The Earth

by Emile Zola

  ‘I know what you want. They came and told me during the wake. So you've been stupid enough to get snaffled again, you couldn't even hang on to the money you'd salted away and now you want me to get you out of trouble, don't you?’

  Then, seeing that he was stammering excuses and explanations, she added angrily:

  ‘As if I hadn't warned you. Didn't I tell you time and again that it was stupid and cowardly to give up your land? It's a good thing that you've been reduced to what I said, driven out by your nasty children and wandering about like a beggar in the night with not even a stone of your own to rest your head on!’

  He held out his hands imploringly and tried to force his way in. She stood her ground and insisted on having her say to the end:

  ‘No, you don't! Go and ask the people who've robbed you for somewhere to sleep. I don't owe you anything. The family would accuse me of interfering again. Anyway, that's not the point, you handed over all your property and I'll never forgive you.’

  And drawing herself up to her full height, with her scrawny neck and round vulture's eyes, she slammed the door in his face:

  ‘You've asked for it so now go and die in the gutter!’

  Fouan stood there, rigid and motionless, in front of her pitiless door while the rain continued to beat steadily down. In the end, he turned and vanished into the inky darkness, swamped in the steady icy downpour from the heavens.

  Where did he go? He never properly remembered. His feet were slipping in the puddles as he groped his way, trying not to collide with trees and walls. He could no longer think, he no longer knew anything at all; this part of the village whose every stone was familiar seemed like some strange remote and terrible place where he felt like a stranger who had lost his way and was unable to find it again. He turned off to the left and then, afraid of tripping into holes, he went to the right and stopped, shivering, feeling threatened on all sides. He came to a fence, which he followed until he reached a little door which opened. He stumbled and fell down into a hole. He was comfortable there, the rain couldn't reach him and it was warm; but a grunt warned him that he had disturbed a pig, which, thinking there was some food about, was already pushing its snout into his ribs. A scuffle ensued and he was so weak that, fearing the pig might eat him, he retreated. Unable to go any further, he lay down beside the door, curling himself up into a ball under the protection of the eaves. Nevertheless water still kept dripping onto his soaking legs and in his damp clothes his body felt frozen in the icy winds. He envied the pig and would have gone back if he had not heard it sniffing voraciously behind his back and biting away at the door.

  At daybreak, Fouan roused from the uneasy slumber in which he had sunk. Once more shame overtook him, shame at the thought that everyone in the district knew what had happened, that his name was being bandied about along the highways and byways, like a pauper's. When you're destitute, there's no justice and you must expect no pity! He slipped along the hedgerows, anxiously expecting a window to open and some early-rising woman to catch sight of him. It was still raining and he made for the plain and hid under a stack. And he spent the whole day like this, shifting from one shelter to the next, in such a state of fright that he would change his cover every couple of hours, imagining that he had been discovered. He was obsessed by only one idea: how long would he take to die? He was suffering from the cold now but he was tortured by hunger; he would certainly die of starvation. Just one more night and one more day, perhaps? As long as it was light, he did not weaken, preferring to end like this rather than go back to the Buteaus. But, as dusk fell, he was seized by a dreadful anguish, a horror of having to spend another night under this implacable downpour. Once more, the cold penetrated into his very bones and unbearable hunger was gnawing at his vitals. As soon as the sky had become quite dark, he felt as if he were being carried away and drowned in the streaming blackness; all thought had left him, his legs kept moving automatically, like an animal's; and thus it was that, quite unconsciously, he found himself standing in the Buteaus' kitchen, having pushed open the door.

  Buteau and Lise were just finishing up yesterday's cabbage soup. Hearing the sound, Buteau had looked round and was watching Fouan as he stood there in his steaming wet clothes, not saying a word. There was a long silence and then Buteau said jeeringly:

  ‘I knew you wouldn't have the guts.’

  Fouan remained rooted to the spot, inscrutable, not opening his lips to say a single word.

  ‘All right, Lise, give him his grub since he's come back now he's hungry.’

  Lise had already stood up and fetched a bowlful of soup. But Fouan grasped the bowl and went away to sit down on a stool, as though refusing to sit down at the table with his children. He greedily ladled up big spoonfuls of soup, so overcome by hunger that his whole body was quivering. Buteau himself finished off his own meal at leisure, rocking to and fro on his chair, picking up pieces of cheese with the point of his knife and putting them into his mouth. The old man's gluttonous feeding intrigued him. He was watching the movements of the spoon with a grin on his face:

  ‘Well, well, it looks as if your little walk in the fresh air has given you quite an appetite. But I shouldn't indulge in it every day, it'd cost too much to feed you.’

  His father continued loudly gulping down his soup without a word. His son went on:

  ‘Well, you dirty old man, I suppose you spent the night with a tart? That's why you're so hungry, I expect?’

  Still no reply, merely the same obstinate silence and fierce gulps as he stowed away spoonful after spoonful of soup.

  ‘Look, I'm speaking to you,’ shouted Buteau crossly. ‘You might have the good manners to answer.’

  Fouan did not even raise his staring, bewildered gaze from the bowl of soup. He did not seem capable of hearing or seeing anything, miles away in his own thoughts, as though trying to say that he had come back just to eat and, although his stomach was present, his heart was far away. He was now roughly scraping the bottom of the bowl with his spoon, to finish the last drop.

  Touched by this display of hunger, Lise ventured to intervene:

  ‘If he wants to lie low and say nothing, why not leave him alone?’

  ‘Then he's not to start buggering me about again,’ Buteau went on angrily. ‘Once, I don't mind. But are you listening, you obstinate old bastard? Let what's happened today be a lesson to you! If you play me any more tricks, I'll let you starve in the gutter!’

  Having now finished, Fouan rose painfully to his feet and, still without a word in a silence which seemed increasingly like the silence of the grave, he turned on his heels and dragged himself wearily to his bed under the stairs, where he flung himself down without bothering to undress. He immediately fell into a leaden slumber and did not stir again, as though knocked unconscious. Lise went to look at him and came back saying that perhaps he was dead. Buteau took the trouble to go and look himself. He shrugged his shoulders. Dead? Good God, do you think people like him die as easily as that? But he must really have got around to be in such a state. The following morning, when they peeped in again, the old man had not stirred; he was still sleeping that evening and he did not wake up until the morning of the second night. He had been unconscious for thirty-six hours.

  ‘So there you are again!’ remarked Buteau with a sneer. ‘I was thinking that if you went on like that you wouldn't be needing any more bread!’

  The old man did not look at him, made no reply and went to sit outside by the road to take the air.

  And now Fouan really showed how obstinate he was. He seemed to have forgotten the bonds that they still refused to return, or at least, he now said nothing about them and no longer tried to find them, maybe through indifference or at any rate resignation. But he shut himself off completely from the Buteaus and remained buried in silence. He refused to speak to them for any purpose or in any circumstance whatsoever. They continued to live together, he slept and ate there, he saw them and crossed their paths; but there was never a look or a word
, he dragged himself wearily around like a spectre amongst the living, as though stricken dumb and blind.

  Once they had grown tired of concerning themselves with him without succeeding in extracting one single sound from him, they left him to his own obstinate devices. Buteau and even Lise both stopped talking to him as well, tolerating him around the place like a piece of perambulating furniture and eventually being hardly aware that he was there. The horse and two cows were of greater account.

  In the whole house, Fouan had only one friend left, young Jules, who was just coming up to his tenth birthday. Whereas Laure, who was four, saw him through the pitiless eyes of her mother and father and would slyly struggle out of his arms as though she too already resented having a useless mouth to feed, Jules liked the old man's company and he provided the last link between Fouan and the others; when a positive yes or no was required, he was the messenger-boy.

  His mother would send him to bring back the answer because he was the only person for whom his grandfather would break his silence. And in addition, now that Fouan was being abandoned by everyone, the little lad would help him with his household chores, such as making his bed in the morning and seeing that he had his ration of soup, which he would eat on his lap in the corner, for he still refused to sit at table. Then they would play together. Fouan enjoyed taking the little fellow by the hand and walking along together; and on such occasions he would unburden himself of all his woes; he kept talking interminably, bewildering the little boy and finding it difficult to express himself, for now that he was talking less and less he was losing the use of his tongue. But the bumbling old man and the lad who could think only of nests and blackberries got on well together and would chat for hours. He taught Jules to set snares and built a little cage for him to keep crickets in. This tiny child's hand, which he held in his as they walked through these deserted byways where he now had neither land nor family, was his only remaining solace and it gave him some joy in living a little longer.

  In any case, Fouan had ceased to be considered as a living person. Buteau acted on his behalf, drew his money and signed for him, on the pretext that the old fellow was going dotty. Monsieur Baillehache paid the one hundred and fifty francs annuity owing from the sale of his house directly to Buteau. The latter had run into trouble only with Delhomme, who refused to pay over to him the two hundred franc pension; but hardly was his back turned than Buteau pocketed the money. That made three hundred and fifty francs which, as Buteau kept moaning, would need doubling and more before he could even cover the cost of his food. He now never mentioned the bonds; let sleeping dogs lie, that would come out in the wash. As for the interest payments, he claimed that he always went round to honour the contract with old Saucisse, fifteen sous every morning as the annuity on his acre of land. He announced loudly that too much money had already been paid for him to give up that commitment. But rumour had it that Saucisse, after being terrorized and threatened with unpleasant consequences, had agreed to break the contract and return half the money he had received, one thousand francs out of two thousand, and that if the old shark was saying nothing about it, it was because, crook that he was, he was too vain to admit that he had been outcrooked. Buteau sensed that a gentle tap would be enough to knock him over for good.

  A year went by and, although declining every day, Fouan still held on. No longer was he the neat old farmer, immaculately clean-shaven with carefully trimmed side-whiskers, always wearing new smocks and black trousers. In his gaunt and haggard face there remained from the past only his long, large, bony nose pointing earthwards; each year his stoop had grown more pronounced and now he went along bent almost double, with only a little time to go before he finally toppled over into the grave. He hobbled about on two sticks, his face covered in a long dirty white beard, wearing out his son's clothes, full of holes and so unsavoury under the warm sun that people would keep upwind, as when meeting some squalid ragged old tramp. And in this decaying human wreck only the animal still survived, obstinately clinging to life. He would fling himself on his bowl of soup like a ravening wolf, never satisfied and even ready to steal Jules's slices of bread if the youngster did not protest. As a result, they cut down his rations and even put him on short commons, on the excuse that he would eat himself to death. Buteau accused him of having gone to the dogs during his stay up at the Castle with Jesus Christ, and it was true: this formerly sober old farmer, who had never spared himself and lived on bread and water, had become used to fine living, to eating meat and drinking spirits, for bad habits are quickly acquired, even when it is a son debauching his father. Seeing that the wine kept disappearing, Lise had to lock it up. On those days when there was a meat stew, little Laure was sent to stand guard over it. Ever since the old man had owed Lengaigne for a cup of coffee, he and Macqueron had been warned that they wouldn't get their money if they offered him tick. He still never broke his tragic silence, but sometimes, when his bowl was not filled or the wine was removed before he had been given his share, he would sit glaring at Buteau in hungry impotent rage.

  ‘Keep on staring, old man,’ Buteau would say. ‘Don't imagine that I feed my livestock for doing fuck all! If someone likes meat, he must bloody well earn it, greedy guts! Aren't you ashamed of falling into disgusting habits at your age?’

  Fouan had not gone back to the Delhommes because he was too proud and obstinate after the insulting remark made by his daughter; and he now had to suffer everything the Buteaus inflicted on him, abuse and even bodily harm. He gave no further thought to his other children but submitted in such a state of weariness that the idea of trying to escape never entered his head: it wouldn't be any better elsewhere, so what was the point? When Fanny met him, she would never be the first to speak to him. The more kind-hearted Jesus Christ, after bearing him a grudge for the unfriendly way in which he had removed himself from the Castle, had greatly enjoyed watching him become abominably drunk at Lengaigne's and leaving him in that state at Buteau's door: a dreadful business, with everything turned upside-down, Lise having to scrub out the kitchen and Buteau swearing that next time he'd make him sleep on the dung-heap. The old man had now become so timorous and distrustful of his elder son that he even had the strength of will to refuse further offers of refreshment. He also often saw La Trouille with her geese as he sat out by the roadside. She would stop and scrutinize him with narrowed eyes as she chatted for a second while her flock stood watching behind her, perched on one leg with their necks on the alert But one morning he discovered that she had stolen his handkerchief; and after that, as soon as he caught sight of her in the distance, he would brandish his sticks in the air to keep her away. She thought this funny and amused herself by setting her geese on him and not running away until some passer-by threatened to box her ears if she didn't leave her granddad alone.

  However, till now Fouan had been able to walk and this consoled him, for he was still interested in the land and would constantly be going up to look at his former fields, like old men still obsessed by passionate memories of former mistresses. The old man would hobble slowly and painfully along all the roads, stopping at a field and standing for hours propped up on his sticks; then he would crawl along to another one and start daydreaming again, like a dried-up old tree by the roadside. His vacant staring eyes no longer clearly distinguished wheat from oats or rye. His head was in a daze; confused memories kept rising from the past: in such and such a year that piece of land had produced so many bushels. Even the dates and the figures eventually became uncertain. Only one feeling, albeit an empty one, still dogged him: the thought of the land, that land which he had coveted so much and owned so proudly, the land to which he had sacrificed his all for sixty years, his arms, his legs and his heart, his very life; that thankless land which had passed into the hands of another man and was continuing to produce without reserving any share for him. And his heart ached at the thought that, this earth now knew nothing about him, that he had retained nothing of her for himself, not a penny-piece or a mouthful of brea
d, and that he had to die and he would rot while she, with no care for him, would become reborn and fruitful through his old bones! No, it was hardly worth the candle to have burnt himself out in a life of toil and then stand naked and infirm at the end! And when he had prowled around his old pieces of land like this, he would topple into bed so wearily that they could not even hear his breathing.

  But his failing legs were depriving him of this last reason for living. Soon, walking became so laborious that he hardly moved beyond the village. On fine days he had three or four favourite stopping-places: the pile of beams in front of Clou's smithy, the bridge over the Aigre, a stone bench near the school; and he would creep slowly from one to the other, taking an hour to cover a couple of hundred yards, dragging his clogs as if they were heavy carts as he creaked along, lurching lopsidedly on his worn-out old hip-joints. Often he would stay daydreaming for a whole afternoon, squatting on the end of a beam, absorbing the sun. He would sit stock-still in a stupor, staring blankly. People went by now without greeting him, for he was turning into a mere thing. Even smoking had become too much of a chore and he was giving it up, for quite apart from the fact that he found the labour of filling and lighting his pipe exhausting, it was too heavy for his gums to hold. His life now revolved round one desire only: to stay put. In the burning midday sun, he would shiver, icy-cold, as soon as he moved. His will and his authority were already in ruins and in his final decline he was no more than an abandoned old beast of burden afflicted with the memory of having once been a man. However, he did not complain, inured as he was to the idea that a worn-out horse, having served its purpose, must be put down once it can no longer earn its keep. An old man is useless and he costs money to feed. He himself had longed to see his father die. That his children in their turn might want him to die, too, caused him neither surprise nor resentment. Such things had to be.