The Earth

by Emile Zola

  A neighbour would say to him:

  ‘Well, old Fouan, you're still keeping going.’

  And he would grunt:

  ‘It takes a blasted long time to peg out and it's not for want of trying.’

  He was telling the truth, for what peasant would not stoically and willingly accept death once he has been stripped of his belongings and the earth is waiting to reclaim him?

  Yet one further tribulation was in store for him. Urged on by his little sister Laure, Jules turned against him. Laure seemed jealous when her brother was with his grandfather. The old man was a nuisance, they'd have much more fun playing together. And if Jules would not go off with her, she clung round his neck and carted him off. Afterwards, she made herself so agreeable that he forgot his household duties towards old Fouan. Gradually she won him over completely, already practised in womanly wiles and having set out to achieve that aim.

  One evening Fouan had gone along to the school to wait for Jules, already so weary that he was relying on the youngster to help him up the slope. But Laure came out with her brother, and as the old man was stretching out his trembling hand to catch hold of the little boy's, she gave a sneering laugh:

  ‘There he is, bothering you again. Don't let him!’

  Then, turning round towards the other young ragamuffins, she shouted:

  ‘Don't you think he's a sissy to let himself be mucked about like that?’

  Embarrassed by their yells of scorn, Jules blushed and, wanting to show what a big boy he was, he jerked his hand away, copying his sister's words as he shouted at the old man who had accompanied him on so many walks:

  ‘Stop bothering me!’

  Dazed and blinded by tears, Fouan stumbled as though the ground were slipping from beneath his feet and he felt the little hand tugging itself away. The others laughed even louder and Laure forced her brother to dance round the old man singing the childish refrain:

  It's raining, it's pouring,

  The old man's snoring,

  He got into bed and bumped his head

  And couldn't get up in the morning.

  Weak and trembling, Fouan took nearly two hours to reach home on his own, scarcely able to drag one foot after the other. And that was the end: the little boy stopped bringing him his bowl of soup and making his bed, the straw mattress which he barely turned from one month's end to the next. He no longer had even this youngster to talk to; he sank into complete silence. Now he was utterly alone: not one single word to anyone or on anything at all ever passed his lips.

  Chapter 3

  THE winter ploughing was drawing to a close, and on this cold and gloomy February afternoon Jean had just arrived with his plough at his big Cornames field where he still had a good two hours' work. It was one end of the field which he was intending to plant with wheat, a Scottish variety of cone wheat which his former employer Hourdequin had advised him to try and of which he had even promised him a few bushels for seed.

  Jean immediately set the ploughshare where he had stopped the day before and, leaning on the plough handles to start a new furrow, he set the horse going with his usual rough growl: ‘Gee up there!’

  Heavy rain following on a great deal of sunshine had packed the clay so tightly that the coulter and ploughshare had difficulty in slicing through it. You could hear the heavy lumps of earth grinding against the mouldboard as they curled over and buried the manure which had been spread across the field. Now and then, the plough would jerk as it hit a stone or some other obstacle.

  ‘Gee up there!’

  Jean tensed his arms to ensure that his furrow was straight as a die, while his horse, with lowered head, its hooves sinking into the ridge between the furrows, kept pulling steadily onward. When the plough started to become choked Jean shook off the mud and grass with a jerk of his wrists and pursued his course, leaving the rich earth heaped up behind him, still quivering, like some live thing with its very vitals exposed.

  When he reached the end of the furrow, he turned and started another. He soon became as though intoxicated by the reek of the earth which he was stirring up, the reek of the damp dark corners, seething hotbeds of growth. The effort of walking and concentrating his vision completed the confusion of his mind. He would never become a real peasant. He wasn't a son of this soil, he was still the urban worker which he had been before, the trooper who had fought in Italy, and he could see and feel things which peasants neither see nor feel, the vast melancholy peace of the plain and the mighty breathing of the earth under sun and rain. He had always had thoughts of retiring to the country. But how silly of him to imagine that, when he laid down his rifle and his plane, the plough would satisfy his need for peace and quiet! If the earth was restful and good to those who loved it, the villagers contaminating it like vermin, those human insects battening on its flesh, were enough to disgrace it and blight any approach to it. He could not recall being so unhappy since the time, already distant, of his arrival at La Borderie.

  Jean lifted the handles slightly to make the going easier. He was annoyed to see a slight curve in the furrow. He turned and urged his horse on, determined to be more careful:

  ‘Gee up there!’

  And what trials and tribulations he had had in these last ten years! First, having to wait so long for Françoise; then the fight with the Buteaus. Not one day had passed without some trouble or other. And now that Françoise was his and he had been married for two years, was he really happy? Even if he still loved her, he had realized that she did not, and never would love him in the way he would have liked to be loved, body and soul. They both lived amicably together and they were doing well, working hard, saving money. But things were not right between them, and when he held her in his arms in bed he felt that she was cold and that her mind was on other things. Now she was five months pregnant with a child conceived without pleasure, the sort who are nothing but a nuisance to their mothers. Even this pregnancy had not brought them closer together. Above all, more and more, he was becoming painfully aware of something which he felt the night they had taken over the house, the feeling that his wife thought him a stranger, a man from another world, born and bred in foreign parts, God alone knows where; a man who didn't think like people from Rognes, who seemed to be a different sort of person from her and with no possible connexion with her, even though he had given her a baby. One Saturday after their marriage, in exasperation at the Buteaus, she had brought back a sheet of official stamped paper from Cloyes, in order to make a will leaving everything to her husband, because it had been explained to her that the house and land would revert to her sister if she died before having a child, since only money and goods and chattels entered into her marriage contract with Jean. And then, without a word of explanation, she seemed to have changed her mind and the blank sheet of paper was still lying in her chest of drawers; and apart from his personal interest in the matter, inwardly he had felt deeply hurt because it seemed to him to show lack of affection. Now that they were going to have a baby, what did it matter anyway? All the same, he felt sad at heart each time he opened the chest of drawers and saw the now useless sheet of official paper.

  Jean stopped to give his horse a breather, while he himself threw off his worries in the icy air. Slowly he let his gaze wander over the empty horizon and the immense plain, where in the far distance other teams were dimly discernible in the grey light. He was surprised to recognize old Fouan, who had come up from Rognes by the new road, impelled by some memory of the past or the need to cast his eye over one of his former pieces of land. Then he looked down and for a minute he was absorbed by the sight of the open furrow, the bowels of the earth which lay exposed at his feet; yellow and strong at the bottom, it looked like fresh young flesh which had been laid bare by turning over the soil, while the manure buried underneath formed a rich and fertile bed. His mind again grew confused; what an odd idea, to burrow into the soil like this in order to be able to eat bread; and then there was the worry of Françoise's failure to love him; and other thou
ghts as well, even dimmer, on what was growing there, on his baby soon to be born, on all the work which people did, often without being any the happier for it. He took hold of the handles again and growled:

  ‘Gee up there!’

  Jean was just finishing his ploughing when Delhomme, who was walking back from a neighbouring farm, stopped beside his field:

  ‘I say, Corporal, have you heard the news? Looks like war.’

  Jean let go of his plough and jerked upright in shocked surprise.

  ‘War? Who with?’

  ‘Well, with the Prussians, from what I can tell. It's in the papers.’

  With a set face, Jean's thoughts went back to Italy again and all the fighting there, the slaughter from which he had been so delighted to escape unscathed. In those days, how he had longed for a life of peace, in some quiet corner! And now when he heard the word war shouted to him by this man passing by on the road, the thought of it set the blood coursing through his whole body.

  ‘Well, if the Prussians are buggering us about, we can't let them take us for mugs!’

  Delhomme did not share this view. He shook his head and pointed out that it would be the end of the countryside if the Cossacks came back, as they did after Napoleon. There was nothing to be gained by knocking each other about: much better to work something out together.

  ‘What I'm saying doesn't affect me. I've deposited some money with Monsieur Baillehache. Whatever happens, Nénesse won't be called up. The draw's tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jean, calming down. ‘It's the same with me. I've done my stint and now I'm married. I don't give a damn for their fighting! So it's the Prussians, is it! Well, we'll give 'em a thrashing, that's all!’

  ‘Goodbye, Corporal.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Delhomme went off, stopping to call out the news further on and then for a third time; and the threat of approaching war sped over the plain of Beauce under the vast, sad, ashen sky.

  His task completed, Jean thought he would go off straight away to La Borderie and pick up the promised seed. He unhitched, leaving the plough at the end of the field, and jumped onto the horse. As he was going off, he remembered Fouan and looked for him, but without success. No doubt the old man had taken shelter from the cold behind a stack still standing in the Buteaus' field.

  At La Borderie, after tying up his horse, Jean called out but nobody replied: everybody must be working outside. He went into the deserted kitchen, rapped on the table and at last heard Jacqueline's voice coming from the cellar in which was the dairy; a trap-door opened directly at the foot of the stairs, so awkwardly placed that there was always a serious risk of an accident.

  ‘Who's there?’

  He was squatting at the top of the steep flight of steps and she looked up and recognized him.

  ‘Oh, it's you, Corporal!’

  He could see her too, in the half-light coming from the ventilator. She was working down there amidst her pans and basins, from which the whey was dripping into a stone trough. Her sleeves were tucked up to her armpits and her bare arms were white with cream.

  ‘Come on down. You're not afraid of me, are you?’

  She still used her familiar form of address, as in the old days, and she was laughing in her usual forthcoming way. He was embarrassed and stayed where he was.

  ‘I've come for the seed that the master promised me.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know, wait a second, I'll be up.’

  And when she came up into the light, he thought how fresh she looked, with her bare white arms, and smelling of fresh milk. She was watching him with her charming, shameless eyes and finally asked him with a saucy look:

  ‘Aren't you going to give me a kiss? Being married's no excuse for being rude.’

  He pretended to give her two smacking kisses on her cheeks, to make it plain that they were just friendly ones. But he found her disturbing and past memories sent a little thrill through his body. He'd never felt that with his wife, whom he was so fond of.

  ‘Come along with me,’ Jacqueline continued. ‘I'll show you the seed. Just think, even the servant's away at the market.’

  She crossed the yard into the wheat barn and went behind a pile of bags. The wheat was stored against the wall, held in by planks. He followed her, a trifle oppressed at finding himself alone with her like this, in this quiet corner. He immediately pretended to be interested in the seed, a fine Scottish variety of cone wheat.

  ‘Isn't it big!’

  But she gave her husky gurgle and quickly brought him back to the subject that interested her.

  ‘Your wife's pregnant, isn't she? So you can let yourself go, eh? Tell me, what's it like with her? Is it as nice as with me?’

  He went very red and she laughed, delighted at having disconcerted him. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike her and her face clouded over.

  ‘You know, I've been having a lot of trouble. Fortunately, it's all over now, and I've come out on top.’

  In fact, Hourdequin's son Léon, who had not been seen for years, had suddenly dropped in at La Borderie; and on the very first day Léon, who had come to see what was happening, had received his answer when he realized that Jacqueline was occupying his mother's bedroom. For a moment, Jacqueline was scared because she had set her mind firmly on marriage in order to inherit the farm. But the captain made the mistake of trying on an old trick: he attempted to extricate his father from his dilemma by being caught by him in bed with Jacqueline. It was too obvious. She made a great display of virtue, shrieking and sobbing, telling Hourdequin that she was going to leave because no one treated her with respect any more, and there was a dreadful row between the two men when the son tried to open his father's eyes, which only made matters worse. Two hours later, he went off himself, shouting as he went through the door that he preferred to give up the lot and if he were ever to come back it would be to kick that bitch out.

  In her triumph Jacqueline made the mistake of thinking that she could get away with anything. She informed Hourdequin that in view of all these mortifications, which were the talk of the district, she owed it to herself to leave him if he wouldn't marry her. She even began to pack her bags. However, still upset at having parted from his son, the more so since he was also full of grief because he secretly felt himself to be in the wrong, Hourdequin nearly knocked her unconscious with a couple of slaps in the face, which stopped any further talk of leaving and made her realize that she had been in too great a hurry. In any case, she was now in complete charge, openly sleeping in the marital bedroom, eating separately with the master, giving the orders, settling the accounts, holding the keys of the safe and so autocratic that he would consult her when any decision had to be taken. He had greatly aged and she had high hopes, in his decline, of eventually overcoming his resistance and persuading him to marry her when she had finally succeeded in wearing him down. Meanwhile, as in his fit of rage he had sworn to cut his son off with a shilling, she was trying to prevail on him to make a will in her favour. She could already see herself as the mistress of the farm because she had extracted a promise from him one night in bed.

  ‘All these years I've been working like a slave to give him fun,’ she said, ‘You must realize that it's not because of his looks!’

  Jean could not help laughing. As she was talking, she had unthinkingly been plunging her bare arms into the wheat, then lifting them out and putting them in again, so that her skin was covered in a fine, soft powder. He stood watching her and then made a comment that he regretted afterwards:

  ‘And what about Tron and you? Still going strong?’

  She did not seem offended but spoke out openly, as though confiding in an old friend.

  ‘Oh, I'm quite fond of that big softy but he really is a bit of a nuisance. Just imagine, he's jealous! Yes, he keeps picking rows with me, the only man he doesn't object to is the master, and even then… I think he comes and listens at the door to make sure we're asleep.’

  Jean laughed again. But she was not jo
king, because secretly she was afraid of this giant of a man, who, she claimed, was sly and untrustworthy like everybody from the Perche. He had threatened to strangle her if she deceived him. So now she was terrified when she went with him, despite her weakness for his sturdy limbs. She herself was so slim that he could have crushed her between his thumb and forefinger.

  Then she gave a pretty shrug of her shoulders, as though to say that she had coped with others like him before. She went on with a smile:

  ‘I say, Corporal, it was nicer with you, we got on so well together!’

  Without taking her quizzical gaze off him, she had started to turn the wheat over again with her arms. And once again he felt himself weakening, forgetful of the fact that he had left the farm and not thinking of his wife and their unborn baby. He grasped her wrists plunged deep in the wheat and ran his hands up her velvet-soft, floury arms, until he reached her girlish bosom which too much fondling seemed to have made all the firmer. This was what she had been wanting ever since she had looked up at him crouching down beside the trap and felt a sudden revival of past affection, as well as the sneaking pleasure of taking him away from another woman, his wife. He had seized her in his arms and was pressing her backwards onto the heap of wheat while she was already sighing in ecstasy when the tall, lean figure of the shepherd Soulas appeared from behind the sacks, coughing violently and spitting. Jacqueline jerked herself upright, while Jean stuttered breathlessly:

  ‘Well, that's it, I'll come back and pick up a dozen bushels. Isn't it big, really big!’

  His ardour cooled, Jean hurriedly made his way out of the barn and unhitched his horse in the yard, ignoring Jacqueline's signs; she would rather have hidden him in Hourdequin's bedroom than forgo her lust for him. But he was anxious to escape and repeated that he would come back the following day. As he was going off leading his horse by the bridle, Soulas, who had gone out to wait for him by the gate, said to him: