The Drinking Den Page 22

  ‘Well, that’s it! I prefer it this way! Keep your money! I’ll take Mother Coupeau myself, do you understand? I rescued a cat the other evening, I can quite well do the same for your mother. And she will want for nothing: she’ll have her coffee and her dram. My God, what a disgusting family!’

  At this, Mme Lorilleux had swung round and was brandishing the saucepan as though about to throw the acid in her sister-in-law’s face. She stammered:

  ‘Get out of here – before I do something we might regret! And don’t count on the five francs, because you won’t have a bean out of me! Not a bean! Five francs, indeed! I’ll say! Mum would be a skivvy for you, and you’d be stuffing yourself on my five francs! If she does go to live with you, just tell her this: she could be dying, and I wouldn’t send her a glass of water. Now, hop it! Clear off!’

  ‘What a monster that woman is!’ Gervaise said, slamming the door behind her.

  The very next day, she brought Mother Coupeau to live with them. She put her bed in the larger of the two box-rooms, the one in which Nana slept, lit by a round window near the ceiling. It did not take long to move her because all the furniture that Mother Coupeau had was this bed, an old walnut cupboard, which they put in the room with the dirty washing, a table and two chairs. They sold the table and had the two chairs re-covered. And the old woman, on the same evening that she moved in, went round with a broom, washed the dishes and generally made herself useful, very pleased at this solution to her difficulties. The Lorilleux were fit to burst, all the more since Mme Lerat had just made it up with the Coupeaus. One fine day, the two sisters, the florist and the chain-maker, actually came to blows over Gervaise. Mme Lerat had had the temerity to approve of the way she had behaved towards their mother. Then, seeing Mme Lorilleux’s exasperation, had gone on to tease her by remarking that the laundress had splendid eyes, eyes that would set paper on fire; whereupon the two of them, after slapping each other’s faces, had sworn never to see one another again. Now, Mme Lerat spent her evenings in the shop, where she secretly enjoyed it when Big Clémence talked dirty.

  Three years went by. They fell out and made up again several times. Gervaise didn’t really give a damn for the Lorilleux, the Boches and all the others who didn’t see things as she did. If they weren’t happy, then they could go hang, couldn’t they? She was earning what she wanted; that was the main thing. Eventually, people round about had come to feel a good deal of respect for her because, when it came down to it, there were not many clients who were so good, paying on time, and not inclined to haggle or grumble. She bought her bread at Mme Coudeloup’s in the Rue des Poissonniers, her meat from Fat Charlie, the butcher in the Rue Polonceau, and her groceries from Lehongre, in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, almost directly opposite her own shop. François, the wine merchant at the corner of the street, brought her wine to her in baskets of fifty litres at a time. Her neighbour, Vigoroux, whose wife must be black and blue because the men used to pinch her bottom so much, sold coke to her at the same rate as the Gas Company. And, you had to say, her suppliers served her conscientiously, knowing that they had everything to gain from being good to her. So, when she went out and about in slippers, bareheaded, she was greeted from all sides. She was easy here, the streets all round were like natural extensions of her own home, which opened directly on to the pavement. Nowadays, she would even spend longer than necessary on an errand, happy at being outside among all her acquaintances. On those days when she did not have time to cook a meal herself, she went out for ready-cooked portions, staying to chat with the man in the delicatessen, who had the shop on the far side of the house; a huge room with great dusty windows, through which, far away, one could see the faint light from the courtyard. Or else she stopped, with her hands full of plates and bowls, and talked through some window on the ground floor, beyond which one could glimpse a cobbler’s shop, with an unmade bed, a floor littered with old clothes, two rickety children’s cots and a pitcher full of black water. But the neighbour she most respected was another who lived opposite, the watchmaker, the gentleman with the frock-coat, always well turned-out and constantly probing around in watches with little instruments. She would often cross the road to say hallo to him, in his shop no bigger than a wardrobe, laughing with delight at seeing the merry little cuckoo clocks, with their busy pendulums, all going at once and all marking time together, but all off the beat.

  CHAPTER 6

  One autumn afternoon, Gervaise had taken some washing to a customer in the Rue des Portes-Blanches and found herself at the bottom of the Rue des Poissonniers just as night was falling. It had rained that morning and the weather was very mild; a smell was rising from the damp pavement, and the laundress, encumbered with her great basket, felt slightly breathless as she walked slowly up the street, her body relaxed and taken over by some vaguely sensual desire that had increased along with her feeling of weariness. She would love to have eaten something good. Then she looked up and saw the sign on the Rue Marcadet, which suddenly gave her the idea of dropping in to visit Goujet at his forge. He had told her twenty times to come round one day, if she was ever interested to see them working with iron. In any case, in front of the other men, she could ask for Etienne and appear to have decided to go there purely for the sake of the boy.

  The bolt and rivet factory must be down here, at this end of the Rue Marcadet, though she wasn’t quite sure where, particularly since the numbers were often missing on the buildings, which were separated by patches of waste ground. This was one street where she would not have wanted to live for all the gold in the world; a wide, dirty street, blackened with the coal-dust from nearby factories, with broken paving-stones and ruts in which puddles stagnated. On either side, there was a line of sheds, large glass-roofed workshops and grey structures, appearing unfinished, exhibiting their bricks and wooden beams; a clutter of tottering brickwork, with gaps through which one could see the countryside beyond, flanked by low dives and cheap lodging-houses. All she could remember was that the forge was near a shop where they sold second-hand clothes and scrap iron, a sort of open drain at ground level, which, according to Goujet, housed hundreds of thousands of francs’ worth of goods. She tried to find her bearings in the midst of the racket from the factories: narrow pipes, on the roofs, coughed out violent jets of steam; a mechanical saw in a timber yard emitted a regular series of screeches, like the sudden tearing of a piece of calico; and button factories shook the ground with the rumbling and the tick-tack of their machinery. She was looking uncertainly towards Montmartre, not knowing whether she should carry on further, when a gust of wind blew the soot down from a high chimney, filling the street. She had shut her eyes and was choking in the foul smoke when she heard a steady beating of hammers. Without realizing it, she had stopped just opposite the forge: she recognized the hole full of second-hand clothes next to it.

  Even so, she hesitated, not knowing how to get in. A broken fence opened on to a path, which seemed to lead through the rubble of a demolition yard. Since a pond of muddy water stood in the way, someone had thrown planks across it. In the end, she ventured across the planks, turned left and found herself lost in a strange forest of old carriages, tipped with their shafts in the air, and ruined shacks with only their wooden frames left standing. At the back, a red light glowed, casting a ray of light through the murky darkness. The hammers had stopped beating. She was carefully advancing towards the light when a workman passed near her, his face black with coal-dust and bristling with a goatee beard, his pale eyes glancing sideways at her.

  ‘Please, Monsieur,’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it here that a child by the name of Etienne works? He’s my boy.’

  ‘Etienne, Etienne…’ the man repeated, in a hoarse voice, shifting from one leg to the other. ‘No, don’t know any Etienne.’

  With his mouth open, he gave off that alcoholic smell that you get from an old brandy cask when you take out the bung. And, since this meeting with a woman in that shady corner was starting to make him adopt a slightly mischie
vous tone, Gervaise shrank back, muttering:

  ‘But isn’t this where Monsieur Goujet works?’

  ‘Ah, Goujet! Yes!’ the workman said. ‘Know Goujet! If you’re looking for Goujet… try down there at the end.’

  And as he turned away, he shouted out in his voice that had the ring of a cracked copper bell:

  ‘Hey, Gueule-d’Or! There’s a lady here for you!’

  But the shout was drowned by a clatter of metal. Gervaise followed where the man indicated and reached a door. She looked round it. Inside was a huge space in which at first she could make nothing out. The forge seemed dead, with only a faint light in one corner, like a pale star, holding back the utter darkness. And, from time to time, black shapes passed in front of the fire, cutting off even that last patch of light – men of exceptional size with huge limbs that one could only guess at. Gervaise, not daring to enter, called from the door, in a half-whisper: ‘Monsieur Goujet! Monsieur Goujet!’

  Suddenly everything was lit up. Beneath the roar of the bellows a jet of white flame shot out. The shed was revealed, its plank walls showing holes that had been crudely plastered over and corners strengthened with brickwork. The coal-dust covered the whole space with grey soot and cobwebs hung from the beams like rags drying up there, weighed down by years of accumulated dirt. On shelves around the walls, hanging from nails or discarded in dark corners, lay a clutter of old pieces of iron, of dented tools, of huge implements, giving silhouettes that were broken, lustreless and hard. And the white flame shot up further and further, dazzling, lighting the beaten-earth floor with the brilliance of sunlight in which the polished steel of four anvils, fastened in wooden stands, shone like silver flecked with gold.

  It was then that Gervaise recognized Goujet in front of the forge, by his fine yellow beard. Etienne was working the bellows. There were two other workmen there; but she saw only Goujet. She went forward and stood in front of him.

  ‘Well, now! Madame Gervaise!’ he exclaimed, his face lighting up. ‘What a pleasant surprise!’

  However, as his comrades were starting to look strangely at him, he pushed Etienne towards his mother and went on:

  ‘You’ve come to see the boy. He’s doing well and he’s starting to get the hang of things.’

  ‘I must say, it’s no easy matter, getting here,’ she said. ‘I thought I was at the end of the earth.’

  And she described her journey. After that, she asked why no one knew Etienne’s name in the factory. Goujet laughed and explained that everyone called the boy Zouzou, because he had his hair cropped short, like a zouave. While they were talking, Etienne was not working the bellows, so the flame dropped and a pink light began to fade in the middle of the shed, which had grown dark once again. The blacksmith looked tenderly at the smiling young woman, fresh and radiant in the glow. Then, since neither of them said anything, enveloped in darkness, he seemed to recover himself and broke the silence:

  ‘If you’ll allow me, Madame Gervaise, there’s something I have to finish. Would you like to stay here? You’re not in anyone’s way.’

  She stayed. Etienne had once more grasped the bellows. The fire flared up, throwing off showers of sparks, all the more so since the lad, to show his mother that he had got the hang of it, was blowing up a real hurricane. Goujet stood and watched a bar of iron heating up as he waited with his pincers in his hand. The fire cast a fierce light across him, leaving no shadows. His shirt, with the sleeves rolled back and the neck open, displayed his naked arms and naked chest, and his skin, pink as a young girl’s, covered with curly blond hairs. With his head slightly shrunk beneath his massive, well-muscled shoulders, and his face attentive, pale eyes fastened on the fire, unblinking, he looked like a resting colossus, calm and strong. When the bar of metal was white-hot, he grasped it with the pincers and cut it on an anvil with a hammer into equal pieces with light blows, as though tapping off pieces of glass. Then, he put the pieces back into the fire, taking them out one by one to shape them. He was making six-sided rivets. He put the ends into an iron frame, pressed down the metal that would form the head, flattened the six sides and threw the completed rivets, still red, on to the black earth where their bright patches faded. All this he did with continual hammering, swinging a five-pound hammer in his right hand, completing some detail at each blow, turning and working his iron with such skill that he could talk and look at people as he worked. The anvil gave out a silvery sound. Not showing a drop of sweat, very much at his ease, he hammered away good-naturedly without appearing to make any more effort than when he was at home in the evening, cutting out pictures.

  ‘Ah, now, that’s a little rivet, twenty millimetres,’ he said, in reply to Gervaise’s questions. ‘You can do up to three hundred of these a day… But you need practice, because the arms rust quickly…’

  And when she asked if his wrists didn’t ache by the end of the day, he had a good laugh. Did she think he was a young lady? His wrist had seen tough times in the last fifteen years and it was now like iron, it had handled so many tools. But she was right: a gentleman who had never struck off a bolt or a rivet and who tried playing around with a five-pound hammer, would certainly have got himself an ache or two after a couple of hours. It didn’t look like much but it could often finish off even a well-built chap in a few years. Meanwhile, the other workers were also hammering all at once. Their great shadows danced around in the light, the red flashes of the iron coming out of the fire shone through the black depths and showers of sparks flew off from the hammers, spreading out like suns at the level of the anvils. Gervaise felt herself caught up in the commotion of the forge, happy to be there, showing no sign of wanting to leave. She was making a wide detour, to get closer to Etienne without the risk of burning her hands, when she saw the dirty, bearded workman whom she had spoken to outside coming in.

  ‘So you found him, did you, Madame?’ he said in his facetious drunkard’s voice. ‘Gueule-d’Or, you know, I’m the one who showed Madame…’

  His name was Bec-Salé1 (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst), the cock of the roost, a highly skilled bolt-maker, who would wash his iron with a litre of fire-water every day. He had been out to have a drink because he didn’t feel well-enough oiled to reach six o’clock otherwise. When he learned that Zouzou was called Etienne, he found this incredibly funny and laughed aloud, showing his blackened teeth. Then he realized who Gervaise was. Only the evening before he had had a glass or two with Coupeau. You could mention Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) to Coupeau and he would tell you at once: ‘He’s a regular guy!’ Oh, that Coupeau! There was a decent chap, now, who paid for drinks when it wasn’t even his round.

  ‘I’m glad to know that you are his wife,’ he said. ‘He deserves a beautiful wife. Don’t you think, so, Gueule-d’Or? Isn’t Madame a beautiful woman?’

  He was starting to get flirtatious, pressing up against the laundress, who retrieved her basket and held it in front of her to keep him at bay. Goujet, realizing that his comrade was teasing him because of his friendship for Gervaise, was annoyed and exclaimed:

  ‘Now, then, you lazy devil! When is the forty millimetres going to get done? Do you feel in the mood, now that you’ve got a good skinful, you old boozer?’

  The blacksmith was referring to an order for large bolts, which would need two hammers on the anvil.

  ‘Right now, if you want, you big baby!’ replied Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst). ‘He sucks his thumb and acts the man. Big you may be, but I’ve gobbled up plenty like you!’

  They were challenging one another, spurred on by the presence of Gervaise. Goujet put the pre-cut lengths of metal into the fire; then he fixed a large-gauge frame on the anvil. His workmate had fetched two twenty-pound sledgehammers from where they were leaning against the wall: these were the two big sisters of the forge, which the workers called Fifine and Dédèle. All the time, he continued to show off, talking about half a gross of rivets that he had made for the Dunkirk lighthouse, real gems, w
orth putting in a museum, they were so well made. Jesus, no! He wasn’t afraid of competition. You could go through every dump in the city before you found another one like him. It would be a laugh; they’d see what they would see.

  ‘Madame will be the judge,’ he said, turning to her.

  ‘Enough chatter,’ said Goujet. ‘Put your back into it, Zouzou! It’s not heating up, my lad.’

  But Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) had something else to say:

  ‘So, are we going to strike together?’

  ‘Not at all! Each man to his own bolt, my friend.’

  This idea sent a cold shiver up the other man’s spine and suddenly his mouth went dry, for all his gift of the gab. Forty-millimetre bolts, struck off by one man on his own: this was unheard of, all the more so since the bolts were to be round-headed, something that was incredibly hard to do, requiring exceptional skill. The three other workmen in the forge had stopped work so that they could watch. One beanpole of a chap bet a litre of wine that Goujet would be beaten. Meanwhile, the two smiths each took a sledgehammer, with their eyes closed, because Fifine weighed half a pound more than Dédèle. Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) had the good fortune to put his hand on Dédèle, Gueule-d’Or was left with Fifine. And, while the iron was heating, Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) had recovered his confidence and was standing in front of the anvil, making eyes in the direction of the laundress, taking up his stance, stamping his foot like a wrestler about to fight and already miming the gesture of swinging Dédèle with all his force. By Jove, he was well set up here: he could have made a pancake out of the column in the Place Vendôme!