The Drinking Den Page 32

  ‘Remember that the one who produces is not a slave, but that anyone who doesn’t produce is a drone.’

  So the household resumed its usual routine, everything calmed down and they slipped into new habits. Gervaise became used to having the dirty washing strewn around, and to Lantier’s comings and goings. He still spoke about big business affairs and would sometimes go out, carefully groomed, with a clean shirt; he would disappear, sometimes all night, then come back, pretending to be exhausted, holding his head, as though he had just spent a full twenty-four hours discussing matters of the most profound and far-reaching import. The truth was that he had been out on the town; and there was no danger of him picking up blisters on his hands, either! He usually got up at ten o’clock, went for a walk in the afternoon, if he liked the look of the weather; or else, on days when it rained, stayed in the shop reading his newspaper. This was just the place for him: he was happiest when there were women around and would insinuate himself into their private world; he loved it when they swore and encouraged them to do so, while himself keeping to quite refined speech. This explained why he so enjoyed the company of laundresses, who are not prudish girls. When Clémence gave him the benefit of her choicest vocabulary, he would smile sweetly and twirl the ends of his narrow moustache. The scent of the laundry, the sweaty girls slapping down the flat-irons with their naked arms, and the whole place like a boudoir littered with the underwear of women from the neighbourhood, seemed the ideal spot for him, a long-awaited haven of pleasure and idleness.

  In the early days, Lantier would eat at François’ place, on the corner of the Rue des Poissonniers. But, three or four times in the seven days of the week, he dined with the Coupeaus, to the point where eventually he offered to make this a formal arrangement and extend it to every meal, paying them fifteen francs for his board on Saturdays. From now on, he did not leave the house, but settled in completely. He could be seen from morning to night going from the shop to the room at the back, in his shirtsleeves, raising his voice and giving orders. He even dealt with customers: he was running the shop. As he didn’t like François’ wine, he persuaded Gervaise from now on to get her wine from Vigoureux, the coal merchant next door, and would go and pinch the wife’s bottom when he and Boche went round to put in their orders. After that, it was Coudeloup’s bread that wasn’t baked properly, so he would send Augustine to buy bread from Meyer’s, the Viennese bakery in the Faubourg-Poissonnière. He also changed Lehongre, the grocer, and only kept fat Charles, the butcher in the Rue Polonceau, because of his political opinions. After a month, he wanted all the cooking done in oil. As Clémence said, joking, the oil stain was starting to come through in this darned Provençal. He made the omelettes himself, turning them over to cook on both sides, so that they were more dried out than pancakes and hard as biscuits. He kept an eye on Mother Coupeau, demanding well-cooked steaks, like boot soles, adding garlic to everything, and getting angry if they sprinkled herbs on the salad – weeds, he exclaimed, which could easily conceal some poison or other. But what he most liked was a certain type of soup, with vermicelli cooked in water, very thick, on which he would empty half a bottle of oil. Only he would eat this, apart from Gervaise, because the others, being Parisians, almost threw up on the one occasion when they dared to taste it.

  Bit by bit, Lantier also started to involve himself in the family’s affairs. Since the Lorilleux were always reluctant to dig into their pockets for the hundred sous for Mother Coupeau, he explained that they could be taken to court. Who did they think they were! They ought to be giving ten francs a month! And he would go up himself to fetch the ten francs in such a determined, yet agreeable manner that the chain-maker didn’t dare to refuse. Now, Mme Lerat, too, was paying two hundred-sou coins. Mother Coupeau wanted to kiss Lantier’s hands because, in addition, he acted as the final judge in arguments between the old woman and Gervaise. When the laundress, in a fit of impatience, treated her mother-in-law roughly, so that she would go off and cry in her bed, he shook the two of them and forced them to kiss and make up, asking if they thought they were being funny by behaving so badly. It was the same with Nana: in his opinion, they were bringing her up very badly. And he was not wrong about that, because when the father beat her, the mother took the child’s side, and when the mother smacked, the father made a scene. Nana, delighted at seeing her parents at each other’s throats, felt she was forgiven in advance and did just as she pleased. Her latest prank was to go and play in the blacksmith’s opposite, spending all day swinging on the shafts of the carts. She would hide with gangs of urchins at the far end of the murky yard, lit only by the red light from the forge; then, suddenly, she would reappear, running, shouting, her hair flying and her face smeared with dirt, followed by a train of kids, as though a volley of hammer blows had put these unkempt ragamuffins to flight. Only Lantier could tell her off, and she even knew how to get round him. This ten-year-old hussy would walk around in front of him like a lady, swinging her hips and giving him sidelong glances with eyes that were already full of corruption. Eventually, he was the one who took charge of her education, teaching her to dance and speak in the Southern dialect.

  So a year went by. People in the neighbourhood thought Lantier must have a private income, because that was the only way to explain the Coupeaus’ style of life. Certainly, Gervaise was still earning, but now that she was feeding two idle men, the shop was surely not enough, all the more so since the shop was getting less profitable; customers were leaving and the women fooled around from morning to night. The truth was that Lantier wasn’t paying for anything, rent or food. In the first months, he gave something on account, then simply talked about large sums that were coming to him, which would allow him to pay everything off later, all at once. Gervaise no longer dared ask him for a penny. She got bread, wine and meat on credit. Bills were mounting up all round, at the rate of three or four francs a day. She hadn’t given a sou to the furniture shop or to their three friends, the builder, the carpenter and the painter. All of them were starting to complain and people treated her less politely in the shops. But she seemed to be almost intoxicated by this plunge into debt: she got carried away, buying only the most expensive things. Since she was no longer paying for it, she gave way to temptation; yet underneath she remained quite honest, dreaming from morning to night of earning hundreds of francs, though she was not quite sure how, so that she could hand out fistfuls of hundred-sou pieces to her creditors. In short, she got in deeper and deeper, and even as it was going off the rails she talked about expanding the business. However, around the middle of the summer, big Clémence left, because there was no longer enough work for two girls and she had been waiting for weeks for her pay. And, as everything collapsed around them, Coupeau and Lantier were living like lords. These two fine fellows, stuffing themselves fit to burst, gobbled up the whole business, growing fat on what remained; and they urged one another on to have second helpings, patting their bellies and joking over dessert, the better to digest it all.

  The great topic of discussion in the neighbourhood was whether Lantier had really gone back to Gervaise. Opinion was divided over this. According to the Lorilleux, Tip-Tap was doing all she could to get the hatter back, but he wanted nothing to do with her, considering her too decrepit; he had much tastier pieces in town. On the contrary, the Boches claimed, the laundress had gone directly to her former lover’s bed the very first night, as soon as that nincompoop Coupeau started to snore. Either way, it all seemed a bit indecent; but there are so many disgusting things in life – and much worse ones – that eventually people came to accept this ménage à trois as quite normal, and even rather sweet, because the three didn’t fight among themselves and maintained a façade of respectability. You could be sure that if you were to poke your nose into some other households thereabouts, you would get much nastier smells up it. At least, between the Coupeaus, it seemed very friendly all round. All three of them mucked in together, looked after each other and hopped into bed with one another, bu
t they didn’t keep the neighbours awake. In any case, everyone was won over by Lantier’s good manners: the old charmer could shut any gossip’s mouth, to such an extent that, because no one knew for sure what his relations with Gervaise were, when the fruit lady told the tripe lady that they were not lovers, the latter seemed to be thinking it was a pity, really, because it made the Coupeaus less interesting altogether.

  Meanwhile, Gervaise was quite easy on that score, because such improper ideas never occurred to her. It reached such a point that she was accused of being cold-hearted; no one in the family could understand her bitterness towards the hatter. Mme Lerat, who enjoyed poking her nose into other people’s love affairs, came round every evening. She considered Lantier irresistible, someone who could seduce the poshest dame; and Mme Boche couldn’t answer for her own virtue, had she been ten years younger. A silent, unrelenting conspiracy brewed up, slowly urging Gervaise on, as though all the women around her might satisfy themselves by finding her a lover. But Gervaise couldn’t understand it; she didn’t find Lantier that attractive. Admittedly, he had improved: he always wore a coat, and had learned a few things by hanging around cafés and political meetings. None the less, knowing him as she did, she could see right through him; and there was a lot behind those eyes that still made her shudder a little. In any case, if other people found him so appealing, why didn’t these others try their chances with the guy? She hinted at this very idea one day with Virginie, who seemed the keenest of all. At this, Mme Lerat and Virginie, trying to get her worked up, told her about what Lantier had got up to with big Clémence. No, of course she hadn’t noticed anything, but whenever she went out to do some shopping, the hatter used to take the girl into his room. They were still spotted together, so he must be going round to see her.

  ‘So what?’ the laundress said, her voice trembling a little. ‘What has it to do with me?’

  She looked into Virginie’s yellow eyes, where gold sparks gleamed, as in a cat’s eyes. Had this woman something against her, that she was trying to make her jealous? But the dressmaker adopted an air of dumb innocence and said:

  ‘Nothing, of course… It’s just that you should advise him to stop seeing that girl, because he could run into trouble with her.’

  The worst thing was that Lantier felt he had support and changed his behaviour towards Gervaise. Now, when he shook her hand, he kept her fingers between his own for a moment. He wore her out with his staring, looking at her with bold eyes in which she could clearly read what he was after. If he walked behind her, he would push his knees into her skirts and blow on her neck, as though to send her to sleep. However, he had still not come out with his feelings openly. But one evening, when he found himself alone with her, he pushed her in front of him to the end of the shop without saying a word, backed her trembling up against a wall, then tried to kiss her. As luck would have it, Goujet came in at that very moment. She struggled free and escaped. And the three of them exchanged a few words, as though nothing had happened. Goujet, white as a sheet, hung his head, thinking he had been disturbing them and that she had put up a struggle only so as not to be kissed in front of somebody.

  The next day, Gervaise wandered around the shop, very distressed and unable to iron a handkerchief. She needed to see Goujet and to explain to him that Lantier had pushed her against the wall. But since Etienne had left for Lille, she no longer dared to go into the forge where Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) would greet her with ironic laughter. That afternoon, however, she gave in and, taking an empty basket, went out with the excuse that she was going to collect some skirts from a customer in the Rue des Portes-Blanches. Then, when she got to the Rue Marcadet, opposite the bolt factory, she walked slowly, hoping for a fortuitous encounter. For his part, no doubt, Goujet must have been expecting her, because she hadn’t been there for five minutes before he came out, as if by chance.

  ‘Oh! So you’re doing your shopping,’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘Are you on your way back home?’

  He was just making conversation. Gervaise in fact had her back to the Rue des Poissonniers. And they walked up towards Montmartre, side by side, with linking arms. They must have had just one idea: to get away from the factory, so that they would not appear to be making an assignation in front of the door. With lowered heads, they followed the uneven road between the rumbling of the factories; then, after two hundred yards, naturally, as though they had agreed the place, they veered left, still without saying anything, and started to cross a piece of waste ground. This was situated between a mechanized sawmill and a button factory, a strip of meadow that was still green, with yellow patches of burned grass. A goat, tethered to a post, was walking around and bleating while, beyond it, a dead tree wilted in the bright sunlight.

  ‘It’s true!’ Gervaise murmured. ‘We could be out in the country.’

  They went and sat under the dead tree. The laundress put her basket down by her feet. Opposite them, on the Butte Montmartre, were stacked tall houses, yellow and grey, amid tufts of meagre greenery. And when they bent their heads further back, they saw the broad sky, with its glowing purity, above the city, broken to the north by a flock of little white clouds. But the bright light dazzled them; so they looked down, along the flat horizon, at the chalky suburbs in the distance, then particularly at the breathing of the slender chimney of the sawmill, which was puffing out jets of steam. Its great sighs seemed to ease their troubled breasts.

  ‘Yes,’ Gervaise went on, made awkward by the silence. ‘I was doing some errands, I came out…’

  Much as she had wanted to explain, suddenly she didn’t dare to speak. She was filled with a great feeling of shame. And yet she realized that they had come there of their own accord, to speak about that one thing; and, indeed, they were speaking about it, without needing to utter a word. What had happened the previous day came between them like a heavy and troublesome burden.

  Then, with a ghastly feeling of sadness, tears in her eyes, she described the last moments of Mme Bijard, her washerwoman, who had died that morning, after dreadful suffering.

  ‘It all happened because of a kick that Bijard gave her,’ she said, in a gentle, monotonous voice. ‘Her belly swelled up. He must have damaged something inside. My God! For three days she writhed in agony. Oh, there are scoundrels in the galleys who are there for less! But the law would have too much work on its hands, if it were to bother with every wife who is done in by her husband. A kick more or less doesn’t matter, does it, when you get them every day? Especially when the poor woman herself tried to save her man from the scaffold by claiming that she had crushed her own belly when she fell on a wash-tub. She screamed all night before she finally passed away.’

  The blacksmith said nothing, pulling up the grass with his clenched fists.

  ‘Only a fortnight ago,’ Gervaise went on, ‘she weaned her youngest, little Jules; just as well, because the child won’t suffer… In any case, that kid Lalie will have two little ones to look after. She’s only eight, but she’s as sensible and solemn as a real mother. Apart from which, her father beats her up all the time… My, oh my, there are some creatures who are put on this earth to suffer…’

  Goujet looked at her and said, abruptly, his lips trembling:

  ‘You caused me pain yesterday, oh, yes! A lot of pain…’

  Gervaise went pale and clasped her hands. But he went on:

  ‘I know, it had to happen… It’s just that you should have confided in me, admitted to me how things were, not to leave me under any illusion…’

  He couldn’t go on. She got up, realizing that Goujet thought she had gone back to Lantier, as people were saying. So, spreading her hands, she cried:

  ‘Oh, no, no, I swear to you… He was pushing me, he was going to kiss me, it’s true. But his face didn’t even touch mine and that’s the first time he has even tried. Truly, on my life, on the life of my children, on everything I hold most sacred!’

  However, the blacksmith shook his head. He was susp
icious because women always deny it. At this Gervaise became very solemn and went on very slowly:

  ‘You know me, Monsieur Goujet, I don’t lie. Well, I’m telling you, no, it’s not so, on my word of honour! That will never happen, do you understand? Never! The day when it happens, I shall be the lowest of the low, I shall no longer deserve the friendship of a decent man like yourself.’

  Her face, as she spoke, was so lovely and full of sincerity that he took her hand and made her sit down. Now he was breathing freely again, and laughing inside. This was the first time that he had held her hand in this way and squeezed it in his own. The two of them stayed silent. In the heavens above them, the white clouds sailed past with the slow grace of swans. In the corner of the field, the goat had turned and was watching them, softly bleating at regular, very long intervals. There, without letting go of one another’s hands, their eyes filled with tenderness, they gazed into the far horizon, at the colourless slope of Montmartre surrounded by the tall forest of factory chimneys against the horizon, in these mean and desolate outskirts of the city where the green trellises of the dingy cabarets moved them to tears.