‘And you’re the one who’s always saying how filthy everyone else is!’ La Levaque shouted at La Pierronne. ‘No wonder you’re so clean if you’re getting the bosses to scrub the floor for you!’
‘Oh, she’s a fine one to talk, she is!’ said Levaque, taking up the theme. ‘That’s the bitch who said my wife sleeps with me and the lodger together, one beneath and one on top!…Oh, yes, that’s what they told me you said.’
But La Pierronne had recovered her composure, and she listened unbowed to the insults and the crude remarks, thoroughly disdainful in the certainty that she was richer and prettier than any of them.
‘I said what I said, so now clear off…Do you hear me? What business is it of yours what I get up to? You’re all just jealous and resent us because we’ve got money to put in the bank! Oh, yes, you can say what you like, but my husband knows perfectly well why Monsieur Dansaert was in our house.’
And indeed by now Pierron was angrily defending his wife. So they rounded on him instead, calling him a lackey, a grass, the Company’s poodle, accusing him of locking himself in at home so that he could stuff himself on the choice morsels with which the bosses paid him for his treachery. He retaliated, claiming that Maheu had been slipping threatening notes under his door, one with a dagger and crossbones on it. And of course it all ended with the men fighting, just like all the other rows the women had started ever since hunger had turned even the mildest among them into a fury. Maheu and Levaque laid into Pierron with their fists, and they had to be dragged off him.
The blood was pouring from her son-in-law’s nose when La Brûlé in turn arrived from the wash-house. Once they had told her what was going on, all she said was:
‘That pig’s a disgrace to me.’
The street was once again deserted, with not a shadow to blot the bare whiteness of the snow; and the village, having relapsed into its state of mortal inactivity, continued to starve to death surrounded by the intense cold.
‘Any sign of the doctor?’ Maheu asked, closing the door after him.
‘He’s not been,’ replied La Maheude, who was still standing by the window.
‘Are the little ones back?’
‘No, not yet.’
Maheu resumed his heavy pacing, from one wall to the other, like some dazed ox. Old Bonnemort, sitting stiffly on his chair, had not even raised his head. Alzire, too, was silent and tried not to shiver, so as not to upset them; but despite her courage in the midst of her suffering she sometimes shook so violently that one could hear her thin, ailing young body almost rattling under the blanket. Meanwhile her big, wide eyes stared up at the ceiling where the pale reflection from the white gardens outside filled the room as though with moonlight.
They had reached their final hour: the house had been completely emptied, stripped terminally bare. The mattress covers had followed the wool stuffing to the second-hand shop; then the sheets had followed, and their linen, anything that could be sold. One evening they had got two sous for one of Grandpa’s handkerchiefs. Tears were shed over each object that the penniless household found it had to part with, and La Maheude still rued the day she had taken along the little pink box, an old present from Maheu, wrapped in her skirt, as though she were taking an infant off to abandon it on someone’s doorstep. They were destitute, and all they had left to sell was the skin on their bodies, which in any case was so damaged and used that no one would have paid a penny for it. So now they didn’t even bother to search for something to sell, they knew there wasn’t anything, that the end had come, that there was no hope of their ever again having a candle or a piece of coal or a potato; and as they waited to die, their only grievance was on behalf of the children, for they were outraged by the pointless cruelty of the little girl being afflicted with illness before she then starved to death anyway.
‘At last. Here he comes!’ said La Maheude.
A dark shape passed the window. The door opened. But it was not Dr Vanderhaghen. Instead they recognized the new priest, Father Ranvier, who did not appear in the least surprised to find the house dead, without light or fire or bread. He had just come from three other neighbouring households, doing the rounds of the families in an effort to recruit men of goodwill to his cause, just as Dansaert had done earlier in the company of the gendarmes. At once he explained his purpose in the feverish voice of the fanatic:
‘Why did you not come to Mass last Sunday, my children? You are wrong, only the Church can save you…Now then, promise me you’ll come next Sunday.’
Maheu had paused to see who it was and then resumed his heavy pacing, without a word. It was La Maheude who replied:
‘To Mass, Father? Whatever for? When the good Lord couldn’t care less about us?…Look! What harm did my little girl ever do Him? Yet now she’s got the fever. We weren’t suffering enough, I suppose, so He had to make her ill just when I haven’t even got a warm drink to give her.’
The priest stood there and held forth at great length. He was using the strike – the terrible poverty, the sense of grievance sharpened by hunger – with the ardour of a missionary preaching to savages for the greater glory of his religion. He said that the Church was on the side of the poor and that one day it would cause justice to triumph by calling down the wrath of God upon the iniquities of the rich. And that day would soon dawn, for the rich had usurped God’s place and were even now governing without God, having wickedly stolen His power. But if the workers were seeking the fair distribution of the fruits of the earth, then they should begin by placing their faith in the priests of the Church, just as the humble and the meek had gathered round the apostles upon the death of Jesus. What power the Pope would have then, what an army the clergy would be able to call upon if it could command the workers in their countless hosts! Within a week they would cleanse the world of the evildoers, they would dispatch the unworthy masters, and the true kingdom of God would be at hand, where each man would be rewarded according to his just desserts and the laws of the workplace would ensure the happiness of all.
As she listened, La Maheude thought she could hear Étienne, back on those autumn evenings when he told them that their troubles would soon be over. The only difference was that she had always been suspicious of men of the cloth.
‘That’s all very fine, Father,’ she said. ‘But you’re only saying that because you’ve fallen out with the bourgeois…All our other priests used to dine with the manager, and then they’d threaten us with hell-fire the moment we asked for bread.’
He continued, turning now to the deplorable rift that had occurred between the Church and the people. And in veiled terms he began to attack the urban priesthood, the bishops, the higher clergy, all of them sated on self-indulgence, bloated with power, and in their foolish blindness living hand in glove with the liberal bourgeoisie, not seeing that it was the bourgeoisie which was robbing them of their dominion over the world. Deliverance would come at the hands of the country priests, who would rise up as one to restore the kingdom of Christ, with the aid of the poor. And it was as though he were already at their head as he drew himself up to the full height of his bony frame, a leader of men, a Gospel revolutionary, his eyes filled with such a blazing light that they lit up the dark room. His fervent preaching so bore him up on the language of mysticism that for some time now the poor Maheus had not understood a thing he said.
‘We don’t need all your words,’ Maheu interrupted crossly. ‘You’d have done better to start by bringing us a loaf of bread.’
‘Come to Mass on Sunday,’ cried the priest. ‘God will provide!’
And away he went, off to catechize the Levaques next, so uplifted by his dream of the Church’s final victory and so disdainful of the realities of life that he continued empty-handed on his rounds of the villages, bringing no alms among this mass of people who were dying of hunger, a poor devil himself who regarded suffering as the very catalyst of salvation.
Maheu was still pacing up and down, and all that could be heard in the room was the regular th
ud of his feet as the flag-stones shook beneath him. Then there was the sound of a rusty pulley turning as old Bonnemort spat into the fireplace. After which the rhythmic pacing began again. Alzire, drowsy with fever, had begun to mutter deliriously and to laugh, thinking that it was warm and that she was playing in the sunshine.
‘God in heaven!’ La Maheude murmured, having felt her cheeks. ‘She’s on fire…I’m not waiting for that bastard any more. Those criminals must have told him not to come.’
She was referring to the Company doctor. She gave a cry of joy none the less when she saw the door open once again. But she lowered her raised arms and stood there, ramrod straight, with a scowl on her face.
‘Evening,’ Étienne said softly, having carefully shut the door after him.
He would often call in like this when it was completely dark. From the second day the Maheus had known about his hiding-place, but they kept the secret, and no one in the village knew exactly what had become of the young man. As a result he was now a figure of legend. People continued to believe in him, and mysterious rumours circulated, like how one day he would return at the head of an army with coffers full of gold; and it was still as though everyone was waiting religiously for a miracle, for their hour to come, for the sudden entry into the city of justice that he had promised them. Some said they’d seen him in a smart carriage, with three other gentlemen, heading for Marchiennes; others maintained that he would be remaining in England for another couple of days. Eventually, however, they began to doubt him, and some jokers accused him of hiding in a cellar with La Mouquette to keep him warm; for his affair with her was public knowledge and had done him harm. His widespread popularity was slowly beginning to give way to disillusion as more and more of the faithful began to despair. Their number would grow.
‘What filthy weather!’ he added. ‘How about you? Any news? Things still getting worse?…I heard that young Négrel had gone off to Belgium to fetch men from the Borinage coal-field. Christ, we’re done for if it’s true!’
He had given an involuntary shudder on entering this dark, icy-cold room, where he had to wait for his eyes to get used to the gloom before he could make out these poor, wretched people inside, and whom even then he discerned only as a thickening of shadow. He felt the repugnance and unease of the working man who has been lifted out of his class by the refinement of study and the thrust of ambition. The poverty and the smell and all these people living on top of one another! And the desperate pity of it all that was bringing a lump to his throat! Their last hour had come, and he found the spectacle so upsetting that he searched for some way to advise them to give up the struggle.
But suddenly there was Maheu standing foursquare in front of him and shouting:
‘Belgians! They wouldn’t dare, the useless bastards!…Well, just let them send their Belgians down, and then watch us destroy their pits for them!’
Looking embarrassed, Étienne explained that it was impossible to move an inch round the place: the soldiers guarding the pits would protect the Belgian workers as they went down. And Maheu clenched his fists, infuriated above all at having a bayonet in his back, as he put it. So the miners were no longer masters in their own backyard? Were they to be treated like galley-slaves and forced to work at rifle-point? He loved his pit, and it had hurt him greatly not to go down it for the last two months. So he saw red at the thought of being insulted like this, by these foreigners they were talking of bringing in. Then he remembered that he had been sacked, and it broke his heart.
‘I don’t know why I’m getting worked up about it,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t belong in the bloody place any more…And once they’ve kicked me out of this house, I may as well go and die along the road somewhere.’
‘Enough!’ said Étienne. ‘They’d take you back tomorrow if you wanted. Nobody sacks good workers.’
He broke off in astonishment on hearing Alzire, who was still laughing away quietly in the delirium of her fever. So far he had been able to identify only the stiff outline of old Bonnemort, and this gaiety on the part of a sick child disturbed him. This time things had gone too far, if the children were now starting to die. In a trembling voice, he took the plunge:
‘Look here, this can’t go on. We’re done for…We’ll have to give in.’
La Maheude, who had remained motionless and silent until then, now let fly, screaming in his face as though he were one of her own, swearing like a man:
‘What did you say? You? Of all bloody people!’
He tried to explain, but she wouldn’t let him speak.
‘Don’t you bloody well dare say that again, or God help me! I may be a woman but you’ll soon feel the back of my hand across your face…We’d have spent the last two months dying of starvation, I’d have sold every object I possess, and my children would have been ill, but all for no purpose, all to keep on with the same old injustice…Oh, I tell you, the very thought of it makes my blood boil. No! No! I’d sooner set fire to the whole bloody lot and kill every single one of them rather than give up now.’
She gestured towards Maheu through the darkness with a grand, menacing wave of her hand:
‘I tell you here and now. If that man returns to work, I’ll be there waiting for him on the road, and I’ll spit in his face and tell him he’s one filthy coward!’
Étienne could not see her, but he could feel the heat coming from her, like the breath of a barking dog; and he recoiled in shock at this furious outburst of which he had been the cause. He found her so changed that he no longer recognized the woman who had once been full of good sense and used to reproach him for his violence. She used to say that one should never wish anyone dead, and yet here she was refusing to listen to reason and talking of killing everyone in sight. Now it was her not him who was taking the political line, wanting to get rid of the bourgeoisie in one fell swoop, demanding a republic and calling for the return of the guillotine to rid the world of the thieving rich who had grown fat on the toil of the starving poor.
‘Yes indeed, I’d skin them alive with my own bare hands…No, we’ve had quite enough, thank you very much! Our time has come, you said so yourself…When I think that our fathers and grandfathers and grandfathers’ fathers and everyone before them have all suffered as we’re suffering now, and that our sons and their sons will all suffer the same, it makes me absolutely wild. Just give me the knife…We didn’t do the half of what we should have done the other day. We should have demolished the whole of Montsou, down to the last sodding brick! And do you know what? My one big regret is that I didn’t let Grandpa choke the life out of that girl from La Piolaine…After all, they’re happy enough to choke the life out of my kids, aren’t they?’
Her words cut through the darkness like the blows of an axe. The closed horizon had refused to open and, deep inside her head, riven by suffering, the unattainable ideal was now turning to poison.
‘You’ve misunderstood me,’ Étienne managed to say finally, beating a retreat. ‘I meant we ought to try and reach an agreement with the Company. I know for a fact that the pits are deteriorating badly, and it would most likely consent to some form of compromise.’
‘No, not one inch!’ she screamed.
At that moment Lénore and Henri came home, empty-handed. A gentleman had given them two sous right enough, but as Lénore was always kicking her little brother, the money had fallen into the snow. Jeanlin had helped them look, but they had not been able to find the coins.
‘Where is Jeanlin, then?’
‘He went off somewhere, Mum. He said there were things he had to do.’
Étienne listened, sick at heart. Previously she used to threaten to kill them if they went begging. Now she sent them out on to the roads herself, and she even talked of them all going, all ten thousand miners from Montsou, each with stick and bundle like the paupers of old, roaming the region and terrifying its inhabitants.
The anguish in that dark room grew deeper still. The children had come home, hungry and wanting food, and now they
wondered why no one was eating; they grumbled and mooched about, eventually treading on the feet of their dying sister, who uttered a groan. Furious, La Maheude tried to slap them and lashed out at random in the dark. When they started howling and demanding bread, she burst out crying and slumped down on to the floor, hugging the pair of them as well as the sick Alzire in one single embrace; and the tears poured out of her, copiously, in a form of nervous reaction which left her feeling completely limp and exhausted, as she repeated the same phrase over and over, calling on death to come: ‘Dear God, why will You not take us all now? For pity’s sake, take us and be done with it!’ The grandfather continued to sit motionless like a gnarled old tree battered by the wind and the rain, while the father paced up and down from fireplace to dresser, his eyes firmly fixed in front of him.
But then the door opened, and this time it was Dr Vander-haghen.
‘What the devil!’ he exclaimed. ‘A candle won’t harm your eyesight, you know…Come on, quick, I’m in a hurry.’
As usual he kept on grumbling, worn out by work. Fortunately he had some matches, and Maheu had to light six of these, one after the other, and hold them up so that the doctor could examine the sick girl. Stripped of her blanket, she lay shivering in the flickering light, like a thin, starving bird in the snow, so puny now that all one could see was her hump. And yet she was smiling, with that absent smile of the dying, wide-eyed, while her poor little fists lay clenched on her hollow chest. And when La Maheude asked, choking back the tears, whether it was right that this child – the only one who helped her round the house, who was so intelligent and so sweet-natured – should be taken before her, the doctor lost his temper.
‘There. She’s gone now…The damned child’s died of starvation. And she’s not the only one either. I’ve just seen another, down the street…You all call me out, but there’s nothing I can do. Meat’s what you all need. That’ll cure you.’
Maheu, his fingers burned, had dropped the match; and darkness fell once more on the little corpse that was still warm. The doctor had rushed away. And in the blackness of the room all Étienne could hear was La Maheude sobbing and crying out again and again, in ceaseless funereal lament, for death to come: