The Drinking Den Read online

  However, the Boches, stern judges of any disputes in the house, felt that the Lorilleux were in the wrong. Of course, the Lorilleux were respectable enough, quiet, working from dawn to dusk all the livelong day and paying their rent on the dot. But in this case, frankly, jealousy was driving them crazy. What’s more, they were cheese-parers – in a word, miserly! People who put the bottle out of sight when someone dropped in, so that they wouldn’t have to offer them a glass of wine; in short, not decent folk. One day, Gervaise had just bought the Boches some cassis with seltzer-water, which they were drinking in the concierge’s lodge, when Mme Lorilleux went past, very stiff, pretending to spit on their doorstep. And, after that, every Saturday, when Mme Boche was sweeping the stairs and passages, she left a pile of dirt in front of the Lorilleux’s door.

  ‘I do believe Tip-Tap is fattening them up, those greedy pigs!’ Mme Lorilleux exclaimed. ‘Oh, they’re all the same, they really are! But they’d better not bother me, or I’ll complain to the landlord. Only yesterday I saw that shifty devil Boche making a pass at Mme Goudron. I ask you: going after a woman of that age, and one who has half a dozen children – it’s quite disgusting! Any more of their revolting behaviour and I’ll have a word with Ma Boche, so that she can give her old man a clip round the ear. Then we’d have a laugh!’

  Mother Coupeau still saw both families, agreeing with everyone and even managing to have herself invited to dinner more often by lending a sympathetic ear by turns to her daughter and her daughter-in-law, one evening apiece. Mme Lerat, for the time being, no longer went to see the Coupeaus, because she had fallen out with Tip-Tap about a zouave3 who had cut off his mistress’s nose with a razor; she was on the side of the zouave, finding the razor very passionate, though she didn’t explain why. Then she managed to arouse Mme Lorilleux’s fury by telling her that Tip-Tap had quite brazenly called her ‘Pigtail’ in a conversation in front of some fifteen or twenty people. Yes, by God: the Boches and the neighbours all called her Pigtail now.

  In the midst of this tittle-tattle, Gervaise, calm, smiling, on the front porch of her shop, greeted her friends with an affectionate little nod. She liked to come out there for a minute or two, taking a break from her ironing, to smile at the street with the swelling pride of a shopkeeper who has a piece of pavement to herself. The Rue de la Goutte-d’Or belonged to her; so did the streets around it and, indeed, the whole neighbourhood. When she put her head out of the door, in her white bodice, her arms bare and her blonde hair dishevelled by the work, she looked right and left, to both ends of the street, taking in the passers-by, the houses, the pavement and the sky in a single glance. To the left, the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or led off, peaceful and empty, towards a small town where the women held murmured conversations at their doorsteps; to the right, a few yards away, the Rue des Poissonniers brought a din of traffic and the continual march of the crowd backwards and forwards, which made this end a whirlpool of milling people. Gervaise loved the street, the jolting of wagons over the pot-holes between the rough humped cobbles and the jostling of people along the narrow pavements, interrupted by steep piles of gravel. The three metres of gutter in front of her own shop took on immense importance: a broad river, which she thought of as very clear, a strange, living river, its waters coloured by the dyeworks in the most fantastic hues amid the black mud. Then she was interested in the other shops: a huge grocer’s with a display of dried fruit held together by finely meshed nets; a workers’ draper and outfitter, displaying smocks and blue overalls with legs and arms spread wide, swaying at the slightest breeze. In the fruiterer’s and the tripe shop, she glimpsed the ends of counters where splendid cats were calmly snoring. Her neighbour, Mme Vigouroux, the coal merchant, returned her greeting: a small, plump woman, with a black face and shining eyes, who lazed around, laughing with the men, slouching against the front of the shop, which was adorned with logs in a complicated design painted against a maroon background, to give it the appearance of a rustic chalet. The Cudorges, mother and daughter, her other neighbours who kept the umbrella shop, never showed themselves, but left their window dark and their door shut, decorated with two little metal parasols thickly painted with bright vermilion. But, before going inside, Gervaise always glanced across at the big white wall on the opposite side, with no windows in it, only a vast doorway through which you could see the blazing furnace, in a yard littered with carts and carriages with their shafts in the air. On the wall was written the word: FARRIER in large letters, surrounded by a semi-circle of horseshoes. All day long, the hammers rang on the anvil and showers of sparks lit up the dismal gloom of the yard. And, beneath this wall, at the bottom of a hole no larger than a cupboard, between a scrap-iron merchant and a chip shop, there was a watchmaker, a decent-looking gentleman in a frock-coat, who was continually probing watches with tiny tools at a bench where delicate things slept under glass covers while, behind him, the pendulums of two or three dozen tiny cuckoo clocks were swinging at once, in the dark squalor of the street, in time to the rhythmical hammering from the farrier’s yard.

  The neighbourhood considered Gervaise very sweet. Of course, there was gossip about her, but everyone was agreed about her large eyes and small mouth, only so long, with very white teeth. In short, she was a pretty blonde girl, who could have been among the loveliest you could find, had it not been for her leg. She was coming up to twenty-eight and had filled out a bit. Her fine features had become fleshier and her movements had a contented slowness. Nowadays, she would sometimes let her mind wander, sitting on the edge of a chair while her iron was heating, with a vague smile, her face suffused with joyful repletion. She was getting fond of her food, everyone said that; but it was no great sin, on the contrary. When one earns enough to pay for delicacies, it would be stupid to eat potato peelings, wouldn’t it? Apart from which, she always worked hard, taking endless trouble for her customers and even working through the night, herself, with the shutters up, when there was an urgent job to do. As they said around and about, she had a lucky streak; everything prospered for her. She did the laundry for the house, M. Madinier, Mlle Remanjou, the Boches… She was even taking Parisian ladies who lived in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière away from her former employer, Mme Fauconnier. After the second fortnight, she had to take on two women, Mme Putois and lanky Clémence, the girl who had previously lived on the sixth floor, so that she now had three staff, counting the apprentice, Augustine, the girl with the squint who was as ugly as a poor man’s arse. Someone else might surely have lost her head at this good fortune. She could well be excused for having a treat on Monday, after slaving away the rest of the week. In any case, she needed it. She would have been like a wet rag, expecting the shirts to iron themselves, if she hadn’t enjoyed something really luscious, a delicacy that made her mouth water just to look at it.

  Never had Gervaise been so accommodating. She was as meek as a lamb and as warm as a new loaf. Apart from Mme Lorilleux, whom she called Pigtail, to get her own back, there was no one she disliked; she tried to see the best in everybody. In the relaxed mood induced by eating well, when she had had a good lunch, followed by coffee, she gave in to an urge towards general indulgence. She would say: ‘We must learn to forgive one another, if we are not to live like savages, don’t you think?’ When people said she was kind, she laughed. A fine thing it would be if she was unkind! She contradicted them, disclaiming any credit for being good. Hadn’t she got everything she had ever dreamed of? What else could she ask for out of life? She recalled what had been her ideal when she was out on the street: work, bread to eat, a place of one’s own, to bring up her children, not be beaten, and to die in her bed. Now she had even more than that: she had everything and better. As for dying in her bed, she fully expected to do so, but as late as possible, naturally!

  It was Coupeau who enjoyed the best of her kindness. Never a hard word or a complaint behind her husband’s back. The roofer had finally gone back to work and, since his current building site was on the other side of Paris, she g
ave him forty sous every morning for his lunch, his glass of wine and his tobacco. The only problem was that, two days out of the six, Coupeau would stop on the way, drink up the forty sous with a friend, and come back at dinner-time with some story or other. One time, he didn’t even get far, because he bought a fine meal for himself, Mes-Bottes and three others, with snails, roast meat and a bottle of good wine – at the Capucin by the Barrière de la Chapelle! And since his forty sous were not enough, he sent a waiter to his wife with the bill and the message to redeem him because he was in hock. She laughed and shrugged her shoulders. What did it matter, if her husband had a bit of fun? If you wanted peace in the home, you had to give the man of the house a long rope. Otherwise, you would start arguing and soon come to blows. Good Lord! You had to understand: Coupeau was still in pain from his leg; and, then, it was the others who led him on, he had to do as they did, unless he was to seem boorish. In any event, it had no effect on him. If he came back tight, he went to bed and two hours later there was no sign of it.

  Meanwhile, the really hot weather had arrived. One afternoon in June, on a Saturday when there was lots of urgent work, Gervaise had filled the machinery with coke herself, while ten irons were heating up round it as the stovepipe roared. At this time of day, the sun fell directly on the shop window, while the pavement bounced the heat back in waves which shimmered across the ceiling of the shop, turned blue by the reflection from the paper on the shelves and in the window, throwing a blinding light over the workbench like a dust of sunlight filtered through the fine linen cloth. Inside, the temperature was killing. The street door had been left open, but there was not a breath of wind coming through it. The clothes drying in the air, hanging from the lines of copper wire, smoked and became as stiff as boards in less than three quarters of an hour. For some time, silence had reigned in this oppressive furnace, only the irons making a dull beating sound, deadened by the thick blanket wrapped in calico.

  ‘Well, I never!’ Gervaise said. ‘We’re melting here today! You could almost take off your blouse!’

  She was crouching down, in front of a bowl, dipping some linen in starch. Wearing a blue skirt and with her bodice slipped off her shoulders and the sleeves rolled up, she had bared her neck and arms and was all pink, sweating so much that the wisps of her tousled blonde hair were sticking to her skin. She was carefully dipping bonnets into the milky water, as well as men’s shirt-fronts, whole petticoats and the trimmings from women’s knickers. Then she rolled the items and put them at the bottom of a square basket, after plunging her hand into a bucket and shaking it over the main part of the shirts and knickers that were not starched.

  ‘This basket is for you, Madame Putois,’ she said. ‘Hurry up, would you? It dries straight away, we’ll need to start again in an hour.’

  Mme Putois, a 45-year-old woman, thin and petite, was ironing without shedding a drop of sweat, buttoned up in an old brown blouse. She hadn’t even taken off her bonnet, a black bonnet trimmed with green ribbons that had turned yellow. She was standing upright in front of the workbench, which was too high for her, her elbows in the air, waving her iron with the jerky movements of a puppet. Suddenly, she exclaimed:

  ‘Oh, no, really, Mademoiselle Clémence! Put your blouse back on. You know I can’t stand indecency. While you’re about it, why not exhibit the whole of your merchandise? There are already three men standing across the road!’

  Under her breath, Clémence called her an old bitch. She was stifling, she had a right to make herself comfortable; not everyone had fire-proofed skin. In any case, could anyone actually see anything? And she raised her arms so that her ample breasts almost burst open her bodice and her shoulders strained the short sleeves. Clémence was getting so much of it that she would be clapped out by thirty; on a day after she’d had a serious night out, she wasn’t even aware of the ground under her feet, but fell asleep at work, feeling as though her head and belly were stuffed with cloth. But she was kept on despite this, because there was no one who could boast of ironing a man’s shirt as stylishly as she did. She specialized in men’s shirts.

  ‘It’s all mine, isn’t it?’ she said at last, slapping herself on the bosom. ‘And it doesn’t bite, it’s never harmed anyone.’

  ‘Clémence, put your bodice back on,’ Gervaise said. ‘Mme Putois is right, it’s not proper… People will be thinking my shop is something else altogether.’

  So big Clémence got dressed again, muttering. What prudery! As though the people going by had never seen a pair of tits before! And she took her anger out on the apprentice, that squinting Augustine, who was beside her ironing some plain linen: stockings and handkerchiefs. She bumped into her and pushed her with her elbow. But Augustine, spiteful, with the sly malice of the deformed and the scapegoat, spat on her dress, without anyone seeing, and so got her revenge.

  Meanwhile, Gervaise had just started doing a bonnet belonging to Mme Boche, taking special care over it. She had prepared some boiled starch to make it good as new, and she was just going over the inside with a polonais, which is a little iron rounded at each end, when a woman came in, bony, her face covered in red blotches and her skirts soaked with water. It was one of the head washerwomen who had three others working under her at the wash-house in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or.

  ‘You’re too early, Madame Bijard!’ Gervaise shouted. ‘I told you to come this evening. This is a very awkward moment!’

  But since the washerwoman protested that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get it done that day, Gervaise agreed to give her the dirty linen at once. They went to look for the bundles in the room on the left, where Etienne slept, and came back with huge armfuls, which they dumped on the stone floor at the back of the shop. Sorting it out took a good half-hour. Gervaise made piles around her, heaping up men’s shirts in one pile, women’s blouses in another, handkerchiefs, socks and dishcloths… When an item from a new customer came into her hands, she marked it with a cross in red cotton, so that she would recognize it. A musty smell rose from all this dirty linen as they spread it around in the hot atmosphere.

  ‘Oh, la, la, doesn’t it stink!’ said Clémence, holding her nose.

  ‘Puh! If it was clean, they wouldn’t be giving it to us,’ Gervaise remarked calmly. ‘It smells like what it is, doesn’t it? Didn’t we say fourteen women’s blouses, Madame Bijard? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…’

  She went on counting out loud. She found nothing disgusting in it, being used to filth. She buried her pink, naked arms into shirts yellow with dirt, clothes stiffened by grease from the washing-up water, socks that were rotten with sweat. Yet, even in the powerful smell that beat against her face as she leaned over the pile, she was seized with a sort of blithe content. She was seated on the edge of a stool, bent double, her arms reaching to left and right, with slow movements, as though she were intoxicated by this human stench, vaguely smiling, her eyes misted over. It was as though her first taste of idleness came from there, from the asphyxiating breath of old clothes poisoning the air around her.

  Just as she was shaking out a child’s nappy that was so soaked with piss that she didn’t recognize it, Coupeau came in.

  ‘Bless me, what a scorcher!’ he stammered. ‘It hits you right on the head!’

  The roofer had to steady himself against the workbench to avoid falling over. It was the first time he had been so drunk. Up to then, he had got a bit tipsy, nothing more; but this time, he had a black eye, a real shiner, from some friendly tap picked up in a fight. His curly hair, already showing some grey threads in it, must have collided with some corner in a low wine shop, because he had a cobweb hanging down on the back of his neck. In any case, he still liked a laugh, though his features were now a little drawn and older, his lower jaw stuck out more, but he was still good-tempered, he said, with skin soft enough to excite the envy of a duchess.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ he continued, turning towards Gervaise. ‘It was Celery-Stalk, you know who I mean, the one with the wooden le
g? Well, he’s off home to the country, so he wanted to buy us all a drink. Oh, we’d have been fine if it wasn’t for this bloody sun. Out in the street, everyone’s sick. I mean it! Everyone’s reeling!’

  As big Clémence was laughing at this idea of him seeing the street drunk, he himself was overcome by such a fit of merriment that he almost suffocated. He shouted: ‘No? The goddam drunkards! They’re such a joke! But it’s not their fault! It’s the sun!’

  The whole shop was laughing now, even Mme Putois, who did not like drunkards. Cross-eyed Augustine cackled like a hen, with her mouth open, gasping for breath. But Gervaise suspected that Coupeau had not come straight home, but had spent an hour with the Lorilleux, who were giving him bad advice. When he swore that this wasn’t so, she joined in the laughter, quite ready to forgive him, not even blaming him for missing yet another day’s work.

  ‘What rubbish he talks!’ she muttered. ‘Have you ever heard such rubbish!’

  Then, in a motherly tone, she added: ‘Go and lie down, why don’t you? You can see we’re busy; you’re in our way. Now, that’s thirty-two handkerchiefs, Mme Bijard; plus two, makes thirty-four…’