by Linda Urbach
“Here you got the spinning area. These glorious machines take the roving off their bobbins and feed ’em through more rollers so that the roving gets to be the same size yarn. Then the yarn gets twisted and twisted and rolled onto the spinning bobbin. After that you got the plying,” Marnet said, pointing out yet another machine. “The plying gets done by pulling the yarn from two bobbins and twisting it together in the opposite direction that it was spun in. Then after all that spinning and plying it goes to a warping room. And this, chère Mademoiselle Bovary of the soon-to-be-cotton-making Bovarys, is where you come in.”
They came to another large area where there were racks and racks of bobbins set up to hold the thread that was ready to go onto the loom for weaving.
“Now the warping and the weaving and the thread count—that’s for another time. Too much information will fill your pretty head with lint. The important thing is this—” Marnet held up a large bolt of plain cotton muslin. “Feel it,” he said.
Berthe ran her fingers over the white rough-textured fabric. She hated the feel of it. How hideously different this was from the smooth fabric she had expected.
“Of course, this isn’t the fine stuff. That’s in another factory. We just do the basics here. But it’s a God-given, glorious trade. One that will keep you fat and happy for years to come.”
Berthe looked around the room. None of the workers looked fat or happy. She had never seen a sorrier-looking group of people. Young girls and boys her age, and even smaller children, seemed to almost be swallowed up by the work. Their clothes were rags at best, their hair limp and dull, their complexions a sickly gray. And their bodies, especially those of the older children, seemed crippled by some unknown disease. Their spindly legs had turned inward at the knees; their elbows were enlarged and knobby; and their hands were swollen and red. Her job, as Marnet outlined it for her, was simple enough, but it was the final blow to her fantasy of work.
“They say you can read and write. I guess that means you can count as well. Alls you got to do is count the finished bobbins, mark ’em down in this here ledger when they been filled with the thread.” He handed her a ledger and a pencil and then indicated a small stool in the corner. “If you just do your job, which I must say is a blessed easy one for a beginner, mind your p’s and q’s, don’t make no trouble, and don’t listen to the rest of the hordes, you’ll do just fine.” He gave her head a friendly tap with his stump and he was off.
She sat and watched and counted while others made the bobbins. After a few hours her back and legs hurt from sitting hunched over on the small stool. She wished she could move around like the others. Halfway through her tedious and endless first morning, she heard a terrible scream from the room next door. Berthe held her breath. She waited for the sound of another scream but it never came. She found the absence of the second scream even more frightening. Her breakfast rose up in her throat and she thought she might be sick all over the floor.
Marnet rushed up to Berthe.
“Good news, Madame Brilliant Bovary, you’ve got a promotion and on your first day,” he said breathlessly. “Come with me.” She followed him to the room next door. “I am pleased to announce that you are hereby promoted to Piecer,” he announced.
“What is that, sir?”
“A position of great responsibility is what that is. A Piecer leans over the spinning machine to repair the broken threads. We usually give this job to the smaller ones, but you look to be fast on your feet and light with your fingers. Though watch out for that wheel there, or you’ll be minus a few.”
This didn’t seem like a promotion to Berthe. Quite the opposite.
“Just thank your lucky stars they didn’t make you a Scavenger,” whispered a small girl at the machine next to her. “Although you are far too big for that.”
“What’s a Scavenger?” asked Berthe, not taking her eyes off the moving machinery.
“There’s one there,” said the girl, pointing to a small figure who scurried underneath the moving machine like a mouse after cheese. “Only the very littlest ones can be Scavengers. Their job is to sweep up the loose cotton from underneath the machinery,” the girl whispered. “It’s quite scary down there under the moving machine, and then of course you breathe in all that dust and lint. It’s by far the worst job.”
“And this is a good job?” Berthe asked.
“Dunno. I just started myself. They had two accidents this morning, so they’re short on Piecers. It’s a position of responsibility,” she said, echoing Marnet’s words.
“Du Croix, come here,” Marnet shouted across the room. “I am putting the virgin in your hands. Show her how to do her job.”
Du Croix turned out to be none other than Hélène. She scowled at Berthe.
“Get someone else to show her. I have to sleep with the bitch. That’s bad enough.”
“Dearest Du Croix, I know Christ the Lord gave you a mouth but he don’t mean you to use it in defiance of your superiors, me being the most immediate one. Get over here and do your job, or I’ll give you a good what for with my trusty stumpy.”
Hélène grudgingly showed Berthe the ropes, or threads to be precise. How she had to stand with her right foot forward and her right side facing the frame in order to mend the broken threads. Berthe was to stay in that same position and keep sliding sideways to the right and then to the left, never stopping, always in motion. She was to mend a break immediately by tying the two broken ends together in a simple square knot before the thread was lost in the machine. Clearly, Hélène had put in her time as a Piecer. She demonstrated the job effortlessly.
“Just keep doing this until they tell you to do something else,” Hélène said, going off to her own job. It was tedious, backbreaking work. After a while, the weight of her body resting always on her right knee created an ache deep down in Berthe’s hip bones. The air was filled with clouds of lint. It went into her eyes and up her nose. She began sneezing and coughing. She longed for the fresh air of her grand-mère’s farm.
“You’ll get used to it,” the girl next to her said. “In about two weeks your lungs will be lined with the stuff and it won’t hardly bother you anymore.”
When the bell rang for supper Berthe was shocked to see that many of the girls couldn’t straighten up. They were permanently bent over, their backs curved into the shape of the letter C.
Her oatcake was covered with a fine layer of dust. A little boy sitting next to her had something different and offered to split half of his supper with Berthe. The boy’s supper was a potato pie with a piece of boiled lard. It was so thick with fat it was hard to swallow. But compared to her dry oatcake, it tasted delicious.
“What’s your name?” Berthe asked.
“Antoine,” said the boy. He was very small, about half her height. He had pale blond hair that stuck out of his head every which way like stalks of wheat. His face had a gray tint and looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a year.
“How old are you?” Berthe asked.
“Eight going on nine.” Pieces of oatcake flew out of his mouth. “You took my job, you know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was hoping to get promoted to Piecer. They usually give that job to the smaller ones like me. And I could do it. I know I could. I been practicing. I could tie those knots with me eyes closed.” He sighed. “I was so hoping to get out from down under.”
“Down under?”
“I’m a Scavenger,” he said.
“Oh,” said Berthe remembering what the girl had told her about the job of Scavenger.
“Sometimes I forget about the machine and lift me stupid head and it pulls out me hair.” He touched the back of his head. “It hurts like the devil, I can tell you that. And I get that cotton dust in me throat and it tickles and tickles, and I can’t stop me coughing. When I saw Violette get hurt I was happy ’cause I thought I was next in line to do her job. I don’t know why they gave it to you. You’re way bigger than me and you’re brand-new.
You don’t know nothing,” he said matter-of-factly.
“That’s true,” Berthe assured him. “Do you want me to say something to Monsieur Marnet?”
He shook his head. “It won’t do no good. Once they make up their minds they don’t like to change. The problem is I’m the best Scavenger they got.”
“How long have you been working here?” she asked. He looked at her as if her question made no sense.
“Since I was small. Since me folks up and died.” Her heart went out to him. Poor little orphan. And then it hit her: That’s what she was. But of course, they were probably all orphans here. What else could they be to work in this awful place? The boy glanced into Berthe’s supper pail.
“You gonna eat the rest of that potato?” he asked.
“No, you can have it,” she said, handing him the cold greasy lump.
“Wait until Easter Sunday,” he said.
“Why, what happens then?” asked Berthe.
“We get cheese and brown bread for supper,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “And a whole extra franc.”
“Tell you what, come Easter you may have my cheese.”
“You’re joking!” His eyes grew wide.
“No, I hate cheese. My grand-mère made cheese on her farm and I never liked it.”
Five minutes later the bell rang again and everyone went back to their workstations. With a wave of his hand, Antoine was gone.
By the end of the first day her hands were bleeding. Her eyes and throat burned and she couldn’t stop coughing. She was dizzy with fatigue. How she missed the farm. Céleste, the geese, the sweet smell of new-mown hay. She looked around her. Berthe realized that other than the few men who kept the machinery in repair there were no older people working at the mill. They were mostly children. Rather, not children, but strange gray creatures with bent backs, bowed legs, and dead eyes.
As she trudged home, a figure came up beside her.
“Don’t spend your money all in one place.” Berthe looked up in time to see Hélène rush past her.
“What?”
“The seventy-five centimes you earned today. Not bad for slave wages.” Hélène laughed as she hurried on. Berthe’s tired mind focused on the number seventy-five, blocking out the word centime. For one split second she felt gratified by this enormous amount. It took a minute to register that seventy-five centimes was just short of a franc. At seventy-five centimes a day she was earning less than the seven francs a week Madame Lisette had predicted would be her pay. Then she realized that the rest of her wages had gone to pay for her room and board.
She thought back to the day before and her excitement about starting her first job and earning her first wages. She passed by the dress shop she had seen that day. She turned her eyes away from the ball gown in the window. She couldn’t bear to be reminded of the luxury that was so far out of her reach. She hardly remembered walking the rest of the way home. She was too tired for dinner and went straight up to her room and fell into bed.
On the second morning she woke with every bone in her young body aching. By the end of the day she felt as if she had been doing this work her entire life. On the third day, her index finger became tangled in a twist of thread and she almost lost the tip of it before freeing it. Her nights were filled with the endless repetition of her daily work. In her dreams she ran up and down the long track tying and retying knot after knot of broken thread. On the fourth day she began to hallucinate, seeing patterns of flowers and leaves appear on the dirty white cotton. The fifth day melted into the sixth and on the seventh day she didn’t just rest, she collapsed. On the second Sunday she forced herself to get up. Hélène slept on, her mouth open, her red braid draped over the edge of the narrow bed. As tired as she was Berthe desperately needed to get out, to breathe in the relatively fresh air of Lille. The streets held the only possibility of distraction from what was now her dreary working life.
But today the cold was too much even for her. Her feet and face ached from the bitter wind and she was forced to return early in the afternoon.
Upon entering her room, she discovered Hélène going through the contents of her valise. The big girl seemed totally unembarrassed at being caught.
“What are you doing? Those are my things.” Berthe stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips.
“Of course they are. It’s your bag, ain’t it? And here’s your very own mother’s fancy froufrou,” Hélène said, holding up the illustration from Berthe’s mother’s fashion magazine.
“Give that to me,” Berthe said, trying to grab it out of the other girl’s hands. Hélène backed away, waving the paper above her head as she danced in place.
“A fancy lady goin’ to town needs a wiggle in her gown,” she sang, swinging her hips. Berthe suddenly reached out and grabbed Hélène’s long braid. Using all her weight, she yanked back with both hands, knocking the bigger girl off balance.
“Ooowww, let go!” screamed Hélène. She fell back on the floor pulling Berthe with her. She grabbed Berthe’s neck and began choking her. Berthe felt her throat closing and she struggled for air. Swinging wildly with her fists she landed a sharp blow directly on the bridge of Hélène’s nose. “Why, you little thug.” Hélène let go of Berthe’s throat and clutched her nose. Blood poured out between her fingers. Berthe had never hit anyone or anything in her life. She was astonished at what she had done.
Hélène pushed herself up with one hand and looked around for a weapon to hit Berthe with. They both saw the umbrella at the same moment, but Berthe got to it first. She raised it above her head and was about to beat Hélène on the shoulders, but changed her mind. Hélène was trying to protect herself with one arm while the other hand was still occupied with staunching the flow of blood from her nose. Berthe reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a clean rag.
“Here, wipe your stupid nose,” she said.
“I don’t want your filthy rag,” snarled Hélène.
“You’re bleeding all over the floor,” Berthe pointed out. “You’re going to slip and fall in your own blood and break your ugly neck.”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. But I don’t want to have to drag your big fat body down the stairs.”
Hélène seemed to consider this for a moment.
“You could push me out the window,” she said, suddenly grinning.
“What if you land on some poor bystander? Then that would be murder,” observed Berthe.
“Wait till Monsieur Roucher walks by and you can push me out then. It would be my great pleasure to flatten the bugger like a pancake.” Berthe tried to keep from laughing. Hélène removed the rag from her nose. It had stopped bleeding. She threw the rag on the floor and yanked the umbrella out of Berthe’s hands. Berthe stood ready, her hands raised and clenched into fists. Suddenly, Hélène began to laugh.
“Oh, you’re scaring me,” Hélène said between guffaws. “I give up. I surrender. I’m your prisoner.” She laughed and laughed until Berthe put down her fists and began laughing herself. “I can’t afford to have you as me enemy. You’re much too dangerous. So, starting today, I’ll be your friend.”
“I don’t want you as my friend,” Berthe said. “You’re a thief.”
“Well, it takes one to know one,” said Hélène. And they both laughed. Hélène reached under her bed and pulled out a cloth bag. From the bag she removed a large paper book. “Do you want to see something hilarious?”
Berthe recognized her mother’s favorite ladies’ periodical, La Corbeille. The very same journal that Emma Bovary had spent hours poring over. She felt a pang in her stomach.
“Where did you get that?”
“I borrowed it from Madame Lisette. She’ll never notice it’s gone. She has a whole stack of these.” She sat down on her bed and opened the periodical. “Have you ever seen anything so ridiculous? Just like that fancy picture of yours.” She pointed to an illustration of four women dressed in ball gowns. They were strangely shaped figures with unnat
urally long necks and arms, and no shoulders to speak of. “Where do they think they’re going all dressed up like that?”
“To a ball or to the opera or to some other formal evening engagement,” said Berthe knowingly.
“But ain’t this dress the silliest thing you’ve ever seen?” Hélène said, singling out one of the gowns. “How can you even sit in something like that?”
“I don’t think they do sit,” Berthe said. “I think they probably just dance the night away.” She read the description from underneath the illustration. “ ‘An evening dress of white silk with two skirts. The lower one having a flounce of lace, headed by a puffing of silk caught up at regular intervals with delicate sprays of crimson salvia.’ ”
“Saliva!” cried Hélène, doubled over with laughter. “Caught up in saliva!”
“Salvia,” corrected Berthe. “It’s part of the mint family.”
“Oh, ain’t we the educated one,” Hélène sniffed.
“My mother had lots of these periodicals,” explained Berthe.
“And she read them to you?”
Berthe nodded. Her mind was suddenly filled with memories of her mother. Berthe knew she had her mother’s affinity for clothes. She could tell just by looking at an illustration in La Corbeille which gowns were overdone, which ones had the right lines to flatter any figure. Perhaps we are not so very different, after all.
She remembered watching as her mother got dressed to go for the first time to the opera at Rouen. This was almost a year after the end of her affair with Monsieur Boulanger. Attending the opera had been another idea hatched by Berthe’s father and Monsieur Homais in an effort to raise her mother’s poor spirits. Her mother had ordered a new evening gown particularly for the occasion. As with the riding costume, it was hard to tell if she was more thrilled about the event or what she was to wear to it.
