The Drinking Den (40 page)

‘You've had it, chum,' the others told Coupeau.

They ordered two more bottles of wine. The glasses were kept full and they were getting more and more drunk. At around five o'clock, it started to get disgusting, so Lantier fell silent and thought of leaving; when people started shouting at each other and tipping wine on the floor, it wasn't the place for him any more. Now Coupeau was getting on his feet to make the drunkard's sign of the cross. On his head, he said Montparnasse; on his right shoulder, Menilmonte; on the left shoulder, La Courtille; in the middle of the belly, Bagnolet; and in the pit of his stomach, sauté of rabbit, three times. So the hatter, taking advantage of the shouts raised by this performance, calmly headed for the door. The others didn't even notice that he had gone. He had already drunk a fair amount; but, once outside, he shook himself and recovered his balance. He calmly returned to the shop, where he told Gervaise that Coupeau was with some friends.

Two days went by. The roofer had not reappeared. He was knocking around in the neighbourhood, no one quite knew where, though some people said they had seen him at Mère Baquet's, at the Papillon or at the Petit Bonhomme Qui Tousse. The only thing was that some people insisted that he was alone, while others had met him together with seven or eight other drunks of his sort. Gervaise shrugged her shoulders with a show of resignation. Good Lord, it was something one had to get used to! She didn't go running after her man; in fact, if she did see him in a wine shop, she would go the long way round to avoid putting him in a temper; and she waited for him to come back, listening at night in case she heard him snoring outside the door. He would sleep on a pile of garbage, or on a bench, or in a patch of waste ground, or lying across a gutter. The next day, still not quite sobered up from the night before, he went off again, knocking on the shutters of cabarets, careering off once more on a crazy progress from one to the next, surrounded by little glasses and big ones, and wine bottles, drifting away from his friends and meeting up with them again, setting off on journeys from which he returned befuddled, while the streets reeled, night fell and day broke, with no other thought than to drink and sleep it off wherever he happened to be. While he was sleeping it off, that was it. On the second day, Gervaise did go to Père Colombe's drinking den, just to have some news. He had been seen there five times, there
was nothing more anyone could say. She had to be satisfied with taking back the tools, which had stayed under the bench.

That evening, Lantier, seeing that the laundress was worried, suggested accompanying her to the music-hall, to take her mind off it. At first she refused: she wasn't in the mood to enjoy herself. Otherwise, she would not say no, because Lantier had made the offer in too straightforward, decent a way for her to suspect any ulterior motive. He seemed to be concerned about her misfortune and appeared genuinely paternal. Coupeau had never slept out for two nights on end; so, in spite of herself, she went to stand by the door every ten minutes, without putting down her iron, looking up and down the street to see if her man was coming home. She was getting pins and needles in her legs, she said, and couldn't stand still. Of course, Coupeau could lose a limb or fall under a carriage and be killed; it would be good riddance: she refused to have the slightest sympathy for a disgusting individual of his kind. But, when it came down to it, it was irritating to be constantly asking oneself whether or not he would be coming home. And, when the gaslights went on, as Lantier once more mentioned the music-hall, she agreed to go. After all, it would be too silly of her to refuse a chance of enjoyment, when for the past three days her husband had been living the life of Riley. Since he wasn't coming home, she would go out in her turn. The place could burn to the ground if it wanted. Life was getting her down so much that she could happily have set it on fire herself.

They had a quick dinner. At eight o'clock, as she left arm in arm with the hatter, Gervaise asked Mother Coupeau and Nana to go to bed straight away. The shop was shut. She went out through the courtyard door and gave the key to Mme Boche, with the message that if that pig of hers came home, would she be good enough to put him to bed.

Lantier was waiting for her in the porch, well turned out and whistling a little tune. She had her silk dress on. They walked slowly along the pavement, holding close to one another and lit by the shafts of light shining out from the shops, which revealed them smiling and half-whispering.

The music-hall was the
café-concert
in the Boulevard de Rochechouart,
once just a small café, now extended over the courtyard by a wooden structure. At the door, a line of glass balls lit up the entrance. Long posters, stuck on wooden panels, had been set up on the ground, level with the gutter.

‘Here we are,' said Lantier. ‘This evening sees the début of the popular dramatic singer Mademoiselle Amanda.'

Then he spotted Bibi-la-Grillade, who was also reading the notice. Bibi had a black eye, the result of a fight the evening before.

‘Hey, what about Coupeau?' the hatter said, looking round. ‘Have you lost Coupeau, then?'

‘Oh, a long time ago! Haven't seen him since yesterday,' the other man replied. ‘There was a bit of a punch-up coming out of Mère Baquet's. I don't like it when fists start flying. You know… there was a fight with the waiter at Mère Baquet's, over a bottle of wine that he wanted us to pay for twice. So I was off; I went to get a bit of shut-eye.'

He was still yawning; he had been sleeping for eighteen hours. Moreover, he had sobered up completely, but still looked befuddled, his old jacket covered in down from his mattress. He must have gone to sleep fully dressed.

‘So you don't know where my husband is?' the laundress asked.

‘No, not the foggiest… It was five o'clock when we left Mère Baquet's. There you are! Perhaps he went down the street. In fact, I do think I saw him going into the Papillon with a coachman. Oh, what fools we are! No good for anything!'

Lantier and Gervaise spent a very pleasant evening in the music-hall. At eleven o'clock, when it closed, they headed back, strolling along, taking their time. The cold was a bit sharp and people were returning home in groups; and there were some girls laughing loudly under the trees, in the dark, because their men were trying to go too far. Lantier was quietly humming one of Mlle Amanda's songs: ‘It tickles my nose…' Gervaise, dazed, as if drunk, took up the refrain. It had been very warm in the café; and, as well as that, the two drinks she had had, together with the pipe smoke and the smell of all those human bodies heaped together, was making her feel a little sick. But what she remembered most of all was Mile Amanda. She would never have dared appear in public undressed like that – though you had to admit
that the lady in question had wonderful skin. And she listened, with voluptuous curiosity, as Lantier made precise remarks about the singer's body, with the assurance of a gentleman who had counted every one of her ribs.

‘Everyone is asleep,' Gervaise said, after she had rung three times, and the Boches had not pulled the cord to release the catch.

The door opened, but the porch was dark, and when she knocked on the window of the lodge to ask for her key, the drowsy concierge started spinning her some yarn that at first she didn't grasp. Eventually, she understood that the constable, Poisson, had brought Coupeau home in a dreadful state and that the key must be in the lock.

‘Damn it!' Lantier muttered when they went in. ‘What's happened here? It's disgusting!'

It did indeed smell very strongly. Gervaise, who was looking for matches, walked on something damp. When she managed to light a candle, they were greeted by a pretty sight. Coupeau had thrown up all over the place. The room was full of vomit, the bed was covered in it, as was the carpet; even the chest of drawers was splattered. Moreover, Coupeau had fallen off the bed where Poisson must have thrown him, and was snoring away in the midst of his filth. He was spread out in it, sprawling like a pig, one cheek spattered with vomit and exhaling his foul breath through an open mouth, his already grey hair lying in the wide pool around his head.

‘Oh, the swine! The swine!' Gervaise said, over and over, in exasperation. ‘He's fouled everything… No, no, not even a dog would have done that. A dead dog is cleaner.'

Neither of them dared to move, uncertain where to step. The roofer had never come home so drunk or made such a repulsive mess in the room. Hence the sight of him was a severe blow to whatever feelings his wife still had for him. Previously, when he had come back slightly tipsy or with one too many under his belt, she had been indulgent, and not repelled by it. But this was too much; she felt nauseous. She wouldn't have picked him up with a pair of tongs. The very idea of this slob's skin coming into contact with her own repelled her, as if she had been asked to lie down beside the corpse of someone who had died of a frightful disease.

‘I must sleep somewhere, though,' she muttered. ‘I can't go back out into the street to sleep… Oh, I'll have to get past him somehow!'

She tried to step over the drunkard and had to support herself on one corner of the chest of drawers, to avoid slipping on the vomit. Coupeau was completely barring the way to the bed. So Lantier, smiling to himself at the realization that she would not be putting her head on her own pillow that night, took one of her hands and said, in a low voice, full of feeling:

‘Gervaise… Listen to me, Gervaise, dear…'

She knew what he meant and pulled her hand away, in confusion, saying
tu
to him as she used to.

‘No, leave me alone… I beg you, Auguste, go back to your room… I'll manage, I'll get in by the foot of the bed.'

‘Come, come, Gervaise, don't be silly,' he said. ‘It smells too foul, you can't stay here. Come with me. What are you frightened of? He can't hear us, can he?'

She struggled, emphatically shaking her head. Hardly knowing what she was doing, as if to show that she would stay there, she took off her clothes, threw her silk dress across a chair and forcefully undressed to her chemise and underskirt, until she was all white, her neck and arms bare. The bed belonged to her, didn't it? She wanted to sleep in her own bed. Twice again she tried to find a clean corner and to get across to it. But Lantier would not give up, taking her by the waist and saying things to inflame her passions. Oh, she was in a fine situation, with an idle husband in front, preventing her from getting decently under her blankets, and a bastard of a man behind her, whose only thought was to take advantage of her misfortune to possess her again! The hatter was raising his voice so she begged him to be silent. And she listened, bending her ear towards the little room where Nana and Mother Coupeau were. The child and the old woman must both be asleep, because she could hear heavy breathing.

‘Auguste, stop it, you'll wake them up,' she went on, clasping her hands. ‘Be reasonable. Some other day, somewhere else… Not here, not in front of my daughter.'

He said nothing, but just smiled; then, slowly, he kissed her ear, as he used to kiss her in the old days, to tease her and excite her. At this,
her strength left her, she felt a great humming, a great shudder go through her flesh. Even so, she took one more step; but she had to come back. She couldn't do it, her repulsion was too great and the smell was such that, had she stayed, she would have been sick in the bed herself. Coupeau, as though lying on a feather mattress, stunned by drink, was sleeping it off, his limbs slack and his face contorted. The whole street might have come in to embrace his wife and he would not have turned a hair.

‘Too bad,' she stammered. ‘It's his fault. I can't do it… Oh, my God! Oh, my God! He's driving me out of my bed. I have nowhere to sleep. Oh, no, I can't bear it, it's his fault…'

She was shivering, not sure what she was doing. And, while Lantier was pushing her into his bedroom, Nana's face appeared behind one of the panes in the glass door of the little room. She had just woken up and quietly got out of bed, in her nightdress, pale from sleep. She looked at her father, lying in his own vomit; then, with her face pressed to the glass, she stayed, waiting until her mother's skirt had vanished into the other man's room, opposite. She was very serious. She had the large eyes of a perverted child, lit up with curious sensuality.

When she was stuck in bed, Mother Coupeau was a real pain in the neck. Admittedly, there was nothing particularly appealing about the little room where she slept with Nana; there was just enough space for two chairs between the child's bed and her own. The wallpaper, a faded old grey paper, was hanging off in places. The round skylight, up near the ceiling, gave the room only the pale, dim light of a cellar. Being there would put years on a person, especially one who couldn't breathe. At nights, at least, when she lay awake, she could listen to the child sleeping and that distracted her. But during the day, since no one kept her company from morning to night, she groaned and wept and kept on repeating the same thing to herself for hours on end, rolling her head around on the pillow:

‘My God, how wretched I am! My God, how wretched I am! In prison – yes! They're leaving me to die in prison!'

And as soon as someone did come to see her, Virginie or Madame Boche, to ask how she was feeling, she wouldn't say, but instead recited the litany of her complaints:

‘Oh, it's dear, the bread I eat here! No, it would be easier for me to be among strangers! I'm telling you, I wanted a cup of camomile tea
and, do you know, they brought me a whole water jug full of it, as a reproach to me for drinking too much. It's like Nana; now, that child I brought up myself: she runs off in the morning barefoot and I don't see her again. Anyone would think I smelled bad. Yet, at night, she sleeps like a top and wouldn't wake up a single time to ask how I was feeling. In short, I'm just an embarrassment to them; they're waiting till I breathe my last. Well, it won't be long now! I don't have a son any longer, that bitch of a laundress has stolen him from me. She'd beat me, she'd finish me off, if she wasn't afraid of the law.'

Gervaise was indeed a little rough on occasions. The whole place was going downhill; tempers were short and people would fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. One morning, when he was nursing a hangover, Coupeau yelled: ‘The old woman says she's going to die, but she's not getting on with it!' The remark was a terrible blow to Mother Coupeau. They reproached her with the amount that she cost and calmly remarked that, without her, there'd be a big saving. The truth was that she didn't behave as she should, either. For example, when she saw her eldest daughter, Mme Lerat, she complained of poverty and accused her son and daughter-in-law of leaving her to die of hunger – and all so that she could get a twenty-
sou
piece out of her and spend it on treats. She would also spread the most terrible tales to the Lorilleux about the use made of their ten francs, which she said went to satisfy the laundress's little whims: new hats, cakes gobbled up secretly in corners – and still worse things that don't bear repeating. Two or three times she almost had the whole family at each other's throats. At one moment, she was on one side, then she was on the other. In short, it was a real mess.

When this crisis reached its peak that winter, one afternoon when Mme Lorilleux and Mme Lerat met at her bedside, Mother Coupeau winked at them, to tell them to bend down. She could hardly speak, but she whispered:

‘It's shocking the goings-on! I heard the two of them last night. Yes, yes, Tip-Tap and the hatter. They were really at it! That Coupeau's a fine one. Shocking!'

In short gasps, coughing and spluttering, she told them that her son must have come back dead drunk, the night before. She herself didn't
sleep, so she could hear every sound: Tip-Tap's bare feet pattering on the floor, Lantier's hiss as he called her in, the noise of the communicating door being opened gently and all that followed. It must have lasted until daybreak, but she didn't know the time exactly because, try as she might, she had eventually dozed off.

‘The most revolting thing is that Nana must have heard it,' she went on. ‘Because she was disturbed all night, even though she usually sleeps like a log. She was jumping up and down and turning over and over as though there were burning coals in her bed.'

The two women did not seem surprised.

‘Well, now!' said Mme Lorilleux. ‘It must have begun on the first day. But if Coupeau doesn't mind, it's none of our business. Even so, it's not exactly a credit to the family.'

‘Well, if I was here,' said Mme Lerat, pursing her lips, ‘I'd put the fear of God into her. I'd scream something – anything: “I can see you!”, perhaps, or: “Police!” A servant girl who works for a doctor told me that, according to her master, this could kill a woman stone dead at a particular moment. And suppose she was struck down, it would be quite right, wouldn't it? She would have been punished right where she had sinned.'

Very soon, everyone around and about knew that Gervaise went, every night, to see Lantier. When she talked to the neighbours, Mme Lorilleux was loudly indignant; she felt sorry for her brother, that silly billy whose wife was cuckolding him from top to bottom; and, from what she said, the only reason she still ventured into that shambles was for the sake of her poor mother, who was forced to live amid these disgraceful goings-on. So the whole neighbourhood blamed Gervaise. She must have been the one who seduced the hatter: you could see it in her eyes. Yes, despite all the unpleasant rumours, that sly fellow Lantier remained in people's good books because he still adopted a gentlemanly manner with everyone, walking along the pavement reading his newspaper, always considerate and gallant with the ladies, never short of sweets and flowers to give them. For heaven's sake, he was only doing his job as cock of the roost! A man is a man; you can't expect him to resist a women if she throws herself at him. But there was no excuse for her; she was a disgrace to the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or.
And the Lorilleux, being godfather and godmother, lured Nana round to their house, to get all the details. When they questioned her in a roundabout way, the girl assumed the air of a half-wit and quenched the flame in her eyes beneath heavy, hooded eyelids.

In the midst of all this public indignation, Gervaise carried on quietly, weary and only half awake. At the start, she felt very culpable and dirty; she was disgusted with herself. When she came out of Lantier's room, she would wash her hands, wetting a towel and rubbing her shoulders till they were almost raw, as if to scrub away her filth. If Coupeau tried to mess around with her at such times, she would lose her temper and run shivering to the back of the shop; and, conversely, she would not let the hatter touch her, if her husband had just kissed her. She would like to have changed her skin as she changed from one man to the other. But, slowly, she grew accustomed to it. It was too tiring to clean herself up every time. Her laziness made her lax, while her need for happiness led her to derive all that she could from her troubles. She was indulgent towards herself and others, simply trying to arrange things so that no one suffered too much. So what? If her husband and her lover were contented, if the household chugged along in its own sweet way, if there was a pleasant atmosphere from morning to night, if they were all well fed, pleased with life and taking things easy, there was really no reason to complain. Then, after all, she couldn't be doing anything so very wrong, since it was turning out so well, to everybody's satisfaction; normally, when one does something wrong, one is punished for it. In this way, her shamelessness became a habit. Now, it all worked as regularly as mealtimes: whenever Coupeau came home drunk, which happened at least every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the week, she went to Lantier's. She shared out her nights. Eventually, when the roofer was merely snoring too loudly, she would leave him fast asleep and carry on sleeping peacefully in the lodger's bed. Not that she felt more affection for the hatter. No, it was just that he was cleaner, she slept better in his room, it felt like having a bath. In short, she was like one of those cats which like to sleep curled up in a ball on a pile of white linen.

Mother Coupeau never dared speak about this openly; but, after a row, when the laundress had shaken her up a bit, she hinted at it
plainly. She said that she knew some quite stupid men and some pretty loose women – and she used even stronger language, coarse enough for someone who had once been in the tailoring trade. The first few times, Gervaise just stared at her, without answering. Then, while also avoiding any precise reference to the situation, she defended herself, with arguments couched in general terms. When a woman had a drunkard for a husband, a filthy beast who lived in the mire, then it was understandable if such a woman sought cleanliness elsewhere. She went further, giving them to understand that Lantier was her husband as much as Coupeau, and possibly more. Hadn't she been going with him since she was fourteen? Didn't she have two children by him? Well, in the circumstances, anything could be forgiven and no one had the right to cast the first stone. She claimed she was only obeying the laws of Nature. And let anybody try to reproach her: she could give as good as she took. There was nothing too pure about the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or! Little Mme Vigouroux was on her back in that coal heap of hers from morning to night. The grocer's wife, Mme Lehongre, was sleeping with her brother-in-law, a great slobbering brute whom she, Gervaise, wouldn't have touched with a shovel. The watchmaker across the street, prim and proper gentleman that he was, nearly went to court because of the dreadful things he was up to, sleeping with his own daughter, a shameless hussy who cruised the boulevards. And, with a sweeping gesture that embraced the whole neighbourhood, she said it would take her an hour just to spread out the dirty linen of all these people, the way they slept like brutes, fathers, mothers, children, one on top of the other, wallowing in their own dirt. Oh, she could tell you a few things; there was filth everywhere, seeping into all the houses around and about. Yes, indeed, it was a fine thing, what went on between men and women in this part of Paris, where they were so poor that they had to live one on top of the other. If you were to put the two sexes into a mortar, all you would get out of it would be enough dung to manure the cherry trees on the Plain of Saint-Denis.

‘It would be better for them if they didn't spit in the air, if they don't want it to fall right back in their eyes,' she would say, when pushed to the limit. ‘Everyone to her own nest, no? They should let a person live her life as she pleases, if they want to live theirs… I'm
not criticizing anyone, as long as I'm not dragged through the dirt by those who spend their own time there, head down.'

And when, one day, Mother Coupeau came out more openly, she told her through clenched teeth:

‘You are in your bed, you take advantage of that… Listen, you're wrong, you see how kind I am because I've never thrown your life back in your face, have I? Oh, it's a pretty one, I know, with two or three men even while Old Coupeau was still alive… No, don't cough, I've said what I want. I'm just asking you to leave me in peace, that's all.'

The old woman nearly suffocated. The following day, when Goujet came to collect his mother's laundry while Gervaise was out, Mother Coupeau called him in and kept him sitting for a long time at her bedside. She was well aware of the blacksmith's feelings and had seen him looking gloomy and miserable for some time, because he suspected the awful things that were going on. So, in order to get her own back for the argument of the previous night and get it all off her chest, she bluntly told him the truth, weeping and moaning, as though Gervaise's misbehaviour was doing harm chiefly to her. When Goujet came out of the room, he had to lean against the wall, overcome with misery. Then, when Gervaise returned, Mother Coupeau shouted out that she was wanted immediately at Mme Goujet's with the laundry, whether it was ironed or not; and she was so excited that Gervaise realized something was up and guessed the unpleasantness and heartbreak that awaited her.

Very pale, her limbs already feeling weak, she put the washing in a basket and set out. For years, she had not paid a single
sou
to the Goujets; the debt still amounted to four hundred and twenty-five francs. Every time, she took the money for the washing, and said that she felt bad about it. It was a source of great shame to her, because she appeared to be taking advantage of the blacksmith's friendship to fleece him. Coupeau, who had fewer scruples nowadays, said that he must have given her a squeeze when no one was looking, so it served him right. But Gervaise, despite the situation that had arisen with Lantier, found this repellent and asked her husband if he had sunk so low as to want that sort of money. No one was allowed to say anything against
Goujet in front of her; her affection for the blacksmith was like a last remaining shred of honour. So, every time she brought washing back to these good people, she felt sick at heart as soon as she set foot on the stairs.

‘Ah, it's you at last,' Mme Goujet said drily as she opened the door. ‘When I need death, I'll send you to look for it.'

Gervaise came in feeling so awkward that she didn't even dare stammer out an excuse. She was never punctual any more, not arriving on time and even keeping customers waiting a week or so. Gradually, she was letting everything go.

‘I've been expecting you the whole of this week,' the lace-maker continued. ‘And, what's more, you lie to me. You send your girl to tell me some story or other: you're just doing my washing, it will be sent round to me that very evening, or else there's been an accident and the bundle has fallen into a bucket of water. And while all this is going on, I'm wasting my time; nothing comes and I worry about what can have happened to it. No, you're not being reasonable… Anyway, what have you got in that basket? Is it all there for once? Have you brought me that pair of sheets that you've been keeping for a whole month and the shirt that got left behind in the last wash?'

‘Yes, yes,' Gervaise muttered. ‘I've brought the shirt, here it is.'

But Mme Goujet protested that it wasn't her shirt, she didn't want it. This was too much! She was being given other people's laundry! Last week, she had already had two handkerchiefs without her mark. She didn't like it all, the idea of getting anybody's old laundry. And, as it happened, she liked her own things.