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  ‘Will you listen to me or not!’ shouted M. Hennebeau finally, beginning to get angry. ‘First of all, it’s not true that the Company is making two centimes on each tub…Let’s look at the figures.’

  A chaotic discussion followed. In an effort to sow division, M. Hennbeau appealed to Pierron, who muttered something non-committal. Levaque, on the other hand, led the more aggressive contingent, but he got things mixed up and kept making assertions without knowing the facts. The loud hubbub of voices seemed to be absorbed by the heavy curtains and the hothouse atmosphere.

  ‘If you’re all going to talk at once,’ said M. Hennebeau, ‘we shall never reach agreement.’

  He had regained his composure, together with the brusque but not unfriendly courtesy of a manager who has been given a job to do and intends to see it carried out. Since the very beginning of the discussion he had been watching Étienne, trying to find some way of making him break the silence that he seemed intent on maintaining. Accordingly, in a sudden change of tack, he stopped talking about the two centimes and began to broaden the discussion.

  ‘No, come on now, admit the truth. It’s all this recent agitation that’s got you in a froth. Really, it’s as though some plague had come among working men, and even the best ones catch it…Oh, you don’t need to tell me, I can see somebody’s been at you. You used to be so peaceable before. That’s it, isn’t it? Somebody’s been saying you can have jam today, that it’s your turn to be the masters…And now they’ve made you sign up to this International everyone’s talking about, a horde of thieves and robbers whose one ambition is to destroy society – ’

  Now Étienne did interrupt:

  ‘You’re mistaken, sir. Not one collier in Montsou has joined yet. But if they’re pushed any further, every man in every pit will join. It all depends on the Company.’

  From then on the battle lay between M. Hennebeau and Étienne, as though the other miners were no longer present.

  ‘The Company provides for these men, you’re wrong to threaten it. This year alone it has spent three hundred thousand francs building villages for the miners, and it gets a return of less than two per cent on that. Not to mention the pensions it pays out, and the free coal, and the medicines it distributes. You seem an intelligent enough young man, and in just a few months you’ve become one of our most skilful workers. Wouldn’t you do better to tell people things that are true rather than ruining your future by mixing with the wrong sort? Yes, I do mean Rasseneur. We had to part company, he and us, if we were going to save our pits from all that socialist rot…You’re always round at his place, and I’m sure he gave you the idea of setting up this provident fund, which incidentally we would be happy to tolerate if it were only for savings, except that we think it’s a weapon to be used against us, an emergency fund to pay for the costs of war. And while we’re on the subject, I may as well tell you that the Company intends to exercise control over that fund.’

  Étienne let him go on, gazing steadily at him with a nervous quivering of the lips. The last sentence made him smile, and he replied simply:

  ‘So I take it, sir, that you are laying down a new condition, since up till now there has been no demand to exercise control…Our wish, I regret to say, is that the Company should take less of a part in our lives, not more, and that instead of playing the role of bountiful provider, it should simply do what’s fair and pay us what is our due – meaning pay us the money we make but which it takes a share of. Is it right every time there’s a crisis to let workers die of starvation so you don’t have to cut the shareholders’ dividend?…You can say what you will, sir, but the new system is a disguised pay-cut, and that’s what sickens us, because if the Company needs to make economies, it is very wrong of it to do so exclusively on the backs of the workers.’

  ‘Ah, now we come to it!’ cried M. Hennebeau. ‘I was wondering when you’d start accusing us of starving the people and living off the sweat of their toil! How can you talk such rubbish, when you must know perfectly well the enormous risks entailed in investing capital in industry, and particularly in an industry like mining? A fully-equipped pit costs today in the region of one and a half to two million francs, and then there’s all the hard work before you begin to see even a modest return on such a huge investment! Almost half the mining companies in France have gone bankrupt…Anyway, it’s stupid accusing the successful ones of being cruel. While their workers are feeling the pain, so are they. Do you not think that the Company has got just as much to lose in the present crisis as you have? It can’t decide the level of pay all on its own, it has to compete or go under. So blame the facts, not the Company…But you don’t want to listen, do you? You don’t want to understand!’

  ‘Oh yes, we do,’ Étienne replied. ‘We understand perfectly well that there can be no improvement for us as long as things continue the way they are, and that’s exactly why sooner or later the workers will make sure things happen differently.’

  This statement, so temperately couched, was made almost in a whisper, but with such tremulous menace and conviction that there was a long silence. A wave of embarrassment and apprehension disturbed the quiet repose of the drawing-room. The other members of the deputation did not quite follow, but they sensed none the less that here, surrounded by this leisured ease, their comrade had just laid claim to their rightful share; and once again they began to cast sideways glances at the warm curtains and the comfortable seats, and at all this expense, when the price of the smallest ornament would have kept them in soup for a month.

  Eventually a pensive M. Hennebeau rose to his feet, preparing to send them away. Everyone else stood up also. Étienne gently nudged Maheu in the elbow, and he began to speak, awkward and tongue-tied once more:

  ‘Well, if that’s all you have to say in reply, sir…We shall tell the others that you reject our terms.’

  ‘But, my dear fellow,’ exclaimed M. Hennebeau, ‘I have rejected nothing!…I am just a paid employee, like you. I have no more say in what is decided than the youngest pit-boy. I receive my instructions, and my sole function is to see that they are properly carried out. I have said to you what I thought it my duty to say to you, but I should certainly refrain from deciding the matter…You have brought me your demands, I shall pass them on to the Board of Directors, and I shall let you know how it responds.’

  He spoke with the correctness of the senior administrator taking care not to become involved in the issues and deploying the soulless courtesy of a simple instrument of authority. And now the miners looked at him with suspicion, wondering what his game was, what it might pay him to lie, what ways he might have of lining his own pocket, positioned as he was like this between them and the true masters. A devious sort, perhaps, since he was paid like a worker and yet he lived so well!

  Étienne risked a further intervention:

  ‘But you must see how regrettable it is, sir, that we cannot plead our case in person. There are many things we could explain and reasons we could give that inevitably you wouldn’t know about yourself…If only we knew who to talk to!’

  M. Hennebeau was not angry. In fact he smiled:

  ‘Ah well now, if you’re not going to have confidence in me, that complicates matters…It would mean you having to try elsewhere.’

  The men’s eyes followed as he gestured vaguely in the direction of one of the drawing-room windows. Where was ‘elsewhere’? Paris probably. But they didn’t quite know, and wherever it was, it seemed like a distant, forbidding place, some remote and sacred region where that unknown deity squatted on its throne deep in the inner recesses of its temple. They would never ever set eyes on this god, they just sensed it, as a force weighing from afar on the ten thousand colliers of Montsou. And when the manager spoke, this force was behind him, concealed and speaking in oracles.

  They felt defeated. Even Étienne shrugged as though to say they would do better to leave. M. Hennebeau gave Maheu a friendly tap on the arm and asked him news of Jeanlin.

  ‘That was a hars
h lesson all right, and to think you’re the one who defends the bad timbering!…Think it over, my friends, and you’ll soon see that a strike would be a disaster for everyone concerned. Within a week you’ll all be starving to death. How are you going to manage?…Anyway, I’m counting on your good sense, and I’m sure you’ll be going back down by next Monday at the latest.’

  They all took their leave, tramping out of the room like a herd of animals, with their heads bowed and offering not a word of response to this prospect of surrender. As he saw them out, the manager had perforce to summarize their meeting: on one side the Company and its new rates, on the other the workers with their demand for an increase of five centimes per tub. And, so that they should be under no illusion, he felt obliged to warn them that the Board of Directors would certainly reject their terms.

  ‘And think twice before you do anything silly,’ he said again, uneasy at their silence.

  Out in the hall Pierron made a very low bow while Levaque made a point of putting his cap back on. Maheu was searching for something more to say, but once again Étienne gave him a nudge. And off they went, accompanied by this ominous silence. The only sound was of the door banging shut behind them.

  When M. Hennebeau came back into the dining-room, he found his guests sitting silent and motionless in front of their liqueurs. He quickly briefed Deneulin, whose expression grew even more sombre. Then, as he drank his cold coffee, everyone tried to talk about something else. But the Grégoires themselves returned to the subject of the strike and expressed their astonishment that there were no laws preventing the workers from leaving their work. Paul tried to reassure Cécile, saying that the gendarmes were on their way.

  Finally Mme Hennebeau summoned her servant:

  ‘Hippolyte, would you open the windows before we go into the drawing-room and let some fresh air in?’

  III

  A fortnight had elapsed, and on the Monday of the third week the attendance lists sent to management indicated a further reduction in the number of men working underground. They had been counting on a general return to work that morning, but because of the Board’s intransigence the miners’ resistance was hardening. Le Voreux, Crèecœur, Mirou and Madeleine were no longer the only pits out on strike; at La Victoire and Feutry-Cantel barely a quarter of the colliers were going down; and even Saint-Thomas was now affected. Gradually the strike was spreading.

  At Le Voreux a heavy silence hung over the pit-yard with that hushed vacancy of a deserted workplace where labour has ceased and life departed. Along the overhead railway, etched against the grey December sky, three or four abandoned tubs sat with the mute dejection of mere things. Underneath, between the trestle-supports, the dwindling coal-piles had left the ground bare and black; and the stock of timbering stood rotting in the rain. At the canal jetty a half-laden barge lay abandoned, as though dozing on the murky water; while up on the deserted spoil-heap, where decomposing sulphide continued to smoke despite the wet, the shafts of a solitary cart rose forlornly into the air. But it was the buildings especially that seemed to be sinking into torpor: the screening-shed with its closed shutters, the headgear that had ceased to echo with the rumble of the pit-head beneath, and the boiler-house where the fire-grates had cooled and whose huge chimney now seemed excessively wide for the occasional wisp of smoke. The winding-engine was fired up only in the mornings. The stablemen delivered fodder to the horses down the pit, where the sole people working were the deputies, miners once more as they endeavoured to prevent the damage to the roads that inevitably occurs when these are no longer properly maintained. From nine o’clock onwards any further maintenance work had to be carried out by using the ladders for access. And over these lifeless buildings, wrapped in their black shroud of coal-dust, hung the steam from the drainage-pump as it continued its slow, heavy panting, the last vestiges of life in a pit, which would be destroyed by flooding if this panting should ever stop.

  Opposite, on its plateau, Village Two Hundred and Forty seemed dead also. The Prefect had hastened from Lille to visit the scene, and gendarmes had patrolled the roads; but with the strikers remaining perfectly calm, Prefect and gendarmes alike had decided to return home. Never had the village set a better example throughout the vast plain. The men would sleep all day to avoid going drinking; the women rationed their consumption of coffee and became more reasonable, less obsessed with gossip and feuding; and even the gangs of children seemed to understand, so well behaved that they ran about barefoot and scrapped without making a noise. The watchword, repeated and passed on from person to person, was simple: there was to be no trouble.

  Nevertheless the Maheus’ house was constantly full of people coming and going. It was here that Étienne, as secretary, had shared out the three thousand francs in the provident fund among the most needy families. After that a few hundred francs more had come in from various sources, some as fund contributions and some from collections, but their resources were running out now. The miners had no money left to carry on the strike, and hunger was staring them in the face. Maigrat had promised everyone a fortnight’s credit but then suddenly changed his mind after the first week and cut off supplies. Generally he did what the Company told him, so perhaps they were trying to force the issue by making everyone starve. On top of which he acted like some capricious tyrant, providing or withholding bread depending on the looks of the girl the parents had sent for their food; and he was never open for La Maheude, since he bore her a deep grudge and wanted to punish her for the fact that he had not yet had Catherine. To make matters even worse the weather was bitterly cold, and the women watched their supply of coal dwindling with the anxious thought that it would not be replenished as long as the men refused to go down the pits. As if it were not enough that they were going to die of hunger, they were now going to freeze to death as well.

  The Maheus were already running short of everything. The Levaques could still eat, thanks to a twenty-franc piece lent by Bouteloup. As for the Pierrons, they still had money; but in order to appear as destitute as everyone else – in case anyone should ask them for a loan – they bought on credit at Maigrat’s, who would have let La Pieronne have his entire shop if she’d only lift her skirt for him. Since Saturday many families had gone to bed without supper. But, as they faced up to the terrible days ahead, not one complaint was heard, and everyone heeded the watchword with steadfast courage. Despite everything they had absolute confidence in the outcome, a kind of religious faith, like some nation of zealots blindly offering up the gift of their own selves. They had been promised the new dawn of justice, and so they were ready to suffer in the pursuit of universal happiness. Hunger turned their heads, and closed horizons had never opened on to broader vistas for these men and women who were drunk on their own deprivation. They beheld before them, as their eyes grew dim with fatigue, the ideal city of their dreams, a city now close at hand and almost real, where the golden age had come to pass, where all men were brothers, living and working in the common cause. Nothing could shake their absolute conviction that now at last they were entering its gates. The provident fund was exhausted, the Company would not yield, the situation would worsen with each day, and yet still they hoped and still they scoffed at life’s realities. Even if the earth should open up beneath their feet, a miracle would surely save them. Such faith took the place of bread and warmed their bellies. When the Maheus, like the others, had downed their thin and watery soup, only too soon digested, they would become elated at this dizzying prospect and their minds would fill with ecstatic visions of a better life such as had once caused the early martyrs to be thrown to the lions.

  From this point on Étienne was the undisputed leader. During their evening conversations he was the oracle, and his studies continued to sharpen his judgement and give him firm opinions on all issues. He would read all night long, and received more and more letters. He had even begun to subscribe to The Avenger, a socialist paper published in Belgium, and the arrival of this journal, the first ever seen in the vill
age, had caused him to be held in exceptional regard among his comrades. With each day that passed he became more and more intoxicated with his growing popularity. To be corresponding like this with a wide range of people, to be debating the workers’ future up and down the region, to be giving individual advice to the miners of Le Voreux, and – most especially – to have become the centre of things and to feel the world revolving round him, it all served constantly to feed his vanity. Him! The ex-mechanic, the coal-worker with the filthy black hands! He was going up in the world, he was becoming one of the detested bourgeois and, without admitting as much to himself, he was beginning to enjoy the pleasures of the intellect and the comforts of easy living. Only one thing still gave him pause, the awareness of his lack of a formal education, which made him embarrassed and timid the moment he found himself in the presence of anyone in a frock-coat. Though he continued to teach himself and read everything he could, his want of method made the process of assimilation very slow, leading eventually to a state of confusion in which he knew things but had not understood them. Indeed in some of his more rational moments he had doubts about his mission and feared that he might not after all be the man the world was waiting for. Perhaps it needed a lawyer, a man of learning capable of speaking and acting without endangering his comrades’ cause? But he soon rejected the idea and recovered his poise. No, no, they didn’t want lawyers! Crooks, the lot of them, using their knowledge to get fat at the people’s expense! It would all turn out as it might, but the workers were better off fending for themselves. And once again he would nurse his fond dream of becoming the people’s leader: Montsou at his feet, Paris in the misty distance and, who knows, election to the Chamber of Deputies, addressing the Assembly1 in its opulent setting? He could just see himself there fulminating against an astonished bourgeoisie in the first parliamentary speech ever made by a working man.