GERMINAL
“To please you,” he said, drinking and giving her back the tin.
She swallowed a second mouthful and forced him to take one too, wishing to share, she said; and that little neck that went from one mouth to the other amused them. He suddenly asked himself if he should not take her in his arms and kiss her lips. She had large lips of a pale rose colour, made vivid by the coal, which tormented him with increasing desire. But he did not dare, intimidated before her, only having known girls on the streets at Lille of the lowest order, and not realising how one ought to behave with a work-girl still living with her family.
“You must be about fourteen then?” he asked, after having gone back to his bread.
She was astonished, almost angry.
“What? fourteen! But I am fifteen! It’s true I’m not big. Girls don’t grow quick with us.”
He went on questioning her and she told everything without boldness or shame. For the rest she was not ignorant concerning man and woman, although he felt that her body was virginal, with the virginity of a child delayed in her sexual maturity by the environment of bad air and weariness in which she lived. When he spoke of Mouquette, in order to embarrass her, she told some horrible stories in a quiet voice, with much amusement. Ah! she did some fine things! And as he asked if she herself had no lovers, she replied jokingly that she did not wish to vex her mother, but that it must happen some day. Her shoulders were bent. She shivered a little from the coldness of her garments soaked in sweat, with a gentle resigned air, ready to submit to things and men.
“People can find lovers when they all live together, can’t they?”
“Sure enough!”
“And then it doesn’t hurt anyone. One doesn’t tell the priest."
“Oh! priest! I don’t care for him! But there is the Black Man."
"What? Black Man?”
“The old miner who comes back into the pit and wrings naughty girls’ necks.”
He looked at her, afraid that she was making fun of him.
[41]
