The Drinking Den Read online

  Gervaise also wanted things to be done correctly. As soon as the wedding had been decided upon, she arranged to do overtime in the evenings and set aside thirty francs. She was really keen to have a little silk mantelet, priced at thirteen francs in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière. She treated herself to it, then spent ten francs to buy a dark blue dress off the husband of a laundress from Mme Fauconnier’s who had died; she altered it to fit her. With the remaining seven francs, she got a pair of cotton gloves, a rose for her hat and some shoes for Claude, her eldest. Fortunately, the two children had passable smocks. She spent four nights cleaning everything and darning the minutest holes in her stockings and her blouse.

  Finally, on the Friday evening, the eve of the great day, Gervaise and Coupeau came back from work and had to stay up until eleven o’clock slaving away. Then, going back to their own beds to sleep, they spent an hour together in the young woman’s room, both happy to have reached the end of all that effort and commotion. Even though they had decided not to break their backs for the sake of the neighbours, when it came down to it they had taken the whole thing to heart and exhausted themselves. When they said good-night, they were both asleep on their feet; but, even so, they managed a great sigh of relief. Now it was all settled. Coupeau had M. Madinier and Bibi-la-Grillade as his witnesses, Gervaise would rely on Lorilleux and Boche. They just needed to go quietly to the town hall and the church, these six, without dragging a whole string of people along behind them. The bridegroom’s two sisters had even announced that they would stay at home, since their presence was not necessary. Only old Mother Coupeau had started to cry, saying that she would go off ahead and hide in a corner, so they had promised to take her with them. As for the rest of the company, they would all meet up at one o’clock at the Moulin d’Argent. From there, they would go and work up an appetite on the Plaine Saint-Denis, taking the railway out and coming back on foot, along the main road. Altogether, it promised to be a fine day, not an extravagant feast, but a bit of fun, something decent and agreeable.

  On Saturday morning, as he was getting dressed, Coupeau suddenly felt a pang of anxiety as he looked at his last twenty sous. It had just occurred to him that it would be a courtesy to offer the witnesses a glass of wine and a slice of ham, while waiting for dinner. Then there might be some unexpected expenses. Twenty sous was definitely not enough. So, after agreeing to take Claude and Etienne round to Mme Boche, who was to bring them to the dinner in the evening, he hurried off to the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or and unashamedly went up to borrow ten francs from Lorilleux. Not that it didn’t pain him to ask, because he was expecting his brother-in-law’s scowl of disapproval. Lorilleux grunted, sniggered unpleasantly and in the end handed over the two five-franc pieces. But Coupeau heard his sister muttering between clenched teeth that this was ‘a good start’.

  The town-hall wedding was set for half-past ten. It was very fine, blistering sunshine roasting the streets. To avoid drawing attention to themselves, the bride and groom, Mother Coupeau and the four witnesses divided into two groups. Gervaise walked at the front, on Lorilleux’s arm, while M. Madinier escorted Mother Coupeau; then, twenty yards behind, on the other pavement, came Coupeau, Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade. The three of them, in black frock-coats, hunched their shoulders and dangled their arms. Boche was wearing yellow trousers, while Bibi-la-Grillade, buttoned up to the neck, with no waistcoat, showed only a corner of a cravat, twisted into a rope. Only M. Madinier was wearing a proper morning-coat, a long one with square-cut tails: passers-by stopped to look at this gentleman escorting fat old Mother Coupeau in her green shawl and black hat with red ribbons. Gervaise, gentle, mild and merry, in her bright-blue dress, her shoulders tightly wrapped in her little silk mantelet, listened obligingly to Lorilleux’s sniggering; as for him, he was buried under a vast greatcoat, in spite of the heat. From time to time, as they went round a corner, Gervaise would turn her head a little and give a quick smile to Coupeau, awkward in his brand-new clothes, shining in the sun.

  Even though they walked very slowly, they arrived outside the town hall a full half-hour too early. And, since the Mayor was late, their turn didn’t come until around eleven o’clock. They waited on chairs in a corner of the room, looking at the high ceiling and the austerity of the walls, keeping their voices low and pushing back their seats with exaggerated politeness whenever a clerk walked by. Yet, under their breath, they called the Mayor a lazy dog; no doubt he was with his mistress, getting a massage for the gout, or else he had swallowed his sash. But when the official did arrive, they stood up respectfully. They were instructed to sit down again. After that, they had to sit through three bourgeois weddings, with brides in white, girls in ringlets, bridesmaids with pink sashes and endless processions of ladies and gentlemen done up to the nines, very respectable-looking. At last, when they were called, they almost missed getting married at all, because Bibi-la-Grillade had disappeared. Boche found him outside, on the square, smoking a pipe. But they were a nice lot in this joint, turning up their noses at people because they didn’t have pale-yellow gloves to stick under their faces! And the formalities – the reading of the Code Civil,2 the questions they were asked, the signing of the certificates – were all hurried through so fast that they exchanged glances, feeling they had been robbed of a good half of the ceremony. Gervaise, bewildered, with a lump in her throat, was dabbing her lips with a handkerchief. Mother Coupeau was weeping uncontrollably. They all bent over the register, writing their names in big, ungainly letters, except the bridegroom, who put a cross, since he was unable to write. Each of them gave four sous for the poor. When the office-boy handed Coupeau the marriage certificate, Gervaise nudged him and he reached in his pocket for another five sous.

  It was a fair distance from the town hall to the church. On the way, the men stopped for a glass of beer and Mother Coupeau and Gervaise for some cassis with water. And they had to follow a long street, where the sun was beating directly down without a scrap of shade. The beadle was waiting for them in the middle of the empty church; he pushed them in the direction of a little chapel, angrily demanding to know if the reason for their late arrival was to show their contempt for religion. A priest strode into the chapel with a sullen look about him, his face pale with hunger, preceded by a young cleric scurrying along in a dirty surplice. The priest rushed through the mass, gobbling the Latin phrases, turning round, bowing, opening his arms wide, all at full speed, with sidelong glances towards the couple and their witnesses. The couple themselves, right in front of the altar, were very put out, not knowing when they should kneel, get up or sit down, and waiting for the server to give them a sign. The witnesses, out of a sense of decency, remained standing the whole time, while Mother Coupeau gave way to another fit of tears and wept into the mass book that she had borrowed from a neighbour. Meanwhile, the clock had struck twelve, the last mass had been said and the church was filling with the sound of the sacristans’ shuffling feet and the din of chairs being put back in place. The high altar was clearly being prepared for some feast-day, because one could hear the hammers of the workmen as they put up some hangings. And, hidden away in the side chapel, in a cloud of dust raised by the beadle sweeping the floor, the sullen-looking priest was briefly passing his dry hands over the bent heads of Gervaise and Coupeau, as though consecrating their union in the midst of a house-moving, with the Good Lord temporarily absent, between two serious masses. When the members of the wedding party had again signed a register, in the sacristy, then found themselves outside in the bright sunlight, under the porch, they stood for a moment, aghast and breathless at having been carried along at a gallop.

  ‘There we are!’ Coupeau said, with an embarrassed laugh. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and saw nothing funny in it, though he added: ‘Well, well, they don’t hang about. They get it all over, one, two, three, like at the dentist’s, so you don’t even have time to say “ouch!” Painless marriage.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, a smart piece of work,’ Lo
rilleux muttered, with a snigger. ‘They chuck it together in five minutes and it holds up for life. Poor old Cadet-Cassis!’

  The four witnesses clapped the roofer on the back and he ducked to avoid them. At the same time, Gervaise was kissing Mother Coupeau and smiling, though her eyes were a little moist. She was saying something in answer to the old woman’s broken mutterings: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do my best. If it does go wrong, it won’t be my fault. No, no, of course, I’m too anxious to be happy myself… Anyway, it’s done now, isn’t it? It’s up to the two of us to get along together and each do our bit.’

  From there, they went directly to the Moulin d’Argent. Coupeau had taken his wife by the arm. They were walking along quickly, laughing, as if impelled forward, some two hundred yards ahead of the others, not seeing the houses, the people or the carriages. The deafening noises of the busy thoroughfare rang bells in their ears. When they reached the wine merchant’s, Coupeau immediately ordered two litres, some bread and slices of ham, in the little glass-walled parlour on the ground floor, without plates or a tablecloth, just as a light refreshment. Then, seeing that Boche and Bibi-la-Grillade were showing signs of serious appetite, he got the landlord to send in another litre and a piece of brie. Mother Coupeau was not hungry, being too choked up for eating. Gervaise, who was dying of thirst, drank great glasses of water, barely tinted with wine.

  ‘That’s on me,’ said Coupeau, going straight to the counter, where he paid four francs five sous.

  Meanwhile, it was one o’clock and the guests were arriving. Mme Fauconnier, a plump woman and still attractive, was the first to appear; she was wearing a plain linen dress with a printed-flower pattern, a pink scarf and a hat smothered in flowers. After that came Mlle Remanjou, a wisp of a thing in the eternal black dress that one imagined she wore even to bed; and the Gaudrons: the husband, built like an ox, made his brown jacket creak with the strain every time he moved, and the wife, vast, exhibited her pregnant belly, its rotundity exaggerated by her bright-violet dress. Coupeau said that they should not wait for Mes-Bottes, because he would meet up with the party on the road to Saint-Denis.

  ‘My, oh my!’ Mme Lerat exclaimed as she came in. ‘We’re going to get a proper soaking. It will be fun!’

  She called everyone to the door of the wine merchant’s to have a look at the clouds, an ink-black storm that was rapidly gathering to the south of Paris. Mme Lerat, the eldest of the Coupeaus, was a tall woman, dry and masculine, who spoke through her nose; she was done up in a puce-coloured dress, too big for her, with long fringes, which made her look like a thin poodle emerging from the water. She was toying with a sunshade as though it were a walking-stick. When she had kissed Gervaise, she went on:

  ‘You can’t imagine the heat out there. It’s like getting a blast from a furnace in your face.’

  Everyone now agreed that they had felt a storm coming for a long time. When they emerged from the church, M. Madinier had clearly seen what was brewing. Lorilleux said that his corns had kept him awake from three in the morning. In any event, it was bound to happen: it really had been too hot over the last three days.

  ‘Yes, it may be about to pour down,’ Coupeau agreed, standing at the door and examining the sky anxiously. ‘We’re only waiting for my sister. If she would only come, we could get started.’

  Mme Lorilleux certainly was late. Mme Lerat had just been round to call for her, but she had interrupted her as she was putting on her corset, so the two of them had had a row. The lanky widow whispered to her brother: ‘I left her where she was. She’s in such a mood! Wait till you see the face on her!’

  And the party had to hang around for another quarter of an hour, kicking their heels in the wine-merchant’s bar, jostled and pushed, among the men coming in to drink a shot of wine at the counter. From time to time, Boche, or Mme Fauconnier, or Bibi-la-Grillade would leave the rest of them and go out on to the pavement, looking upwards. There was no rain coming down at all, but the light was going and gusts of wind, blowing close to the ground, raised little eddies of white dust. At the first clap of thunder, Mlle Remanjou crossed herself. All eyes turned anxiously to the round clock over the mirror. It was already twenty minutes to two.

  ‘There we go!’ Coupeau shouted. ‘Heaven weeps!’

  A squall of rain swept across the road, down which women were in full flight, holding their skirts in both hands. It was with this first cloudburst that Mme Lorilleux at last arrived, breathless, irate, pausing in the doorway to wage war on her umbrella, which refused to shut.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like it!’ she stammered. ‘It caught me just as I was leaving. I was tempted to go straight back and change all my clothes – it’s a real shame I didn’t. A fine wedding this is, I must say! I told you! I said you should put it all off until next Saturday. And now, because you didn’t listen to me, it’s pouring down! Well, so much the better! Let the heavens open!’

  Coupeau tried to calm her, but she wouldn’t listen. He was not the one who would be paying for her dress, which was ruined. She had on a dress of black silk, which was stifling her: the top was too tight, so it dragged on the buttons and cut into her shoulders, while the skirt was cut as a sheath and so narrow across the thighs that she had to hobble along in short steps. Even so, all the women in the company were looking at her with pursed lips, impressed by the way she was turned out. She appeared not to have noticed Gervaise, who was sitting next to Mother Coupeau. She called Lorilleux over and asked for his handkerchief; then, in a corner of the shop, she carefully wiped off the drops of rain that had gathered on the silk, one by one.

  Meanwhile, the squall had suddenly passed. The daylight was still fading and it was almost dark, a livid darkness shot through with broad flashes of lightning. Bibi-la-Grillade laughed and said again that it would soon be raining cats and dogs, of course. Then, the storm did break, with extreme violence. For half an hour, the rain fell in bucketfuls and the thunder rumbled ceaselessly. The men, standing by the door, stared at the grey sheets of rain, the flooded gutters and the cloud of spray flying from the puddles lapping across the pavement. The women had gone to sit down, afraid, with their hands over their eyes. No one said anything, overwhelmed by it all. A dubious joke about the thunder from Boche, who said that St Peter was sneezing up in heaven, didn’t amuse anybody. But, when the claps of thunder became less frequent as the storm moved away, they started to get impatient and vented their anger on the weather, swearing and shaking their fists at the clouds. Now a fine, interminable rain was falling out of an ashen sky.

  ‘It’s after two o’clock,’ Mme Lorilleux cried. ‘Come, come, we don’t want to stay here all night!’

  When Mlle Remanjou said something about going to the countryside in spite of everything, even if they only went as far as the ditch in the fortifications,3 there was a cry of protest: the roads must be in a fine state; they wouldn’t be able to sit down on the grass; and then it didn’t look as though the rain was over; it might start to pour again. Coupeau, looking at a workman, dripping wet, who was calmly walking along in the rain, muttered: ‘If that Mes-Bottes is still waiting for us on the road to Saint-Denis, he won’t be getting sunburn.’

  This made them laugh; but there was a rising tide of irritation. It was starting to get them down. They had to make up their minds. Surely they weren’t intending to stay like this until dinner-time, staring into space. So, for a quarter of an hour they racked their brains as they watched the unrelenting storm. Bibi-la-Grillade suggested they have a hand of cards; Boche, who was slyly dirty-minded by nature, knew an amusing little game called Confessions; Mme Gaudron talked of going to have some onion tart in the Chaussée Clignancourt; Mme Lerat wanted them to tell stories to one another; as for Gaudron, it didn’t bother him, he felt quite happy where he was and proposed starting dinner right away. And, each time a suggestion was made, they discussed it and got angry about it: that was a silly idea; that would bore everyone rigid; people would think they were a bunch of kids. Then Lorilleux,
wanting to get his word in, came up with something nice and simple: a walk along the outer boulevards as far as the Père Lachaise Cemetery,4 where they could see the tomb of Héloïse and Abélard5 if they had time. At that, Mme Lorilleux erupted, unable to contain herself any longer. She was off! That’s what she was doing! Were they trying to make a fool of her? She did herself up, got soaked by the rain, and all to be shut indoors at some wine merchant’s! No, no, she’d had enough of this kind of wedding, she’d be better off at home. Coupeau and Lorilleux had to stand in the door to stop her. She ranted on:

  ‘Get out of my way! I tell you, I’m leaving!’

  After her husband had managed to calm her down, Coupeau went over to Gervaise, who was still sitting quietly in a corner, talking to her mother-in-law and Mme Fauconnier.

  ‘You haven’t made any suggestion at all,’ he said, still addressing her as vous, not yet daring to use the familiar form tu with her.

  ‘Oh, whatever you like,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘I’m not fussy. Let’s go out, or not go out, it’s the same to me. I feel fine, that’s all I ask.’

  It was true: her face was radiant with tranquil joy. Since the guests had arrived, she had been talking to each of them, her voice low and full of emotion, looking very sensible and not taking part in any of the rows. While the storm was erupting, she stayed, staring at it, watching the shafts of lightning, like someone who could see serious things, far away in the future in these sudden flashes of light.