Germinal (48 page)

‘Comrades! Comrades!' an exhausted Étienne kept repeating in a hoarse voice, as he tried to obtain a moment's silence and conclude the meeting.

Eventually they paid attention.

‘Comrades! Are we agreed? Tomorrow morning at Jean-Bart!'

‘Yes! Yes! Jean-Bart! Death to the scabs!'

And a tempest of three thousand voices filled the sky and died away in the pure light of the moon.

At four o'clock the moon had set, and it was pitch dark. Everyone was still asleep in the Deneulin household; and the old brick house stood dark and silent, with its doors and windows shut, at the end of the large, untidy garden that lay between it and the Jean-Bart mine. Along the other side of the house ran the now deserted road to Vandame, a small town about three kilometres away and hidden from view by the forest.

Deneulin, tired from having spent part of the previous day down the pit, was snoring with his face to the wall when he dreamed that someone was calling him. When he eventually woke up, he heard a real voice and rushed to open the window. It was one of his deputies, standing in the garden below.

‘What is it?' he asked.

‘It's mutiny, sir. Half the men are refusing to work, and they won't let the others go down.'

Deneulin did not understand at first. His head felt dizzy and heavy with sleep, and the cold air struck him with the force of an icy shower.

‘Then damn well make them go down!' he spluttered.

‘It's been going on for an hour now,' the deputy continued, ‘so we thought we'd better come and fetch you. You're the only one who can maybe make them see sense.'

‘All right, I'm coming.'

He quickly got dressed: his mind had cleared, and he was very worried. They could easily have looted the house, for neither the cook nor the manservant had stirred. But from across the landing he could hear the sound of anxious voices; and when he came out, he saw the door to his daughters' bedroom open and the two girls appear, having hurriedly thrown on their white dressing-gowns.

‘What's happening, Father?'

Lucie, the elder, was already twenty-two, tall, dark, with a regal air; while Jeanne, the younger one and just nineteen, was short, with golden hair and an easy grace.

‘Nothing serious,' he replied in order to reassure them. ‘Some
troublemakers kicking up a fuss over at the mine, apparently. I'm off to see what's going on.'

But they would not hear of it and insisted that he must have something to warm his stomach before he left. He would only come back ill otherwise, with his digestion ruined as usual. He endeavoured to say no and that as God was his witness he simply did not have the time.

‘Now look,' said Jeanne eventually, wrapping herself round his neck. ‘You'll just have a little glass of rum and a biscuit or two. Or else I'll hang on to you like this and you'll have to take me with you.'

He had to give in, declaring that he would surely choke on the biscuits. Already they were on their way downstairs ahead of him, each with her own candlestick. Below, in the dining-room, they hurried to wait on him, one pouring the rum, the other running to the pantry for a packet of biscuits. Having lost their mother when they were very young, they had brought themselves up, rather badly it must be said, since their father spoiled them. The elder girl dreamed constantly of singing on the stage, while the younger one was mad about painting, with a boldness of taste which set her apart. But when serious business difficulties had obliged them to cut back on their style of living, these two apparently extravagant girls had suddenly blossomed into thoroughly sensible and resourceful housekeepers who could spot the merest discrepant centime in the household accounts. And now, for all that they lived the part of bohemian spinsters, they managed the domestic budget, watched every last penny, haggled with the tradesmen, endlessly refurbished their wardrobes, and ultimately managed to lend an air of decent respectability to the worsening financial straits in which they lived.

‘Eat, Papa,' Lucie insisted.

Then, noticing how quickly he seemed preoccupied again as he sat there with a silent and gloomy expression, she became alarmed once more.

‘Is it serious, then? Judging by your face, it must be…Why don't we stay here with you? They can manage without us at that lunch today.'

She was referring to an outing which had been planned for the coming morning. Mme Hennebeau was to fetch Cécile from the Grégoires' in her carriage; after that she would come and collect Lucie and Jeanne, and then they were all going to Marchiennes to have lunch at Les Forges as guests of the manager's wife. It would be a chance to visit the workshops and to see the blast-furnaces and the coke-ovens.

‘Of course we'll stay,' declared Jeanne in her turn.

But he became cross.

‘What sort of an idea is that! I tell you there's nothing to worry about…Kindly do me the pleasure of tucking yourselves up in bed again. And then you will dress and be ready at nine o'clock as planned.'

He kissed them and hurried away. The sound of his boots on the frozen ground could be heard disappearing across the garden.

Jeanne carefully replaced the cork in the bottle of rum, while Lucie locked the biscuits away. The dining-room had the clean and tidy look of a place where the fare is frugal. And they both took advantage of this early-morning visit to check that nothing had been left lying around from the night before. A napkin had been forgotten, so the servant would be scolded. Finally they went back upstairs to bed.

As he took a short cut along the narrow paths of his kitchen-garden, Deneulin was thinking about the danger to his fortune, his Montsou denier, the million francs he had realized and dreamed of increasing tenfold, and which was now in such grave peril. It had been one long tale of bad luck: the unforeseen and enormously expensive repair programme, the ruinous running costs, and now this disastrous industrial crisis just when he was beginning to make a profit. If the strike went ahead, he would be finished. He pushed open a small gate: in the pitch darkness the colliery buildings could be identified by their even blacker shadows and a sprinkling of lanterns.

Jean-Bart was not as big as Le Voreux, but in the opinion of the engineers the new plant and machinery had made it a fine pit. Not only had the shaft been widened by a metre and a half and taken down to a depth of seven hundred and eight metres,
it had been completely re-equipped with a new winding-engine, new cages and new fittings, and all to the very latest specifications. Moreover, there was even a hint of conscious elegance in the way things had been designed: the screening-shed had a carved frieze, the headgear had been adorned with a clock, the pit-head and the engine-house had the rounded contours of a Renaissance chapel, and the chimney above them was spiral-shaped and constructed from a mosaic of black and red brick. The pump had been located in the other mine-shaft belonging to the concession, the disused Gaston-Marie pit, which was now used solely for drainage. Jean-Bart had only two subsidiary shafts, to the right and left of the winding-shaft, one for the steam-driven ventilator and the other for the emergency ladders.

That morning Chaval had arrived first, as early as three o'clock, and had gone round sowing the seed of dissent among his comrades and trying to persuade them that they ought to imitate the Montsou miners and demand an increase of five centimes per tub. Soon the four hundred underground workers had left the changing-room and streamed into the pit-head hall amid much shouting and gesticulating. Those who wanted to work were standing there in their bare feet holding their lamps and clutching a pick or a shovel under their other arm; while the remainder, still in their clogs and with a coat over their shoulders on account of the bitter cold, were barring the way to the pit-shaft. The deputies were shouting themselves hoarse in their attempts to restore order, begging the miners to be reasonable and not to prevent those who had the good sense and decency to want to work from duly doing so.

But Chaval lost his temper when he saw Catherine in her jacket and trousers, with her hair tucked into her blue cap. When he had got up earlier, he had ordered her roughly to stay in bed. She was dismayed at the thought of a stoppage and had followed him nevertheless, for he never passed on any money to her and she often had to support both of them; and what would become of her if she was no longer earning? One thing in particular terrified her, the prospect of ending up in the brothel at Marchiennes, which is what happened to putters who had no money and nowhere to sleep.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?' Chaval screamed.

She answered haltingly that she had no other source of income and that she wanted to work.

‘So you're going to cross me, are you, you bitch?…You can go home this minute, or I'll bloody come and kick your backside for you all the way there!'

She backed nervously away but did not leave, determined to see how things would turn out.

Deneulin was now coming down the stairs from the screening-shed. Despite the poor light cast by the lanterns he took in the scene at a glance, the shadowy mass of people whose every face he knew, the hewers, the onsetters, the banksmen, the putters, down to the youngest pit-boy. In the great hall, which was still clean and pristine, normal activity was in a state of suspended animation: the winding-engine, fully primed, was letting off little whistles of steam; the cages hung from motionless cables; and the tubs, abandoned in mid-journey, were cluttering up the cast-iron floor. Only about eighty lamps had been claimed, the others were still burning in the lamp-room. But no doubt a single word from him would suffice, and the regular routine would resume once more.

‘So what's this all about then, boys?' he asked in a loud voice. ‘What's the problem? Tell me, I'm sure we can sort it out.'

As a rule he adopted a paternal air when dealing with his men, even though he made them work hard. Authoritarian and brusque in his manner, he would begin by trying to win them over with a rather obvious mateyness; and often he succeeded, for the workers respected the courage of a man who was constantly down at the coal-face with them and who was always the first on the scene whenever anything terrible happened in the pit. Twice now, after firedamp explosions, when even the bravest miners had balked, they had lowered him down on a rope tied under his armpits.

‘Look here,' he continued, ‘I hope you're not going to make me regret having trusted you. You know I refused to have a police guard here…Take your time, I'm listening.'

Everybody was silent and embarrassed and began to edge away. At length Chaval spoke up:

‘It's like this, Monsieur Deneulin. We just can't go on. We must have five centimes more per tub.'

He was taken aback.

‘What? Five centimes! What's brought this on? I'm not complaining about your timbering, I'm not trying to impose a new rate like they are at Montsou.'

‘Maybe not, but the Montsou comrades are right all the same. They're rejecting the timbering rate and demanding an increase of five centimes because it's just not possible to do the job properly under the present terms…We want an increase of five centimes. Isn't that right, comrades?'

Various voices expressed their support, and the noise level rose again, accompanied by violent gestures. Gradually everyone gathered round in a tight semicircle.

Deneulin's eyes blazed, and this man who had a taste for firm government had to clench his fists for fear that he might yield to temptation and grab somebody by the scruff of the neck. He preferred to discuss things, to talk things through sensibly.

‘You want five centimes more, and I agree with you that the job is worth it. But I can't give it to you. If I were to pay you that, I would simply be ruined…You've got to understand that for you to make a living I've got to make a living first. And I've reached my limit. The slightest increase in operating costs would bankrupt me…Two years ago, if you remember, at the time of the last strike, I conceded. I could still afford to then. But that increase has been ruinous for me all the same, and I've been struggling ever since…Today I would rather give the whole thing up at once than not know from one month to the next where I was going to find the money to pay you.'

Faced with this master who was ready to give them such a frank account of his business affairs, Chaval gave an ugly laugh. The others looked at the floor in disbelief, stubbornly refusing to get it into their heads that a boss didn't automatically make millions off the back of his workers.

Deneulin persisted. He told them about his ongoing battle with Montsou, who were always on the lookout for some way to gobble him up if he should ever fall on hard times. The competition with them was fierce, forcing him to make savings
wherever he could, and all the more so because the considerable depth of Jean-Bart added to the cost of extraction, a disadvantage only barely offset by the greater thickness of its seams. He would never have increased their pay at the time of the last strike if it hadn't been for the need to match Montsou, so as not to lose his workforce. Then he threatened them with the consequences: what a fine outcome it would be for them if they forced him to sell and they ended up under the heel of Montsou! He didn't rule them like some god in a far-away temple, he wasn't one of those invisible shareholders who pays managers to fleece the miners for them; he was their employer, and it wasn't just his own money he was risking, it was his peace of mind, his health, his whole life. Any stoppage would mean the end of him, it was as simple as that, for he had no stock in reserve and yet he had to meet his orders. At the same time he couldn't let the money invested in equipment stand idle. How was he to meet his commitments? Who was going to pay the interest on the money his friends had entrusted to him? It would mean bankruptcy.

‘So there you have it, my friends!' he concluded. ‘I wish I could convince you…You really can't ask a man to sign his own death warrant, can you? And whether I give you the five centimes or I let you go ahead and strike, either way I'll be slitting my own throat.'