Complete Works of Emile Zola (1056 page)

At that same hour, in the office of the assistant station-masters, Roubaud began to doze in an old leather armchair, which he quitted twenty times in the course of the night, with aching limbs. Up to nine o’clock, he had to be present at the arrival and departure of the night trains. The tidal train engaged his particular attention: there were the manœuvres, the coupling, the way-bills to be closely scrutinised. Then, when the Paris express had arrived and had been shunted, he supped alone in the office at a corner of the table, off a slice of cold meat between a couple of pieces of bread, which he had brought down from his lodging. The last arrival, a slow train from Rouen, steamed in at half past twelve. The platforms then became quite silent. Only a few lamps remained alight, and the entire station lay at rest, in this quivering semi-obscurity.

Of all the staff there remained but a couple of foremen, and four or five porters, under the orders of the assistant station-master. They slept like tops on the sloping plank platform in the quarters allotted to them; while Roubaud, obliged to rouse them at the least warning, could only doze with his ears open. Lest he should succumb to fatigue, towards daybreak, he set his alarum at five o’clock, at which hour he had to be on his feet, to be present at the arrival of the Paris train. But, occasionally, especially recently, he suffered from insomnia, and turned about in his armchair without being able to close his eyes. Then he would get up and go out, take a look round, walk as far as the box of the pointsman, where he chatted an instant. And the vast black sky, the sovereign peacefulness of the night, ultimately calmed his fever.

In consequence of a struggle with marauders, he had been supplied with a revolver, which he carried loaded in his pocket. And he often walked about in this way, up to daybreak, stopping as soon as he perceived anything moving in the darkness, resuming his walk with a sort of vague feeling of regret at not having had to make use of his weapon. He felt relieved when the sky whitened, and drew the great pale phantom of the station from darkness. Now that day broke as early as three o’clock he went in, and, throwing himself into his armchair, slept like a dormouse, until his alarum brought him, with a start, to his feet.

Séverine met Jacques once a fortnight, on Thursday and Saturday. And, one night, when she had told him about the revolver, they both felt considerably alarmed. As a matter of fact, Roubaud never went so far as the depot. But this circumstance did not divest their walks of an aspect of danger, which added to their charm. Moreover, they had found a delightful nook, behind the cottage of the Sauvagnats, a sort of alley, between some enormous heaps of coal, which formed the only street in a strange town of great, square, black-marble palaces. There, they were completely hidden.

This girl, who had killed, was his ideal. His cure seemed to him more certain every day, because he had fondled her, his lips upon her lips, absorbing her very soul, without that furious envy having been aroused, to master her by slaughtering her.

And so these happy meetings followed one upon another. The two sweethearts never wearied for a moment of seeking one another, of strolling together in the obscurity, between the great heaps of coal that deepened the darkness around them.

One night in July, Jacques, to reach Havre at 11.5, the fixed time, had to urge on La Lison, as if the stifling heat had made the engine idle. From Rouen, a storm accompanied him on the left, following the valley of the Seine, with great brilliant flashes; and, from time to time, he turned round anxiously, for Séverine was to meet him that night. He feared that if this storm burst too soon, it would prevent her going out. And so, when he had succeeded in attaining the station before the rain, he felt impatient with the passengers, who seemed as if they would never finish leaving the carriages.

Roubaud was on the platform, glued there for the night.

“The deuce!” said he, laughing. “What a hurry you’re in to get off to bed! Pleasant dreams!”

“Thanks,” answered Jacques.

After driving back the train, he whistled, and made his way to the depot. The flaps of the immense door were open. La Lison penetrated the engine-house, a sort of gallery with double lines, about sixty yards long, and built to accommodate six locomotives. Within, it was very dark. Four gas-burners did not suffice to dispel the obscurity, which they seemed to deepen into four great moving shadows. But, at moments, the vivid flashes of lightning, set the glazed roof and the tall windows to right and left, ablaze; and one then distinguished, as in a flame of fire, the cracked walls, the timber black with smoke, all the tumble-down wretchedness of this out-of-date building. Two locomotives were already there, cold and slumbering.

Pecqueux at once began to put out the fire. He violently raked it, and, the live coal escaping from the cinder-box, fell into the pit below.

“
I’m dying of hunger,” said he. “I shall go and have a mouthful. Are you coming?”

Jacques did not reply. In spite of his hurry, he did not wish to leave La Lison before the lights had been extinguished, and the boiler emptied. This was a scruple, the habit of a good driver, wherefrom he never departed. When he had time, he remained there until he had examined and wiped everything, with all the care that is taken to groom a favourite nag.

It was only when the water ran gurgling into the pit, that he exclaimed:

“Hurry on, hurry on!”

A formidable flash of lightning interrupted him. This time, the tall windows stood out so distinctly against the flaming sky, that the very numerous broken panes of glass could have been counted. To the left, a thin sheet of iron, which had remained fixed in one of the vices serving for the repairs, resounded with the prolonged vibration of a bell. All the antiquated timber-work of the roof had cracked.

“The devil!” simply said the fireman.

The driver made a gesture of despair. This put an end to his appointment, and the more so, as a perfect deluge was now pouring down on the engine-house. The violence of the rain threatened to break the glazed roof. Up there some of the panes of glass must also have been broken, for big raindrops were falling on La Lison in clusters. A violent wind entered by the doors which had been left open, and anyone might have fancied that the body of the old structure was about to be swept away.

Pecqueux was getting to the end of his work on the locomotive.

“There!” said he; “we shall be able to see better tomorrow. I have no need to tidy it up any more to-night.”

And, returning to his former idea, he added:

“I must get something to eat. It’s raining too hard to go and stick oneself on one’s mattress.”

The canteen, indeed, was at hand, against the depot itself;
while the company had been obliged to rent a house — Rue François-Mazeline — where beds had been provided for the drivers and firemen who passed the night at Havre. In such a deluge, they would have got drenched to the skin before arriving there.

Jacques had to make up his mind to follow Pecqueux, who had taken the small basket belonging to his chief, to save him the trouble of carrying it. He knew that this basket still contained two slices of cold veal, some bread, and a bottle of wine that had hardly been touched; and it was simply this knowledge that made him feel hungry. The rain increased Another clap of thunder had just shaken the engine-house. When the two men went away on the left, by the small door leading to the canteen, La Lison was already becoming cold. The engine slumbered, abandoned, in the obscurity, lit up by the vivid flashes of lightning, with the heavy drops of rain falling on its flanks. Hard by, a water-crane, imperfectly turned off, continued dripping, and formed a pool that ran between the wheels of the locomotive into the pit.

But Jacques wished to wash before entering the canteen. Warm water and buckets were always to be found in an adjoining room. Drawing a piece of soap from his basket, he removed the dirt from his travel-begrimed hands and face; and, as he had taken the precaution to bring a second lot of clothes with him, in accordance with the advice given to the drivers, he was able to change his garments from head to foot, as he was accustomed to do, for that matter, each night on his arrival at Havre, when he had an appointment with Séverine. Pecqueux was already waiting in the canteen, having only just dipped the tip of his nose, and the ends of his fingers, in the water.

This canteen simply consisted of a small, bare room painted yellow, where there was nothing but a stove to warm the food, and a table fixed in the ground, and covered with a sheet of zinc, by way of tablecloth. A couple of forms completed the furniture. The men had to bring their own victuals, and eat off a piece of paper with the points of their knives. Light entered the room through a large window.

“What a vile downpour!” exclaimed Jacques, planting himself before the panes of glass.

Pecqueux had settled himself on a form at the table.

“You are not going to eat then?” he inquired.

“No, mate. Finish my bread and meat, if you care for it. I’ve no appetite.”

The other, without more ado, fell upon the veal, and emptied the bottle. He frequently met with similar luck, for his chief was a poor eater; and he loved him the better, in his caninelike fidelity, for all the crumbs picked up in this way, behind him. With his mouth full, he resumed after a silence:

“The rain! What do we care about that, so long as we’re under cover? Only, if it continues, I shall cut you, and be off next door.”

He began laughing, for he made no secret of his mode of life; and, no doubt, had told the driver all about his intrigue with Philomène Sauvagnat.

Jacques muttered an oath, as he perceived the deluge of rain increase in violence, after showing signs of abating.

Pecqueux, with the last mouthful of meat at the end of his knife, again gave a good-humoured laugh.

“You must have something to do then, to-night?” said he. “Well, they can’t reproach us two with wearing out the mattresses, over there, in the Rue François-Mazeline.” Jacques quickly left the window.

“Why?” he inquired.

“Well, you’re just like me. Since the spring, you never turn in till two or three o’clock in the morning,” answered the other.

He seemed to know something. Perhaps he had caught them together. In each room the bedsteads were in couples: fireman and driver. The railway authorities sought to bind these men to one another as firmly as possible, on account of their work, which necessitated such a close understanding. And so, Jacques was not astonished that the fireman should have noticed the late hours he kept, particularly as he had formerly been so regular.

“I suffer from headache,” remarked the driver, for want of something better to say; “and it does me good to walk out at night-time.”

But the fireman was already excusing himself.

“Oh! you know,” he broke in, “you are free to do as you please. What I said, was only by way of a joke. And if you should meet with any trouble one of these days, don’t mind coming to me, because I’m ready to do anything you like.”

Without explaining his meaning more clearly, Pecqueux grasped him by the hand, pressing it fit to crush it, so as to make him understand that he was at his service, body and soul. Then, crumpling up the greasy paper which the meat had been in, he threw it away, and placed the empty bottle in the basket, performing this little service like a careful servant accustomed to the broom and sponge. And, as the rain obstinately continued, although the thunder had ceased, he exclaimed:

“Well, I’m off, and leave you to your own business!”

“Oh!” said Jacques, “as there are no signs of it clearing up, I shall go and lie down on a camp bedstead!”

Beside the depot was a room with mattresses protected by canvas slips, where the men rested in their clothes when they had only to wait three or four hours at Havre. So, as soon as Jacques saw the fireman disappear in the downpour of rain, he risked it in his turn, and ran to the drivers’ quarters. But he did not lie down. He stood on the threshold of the wide-open door, stifled by the oppressive heat within, where another driver, stretched on his back, was snoring with his mouth wide open.

A few more minutes passed, and Jacques could not make up his mind to abandon all hope. In his exasperation against this disgusting rain, he felt an increasing wild desire to gain, in spite of all, the place where he and Séverine were to meet; so as at least to have the pleasure of being there himself, even if he no longer expected to find his sweetheart. With spasmodic precipitation, he at last dashed through the rain. He reached their favourite comer, and followed the dark alley formed by the heaps of coal. And, as the sharp rain whipped his face and blinded him, he went as far as the tool-house, where he and Séverine had already once found shelter. He seemed to think he would be less lonely there.

Jacques was entering the dense obscurity of this retreat when a couple of slender arms entwined him, and a pair of warm lips rested on his own. Séverine was there.

“Goodness gracious! is it you?” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” she answered; “I saw the storm approaching, and ran here before the rain came down. What a time you have been!”

“You expected me then?”

“Oh! yes. I waited, waited—”

They had seated themselves on a pile of empty sacks, listening to the pouring rain beating, with increased violence, on the roof. The last train from Paris, which was just coming in, passed by, roaring, whistling, rocking the ground. All at once Jacques rose. On seating himself a few moments before, he had by chance found the handle of a hammer beneath his hand, and he was now deluged with intense joy.

It was all over then! He had not grasped that hammer and smashed the skull of his sweetheart. She was his own, without a battle, without that instinctive craving to fling her lifeless on her back, like a prey torn from others.

He no longer thirsted to avenge those very ancient offences, whose exact details escaped his memory, that rancour stored up from male to male since the first deceptions in the depths of caverns. No. This girl had cured him, because he saw she was different from the others, violent in her weakness, reeking with human gore, which encircled her in a sort of cuirass of horror. She predominated over him, he, who had never dared do as she had done.