The Drinking Den Page 34

  When lunch-time came, Coupeau had an idea. He stamped his foot, exclaiming:

  ‘We should go and fetch Bec-Salé. I know where he’s working… We’ll take him to eat pigs’ trotters in hollandaise sauce at Mère Louis’.’

  They all shouted approval. Yes, Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) must surely want to eat trotters in sauce. They set out. The streets were yellow and a thin rain was falling; but they were already too well warmed up inside to feel it sprinkling their extremities. Coupeau took them to the Rue Marcadet, to the bolt factory. Since they were arriving at least half an hour before the end of the shift, the roofer gave two sous to a lad to go in and tell Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) that his old woman was feeling ill and asking for him to come straight away. The blacksmith came out at once, strolling along, perfectly calm, scenting a good meal in the offing.

  ‘Ah! You old drunks!’ he said, as soon as he saw them, hiding in a doorway. ‘I guessed as much… So, where are we going to eat then?’

  At Mère Louis’, while they were sucking the little bones from the trotters, they started in again on saying what they thought of bosses. Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) announced that there was an urgent order to be finished at his works. Oh, the boss was not worried about a quarter of an hour; even if they didn’t turn up, he would be nice enough: he had to consider himself lucky when they came back at all. In the first place, there was no danger that any boss would dare to sack Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst), because you didn’t find blokes of his ability any more. After the trotters, they had an omelette and everyone drank his bottle. Mère Louis had her wine sent up from the Auvergne, wine the colour of blood, which you could cut with a knife. They were beginning to have fun: the party was really starting to swing.

  ‘What right has he to get on my wick, that beggar of a boss?’ Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) exclaimed over dessert. ‘Do you know, he’s just had the nerve to put up a bell in his dump? A bell! That’s for slaves… Well, it can ring as much as it likes today! I’ll be damned if they catch me at the anvil again! I’ve put up with it for five days, now I can chuck it in. If he kicks up a fuss, I’ll tell him to go to hell!’

  ‘Now, then,’ said Coupeau, with a serious look, ‘I’ll have to leave you, I’m off to work. Yes, I promised my wife… Enjoy yourselves, I’ll be with you in spirit, you know, my old mates.’

  The others fell about laughing. But he seemed so determined that they all went with him, when he talked about fetching his tools from Old Colombe’s. He took the bag from under the bench and put it in front of him while they had a last drink. At one o’clock, they were still offering one another successive rounds, so Coupeau, with a gesture of annoyance, put the tools back under the bench; they were getting in his way, he couldn’t get close to the counter without stubbing his foot against them. It was too silly, he would go to Bourguignon’s the next day. The other four, who were arguing about wages, were not surprised when the roofer, without further explanation, suggested they went for a little walk round the boulevard, to stretch their legs. The rain had ended. The leg-stretching amounted to no more than a few steps in single file, with their arms swinging idly at their sides. They had nothing to say, startled by the fresh air and annoyed at being outside. Slowly, without even needing to nudge each other, they instinctively went back up the Rue des Poissonniers, where they slipped into Chez François to take a glass out of the bottle. Honestly, they needed that to pick up their spirits. It made one too miserable being in the street; it was so muddy that you would hesitate to show a constable the door. Lantier pushed his friends towards the private bar, a narrow room with just one table in it, separated from the public room by a partition with frosted glass. He preferred private bars, because they were more respectable. Weren’t they all nice and easy there? You could imagine you were at home and even take a little nap without embarrassment. He asked for the newspaper, spread it out on the table and looked through it, raising his eyebrows. Coupeau and Mes-Bottes had started a game of piquet. Two litres and five glasses were waiting on the table.

  ‘So, what have they got to say for themselves, in that paper?’ Bibi-la-Grillade asked Lantier.

  He didn’t answer straight away. Then, without looking up:

  ‘I’m at the parliamentary page. Here are some ten-a-penny Republicans, those damned lazy beggars on the Left. Do the people elect them so that they can dribble this sugar-water? Here’s one who believes in God and is getting all lovey-dovey with those bastards in the government. Now, if I was elected, I’d go up on the rostrum and say: Shit! Yes, not another word. That’s my opinion!’

  ‘You know Badinguet had a fight with his old woman in front of the whole courtyard the other evening,’ said Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst). ‘Honest! And about nothing, just an argument. Badinguet was sloshed.’

  ‘Give us a rest with your politics,’ said the roofer. ‘Read the murders, it’s more amusing.’

  And, going back to his game, he called three nines and three queens:

  ‘I’ve got a threesome down the drain and three doves… Skirts don’t let me down.’

  They emptied their glasses, Lantier started to read aloud:

  ‘The commune of Gaillon (Seine-et-Marne) has just been appalled by a ghastly crime. A son killed his own father with a spade, in order to steal thirty sous from him…’

  They all gave exclamations of horror. Now, there’s someone, if you like, whom they would be happy to go and see shortened by a head! No, the guillotine was too good for him; he should be drawn and quartered. A report of an infanticide also shocked them, but the hatter, a great moralizer, excused the woman and put all the blame on her seducer – because, after all, if some scoundrel of a man had not given the poor woman a child, then she couldn’t have thrown one down the water-closet. But what really got their enthusiasm up were the exploits of the Marquis de T—, who had left a ball at two in the morning and defended himself against three footpads in the Boulevard des Invalides. Without even taking off his gloves, he had dealt with the first two by head-butting them in the stomach, and led the third off to the police station, by one ear. Honestly! What a man! Pity he was an aristocrat.

  ‘Now, listen to this,’ Lantier went on, ‘I’m moving on to the society news.“The Comtesse de Brétigny’s eldest daughter is to marry the young Baron de Valençay, His Majesty’s aide-de-camp. The wedding gifts include more than three hundred thousand francs’ worth of lace –”’

  ‘What do we care about that?’ Bibi-la-Grillade said, interrupting. ‘We don’t want to know the colour of her petticoats. Even though she has lots of lace, she’ll still be seeing the moon through the same hole as everyone else.’

  As Lantier appeared to be on the point of reading the rest, Bec-Salé (also known as Drinks-Without-Thirst) took the paper away from him and sat on it, saying: ‘Oh, no, come on! That’s enough! There: like that it’ll keep warm. That’s all paper is good for…’

  Meanwhile, Mes-Bottes, who had been looking at his hand, gave a triumphant thump on the table. He had ninety-three.

  ‘I’ve got the Revolution!’9 he exclaimed. ‘A greedy quint with its point in the cow’s grass…Twenty, no? Then, tierce major in window-panes, twenty-three; three bulls, twenty-six; three flunkeys; three one-eyes, ninety-two10… So I play Year I of the Revolution: ninety-three.’

  ‘You’ve had it, chum,’ the others told Coupeau.

  They ordered two more bottles of wine. The glasses were kept full and they were getting more and more drunk. At around five o’clock, it started to get disgusting, so Lantier fell silent and thought of leaving; when people started shouting at each other and tipping wine on the floor, it wasn’t the place for him any more. Now Coupeau was getting on his feet to make the drunkard’s sign of the cross. On his head, he said Montparnasse; on his right shoulder, Menilmonte; on the left shoulder, La Courtille; in the middle of the belly, Bagnolet; and in the pit of his stomach, saut�
� of rabbit, three times. So the hatter, taking advantage of the shouts raised by this performance, calmly headed for the door. The others didn’t even notice that he had gone. He had already drunk a fair amount; but, once outside, he shook himself and recovered his balance. He calmly returned to the shop, where he told Gervaise that Coupeau was with some friends.

  Two days went by. The roofer had not reappeared. He was knocking around in the neighbourhood, no one quite knew where, though some people said they had seen him at Mère Baquet’s, at the Papillon or at the Petit Bonhomme Qui Tousse. The only thing was that some people insisted that he was alone, while others had met him together with seven or eight other drunks of his sort. Gervaise shrugged her shoulders with a show of resignation. Good Lord, it was something one had to get used to! She didn’t go running after her man; in fact, if she did see him in a wine shop, she would go the long way round to avoid putting him in a temper; and she waited for him to come back, listening at night in case she heard him snoring outside the door. He would sleep on a pile of garbage, or on a bench, or in a patch of waste ground, or lying across a gutter. The next day, still not quite sobered up from the night before, he went off again, knocking on the shutters of cabarets, careering off once more on a crazy progress from one to the next, surrounded by little glasses and big ones, and wine bottles, drifting away from his friends and meeting up with them again, setting off on journeys from which he returned befuddled, while the streets reeled, night fell and day broke, with no other thought than to drink and sleep it off wherever he happened to be. While he was sleeping it off, that was it. On the second day, Gervaise did go to Père Colombe’s drinking den, just to have some news. He had been seen there five times, there was nothing more anyone could say. She had to be satisfied with taking back the tools, which had stayed under the bench.

  That evening, Lantier, seeing that the laundress was worried, suggested accompanying her to the music-hall, to take her mind off it. At first she refused: she wasn’t in the mood to enjoy herself. Otherwise, she would not say no, because Lantier had made the offer in too straightforward, decent a way for her to suspect any ulterior motive. He seemed to be concerned about her misfortune and appeared genuinely paternal. Coupeau had never slept out for two nights on end; so, in spite of herself, she went to stand by the door every ten minutes, without putting down her iron, looking up and down the street to see if her man was coming home. She was getting pins and needles in her legs, she said, and couldn’t stand still. Of course, Coupeau could lose a limb or fall under a carriage and be killed; it would be good riddance: she refused to have the slightest sympathy for a disgusting individual of his kind. But, when it came down to it, it was irritating to be constantly asking oneself whether or not he would be coming home. And, when the gaslights went on, as Lantier once more mentioned the music-hall, she agreed to go. After all, it would be too silly of her to refuse a chance of enjoyment, when for the past three days her husband had been living the life of Riley. Since he wasn’t coming home, she would go out in her turn. The place could burn to the ground if it wanted. Life was getting her down so much that she could happily have set it on fire herself.

  They had a quick dinner. At eight o’clock, as she left arm in arm with the hatter, Gervaise asked Mother Coupeau and Nana to go to bed straight away. The shop was shut. She went out through the courtyard door and gave the key to Mme Boche, with the message that if that pig of hers came home, would she be good enough to put him to bed.

  Lantier was waiting for her in the porch, well turned out and whistling a little tune. She had her silk dress on. They walked slowly along the pavement, holding close to one another and lit by the shafts of light shining out from the shops, which revealed them smiling and half-whispering.

  The music-hall was the café-concert in the Boulevard de Rochechouart, once just a small café, now extended over the courtyard by a wooden structure. At the door, a line of glass balls lit up the entrance. Long posters, stuck on wooden panels, had been set up on the ground, level with the gutter.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Lantier. ‘This evening sees the début of the popular dramatic singer Mademoiselle Amanda.’

  Then he spotted Bibi-la-Grillade, who was also reading the notice. Bibi had a black eye, the result of a fight the evening before.

  ‘Hey, what about Coupeau?’ the hatter said, looking round. ‘Have you lost Coupeau, then?’

  ‘Oh, a long time ago! Haven’t seen him since yesterday,’ the other man replied. ‘There was a bit of a punch-up coming out of Mère Baquet’s. I don’t like it when fists start flying. You know… there was a fight with the waiter at Mère Baquet’s, over a bottle of wine that he wanted us to pay for twice. So I was off; I went to get a bit of shut-eye.’

  He was still yawning; he had been sleeping for eighteen hours. Moreover, he had sobered up completely, but still looked befuddled, his old jacket covered in down from his mattress. He must have gone to sleep fully dressed.

  ‘So you don’t know where my husband is?’ the laundress asked.

  ‘No, not the foggiest… It was five o’clock when we left Mère Baquet’s. There you are! Perhaps he went down the street. In fact, I do think I saw him going into the Papillon with a coachman. Oh, what fools we are! No good for anything!’

  Lantier and Gervaise spent a very pleasant evening in the music-hall. At eleven o’clock, when it closed, they headed back, strolling along, taking their time. The cold was a bit sharp and people were returning home in groups; and there were some girls laughing loudly under the trees, in the dark, because their men were trying to go too far. Lantier was quietly humming one of Mlle Amanda’s songs: ‘It tickles my nose…’ Gervaise, dazed, as if drunk, took up the refrain. It had been very warm in the café; and, as well as that, the two drinks she had had, together with the pipe smoke and the smell of all those human bodies heaped together, was making her feel a little sick. But what she remembered most of all was Mile Amanda. She would never have dared appear in public undressed like that – though you had to admit that the lady in question had wonderful skin. And she listened, with voluptuous curiosity, as Lantier made precise remarks about the singer’s body, with the assurance of a gentleman who had counted every one of her ribs.

  ‘Everyone is asleep,’ Gervaise said, after she had rung three times, and the Boches had not pulled the cord to release the catch.

  The door opened, but the porch was dark, and when she knocked on the window of the lodge to ask for her key, the drowsy concierge started spinning her some yarn that at first she didn’t grasp. Eventually, she understood that the constable, Poisson, had brought Coupeau home in a dreadful state and that the key must be in the lock.

  ‘Damn it!’ Lantier muttered when they went in. ‘What’s happened here? It’s disgusting!’

  It did indeed smell very strongly. Gervaise, who was looking for matches, walked on something damp. When she managed to light a candle, they were greeted by a pretty sight. Coupeau had thrown up all over the place. The room was full of vomit, the bed was covered in it, as was the carpet; even the chest of drawers was splattered. Moreover, Coupeau had fallen off the bed where Poisson must have thrown him, and was snoring away in the midst of his filth. He was spread out in it, sprawling like a pig, one cheek spattered with vomit and exhaling his foul breath through an open mouth, his already grey hair lying in the wide pool around his head.

  ‘Oh, the swine! The swine!’ Gervaise said, over and over, in exasperation. ‘He’s fouled everything… No, no, not even a dog would have done that. A dead dog is cleaner.’

  Neither of them dared to move, uncertain where to step. The roofer had never come home so drunk or made such a repulsive mess in the room. Hence the sight of him was a severe blow to whatever feelings his wife still had for him. Previously, when he had come back slightly tipsy or with one too many under his belt, she had been indulgent, and not repelled by it. But this was too much; she felt nauseous. She wouldn’t have picked him up with a pair of tongs. The very idea of this slob’s skin co
ming into contact with her own repelled her, as if she had been asked to lie down beside the corpse of someone who had died of a frightful disease.

  ‘I must sleep somewhere, though,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t go back out into the street to sleep… Oh, I’ll have to get past him somehow!’

  She tried to step over the drunkard and had to support herself on one corner of the chest of drawers, to avoid slipping on the vomit. Coupeau was completely barring the way to the bed. So Lantier, smiling to himself at the realization that she would not be putting her head on her own pillow that night, took one of her hands and said, in a low voice, full of feeling:

  ‘Gervaise… Listen to me, Gervaise, dear…’

  She knew what he meant and pulled her hand away, in confusion, saying tu to him as she used to.

  ‘No, leave me alone… I beg you, Auguste, go back to your room… I’ll manage, I’ll get in by the foot of the bed.’

  ‘Come, come, Gervaise, don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘It smells too foul, you can’t stay here. Come with me. What are you frightened of? He can’t hear us, can he?’

  She struggled, emphatically shaking her head. Hardly knowing what she was doing, as if to show that she would stay there, she took off her clothes, threw her silk dress across a chair and forcefully undressed to her chemise and underskirt, until she was all white, her neck and arms bare. The bed belonged to her, didn’t it? She wanted to sleep in her own bed. Twice again she tried to find a clean corner and to get across to it. But Lantier would not give up, taking her by the waist and saying things to inflame her passions. Oh, she was in a fine situation, with an idle husband in front, preventing her from getting decently under her blankets, and a bastard of a man behind her, whose only thought was to take advantage of her misfortune to possess her again! The hatter was raising his voice so she begged him to be silent. And she listened, bending her ear towards the little room where Nana and Mother Coupeau were. The child and the old woman must both be asleep, because she could hear heavy breathing.