Free Germinal by Émile Zola Page B

seen as they lay crowded together, their mouths open, stunned by exhaustion. Despite the bitter cold outside, the air was heavy with the warmth of the living, that stuffy heat to be found in even the best-kept bedrooms, with its reek of the human herd.
    The cuckoo clock downstairs struck four, but still nothing, only the faint whistle of breathing and the deeper sound of two people snoring. And then, all of a sudden, it was Catherine who rose first. In her tiredness she had counted the four chimes as usual, through the floorboards, but without finding the strength to rouse herself completely. Then, having swung her legs out ofbed, she groped about and finally struck a match to light the candle. But she remained seated, her head so heavy that it slumped back between her shoulders, yielding to an irresistible desire to fall back on to the bolster.
    The candle now lit up the square room, which had two windows and was filled with three beds. There was a wardrobe, a table and two chairs made of seasoned walnut whose smoky-brown colour stood out starkly against the walls, which were painted bright yellow. And that was all, apart from some clothes hanging on nails and a jug standing on the tiled floor next to a red earthenware dish that served as a basin. In the bed on the left, Zacharie, the eldest, a lad of twenty-one, lay beside his brother Jeanlin, who was nearly eleven; in the bed on the right, two little ones, Lénore and Henri, the first aged six, the other four, lay in each other’s arms; while the third bed was shared by Catherine and her sister Alzire, aged nine, who was so puny for her age that Catherine wouldn’t even have felt her next to her had it not been for the sickly child’s hunchback, which kept digging into her. The glass-panelled door to the bedroom stood open, and one could see the landing beyond, a kind of alcove in which their father and mother occupied the fourth bed. Next to it they had had to install the cradle of the latest addition to the family, Estelle, who was barely three months old.
    Catherine made a supreme effort to force herself awake. She stretched and then ran her taut fingers through the tousled red hair that fell over her forehead and down the nape of her neck. She was of slight build for a fifteen-year-old, and all that could be seen outside the tight sheath of her nightshirt were her bluish feet, which looked as though they had been tattooed with coal, and her delicate arms whose milky whiteness stood out against her sallow complexion, itself already ruined by constant scrubbings with black soap. Her mouth, which was a little large, opened in a final yawn to reveal a fine array of teeth set in pale, anaemic gums. Her grey eyes watered as she struggled to stay awake, and they held such an expression of pain and exhaustion that her whole body seemed to be swelling with fatigue.
    But a growling sound came from the landing as, in a voice thick with sleep, Maheu muttered:
    â€˜God! Is it that time already…Is that you, Catherine?’
    â€˜Yes, Dad…The clock downstairs has just struck.’
    â€˜Hurry up then, you lazy girl! If you hadn’t spent all Sunday night dancing, you could have got us up earlier…Anyone would think we didn’t have a job of work to go to!’
    He grumbled on, but gradually sleep overtook him again; his reproaches became muddled and eventually subsided to be replaced by a new bout of snoring.
    The girl moved about the room in her nightshirt, barefoot on the tiled floor. As she passed Henri and Lénore’s bed, she covered them with the blanket, which had slipped off the bed; neither woke up, since both were lost to the world in the deep sleep of children. Alzire had opened her eyes and rolled over without a word to occupy the warm spot left by her elder sister.
    â€˜Come on, Zacharie! You, too, Jeanlin,’ Catherine repeated, standing by her two brothers who each lay sprawled on his front with his nose in the