3 Books To Know French Literature. Victor Hugo

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СКАЧАТЬ teeth, and she chewed them, and endeavoured to swallow them. This occupied their jaws, and gave them the illusion of eating. Then, when the belt was finished, they went back to their clothes, sucking them for hours.

      But soon these violent crises subsided; hunger became only a low deep ache with the slow progressive languor of their strength. No doubt they would have succumbed if they had not had as much water as they desired. They merely bent down and drank from the hollow of the hand, and that very frequently, parched by a thirst which all this water could not quench.

      On the seventh day Catherine was bending down to drink, when her hand struck some floating body before her.

      "I say, look! What's this?"

      Étienne felt in the darkness.

      "I can't make out; it seems like the cover of a ventilation door."

      She drank, but as she was drawing up a second mouthful the body came back, striking her hand. And she uttered a terrible cry.

      "My God! it's he!"

      "Whom do you mean?"

      "Him! You know well enough. I felt his moustache."

      It was Chaval's corpse, risen from the upbrow and pushed on to them by the flow. Étienne stretched out his arm; he, too, felt the moustache and the crushed nose, and shuddered with disgust and fear. Seized by horrible nausea, Catherine had spat out the water which was still in her mouth. It seemed to her that she had been drinking blood, and that all the deep water before her was now that man's blood.

      "Wait!" stammered Étienne. "I'll push him off!"

      He kicked the corpse, which moved off. But soon they felt it again striking against their legs.

      "By God! Get off!"

      And the third time Étienne had to leave it. Some current always brought it back. Chaval would not go; he desired to be with them, against them. It was an awful companion, at last poisoning the air. All that day they never drank, struggling, preferring to die. It was not until the next day that their suffering decided them: they pushed away the body at each mouthful and drank in spite of it. It had not been worth while to knock his brains out, for he came back between him and her, obstinate in his jealousy. To the very end he would be there, even though he was dead, preventing them from coming together.

      A day passed, and again another day. At every shiver of the water Étienne perceived a slight blow from the man he had killed, the simple elbowing of a neighbour who is reminding you of his presence. And every time it came he shuddered. He continually saw it there, swollen, greenish, with the red moustache and the crushed face. Then he no longer remembered; he had not killed him; the other man was swimming and trying to bite him.

      Catherine was now shaken by long endless fits of crying, after which she was completely prostrated. She fell at last into a condition of irresistible drowsiness. He would arouse her, but she stammered a few words and at once fell asleep again without even raising her eyelids; and fearing lest she should be drowned, he put his arm round her waist. It was he now who replied to the mates. The blows of the pick were now approaching, he could hear them behind his back. But his strength, too, was diminishing; he had lost all courage to strike. They were known to be there; why weary oneself more? It no longer interested him whether they came or not. In the stupefaction of waiting he would forget for hours at a time what he was waiting for.

      One relief comforted them a little: the water sank, and Chaval's body moved off. For nine days the work of their deliverance had been going on, and they were for the first time taking a few steps in the gallery when a fearful commotion threw them to the ground. They felt for each other and remained in each other's arms like mad people, not understanding, thinking the catastrophe was beginning over again. Nothing more stirred, the sound of the picks had ceased.

      In the corner where they were seated holding each other, side by side, a low laugh came from Catherine.

      "It must be good outside. Come, let's go out of here."

      Étienne at first struggled against this madness. But the contagion was shaking his stronger head, and he lost the exact sensation of reality. All their senses seemed to go astray, especially Catherine's. She was shaken by fever, tormented now by the need to talk and move. The ringing in her ears had become the murmur of flowing water, the song of birds; she smelled the strong odour of crushed grass, and could see clearly great yellow patches floating before her eyes, so large that she thought she was out of doors, near the canal, in the meadows on a fine summer day.

      "Eh? how warm it is! Take me, then; let us keep together. Oh, always, always!"

      He pressed her, and she rubbed herself against him for a long time, continuing to chatter like a happy girl:

      "How silly we have been to wait so long! I would have liked you at once, and you did not understand; you sulked. Then, do you remember, at our house at night, when we could not sleep, with our faces out listening to each other's breathing, with such a longing to come together?"

      He was won by her gaiety, and joked over the recollection of their silent tenderness.

      "You struck me once. Yes, yes, blows on both cheeks!"

      "It was because I loved you," she murmured. "You see, I prevented myself from thinking of you. I said to myself that it was quite done with, and all the time I knew that one day or another we should get together. It only wanted an opportunity—some lucky chance. Wasn't it so?"

      A shudder froze him. He tried to shake off this dream; then he repeated slowly:

      "Nothing is ever done with; a little happiness is enough to make everything begin again."

      "Then you'll keep me, and it will be all right this time?"

      And she slipped down fainting. She was so weak that her low voice died out. In terror he kept her against his heart.

      "Are you in pain?"

      She sat up surprised.

      "No, not at all. Why?"

      But this question aroused her from her dream. She gazed at the darkness with distraction, wringing her hands in another fit of sobbing.

      "My God, my God, how black it is!"

      It was no longer the meadows, the odour of the grass, the song of larks, the great yellow sun; it was the fallen, inundated mine, the stinking gloom, the melancholy dripping of this cellar where they had been groaning for so many days. Her perverted senses now increased the horror of it; her childish superstitions came back to her; she saw the Black Man, the old dead miner who returns to the pit to twist naughty girls' necks.

      "Listen! did you hear?"

      "No, nothing; I heard nothing."

      "Yes, the Man—you know? Look! he is there. The earth has let all the blood out of the vein to revenge itself for being cut into; and he is there—you can see him—look! blacker than night. Oh, I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid!"

      She became silent, shivering. Then in a very low voice she whispered:

      "No, it's always the other one."

      "What other one?"

      "Him СКАЧАТЬ