The Volley (Part Six)

The troops came to Montsou. Soldiers occupied the pits; sentries stood at the gates; patrols marched through the villages. The newspapers in Paris printed stories of savage hordes looting and murdering. Arrests began. The authorities were looking for Étienne.

He hid underground, in Jeanlin's lair in the abandoned galleries of Réquillart. There was a dry corner among old timbers, a bed of hay, and the provisions Jeanlin stole — bread, potatoes, bottles of gin, even pieces of meat. Étienne lived there for days, coming up only at night. He had time to think, and he thought too much. He went over the day at Jean-Bart and the march and the death of Maigrat, and he felt the movement he had led slipping from his hands. He had wanted justice, and the mob had given him blood. He felt something bitter and cold rise in him — and with it, sometimes, the old dark violence of his blood, that frightened him.

The Company held out. It let it be known that men who returned to work would be taken back, except the ringleaders, and that it was bringing in workers from Belgium. The village took this news with a long howl of rage.

In the Maheus' house, hunger had become a kind of death. Alzire, the little hunchback, lay on the bed upstairs, so thin she was hardly there, coughing and shivering. She talked quietly about the sun, about warm days, about soup. Étienne came up one night and sat by her, holding her hand. She smiled at him. Maheude sat at the foot of the bed with her arms folded and her face like stone. Before morning Alzire died, with no sound, as quietly as she had lived.

They buried her. Maheude did not cry. "It's one fewer to feed," she said, and then put her face in her apron.

Étienne went back to his hiding place. One night, coming out of Réquillart in the dark, he saw Jeanlin crouching in the shadow, watching a young soldier on sentry duty at the Voreux — a boy of twenty, pink-cheeked, fresh from Brittany, pacing up and down in the cold and humming to himself to keep his courage up. Before Étienne could move, Jeanlin had crawled up behind him like a wolf cub, leapt on his back, and plunged a knife into his throat. The soldier fell without a cry.

"Why?" Étienne whispered, appalled. "Why did you do it?"

Jeanlin shrugged. "I don't know. I felt like it."

Étienne stared at him. There was no reason in the child at all — only instinct, the thing that lay deep in all of them, deep in himself too. They dragged the body to Réquillart and threw it down the old shaft. The Company never found it, and the soldier was listed as a deserter. Étienne could not sleep for nights afterwards, seeing the boy's face.

Not long after, Étienne went at last to the Avantage. Rasseneur had become a power in Montsou again; the miners, tired and beaten, were turning back to him and his moderation, and away from Étienne. That night Chaval was there, drunk and boasting. He insulted Étienne; he insulted the strike. Then he said something about Catherine, and Étienne went white.

They fought outside in the road, in the mud. Chaval pulled a knife; Étienne knocked it out of his hand and threw him down, and found himself kneeling on Chaval's chest with a mad desire to kill him, to crush his skull with a stone. The craving for murder came up in him from somewhere far down, the inherited madness of his line, and filled his head with red. He stood up and let Chaval go, and walked off shaking.

Catherine had seen it all. A little later, in the dark lane, she came after him and stood near him without speaking. Chaval, when he got up, beat her and drove her out of his room, and she went home to her mother.

The Belgian workers arrived at the Voreux one morning under military escort. The whole village went to meet them.

The soldiers — sixty men and a captain — stood in front of the pit with their rifles. In front of them, filling the ground between the pit and the slag-heap, came the miners: men, women, children. They shouted at the soldiers, then at the Belgians, then at the soldiers again. "Traitors! Murderers! Cowards!" The women were the worst. Maheude was there, her face terrible, holding Estelle. Mouquette was there; when an officer shouted at her, she turned round, lifted her skirts and showed him her backside in derision, and the crowd roared with laughter.

Then the bricks began to fly. The women had found a stack of them by the brick-works and they tore them up and threw them, the children carrying them in armfuls. A soldier was struck in the face. The young officer held his men back; they stood with their rifles and their faces white and drawn, taking the bricks. Maheu, who had been silent all along, stepped out in front of the line and tore open his jacket to bare his chest.

"Go on! Shoot! Shoot if you dare!"

Étienne, too, was in front, shouting at the soldiers that they were workers' sons, that they should not shoot their brothers. Catherine was beside him; she had come out of nowhere.

A brick struck the captain. Then, without anyone giving the order, a shot rang out, then another, then a whole ragged volley.

For an instant nobody understood. Then they saw the bodies. Maheu lay on his back, a bullet in his heart. Mouquette had thrown herself in front of Catherine, and taken the bullets meant for her, and lay dying, smiling at her. Little Bébert and Lydie, who had been throwing bricks hand in hand, lay side by side in the mud. Old Brûlé was dead. There were others, many others, dead and wounded, and the wounded were screaming. The soldiers stood paralysed, looking at what they had done. Some of them were weeping.

Maheude knelt by her husband with the baby in her arms. She did not cry. She looked at him for a long time, as if trying to understand.

The volley at the Voreux was the end of the strike. The newspapers in Paris turned against the Company; there were questions in the Chamber; the government grew afraid. The Board decided to make a gesture: the new wage system would remain, but the men who came back would be welcomed, and the dismissals withdrawn.

The village was broken. When Étienne walked through it, the women spat at him. Stones were thrown. Levaque's wife screamed that he had killed Maheu, that he had led them all to their deaths with his fine words. Rasseneur stood on his doorstep and watched with satisfaction. Étienne went home with the blood running from his forehead, and found Maheude sitting in the empty kitchen. She looked at him and said nothing — no reproach, nothing, which was worse.

Only Souvarine was unmoved. "You see," he said to Étienne quietly, stroking his rabbit. "Talk. Strikes. Nothing changes."