The Fête and the Wage Cut (Part Three)

Étienne did not leave. The months went by. He had become a good haulier, then a good hewer, and he had moved out of the Avantage into the Maheus' house as a lodger, for Zacharie had at last married Philomène and gone to live with her in a house of their own. Étienne took Zacharie's place in the bed beside Jeanlin, in the same narrow room where Catherine slept.

Each night she undressed by the candle with her back turned, quickly, while he looked at the wall. Neither of them spoke of it. He never touched her. Between them lay Chaval, whom she went out with on Sundays, and an awkwardness that grew heavier the longer it lasted.

Maheu and his wife had come to respect the young man. He gave them his board, which helped; he did not drink; and in the evenings he talked. He talked about the injustice of their life — how they worked like beasts for wages that never covered their needs, how their children went down at ten and died at forty, while the shareholders in Paris lived in idleness on the profits. At first Maheu shook his head; it had always been so. But Maheude listened with burning eyes. The idea that it might be different had never entered her head before, and now it would not leave.

The ducasse, the village fête, fell in July. All Montsou was out. The men drank from café to café — the Avantage, the Volcan with its singers, the Progress, the Saint-Éloi — and the young people danced at the Bon-Joyeux, the ballroom kept by the Widow Désir, a vast, cheerful woman of fifty who had six lovers at once, one for each day of the week, and boasted of it. Étienne, at a table with Maheu and Levaque and Pierron, spoke about a provident fund: if every miner put aside a few sous a week, they would have money for when the Company squeezed them too hard — money to strike. The men listened, nodded, drank, and agreed to think about it. Rasseneur was against: the Company would see it as a war-chest.

Catherine danced with Chaval. Late in the evening, with the music still going, Étienne saw them leave together. She did not come home that night, or the next. Chaval had taken a room in Montsou, and she had gone to live with him.

When she came by a week later to collect some clothes, Maheude cursed her up and down the street. It was not the man that enraged her; it was the money. A girl of fifteen earning, and now her wages would go into Chaval's pocket. Catherine took her things and went without answering, her face set. Étienne said nothing. He worked harder than ever and talked more.

His life now had a purpose. He wrote to Pluchart. He read every night, the borrowed books spread on his knees, his head full of words he could not always pronounce. He set up the provident fund, collected the sous. The miners began to come to him. Rasseneur felt his influence slipping, and their friendship cooled.

Down in the pit, the Company made a change. A notice went up at the Voreux and at all the Company's pits. Starting the first of December, timbering would be paid for separately, by the cubic metre, and to make up for it the price of each tub of coal would be lowered. The engineer explained that this was fair: the men had always neglected the timbering; now they would be paid to do it properly. The miners stood in front of the notice, reading it and rereading it, trying to understand.

That evening Étienne worked it out on the kitchen table, with a stub of pencil. The figures came out the same every way: for the same work, they would earn less. It was a disguised wage cut.

"They're robbing us," he said. "Plain robbery. They want to make us pay for their crisis."

Maheu looked at the figures for a long time. "That's the way it is," he said at last. But his voice had changed.

Autumn came, then the cold. In the pit the work grew harder; the Company, short of money, pushed for more. One afternoon, in a gallery at the Voreux, the roof came down without warning. There was a roar, then silence, then dust and shouting. When they dug through, a miner lay dead under the rock. Jeanlin had been caught too, and they carried him out with both legs broken. They brought him home on a stretcher, and Maheude stood at the door with her hands over her mouth, then burst into a torrent of curses against the Company, against the mine, against God. Jeanlin would mend, but the doctor said he would limp all his life.

"That's what they pay us for," Maheude said. "With our children's legs."

Pay day came in the second half of November. It took place in the little office by the Voreux, the men filing past the window one team at a time. When Maheu's turn came, the clerk counted out his fortnight: the wages of the whole team, minus the fines for bad timbering, minus the days lost. The sum was so small that Maheu stood staring at it.

"That's all?"

"That's all."

And the new notice was there, on the wall by the window, about the first of December.

Maheu walked home with the money in his fist. When Maheude saw it she did not shout; she sat down on a chair and stared at the coins on the table as if they had betrayed her. How was she to feed seven mouths and pay Maigrat with that? Then the anger came, hot and simple.

"It can't go on. It can't."

That night the men gathered at the Avantage. Étienne stood up on a chair and spoke. He had never spoken in public before; his voice trembled at first, then grew steady. The Company was cutting their wages while the shareholders' dividends went on. They were not animals. If they went down on Monday they would be accepting it. If they stayed up, together, all of them, the Company would have to give way. They had the provident fund. The International would help them.

There was a long silence. Then Maheu, slowly, said: "He's right." And Levaque shouted, and Pierron, who never shouted, nodded, and the whole café was on its feet.

On Monday morning, at four o'clock, the bell rang at the Voreux, and no one went down.