The Drinking Den Page 42

  The locksmith had thought up another little game. He would leave small coins on the stove until they were red-hot, then put them on the corner of the mantelpiece, before calling Lalie and telling her to go and buy two pounds of bread. The girl would unsuspectingly pick up the coins, cry out and throw them down, shaking her burned hand. At this, he would fly into a rage. Who had given him such a slut? She was throwing money away now! And he threatened to flay the skin off her bottom if she didn’t pick them up straight away. When the girl hesitated, she got a first warning, a clip so hard that it left her seeing stars. Silently, with two big tears gathering in her eyes, she would pick up the coins and leave, tossing them in her hand to cool them down.

  No, one could never imagine the vicious ideas that can sprout in the depths of a drunkard’s brain. One afternoon, for example, Lalie had tidied everything up and was playing with the children. The window was open, so there was a draught, and the wind, circulating in the corridor, kept nudging the door open slightly.

  ‘It’s Monsieur Hardi,’ said the little girl. ‘Come on in, Monsieur Hardi! Please come in.’

  And she curtsied to the door, welcoming the wind. Henriette and Jules, behind her, also bowed and curtsied, delighted by the game and laughing as though someone was tickling them. She was pink with pleasure at seeing them so heartily amused, and was even enjoying herself – something that happened only once in a blue moon.

  ‘Good-morning, Monsieur Hardi. How d’you do, Monsieur Hardi?’

  But a brutal hand pushed open the door and Old Bijard came in. Henriette and Jules fell back on to their bottoms against the wall and Lalie, terrified, remained frozen in the midst of a curtsy. The locksmith was holding a large, brand-new coachman’s whip, with a long white wooden handle, its leather thong ending in a slender piece of string. He put this whip down in the corner, by the bed, but did not lash out as usual with his shoe at the girl, who was already protecting herself by turning her back. A snigger exhibited his black teeth; he was very merry and very drunk, his face lit up with an idea for a jolly lark.

  ‘Huh?’ he said. ‘You playing the whore, then, you useless bitch? I could hear you dancing from downstairs… Come on, over here! Closer, for Christ’s sake! And facing me: I don’t want to smell your arse. Why are you shaking like a kitten: have I touched you? Take off my shoes.’

  Lalie, terrified at not having had her beating, had gone pale again. She took off his shoes. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and lay down fully clothed, without shutting his eyes, following the girl’s movements around the room. She went backwards and forwards, driven senseless by his stare, her limbs seized by such terror that eventually she dropped a cup. At this, without getting up, he took the whip and showed it to her.

  ‘Now, then, you little cow, take a look at this: it’s a present for you. Yes, that’s another fifty sous you’ve cost me. With this little toy, I shan’t have to run around any more, however much you try to hide in a corner. Like a go? So, you want to break the cups, do you? Hop, hop! Dance away, and make your curtsies to Monsieur Hardi!’

  He did not even sit up, but arched his back, his head pressing into the pillow, cracking the huge whip around the room, with the noise of a postilion urging on his horses. Then, bringing his arm down, he wrapped it around the middle of Lalie’s body, rolled her up and unrolled her like a top. She fell over and tried to crawl away, but he caught her again and put her upright.

  ‘Gee up!’ he yelled. ‘It’s a donkey race. Isn’t that a great idea for a winter’s morning? I’m snug in bed, no chance of catching cold, and I can keep the calves in order from a distance, without scraping my chilblains. To that corner: gotcha! And that one: gotcha there, too! And over there: gotcha again! Ah, and if you scrabble under the bed, I’ll get you with the handle. Gee up, gee up! For daddy!’

  A fleck of foam rose to his lips and his yellow eyes bulged out of their black holes. Lalie, terrified, was screaming and leaping from one corner of the room to the other, flattening herself against the floor, pressing herself to the walls; but the slender thong of the great whip reached her everywhere, cracking in her ears with the sound of a firecracker and lacerating her flesh with long burns. It was just like the dance of an animal being trained to do tricks. You should have seen the poor little cat dance, with her heels in the air, like children playing with a skipping-rope and shouting: ‘Vinegar!’ She couldn’t draw breath, bouncing like a rubber ball, letting herself be hit, blind and exhausted by the search for a safe spot. And that wolf, her father, was gloating, calling her a ‘gallivanter’ and asking whether she had had enough, and if she fully realized that she should give up any hope of escaping from him now.

  Then, suddenly, Gervaise came in, summoned by the girl’s screams. At the sight of the picture in front of her, she was seized with savage indignation.

  ‘Oh, the vile man!’ she cried. ‘Will you leave her alone, you bandit! I’m going to report you to the police, I am!’

  Bijard gave a growl, like an animal disturbed, and muttered:

  ‘Now then, cripple! You look after your own business. Perhaps I should put gloves on to smack her. As you can see, I’m just warning her, to show that I have a long reach.’

  And he shot out a final crack of the whip, which caught Lalie on the face. Her upper lip was split open and blood began to flow. Gervaise had picked up a chair and was about to attack the locksmith; but the girl held her hands out, begging, saying it was nothing, it was all over. She was dabbing the blood with the corner of her apron, telling her children to stop crying, which they were doing with great sobs as if they were the ones who had been beaten with the whip.

  When Gervaise thought of Lalie, she could no longer feel sorry for herself. She would like to have had the spirit of that eight-year-old, who alone suffered as much as all the rest of the women in their part of the house together. She had known her to be on dry bread for three months, and not even enough of that to satisfy her, so thin and weak that she had to support herself against the wall as she walked. When she smuggled in some scraps of meat for her, Gervaise thought her heart would break to see her swallowing them with large, silent tears, in small pieces, because her throat was so tight that food would no longer go down it. Always sweet and affectionate in spite of all, wise beyond her years, she performed the duties of a little mother and was nearly dying from this maternal role, too soon imposed on her childish innocence. So Gervaise modelled herself on the example of this dear creature, full of suffering and forgiveness, and tried to learn from her not to complain about her own sufferings. The only complaint that Lalie ever made was her silent look, her great dark eyes, full of resignation, in the depths of which one could see nothing but a pit of agony and sadness: never a word, just those great black eyes, open wide.

  The trouble was that the poison from the drinking den was also starting to ravage the Coupeaus. The laundress could foresee the time when her own man would be taking a whip, like Bijard, to lead the dance. And, naturally, the misfortune threatening her made her all the more appreciative of the little girl’s situation. Yes, Coupeau was well along the downward path. The time had passed when a glass of spirits gave him a healthy colour; he could no longer tap himself on the belly and boast that the hair of the dog was building him up, because his ugly yellow fat of the early years had melted away; he was getting thin and dry, and had a livid complexion with the greenish tint of a corpse rotting in a pond. His appetite had also faded: he had less and less taste for bread and had even turned his nose up at cooked meals. You could have served him the best prepared ratatouille, his stomach would heave and his softened teeth refuse to chew. To keep him going, he needed his tumbler of spirits every day: this was his ration, food and drink, the only nourishment he could take in. In the morning, when he first got out of bed, he spent a good quarter of an hour doubled up, coughing and shivering, holding his head and bringing up bile, as bitter as gall, which decoked his throat. It never failed, you could get the chamber-pot ready in advance. He was not quite stea
dy on his legs until he had taken the first glass of the day, which acted as a proper cure when its flames cauterized his guts. But, as the day wore on, he regained his strength. At first, he used to feel an itching and prickling on the skin of his hands and feet; and would joke about it, saying that someone was tickling him, and that his old woman must have put itching powder in the bed. Then his legs had become heavy and the itching had changed to dreadful cramps that seized his flesh as though in a vice. Now this he found less amusing. No longer laughing, he would stop dead on the pavement, bewildered, his ears ringing and with stars flickering in front of his eyes. Everything looked yellow and the houses danced, and he hung on to something for a few seconds, to stop himself falling over. At other times, with the sun shining on his back, he would feel a shiver like a torrent of icy water flowing from his shoulders to his backside. The thing that most got on his nerves was a shiver in both hands; his right hand in particular must have committed some dreadful crime because it had such nightmares. Good heavens, wasn’t he a man any longer! He was turning into an old woman! He would clench his muscles and seize his glass in order to hold it steady, in a granite fist, but the glass, despite all his efforts, would dance around, jumping to left and right with a regular, urgent little shudder. At this, he would chuck it down his throat, angry, shouting that he needed a few dozen like that and he would carry a barrel without moving a finger. Gervaise told him that, on the contrary, if he didn’t want the shakes, he should stop drinking. So he told her to go to hell and drank one litre after another so that he could test it again, losing his temper and accusing the passing omnibus of rattling his glass.

  In March, Coupeau came back one evening soaked to the skin. He had been on his way back with Mes-Bottes from Montrouge, where they had put themselves outside an eel soup; and they were caught in a downpour that lasted from the Barrière des Fournaux to the Barrière Poissonnière, a fair bit of road. During the night, he was taken with a frightful cough; he was very red, with a raging temperature, his chest heaving like a punctured bellows. When the Boches’ doctor saw him that morning and put his stethoscope to his back, he shook his head and took Gervaise aside, advising her to get her husband taken into hospital at once. Coupeau had pneumonia.

  Of course, Gervaise did not complain. At one time, she would have let herself be chopped up rather than entrust her man to the quacks and sawbones. When he had his accident in the Rue de la Nation, she used up all their savings so that she could nurse him. But such feelings do not last for ever when a man starts to go downhill. No, she was not going to go to all that trouble: this time they could take him and not bring him back, and she would thank them for it. However, when the stretcher-bearers did arrive and Coupeau was carried out like a piece of furniture, she went quite white and pressed her lips together. Even though she still muttered that it was a good thing, her heart was no longer in it and she wished she had just ten francs in the dresser, so that she didn’t have to let him go. She accompanied him to Lariboisière and watched the nurses putting him in bed at the far end of a long ward where rows of patients, looking like death, rose up to watch the one being brought in to join them. A nice place to die, it was, with a stifling stench of fever and a chorus of consumptive coughs that made you want to bring up your lungs – not to mention that the ward itself looked like a miniature Père Lachaise with its rows of white beds like a line of tombstones. Then, since he was just lying flat on his pillow, she left, not finding anything to say and unfortunately having nothing in her pocket to comfort him. Outside, opposite the hospital, she turned round and looked at the building. And she thought of the old days, when Coupeau was up there, leaning over the gutters and fitting his lengths of zinc, singing in the sunlight. He wasn’t drinking then and he had a complexion like a little girl. She would lean out of her window in the Hôtel Boncoeur, looking for him and finding him suspended in the sky; and they would both wave their handkerchiefs, blowing kisses by telegraph. Yes, Coupeau had worked up there, never imagining that he was working for himself. Now he was not on the roofs any more, like a merry, lustful sparrow; he was down below, in the niche that he had built for himself in the hospital where he had come to die, with his stubbly, tanned hide. My God, how far away those days of love now seemed!

  The day after next, when Gervaise called in for news, she found the bed empty. A sister explained to her that they had had to take her husband to the asylum of Sainte-Anne, because the evening before he had suddenly started to create an uproar. Oh, it had been complete madness, notions of banging his head against the wall and yelling that prevented the other patients from getting to sleep. It was to do with the drink, apparently. The drink had been brewing in his body and, when the pneumonia left him flat on his back, it had taken advantage of this to attack, racking his nerves. The laundress went home with her mind spinning. So now her man was mad! Life would really be a game if they ever let him out. Nana yelled that they must leave him in the hospital, or otherwise he would slaughter the both of them.

  It was not until the following Sunday that Gervaise was able to go to Sainte-Anne. It was a real journey. Luckily the omnibus from the Boulevard Rochechouart to La Glacière went close to the asylum. She got off at the Rue de la Santé and bought two oranges, so that she would not arrive empty-handed. Another large pile with grey courtyards, endless corridors and a stink of rancid old medicines, which did not exactly make one feel merry. But when they showed her into one of the cells, she was astonished to find Coupeau looking quite sprightly. She happened to find him on the lavatory, a very clean wooden box, which did not give out the slightest smell; and they laughed at her surprising him at his business, with his bottom exposed. Well, you know how it is when you’re ill… He sat there on his throne like a bishop, with his old cheeky look and chatter. He must be better, since he was performing regularly again.

  ‘What about the pneumonia?’ the laundress asked.

  ‘All finished!’ he answered. ‘They dragged that out of me. I’m still coughing a bit, but not with that rasping.’

  Then, just as he was leaving the lavatory to get back into bed, he made another joke:

  ‘You’ve got a strong nose. You’re not afraid of getting a pinch of snuff up it, are you?’

  And they laughed even more at this. Underneath, they were happy. It was to show their pleasure, without making speeches, that they joked about such indelicate matters. You need to have had a sick person on your hands to understand what joy it is to see them functioning properly again in every respect.

  When he was in bed, she gave him the two oranges and he was touched by the gesture. He was getting affectionate again, since he had been drinking camomile tea instead of leaving his heart on the pub bar. Eventually, she even dared mention his attack of delirium, so surprised was she to hear him talking sensibly, like in the good old days.

  ‘I’ll say!’ he exclaimed, laughing at himself. ‘I did talk some rubbish, didn’t I? Just think: I was seeing rats everywhere and crawling about on all fours to put a grain of salt under their tails! And you were calling to me because some men were after you. I mean, all sorts of stupid nonsense, ghosts in broad daylight. Oh, yes! I remember it very well: my brain’s still solid enough. But it’s over now. I do see things as I fall asleep, and there are nightmares. But everyone has nightmares.’

  Gervaise stayed with him until evening. When the house doctor came for his six o’clock visit, he got Coupeau to stretch out his hands. They were hardly trembling at all now: just a little shiver at the ends of the fingers. However, as night fell, he was gradually overcome with anxiety. Twice, he sat bolt upright, staring at the floor, into the shadows around the room. Suddenly, he reached out and appeared to be crushing some animal against the wall.

  ‘What is it?’ Gervaise asked him, fearfully.

  ‘The rats, the rats,’ he muttered.

  Then there was silence until, slipping into sleep, he lashed out, speaking in disconnected sentences.

  ‘For God’s sake! They’re eating through me! Ah,
the filthy creatures! Hold on! Keep a hand on your skirt! Look out for that bastard behind you! Damn their eyes! They’ve knocked her over! And the brutes are laughing! Brutes! Scoundrels! Brigands!’

  He was hitting out at the air, dragging at his blanket, rolling it up in a lump around his chest, as though defending himself from attack by the bearded men that he could see. At this, the warders came running and Gervaise left, horrified by the scene. But when she came back a few days later, she found Coupeau completely cured. Even the nightmares had gone, and he was sleeping like a baby, ten hours without moving. So they allowed his wife to take him home. However, the house doctor gave her the usual good advice at the door and advised her to reflect on it. If he started to drink again, he would go right back down again and it would be the end of him. It was entirely up to him. He had seen what a nice, fit chap he was when he didn’t get drunk. Well, he would have to stick to this way of living once he got home, act like a nun, imagine he was still locked up and that there was no such thing as a wine merchant’s shop.