Human Beast: The Emile Zola Society Edition

  VII

  That Friday, passengers intending to catch the 6.40 express at Le Havre awoke with cries of dismay. Snow had been falling thick and fast since midnight, and the streets were ankle deep.

  In the station, the train was ready to leave; seven carriages, three second class and four first, and La Lison steaming and ready to go. When Jacques and Pecqueux had arrived at the engine shed to inspect the locomotive at half past five, they couldn’t believe how much snow had fallen. And the sky was still black, with more snow to come. They stood on the footplate listening for the whistle to proceed, looking out in front of them through the gaping mouth of the train shed and watching the snowflakes falling swiftly and silently, streaking the darkness with a shimmer of white.

  ‘I’m blowed if I can see the signal,’ the driver muttered.

  ‘We’ll be lucky to get through!’ said the fireman.

  Roubaud was standing on the platform with his lamp, having arrived that minute to begin his shift. There were dark rings under his eyes, which kept closing from fatigue as he supervised the departure. Jacques asked him if he knew anything about the state of the line; he came over to him, shook his hand and said that he had received no report so far. At that moment Séverine came down the steps wrapped in a heavy overcoat. Roubaud led her to a first-class compartment and helped her to get in. He must have noticed the look of affection and anxiety that the two lovers exchanged. Yet it didn’t occur to him to tell his wife that it was unwise to leave in weather like this and that she would do better to postpone her trip.

  Other passengers were beginning to arrive, all muffled up and carrying luggage, jostling to get to the train in the terrible morning cold. With snow still clinging to their boots, they quickly shut the carriage doors and barricaded themselves in. The platform remained empty, dimly lit by the fitful glimmer of a few gas lamps; the headlamp on the locomotive, fixed to the base of the chimney, gleamed like a giant eye, casting its broad beam of light into the darkness.

  Roubaud raised his lamp to give the signal for departure. The guard blew his whistle, and Jacques gave a whistle in reply. He opened the regulator and eased the reversing wheel forward. They were off. Roubaud stood for a minute quietly watching the train as it disappeared into the storm.

  ‘Listen!’ Jacques said to Pecqueux. ‘I don’t want any messing about today.’

  He had noticed that, like Roubaud, his companion also seemed to be falling asleep on his feet; the result of a night on the tiles no doubt.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ muttered Pecqueux. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  As soon as the train emerged from the covered roof of the station, the two men were exposed to the snow. The wind was blowing from the east and it caught the locomotive head on, sending the snow in great swirls directly towards it. At first, standing behind the weather shield dressed in thick woollen clothes and with their eyes protected by goggles, Jacques and Pecqueux didn’t find things too difficult. But the light from the headlamp blazing out into the night seemed to be swallowed up in dense clouds of whiteness. Instead of being lit up for two or three hundred metres ahead, the track seemed to come towards them out of a milky fog, with objects suddenly appearing only when they were very close to, as if from the depths of a dream. What most worried Jacques was the realization, as they passed the signal at the first section box, that, as he had feared, it would be impossible to see a signal at red from the regulation distance. So progress was extremely cautious. Yet he couldn’t afford to go too slowly; there was already tremendous wind resistance, and it would be equally dangerous if the train fell too far behind schedule.

  La Lison maintained a steady speed all the way to Harfleur. As yet, Jacques wasn’t too worried about the depth of the snow; it was sixty centimetres deep at the most and the snowplough could easily clear a depth of one metre.1 His principal concern was to keep the train running at speed. He knew that, as well as remaining sober and making sure his locomotive was kept in good condition, the mark of a good driver was to be able to keep his engine running smoothly and steadily while maintaining full pressure. In fact Jacques’s one weakness was an obstinate unwillingness to bring his train to a stop. He sometimes even ignored signals, fully confident that he had La Lison under control. Occasionally he would get carried away and deliberately run over detonators.2 He said it was like treading on someone’s corns! It had twice earned him a week’s suspension. On this occasion, however, he sensed that the situation was fraught with danger. The thought that his beloved Séverine was with him and that her life was in his hands increased his resolve to press on regardless down the iron highway that led to Paris, braving every obstacle that might confront him.

  Jacques stood on the metal plate that linked the engine and tender, constantly jolted by the movement of the train and, despite the snow, leaning out to the right, trying to see ahead. Nothing was visible through the footplate window; it was streaked with water from the driving snow. Jacques stood looking into the icy blast, his face stung by a million sharp needles, lacerated by the cold, which cut into his skin like a razor. From time to time he drew back to recover his breath, removed his goggles and wiped them and then returned to his lookout post in the teeth of the gale, peering intently into the darkness for signals at red. He was so absorbed in his task that he twice had the illusion of seeing a sudden shower of sparks scattered like spots of blood across the curtain of snow that floated in front of him.

  Suddenly, in the darkness, Jacques sensed that his fireman was no longer there. In order to avoid dazzling the driver, there was only one light on the footplate - a small lamp which was used to check the water level in the boiler, but on the enamelled dial of the pressure gauge, which seemed to emit a light of its own, he could see the little blue needle quivering and falling rapidly. The fire was low, and his fireman lay sprawled out on the toolbox fast asleep.

  ‘You bloody drunkard!’ Jacques yelled, shaking him furiously.

  Pecqueux got to his feet, muttering some unintelligible excuse. He could hardly stand. Through sheer force of habit he returned to his fire, breaking up lumps of coal with his hammer, spreading it evenly over the grate with his shovel and sweeping the footplate with his broom. With the firebox door open, a shaft of light from the fire stretched back over the train like the blazing tail of a comet, turning the snowflakes that fell through it into great drops of gold.

  After Harfleur they began the stiff three-league climb to Saint-Romain, the steepest gradient on the line. Jacques needed to concentrate on his driving again, knowing that it would need a real effort to get up this incline, which was difficult enough even in fine weather. With his hand on the reversing wheel, he watched the telegraph poles go by, trying to calculate how quickly the train was moving. They were rapidly losing speed; La Lison was beginning to struggle, and he could feel the increasing resistance of the snow against the snowplough. He stretched out his foot and opened the firebox door again. Pecqueux, still half asleep, knew what he had to do and immediately started heaping extra coal on the fire in order to increase the pressure. The firebox door was by now red hot, sending a purplish glow about their legs, although neither of them felt its heat, as the surrounding air was so bitterly cold. At a nod from his driver, Pecqueux opened the damper3 in the ash-pan, which increased the draught to the fire. The needle on the pressure gauge had quickly risen to ten atmospheres,4 and La Lison was working flat out. At one point, Jacques noticed that the water level was falling and, although he knew it would reduce the pressure, he had to turn the injector on. Pressure was soon restored; the engine snorted and spat, like a horse being driven too hard, lunging and rearing so alarmingly that you might have imagined you could hear her bones cracking. Jacques was calling her all sorts of names, as if she were an old and ailing wife whom he no longer loved as he had done before.

  ‘She’ll never make it, the lazy thing!’ he muttered through clenched teeth. Normally when he was driving, he didn’t speak.

  Pecqueux, who was still barely awake, looked at him in amazeme
nt. What had he suddenly got against La Lison? Wasn’t this the good old engine they had both worked with for so long? She had always done everything that was asked of her, pulling away from stations so easily that it was a pleasure to drive her, and such a good steamer that she saved them a tenth of their coal between Paris and Le Havre! When a locomotive had a valve gear as good as hers, with perfect timing that reduced the expenditure of steam as if by magic, you could forgive her all sorts of other failings, as you would a crotchety wife, provided she was a good housekeeper and didn’t spend too much money. Admittedly, La Lison consumed too much oil. So what? You simply oiled her. That was all there was to it!

  In fact it was oil that Jacques was complaining about at that very moment.

  ‘She’ll never make it unless we give her some oil,’ he was saying.

  Whereupon, he did something he had not done more than three times in his whole career; he took his oilcan and went to oil La Lison as she continued on her way. He climbed over the side of the cab on to the running plate and walked the length of the boiler. It was a very dangerous thing to do; his feet kept slipping on the narrow metal plate, which was wet from the snow. He couldn’t see what he was doing, and the force of the wind threatened to blow him away like a wisp of straw. La Lison steamed forward into the night with Jacques clinging to her side, being jolted and jarred as she ploughed her way through the immense covering of snow. He reached the buffer beam at the front of the locomotive and crouched over the lubricator of the right-hand cylinder, desperately trying to fill it, while clinging to the handrail with his other hand. Then, like an insect, he had to crawl round to the other side to oil the left-hand cylinder. When he got back to the footplate he was exhausted and as white as a sheet; he had come within a whisker of getting himself killed.

  ‘The lousy bitch!’ he muttered.

  Pecqueux was amazed at the way Jacques had suddenly become so annoyed with La Lison. He couldn’t help laughing and ventured his old joke: ‘You should’ve let me do it. That’s my speciality, oiling the ladies!’

  By now he had woken up a little and was standing in his customary position, keeping a lookout on the left-hand side of the line. Normally his eyesight was very good, better in fact than his driver’s. But the blizzard had wiped everything out. Jacques and Pecqueux both knew every kilometre of the line like the backs of their hands, but they could now scarcely recognize the places they were passing through; the track had disappeared beneath the snow, the hedges and even the houses seemed to have submerged. All that could be seen was a flat, unending plain, an undefined wilderness of white, through which La Lison seemed to be charging headlong, like a thing possessed. Never before had the two men experienced so intensely the ties of comradeship that united them, as when they stood together on the footplate of La Lison as she pursued her perilous course, feeling lonelier and more abandoned than if they had been locked away in a prison cell, and bearing the terrible, agonizing responsibility for all the lives that were being drawn along in the train behind them.

  Pecqueux’s joke had angered Jacques, but he simply smiled and contained his annoyance; this wasn’t the time to quarrel. The snow was falling thicker than ever, and the horizon was closing in around them like a curtain. They were still climbing. Suddenly the fireman thought he saw a red signal in the distance. He shouted to his driver. But the signal had already disappeared. His eyes were ‘playing tricks on him’; a not infrequent complaint of his. The driver had seen nothing, but the fireman’s false alarm had disturbed him; his heart beat faster, he was beginning to lose confidence in himself. Beyond the whirling snowflakes he imagined he saw huge dark shapes, massive forms that loomed out of the night and moved towards them in front of the locomotive. Were they landslides that had piled up on the line? Was the train about to run into them? Seized with panic, he pulled frantically at the whistle; its long, mournful wail rose into the air above the noise of the storm. Much to his surprise, he had whistled at just the right moment, for the train was passing through Saint-Romain; he had thought it was two kilometres further on.

  Once she had breasted the incline, La Lison began to run more easily, and Jacques could relax a little. From Saint-Romain to Bolbec the line was almost level, and there should be no further problems until they had crossed the plateau. Even so, during their three-minute stop at Beuzeville, Jacques called over to the stationmaster, whom he had spotted on the platform, to express his concern about the snow, which was getting deeper every minute. They would never make it to Rouen; while they were near a shed which always had spare engines in steam, the most sensible thing would be to attach an extra locomotive and double-head the train. But the stationmaster said he hadn’t received permission and he didn’t think that it was within his responsibility. The only thing he could think of was to provide them with five or six wooden shovels to clear the rails should the need arise. Pecqueux took the shovels and stowed them in a corner of the tender.

  As expected, La Lison crossed the plateau without too much difficulty and maintained a good speed. But she was beginning to tire. Every minute Jacques had to stretch out his foot to open the firebox door so that his fireman could add more coal; each time he did so, the comet’s tail flashed across the night above the dark outline of the train, with whiteness all around, enclosing it like a shroud. It was a quarter to eight, and it was beginning to get light, although, in the great swirls of snow that filled the sky from one end of the horizon to the other, the dawn was hardly noticeable. It was a murky half-light in which nothing could yet be seen, making things even more difficult for the two men, whose eyes, despite their goggles, were streaming as they peered into the distance. Jacques kept one hand on the reversing wheel and the other on the whistle, sounding it almost continuously to warn of their approach and sending a wail of distress across the empty wastes of this desert of snow.

  They passed through Bolbec and Yvetot without incident. At Motteville, Jacques again summoned the assistant stationmaster, but he was unable to give him any precise information on conditions up the line. So far, no train had arrived; they had merely been informed by telegraph that the stopping train from Paris was being held at Rouen as a precaution. La Lison set off once more, lumbering slowly down the gentle three-league descent to Barentin. By now it was daylight. But the light was very pale, a livid glow that seemed to emanate from the snow itself. The snow continued to fall more thickly, as if dawn were descending from above, cloudy and shivering, strewing the heavens’ waste across the surface of the earth. As it grew lighter, the wind rose sharply, driving the snowflakes towards them like bullets. The fireman had to keep taking his shovel to remove the snow at the back of the tender, between the two water-tanks. The countryside on both sides of the train appeared so unrecognizable that the two men felt they were travelling through a dream world; the broad, open fields, the lush meadows surrounded by green hedges, the little orchards planted with apple trees were now but a sea of white with small waves rippling across its surface, a vast, empty expanse, cold and frozen, in which everything seemed to dissolve into whiteness. The engine driver stood on the footplate, his face lashed by the gusts of wind, his hand on the reversing wheel. He was beginning to feel the cold that bit into him mercilessly.

  When they eventually reached Barentin, Monsieur Bessière, the stationmaster, came up to the engine and told Jacques that heavy falls of snow had been reported at La Croix-de-Maufras.

  ‘You might be able to get through,’ he said, ‘but it will be difficult.’

  Jacques lost his temper.

  ‘God Almighty!’ he yelled. ‘What did I tell them at Beuzeville? They could easily have put another engine on! We’re going to be in trouble, I’m telling you!’

  The guard had left his van; he too was getting annoyed. He was frozen stiff from sitting in his observation cabin; he said he couldn’t tell a signal from a telegraph post. They might just as well have been travelling blind in all this snow!

  ‘Anyway,’ said Monsieur Bessière, ‘you’ve been warned.’
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  The passengers were beginning to wonder why there was such a long delay in this silent, snow-bound station; there was nothing happening on the platform, no carriage doors opening and closing. People started to lower their windows and look out. There was a very large woman with two charming, fair-haired young girls, her daughters no doubt, all three unmistakably English, and a little further down the train a pretty young woman with dark hair, with a man rather older than her who was pulling her back into the compartment. There were two men, one older and one younger, leaning out of the windows, talking to each other from one compartment to the next. But as Jacques looked down the line of carriages, he saw only one person - Séverine. She too was leaning from her carriage, looking along the train towards him, obviously very concerned. Dear Séverine! How worried she must be! His heart ached to think of her there, so near yet so far, and in such danger. He would have given anything to have arrived in Paris and to have brought her there safe and sound.

  ‘Come on,’ said the stationmaster, ‘you’d better get going. There’s no point in making everyone nervous.’

  He gave the all clear. The guard, who had climbed back into his van, blew his whistle, and once again La Lison was on her way.

  Jacques immediately sensed that the condition of the line had changed. They were no longer on the plateau, with the train crossing an endless carpet of thick snow like a ship ploughing its way through the sea, leaving a wake behind it; they were now entering a more rugged country of hills and valleys that rose and fell continuously all the way to Malaunay. Here the snow had not settled evenly. In some places the track was clear, but in others the line was blocked by huge drifts. The wind had blown the snow away from the embankments but had driven it into the cuttings. A continual succession of hazards confronted them, stretches of clear track which were suddenly cut off by huge walls of snow. It was now broad daylight, and under its covering of snow the wild countryside with its steep hills and narrow gorges took on the desolate appearance of an ocean frozen solid in the middle of a storm.