The Drinking Den (17 page)

However, especially in the early days, they had to scrimp and save to make ends meet. The wedding had left them with a debt of two hundred francs. Then, they hated living at the Hôtel Boncoeur. They found it disgusting and full of undesirable types. They dreamed of having their own home, with their own furniture, which they could take care of. Twenty times, they worked out how much they would need: in round figures, it came to three hundred and fifty francs, if they wanted to start off without having a hard time to keep their heads above water and have a saucepan or casserole dish when they needed it. They could see no chance of saving such a large sum within two years; but then they had a stroke of luck: an old gentleman from Plassans asked them to send him Claude, the elder of the two boys, so he could put him in boarding-school – a generous notion on the part of an eccentric art-lover who had been very impressed by some sketches of people that the kid had done. Claude had been costing them the shirts off their backs, and now that they had only the younger boy,
Etienne,
²
to support, they put aside the three hundred and fifty francs in seven and a half months. On the day when they bought their furniture, at a second-hand shop in the Rue Belhomme, they went for a walk before going home along the outer boulevards, their hearts bursting with great joy. They had a bed, a bedside table, a chest of drawers with a marble top, a cupboard, a round table with a waxed cloth and six chairs, everything in old walnut – not to mention the bedclothes, linen and almost-new kitchen utensils. To them, this seemed to mark the moment when they finally and seriously took their place in life – an event that, by making them owners of property, gave them some standing among the well-set-up people of the neighbourhood.

For the past two months, they had been concerned with the choice of somewhere to live. What they wanted most of all was to rent a flat in the big house in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, but there was not a single room to let, so they had to give up this long-cherished dream. Underneath, if the truth be told, Gervaise was not sorry: the idea of living only a few doors away from the Lorilleux had made her quite scared. They looked elsewhere. Coupeau, quite rightly, was keen not to move too far from Mme Fauconnier's, so that Gervaise could slip home at any time of the day. And finally they did find somewhere, a big room, with a small room off it and a kitchen, in the Rue Neuve de la Goutte-d'Or, almost opposite the laundry. It was a little, two-storey house, with a steep staircase at the top of which were just two apartments, one on the right, the other on the left; the lower floor being occupied by a man who gave carriages out for hire and kept them in sheds round a huge courtyard opening into the street. The young woman was delighted: it was like living in a small town again: no busybodies next door, no gossip to worry about, just a tranquil spot that reminded her of a backstreet in Plassans, behind the ramparts; and, to cap it all, she could see her own window from the laundry, if she craned her neck, without putting down her iron.

They moved on the April quarter-day.
³
Gervaise was now eight months pregnant; but she showed a fine spirit, laughing and saying that the child would help her while she was working; she could feel its little fists pushing inside her and giving her strength. What! She took
not the least notice of Coupeau when he said she should have a lie down and take it easy! She'd lie down when the contractions started. That would be quite soon enough, because now, with another mouth to feed, they would really have to put their backs into it. She was the one who cleaned the apartment, before helping her husband to put back the furniture. She worshipped that furniture, wiping it down lovingly and breaking her heart at the slightest scratch. She would stop dead, as though she had hit herself, when she knocked any piece of it with the broom. The chest of drawers was especially dear to her: she thought how beautiful and solid it was, with that air of seriousness about it. One of her dreams, which she did not dare mention to anyone, was to have a clock to put on it, right in the middle of the marble top – the effect would be quite splendid. Had it not been for the baby that was on the way, she might have risked buying her clock, but as it was she put it off until later, with a sigh.

The family were enchanted with their new abode. Etienne's bed was in the small room, which was large enough for another child's cot. The kitchen was no bigger than the back of your hand and very dark; but if you left the door open you could see quite well. After all, Gervaise did not have to cook for thirty people; all she needed was room to make a stew. As for the main room, it was their pride and joy. As soon as they got up, they drew the curtains across the recess – curtains in white calico – and at once the bedroom was transformed into a dining-room, with the table in the middle and the wardrobe and chest of drawers facing one another. As the open fire could consume as much as fifteen
sous
' worth of coal a day, they blocked it off. Instead a little iron stove, standing on the marble slab, gave them heat even in the depth of winter for seven
sous
. Coupeau had done his best to decorate the walls, while promising further embellishments later on. A tall engraving showing a Marshal of France,
⁴
prancing about with his baton in his hand, between a cannon and a heap of cannon-balls, took the place of a mirror. Above the chest of drawers were the family photographs, in two rows, to the right and left of an old china stoup for holy water, with gilt decoration, where they kept the matches. On a corner of the wardrobe stood a bust of Pascal, and on the other side, one of Béranger,
⁵
the first grave, the other smiling, close to the cuckoo
clock, so that they seemed to be listening to its ticking. It really was a lovely room.

‘Guess how much we are paying here?' Gervaise would ask everyone who came to see them.

And when they overestimated her rent, she enjoyed a little triumph, delighted at being so well housed for so little, and exclaimed: ‘One hundred and fifty francs, not a penny more! There! It's a gift, isn't it?'

The Rue Neuve de la Goutte-d'Or itself played a large part in their feeling of satisfaction. Gervaise lived in the street, constantly going back and forth from her own house to Mme Fauconnier's. Coupeau, nowadays, would go downstairs in the evening to smoke his pipe on the doorstep. The street, which had no pavement and was full of pot-holes, went uphill. At the top end, towards the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or, there were dark shops with dirty windows: shoemakers, coopers, a dubious grocer's store and a wine merchant's, which had gone bankrupt some weeks earlier, its shutters now closed and covered with posters. At the other end, going into Paris, four-storey houses blocked off the sky; the ground floors were occupied by laundries, one on top of the other, in a bunch; the only exception was the window of a small-town barber and wig-maker's, painted green and full of soft-coloured bottles, which brightened up this overshadowed corner with its shiny copper signs, always highly polished. But the most cheerful part of the street was in the middle, where the buildings were lower and more widely-spaced, letting in air and light. The sheds of the coach-maker and the nearby soda-water factory, with the wash-house on the other side, created a vast, silent open area, in which the muffled voices of the washerwomen and the regular breathing of the steam-engine seemed to intensify the sense of withdrawal. Patches of wasteland and narrow alleyways, running between the black walls, turned this part of the street into a village. Coupeau, amused by the the sight of the occasional passer-by hopping over the constant streams of soapy water, said that it reminded him of a little place in the country where one of his uncles had taken him when he was five. Gervaise's great joy, to the left of her window, was a tree in a courtyard, an acacia with one of its branches reaching out, its meagre greenery enough to lend charm to the whole street.

It was the last day of April when the young woman gave birth. Her
contractions started in the afternoon, at about four o'clock, while she was ironing a pair of curtains at Mme Fauconnier's. She did not want to leave at once, but stayed there, writhing on a chair, running the iron across from time to time when the pain subsided for a moment. The curtains were a rush job and she insisted on finishing them; after all, it might just be indigestion and one couldn't stop for a tummy-ache. But, as she was talking about starting on some men's shirts, she suddenly went pale. She had to leave the workshop and cross the street, bent double, steadying herself against the wall. A girl from the laundry offered to accompany her, but she refused, merely asking her to slip round the corner to the midwife in the Rue de la Charbonnière. It was not as though the house was on fire: she would undoubtedly be at it for the whole night. It would not stop her getting Coupeau's dinner for him when she got home; after that she would see about lying down for a while, without even getting undressed. On the stairs, though, she was so overcome by the pain that she had to sit down right where she was; and she pressed her two fists against her mouth to stop crying out, because she would feel ashamed at being found there by a man, if one were coming upstairs. The pain went and she managed to open the door, very relieved, thinking she must definitely have made a mistake. She was going to make a mutton stew that evening with the outer part of some cutlets. Everything was still fine while she was peeling her potatoes; and the meat was browning in a pan when the sweating and the contractions returned. She was stirring the roux to make a sauce, staggering in front of the stove and blinded by tears. So what if she was having a baby? That was not a reason to leave Coupeau without anything to eat. Finally, the stew was simmering over a damped-down fire. She went back into the bedroom, thinking there was time for her to lay one end of the table. She had to put the bottle of wine down in a hurry. She did not have the strength to reach the bed, but fell down and gave birth on a straw mat on the floor. When the midwife arrived, a quarter of an hour later, that is where she delivered her.

The roofer was still working at the hospital. Gervaise wouldn't let them go and interrupt him. When he got home at seven o'clock, he found her in bed, well wrapped up and very pale against the pillow. The child was crying, swaddled in a shawl at the mother's feet.

‘Oh, my poor wife!' Coupeau said, kissing her. ‘And less than an hour ago, there I was joking while you were yelling in pain. Well, I must say, you don't make a big thing of it: you drop them in the time it takes to sneeze!'

She gave a weak smile and muttered: ‘It's a girl.'

‘Just so!' the roofer continued, teasing her to help her feel better. ‘A girl: that's what I ordered! I've got what I wanted, huh? Do you do everything I ask?'

And, picking up the child, he continued: ‘Let's have a little look at you then, Miss Slattern! You've got a very black little face. Don't you worry, it will get whiter. You'd better behave yourself, not act like a shameless little hussy, but grow up sensible, like your Mum and Dad.'

Gervaise looked at her daughter, very serious, with eyes wide and slightly clouded by a hint of sadness. She shook her head. She would have liked a boy, because boys always got by and did not run so many risks in this Paris of theirs. The midwife had to take the infant out of Coupeau's hands. She also told Gervaise not to speak; it was bad enough that people should be making so much noise around her. Then the roofer said that they would have to tell Mother Coupeau and the Lorilleux, but before that, he was dying of hunger, he wanted to eat. The new mother was very upset by the sight of him getting dinner for himself, hurrying into the kitchen to fetch the stew, eating out of a soup plate, not being able to find the bread… Despite instructions to the contrary, she bemoaned the situation and turned round and round in the sheets. It was so silly not to have managed to lay the table; the pain had brought her to the ground as if she had been poleaxed. Her poor husband would reproach her, if she lay there taking it easy while he had such a poor dinner. Were the potatoes cooked enough, at least? She couldn't remember now if she had salted them.

‘Be quiet, for heaven's sake!' the midwife exclaimed.

‘Oh, that'll be the day, when you stop her worrying,' said Coupeau, with his mouth full. ‘I bet that if you weren't here, she would be getting up to cut my bread for me. Stay on your back, you great goose! You mustn't wear yourself out, or it'll be two weeks before you're on your feet again… That stew of yours is very good. This lady will take some with me, won't you, Madame?'

The midwife refused, but said she would be glad of a glass of wine, because it had really churned her up inside, finding the poor woman down there with the baby. Coupeau left finally, to take the news to the family. Half an hour later, he was back with everybody: Mother Coupeau, the Lorilleux and Mme Lerat, whom he'd happened to run into at the Lorilleux's. Now that the family was prospering, they had become very friendly, heaping praise on Gervaise while making little qualifying gestures – a nod, a wink – as if hinting that they were reserving their real opinion. In any event, they knew what they knew; it was just that they didn't want to go against the opinion of the whole neighbourhood.

‘I've brought you the whole bunch!' Coupeau exclaimed. ‘Too bad! They wanted to see you. Don't say a word, I forbid it. They'll stay here and look at you quietly, with no formalities, right? I'm going to make coffee for them – and what coffee!'

He vanished into the kitchen. Mother Coupeau kissed Gervaise and wondered at the size of the baby. The other two women also planted big kisses on the new mother's cheeks. Then all three of them, standing by the bed, with loud exclamations, told stories of childbirth, unusual births, like having a tooth pulled, no worse. Mme Lerat examined the infant all over and pronounced her well formed, even adding, for Gervaise's sake, that this one would make a complete woman; though, finding that her head was a little pointed, she massaged it gently despite the baby's cries, in order to make it more round. Mme Lorilleux took the child away from her in annoyance: it would be enough to give a creature all sorts of bad habits, messing it about like that when the skull was still so soft. Then she looked to see whom the child resembled. They nearly came to blows. Lorilleux, craning his neck behind the women, said that the baby had nothing of Coupeau… Perhaps something of the nose, but even then… She was the very image of her mother, with someone else's eyes; and those eyes definitely didn't come from their family.