, had vanished: those little rascals were always up to no good together. Once Maheu had told them about the dandelion salad and set their minds at rest, he and his comrade began to chaff La Pierronne with crude joviality. She was cross but made no effort to leave, secretly aroused by their dirty talk, which had her clutching her stomach and screaming back at them. Help arrived in the form of a skinny-looking woman whose angry splutterings made her sound like a clucking hen. Other women, standing in their doorways at a safe distance, made a show of being scandalized. School was out now and there were small children everywhere, swarms of little creatures screaming and fighting and rolling on the ground; while their fathers, at least those who were not off drinking, gathered in groups of three or four, squatting on their heels as though they were still down the mine, and smoking their pipes in the shelter of a wall as they exchanged a desultory word. La Pierronne departed in high dudgeon when Levaque asked to see if her thighs were nice and firm, and he decided to go to Rasseneur’s on his own while Maheu got on with his planting.
It was rapidly getting dark and La Maheude lit the lamp, annoyed that neither her daughter nor the boys were back yet. She could have bet on it: they never did manage all to be there for the one meal when they could have sat down and eaten together. On top of which she was still waiting for the dandelions. What could that little rascal possibly be picking at this hour when it was pitch dark! A salad would go so well with the vegetable stew she had simmering on the stove, a mixture of potatoes, leeks and sorrel chopped up and then cooked with fried onion! The whole house reeked of this fried onion, which is a pleasant smell at first but soon turns rancid. Its foul odour penetrates the brickwork of the miners’ houses to such an extent that the strong stench of this pauper cuisine announces their existence from far off in the countryside.
Once it was dark, Maheu came in from the garden and immediately slumped down on to a chair with his head against the wall. As soon as he sat down like this each evening, he fell asleep. The cuckoo clock was striking seven. Henri and Lénore had just broken a plate, having insisted on giving Alzire a hand setting the table, when old Bonnemort arrived back first, in a hurry to have his dinner before returning to the pit. So La Maheude woke Maheu:
‘Oh well, let’s eat anyway…They’re old enough to find their own way home. But it’s a shame about the salad!’
V
At Rasseneur’s Étienne had eaten some soup and then gone up to the tiny room he was to occupy in the attic, overlooking Le Voreux, where he fell exhausted on to the bed still fully dressed. In two days he had had less than four hours’ sleep. When he woke up at dusk, he was momentarily at a loss, unable to remember where he was; and he felt so groggy and ill that he struggled to his feet with the intention of getting some fresh air before having dinner and going to bed for the night.
Outside the weather was becoming much milder: the sooty sky was turning copper and threatening one of the long, steady downpours that are so common in this part of northern France and which can always be predicted from the warm moisture in the air. Night was falling, and great swathes of murk were enveloping the remoter reaches of the plain. The lowering sky seemed to be dissolving into black dust over this immense sea of reddish earth, and not a single breath of wind stirred the darkness at this hour. It was like the scene of some drab and sorry burial.
Étienne simply walked, at random and with no other aim than to clear his head. When he passed Le Voreux, already sunk in darkness at the bottom of its hollow and as yet unlit by a single lantern, he paused a moment to watch the day shift coming out. It was presumably six o’clock because stonemen, onsetters and stablemen were heading off in small groups and mingling with the blurred shapes of the women from the screening-shed, who were laughing in the gloom.
First came La Brûlé and her son-in-law Pierron. She was having a row with him because he hadn’t stood up for her during an argument with a supervisor over her tally of stones.
‘Bloody wimp! God! Call yourself a man, do you, crawling to those bastards like that? They’ll have us all for breakfast, they will.’
Pierron was calmly following her, making no reply. Eventually he said:
‘So I should have jumped the boss, should I? Thanks. A great way to get myself into trouble.’
‘Show him your backside, then!’ she shouted. ‘Christ Almighty! If only that daughter of mine had listened to me!…As if it wasn’t enough that they killed her father for me, now you want me to thank them too. Well, not me. I’ll have their guts for bloody garters.’
Their voices died away. Étienne watched her depart, with her hooked nose and her straggling white hair and her long, skinny arms that were gesticulating furiously. But behind him the sound of two young voices caught his ear. He had recognized Zacharie, who had been waiting there and had now been joined by his friend Mouquet.
‘Are you coming?’ asked the latter. ‘We’re just going to get something to eat and then head for the Volcano.’
‘Maybe later. I’m busy.’
‘How do you mean?’
Mouquet turned and saw Philomène coming out of the screening-shed. He thought he understood.
‘Oh, I see, that’s it…Well, I’m off then.’
‘Yes, all right. I’ll catch up with you later.’
As he departed, Mouquet ran into his father, old Mouque, who was also coming out of Le Voreux; and the two men exchanged a simple ‘hallo’ before the son took the main road and the father made off along the canal.
Zacharie was already pushing a reluctant Philomène towards the same deserted towpath. No, she was in a hurry, some ot
her time; and they quarrelled, as though they’d been married for years. It wasn’t much fun only ever seeing each other out of doors like this, especially in the winter when the ground’s wet and there’s no corn to lie on.
‘No, it’s not a case of that,’ he muttered impatiently. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
He put his arm round her waist and led her gently forward. When they had reached the shadow of the spoil-heap, he asked if she had any money on her.
‘What for?’ she demanded.
Then he started mumbling something about owing two francs and how upset his family was going to be.
‘Stop right there!…I saw Mouquet. You’re off to the Volcano again, and those filthy women that sing there.’
He protested his innocence, hand on heart, word of honour. When she merely shrugged, he said abruptly:
‘Why not come with us, if you like…It wouldn’t worry me. What would I be doing with any singers anyway?…How about it?’
‘And the little one?’ she replied. ‘How can I go anywhere with a kid screaming all the time?…It’s time I went home. I expect they can’t hear themselves think by now.’
But he stopped her, begged her. Please, he’d promised Mouquet and he’d only look a fool if he didn’t go. A man can’t just go home every evening like some roosting hen. Admitting defeat, she lifted the flap of her jacket, broke a thread with her nail and took some fifty-centimes coins from a corner of the hem. She was afraid of being robbed by her mother, and so this was where she hid the money she earned by doing overtime at the pit.
‘Look, I’ve got five,’ she said. ‘You can have three if you want…Only you’ve got to promise me that you’ll try and persuade your mother to let us get married. I’ve had enough of this outdoor life! And what’s more, Mum keeps blaming me for having so many mouths to feed…So come on, promise me first. Promise.’
She spoke in the listless voice of a gangling, sickly girl who felt no passion and was simply weary of living. He for his part promised faithfully, loudly giving her his word as God was his witness. Once he had the three coins in his hand, he kissed her and tickled her and made her laugh, and he would have gone the whole way, here in this little corner of the spoil-heap which served as the winter bedroom of their domestic bliss, but she said no, it would give her no pleasure. And she returned to the village alone while he took a short cut across the fields to rejoin his comrade.
Étienne had followed them absent-mindedly at a distance, not realizing at first and thinking that this was an innocent meeting. They grew up quickly, these mining girls; and he remembered the ones back in Lille and how he used to wait for them behind the factories, whole gangs of them, already corrupted at the age of fourteen by living in the kind of destitution that makes people simply let themselves go.
But another encounter surprised him even more, and he stopped in his tracks. There at the bottom of the spoil-heap, in a space between some large rocks that had rolled down, was little Jeanlin giving a furious telling-off to Lydie and Bébert seated either side of him.
‘What have you got to say for yourselves, eh?…You can each have your share of this fist if you think you can start demanding things…Whose idea was it in the first place, eh?’
It had indeed been Jeanlin’s idea. After spending an hour roaming about the fields beside the canal picking dandelions with the two others, it had occurred to him as he gazed at the amount they had collected that they would never eat all that at home; and instead of going back to the village he’d gone to Montsou, taking Bébert along to keep watch and making Lydie ring the doorbells of the bourgeois and offer to sell them some dandelion salad. Already versed in the ways of the world, he said that girls could sell whatever they had a mind to. In the heat of the commercial moment they’d sold the whole lot, but Lydie had made eleven sous. And now, bereft of salad, the three of them were sharing out the proceeds.
‘It’s not fair!’ Bébert protested. ‘You should divide by three…If you keep seven, that’ll only leave us two each.’
‘What do you mean ‘‘not fair’’?’ Jeanlin retorted furiously. ‘I picked more of them than you did, for a start.’
Bébert usually conceded out of timorous respect, forever the gullible victim. Though older and stronger he even allowed himself to be punched. But this time the prospect of so much money stirred him to resistance.
‘He’s diddling us, isn’t he, Lydie?…If he doesn’t share properly, we’ll tell his mother on him.’
At once Jeanlin stuck a fist under his nose.
‘You just say that once more and I’ll go and tell yours how you sold my mum’s salad…Anyway, you bloody idiot, how am I supposed to divide eleven by three? You try it if you’re so clever…So there’s two sous for each of you. Quick, take ’em or I’ll stick ’em back in my pocket.’
Bébert had no answer and accepted the two sous. Lydie, who was trembling, had said nothing for, like the child equivalent of a battered wife, she felt afraid of Jeanlin and yet loved him too. As he offered her the two sous, she reached out her hand with a submissive smile. But he suddenly changed his mind.
‘No, wait. What bloody use is two sous to you?…Your mother’ll only pinch ’em off you. Bound to, unless you hide them. I’d better look after them. Whenever you need money, you can just ask me.’
And the nine sous vanished. To keep her quiet, he grabbed her and rolled her over on the spoil-heap. She was his little woman, and together in dark corners they would experiment at the love they heard and saw going on at home behind partition walls or through cracks in the door. They knew all about it but had scarcely the means; as yet too young, they spent hours groping each other and pretending to do it like two naughty young puppies. He called it ‘playing mums and dads’, and whenever he took her off somewhere, she eagerly followed. She trembled with the delicious instinctive thrill of it as she allowed herself to be taken; and though he often did things that made her cross, she always yielded in the hope of something which never came.
Since Bébert was not allowed to participate in these particular games and got thumped each time he tried to touch Lydie, he felt angry and put out and didn’t know where to look when the pair of them messed about like this together, which they did quite happily in his presence. Hence his one idea was to scare them and to interrupt them by shouting that someone was looking.
‘It’s no good. There’s a man watching.’
In this case it was true, for Étienne had decided to continue his walk. The children leaped up and ran away as he came past the corner of the spoil-heap and continued along the edge of the canal, amused to see the rascals get such a fright. No doubt it was too soon for them to be up to this kind of thing at their age; but, well, they saw such goings-on and heard such filthy stories, you’d have to have tied them up if you wanted to stop them. Nevertheless, deep down, he found it depressing.
A hundred paces further on he encountered more couples. He had reached Réquillart, and here at the old, ruined mine every girl in Montsou was to be found loitering with her man. It was where everybody met, a remote, deserted spot where the putters came and conceived their first babies when they didn’t want to risk it on the shed roof back at home. The broken fences meant that everyone could get into the old pit-yard, which was now a wasteland littered with the remains of two collapsed sheds and the still-standing supports of the overhead railway. Disused tubs lay strewn about, and half-rotten timbering stood stacked in piles, while lush vegetation was vigorously reclaiming the place in the form of thick grass and some young trees, which had sprouted and were already sturdy. Each girl felt at home here: there were secret places for all, and their lovers could have their wicked way with them on top of the beams, behind the woodpiles or inside the tubs. They made themselves as comfortable as they could, cheek by jowl and yet oblivious to their neighbours. And it was as though, all around the defunct headgear and this shaft that was weary of disgorging its coal, creation itself were taking its revenge, as though unfettered love, lashed by in
stinct, were busy planting babies in the wombs of these girls who were hardly yet women.
All the same a caretaker still lived there, old Mouque. The Company had let him have two rooms situated almost directly beneath the derelict headgear, whose last remaining beams threatened daily to come crashing down on top of them. He had even had to prop up part of his roof. But he and his family were comfortable living there, with himself and Mouquet in one room and La Mouquette in the other. As there wasn’t a single pane of glass left in the windows, they had decided to board them up: this made it dark indoors, but at least it was warm. In fact the caretaker had nothing to take care of; he simply went off to look after his horses at Le Voreux and never bothered about the ruins of Réquillart, where all that was kept under repair was the mine-shaft itself so that it could serve as a flue for the engine which ventilated the neighbouring pit.
And this was how old Mouque came to be living out his days surrounded by young love. From the age of ten La Mouquette had been having sex in every corner of the ruins, not, like Lydie, as a timid and unripe little urchin-child, but as a girl who had filled out and was ready for boys with beards. There was nothing her father could say or do about it, for she always showed him proper respect and never asked any of her boyfriends into the house. Anyway, he was used to such things. Whether he was on his way out to Le Voreux or coming home again, the moment he ventured out of his lair he was always tripping over some couple hidden in the grass. Even worse, whenever he wanted to fetch some wood to cook his soup or pick some burdock for his rabbit over on the far side of the mine, there all the girls of Montsou would be, popping their pretty little noses up out of the grass, and he had to be careful where he trod so as not to step on any of the legs stretched out across the path. But gradually such encounters had ceased to trouble either party, neither himself, who simply tried to make sure that he didn’t trip over, nor the girls themselves, whom he left to get on with the business in hand as he tiptoed discreetly away like a good fellow who has no quarrel with the workings of nature. Except that just as they had now got to know him, so too he had come to recognize them, the way one recognizes amorous magpies disporting in the pear trees in the garden. Oh, these youngsters! They were always at it, they simply never stopped! Sometimes he shook his head in silent regret as he turned away from the noisy trollops panting loudly in the dark. Only one thing actually annoyed him: a particular pair of lovers had acquired the unfortunate habit of embracing against the outside wall of his room. Not that it kept him awake at night or anything of that sort; it was just that they pushed so hard that they were gradually damaging the wall.