The Drinking Den Page 39

  ‘Here they are!’

  It was still not the hearse. Four undertakers entered briskly, one after the other, with the red faces and ungainly hands of furniture-removers, their black clothes scruffy, worn and faded from the rubbing of coffins. Old Bazouge came first, very drunk and very proper: as soon as he was on the job, he recovered his dignity. They said nothing, heads slightly bent, already weighing Mother Coupeau with their eyes. And there was no hanging around. The poor old woman was wrapped up before you could sneeze. The smallest of the four, a young man with a squint, had emptied the bran into the coffin, spreading it around and kneading it as though making bread. Then another, long and thin, who looked like a bit of a wag, laid the sheet out over it. And finally, one, two, three, hup! All four grasped the body and lifted it, two at the feet, two at the head. It was quicker than tossing a pancake. The onlookers, craning their necks, might have thought that Mother Coupeau had hopped into the coffin herself. She slipped in, fitting perfectly – so tightly in fact that they heard her brushing against the new wood. She was touching it on all sides, like a picture in its frame. But, when all’s said and done, she did fit, which astonished everyone; of course, she must have shrunk since the previous day. Meanwhile, the undertakers were standing and waiting. The one with the squint took the lid, inviting the family to make their last adieus, while Bazouge put some nails in his mouth and got the hammer ready. Then Coupeau, his two sisters, Gervaise, and still others among them, knelt down and kissed the mother who was leaving them, with large tears falling in warm drops and rolling across that stiffened, ice-cold face. There was a long-drawn-out sound of sobbing. The lid went down, Old Bazouge drove his nails in as smartly as a packer in a warehouse, two knocks for each, and no one could hear himself cry any longer in this din of carpentry. It was done. They left.

  ‘Imagine showing off at a time like this!’ Mme Lorilleux remarked to her husband when she saw the hearse at the door.

  The hearse had the whole neighbourhood turned upside-down. The tripe-seller called the grocer’s boys, the little watchmaker had come out on to the pavement, the neighbours were all leaning out of their windows, everyone talking about the valance with white cotton fringes. Huh! The Coupeaus would have done better to have paid off their debts! But, as the Lorilleux said, when you are proud, it comes out everywhere and in spite of all.

  ‘It’s a disgrace!’ Gervaise was saying at the same moment, speaking about the chain-maker and his wife. ‘To think that those misers haven’t even brought a bunch of violets for their mother!’

  Indeed, the Lorilleux had come empty-handed. Mme Lerat had offered a wreath of artificial flowers, and there was also on the coffin a wreath of everlasting flowers and a bouquet, which the Coupeaus had bought. The undertakers needed a great heave to lift the coffin and put it on the hearse. It took some time to organize the procession. Coupeau and Lorilleux, in frock-coats, carrying their hats, were chief mourners; the first of them, having stoked up his tender feelings that morning with two glasses of white wine, was supported on the arm of his brother-in-law, his legs feeling weak and his head aching. Then came the men: M. Madinier, very solemn, all in black; Mes-Bottes, with a topcoat over his smock; Boche, clashing with them in his yellow trousers; then Lantier, Gaudron, Bibi-la-Grillade, Poisson and others. After this came the ladies, first of all Mme Lorilleux, wearing the dead woman’s skirt, suitably altered. Mme Lerat had a shawl to hide her improvised mourning, a blouse trimmed with lilac; and behind these came Virginie, Mme Gaudron, Mme Fauconnier, Mlle Remanjou and the rest. When the hearse shuddered and slowly began to descend the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, amid signs of the cross and raisings of hats, the four undertakers went to the head of the line, two in front, the others to right and left. Gervaise had stayed behind to lock up the shop. She handed Nana over to Mme Boche and ran to rejoin the procession, while the little girl, held up by the concierge under the porch, watched with profound interest as her grandmother disappeared at the end of the street in that fine carriage.

  Just as the laundress, panting for breath, caught up with the marchers, Goujet joined them from the other direction. He went with the men; but he turned round and greeted her with a nod, so gently, that she suddenly felt very unhappy and started to cry again. She was not only weeping for Mother Coupeau, she was weeping for something dreadful, something that she couldn’t express, which was stifling her. Throughout the journey, she kept her handkerchief pressed to her eyes. Mme Lorilleux, her cheeks dry and puffy, looked sideways at her, as though accusing her of putting it on.

  The church ceremony was soon hurried through, but the mass dragged on a bit, because the priest was very old. Mes-Bottes and Bibi-la-Grillade preferred to stay outside, because of the collection. All the time, M. Madinier was watching the priests and told Lantier what he thought: those jokers gabbled out their Latin without even knowing what they were saying; they would bury a person for you just as they would baptize or marry one, without the slightest real feeling. Then M. Madinier criticized all this ceremonial nonsense, the lights, the mournful voices and the show put on for the family. It was true: you lost your loved one twice, once at home and once in church. All the men agreed with him, because it was another painful moment when, at the end of the mass, there was a muttered sound of prayers and all the congregation had to march past the body, sprinkling holy water. Fortunately, the cemetery was not far away: the little cemetery of La Chapelle, a patch of green opening on the Rue Marcadet. The cortège, when it arrived, had more or less broken up, everyone tapping their feet and talking about this and that. Their shoes clattered on the hard ground and they would like to have stamped them harder to keep warm. The gaping hole, with the coffin placed beside it, was already white with frost and rocky like a quarry. The mourners, standing round the heaps of soil, were not amused at having to wait in such weather and stare at the hole. Finally, a priest in a surplice emerged from a little house, shivering: you could see his breath like steam at every De profundis he gave forth. At the last sign of the cross, he sped off, in no hurry to start again. The grave-digger took his spade, but the frost was so hard that he could only chip off large lumps of earth that played a merry tune as they bombarded the coffin in its grave – a volley of cannon shots, so that you thought the wood would split. However self-centred you are, that’s a noise that gets you in the pit of the stomach. The tears began to flow again. Even after they had left and were outside, they could still hear the cannon shots. Mes-Bottes, blowing on his fingers, said it out loud: ‘By God, no! Poor Mother Coupeau wasn’t going to be too warm!’

  ‘Ladies and gents,’ the roofer said to the few friends who had stayed in the street with the family. ‘If you would allow us to offer you a little something…’

  And he was the first to go inside the wine merchant’s on the Rue Marcadet called At the Cemetery Gate. Gervaise, pausing outside, called to Goujet who was just leaving after once more nodding to her. Wouldn’t he take a glass of wine? But he was in a hurry to get back to the factory. So they looked at one another for a moment in silence.

  ‘Please forgive me for the sixty francs,’ the laundress said at last. ‘I felt I was going mad. I thought of you –’

  ‘Don’t apologize,’ the blacksmith interrupted. ‘You’re forgiven. And, you know, I’m always there if you should need me… But don’t say anything to Mother, because she has her own ideas and I don’t want to upset her.’

  She kept looking at him; and, seeing him so kind, so sad, with his fine yellow beard, she was on the point of accepting the proposal he had once made, to go away with him so that they could be happy somewhere together. Then, another wicked thought came into her head: that of borrowing her two quarters’ rent from him, at any price. She shivered and said cajolingly:

  ‘There’s no ill feeling, is there?’

  He shook his head and replied:

  ‘No, of course, there will never be any ill feeling… It’s just that, you understand, it’s all over.’

  He strode off, leaving Gervaise s
tunned, hearing the last words beating in her ears like a tolling bell. As she stepped inside the wine merchant’s, she could hear a dull voice inside her: If it’s all over, then it’s all over. There’s nothing more for me to do if it’s ‘all over’! She sat down, swallowed a piece of bread and cheese and emptied a full glass, which was on the table in front of her.

  They were in a long ground-floor room with a low ceiling, in which there were two large tables. Bottles of wine, hunks of bread and large triangles of brie were lined up on three plates.

  It was just a quick snack, without a tablecloth or plates. Further away, near the rumbling stove, the four undertakers were finishing their lunch.

  ‘Well, well!’ M. Madinier exclaimed. ‘It comes to us all. The old give way to the young… It’s going to seem very empty, your flat, when you go back.’

  ‘Oh, my brother is giving his notice,’ Mme Lorilleux said quickly. ‘It’s a real ruin that shop.’

  They had been working on Coupeau. Everyone was urging him to give up the lease. Even Mme Lerat, who had been on good terms with Lantier and Virginie for some time, excited by the idea that they must have a fancy for each other, put on a terrified look and spoke about bankruptcy and prison. Then, suddenly, the roofer got angry and his feeling of grief turned to anger, already too well oiled.

  ‘Listen!’ he yelled at his wife. ‘I want you to listen! You’re as stubborn as a blessed mule, but this time, I warn you, I’m going to have my way.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Lantier. ‘You’ll never make her change her mind by arguing with her. You’d need a mallet to get that into her skull.’

  And both of them turned on her for a moment. None of this stopped people’s jaws from functioning. The brie vanished and the wine flowed like a fountain. Meanwhile, Gervaise was softening under the blows. She said nothing, her mouth constantly full, rushing as though she was starving with hunger. When they grew weary of it, she slowly looked up and said:

  ‘Have you had enough, then? I don’t give a damn for the shop. I’ve had enough of it. Do you hear me: I’ve had enough of it! It’s all over!’

  At this, they ordered more bread and cheese and started to talk business. The Poissons would take over the lease and offered to be responsible for the two quarters’ back rent. Moreover, Boche self-importantly accepted the deal on the landlord’s behalf. In the meantime, he even rented out a flat to the Coupeaus, the vacant flat on the sixth floor, in the same corridor as the Lorilleux. As for Lantier, why! He was quite content to keep his room, if that didn’t bother the Poissons. The constable agreed, it didn’t bother him at all; friends will always get on, regardless of their political views. And Lantier, not interfering any more in the exchange of the lease, like a man who has finally done his little bit of business, got himself a huge slice of bread and spread it with brie. He leaned back, eating with pious concentration, his face flushed, full of a sly feeling of delight, closing one eye, then the other, as he weighed up first Gervaise, then Virginie.

  ‘Hey! Old Bazouge!’ Coupeau called. ‘Come and have a drink. We’re not stuck-up, we’re all workers here.’

  The four undertakers, who were just leaving, came back to drink a toast with the company. They were not complaining, but the lady just now had weighed a fair bit and they deserved a glass. Old Bazouge stared hard at the laundress, but said nothing improper. She got up, feeling awkward, and left the men, who were starting to get seriously drunk. Coupeau, already drunk as a newt, began to blub again, putting it all down to the grief.

  That evening, when Gervaise got back home, she sat on a chair, staring into space. The rooms seemed to be huge and empty. Of course, it was great to have the extra room. But of course it was not only Mother Coupeau whom she had left behind at the bottom of her hole in the little garden in Rue Marcadet. She had lost so much; it must be a piece of her own life, and her shop, and her pride as a manager, that she had buried there. Yes, the walls were bare, so was her heart, it was a total clearing-out, a descent into the pit. And she felt too weary now; she would pick herself up later, if she could.

  At ten o’clock, as she was getting undressed, Nana wept and sulked. She wanted to sleep in Mother Coupeau’s bed. Her mother tried to scare her, but the child was precocious and death aroused only curiosity in her. Eventually, for the sake of peace and quiet, they allowed her to lie down in Mother Coupeau’s place. The little miss liked large beds in which she could stretch out and roll around. That night, she slept exceptionally well, tickled by the warm feather mattress.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Coupeaus’ new apartment was on the sixth floor, Staircase B. When you had gone past Mlle Remanjou’s, you took the corridor on the left. Then you had to turn off again. The first door belonged to the Bijards. Almost opposite, in an airless hole, under a little staircase that led up to the roof, Old Bru slept. Two flats further on, was Bazouge’s; then, finally, beside Bazouge, you had the Coupeaus, one room and a box-room overlooking the yard. And there were only two more apartments, further down the corridor, before you reached the Lorilleux at the very end.

  One room and a box-room, nothing more. This is where the Coupeaus lived now. And the room was only as big as the palm of your hand. They had to do everything there: sleep, eat and all the rest. Nana’s bed just fitted into the box-room; she had to get undressed in her parents’ bedroom and they left the door open at night so that she would not suffocate. The place was so small that Gervaise had handed over some of her things to the Poissons when she left the shop, since she couldn’t fit it all in. With the bed, table and four chairs, the apartment was full. Even though her heart was broken, she had not been able to part with her chest of drawers, but had cluttered up the floor-space with this lumping great piece of furniture, which blocked half the window. One of the casements was broken and blocked off, which reduced the amount of light and added to the gloom. When she wanted to look out into the yard, since she was getting very fat, she had to squeeze into a space narrower than her own width, leaning sideways and craning her neck before she could see anything.

  In the early days, the laundress would sit down and weep. It seemed too unkind to her, not being able to move around in her own home, after always having lots of space. She was stifling; she would stay for hours at the window, squeezed between the wall and the chest of drawers, getting a stiff neck. This was the only place where she could breathe. Yet the courtyard inspired only melancholic ideas in her. Opposite, on the sunny side, she could see her former dream, that window on the fifth floor where, every spring, flowering bean plants spread their slender stems across a cat’s cradle of strings. Her own room was on the shady side, where a pot of mignonette would die within the week. No, indeed, life was not being kind to her, this was not at all the way she had hoped to live. Instead of having an old age decked with flowers, she was heading for the mire. One day, leaning out, she had an odd sensation: she thought she saw herself down there, under the porch, near the concierge’s lodge, looking up and scrutinizing the house for the first time; this thirteen-year leap back made her heart miss a beat. The yard had not changed; the bare façade was hardly more black or more pitted; a stench rose from the rust-eaten drainpipes; washing and children’s nappies smeared with filth were drying on the window-frames; below, the uneven paving was still dirtied by cinders from the watchmaker’s and wood shavings from the cabinet-maker’s; and there was even, in the damp corner by the pump, a pond, which had run out of the dyer’s with a lovely blue tint, almost as soft as the blue that first time. But she now felt herself strangely altered and decrepit. To start with, she was no longer downstairs, looking up at the sky, happy and confident, setting her sights on the fine apartment. She was under the roof, in the dingy dead end, the dirtiest hole, the place where sunlight never penetrated. And that explained her tears: she could hardly be contented with her lot.

  Meanwhile, after Gervaise had grown a little more accustomed to it, the family’s first weeks in the new apartment seemed to be turning out quite well. Winter was almost ov
er and the few sous’ worth of furniture that they had handed over to Virginie had made it easier to settle in. Then, with the fine weather, came a stroke of luck: Coupeau was taken on for a job outside Paris, at Etampes.1 He was there for nearly three months, keeping sober, cured by the country air. You cannot imagine how beneficial it is to drinkers to leave the air of Paris, where the streets are actually laden with the fumes of wine and spirits. On his return, he was as fresh as a daisy and brought back four hundred francs, which they used to pay off the two quarters’ rent due on the shop, for which the Poissons had stood as guarantors, and some other small debts in the neighbourhood, the most pressing. Gervaise could once more walk down two or three streets that she had been avoiding. Of course, she had resumed her work as an ironer by day. Mme Fauconnier, a very decent woman as long as you kept paying her compliments, was quite happy to take her back. She even paid her three francs, as she would to a first assistant, out of respect for her previous position as manageress. In this way, it seemed that the household might be able to get by; Gervaise could even foresee the day when, by dint of hard work and savings, they might pay everything off and have a decent standard of living. At least, this is what she promised herself in the excitement of the large amount that her husband had earned. In the colder light of common sense, she took things as they came and told herself that even the good times never last.

  What made the Coupeaus suffer most now was seeing the Poissons settled into their shop. They were not excessively envious by nature, but people got on their nerves by deliberately marvelling in front of them at the improvements made by their successors. The Boches and, above all, the Lorilleux were unremitting. To listen to them, you would think there had never been a finer shop. And they spoke about the filthy state in which the Poissons had found the premises, saying that the cleaning up alone had cost thirty francs. After some thought, Virginie had settled on a little luxury grocer’s shop, with sweets, chocolate, coffee and tea. Lantier had strongly advised her to do this, saying that there were huge amounts to be made in fine foods. The shop was painted black and trimmed with yellow: two high-class colours. Three carpenters worked for a week fitting the pigeon-holes, the windows and a counter with shelves for the jars, as in a confectioner’s. The little legacy that Poisson had put by must have been seriously eroded. But Virginie was triumphant and the Lorilleux, with the help of the concierges, did not spare Gervaise a shelf, a window or a jar: they were entertained at the sight of her face falling. However little one is inclined to be envious, one must rage when others put on your shoes and stamp on you with them.