The Drinking Den (25 page)

Then, at the end of the summer, Nana upset the whole house. She was now six, and turning into a real little devil. Every morning, so as not to have her always under her feet, her mother took her to Mlle Josse's little dame school in the Rue Polonceau. There, she would tie
the dresses of her fellow-pupils together at the back, fill the mistress's snuff-box with ashes and get up to even less savoury tricks that couldn't decently be described. Twice, Mile Josse expelled her, but then took her back so as not to lose the six francs a month. When school ended, Nana would get her revenge for having been shut up by creating havoc in the doorway and the yard where the laundry women, deafened by the noise, told her to go and play. There she met up with Pauline, the Boches' daughter, and Victor, the son of Gervaise's former boss, a great lump of a boy, ten years old, who loved to gad about with these still very young girls. Mme Fauconnier, who was still on good terms with the Coupeaus, sent the lad down herself. Moreover, the whole building teemed with kids, to an extraordinary extent, swarms of them pouring down the four stairways at all hours of the day and streaming out across the yard, like flocks of noisy, ravaging sparrows. Mme Gaudron alone could answer for nine of them, fair-haired and dark, snotty, unkempt, with trousers hauled up to their eyes, socks falling around their ankles, and torn jackets showing patches of white flesh under the dirt. Another woman, who delivered bread, let seven of them loose from her lodgings on the fifth floor. Hordes emerged from every room. And, in the midst of this milling throng of pink-nosed parasites, washed clean every time it rained, there were some tall, stringy ones, others fat, already pot-bellied like grown men, and some tiny little ones, straight from the cradle, still uneasy on their feet, who went back to travelling on all fours when they needed to run. Nana reigned over this heap of brats. She would play the Little Miss over girls twice her size, deigning only to relinquish a little of her power to Pauline and Victor, those intimates who supported her in everything. This darned little hussy was constantly talking about playing mummies and daddies, undressing the littlest ones so that she could dress them up again, and wanting to search the others all over, feeling them and subjecting them to the capricious tyranny of an adult with a perverted imagination. Under her leadership, they were always getting into trouble. The gang would paddle in the coloured waters from the dyeworks, emerging with their legs dyed blue or red up to the knees. Then she would dash off to the locksmith's to pinch nails and iron filings, before setting off again to plunge into the shavings from the carpenter's shop, great piles
of shavings, good fun in themselves, where you could roll around and show your bottom. The yard was her kingdom, echoing with the clatter of little shoes frantically tumbling around and the high screech of voices that rang out whenever the swarm resumed its flight. Some days, even the courtyard was not large enough, so the gang would pour down into the cellars, then run back up, climb the whole length of a staircase, set off along a corridor, then come down a stairway again, follow another corridor, and so on, for hours on end without tiring, constantly screaming, shaking the massive building like a stampede of dangerous wild animals let loose from every side.

‘Aren't they dreadful, those little brats!' Mme Boche cried. ‘Honestly, people must have very little to do if they have time to make so many children. And they complain all the time that they don't have enough to eat!'

Boche observed that children grow on poverty like mushrooms on a dunghill. The concierge yelled after them all day long, threatening them with her broom. Eventually, she locked the door to the cellars, because she learned from Pauline – when she was giving her a slap round the face – that Nana had had the idea of playing doctors down there in the dark: the naughty little girl had been giving treatment to the others, with sticks.

Then, one afternoon, there was a dreadful scene. It was bound to happen, of course. Nana had thought up a really amusing little game. She had stolen one of Mme Boche's clogs from outside the lodge, tied a piece of string to it and started to pull it along like a cart. Victor, for his part, decided to fill it with potato peelings, and a procession began, with Nana in front, pulling the clog, while Pauline and Victor came on her right and left. After that, the whole gaggle of kids came pushing and shoving along in order, the tallest first and the little ones behind. An infant in petticoats, no higher than a boot, with a crumpled bonnet, took up the rear. The whole line of them was singing some sad dirge, with ‘ohs!' and ‘ahs!', because Nana had said that they were going to play funerals: the potato peelings were the body. When they had been round the yard once, they started over again. They thought it was great fun.

‘What on earth are they up to now?' Mme Boche muttered, coming
out of her lodge to have a look, being always suspicious and on her guard.

And when she realized what was happening:

‘But that's my clog!' she screamed in fury. ‘Oh, the little rascals!'

She set into them, slapping Nana around the face and giving Pauline a kick up the backside, since the silly goose had let them take her mother's clog. At that moment, Gervaise was filling her bucket at the pump. When she saw Nana's nose bleeding and the girl racked with sobbing, she could hardly refrain from grabbing the concierge by the hair. How could she hit a child as if she were beating an ox? She must be quite heartless, the lowest of the low. Of course, Mme Boche snapped back. When one had a slut like that for a daughter, one should keep her under lock and key. In the end, Boche himself appeared at the door of the lodge and shouted to his wife to come in and not to bother arguing with such scum. It was a complete breach between them.

In point of fact, things had not been going well between the Boches and the Coupeaus for a month or so. Gervaise, who was very generous by nature, was always giving them litres of wine, cups of stock, oranges or pieces of cake. One evening, she had gone to the lodge with the remains of a salad, wild chicory and beetroot, knowing that the concierge would kill for a salad. But the next day she went white as a sheet on overhearing Mlle Remanjou describe how Mme Boche had thrown out the chicory where everyone could see, with a contemptuous air, saying that, thank God, she was not yet reduced to eating things that others had pawed all over. From then on, Gervaise put an end to all presents: no more bottles of wine or cups of stock, no more oranges or slices of cake. You should have seen the face the Boches made! It was as though the Coupeaus were stealing from them. Gervaise realized her mistake: after all, if she had not been stupid enough to do so much for them, they would not have picked up bad habits and would have remained well-disposed. Now the concierge couldn't say enough ill of her. When the October quarter-day came around, she moaned endlessly to the owner, M. Marescot, because the laundress, who frittered away her money on all kinds of delicacies, was a day late with her rent; so that M. Marescot himself – another one who was not exactly over-polite – came into the shop, without taking off his hat, and demanded his
money; which, in the event, was given to him on the spot. Needless to say, the Boches had held out the hand of friendship to the Lorilleux. Now the Lorilleux were the ones who came for feasts in the lodge, with tender scenes of reconciliation. They would never have fallen out, had it not been for that Tip-Tap, who could cause a war between mountains. Oh, the Boches had got to know her now and understood what the Lorilleux must have had to put up with. And they all made a point of sneering, as she came through the doorway.

Despite this, Gervaise went up to see the Lorilleux one day. It was to do with Mother Coupeau who was now sixty-seven. Her eyesight had completely gone and her legs were none too solid either. She had just been obliged to give up her last cleaning job and was liable to starve to death if they didn't help her. Gervaise found it shameful that a woman of that age, with three children, could be abandoned in this way by all and sundry. Coupeau refused to speak to the Lorilleux, telling Gervaise that she could go by herself if she wished; so, her heart bursting in a fit of indignation, she went up to see them.

Once upstairs, she went in without knocking, like a tempest. Nothing had changed since the evening when the Lorilleux had first given her such an unfriendly welcome. The same piece of faded woollen cloth separated the bedroom from the workshop, in an apartment shaped like a firing range, which seemed to have been designed for an eel. At the back, Lorilleux was leaning over his bench, pinching together the links at the end of a column chain, while Mme Lorilleux was standing in front of the vice, pulling out a thread of gold. In full daylight, the little furnace gave off a pinkish glow.

‘Yes, it's me!' Gervaise said. ‘You're probably surprised, since there's a feud between us. But I'm not here for my sake, and still less for yours, as you may imagine. I've come because of Mother Coupeau. Yes, I've come to see if we are going to let her depend on the charity of others to have a crust of bread.'

‘Well, that's an entrance, bursting in like that,' Mme Lorilleux muttered. ‘She's certainly got a cheek.'

She turned her back and went on drawing out her gold thread, pretending that her sister-in-law was not there. But Lorilleux had looked up, his face ashen, and cried: ‘What's that you're saying?'

Then, since he had heard perfectly well, he went on:

‘She's been stirring things up again, has she? She's a fine one, that Mother Coupeau, pleading poverty to everyone. It was only the day before yesterday that she came here to dinner. We're doing whatever we can. We don't live in Eldorado. But if she's going to be gossiping to all and sundry, then she can stay where she is, because we don't like people spying on us.'

He, too, turned his back and went back to his bit of chain, adding, as though with regret: ‘When everyone puts in five francs a month, we'll do the same.'

Gervaise had calmed down, chilled by the Lorilleux's stony faces. She had never set foot in their flat without feeling a sense of unease. Her eyes cast down, looking towards the diamond pattern on the wooden rack, which caught the fragments of gold, she now put her case in reasoned tones. Mme Coupeau had three children; so if each of them gave five francs that would make only fifteen francs, which was really not enough; no one could live on that, they would need at least three times as much. But Lorilleux protested: where did she expect him to steal fifteen francs a month? People were odd, thinking they were rich just because they had gold in the house. Then he started on Mother Coupeau: she had to have her coffee in the mornings, she took a drop of spirits now and then, and she made demands like a person with a fortune. Good God! Everyone liked to be comfortable but, don't you see, when you hadn't put anything to one side, you did as everyone else does: you tightened your belt. In any case, Mother Coupeau was not old enough to stop work yet; she could still see perfectly well when it was a case of finding a good piece at the bottom of the serving dish; in short, she was an artful old girl who wanted to take things easy and spoil herself. Even if he had had the means, he would still have considered it wrong to support someone in idleness.

None the less, Gervaise maintained her conciliatory tone, quietly discussing these disingenuous arguments. She tried to appeal to the Lorilleux's feelings. But eventually the husband did not bother to answer, and the wife was now in front of the brazier, cleaning off a piece of chain in the little copper saucepan with the long handle, full of acid. She insisted on keeping her back turned, as though she were
a hundred miles away. And Gervaise was still speaking, watching them obstinately working away in the middle of the black dust of the workshop, their bodies bent, their clothes greasy and patched, hardened to the dull consistency of old tools in their cramped, mechanical toil. Then, suddenly, the anger welled up in her throat and she cried out:

‘Well, that's it! I prefer it this way! Keep your money! I'll take Mother Coupeau myself, do you understand? I rescued a cat the other evening, I can quite well do the same for your mother. And she will want for nothing: she'll have her coffee and her dram. My God, what a disgusting family!'

At this, Mme Lorilleux had swung round and was brandishing the saucepan as though about to throw the acid in her sister-in-law's face. She stammered:

‘Get out of here – before I do something we might regret! And don't count on the five francs, because you won't have a bean out of me! Not a bean! Five francs, indeed! I'll say! Mum would be a skivvy for you, and you'd be stuffing yourself on my five francs! If she does go to live with you, just tell her this: she could be dying, and I wouldn't send her a glass of water. Now, hop it! Clear off!'

‘What a monster that woman is!' Gervaise said, slamming the door behind her.

The very next day, she brought Mother Coupeau to live with them. She put her bed in the larger of the two box-rooms, the one in which Nana slept, lit by a round window near the ceiling. It did not take long to move her because all the furniture that Mother Coupeau had was this bed, an old walnut cupboard, which they put in the room with the dirty washing, a table and two chairs. They sold the table and had the two chairs re-covered. And the old woman, on the same evening that she moved in, went round with a broom, washed the dishes and generally made herself useful, very pleased at this solution to her difficulties. The Lorilleux were fit to burst, all the more since Mme Lerat had just made it up with the Coupeaus. One fine day, the two sisters, the florist and the chain-maker, actually came to blows over Gervaise. Mme Lerat had had the temerity to approve of the way she had behaved towards their mother. Then, seeing Mme Lorilleux's exasperation, had gone on to tease her by remarking that the laundress
had splendid eyes, eyes that would set paper on fire; whereupon the two of them, after slapping each other's faces, had sworn never to see one another again. Now, Mme Lerat spent her evenings in the shop, where she secretly enjoyed it when Big Clémence talked dirty.