Complete Works of Emile Zola (1802 page)

All that clangorous old iron that resounded underneath me, put iron into my blood. It did me more good than the chemist’s drugs. I was accustomed to the uproar, I had need of the music of the hammers on the anvil to feel myself alive. In my room, which the snorting of the bellows made quite cheerful, I recovered my poor head. Toe, toe; toe, toe; it was like the merry pendulum that regulated my hours of labour. At the hardest part of the work, when the blacksmith became angry, when I heard the red-hot iron cracking beneath the bounds of the frantic hammers, I felt the heated blood of a giant in my wrists; I would have liked to have flattened out the world with a stroke of my pen. Then, when the blacksmith’s shop was quiet, all became silent in my skull; I went down, and when I saw that metal vanquished and still smoking, I felt ashamed of my own work.

Ah! how superb I have sometimes seen the blacksmith look on sultry afternoons! He was stripped to the waist, and his muscles were strained and salient, like some of those grand figures of Michael Angelo, who are straightening themselves in a final effort. In looking at him, I found that modern sculptural line, which our artists laboriously search for among the remains of ancient Greece. He seemed to me a hero made greater by labour, the untiring child of this century, who was for ever beating the implement of our analysis on the anvil, who was fashioning the society of the near future out of iron and by iron. He toyed with his hammers. When he felt in a merry mood, he took up “the young lady” and kept on thumping. He then produced thunder at home amidst the rosy flush of the furnace. I fancied I heard the sigh of the people at their task.

It was there, in the blacksmith’s shop, amidst the ploughs, that I cured myself for ever of the evils of idleness and doubt

THE SLACK SEASON

I

WHEN the workmen reach the factory in the morning they find it looking frigid, as if overcast by a cloud of ruin. The machine with its slender limbs and motionless wheel, stands silent at the end of the great room; and this adds to the feeling of depression, for its puffing and vibration, in ordinary times, convey to the whole house the courage of a giant inured to the task.

The master comes down from his little private room, and with an air of sadness addresses the workmen thus:

“My good fellows, there is no work to-day — I receive no orders; countermands reach me from all quarters, I shall remain with goods on my hands. This month of December, on which I relied, this month which, in previous years, has been a very busy one, threatens to ruin the most stable firms — we must suspend everything.”

And noticing the workmen looking at one another dreading to return home, in terror of approaching hunger, he added in a lower tone:

“I am not an egotist, no, I vow I am not. My position, also, is dreadful, more so perhaps than yours. I have lost fifty thousand francs in a week. I am stopping work to-day so as not to deepen the abyss; and I have not the first sou of the money I shall require to meet my acceptances on the 15th. You see I am speaking to you as to friends, I am hiding nothing from you. To-morrow, perhaps, the process-servers will be here. It is no fault of ours, is it? We have struggled on to the end. I would have liked to have helped you through this bad time; but it is all over now, I’m struck down; I’ve no more bread to share.”

Then, he held out his hand to them. The workmen grasped it in silence. And, for some minutes, they remained there, gazing with clenched fists at their useless tools. On other mornings, the files sang, the hammers marked the rhythm from daybreak; and all this seems already to be sleeping in the dust of bankruptcy. Twenty or thirty families will be without food in the coming week. Some of the women who had been working in the factory have tears in the corners of their eyes. The men endeavour to appear more firm. They put on a plucky look and say that no one can die of hunger in Paris.

Then, when the master leaves them, and they see him walk away bowed down in a week, overwhelmed by a disaster which is perhaps even more serious than he acknowledges, they withdraw one by one, choking before they are out of the room, with lumps rising in their throats, and as disheartened as if they were leaving a deathbed. The corpse is work, the great silent machine, the sinister skeleton of which stands there in the obscurity.

II

The workman is outside, in the road, on the pavement He has been running about the streets for a week without being able to find employment. He has been from door to door, offering his arms, his hands, his whole self for any kind of labour, the most revolting, the hardest, the most fatal. All doors have been closed to him.

Then, he was willing to work at half price. The doors did not open. Were he to work for nothing, he could not be employed. It is the slack season, the terrible slack season that sounds the death-knell of the garrets. The panic has stopped all trades, and money, cowardly money, has hidden itself away.

At the end of a week it is, indeed, all up with him. The workman has made a last effort, and he returns home slowly, his hands empty, worn out with wretchedness. It is raining on that particular night, and Paris looks dismal in the mud. He walks along in the downpour without feeling it, thinking of nothing but his hunger, stopping so as to reach his destination later. He has leant over a parapet of the Seine; the swollen waters flow with a prolonged noise; sprays of white foam are scattered in the air at one of the piers of the bridge. He leans more forward, the huge torrent passes beneath him, hailing him furiously to come. Then he says to himself that it would be cowardly, and he goes away.

It has stopped raining. The gas is flaming in the windows of the jewellers’ shops. If he were to break a sheet of glass, he could grasp with one hand wherewith to give him bread for years. Lights are appearing in the kitchens of the restaurants; and behind the white muslin curtains he sees persons eating. He hurries along, ascends to the faubourg, passing by the eating-houses, where poultry is roasting on spits, by the ham, and beef, and pastry-cooks’ shops, by all that epicurean part of Paris, which displays its comestibles at hours when one is hungry.

As his wife and little girl had been crying in the morning, he had promised to bring food home at night He had not dared to go and tell them he had lied, before the evening. As he walked along he was thinking how he would go in, what he would tell them to give them patience. However, they could not remain any longer without eating. He was willing to try and do so, but his wife and the little one were too delicate.

And, for a moment, he has the idea of begging. But when a lady and gentleman pass beside him, and he thinks of extending his hand, his arm becomes stiff, and he feels a lump in his throat He stands there on the pavement, whilst respectable persons turn aside their heads, fancying, at the sight of his ferocious, starving look, that he must be intoxicated.

III

The workman’s wife has gone down to the front door, leaving the little one asleep upstairs. The woman is quite thin, and is dressed in a cotton gown. She is shivering in the icy blast of the wind in the street.

She has nothing more at home. She has pawned everything. A week without work was sufficient to clear out the lodging. On the previous evening she sold the last lot of wool from her mattress to the second-hand dealer; the mattress had gone thus; now, there only remained the tick. She has hung that up before the window to keep out the draught, for the little one coughs a great deal.

Without saying anything to her husband, she, on her side, had endeavoured to get work. But the slack season has been more cruel for the women than the men. There are unhappy creatures in rooms on her landing whom she hears sobbing at night. She met one begging at the corner of a street; another is dead; another has disappeared.

She, fortunately, is married to a good man, a husband who does not drink. They would be in comfort, if the slack seasons had not despoiled them of all She has used up all her credit. She owes money to the baker, the grocer, and does not even dare pass by their shops any more. In the afternoon she went to her sister to borrow a franc; but there, also, she had found such poverty that she began to cry without speaking, and both of them, her sister and herself, had wept for a long time together. Then, as she was leaving, she promised to take her a piece of bread if her husband brought anything home.

The husband does not return. It rains. She seeks shelter under the doorway; great drops of water splash down at her feet, and the fine rain soaks her thin gown. At times she feels impatient; she goes out, notwithstanding the downpour, goes to the end of the street, to see if she cannot perceive the person she is expecting coming along the road in the distance And when she returns she is wet through; she smooths down her hair with her hands, to wipe it; she still takes patience although troubled with short feverish shivers.

Passers-by elbow her as they go backwards and forwards; she makes herself as small as possible so as not to be in any one’s way. Men stare her full in the face; at times she feels warm wafts of breath skim across her neck. It seems as if all the dubious side of Paris, the street with its mud, its raw lights, its rolling of carriages, would like to clutch her and cast her in the gutter. She is hungry, any one can take her. There is a baker opposite, and she thinks of the little one asleep upstairs.

Then, when her husband at length appears, hurrying along close to the houses like a worthless fellow, she dashes forward and gazes at him anxiously.

“Well!” she stammers.

He does not answer, but hangs his head Then, she goes upstairs the first, as pale as death.

IV

Upstairs, the little one is not sleeping. She has woke up, she is thinking in front of a candle end that is flickering on a corner of the table. And something monstrous and heartrending passes over the countenance of that chit of seven, who has the worn and serious features of a grown-up woman.

She is seated at the edge of a trunk which serves her for a bed. Her bare feet are dangling down, shivering with cold; her sickly, doll-like hands gather the rags that form her covering, about her chest. She feels a burning there, a fire she would like to extinguish. She is thinking.

She has never had any playthings. She cannot go to school because she has no shoes. She remembers that when she was younger her mother used to take her out into the sun. But that was a long while ago. It had been necessary to move; and, since then, it seemed as if an intense chill had spread over her home. Then, she had ceased to be happy; she had been always hungry.

She is entering upon something very profound, without being able to understand it. Every one is hungry then? She has sought, however, to accustom herself to the feeling and has been unable. She thinks she must be too little, that it is necessary to be big to understand. Her mother, no doubt, knows all about this matter which is concealed from children. If she dared she would ask her who it is that puts you into the world in this way in order that you may be hungry.

Then, their home is so unsightly! She looks at the window where the tick of the mattress is flapping, at the bare walls, the rickety furniture, at all that disgraceful aspect of the garret to which the slack season conveys such a look of despair. She fancies, in her ignorance, that she must have dreamt of warm rooms with beautiful shiny things; she closes her eyes to see them again; and, through her eyelids, which have become thinner, the candle-light seems a great blaze of gold into which she would like to go. But the wind is blowing, and such a draught comes through the window that she is seized with a fit of coughing. Her eyes become full of tears.

Formerly she felt afraid when left all alone. Now she does not know whether she is afraid or not; it is all the same to her.

As they have not had anything to eat since the previous evening, she fancies her mother has gone downstairs to get some bread. Then that thought interests her. She will cut her bread into very small pieces; she will take them slowly, one by one. She will play with her bread.

Her mother has returned, her father has closed the door. The little one looks at both their hands very much surprised; and, as her parents say nothing, she repeats, after a moment, in a hum-drum tone:

“I’m hungry, I’m hungry.”

The father is seated in an obscure comer, with his head between his hands; he remains there, bowed down, his shoulders quivering with heavy, silent sobs. The mother, stifling her tears, has come to put the little one to bed again. She covers her with all the clothes in the place, and tells her to be good and go to sleep. But the child, whose teeth are chattering with cold, and who feels the burning in her chest more acutely, becomes very bold. She hangs round her mother’s neck, and then murmurs softly:

“Tell me, mamma, why are we hungry?”

THE LITTLE VILLAGE

I

WHERE is the little village? In what dip of the ground are its white habitations hidden? Are they grouped round the church, at the bottom of some hollow? Or do they follow on one after the other along the highway? Or, again, do they climb the side of a hill, like capricious goats, ranging in terraces and half hiding their red roofs amidst the foliage?

Has the little village a name that sounds sweet to the ear? Is it a tender name, easy to French lips, or some German name, harsh, bristling with consonants, as guttural as the croaking of a raven?

And are there harvests, are there vintages at the little village? Is it a land of corn or a land of vines? What are the inhabitants doing at the present time, in the fields, in broad daylight? As they return in the evening, along the lanes, do they stay to take a glance at the bountiful crops, thanking Heaven for a good year?

II

I can easily picture it to myself upon a hillside. It is there, lying so unassumingly among the trees, that, from a distance, one would take it for a mass of fallen rocks, covered with moss. But coils of smoke issue from amidst the branches; on a pathway running down the slope, children are pushing along a wheelbarrow. Then, looking from the plain, you gaze at it with a feeling of jealous envy; and you go your way bearing along with you the remembrance of this nest of which you have just caught a glimpse.