第 二十五 章 · 第25章

At Jean-Bart, Catherine had already been at work for an hour, pushing

trams as far as the relays; and she was soaked in such a bath of

perspiration that she stopped a moment to wipe her face.

At the bottom of the cutting, where he was hammering at the seam with

his mates, Chaval was astonished when he no longer heard the rumble of

the wheels. The lamps burnt badly, and the coal dust made it impossible

to see.

"What's up?" he shouted.

When she answered that she was sure she would melt, and that her heart

was going to stop, he replied furiously:

"Do like us, stupid! Take off your shift."

They were seven hundred and eight metres to the north in the first

passage of the Désirée seam, which was at a distance of three

kilometres from the pit-eye. When they spoke of this part of the pit,

the miners of the region grew pale, and lowered their voices, as if

they had spoken of hell; and most often they were content to shake

their heads as men who would rather not speak of these depths of fiery

furnace. As the galleries sank towards the north, they approached

Tartaret, penetrating to that interior fire which calcined the rocks

above. The cuttings at the point at which they had arrived had an

average temperature of forty-five degrees. They were there in the

accursed city, in the midst of the flames which the passers-by on

the plain could see through the fissures, spitting out sulphur and

poisonous vapours.

Catherine, who had already taken off her jacket, hesitated, then took

off her trousers also; and with naked arms and naked thighs, her

chemise tied round her hips by a cord like a blouse, she began to push

again.

"Anyhow, that's better," she said aloud.

In the stifling heat she still felt a vague fear. Ever since they began

working here, five days ago, she had thought of the stories told her in

childhood, of those putter-girls of the days of old who were burning

beneath Tartaret, as a punishment for things which no one dared to

repeat. No doubt she was too big now to believe such silly stories; but

still, what would she do if she were suddenly to see coming out of the

wall a girl as red as a stove, with eyes like live coals? The idea made

her perspire still more.

At the relay, eighty metres from the cutting, another putter took the

tram and pushed it eighty metres farther to the upbrow, so that the

receiver could forward it with the others which came down from the

upper galleries.

"Gracious! you're making yourself comfortable!" said this woman, a lean

widow of thirty, when she saw Catherine in her chemise. "I can't do it,

the trammers at the brow bother me with their dirty tricks."

"Ah, well!" replied the young girl. "I don't care about the men! I feel

too bad."

She went off again, pushing an empty tram. The worst was that in this

bottom passage another cause joined with the neighbourhood of Tartaret

to make the heat unbearable. They were by the side of old workings, a

very deep abandoned gallery of Gaston-Marie, where, ten years earlier,

an explosion of fire-damp had set the seam alight; and it was still

burning behind the clay wall which had been built there and was kept

constantly repaired, in order to limit the disaster. Deprived of air,

the fire ought to have become extinct, but no doubt unknown currents

kept it alive; it had gone on for ten years, and heated the clay wall

like the bricks of an oven, so that those who passed felt half-roasted.

It was along this wall, for a length of more than a hundred metres,

that the haulage was carried on, in a temperature of sixty degrees.

After two journeys, Catherine again felt stifled. Fortunately, the

passage was large and convenient in this Désirée seam, one of the

thickest in the district. The bed was one metre ninety in height, and

the men could work standing. But they would rather have worked with

twisted necks and a little fresh air.

"Hallo, there! are you asleep?" said Chaval again, roughly, as soon as

he no longer heard Catherine moving. "How the devil did I come to get

such a jade? Will you just fill your tram and push?"

She was at the bottom of the cutting, leaning on her shovel; she was

feeling ill, and she looked at them all with a foolish air without

obeying. She scarcely saw them by the reddish gleam of the lamps,

entirely naked like animals, so black, so encrusted in sweat and coal,

that their nakedness did not frighten her. It was a confused task,

the bending of ape-like backs, an infernal vision of scorched limbs,

spending their strength amid dull blows and groans. But they could see

her better, no doubt, for the picks left off hammering, and they joked

her about taking off her trousers.

"Eh! you'll catch cold; look out!"

"It's because she's got such fine legs! I say, Chaval, there's enough

there for two."

"Oh! we must see. Lift up! Higher! higher!"

Then Chaval, without growing angry at these jokes, turned on her.

"That's it, by God! Ah! she likes dirty jokes. She'd stay there to

listen till to-morrow."

Catherine had painfully decided to fill her tram, then she pushed it.

The gallery was too wide for her to get a purchase on the timber on

both sides; her naked feet were twisted in the rails where they sought

a point of support, while she slowly moved on, her arms stiffened in

front, and her back breaking. As soon as she came up to the clay wall,

the fiery torture again began, and the sweat fell from her whole body

in enormous drops as from a storm-cloud. She had scarcely got a third

of the way before she streamed, blinded, soiled also by the black mud.

Her narrow chemise, as though dipped in ink, was sticking to her skin,

and rising up to her waist with the movement of her thighs; it hurt her

so that she had once more to stop her task.

What was the matter with her, then, today? Never before had she felt

as if there were wool in her bones. It must be the bad air. The

ventilation did not reach to the bottom of this distant passage. One

breathed there all sorts of vapours, which came out of the coal with

the low bubbling sound of a spring, so abundantly sometimes that

the lamps would not burn; to say nothing of fire-damp, which nobody

noticed, for from one week's end to the other the men were always

breathing it into their noses throughout the seam. She knew that bad

air well; dead air the miners called it; the heavy asphyxiating gases

below, above them the light gases which catch fire and blow up all the

stalls of a pit, with hundreds of men, in a single burst of thunder.

From her childhood she had swallowed so much that she was surprised she

bore it so badly, with buzzing ears and burning throat.

Unable to go farther, she felt the need of taking off her chemise. It

was beginning to torture her, this garment of which the least folds cut

and burnt her. She resisted the longing, and tried to push again, but

was forced to stand upright. Then quickly, saying to herself that she

would cover herself at the relay, she took off everything, the cord and

the chemise, so feverishly that she would have torn off her skin if she

could. And now, naked and pitiful, brought down to the level of the

female animal seeking its living in the mire of the streets, covered

with soot and mud up to the belly, she laboured on like a cab-hack. On

all fours she pushed onwards.

But despair came; it gave her no relief to be naked. What more could

she take off? The buzzing in her ears deafened her, she seemed to feel

a vice gripping her temples. She fell on her knees. The lamp, wedged

into the coal in the tram, seemed to her to be going out. The intention

to turn up the wick alone survived in the midst of her confused ideas.

Twice she tried to examine it, and both times when she placed it before

her on the earth she saw it turn pale, as though it also lacked breath.

Suddenly the lamp went out. Then everything whirled around her in the

darkness; a millstone turned in her head, her heart grew weak and left

off beating, numbed in its turn by the immense weariness which was

putting her limbs to sleep. She had fallen back in anguish amid the

asphyxiating air close to the ground.

"By God! I believe she's lazing again," growled Chaval's voice.

He listened from the top of the cutting, and could hear no sound of

wheels.

"Eh, Catherine! you damned worm!"

His voice was lost afar in the black gallery, and not a breath replied.

"I'll come and make you move, I will!"

Nothing stirred, there was only the same silence, as of death. He

came down furiously, rushing along with his lamp so violently that he

nearly fell over the putter's body which barred the way. He looked

at her in stupefaction. What was the matter, then? was it humbug, a

pretence of going to sleep? But the lamp which he had lowered to light

up her face threatened to go out. He lifted it and lowered it afresh,

and at last understood; it must be a gust of bad air. His violence

disappeared; the devotion of the miner in face of a comrade's peril

was awaking within him. He shouted for her chemise to be brought, and

seized the naked and unconscious girl in his arms, holding her as high

as possible. When their garments had been thrown over her shoulders he

set out running, supporting his burden with one hand, and carrying the

two lamps with the other. The deep galleries unrolled before him as he

rushed along, turning to the right, then to the left, seeking life in

the frozen air of the plain which blew down the air-shaft. At last the

sound of a spring stopped him, the trickle of water flowing from the

rock. He was at a square in the great haulage gallery which formerly

led to Gaston-Marie. The air here blew in like a tempest, and was so

fresh that a shudder went through him as he seated himself on the earth

against the props; his mistress was still unconscious, with closed eyes.

"Catherine, come now, by God! no humbug. Hold yourself up a bit while I

dip this in the water."

He was frightened to find her so limp. However, he was able to dip her

chemise in the spring, and to bathe her face with it. She was like a

corpse, already buried in the depth of the earth, with her slender

girlish body which seemed to be still hesitating before swelling to

the form of puberty. Then a shudder ran over her childish breast, over

the belly and thighs of the poor little creature deflowered before her

time. She opened her eyes and stammered:

"I'm cold."

"Ah! that's better now!" cried Chaval, relieved.

He dressed her, slipped on the chemise easily, but swore over the

difficulty he had in getting on the trousers, for she could not help

much. She remained dazed, not understanding where she was, nor why

she was naked. When she remembered she was ashamed. How had she dared

to take everything off! And she questioned him; had she been seen so,

without even a handkerchief around her waist to cover her? He joked,

and made up stories, saying that he had just brought her there in the

midst of all the mates standing in a row. What an idea, to have taken

his advice and exhibited her bum! Afterwards he declared that the mates

could not even know whether it was round or square, he had rushed along

so swiftly.

"The deuce! but I'm dying of cold," he said, dressing himself in turn.

Never had she seen him so kind. Usually, for one good word that he said

to her she received at once two bullying ones. It would have been so

pleasant to live in agreement; a feeling of tenderness went through her

in the languor of her fatigue. She smiled at him, and murmured:

"Kiss me."

He embraced her, and lay down beside her, waiting till she was able to

walk.

"You know," she said again, "you were wrong to shout at me over there,

for I couldn't do more, really! Even in the cutting you're not so hot;

if you only knew how it roasts you at the bottom of the passage!"

"Sure enough," he replied, "it would be better under the trees. You

feel bad in that stall, I'm afraid, my poor girl."

She was so touched at hearing him agree with her that she tried to be

brave.

"Oh! it's a bad place. Then, to-day the air is poisoned. But you shall

see soon if I'm a worm. When one has to work, one works; isn't it true?

I'd die rather than stop."

There was silence. He held her with one arm round her waist, pressing

her against his breast to keep her from harm. Although she already felt

strong enough to go back to the stall, she forgot everything in her

delight.

"Only," she went on in a very low voice, "I should like it so much if

you were kinder. Yes, it is so good when we love each other a little."

And she began to cry softly.

"But I do love you," he cried, "for I've taken you with me."

She only replied by shaking her head. There are often men who take

women just in order to have them, caring mighty little about their

happiness. Her tears flowed more hotly; it made her despair now to

think of the happy life she would have led if she had chanced to fall

to another lad, whose arm she would always have felt thus round her

waist. Another? and the vague image of that other arose from the depth

of her emotion. But it was done with; she only desired now to live to

the end with this one, if he would not hustle her about too much.

"Then," she said, "try to be like this sometimes."

Sobs cut short her words, and he embraced her again.

"You're a stupid! There, I swear to be kind. I'm not worse than any one

else, go on!"

She looked at him, and began to smile through her tears. Perhaps he

was right; one never met women who were happy. Then, although she

distrusted his oath, she gave herself up to the joy of seeing him

affectionate. Good God! if only that could last! They had both embraced

again, and as they were pressing each other in a long clasp they heard

steps, which made them get up. Three mates who had seen them pass had

come up to know how she was.

They set out together. It was nearly ten o'clock, and they took their

lunch into a cool corner before going back to sweat at the bottom of

the cutting. They were finishing the double slice of bread-and-butter,

their brick, and were about to drink the coffee from their tin, when

they were disturbed by a noise coming from stalls in the distance. What

then? was it another accident? They got up and ran. Pikemen, putters,

trammers crossed them at every step; no one knew anything; all were

shouting; it must be some great misfortune. Gradually the whole mine

was in terror, frightened shadows emerged from the galleries, lanterns

danced and flew away in the darkness. Where was it? Why could no one

say?

All at once a captain passed, shouting:

"They are cutting the cables! they are cutting the cables!"

Then the panic increased. It was a furious gallop through the gloomy

passages. Their heads were confused. Why cut the cables? And who was

cutting them, when the men were below? It seemed monstrous.

But the voice of another captain was heard and then lost:

"The Montsou men are cutting the cables! Let every one go up!"

When he had understood, Chaval stopped Catherine short. The idea that

he would meet the Montsou men up above, should he get out, paralysed

his legs. It had come, then, that band which he thought had got into

the hands of the police. For a moment he thought of retracing his path

and ascending through Gaston-Marie, but that was no longer possible. He

swore, hesitating, hiding his fear, repeating that it was stupid to run

like that. They would not, surely, leave them at the bottom.

The captain's voice echoed anew, now approaching them:

"Let every one go up! To the ladders! to the ladders!"

And Chaval was carried away with his mates. He pushed Catherine and

accused her of not running fast enough. Did she want, then, to remain

in the pit to die of hunger? For those Montsou brigands were capable

of breaking the ladders without waiting for people to come up. This

abominable suggestion ended by driving them wild. Along the galleries

there was only a furious rush, helter-skelter; a race of madmen, each

striving to arrive first and mount before the others. Some men shouted

that the ladders were broken and that no one could get out. And then in

frightened groups they began to reach the pit-eye, where they were all

engulfed. They threw themselves toward the shaft, they crushed through

the narrow door to the ladder passage; while an old groom who had

prudently led back the horses to the stable, looked at them with an air

of contemptuous indifference, accustomed to spend nights in the pit and

certain that he could eventually be drawn out of it.

"By God! will you climb up in front of me?" said Chaval to Catherine.

"At least I can hold you if you fall."

Out of breath, and suffocated by this race of three kilometres which

had once more bathed her in sweat, she gave herself up, without

understanding, to the eddies of the crowd. Then he pulled her by the

arm, almost breaking it; and she cried with pain, her tears bursting

out. Already he was forgetting his oath, never would she be happy.

"Go on, then!" he roared.

But he frightened her too much. If she went first he would bully her

the whole time. So she resisted, while the wild flood of their comrades

pushed them to one side. The water that filtered from the shaft was

falling in great drops, and the floor of the pit-eye, shaken by this

tramping, was trembling over the sump, the muddy cesspool ten metres

deep. At Jean-Bart, two years earlier, a terrible accident had happened

just here; the breaking of a cable had precipitated the cage to the

bottom of the sump, in which two men had been drowned. And they all

thought of this; every one would be left down there if they all crowded

on to the planks.

"Confounded dunderhead!" shouted Chaval. "Die then; I shall be rid of

you!"

He climbed up and she followed.

From the bottom to daylight there were a hundred and two ladders, about

seven metres in length, each placed on a narrow landing which occupied

the breadth of the passage and in which a square hole scarcely allowed

the shoulders to pass. It was like a flat chimney, seven hundred metres

in height, between the wall of the shaft and the brattice of the

winding-cage, a damp pipe, black and endless, in which the ladders were

placed one above the other, almost straight, in regular stages. It took

a strong man twenty-five minutes to climb up this giant column. The

passage, however, was no longer used except in cases of accident.

Catherine at first climbed bravely. Her naked feet were used to the

hard coal on the floors of the passages, and did not suffer from the

square rungs, covered with iron rods to prevent them from wearing

away. Her hands, hardened by the haulage, grasped without fatigue the

uprights that were too big for her. And it even interested her and took

her out of her grief, this unforeseen ascent, this long serpent of

men flowing on and hoisting themselves up three on a ladder, so that

even when the head should emerge in daylight the tail would still be

trailing over the sump. They were not there yet, the first could hardly

have ascended a third of the shaft. No one spoke now, only their feet

moved with a low sound; while the lamps, like travelling stars, spaced

out from below upward, formed a continually increasing line.

Catherine heard a trammer behind her counting the ladders. It gave her

the idea of counting them also. They had already mounted fifteen, and

were arriving at a landing-place. But at that moment she collided with

Chaval's legs. He swore, shouting to her to look out. Gradually the

whole column stopped and became motionless. What then? had something

happened? and every one recovered his voice to ask questions and to

express fear. Their anxiety had increased since leaving the bottom;

their ignorance as to what was going on above oppressed them more as

they approached daylight. Someone announced that they would have to go

down again, that the ladders were broken. That was the thought that

preoccupied them all, the fear of finding themselves face to face with

space. Another explanation came down from mouth to mouth; there had

been an accident, a pikeman slipped from a rung. No one knew exactly,

the shouts made it impossible to hear; were they going to bed there? At

last, without any precise information being obtained, the ascent began

again, with the same slow, painful movement, in the midst of the tread

of feet and the dancing of lamps. It must certainly be higher up that

the ladders were broken.

At the thirty-second ladder, as they passed a third landing-stage,

Catherine felt her legs and arms grow stiff. At first she had felt a

slight tingling in her skin. Now she lost the sensation of the iron

and the wood beneath her feet and in her hands. A vague pain, which

gradually became burning, heated her muscles. And in the dizziness

which came over her, she recalled her grandfather Bonnemort's stories

of the days when there was no passage, and little girls of ten used to

take out the coal on their shoulders up bare ladders; so that if one

of them slipped, or a fragment of coal simply rolled out of a basket,

three or four children would fall down head first from the blow. The

cramp in her limbs became unbearable, she would never reach the end.

Fresh stoppages allowed her to breathe. But the terror which was

communicated every time from above dazed her still more. Above and

below her, respiration became more difficult. This interminable ascent

was causing giddiness, and the nausea affected her with the others. She

was suffocating, intoxicated with the darkness, exasperated with the

walls which crushed against her flesh, and shuddering also with the

dampness, her body perspiring beneath the great drops which fell on

her. They were approaching a level where so thick a rain fell that it

threatened to extinguish their lamps.

Chaval twice spoke to Catherine without obtaining any reply. What the

devil was she doing down there? Had she let her tongue fall? She might

just tell him if she was all right. They had been climbing for half an

hour, but so heavily that he had only reached the fifty-ninth ladder;

there were still forty-three. Catherine at last stammered that she was

getting on all right. He would have treated her as a worm if she had

acknowledged her weariness. The iron of the rungs must have cut her

feet; it seemed to her that it was sawing in up to the bone. After

every grip she expected to see her hands leave the uprights; they were

so peeled and stiff she could not close her fingers, and she feared she

would fall backward with torn shoulders and dislocated thighs in this

continual effort. It was especially the defective slope of the ladders

from which she suffered, the almost perpendicular position which

obliged her to hoist herself up by the strength of her wrists, with her

belly against the wood. The panting of many breaths now drowned the

sound of the feet, forming an enormous moan, multiplied tenfold by the

partition of the passage, arising from the depths and expiring towards

the light. There was a groan; word ran along that a trammer had just

cut his head open against the edge of a stair.

And Catherine went on climbing. They had passed the level. The rain

had ceased; a mist made heavy the cellar-like air, poisoned with the

odour of old iron and damp wood. Mechanically she continued to count

in a low voice--eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three; still nineteen.

The repetition of these figures supported her merely by their rhythmic

balance; she had no further consciousness of her movements. When she

lifted her eyes the lamps turned in a spiral. Her blood was flowing;

she felt that she was dying; the least breath would have knocked her

over. The worst was that those below were now pushing, and that the

entire column was stampeding, yielding to the growing anger of its

fatigue, the furious need to see the sun again. The first mates had

emerged; there were, then, no broken ladders; but the idea that they

might yet be broken to prevent the last from coming up, when others

were already breathing up above, nearly drove them mad. And when a new

stoppage occurred oaths broke out, and all went on climbing, hustling

each other, passing over each other's bodies to arrive at all costs.

Then Catherine fell. She had cried Chaval's name in despairing appeal.

He did not hear; he was struggling, digging his heels into a comrade's

ribs to get before him. And she was rolled down and trampled over.

As she fainted she dreamed. It seemed to her that she was one of

the little putter-girls of old days, and that a fragment of coal,

fallen from the basket above her, had thrown her to the bottom of the

shaft, like a sparrow struck by a flint. Five ladders only remained

to climb. It had taken nearly an hour. She never knew how she reached

daylight, carried up on people's shoulders, supported by the throttling

narrowness of the passage. Suddenly she found herself in the dazzling

sunlight, in the midst of a yelling crowd who were hooting her.