Germinal (20 page)

Honorine and Mélanie finally brought the parcel. Cécile undid it and produced the two dresses. She added some scarves and even some stockings and mittens. They would all fit just beautifully, and hastily she bid the maids wrap the selected garments, for her piano teacher had just arrived and she was beginning to usher mother and children towards the door.

‘We really are very short,' stammered La Maheude. ‘If you could just spare a five-franc piece…'

The words stuck in her throat for the Maheu family were proud and did not beg. Cécile looked anxiously towards her father; but he refused point blank with the air of one called upon to perform a painful duty.

‘No, it is not our custom. We simply cannot.'

Then, moved by the look of distress on the mother's face, Cécile wanted to give the children something extra. They hadn't taken their eyes off the brioche, so she cut two slices which she handed to them.

‘Here, these are for you.'

Then she took them back and asked for an old newspaper.

‘Wait, you can share them with your brothers and sisters.' With her parents looking on affectionately, Cécile finally bundled them out. And these poor mites who had no bread to eat went on their way, respectfully bearing this brioche
¹
in tiny hands that were numb with cold.

La Maheude dragged her children along the cobblestone road, seeing neither the empty fields nor the black mud nor the huge, pale sky curving overhead. On her way back through Montsou, she strode purposefully into Maigrat's shop and begged him so hard that she finally left with two loaves, some coffee and butter, and even the five-franc piece she had been wanting, since the man also lent money at an extortionate rate of interest. In fact
it wasn't herself he was after, it was Catherine, as La Maheude understood when he told her to send her daughter to collect the rest of the provisions. They would soon see. Catherine would slap him the minute he laid a finger on her.

Eleven o'clock struck at the little church in Village Two Hundred and Forty, a brick chapel in which Father Joire came to say Mass on Sundays. From the school next door, which was also built of brick, the sound of children reciting their lessons could be heard even though the windows were shut to keep out the cold. Between the four great blocks of uniform housing, the broad avenues of tiny back-to-back gardens lay deserted; ravaged by winter, they made a sorry sight with their marly soil and the bumps and smudges of their last remaining vegetables. Indoors, soup was being prepared; smoke rose from the chimneys, and here and there along the rows of houses a woman would emerge, open another door, and disappear again. Even though it wasn't raining, the grey sky was so heavy with moisture that drain-pipes dripped steadily into the water-butts that stood all along each pavement. This village had simply been plonked down in the middle of the vast plateau, surrounded by black roads as though by a border of condolence, and the only cheerful note was provided by the regular bands of red roof tiles, constantly washed clean by the rain.

On her return La Maheude made a detour to buy some potatoes from the wife of a supervisor, who still had some of last year's crop left. Behind a row of scraggy poplars, which were the only trees to be seen in this flat terrain, a group of buildings stood apart from the rest, a series of houses arranged in fours and each surrounded by its own garden. Since the Company had reserved this new development for the deputies, the workers had dubbed this corner of their hamlet the First Estate, just as they called their own part of the village Never-Never-Land
by way of cheerful, ironic comment on their debt-ridden penury.

‘Oof. Here we are at last,' said La Maheude as, laden with parcels, she bundled Lénore and Henri into their house all covered in mud and now thoroughly walked off their feet.

In front of the fire Estelle lay screaming in Alzire's arms. The latter, having run out of sugar and not knowing how to keep Estelle quiet, had decided to pretend to offer her her breast. This often did the trick. But she was just a sickly eight-year-old, and when she opened her dress this time and pressed the child's mouth to her emaciated chest, it merely made Estelle cross to suck the skin and find that nothing came.

‘Here, give her to me!' her mother shouted as soon as her hands were free. ‘We shan't be able to hear ourselves think.'

Once she had drawn from her bodice a breast as heavy as a swollen wineskin and the bawling child had latched on to the spout, there was immediate quiet, and they could finally talk. Everything else was fine, the little housewife had kept the fire going and swept and tidied the room. And in the silence they could hear Grandpa snoring away upstairs, with the same rhythmic snore that had not faltered for an instant.

‘Goodness, look at all these things!' Alzire said softly, smiling at the sight of the groceries. ‘I can make the soup if you want, Mum.'

The table was covered: one parcel of clothes, two loaves of bread, potatoes, butter, coffee, chicory and half a pound of brawn.

‘Oh, yes, the soup,' said La Maheude wearily. ‘We'd need to go and pick some sorrel and pull up some leeks…No, I'll make some later for the men…Put some potatoes on to boil just now, and we'll have them with a bit of butter…And some coffee, too, eh? Don't forget the coffee!'

But then she suddenly remembered the brioche. She looked at Lénore and Henri, who were now fighting on the floor, for they had already recovered their strength and their spirits, and she saw that their hands were empty. The greedy little things had quietly eaten the lot on the way home! She gave them a
smack just as Alzire, who was hanging the cooking-pot over the fire, tried to mollify her.

‘Leave them be, Mum. If you're thinking of me, I really don't mind about the brioche. They were hungry, what with walking all that way.'

Midday struck, and the sound of clogs could be heard as the children came out of school. The potatoes were ready, and the coffee, to which more than an equivalent amount of chicory had been added to supplement it, was gurgling through the filter in large drops. They cleared a corner of the table, but only La Maheude took her food there, since the three children were happy to eat off their knees; and as the little boy ate with mute intent, he kept turning round to look at the brawn, excited by the greasepaper wrapping but not saying a word.

La Maheude was sipping her coffee, her hands clenched round the glass to warm them, when old Bonnemort came downstairs. Usually he got up later, and his lunch would be waiting for him on the stove. But today he started grumbling because there was no soup. Then, after his daughter-in-law had told him that beggars can't be choosers, he ate his potatoes in silence. From time to time he would get up and go and spit into the ashes, by way of keeping the place clean. Then he would return to his chair and sit there in a slumped heap, rolling the food round at the back of his mouth, with his head bowed and a vacant expression on his face.

‘Oh, Mum, I forgot, next door came round – '

Her mother cut her short:

‘I'm not talking to that woman.'

She was still seething with resentment against La Levaque, who had pleaded poverty the day before and refused to lend her a sou, whereas she happened to know that La Levaque had plenty of money just then, seeing as Bouteloup, her lodger, had paid her his fortnight in advance. People in the village rarely lent money to each other.

‘But that reminds me,' La Maheude continued. ‘Put a millful of coffee in some paper, and I'll take it round to La Pierronne. She lent me some the day before yesterday.'

When her daughter had prepared the package, she told Alzire
that she would be back at once to start cooking the men's soup. Then off she went with Estelle in her arms, leaving old Bonnemort slowly chewing his potatoes, and Lénore and Henri fighting over the peelings that had fallen on the floor.

Rather than go round by the street, La Maheude cut straight across the gardens just in case La Levaque should try to speak to her. As it happened, her own garden backed on to the Pierrons', and there was a hole in the dilapidated trellis through which they were able to visit each other. The shared well was located there, serving four households. Next to it, behind a sorry clump of lilac, was the
carin
, a low shed full of old tools where they also reared a succession of rabbits to be eaten on special occasions. One o'clock struck, coffee-time, when not a soul was to be seen at window or door – except for one man, one of the stonemen, who was digging his little vegetable patch until it was time to go to work. He did not look up. But as La Maheude reached the row of houses on the other side, she was surprised to see a gentleman and two ladies come past the church. She stopped for a moment and then recognized them: it was Mme Hennebeau, who was showing her guests round the village, the man with the ribbon in his buttonhole and the lady in a fur coat.

‘Oh, you really shouldn't have bothered!' La Pierronne exclaimed when La Maheude handed her the coffee. ‘There was no hurry.'

She was twenty-eight and considered the prettiest woman in the village, with brown hair, a low forehead, big eyes and a small mouth – and always well turned out, as clean and dainty as a cat. Moreover, since she had not had any children she still had a fine bust. Her mother, La Bruúlé, the widow of a hewer who had been killed in the mine, had sent her daughter to work in a factory, determined that she should not marry a collier; and so she had still not got over her fury that, rather late in the day, this same daughter had gone and married Pierron, who was a widower to boot and already had a girl of eight. And yet it was a happy marriage, despite all the stories and gossip about the husband's obliging ways and the lovers his wife had taken: they had not a penny of debt, they ate meat twice a week, and their house was so spick and span that you could have seen your face
in the saucepans. As if that were not enough, they knew the right people, and the Company had authorized La Pierronne to sell sweets and biscuits, which she displayed in jars along two shelves behind her window. This made her a profit of six or seven sous a day, and sometimes twelve on Sundays. The only exceptions to this general felicity were La Bruúlé herself, a revolutionary of the old school who ranted and raved and demanded revenge on the bosses for killing her husband, and little Lydie, who got smacked rather too often as a consequence of the family's more lively exchanges.

‘What a big girl we are already!' said La Pierronne, cooing at Estelle.

‘Oh, the trouble they cause! Don't get me started!' La Maheude said. ‘You're lucky you don't have any. At least you can keep things clean and tidy.'

Even though everything was tidy in her own house and she did the washing every Saturday, she cast an envious housewifely eye round this room that was so bright and cheerful, stylish even, with its gilt vases on the sideboard, its mirror and its three framed prints.

She had found La Pierronne drinking coffee on her own, since the rest of her family was at the pit.

‘You will stay and have a glass with me, won't you?' she said.

‘No, thanks, I've just had mine.'

‘What does that matter?'

And nor did it matter. Quietly the women sipped their coffee. As they looked out between the jars of biscuits and sweets, their gaze fell on the houses opposite and on the row of windows, each with its own little curtains, whose varying degrees of whiteness bespoke differing degrees of domestic virtue. The Levaques' curtains were very dirty and looked more like tea-towels that had been used to clean the saucepans.

‘How can people live in such filth!' muttered La Pierronne.

That was enough for La Maheude: there was no stopping her now. Oh, if she'd had a lodger like Bouteloup, she'd soon have shown them how to make ends meet! As long as you went about it the right way, having a lodger could be a great advantage. Except that you should never sleep with them. Though in this
case the husband drank and beat his wife and was forever chasing the girls who sang at the cafés in Montsou.

La Pierronne assumed an expression of profound disgust. You could catch all sorts of things from those singers. There was one at Joiselle who'd infected an entire pit.

‘But I'm surprised you've let your son go with their daughter.'

‘Well, I know, but you try and stop them!…Their garden is right next to ours. Every summer Zacharie was always behind the lilac with Philoméne, or else on top of the shed and not caring a blind bit who saw them. You couldn't draw water from the well without catching them at it.'

In a crowded village where everyone lived cheek by jowl it was a common story. Flung together at a young age, its boys and girls soon went to the bad, having their end away, as they put it,
¹
on the low sloping roof of the shed as soon as darkness fell. This was where the putters conceived their first baby, that is if they couldn't be bothered to go as far as Réquillart or the cornfields. It didn't matter, though, they got married eventually. It was only the mothers who were cross when their sons started too early, because once the lad was married he stopped bringing money home to his family.

‘If I were you, I'd sooner they got it over with,' La Pierronne observed in her wisdom. ‘Your Zacharie's put her in the family way twice already, and they'll simply go somewhere else to do it…Whichever way you look at it, the money's gone.'

La Maheude was furious and spread her hands wide:

‘What an idea! I'd sooner put a curse on them if they went and did it again…Zacharie should show us a bit of consideration, shouldn't he? He's cost us money after all, and it's time he paid some of it back before he saddles himself with a wife…What would become of us, I ask you, if our children all started working for other people straight away? We might as well curl up and die!'

Gradually she calmed down.

‘As a general rule, I mean. We'll just have to wait and see…It's good and strong, this coffee of yours. You obviously put the right amount in.'