The Drinking Den Read online

  It was half-past seven. They had closed the shop door, to stop the whole street spying on them – especially the watchmaker opposite, whose eyes were as big as saucers and looked so greedy that they seemed to grab each mouthful from them – which quite put them off eating. The curtains hanging in front of the windows cast a great even sweep of white light, without a shadow, across the table, with its still symmetrically arranged place-settings, and its pots of flowers wrapped in their tall paper collars; and the pale light of this slowly falling dusk made the whole company appear distinguished. Virginie found the word: she looked round the room, all closed in with muslin hangings, and announced that it was ‘lovely’. When a cart passed by in the street, the glasses jumped around on the table and the ladies had to shout as loud as the men. But there was not much conversation: they were on their best behaviour, just exchanging compliments. Only Coupeau was in his working clothes, because, as he said, one doesn’t have to dress up for friends and, in any case, a smock is a workman’s badge of honour.

  The ladies, tightly pulled into their bodices, had their hair wound round their heads and smoothed down with pomade so that it reflected the light, while the men, sitting back from the table, puffed out their chests and spread their elbows, so as not to spatter their coats.

  My goodness, what a hole they made in the veal! They may not have been talking much, but they were keeping their jaws occupied all the same. The salad bowl was hollowed out, a spoon stuck in the sauce, a good sauce, thick and yellow and trembling like a jelly. From within it, they fished out the pieces of veal; and there were still some left. The bowl was passed from hand to hand, faces leaning over it and searching for mushrooms. The great loaves of bread, standing behind the guests against the wall, seemed to melt away. Between mouthfuls you could hear the glasses thumping on the table. The sauce was a little too salted; it took four litres of wine to wash down that confounded blanquette, which slipped past your throat like a cream, then set fire to your stomach. And there was no time to draw breath before the pork, sitting on its dish surrounded by large round potatoes, arrived in a cloud of steam. There was a gasp. By golly, that was it! Something everybody liked! This would give them all a good appetite; and every eye cast a sidelong glance on the dish as they wiped their knives on a piece of bread, to be ready. Then, when they had each been served, they nudged one another with their elbows and chatted away with their mouths full. Wasn’t that right? What a lovely rib of pork this was! Something soft, yet firm that you felt travelling the whole length of your gut, right down to the toes. And the potatoes: sheer delight! This course was not salted but, just for the sake of the potatoes, it needed a rinse every so often. They uncorked another four litres. The plates were wiped so clean that they didn’t change them for the peas. Oh, vegetables didn’t take up any room; you could eat them by the spoonful and not worry about them. Real gourmet food, ladies’ stuff, so to speak. The best thing about the peas were the bits of bacon, grilled to perfection and smelling of horses’ hooves. Two litres were enough.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Nana shouted suddenly. ‘Augustine is putting her hands in my plate!’

  ‘You’re getting on my nerves. Give her a slap!’ Gervaise said, stuffing peas into herself.

  In the room next door, at the children’s table, Nana was playing the mistress of the house. She had sat down next to Victor and put her brother Etienne beside little Pauline; in that way, they became married couples having a party. To start with, Nana had served her guests very graciously, with the condescending manners of a grown-up; but now she gave in to her love of bacon pieces and kept them all for herself. Boss-eyed Augustine, slyly hovering around the children, took advantage of this to grab handfuls of the bacon from her, on the excuse of redistributing them. Nana was furious and bit her wrist.

  ‘Now, now!’ Augustine muttered. ‘I’ll tell your mother that after the veal you asked Victor to give you a kiss.’

  However, order was restored: Gervaise and Mother Coupeau arrived to take the goose off the spit. At the big table, they were leaning back in their chairs, taking a breather. The men unbuttoned their waistcoats and the ladies wiped their faces in their napkins. The meal had been, so to speak, suspended; only one or two of the guests, their jaws chewing away, continued to swallow great mouthfuls of bread, without even being aware of it. They waited, letting the food settle down. Night had fallen gradually; a dirty, ash-grey light was gathering behind the curtains. When Augustine put down two lighted lamps, one at each end of the table, the disarray was revealed: the greasy plates and forks, the tablecloth stained with wine and covered in breadcrumbs. The smell that wafted around them was so strong that it stifled them. Meanwhile, noses were drawn towards the kitchen, and certain hot odours coming out of it.

  ‘Can I lend a hand?’ asked Virginie.

  She got up and went into the next room. One by one, all the other women followed and gathered round the roaster where they watched attentively as Gervaise and Mother Coupeau pulled at the bird. Then cries went up in which you could hear the children’s shrill voices and joyful yells. There was a triumphal re-entry, Gervaise carrying the goose, with stiffly outstretched arms, her face sweating, but beaming in a great, silent grin. Behind her, the women, laughing with her, while Nana, at the very end, her eyes excessively wide, stood on tiptoe to get a look. And when at last the goose was on the table, huge, golden brown, pouring with fat, they didn’t set about it straight away. There was a moment of astonishment, of respectful surprise, that left them all speechless. They pointed the creature out to one another with winks and nods: hell and damnation! What a girl! Look at those thighs, that belly!

  ‘Here’s one that didn’t get fat just licking the wall!’ Boche said.

  So then they started to analyse the creature in detail. Gervaise gave them the facts: it was the finest bird she could find at the poulterer’s on the Faubourg Poissonnière; it weighed twelve and a half pounds on the coal merchant’s scale; they had used the same amount – a whole bushel – of coal to cook her; and she had given up three bowls of fat. Virginie interrupted to boast that she had seen the bird raw: you could have eaten her like that, her flesh was so pure and white, with a skin like a blonde, huh? All the men laughed with ribald greed. Lorilleux and Mme Lorilleux, however, turned up their noses, choked at seeing such a bird on Tip-Tap’s table.

  ‘Well, we’re not going to eat it as it is,’ the laundress said eventually. ‘Who’s going to cut? No, no, I can’t! It’s too big, it scares me.’

  Coupeau volunteered. Heavens, it was quite simple! You grabbed hold of the limbs and pulled it apart; the pieces tasted just as good afterwards. But they protested and forcibly took the kitchen knife away from the roofer; when he carved, he left a proper shambles in the plate. It took them a moment to think of some well-meaning type; then, eventually, Mme Lerat said cajolingly:

  ‘Listen, Monsieur Poisson should do it… Definitely, Monsieur Poisson…’

  And, since the rest of them appeared not to follow her, she added, in still more ingratiating tones:

  ‘Well, naturally, Monsieur Poisson, who is used to weaponry.’

  And she gave the constable the kitchen knife that she was holding. The whole table laughed, gladly and approvingly.

  Poisson bowed with military rigidity and brought the goose in front of him. His neighbours, Gervaise and Mme Boche, moved away to leave room for his elbows. He started to cut slowly, with sweeping gestures and his eyes fixed on the bird, as if to nail it to the plate. When he stuck the knife into the carcass, making the bones crack, Lorilleux felt a surge of patriotism and cried:

  ‘Ah, now! If only that was a Cossack!’2

  ‘Did you ever fight against the Cossacks, Monsieur Poisson?’ Mme Boche inquired.

  ‘No, but I did with the Bedouin,’3 the constable replied, removing a leg. ‘There are no Cossacks any longer.’

  Now there was absolute silence. Every neck was craned, all eyes followed the knife. Poisson had got a surprise for them. Suddenly, he gave
one last stab and the hind part of the animal broke away and stood upright, rump in the air: it was the bishop’s mitre. At this, they broke into spontaneous applause. Really, it took an old soldier to do things in style! Meanwhile, the goose had discharged a stream of gravy from the gaping hole in its rear end. Boche laughed.

  ‘Sign me up,’ he muttered, ‘if she’ll pee in my mouth like that.’

  ‘Oh, the dirty devil!’ the ladies exclaimed. ‘How disgusting can you get!’

  ‘No, really! I’ve never known such a repulsive man!’ Mme Boche said, more incensed than any of them. ‘Be quiet, do you hear? You would turn the stomach of an army. It’s only so that he can have it all to himself, you know.’

  At the same time, in the midst of all the noise, Clémence was saying insistently:

  ‘Monsieur Poisson, Monsieur Poisson, listen, Monsieur Poisson… Keep the rump for me, won’t you?’

  ‘My dear, the rump is yours as of right,’ said Mme Lerat, in her discreetly suggestive way.

  Meanwhile, the goose had been cut up. The constable, after giving everyone a few moments to admire the bishop’s mitre, had separated the pieces and arranged them around the dish. They could help themselves. But the ladies were unbuttoning their dresses and complaining of the heat. Coupeau cried that they were at home, so to hell with the neighbours; and he opened the street door wide, so the party continued against a background of passing cabs and people pushing and shoving their way along the street. Now, with their jaws rested and a new hole in their stomachs, they resumed their dinner, falling on the goose with gusto. Just waiting and watching the animal being cut up, Boche said jocularly, had sent the veal and the pork right down to his ankles.

  Now this was a terrific feast, and no mistake – which meant that none of those present could remember ever having happily risked such a bout of indigestion. Gervaise, huge, leaned on her elbows and ate large chunks of white meat, saying nothing for fear of losing a bite; the only thing that bothered her was a little feeling of shame at appearing like this, munching away like a rabbit, in front of Goujet. In any case, Goujet was filling himself up with the sight of her all pink in the face from eating; and then she remained so kind and good in her gluttony! She said nothing, but all the time she was breaking off to look after Old Bru and put some titbit on his plate. It was really quite touching to see this woman, who liked food so much, take a piece of wing out of her own mouth and hand it across to the old man, who didn’t seem to appreciate it, but ate everything up, with his head bent over his plate, stupefied at so much food, when his throat had forgotten the taste of bread. The Lorilleux turned their fury on the goose; they took enough for three days, they would have swallowed up the dish, the table and the whole shop, if they could have ruined Tip-Tap by it. All the ladies wanted the breast – that was ladies’ meat. Mme Lerat, Mme Boche and Mme Putois were scraping the bones while Mother Coupeau, who loved the neck, was tearing the meat off it with her last two remaining teeth. As for Virginie, she loved the skin, when it was crisp, and each guest handed his skin over to her, out of gallantry – so much, in fact, that Poisson started to give his wife stern glances, ordering her to stop because she had had enough: on a previous occasion she had eaten too much roast goose and had had to spend a fortnight in bed with a swollen stomach. But Coupeau got angry and served Virginie a piece of leg, shouting that, for God’s sake, if she didn’t clean the bone of that, she wasn’t a proper woman. What harm had a bit of goose ever done anybody? On the contrary: it cured diseases of the spleen. You could eat it without bread, like a dessert. As far as he was concerned, he could go on eating it all night, without any after-effects; and, just showing off, he crammed a whole drumstick into his mouth. Meanwhile, Clémence was finishing her piece of rump, sucking it and smacking her lips, rolling around with laughter on her chair, because Boche was whispering lewd remarks into her ear. Oh, good Lord, yes, they really stuffed themselves! While you’re at it, you might as well do it properly – no? And if one only has a really good feast now and again, it would be crazy not to fill oneself up to the eyeballs. Of course, you could see your belly swell up accordingly. The women all looked pregnant. All of them were bursting out of their skins, the greedy pigs! Their mouths open, their chins spattered with grease, their faces looked like backsides – and so red that you would think they were the backsides of rich people, bursting with prosperity.

  And what about the wine, my children! It was flowing around the table like water flowing in the Seine. A real torrent, as when it has been raining and the earth is thirsty. Coupeau poured it out with the bottle held high, so that he could see the red stream frothing; and when a bottle was empty, he joked by turning it upside-down and pressing the neck like a woman milking a cow. Another black girl with a broken neck. In a corner of the shop, the pile of dead black girls was rising, a cemetery of bottles on to which they shovelled the scraps from the tablecloth. Mme Putois asked for water, so the roofer indignantly removed the carafes himself. Did respectable people drink water? Did she want to have frogs in her stomach? And the glasses were emptied in a single gulp: you could hear the liquid being tossed back and pouring down their throats, with a noise like rainwater going down a drainpipe during a storm. It was raining cheap wine, wasn’t it? A plonk that at first had a taste like an old barrel, but which you soon got used to, so that eventually it had a bouquet of hazelnuts. God in heaven, whatever the Jesuits said; the fruit of the vine was a darned good invention! Everyone laughed in approval; because, after all, a working man couldn’t live without wine: old Father Noah had planted vines for the sake of roofers, tailors and blacksmiths. Wine cleaned you out and relaxed you after work, it gave guts to the lazybones; and then, when the old devil started playing tricks on you, well, there was nothing to worry about, Paris belonged to you! And who was saying that the worker, exhausted, penniless, despised by the bourgeois, had so much to be happy about that you could blame him for getting plastered now and again, just so that he could look on the bright side of life for once? Tell me, right now, did they give a fig for the Emperor? Perhaps the Emperor himself was drunk, but what did that matter, they didn’t care a damn for him and they defied him to be more drunk and to be enjoying himself more than they were. Blast the aristocracy! Coupeau said they could all go to hell. Women were what he cared for. And he smacked his pocket, jangling the three sous in it as though he was turning over shovelfuls of gold. Even Goujet, who was usually so sober, was getting a bit jolly. Boche’s eyes were narrowing, while Lorilleux’s had gone pale, and Poisson was wearing increasingly stern expressions on his sun-tanned old soldier’s face. They were already as drunk as newts. And the ladies were a little bit merry, too – though it was still just a little bit, a flush on the cheeks and a need to loosen their clothes, so that they had removed their scarves; only Clémence was starting to go too far. But suddenly Gervaise remembered the six bottles of vintage wine. She had forgotten to serve them with the goose, but she brought them and they filled their glasses. At this, Poisson got up and, raising his glass, said: ‘To Gervaise’s health!’

  They all stood up, in a clatter of moving chairs. Hands reached out, glasses clinked and there was a general hubbub.

  ‘Fifty years from now!’ Virginie cried.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ Gervaise answered, smiling and quite moved. ‘I’d be too old. Come on, the day comes when you’re happy to go.’

  All this time, the neighbourhood was watching through the wide-open door and taking part in the feast. Passers-by would stop in the wide band of light flooding across the pavement and laugh with pleasure at seeing these people enjoying themselves so much. Coachmen, leaning off their seats and whipping their old nags, cast a glance inside and cracked a joke: ‘What’s this, is it all for free?… Hey, there, fatty! D’you want the midwife?’ And the smell of the goose delighted the whole street, filling it with good cheer. The grocer’s boys thought they were eating the bird, on the pavement opposite, while the fruiterer and the tripe merchant were constantly coming out to the front
of their shops to sniff the air, licking their lips. The neighbourhood was doubled up with indigestion. The Cudorge ladies, mother and daughter, who sold umbrellas next door and whom no one ever saw, crossed the road one after the other, casting sidelong glances, with their faces flushed as though they had been leaning over a hot stove. The little jeweller, sitting at his workbench, was unable to carry on with what he was doing, drunk with counting the bottles, in a state of great excitement among his merry cuckoos. Yes, the neighbours were drinking it in, Coupeau said, so why should they hide? Once they had got started, none of them was ashamed at being seen eating; on the contrary, they were flattered and stimulated at the sight of the gathering crowd, gaping with greed; they would have liked to break down the shop-front, drag the table out on to the road and have their dessert there, with everyone watching, amid the hustle and bustle of the street. There was nothing disgusting about it, was there? So there was no reason why they should selfishly shut themselves up indoors. Coupeau, seeing the little watchmaker over the road dribbling at the mouth, raised a bottle so that he could see it from afar; and when the other man nodded his acceptance, carried the bottle and a glass over to him. A feeling of brotherhood was set up with the rest of the street. They clinked glasses to the passers-by. They called out to any acquaintance who looked like a decent sort. The meal spread outwards, from one person to the next, until the whole district of the Goutte-d’Or had its nose in the air and its hands on its belly, in the devil’s own Bacchanalian revelry.

  For a while, the coal merchant, Madame Vigouroux, had been walking backwards and forwards in front of the door.

  ‘Hi! Madame Vigouroux! Madame Vigouroux!’ everyone yelled.

  She came in, laughing like a hyena, sparkling clean and plump enough to burst her stays. The men loved pinching her, because you could pinch her anywhere and never meet a bone. Boche got her to sit next to him and immediately he was giving her knee a sly rub under the table. But she was used to this kind of thing and calmly emptied a glass of wine, announcing that the neighbours were all looking out of their windows and that some people in the apartment block were starting to get annoyed.