Germinal (33 page)

Three times that day Maheu had been forced to make them strengthen the timbering. It was half past two, and it would soon be time to return to the surface. Étienne, lying on his side, was just finishing cutting out a block of coal when a distant rumble of thunder shook the entire mine.

‘What the hell's that?' he shouted, dropping his pick to listen.

He thought the whole road was caving in behind him.

But already Maheu was slithering down the slope of the coal-face and shouting:

‘It's a fall! Quick! Hurry!'

They all slid down as fast as they could, in a rush of anxious concern for their fellow-miners. A terrible silence had fallen, and the lamps bobbed up and down in their hands as they raced along the roads in single file, bending so low that it was almost as if they were galloping on all fours. Without slackening speed they exchanged rapid question and answer: whereabouts? Up here by the coal-faces? No, it came from lower down! Near the haulage roadway more like! When they reached the chimney, they plunged down it one on top of the other, heedless of the bruises.

Jeanlin, his bottom still red from the previous day's thrashing, had not tried to escape his work that day. He was busy trotting along barefoot behind his train, shutting the ventilation doors one by one. Sometimes, when he thought there were no deputies around, he would climb up on to the last tub, which he'd been told not to do in case he fell asleep on it. But his main source of amusement was, each time the train pulled in to let another one pass, to set off and find Bébert, who was up at the front holding the reins. He would sneak up on him, without his lamp, and pinch him hard, or else he would play tricks on him, looking like some evil monkey with his yellow hair and big ears and his thin, pointed face with its little green eyes that glowed in the dark. Unnaturally precocious for his years, he seemed to have the instinctual intelligence and quick dexterity of some freakish human runt which had reverted to its original animal state.

That afternoon Mouque brought Battle along to do his stint with the pit-boys; and while the horse was taking a breather in a siding, Jeanlin crept up behind Bébert and asked:

‘What's wrong with the old nag, stopping dead like that?…He'll make me break a leg one day.'

Bébert could not answer; he was having to restrain Battle, who was becoming excited at the approach of the other train. The horse had caught the scent in the distance of his comrade, Trumpet, for whom he had developed a deep affection ever since the day he had seen him arrive at pit-bottom. His was the
warm compassion of an elderly philosopher wanting to comfort a young friend by imbuing him with his own patience and resignation; for Trumpet had not been able to adapt, and he hauled his tubs with reluctance, head down, blinded by the dark, and in constant longing for the sunshine. So each time Battle met him, he would stretch out his head, snort and give him an encouraging lick.

‘Christ Almighty!' swore Bébert. ‘There they go again, slobbering all over each other.'

Once Trumpet had passed, he replied to Jeanlin's question about Battle:

‘The old fellow's got the wind up, that's why. When he stops like that, it's because he senses something's wrong, like a rock in the way or a hole. He takes care of himself, he does, wants to make sure he comes to no harm. Today there must be something up beyond that door. He keeps pushing it and then not moving an inch…Have you noticed anything?'

‘No,' said Jeanlin. ‘There's a lot of water, though. I'm up to my knees in it.'

The train set off again. And on the next trip Battle once again pushed the ventilation door open with his head and just stood there, whinnying and trembling. All at once he made up his mind and went through.

Jeanlin had hung back to close the door. He stooped to peer at the pool of water he was wading through; then he raised his lamp and saw that the timbers were sagging under the weight of a spring seeping down. At that moment a hewer, whose name was Berloque but whom everyone called Chicot, was on his way back from his coal-face, anxious to be with his wife, who was in labour. He, too, stopped to look at the timbering. And suddenly, just as Jeanlin was about to rush off after his train, there had been an almighty crack, and man and boy were buried beneath the rock-fall.

There was a long silence. The draught created by the fall was pushing thick clouds of dust along the roads. Blinded and choking for air, the miners were on their way down from every part of the mine, even from the most distant workings. Their lamps bobbed about but barely illuminated these black men
racing along like moles in a run. When the first of them reached the rock-fall, they shouted out loudly to summon their comrades. A second group had come from the coal-faces beyond and found themselves on the other side of the mass of earth blocking the roadway. It was immediately obvious that at most ten metres of roof had caved in. The damage was not serious. But their blood ran cold when they heard the sound of groaning coming from beneath the rubble.

Bébert had abandoned his train and was running towards them, shouting:

‘Jeanlin's under there! Jeanlin's under there!'

At that precise moment Maheu came tumbling down the chimney with Zacharie and Étienne. He was beside himself with despair and helplessness, and could only keep swearing:

‘Christ! Christ! Christ!'

Catherine, Lydie and La Mouquette had also rushed up and now stood there sobbing, screaming with terror in the midst of this appalling mayhem, which the darkness made only more terrible. People tried to quieten them, but they were panicking and screamed louder with each groan they heard.

Richomme, the deputy, had arrived at the double, dismayed to find that neither Négrel the engineer nor Dansaert was down in the pit. He put his ear to the rocks to listen and eventually declared that the groans were not the groans of a child. It must be a man under there, no question about it. Twenty times already Maheu had called for Jeanlin. Not a whisper. The lad must have been crushed to death.

And on the groaning went, unvarying. People spoke to the dying man and asked his name. A groan was the only reply.

‘Come on, quick,' urged Richomme, having already organized the rescue operation. ‘There'll be time for talking later.'

The miners attacked the rock-fall from both sides with pick and shovel. Chaval worked in silence alongside Maheu and Étienne, while Zacharie saw to the removal of the rubble. The end of the shift had come and gone, and no one had eaten; but you didn't go home to your soup when there were comrades in danger. However, it occurred to them that they would be worried in the village if no one came home, and it was suggested
that the women should go back. But neither Catherine nor La Mouquette nor even Lydie would budge from the spot, so desperate were they to know the worst and busy helping to clear away the earth. Hence Levaque accepted the job of telling people about the rock-fall and how there had been just a small amount of damage that needed repairing. It was nearly four o'clock, and in less than an hour the miners had done the equivalent of a day's work: half the earth would already have been cleared if further pieces of rock had not fallen from the roof of the road. Maheu worked away in such a frenzy of stubborn determination that he angrily waved another man away when he offered to relieve him for a moment.

‘Gently does it!' said Richomme eventually. ‘We're nearly there…We don't want to finish them off.'

It was true: the groaning was becoming more and more audible. Indeed it was this continuous groaning that was guiding the men, and now it seemed to be coming from directly beneath their picks. Suddenly it stopped.

Everyone looked at each other in silence, shivering as the chill of death passed over them in the darkness. They kept digging, bathed in sweat, with every sinew in their bodies stretched to breaking-point. They came on a foot and then started removing the rubble with their bare hands, uncovering the limbs one by one. The head was unscathed. Lamps were lowered, and the name of Chicot began to circulate. He was still warm, his spine broken by a rock.

‘Wrap him in a blanket and put him in a tub,' Richomme ordered. ‘Now for the young lad. Quickly!'

Maheu gave one last blow with his pick, and a gap opened up; they were through to the men digging from the other side. They called out: they'd just found Jeanlin, unconscious, with both legs broken but still breathing. His father took him in his arms; and even now all he could think to mutter through clenched teeth, by way of expressing his pain, was ‘Christ! Christ! Christ!' Catherine and the rest of the women had begun to wail again.

They quickly formed themselves into a procession. Bébert had fetched Battle, who was harnessed to the two tubs: in the first
lay the body of Chicot, with Étienne watching over it; in the second was Maheu, seated, with Jeanlin lying unconscious across his knees, covered with a piece of woollen cloth ripped from a ventilation door. And off they set, at the walk. Over each tub a lamp shone like a red star. Then behind came the long line of miners, some fifty shadowy figures in single file. By now completely exhausted, they were dragging their feet and slipping on the mud, like some grim herd of animals struck down by a fatal disease. It took nearly half an hour to reach pit-bottom as this seemingly endless subterranean cortège made its way through the thick darkness along the roadways, which forked and twisted and unravelled before them.

At pit-bottom Richomme, who had gone on ahead, had given orders for a cage to be kept empty. Pierron loaded the two tubs immediately. In the one, Maheu sat with his injured child on his knees, while in the other Étienne had to cradle Chicot's body in his arms so as to hold it steady. Once the other miners had piled into its other levels, the cage began its ascent. This took two minutes. The water falling from the lining of the shaft felt very cold, and the men gazed upwards, impatient for daylight.

Fortunately a pit-boy who had been sent to fetch Dr Vanderhaghen had found him and was bringing him to the pit. Jeanlin and the dead man were taken into the deputies' room where there was always a roaring fire burning from one year's end to the next. The buckets of hot water lined up ready for the men to wash their feet were moved to one side; and having spread two mattresses on the flagstone floor, they laid the man and the boy down on them. Only Maheu and Étienne were allowed in. Outside, various putters, hewers and young lads who'd come to see stood around in a group talking quietly.

The doctor took one look at Chicot and muttered:

‘He's had it!…You can wash him now.'

Two supervisors undressed him and then sponged down his body, which was black with coal-dust and still covered in the sweat of his day's work.

‘The head's all right,' the doctor continued, kneeling on Jeanlin's mattress. ‘So's his chest…Ah! it's the legs that took the brunt of it.'

As deftly as a nurse he undressed the child himself, loosening his cap, removing his jacket and pulling his trousers and shirt off. And his poor little body emerged, as thin as an insect's, filthy with black dust and yellowish earth and mottled with patches of blood. He couldn't be examined properly in this state, and so they had to wash him too. The sponging then seemed to make him even thinner, and his flesh was so pallid and transparent that one could see his bones. He was a pitiable sight, the last, degenerate offspring of a destitute breed, a suffering scrap of a thing half crushed to death by rock. Once he was clean, they could see the bruises on his thighs, two red blotches against the whiteness of his skin.

Jeanlin recovered consciousness and groaned. At the foot of the mattress, arms dangling by his side, Maheu stood gazing at him; and huge tears rolled down his cheeks.

‘So you're his father?' asked the doctor, looking up. ‘There's no call for tears. You can see he's not dead…Here, give me a hand instead.'

He diagnosed two simple fractures. But he was worried about the right leg; it would probably have to be amputated.

At that point Négrel and Dansaert, having eventually been notified, arrived with Richomme. Négrel listened to the deputy's report with growing exasperation. He exploded: it was always the damned timbering! If he'd said it once, he'd said it a hundred times: men would die! And now the brutes were talking about going on strike if anyone forced them to timber properly! The worst of it was that this time the Company would have to pay for the damage itself. Monsieur Hennebeau
would
be pleased!

‘Who is it?' he asked Dansaert, who was standing silently by the body as it was being wrapped in a sheet.

‘Chicot, one of our best,' the overman replied. ‘He's got three children…Poor bugger!'

Dr Vanderhaghen asked for Jeanlin to be transported immediately to his parents' house. It was six o'clock and already getting dark, so it would be best to move the body as well; and the engineer gave orders for the horses to be harnessed to a wagon and for a stretcher to be fetched. The injured boy was placed on
the stretcher, and the dead man was loaded into the wagon on his mattress.

Putters were still standing outside the door, chatting with some miners who had remained behind to see what was happening. When the door of the deputies' room opened again, the group fell silent. A new funeral cortège formed up, with the wagon in front, then the stretcher, and finally the line of people following. They moved out of the pit-yard and slowly climbed the road towards the village. The first frosts of November had stripped the vast plain bare, and night was slowly burying it in a shroud of livid white as though a pall had detached itself from the paling sky.

Then Étienne whispered to Maheu that he should send Catherine on ahead to warn La Maheude and soften the blow. Her father, looking dazed as he followed the stretcher, nodded his agreement; and the girl ran on, since they were nearly there now. But the familiar dark outline of the box-shaped wagon had already been spotted. Women were careering out on to the pavements, and three or four were tearing along in a panic, not a bonnet on their heads. Soon there were thirty, fifty of them, all gripped by the same terror. Had someone been killed? Who was it? Levaque's story had earlier set their minds at rest, but now the tale assumed the dimensions of a nightmare: it wasn't just one man who had perished but ten, and the funeral-wagon was going to bring each one of them back like this, body by body.