Kabanata Kabanata 33 · 第33章

When they came out of Rasseneur's, Étienne and Catherine walked on in

silence. The thaw was beginning, a slow cold thaw which stained the

snow without melting it. In the livid sky a full moon could be faintly

seen behind great clouds, black rags driven furiously by a tempestuous

wind far above; and on the earth no breath was stirring, nothing could

be heard but drippings from the roofs, the falling of white lumps with

a soft thud.

Étienne was embarrassed by this woman who had been given to him, and

in his disquiet he could find nothing to say. The idea of taking her

with him to hide at Réquillart seemed absurd. He had proposed to lead

her back to the settlement, to her parents' house, but she had refused

in terror. No, no! anything rather than be a burden on them once more

after having behaved so badly to them! And neither of them spoke any

more; they tramped on at random through the roads which were becoming

rivers of mud. At first they went down towards the Voreux; then they

turned to the right and passed between the pit-bank and the canal.

"But you'll have to sleep somewhere," he said at last. "Now, if I only

had a room, I could easily take you----"

But a curious spasm of timidity interrupted him. The past came back

to him, their old longings for each other, and the delicacies and the

shames which had prevented them from coming together. Did he still

desire her, that he felt so troubled, gradually warmed at the heart by

a fresh longing? The recollection of the blows she had dealt him at

Gaston-Marie now attracted him instead of filling him with spite. And

he was surprised; the idea of taking her to Réquillart was becoming

quite natural and easy to execute.

"Now, come, decide; where would you like me to take you? You must hate

me very much to refuse to come with me!"

She was following him slowly, delayed by the painful slipping of her

sabots into the ruts; and without raising her head she murmured:

"I have enough trouble, good God! don't give me any more. What good

would it do us, what you ask, now that I have a lover and you have a

woman yourself?"

She meant Mouquette. She believed that he still went with this girl, as

the rumour ran for the last fortnight; and when he swore to her that it

was not so she shook her head, for she remembered the evening when she

had seen them eagerly kissing each other.

"Isn't it a pity, all this nonsense?" he whispered, stopping. "We might

understand each other so well."

She shuddered slightly and replied:

"Never mind, you've nothing to be sorry for; you don't lose much. If

you knew what a trumpery thing I am--no bigger than two ha'porth of

butter, so ill made that I shall never become a woman, sure enough!"

And she went on freely accusing herself, as though the long delay of

her puberty had been her own fault. In spite of the man whom she had

had, this lessened her, placed her among the urchins. One has some

excuse, at any rate, when one can produce a child.

"My poor little one!" said Étienne, with deep pity, in a very low voice.

They were at the foot of the pit-bank, hidden in the shadow of the

enormous pile. An inky cloud was just then passing over the moon;

they could no longer even distinguish their faces, their breaths

were mingled, their lips were seeking each other for that kiss which

had tormented them with desire for months. But suddenly the moon

reappeared, and they saw the sentinel above them, at the top of the

rocks white with light, standing out erect on the Voreux. And before

they had kissed an emotion of modesty separated them, that old modesty

in which there was something of anger, a vague repugnance, and much

friendship. They set out again heavily, up to their ankles in mud.

"Then it's settled. You don't want to have anything to do with me?"

asked Étienne.

"No," she said. "You after Chaval; and after you another, eh? No, that

disgusts me; it doesn't give me any pleasure. What's the use of doing

it?"

They were silent, and walked some hundred paces without exchanging a

word.

"But, anyhow, do you know where to go to?" he said again. "I can't

leave you out in a night like this."

She replied, simply:

"I'm going back. Chaval is my man. I have nowhere else to sleep but

with him."

"But he will beat you to death."

There was silence again. She had shrugged her shoulders in resignation.

He would beat her, and when he was tired of beating her he would stop.

Was not that better than to roam the streets like a vagabond? Then she

was used to blows; she said, to console herself, that eight out of ten

girls were no better off than she was. If her lover married her some

day it would, all the same, be very nice of him.

Étienne and Catherine were moving mechanically towards Montsou, and

as they came nearer their silences grew longer. It was as though they

had never before been together. He could find no argument to convince

her, in spite of the deep vexation which he felt at seeing her go back

to Chaval. His heart was breaking, he had nothing better to offer than

an existence of wretchedness and flight, a night with no to-morrow

should a soldier's bullet go through his head. Perhaps, after all, it

was wiser to suffer what he was suffering rather than risk a fresh

suffering. So he led her back to her lover's, with sunken head, and

made no protest when she stopped him on the main road, at the corner of

the Yards, twenty metres from the Estaminet Piquette, saying:

"Don't come any farther. If he sees you it will only make things worse."

Eleven o'clock struck at the church. The estaminet was closed, but

gleams came through the cracks.

"Good-bye," she murmured.

She had given him her hand; he kept it, and she had to draw it away

painfully, with a slow effort, to leave him. Without turning her head,

she went in through the little latched door. But he did not turn away,

standing at the same place with his eyes on the house, anxious as to

what was passing within. He listened, trembling lest he should hear the

cries of a beaten woman. The house remained black and silent; he only

saw a light appear at a first-floor window, and as this window opened,

and he recognized the thin shadow that was leaning over the road, he

came near.

Catherine then whispered very low:

"He's not come back. I'm going to bed. Please go away."

Étienne went off. The thaw was increasing; a regular shower was falling

from the roofs, a moist sweat flowed down the walls, the palings, the

whole confused mass of this industrial district lost in night. At

first he turned towards Réquillart, sick with fatigue and sadness,

having no other desire except to disappear under the earth and to be

annihilated there. Then the idea of the Voreux occurred to him again.

He thought of the Belgian workmen who were going down, of his mates at

the settlement, exasperated against the soldiers and resolved not to

tolerate strangers in their pit. And he passed again along the canal

through the puddles of melted snow.

As he stood once more near the pit-bank the moon was shining brightly.

He raised his eyes and gazed at the sky. The clouds were galloping by,

whipped on by the strong wind which was blowing up there; but they were

growing white, and ravelling out thinly with the misty transparency

of troubled water over the moon's face. They succeeded each other so

rapidly that the moon, veiled at moments, constantly reappeared in

limpid clearness.

With gaze full of this pure brightness, Étienne was lowering his head,

when a spectacle on the summit of the pit-bank attracted his attention.

The sentinel, stiffened by cold, was walking up and down, taking

twenty-five paces towards Marchiennes, and then returning towards

Montsou. The white glitter of his bayonet could be seen above his black

silhouette, which stood out clearly against the pale sky. But what

interested the young man, behind the cabin where Bonnemort used to take

shelter on tempestuous nights, was a moving shadow--a crouching beast

in ambush--which he immediately recognized as Jeanlin, with his long

flexible spine like a marten's. The sentinel could not see him. That

brigand of a child was certainly preparing some practical joke, for he

was still furious against the soldiers, and asking when they were going

to be freed from these murderers who had been sent here with guns to

kill people.

For a moment Étienne thought of calling him to prevent the execution of

some stupid trick. The moon was hidden. He had seen him draw himself

up ready to spring; but the moon reappeared, and the child remained

crouching. At every turn the sentinel came as far as the cabin, then

turned his back and walked in the opposite direction. And suddenly, as

a cloud threw its shadow, Jeanlin leapt on to the soldier's shoulders

with the great bound of a wild cat, and gripping him with his claws

buried his large open knife in his throat. The horse-hair collar

resisted; he had to apply both hands to the handle and hang on with

all the weight of his body. He had often bled fowls which he had found

behind farms. It was so rapid that there was only a stifled cry in the

night, while the musket fell with the sound of old iron. Already the

moon was shining again.

Motionless with stupor, Étienne was still gazing. A shout had been

choked in his chest. Above, the pit-bank was vacant; no shadow was

any longer visible against the wild flight of clouds. He ran up and

found Jeanlin on all fours before the corpse, which was lying back

with extended arms. Beneath the limpid light the red trousers and grey

overcoat contrasted harshly with the snow. Not a drop of blood had

flowed, the knife was still in the throat up to the handle. With a

furious, unreasoning blow of the fist he knocked the child down beside

the body.

"What have you done that for?" he stammered wildly.

Jeanlin picked himself up and rested on his hands, with a feline

movement of his thin spine; his large ears, his green eyes, his

prominent jaws were quivering and aflame with the shock of his deadly

blow.

"By God! why have you done this?"

"I don't know; I wanted to."

He persisted in this reply. For three days he had wanted to. It

tormented him, it made his head ache behind his ears, because he

thought about it so much. Need one be so particular with these damned

soldiers who were worrying the colliers in their own homes? Of the

violent speeches he had heard in the forest, the cries of destruction

and death shouted among the pits, five or six words had remained with

him, and these he repeated like a street urchin playing at revolution.

And he knew no more; no one had urged him on, it had come to him of

itself, just as the desire to steal onions from a field came to him.

Startled at this obscure growth of crime in the recesses of this

childish brain, Étienne again pushed him away with a kick, like an

unconscious animal. He trembled lest the guard at the Voreux had heard

the sentinel's stifled cry, and looked towards the pit every time the

moon was uncovered. But nothing stirred, and he bent down, felt the

hands that were gradually becoming icy, and listened to the heart,

which had stopped beneath the overcoat. Only the bone handle of the

knife could be seen with the motto on it, the simple word "Amour,"

engraved in black letters.

His eyes went from the throat to the face. Suddenly he recognized the

little soldier; it was Jules, the recruit with whom he had talked one

morning. And deep pity came over him in front of this fair gentle face,

marked with freckles. The blue eyes, wide open, were gazing at the sky

with that fixed gaze with which he had before seen him searching the

horizon for the country of his birth. Where was it, that Plogof which

had appeared to him beneath the dazzling sun? Over there, over there!

The sea was moaning afar on this tempestuous night. That wind passing

above had perhaps swept over the moors. Two women perhaps were standing

there, the mother and the sister, clutching their wind-blown coifs,

gazing as if they could see what was now happening to the little fellow

through the leagues which separated them. They would always wait for

him now. What an abominable thing it is for poor devils to kill each

other for the sake of the rich!

But this corpse had to be disposed of. Étienne at first thought of

throwing it into the canal, but was deterred from this by the certainty

that it would be found there. His anxiety became extreme, every minute

was of importance; what decision should he take? He had a sudden

inspiration: if he could carry the body as far as Réquillart, he would

be able to bury it there for ever.

"Come here," he said to Jeanlin.

The child was suspicious.

"No, you want to beat me. And then I have business. Good night."

In fact, he had given a rendezvous to Bébert and Lydie in a

hiding-place, a hole arranged under the wood supply at the Voreux. It

had been arranged to sleep out, so as to be there if the Belgians'

bones were to be broken by stoning when they went down the pit.

"Listen!" repeated Étienne. "Come here, or I shall call the soldiers,

who will cut your head off."

And as Jeanlin was making up his mind, he rolled his handkerchief, and

bound the soldier's neck tightly, without drawing out the knife, so as

to prevent the blood from flowing. The snow was melting; on the soil

there was neither a red patch nor the footmarks of a struggle.

"Take the legs!"

Jeanlin took the legs, while Étienne seized the shoulders, after having

fastened the gun behind his back, and then they both slowly descended

the pit-bank, trying to avoid rolling any rocks down. Fortunately the

moon was hidden. But as they passed along the canal it reappeared

brightly, and it was a miracle that the guard did not see them.

Silently they hastened on, hindered by the swinging of the corpse, and

obliged to place it on the ground every hundred metres. At the corner

of the Réquillart lane they heard a sound which froze them with terror,

and they only had time to hide behind a wall to avoid a patrol. Farther

on, a man came across them, but he was drunk, and moved away abusing

them. At last they reached the old pit, bathed in perspiration, and so

exhausted that their teeth were chattering.

Étienne had guessed that it would not be easy to get the soldier down

the ladder shaft. It was an awful task. First of all Jeanlin, standing

above, had to let the body slide down, while Étienne, hanging on to

the bushes, had to accompany it to enable it to pass the first two

ladders where the rungs were broken. Afterwards, at every ladder, he

had to perform the same manoeuvre over again, going down first, then

receiving the body in his arms; and he had thus, down thirty ladders,

two hundred and ten metres, to feel it constantly falling over him.

The gun scraped his spine; he had not allowed the child to go for the

candle-end, which he preserved avariciously. What was the use? The

light would only embarrass them in this narrow tube. When they arrived

at the pit-eye, however, out of breath, he sent the youngster for the

candle. He then sat down and waited for him in the darkness, near the

body, with heart beating violently. As soon as Jeanlin reappeared with

the light, Étienne consulted with him, for the child had explored these

old workings, even to the cracks through which men could not pass.

They set out again, dragging the dead body for nearly a kilometre,

through a maze of ruinous galleries. At last the roof became low,

and they found themselves kneeling beneath a sandy rock supported by

half-broken planks. It was a sort of long chest in which they laid the

little soldier as in a coffin; they placed his gun by his side; then

with vigorous blows of their heels they broke the timber at the risk

of being buried themselves. Immediately the rock gave way, and they

scarcely had time to crawl back on their elbows and knees. When Étienne

returned, seized by the desire to look once more, the roof was still

falling in, slowly crushing the body beneath its enormous weight. And

then there was nothing more left, nothing but the vast mass of the

earth.

Jeanlin, having returned to his own corner, his little cavern of

villainy, was stretching himself out on the hay, overcome by weariness,

and murmuring:

"Heigho! the brats must wait for me; I'm going to have an hour's sleep."

Étienne had blown out the candle, of which there was only a small end

left. He also was worn out, but he was not sleepy; painful nightmare

thoughts were beating like hammers in his skull. Only one at last

remained, torturing him and fatiguing him with a question to which he

could not reply: Why had he not struck Chaval when he held him beneath

the knife? and why had this child just killed a soldier whose very

name he did not know? It shook his revolutionary beliefs, the courage

to kill, the right to kill. Was he, then, a coward? In the hay the

child had begun snoring, the snoring of a drunken man, as if he were

sleeping off the intoxication of his murder. Étienne was disgusted and

irritated; it hurt him to know that the boy was there and to hear him.

Suddenly he started, a breath of fear passed over his face. A light

rustling, a sob, seemed to him to have come out of the depths of the

earth. The image of the little soldier, lying over there with his gun

beneath the rocks, froze his back and made his hair stand up. It was

idiotic, the whole mine seemed to be filled with voices; he had to

light the candle again, and only grew calm on seeing the emptiness of

the galleries by this pale light.

For another quarter of an hour he reflected, still absorbed in the

same struggle, his eyes fixed on the burning wick. But there was a

spluttering, the wick was going out, and everything fell back into

darkness. He shuddered again; he could have boxed Jeanlin's ears, to

keep him from snoring so loudly. The neighbourhood of the child became

so unbearable that he escaped, tormented by the need for fresh air,

hastening through the galleries and up the passage, as though he could

hear a shadow, panting, at his heels.

Up above, in the midst of the ruins of Réquillart, Étienne was at last

able to breathe freely. Since he dared not kill, it was for him to die;

and this idea of death, which had already touched him, came again and

fixed itself in his head, as a last hope. To die bravely, to die for

the revolution, that would end everything, would settle his account,

good or bad, and prevent him from thinking more. If the men attacked

the Borains, he would be in the first rank, and would have a good

chance of getting a bad blow. It was with firmer step that he returned

to prowl around the Voreux. Two o'clock struck, and the loud noise

of voices was coming from the captains' room, where the guards who

watched over the pit were posted. The disappearance of the sentinel had

overcome the guards with surprise; they had gone to arouse the captain,

and after a careful examination of the place, they concluded that it

must be a case of desertion. Hiding in the shade, Étienne recollected

this republican captain of whom the little soldier had spoken. Who

knows if he might not be persuaded to pass over to the people's side!

The troop would raise their rifles, and that would be the signal for

a massacre of the bourgeois. A new dream took possession of him; he

thought no more of dying, but remained for hours with his feet in the

mud, and a drizzle from the thaw falling on his shoulders, filled by

the feverish hope that victory was still possible.

Up to five o'clock he watched for the Borains. Then he perceived

that the Company had cunningly arranged that they should sleep at

the Voreux. The descent had begun, and the few strikers from the

Deux-Cent-Quarante settlement who had been posted as scouts had not yet

warned their mates. It was he who told them of the trick, and they set

out running, while he waited behind the pit-bank, on the towing-path.

Six o'clock struck, and the earthy sky was growing pale and lighting up

with a reddish dawn, when the Abbé Ranvier came along a path, holding

up his cassock above his thin legs. Every Monday he went to say an

early mass at a convent chapel on the other side of the pit.

"Good morning, my friend," he shouted in a loud voice, after staring at

the young man with his flaming eyes.

But Étienne did not reply. Far away between the Voreux platforms he had

just seen a woman pass, and he rushed forward anxiously, for he thought

he recognized Catherine. Since midnight, Catherine had been walking

about the thawing roads. Chaval, on coming back and finding her in bed,

had knocked her out with a blow. He shouted to her to go at once by the

door if she did not wish to go by the window; and scarcely dressed,

in tears, and bruised by kicks in her legs, she had been obliged to

go down, pushed outside by a final thrust. This sudden separation

dazed her, and she sat down on a stone, looking up at the house, still

expecting that he would call her back. It was not possible; he would

surely look for her and tell her to come back when he saw her thus

shivering and abandoned, with no one to take her in.

At the end of two hours she made up her mind, dying of cold and as

motionless as a dog thrown into the street. She left Montsou, then

retraced her steps, but dared neither to call from the pathway nor to

knock at the door. At last she went off by the main road to the right

with the idea of going to the settlement, to her parents' house. But

when she reached it she was seized by such shame that she rushed away

along the gardens for fear of being recognized by someone, in spite of

the heavy sleep which weighed on all eyes behind the closed shutters.

And after that she wandered about, frightened at the slightest noise,

trembling lest she should be seized and led away as a strumpet to

that house at Marchiennes, the threat of which had haunted her like

nightmare for months. Twice she stumbled against the Voreux, but

terrified at the loud voices of the guard, she ran away out of breath,

looking behind her to see if she was being pursued. The Réquillart lane

was always full of drunken men; she went back to it, however, with the

vague hope of meeting there him she had repelled a few hours earlier.

Chaval had to go down that morning, and this thought brought Catherine

again towards the pit, though she felt that it would be useless to

speak to him: all was over between them. There was no work going on

at Jean-Bart, and he had sworn to kill her if she worked again at the

Voreux, where he feared that she would compromise him. So what was to

be done?--to go elsewhere, to die of hunger, to yield beneath the blows

of every man who might pass? She dragged herself along, tottering amid

the ruts, with aching legs and mud up to her spine. The thaw had now

filled the streets with a flood of mire. She waded through it, still

walking, not daring to look for a stone to sit on.

Day appeared. Catherine had just recognized the back of Chaval, who was

cautiously going round the pit-bank, when she noticed Lydie and Bébert

putting their noses out of their hiding-place beneath the wood supply.

They had passed the night there in ambush, without going home, since

Jeanlin's order was to await him; and while this latter was sleeping

off the drunkenness of his murder at Réquillart, the two children were

lying in each other's arms to keep warm. The wind blew between the

planks of chestnut and oak, and they rolled themselves up as in some

wood-cutter's abandoned hut. Lydie did not dare to speak aloud the

sufferings of a small beaten woman, any more than Bébert found courage

to complain of the captain's blows which made his cheeks swell; but

the captain was really abusing his power, risking their bones in mad

marauding expeditions while refusing to share the booty. Their hearts

rose in revolt, and they had at last embraced each other in spite of

his orders, careless of that box of the ears from the invisible with

which he had threatened them. It never came, so they went on kissing

each other softly, with no idea of anything else, putting into that

caress the passion they had long struggled against--the whole of their

martyred and tender natures. All night through they had thus kept each

other warm, so happy, at the bottom of this secret hole, that they

could not remember that they had ever been so happy before--not even on

St. Barbara's day, when they had eaten fritters and drunk wine.

The sudden sound of a bugle made Catherine start. She raised herself,

and saw the Voreux guards taking up their arms. Étienne arrived

running; Bébert and Lydie jumped out of their hiding-place with a leap.

And over there, beneath the growing daylight, a band of men and women

were coming from the settlement, gesticulating wildly with anger.