Complete Works of Emile Zola (958 page)

“Pish! My skin’s absolutely crackling,” said Buteau at last.

And, turning to Françoise:

“Let’s sleep a bit!”

He looked round him for a little shade, but found none. The sun was beating down perpendicularly, and there was not so much as a bush to shelter them. At last he noticed that at the end of the field, in a sort of little ditch, some wheat which was still standing threw a brown streak of shadow.

“Hullo there, Palmyre!” cried he. “Don’t you follow our example?”

She was fifty paces off, and replied in a stifled voice, which reached them like a whisper:

“No, no! I haven’t time.”

She was now the only worker left in all the glowing plain. If she didn’t take her franc-and-a-half home with her at night-­time, Hilarion would beat her; for he no longer confined himself to his accustomed ill-usage, but robbed her as well, that he might have money to buy brandy with. However, her strength was now forsaking her. Her flat figure, planed straight like a plank by sheer hard work, creaked as if it were about to snap at every fresh sheaf she picked up and bound. With ashen face, worn like some old copper coin, seemingly sixty years of age though actually but thirty-five, she let the burning sun drink up her life-blood in the despairing efforts she made, like a beast of burden about to fall and perish.

Buteau and Françoise had stretched themselves side by side. They were steaming with sweat, now that they had ceased to move about, and they lay in silence with closed eyes. A leaden slumber instantly weighed them down; they slept for an hour; and the perspiration poured unceasingly from their limbs in the motionless, heavy, furnace-like atmo­sphere. When Françoise opened her eyes again, she saw Buteau lying on his side, watching her with the jaundiced look that had disturbed her for some time past. She re-closed her eye-lids, and pretended to go to sleep again. Without his having yet spoken to her, she knew well enough that he desired her, now that she had grown up, and was quite a woman. The idea maddened her. Would he dare, the swine! he whom she heard rioting with her sister every night? Never before had his lustful manner so exasperated her. Would he dare? And she awaited his addresses, unconsciously wishing for them, but resolved, if he touched her, to strangle him.

As she closed her eyes Buteau suddenly seized hold of her.

“You swine! you swine!” she stammered, repulsing him.

He chuckled with a wild look, and whispered:

“Stupid! Keep still! I tell you they’re asleep; no one is looking.”

At that moment, Palmyre’s wan and agonised face appeared above the corn. She had turned round at the noise. But she didn’t count, any more than if a cow had lifted up its muzzle. And, indeed, she returned, with indifference, to her sheaves. The cracking of her loins was again heard at each effort she made.

“Stupid,” said Buteau. “Lise won’t know.”

At the mention of her sister, Françoise, who was on the eve of giving way, nerved herself for renewed resistance. From that moment she remained firm, beating him with her fists and kicking him with her bare legs. Was he hers, this fellow? Did he think she wanted some one else’s leavings?

“Go and find my sister, you pig!” she exclaimed. And then she gave him such a kick in a tender part that he was forced to let her go, pushing her away so brutally that she had to stifle a cry of pain.

It was high time that the scene should finish, for Buteau, when he got up, perceived Lise returning with the snack. He walked on to meet her, and engaged her in talk, so as to allow Françoise the time to tidy her dress. The idea that she was going to tell everything made him regret not having stunned her with a kick. However, she said nothing, but sat down amid the bundles of wheat with a stubborn and insolent air. He had resumed his reaping, but she still stayed there idly, like a princess.

“What is it?” asked Lise, tired with her journey, and sitting down as well: “you’re not working?”

“No, it bores me,” replied Françoise, savagely.

Then Buteau, afraid to storm at her, fell foul of his wife. What was she up to, stretches out there like a sow, warming her belly in the sun? And a sweet thing, indeed, it was. A fine pumpkin to set out to ripen. At that phrase she began to laugh with all her old buxom gaiety. Maybe it was true that the warmth ripened the little one and brought it on; and so, under the flaming heavens, she rounded her huge figure, which seemed like the protuberance of some germ rising from the fruitful soil. But he did not laugh. He brutally made her get up, and insisted on her helping him. Inconvenienced by her condition, she was fain to kneel down, picking up the ears of corn with a side-long movement, and panting as she laboured on.

“As you’re doing nothing,” she said to her sister, “you might at least go back home and make the soup.”

Françoise went off without a word. Although the heat was still stifling La Beauce had again assumed an aspect of activity. The little black specks of harvesters re-appeared, swarming to infinity. Delhomme was once more reaping with his two men, while La Grande, watching the growth of her stack, was leaning on her stick, quite prepared to bring it across the face of any idler. Fouan also went to have a look at the stack; next he again became absorbed in his son-in-law’s work; and then he wandered retrospectively and re­gretfully to and fro, with heavy gait. Françoise, with her head still dizzy from the shock she had experienced, was going along the new road, when a voice called to her:

“Come along. This way!”

It was Jean, half hidden behind the sheaves which he had been carting from the neighbouring fields since the morning. He had just unloaded his waggon once more; and the two horses were waiting motionless in the sunshine. The erection of the large stack would not be begun till the morrow, and he had merely piled up some heaps, three walls which enclosed, as it were, a room; a deep snug nest of straw.

“Come along!” he said. “It’s me!”

Françoise mechanically complied with the request. She did not even think of glancing back. Had she turned round, she would have noticed Buteau craning forward, surprised to see her leaving the road.

Jean now began jestingly:

“It’s proud you’re getting, to go by without giving a day to your friends!”

“Why, you’re so hidden,” she replied, “that you can’t be seen.”

Then he complained of the cold shoulder that the Buteaus now always turned upon him. But she was not composed enough to talk of that; she remained silent, or only let a brief word fall now and then. She had spontaneously dropped upon the straw, at the far end of the nook, as though she were thoroughly tired out. Her head was full of one thing, the attack of that man over yonder at the edge of the field; his hot hands, of which she still felt the powerful grip; his mascu­line approach, that she still seemed to expect, breathing short, in an anguish of desire, against which she struggled. She closed her eyes, choking.

Then Jean spoke no more. Seeing her thus, supine and yielding, the blood pulsed strongly through his veins. He had not calculated on this encounter, and he still held back, think­ing that it would be a shame to take advantage of such a child.

But the loud beating of his heart upset him. He had so long desired her! A vision of possession drove him frantic, as during his feverish nights. He lay down near her, contenting himself first with one of her hands, and then with both hands, which he crushed between his own, without so much as venturing to raise them to his lips. She did not draw them away, but re-opened her dreamy, heavy-lidded eyes, and looked at him without a smile, without any sign of shame, her face nervously strained. It was this mute, almost painful look of hers that all at once urged him to brutality. He made a dash, and seized her like the other.

“No, no,” she faltered; “I entreat you.”

But she made no defence. She only gave a cry of pain. It seemed as if the ground were giving way beneath her, and in her dizziness consciousness failed her.

When she re-opened her eyes, without saying a word, without making a movement, after remaining for a moment in a state of stupor, the thought of the other one came back to her. Jean, on his side, was displeased. Why had she yielded? She could not love a veteran like him! And he also remained motionless, aghast. Finally, with a discontented gesture, he tried to think of something to say, and failed. Embarrassed still further, he resolved to kiss her; but she at once recoiled, unwilling that he should touch her again,

“I must go,” he muttered “You stay here.”

She made no answer, but stared vaguely up at the sky.

“Won’t you? Come, wait five minutes, so that you mayn’t be seen coming away at the same time as me.”

Then she decided to open her lips.

“All right, be off!”

That was all. He smacked his whip, swore at his horses, and with his head bent trudged away by the side of his cart.

Meanwhile, Buteau’s astonishment at Françoise’s disappear­ance behind the sheaves continued; and when he saw Jean make off, he had a suspicion of the truth. Without confiding in Lise, he crept off like a wary hunter, and finally leapt full into the midst of the nook of straw. Françoise had not stirred, in the torpor that benumbed her; she was still gazing vaguely upwards.

“Oh, you strumpet! So that vagabond’s your lover, and I’m only good to be kicked! Great God! We’ll soon see about that.”

He had already got hold of her; and she plainly realised by his heated look that he intended to take advantage of the opportunity. As soon as she again felt his burning hands, she once more resisted. Now that he was there, she no longer regretted or wanted him. Her whole nature revolted rancorously and jealously against him, albeit she was herself unconscious of the freaks of her will.

“Will you let me go, you swine!” she said. “I’ll bite you!”

For the second time he had to leave go of her. He spluttered with fury, enraged at the thought that she yielded to another.

“Oh, I had a notion that there was something between you two,” he said. “I ought to have kicked him out a long time ago, you hussy!”

Then he gave vent to a flood of filth. She, although maddened on her own side, remained stiff and pale, affecting perfect calmness, and replying curtly to all his dirty speeches:

“What’s it got to do with you? Can’t I do what I like?”

“Very well. Then I shall turn you out of the house im­mediately we get back! I shall tell Lise how I found you, and you may go and do as you like elsewhere.”

He was now pushing her in front of him towards the field where his wife was waiting.

“Tell Lise!” said Françoise. “What do I care? I shall go away if I choose.”

“If you choose! Oh, indeed! We shall see about that. You’ll be kicked out, neck and crop!”

By way of taking a short cut, he was driving her across the field which had hitherto belonged in common to her sister and herself, and the partition of which he had always postponed. Suddenly he was seized with consternation. A new idea had just flashed like lightning through his mind. It had occurred to him that if he turned her away this field would be cut in two, and that she would take half of it, and perhaps give it to her gallant. The thought froze him, and both nipped his lust and wrath. No; that would be folly. He must not let every­thing go because a girl had baulked him for once. There was plenty of sport to be had any day; but if a fellow once got hold of some land, the thing was to stick to it.

He said nothing more, but slackened his pace, feeling puzzled as to how he might recall his violent words before he reached his wife. At length he made up his mind.

“Well, I’m not fond of making mischief,” he said; “it’s your seeming disgust of me that annoys me so. Otherwise, I hardly care to vex Lise, situated as she is.”

She fancied that he, too, was afraid of being exposed.

“You may be sure of one thing,” she answered; “if you speak, I shall do the same.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of that,” he resumed, coolly and quietly. “I shall say you are lying, in revenge, because I caught you.” Then, as they were getting near, he concluded, quickly: “So it shan’t go any further. We must both of us talk it over some other time.”

Lise, however, was beginning to feel surprised, unable to understand why Françoise was coming back with Buteau like that. He was explaining that the lazy thing had been sulking behind a hay-stack, down yonder, when suddenly a harsh cry interrupted him, and the matter was forgotten.

“What’s that? Who screamed?”

It was a weird cry, a long screaming sigh, like the death-gasp of an animal having its throat cut. It rose up and died away amid the pitiless glare of the sun.

“Eh? What is it? A horse surely, with its bones broken!”

They turned round, and saw Palmyre still standing in the next field, amid the bundles of wheat. With her failing arms, she was pressing against her shrivelled bosom one last sheaf, which she was striving to bind. But, raising a fresh cry of agony, and letting the whole lot fall, she spun round and fell prone among the corn, struck down by the sun that had been scorching her for the last twelve hours.

Lise and Françoise ran up, Buteau following at a more careless pace; while everybody from the surrounding fields came forward: the Delhommes, Fouan, who was strolling about there, and La Grande, who was scattering the stones with the ferule of her stick.

“What’s the matter?”

“Palmyre in a fit.”

“I saw her fall from over there.”

“Good Heavens!”

All of them stood round and watched her, not venturing too near, however, for they were struck with that mysterious awe which disease always inspires in the peasantry. She was stretched, face upwards, on the ground, with her arms extended as if she had been crucified on that earth, which, by the hard toil it exacted, had worn her out so soon, and was now killing her. Some vessel must have broken, for a stream­let of blood flowed from her mouth. Still, she was dying more from exhaustion, brought on by toil such as would have over-tasked a beast. A withered, shrunken thing she looked among the stubble, a mere fleshless, sexless bit of frippery, exhaling a last faint gasp amid the rich, fertile harvest.