by Emile Zola
As he came nearer, Étienne and Catherine watched the rocks seize him in a stranglehold. The horse stumbled, breaking both forelegs. With one last effort he dragged himself forward for a few metres, but his haunches were wedged and he could not get through; he was trapped, caught in a noose by the earth itself. Blood was pouring from his head as he stretched out his neck and searched with wide, glazed eyes for some other way through the rock. The water was rapidly covering him, and he began to whinny with the same long, agonized cry that the other horses had given when they died in the stable. It was an appalling death as the old animal lay there in the depths of the earth, wedged tight, his bones broken, fighting for his life far from the light of day. His cry of distress went on and on, and even when the water washed over his mane it continued, only more rasping as he stretched his mouth wide, up into the air. There was one last, muffled snort, like the gurgle from a filling barrel. Then a deep silence fell.
‘Oh, my God! Take me away!’ sobbed Catherine. ‘Oh, my God! I’m so frightened, I don’t want to die…Take me away! Take me away!’
She had seen death. The collapse of the shaft, the flooding of the mine, none of it had had the immediate horror of Battle’s dying screams. And she could still hear them: her ears rang, her whole body shook with them.
‘Take me away! Take me away!’
Étienne had grabbed her and was dragging her away. It was high time in any case: as they began to climb the chimney, the water was already up to their shoulders. He had to help her, for she no longer had the strength to hold on to the timbering. Three times he thought he’d lost her and that she was about to fall back into the deep sea of water whose rising tide was still growling at their heels. However, they were able to rest for a few minutes when they reached the first level, which was still clear. But the water soon appeared again, and they had to hoist themselves up once more. And they went on climbing for hours as the floodwater pursued them from one level to the next and forced them ever upwards. At the sixth level there was a moment’s respite of hope and elation when it seemed as though the water had stopped rising. But then it rose again even more quickly than before, and they had to climb up to the seventh level, and then the eighth. There was only one more left, and when they reached it, they anxiously watched each centimetre of the water’s progress. What if it didn’t stop? Were they going to die like the old horse, crushed against the roof with their lungs full of water?
Rock-falls could be heard all the time. The whole mine had been profoundly disturbed, and its frail intestines were bursting under the pressure of the enormous quantity of water it had imbibed. The air was being pushed back to the end of each roadway, where it accumulated in compressed pockets and then exploded with tremendous force, splitting the rock and convulsing its formations. It was the terrifying noise of subterranean cataclysm, a reminder of the ancient battles between earth and water when great floods turned the land inside out and buried mountains beneath the plains.
Catherine, shaken and dazed by this continual collapse, pressed her hands together and kept burbling the same words over and over again:
‘I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die…’
To reassure her, Étienne swore that the water was no longer rising. They had been running away from it for six hours now, somebody was bound to come and rescue them. Six hours was a pure guess, for neither of them had any real idea what time it was. In fact a whole day had passed while they were clambering up through the Guillaume seam.
Soaked to the skin, their teeth chattering, they tried to make themselves comfortable. Catherine took off her clothes, without embarrassment, in order to wring the water out of them; then she put her trousers and jacket back on, and they dried on her body. She was barefoot, and Étienne made her put on his clogs. They could settle down to wait now, and they lowered the wick on the lamp till it gave off no more than the faint gleam of a night-light. But their stomachs were racked by cramps, and they both realized that they were dying of hunger. Until that moment they had been quite oblivious to how they felt. When disaster had struck, they had not yet eaten their lunch, and now they had just found their sandwiches, soaking wet and turned to sops. Catherine had to get cross with Étienne before he would take his share. As soon as she had eaten, she fell asleep with exhaustion on the cold ground. Étienne, tormentedly unable to sleep, sat watching over her, his head in his hands, staring into space.
How many hours went by like this? He could not have said. But what he did know was that there in front of him, at the mouth of the chimney, he could see the black water moving, like a beast arching its back higher and higher to reach them. At first, it was just a thin trickle, like a writhing snake straightening out; then it grew into the swarming, crawling spine of an animal; and then it caught up with them, wetting Catherine’s feet as she slept. He was anxious not to wake her. It would surely be cruel to rouse her from her rest and from her blissful unawareness, perhaps even from pleasant dreams of fresh air and life in the sunshine. And anyway, where could they go now? He thought for a while, and then he remembered that the top of the incline serving this part of the seam connected with the foot of the incline serving the level above. It was a way out. He let her sleep on for as long as possible, watching the water rise and waiting till it chased them on. Eventually he lifted her gently, and she gave a great shudder:
‘Oh, my God! So it’s true!…It hasn’t stopped. Oh, my God!’ She had remembered where she was, and she screamed to find death so close.
‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he said softly. ‘There’s a way through. I promise you.’
In order to reach the incline they had to walk bent over double and so once more found themselves up to their shoulders in water. Another climb began, a more dangerous one this time, up through a cavity a hundred metres long entirely lined with timber. They began by trying to pull on the cable so as to lodge one tub securely at the bottom, because if the other were to come down as they were climbing up, it would crush them to death. But nothing would move, something must be in the way and preventing the mechanism from working properly. They decided to risk it. Not daring to hold on to the cable, which was in their way, they scrabbled up the smooth wood, tearing their nails as they went. Étienne followed behind Catherine, stopping her with his head when she slid back, her hands bleeding. Suddenly they found themselves up against some fractured beams which were blocking the incline. The earth had shifted, and the rubble was preventing them from going any higher. Fortunately there was a doorway there, which led out into a road.
Ahead of them they were astonished to see the glow of a lamp. A man was angrily shouting at them:
‘More bloody fools with the same bright idea as me!’
They recognized Chaval, who had found himself cut off by the same rock-fall that had filled the incline with rubble; the two comrades who had gone with him had been killed on the way, their skulls smashed open by the rock. Though he had injured his elbow, Chaval had had the courage to crawl back to them to retrieve their lamps and to search them for their sandwiches, to which he helped himself. As he was making his escape, one last collapse behind him had blocked off the roadway.
His first thought was to promise himself that he wasn’t going to share his provisions with these people who had suddenly appeared from nowhere. He would sooner kill them! Then he in his turn realized who it was, and as his anger subsided, he began to laugh with malicious glee:
‘Ah, it’s you, Catherine! It’s all ended in tears, and now you want to come back to your old man! Good! Good! Well, we’ll have ourselves a little party then.’
He pretended not to notice Étienne. The latter, shocked by this chance encounter, had immediately put a protective arm round Catherine as she huddled closer to him. Nevertheless there was no way round the situation, and so, as if he and his comrade had parted on the friendliest terms an hour ago, he simply asked him:
‘Have you tried the far end? Can’t we get out through the coal-faces?’
‘Oh yeah, why
not? They’ve collapsed, too, so we’re blocked on both sides. We might as well be in a bloody mousetrap…But if you’re good at diving, you can always go back down the incline the way you came.’
Sure enough, the water was still rising: they could hear it lapping. Their means of retreat had already been cut off. And he was right, it was like a mousetrap, a section of roadway blocked at both ends by massive rock-falls. There was no way out. The three of them were immured.
‘So you’ll stay?’ Chaval asked in mock-cheerful fashion. ‘Well, you couldn’t have made a better decision. And if you don’t bother me, I shan’t bother you. There’s plenty of room in here for two men…And then we’ll soon see who dies first. Unless somebody comes to rescue us, of course, but that doesn’t seem very likely.’
Étienne went on:
‘What about tapping? Maybe someone might hear us.’
‘I’m fed up tapping…Here! You have a go yourself with this stone.’
Étienne took the piece of sandstone that Chaval had already half worn away and went to the coal-seam at the far end and beat out the miners’ tattoo, that long sequence of taps with which miners signal their whereabouts whenever they are in danger. Then he put his ear to the rock and listened. He kept at it, tapping it out twenty times or more. There was no response.
During this time Chaval had been coolly affecting to set up home. First, he lined his three lamps up against the wall; only one of them was lit, the others were for later. Then he set his two remaining sandwiches down on a piece of timbering. It was his dresser; he could last two days on that little lot if he was careful. He turned round and said:
‘Half’s for you, you know, Catherine. If the hunger gets too much for you.’
She said nothing. For her it was the final straw to find herself caught once more between these two men.
And so their appalling new life began. Seated on the ground a few metres apart, neither Chaval nor Étienne would open his mouth. After a comment from the former, the latter extinguished his lamp; the extra light was a pointless luxury. Then they fell silent again. Catherine had lain down beside Étienne, worried by the looks that her former lover kept giving her. The hours went by: they could hear the gentle murmur of the water as it continued to rise, while heavy thuds and distant reverberations bore witness to the final disintegration of the mine. When the lamp ran out of oil and they had to open another one to light it, the fear of firedamp gave them momentary pause; but they would rather have been blown up there and then than survive in darkness; and nothing did blow up, there was no firedamp. They lay down again, and the hours began to tick by once more.
A sound disturbed Étienne and Catherine, who raised their heads to look. Chaval had decided to eat: he had cut himself half a slice of buttered bread and was chewing it slowly so as not to be tempted to swallow it whole. Tormented by hunger, they watched him.
‘Sure you won’t have some?’ he asked Catherine with a provocative air. ‘You’re wrong not to.’
She had lowered her eyes, fearful that she might yield to temptation as cramp gripped her stomach so hard that it brought tears to her eyes. But she knew what he was asking. Already that morning she had felt his breath on her neck; seeing her in the other man’s company had rekindled his former desire for her. She knew that blazing look in his eye as he appealed to her to join him, the same blazing look she had seen during his fits of jealousy when he would beat her up with his fists and accuse her of doing all manner of unspeakable things with her mother’s lodger. And she didn’t want that. She was terrified that if she went back to him she would be setting the two men at each other’s throats, here in this narrow cave where they were facing death. My God! Could they not at least all breathe their last together as friends!
Étienne would rather have died of starvation than ask Chaval for a mouthful of bread. The silence grew heavier, and another stretch of eternity seemed to go by as the minutes slowly passed, the next one no different from the last, each without hope. They had now been shut up together for a day. The second lamp was burning low, and they lit the third.
Chaval started on the other slice of bread and grunted:
‘Come here, you fool.’
Catherine shuddered. Étienne had turned away to leave her free to go. But when she didn’t move, he whispered to her softly:
‘Go on, love.’
The tears that she had been holding back now poured down her cheeks. She cried for a long time, neither having the strength to get up nor knowing whether or not she was hungry, but aching her whole body through. Étienne had got up and was pacing up and down, vainly tapping out the miners’ tattoo and infuriated at having to spend the last remaining vestiges of his life down here, cheek by jowl with a rival he detested. There wasn’t even enough room for them to die apart! Ten paces only, and then he had to turn round and there he was tripping over him again! And then there was the poor girl. Here they were fighting over her underneath the bloody ground! She would belong to whoever survived the other, and if he himself went first, Chaval would steal her from him once again. Time dragged by as hour followed hour, and the revolting consequences of their life at close quarters grew worse, with their foul breath and the stench of bodily needs satisfied in full view of each other. Twice Étienne lunged at the rock as though to cleave it asunder with his own bare fists.
Another day was drawing to a close, and Chaval had sat down next to Catherine to share his last half-slice of bread with her. She was painfully chewing each mouthful, and he was making her pay for each one with a caress, determined in his jealousy to have her once more, and in the other man’s presence. Past caring, she let him do as he pleased. But when he tried to take her, she protested.
‘Get off. You’re crushing me.’
Étienne was shaking, having pressed his forehead against the timbering in order not to see. He leaped towards them in a fury.
‘Leave her alone, for Christ’s sake!’
‘It’s none of your business,’ said Chaval. ‘She’s my woman. I can do what I bloody like with her!’
He grabbed hold of her again and held her tight in his arms, out of bravado, crushing his red moustache against her mouth:
‘Leave us in peace, will you! Why don’t you bugger off over there for a while.’
But Étienne, white-lipped, shouted:
‘If you don’t leave her alone, so help me I’ll throttle you.’
Chaval was on his feet in a flash, realizing from the piercing tone in Étienne’s voice that he meant to have the matter out once and for all. Death seemed to be a long time coming: one of them would have to make way for the other here and now. It was their old enmity showing its face again, down beneath the earth where soon they would both be laid to rest; and yet there was so little room to move that they couldn’t even brandish their fists without grazing them on the rock.
‘You’d better watch out,’ growled Chaval. ‘This time I’m going to have you.’
At that, Étienne went mad. His eyes clouded over with a red mist, and his throat bulged as the blood rushed to his head. He was seized with the need to kill, an irresistible, physical need like a tickle of phlegm in the throat that brings on a violent, unstoppable fit of coughing. It rose up and burst forth, beyond his power to control it, under the impulse of the hereditary flaw within him. He grabbed hold of a lump of shale in the wall, loosened it and tore it free. It was large and heavy. Using both hands and with superhuman strength, he brought it crashing down on Chaval’s skull.
He did not even have time to jump back. He fell where he was, his face smashed, his skull split open. His brains had spattered against the roof, and a jet of purple was pouring from the wound like water spurting from a spring. A pool formed immediately, reflecting the hazy star of the lamp. Dark shadow filled the walled cave, and the body on the ground looked like the black hump of a pile of coal.
Étienne leaned over him, wide-eyed, and stared. So it was done, he had killed. The memory of all his past struggles came confusedly to his mind
, memories of his long, futile battle against the poison that lay dormant in every sinew of his body, the alcohol which had slowly accumulated over the generations in his family’s blood. And yet if he was drunk now, it could only be on hunger: his parents’ alcoholism had sufficed at one remove. His hair stood on end at the horror of this murder and, though all his upbringing was against it, his heart was racing with joy, the sheer animal joy of a sated appetite. And then he felt an upsurge of pride, the pride of the fittest. He had suddenly remembered the young soldier, his throat slit with a knife, killed by a child. Now he, too, had killed.
Catherine had got to her feet, and she gave a loud shriek.
‘My God! He’s dead!’
‘Are you sorry?’ Étienne asked fiercely.
She was gasping for breath, at a loss for words. Then she swayed and flung herself into his arms.
‘Oh, kill me too! Let’s both of us die!’
She wrapped her arms round his shoulders and hugged him tight, as he hugged her; and together they hoped that they were about to die. But death was in no hurry, and they loosened their embrace. Then, as she hid her eyes, he dragged the poor wretch across the ground and pushed him down the incline, to clear the cramped space they still had to live in. Life would have been impossible with that corpse under their feet. But they were horrified to hear the body land with a splash. What? Had the flood filled the hole up already? Then they caught sight of it, overflowing into their roadway.