The Drinking Den Page 45

  ‘Oh, you’ll never guess what,’ said Léonie, a pretty brunette, leaning over the cushion on which she was stamping out rose petals. ‘Well, poor Caroline is really unhappy with the boy who used to wait for her in the evenings.’

  Nana, cutting out thin strips of green paper, exclaimed:

  ‘So, what do you expect? A man who was having it off with someone different every day!’

  The girls started to giggle behind their hands and Mme Lerat had to lay down the law. She screwed up her nose and muttered:

  ‘That’s a nice way to talk, my girl – such words! I’ll tell your father about it and see what he thinks.’

  Nana puffed out her cheeks, as though repressing a burst of laughter. Her father, indeed! You should hear the way he talked! But Léonie suddenly muttered quietly and very fast:

  ‘Hey, look out! The boss!’

  Mme Titreville, a tall, dry woman, was indeed coming through the door. She usually stayed downstairs in the shop. The girls were considerably afraid of her because she never joked about anything.

  She walked slowly round the table – at which all heads were now bowed, silent and busy. She called one girl a numbskull and told her to start a daisy over again. Then she left, with the same stiff manner that she had had on entering.

  ‘Ho, ho!’ said Nana, amid a chorus of groans.

  ‘Ladies, really, ladies!’ said Mme Lerat, trying to look cross. ‘I shall be obliged to take certain measures…’

  But they didn’t listen: no one was scared of her. She was too tolerant, excited at being among these girls whose eyes were full of fun, taking them aside to worm out the secrets of their love affairs and even telling their fortunes when a corner of the table was free for her to lay out the cards. Her tough old skin and frame like a grenadier’s would shudder with a true gossip’s pleasure whenever the conversation turned to intimate matters. The one thing she didn’t like was indelicate expressions: anything was permitted, provided one did not use obscenities.

  You could say that Nana was rounding off a fine education here in the workshop. Of course, she did have a natural talent; but frequenting this group of girls, who were already well versed in poverty and vice, provided the finishing touches. They were one on top of the other, passing on the rot, just as you find in a basket of apples when some of them are mouldy. Of course, they behaved properly in company, so as not to appear too worldly-wise in character or profane in speech; in short, they acted the perfect little misses. But foul language flourished even so, in whispers and in dark corners. Two of them never met together without immediately dissolving into giggles as they swapped obscenities. Then a couple of them would walk home together in the evenings, exchanging confidences, stories that would make your hair stand on end, two excited girls stopping to talk on the pavement amid the bustle of the crowd. In addition to that, for those like Nana who had not yet fallen, there was a bad atmosphere in the works, a scent of dance-halls and none-too-proper nights, brought in by those already corrupted, with their hastily dressed hair and their crumpled skirts, looking as though they had slept in them. The laziness of mornings after the night before, and ringed eyes – those dark patches under the eyes that Mme Lerat euphemistically called ‘love’s punches’ – the swaying hips and hoarse voices, all breathed a scent of perversion over the trestle-table and the fragile bloom of artificial flowers. Nana sniffed, intoxicated, when she sensed beside her a girl who had already tasted the forbidden fruit. For a long time she used to sit next to big Lisa, who was said to be pregnant; and she would sneak eager looks at her, as though expecting her suddenly to swell up and burst. There wasn’t much you could teach her: the wretch knew it all, having learned everything on the street in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. The only thing was that in the workshop she saw it going on and, bit by bit, acquired both the desire and the courage to do it herself.

  ‘It’s stifling in here,’ she muttered, going over to one of the windows, as though to lower the Venetian blind.

  But instead, she leant out and looked once more to right and left. At the same moment, Léonie, who had been keeping an eye on a man who had stopped on the pavement opposite, shouted:

  ‘What’s that old bloke doing? He’s been spying on us for a quarter of an hour already.’

  ‘Some old tomcat,’ said Mme Lerat. ‘Nana, would you come and sit down. I’ve told you you’re not to stay by the window.’

  Nana went back to the violet stalks that she had been rolling and the whole room started to observe the man. He was a well-dressed gentleman in a topcoat, aged around fifty. He had a pale face, very serious and respectable, with a neatly cut grey beard around his chin. For an hour, he remained standing in front of a herbalist’s shop, looking up towards the blinds on the windows of the workshop. The flower girls gave little giggles, which were drowned by the noise from the street; and they bent over their work, very busy-looking, casting sidelong glances so as not to lose sight of the gentleman.

  ‘I say!’ Léonie observed. ‘He has a monocle. Oh, he’s a proper gentleman. He must be waiting for Augustine.’

  But Augustine, a large, ugly blonde girl, retorted sourly that she didn’t like old men – at which Mme Lerat, shaking her head, gave a tight smile, full of double entendre, and muttered:

  ‘You’re wrong there, dear; old men are more tender.’

  At that moment, Léonie’s neighbour, a plump little creature, said something in her ear, and Léonie suddenly fell back on her chair, twisting around and laughing hysterically, then looking towards the gentleman and laughing still louder. She stammered:

  ‘That’s it! Yes, that’s it! Oh, what a foul mind that Sophie has!’

  ‘What did she say? What did she say?’ all of them asked, consumed with curiosity.

  Léonie, wiping tears from her eyes, did not answer. When she had calmed down a little, she went back to her embossing, with the announcement:

  ‘It’s not something you can repeat.’

  They insisted, but she shook her head, amid renewed gusts of merriment. So Augustine, who was sitting on her left, begged her to whisper it. In the end, Léonie did agree to whisper it in her ear. Augustine fell about laughing in her turn. Then, she too repeated the words, which went from one ear to another, amid exclamations and stifled laughter. When they all knew Sophie’s indecent remark, they looked at one another and burst out laughing together, though blushing and slightly ashamed. Only Mme Lerat was not in the know and she was very annoyed.

  ‘Ladies, what you have done is most impolite,’ she said. ‘One should never whisper when others are present… It’s so improper, isn’t it? Such bad manners!’

  However, she did not dare ask them to repeat what Sophie had said, even though she was dying to know it. But, for a while, head bent, resting on her dignity, she enjoyed the girls’ conversation. Not one of them could make a remark, however innocent, for example about the work she was doing, without the others instantly giving it some other meaning: they twisted the sense to give it an obscene meaning, or discovered extraordinary implications beneath simple expressions such as: ‘There’s a split in my pincers,’ or ‘Who’s been in my little pot?’ And they referred everything back to the gentleman who was loitering across the street: everything came back to him. Oh, his ears must be burning! They eventually found themselves saying the most silly things, so keen were they to be smart. This did not stop them finding the game very amusing and going further and further, wild-eyed and jumping with excitement. There was no cause for Mme Lerat to be cross, they were not saying anything indecent. And she herself had them all in fits when she said:

  ‘Mademoiselle Lisa, can I have a light. My fire has gone out.’

  ‘Oh! Madame Lerat’s fire has gone out!’ they all yelled.

  She tried to explain:

  ‘When you are my age, ladies…’

  But they were not listening, all talking instead about calling the gentleman up to re-light Mme Lerat’s fire.

  Nana joined in this orgy of laughter. You should
have seen it: no double entendre escaped her, and she even made some ripe ones herself, sticking out her chin for emphasis, puffed up and bursting with delight. She was at home with vice like a fish in the water. And she went on rolling her violet stems, while rocking back and forth on her chair. Oh, she was certainly nimble, doing them in less time than it took to roll a cigarette, with just one movement to pick up a thin piece of green paper, then, whoosh, the paper was wrapped round the wire. After that, a drop of gum at the top to stick it down, and it was done: a fresh and delicate piece of greenery, ready to pin to a lady’s bosom. The trick lay in her slender, harlot’s fingers, so subtle and caressing that they seemed to have no bones. This was the only part of the job that she had managed to learn. She did the stems so well that she got all of them to do in the shop.

  Meanwhile, the gentleman on the opposite pavement had left. The girls settled down, working away in the oppressive heat. When midday sounded, the hour for lunch, each of them shook herself. Nana, who had rushed over to the window, shouted that she would go down and do the shopping, if they liked. Léonie ordered two sous’ worth of prawns, Augustine a packet of chips, Lisa a bunch of radishes and Sophie a sausage. Then, as she was going downstairs, Mme Lerat – having found it odd how interested she was in the window that day – strode after her, saying:

  ‘Wait for me! I’ll go with you, I need something.’

  Then what should she see in the alley, but the gentleman, stuck there like a candle, making eyes at Nana! The girl was blushing furiously. Her aunt seized her by the arm and frog-marched her along the pavement while the gentleman followed behind. No! The old tomcat was after Nana! Well, that was really nice, at fifteen and a half, dragging some man along by her skirts! So Mme Lerat started to question her urgently. My God, Nana didn’t know anything; he’d only been following her for five days; she couldn’t take a step outside without tripping over him. She thought he was something in business, a manufacturer of bone buttons. Mme Lerat was very impressed. She turned round and got a good look at him out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘Anyone can tell he’s well-off,’ she muttered. ‘Listen to me, kitten, you must tell me everything. You have nothing further to worry about.’

  As they spoke, they were hurrying from one shop to another: the pork butcher, the fruiterer, the delicatessen. And the orders, in sheets of grey paper, were piling up in their hands. But they remained polite and agreeable, swinging their hips and looking behind them with little laughs and sparkling eyes. Mme Lerat herself put on airs and acted the pretty young thing, because of the button-maker who was still following them.

  ‘He is very distinguished,’ she announced as they arrived back at the workshop. ‘If only his intentions were honest…’

  Then, as they were going up the stairs, she suddenly appeared to remember something.

  ‘By the way, you didn’t tell me what those young things were whispering to each other – you know, Sophie’s crude remark.’

  Nana didn’t bother to argue; but she did put her arms round Mme Lerat’s neck and forced her to come back down a couple of steps because, honestly, it was not something you could repeat aloud, even on the back stairs. Then she whispered. It was so obscene that her aunt just shook her head, with wide eyes and a grimace. At least, now she knew, and it didn’t irritate her any more.

  The flower-makers ate off their knees, so as not to make the table dirty. They hurried to get it down, bored with eating because they would rather spend the lunch-hour looking at the passers-by or exchanging confidences in corners. That day, they tried to find out where the gentleman from the morning was hiding, but he had definitely disappeared. Mme Lerat and Nana exchanged glances, with pursed lips. It was already ten past one and the girls did not seem over-anxious to pick up their pincers again, when Léonie, blowing through her lips, said, ‘Pssst!’, as house-painters do to attract each other’s attention, to warn that the boss was coming. At once, they were all on their chairs, bent over their work. Mme Titreville came in and carried out a strict tour of inspection.

  From that day on, Mme Lerat delighted in her niece’s first affair. She never left her alone, accompanying her morning and evening, on the excuse that she was responsible for her. Nana got a bit fed up with this, but she did feel quite important being looked after like a treasure, and the conversations that the two of them had in the street, with the button-maker behind them, stirred her emotions and made her want to take the plunge. Oh, her aunt could understand the feeling; even the button-maker, a man who was already old and very respectable, appealed to her, because of course feelings in mature people always have deeper roots. But she did keep her eyes open. Yes: he would have to get over her dead body before he could touch the girl. One evening, she went up to the gentleman and told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing was not very correct. He bowed politely, without replying, like an ageing dandy who was used to rebuffs from parents and relatives. She really couldn’t feel too cross with him; he had such good manners. So she gave practical advice about love, with oblique references to the disgusting tricks of men and all sorts of tales about feather-brained girls who had regretted their experiences. Nana would emerge from these chats in a languid mood with a wicked look on her white face.

  But one day in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, the button-maker had dared to stick his nose between the niece and the aunt and murmur things that shouldn’t be said. Mme Lerat, terrified, repeating that she was not even sure about looking after herself, went and told everything to her brother. From now on, it was quite another story. There were some fine old rows in the Coupeau household. To start off, the roofer gave Nana a good hiding. What were they telling him? The little slut was running after old men. Just let her get caught canoodling with someone out there, and she knew what was coming to her: he’d have her guts for garters pretty darned quick! What kind of guttersnipe was she, to set about dishonouring the family? And he would shake her, saying that, by God, she had better keep to the straight and narrow in future because he would have an eye on her himself. As soon as she came home, he would search her and scrutinize her to see if she was bringing back a peck on the eyelid, one of those little kisses that are silently planted there. He would sniff her, turn her round and round. One evening, she got another hiding because he found a black mark on her neck. The little slut dared to say that it was not a love bite! She called it a bruise, nothing more, which Léonie had given her while they were playing. He’d give her bruises, he’d teach her to mess around, if it meant breaking her limbs. Yet, at other times, when he was in a good mood, he would tease her and make fun of her. She was a nice one for the men, no doubt – flat as a sole and with dips above her collar-bones that you could put your fist in. Nana, beaten for wickedness that she had not committed, forced to listen to her father’s obscene accusations, displayed the sly and seething submission of a hunted animal.

  ‘Leave her alone, won’t you!’ Gervaise sensibly told him over and over again. ‘You’ll make her want it in the end, if you keep talking about it!’

  Oh, yes, indeed: want it she did. That is, her whole body itched to gad about and to take the plunge, as Coupeau said. He made the idea so much a part of her everyday life that even a decent girl would have been aroused by it. Indeed, his habit of shouting about it taught her things that she did not yet know, which was remarkable. So, bit by bit, she started to behave strangely. One morning, he noticed her feeling around in a paper bag, then smearing something on her face. It was rice powder, which, by some perversion, she was sticking all over the delicate satin of her skin. He wiped the paper bag across her face, hard enough to skin her, and called her a miller’s daughter. Another time, she brought back red ribbons to decorate her hat, the old black hat that she was so ashamed of. And where did these ribbons come from, he asked her angrily. Huh? Did she earn the money for them on her back? Or did she filch them somewhere? A thief or a whore, perhaps both already. Time and again like this he would see pretty things in her hands: a carnelian ring, a pai
r of sleeves with a small lace trimming, or one of those rolled gold hearts, called ‘touch-its’, which girls put between their breasts. Coupeau wanted to take the lot, but she defended her things furiously; they belonged to her, some lady or other had given them to her, or she had swapped them at work. The heart, for example, she found in the Rue d’Aboukir. When her father smashed it under his heel, she stood there quite straight, pale and tense, fighting an impulse to throw herself at the man and tear something off him for once. She had dreamed of having a heart like that for two years, and now he was destroying it. No, it was too much, some day it would have to end!

  Meanwhile, Coupeau was inspired more by a desire to tease than by any sense of decency in the way that he tried to get Nana to obey him. He was often in the wrong and his injustices infuriated the girl. She would even miss work; and when the roofer was giving her a hiding, she mocked him, told him that she wasn’t going back to Titreville, because they sat her next to Augustine, who must have eaten her own feet, her breath stank so much. So Coupeau took her himself to the Rue du Caire, and asked the manageress always to put her next to Augustine, as a punishment. Every morning for a fortnight he took the trouble to go down to the Barrière Poissonnière, so that he could accompany Nana to the door of the shop. And he stayed outside on the pavement for a quarter of an hour, to make sure that she had gone in. But one morning, when he had stopped off with a friend at a wine shop in the Rue Saint-Denis, he saw the little slut, ten minutes later, hurrying towards the end of the street, wiggling her arse. For a fortnight, she had been tricking him, climbing up two floors instead of going into Titreville’s, and sitting on a stair until he had gone. When Coupeau blamed Mme Lerat, she proclaimed very emphatically that it was not her fault. She had told her niece everything she needed to know to put her off men, so it was unfair to blame her if the kid was still attracted to the rotters. Now she was washing her hands of the whole thing and swore not to get involved in any of it from now on, because she knew what she knew, all the gossip in the family, yes, some people who accused her of wanting to go painting the town herself with Nana and take a disgusting pleasure in watching her do the splits under her very eyes. In any case, Coupeau had been told by the manageress that Nana had been corrupted by another girl, that little bitch Léonie, who had just given up making flowers to start living it up. Perhaps the child, who only wanted to savour some of the delights to be had on the streets, might still be able to get married in white with a nice crown of orange flowers on her head; but, by gosh, they would have to get a move on if they were to hand her over to a husband with nothing damaged, clean and in good condition; in short, intact, like young ladies who have some respect for themselves.