LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I belong to Montsou,” he said, “I am called Bonnemort.”

      “Is it a nickname?” asked Étienne, astonished.

      The old man made a grimace of satisfaction and pointed to the Voreux:

      “Yes, yes; they have pulled me three times out of that, torn to pieces, once with all my hair scorched, once with my gizzard full of earth, and another time with my belly swollen with water, like a frog. And then, when they saw that nothing would kill me, they called me Bonnemort for a joke.”

      His cheerfulness increased, like the creaking of an ill-greased pulley, and ended by degenerating into a terrible spasm of coughing. The fire basket now clearly lit up his large head, with its scanty white hair and flat, livid face, spotted with bluish patches. He was short, with an enormous neck, projecting calves and heels, and long arms, with massive hands falling to his knees. For the rest, like his horse, which stood immovable, without suffering from the wind, he seemed to be made of stone; he had no appearance of feeling either the cold or the gusts that whistled at his ears. When he coughed his throat was torn by a deep rasping; he spat at the foot of the basket and the earth was blackened.

      Étienne looked at him and at the ground which he had thus stained.

      “Have you been working long at the mine?”

      Bonnemort flung open both arms.

      “Long? I should think so. I was not eight when I went down into the Voreux and I am now fifty-eight. Reckon that up! I have been everything down there; at first trammer, then putter, when I had the strength to wheel, then pikeman for eighteen years. Then, because of my cursed legs, they put me into the earth cutting, to bank up and patch, until they had to bring me up, because the doctor said I should stay there for good. Then, after five years of that, they made me carman. Eh? that’s fine — fifty years at the mine, forty-five down below.”

      While he was speaking, fragments of burning coal, which now and then fell from the basket, lit up his pale face with their red reflection.

      “They tell me to rest,” he went on, “but I’m not going to; I’m not such a fool. I can get on for two years longer, to my sixtieth, so as to get the pension of one hundred and eighty francs. If I wished them good evening to-day they would give me a hundred and fifty at once. They are cunning, the beggars. Besides, I am sound, except my legs. You see, it’s the water which has got under my skin through being always wet in the cuttings. There are days when I can’t move a paw without screaming.”

      A spasm of coughing interrupted him again.

      “And that makes you cough so,” said Étienne.

      But he vigorously shook his head. Then, when he could speak:

      “No, no! I caught cold a month ago. I never used to cough; now I can’t get rid of it. And the queer thing is that I spit, that I spit ——”

      The rasping was again heard in his throat, followed by the black expectoration.

      “Is it blood?” asked Étienne, at last venturing to question him.

      Bonnemort slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

      “It’s coal. I’ve got enough in my carcass to warm me till I die. And it’s five years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it seems, without knowing it; it keeps you alive!”

      There was silence. The distant hammer struck regular blows in the pit, and the wind passed by with its moan, like a cry of hunger and weariness coming out of the depths of the night. Before the flames which grew low, the old man went on in lower tones, chewing over again his old recollections. Ah, certainly: it was not yesterday that he and his began hammering at the seam. The family had worked for the Montsou Mining Company since it started, and that was long ago, a hundred and six years already. His grandfather, Guillaume Maheu, an urchin of fifteen then, had found the rich coal at Réquillart, the Company’s first pit, an old abandoned pit to-day down below near the Fauvelle sugar works. All the country knew it, and as a proof, the discovered seam was called the Guillaume, after his grandfather. He had not known him — a big fellow, it was said, very strong, who died of old age at sixty. Then his father, Nicolas Maheu, called Le Rouge, when hardly forty years of age had died in the pit, which was being excavated at that time: a land-slip, a complete slide, and the rock drank his blood and swallowed his bones. Two of his uncles and his three brothers, later on, also left their skins there. He, Vincent Maheu, who had come out almost whole, except that his legs were rather shaky, was looked upon as a knowing fellow. But what could one do? One must work; one worked here from father to son, as one would work at anything else. His son, Toussaint Maheu, was being worked to death there now, and his grandsons, and all his people, who lived opposite in the settlement. A hundred and six years of mining, the youngsters after the old ones, for the same master. Eh? there were many bourgeois that could not give their history so well!

      “Anyhow, when one has got enough to eat!” murmered Étienne again.

      “That is what I say. As long as one has bread to eat one can live.”

      Bonnemort was silent; and his eyes turned towards the settlement, where lights were appearing one by one. Four o’clock struck in the Montsou tower and the cold became keener.

      “And is your company rich?” asked Étienne.

      The old man shrugged his shoulders, and then let them fall as if overwhelmed beneath an avalanche of gold.

      “Ah, yes! Ah, yes! Not perhaps so rich as its neighbour, the Anzin Company. But millions and millions all the same. They can’t count it. Nineteen pits, thirteen at work, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crévecoeur, Mirou, St. Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, and still more, and six for pumping or ventilation, like Réquillart. Ten thousand workers, concessions reaching over sixty-seven communes, an output of five thousand tons a day, a railway joining all the pits, and workshops, and factories! Ah, yes! ah, yes! there’s money there!”

      The rolling of trains on the stages made the big yellow horse prick his ears. The cage was evidently repaired below, and the landers had got to work again. While he was harnessing his beast to re-descend, the carman added gently, addressing himself to the horse:

      “Won’t do to chatter, lazy good-for-nothing! If Monsieur Hennebeau knew how you waste your time!”

      Étienne looked thoughtfully into the night. He asked:

      “Then Monsieur Hennebeau owns the mine?”

      “No,” explained the old man, “Monsieur Hennebeau is only the general manager; he is paid just the same as us.”

      With a gesture the young man pointed into the darkness.

      “Who does it all belong to, then?”

      But Bonnemort was for a moment so suffocated by a new and violent spasm that he could not get his breath. Then, when he had expectorated and wiped the black froth from his lips, he replied in the rising wind:

      “Eh? all that belongs to? Nobody knows. To people.” And with his hand he pointed in the darkness to a vague spot, an unknown and remote place, inhabited by those people for whom the Maheus had been hammering at the seam for more than a century. His voice assumed a tone of religious awe; it was as if he were speaking of an inaccessible tabernacle containing a sated and crouching god to whom they had given all their flesh and whom they had never seen.

      “At all events, if one can get enough bread to eat,” repeated Étienne, for the third time, without any apparent transition.

      “Indeed, yes; if we could always get bread, it would be too good.”

      The horse had started; the carman, in his turn, disappeared, with the trailing step of an invalid. Near the tipping-cradle the workman had not stirred, gathered up in a ball, burying his chin between his knees, with his great dim eyes fixed on emptiness.

      When he had picked up his bundle, Étienne still remained at the same spot. He felt the gusts freezing his back, while his chest was burning before the large fire. Perhaps, all the same, it would be as well

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