The Drinking Den (41 page)

‘And the sheets?' she went on. ‘They're lost, aren't they? Well, my girl, you'll just have to do something about it, because I want them whatever happens by tomorrow morning, do you hear?'

There was a silence. What most disturbed Gervaise was that she could feel the door to Goujet's room, behind her, half open. She guessed that the blacksmith must be there: how dreadful, that he should be listening to all these reproaches, which she could not answer because they were deserved! She tried to be very compliant and mild, lowering her head and putting the laundry on the bed as quickly as she could. But worse was to come, when Mme Goujet started to look at the items
one by one. She picked them up and threw them aside, saying:

‘Oh, you've certainly lost the knack! One used to be able to compliment you every time, but not now. You're making a real mess of it… Just look at this shirt-front: you've scorched it, the iron has marked it on the folds. And all the buttons are torn off. I don't know how you manage it, there's never a single button left on… Now there's a petticoat I'm not paying for. Can you see? The dirt's still there, all you've done is to spread it around. Thank you very much! If the laundry is not even clean any longer…'

She paused, counted the items of clothing and exclaimed:

‘What! Is this all you've brought? I'm missing two pairs of stockings, six towels, a tablecloth, some dusters… You must be joking! I sent word to you that I wanted it, ironed or not. If in one hour your girl isn't here with the rest, there'll be bad blood between us, Madame Coupeau, I warn you.'

At that moment, Goujet coughed in his room. Gervaise gave a slight shudder. My God, to think that she was being spoken to like this, in front of him! She remained standing in the middle of the room, embarrassed, awkward, waiting for the dirty linen. But after finishing her count, Mme Goujet had quietly resumed her place by the window and was darning a lace shawl.

‘And the laundry to go?' Gervaise asked timidly.

‘No, thank you,' the old woman replied. ‘There won't be anything this week.'

Gervaise went pale. They were taking their custom away from her. At this, she lost her head completely and had to sit down on a chair, because her legs were failing her. She didn't try to defend herself, finding nothing to say except:

‘Is Monsieur Goujet ill then?'

Yes, he was sick, he'd had to come home instead of going to the forge and had just gone to lie down on his bed to rest. Mme Goujet spoke gravely, wearing as always her black dress and with her white face framed in her nun's coif. The day rate for bolt-makers had been lowered once again: it had gone down from nine francs to seven, because of the machines that, now, were taking over most of the work. So they were trying to save money on everything; she was going to start doing
her own laundry again. Of course, it would have been convenient just now if the Coupeaus could have paid back the money that her son had lent them. But she was not the one to send in the bailiffs because they couldn't pay. When she began to speak of the debt, Gervaise lowered her head and seemed to be following the movement of the needle as it remade the loops, one by one.

‘And yet,' the lace-maker went on, ‘if you were to make a little effort, you could manage to pay it off. After all, you eat very well, and spend a lot, I'm sure… If you were only to give us ten francs a month – '

She was interrupted by Goujet's voice, calling: ‘Mother! Come here!'

When she got back and sat down, almost immediately, she changed the subject. The blacksmith had doubtless told her not to ask Gervaise for money. But, in spite of herself, after five minutes, she once more mentioned the debt. Oh, she'd known what would happen! The roofer was drinking up the shop and he would take his wife down with him. If her son had listened to what she said, he would never have lent those five hundred francs. By now, he would be married, instead of pining away with nothing to look forward to except misery all his life. She started to get carried away, saying harsh things and openly accusing Gervaise of conspiring with Coupeau to take advantage of her booby of a son. Yes, there were some women who would play the hypocrite for years, until their misdemeanours finally came to light.

‘Mother! Mother!' Goujet's voice called, this time more fiercely.

She got up and when she returned, picked up her lace-work and said: ‘Go in, he wants to see you.'

Trembling, Gervaise left the door open. The scene disturbed her deeply because it was like an admission of their feelings in front of Mme Goujet. The little bedroom was calm, with pictures around the walls and a narrow iron bedstead, like the room of a fifteen-year-old boy. Goujet's large form, all his strength drained by what Mother Coupeau had told him, was stretched out on the bed, red-eyed, his fine yellow beard still wet with tears. He must have pounded his pillow with his great fists, in the first moment of his fury, because the feathers were escaping through the torn pillowcase.

‘Listen, mother is wrong,' he told the laundress, almost in a whisper. ‘You don't owe me anything. I don't want to hear a word about it.'

He had sat up and was looking at her. At once, large tears welled up in his eyes.

‘Are you ill, Monsieur Goujet?' she murmured. ‘Please tell me what is wrong.'

‘Thank you, nothing. I tired myself out yesterday. I am going to sleep a little.'

Then his heart broke and he was unable to restrain himself:

‘Oh, my God! My God! It should never have been, never! You swore to me. And now it's happened! It's happened! Oh, my God! I can't bear it! Go away!'

He gestured for her to leave, gently begging her. Instead of going over to the bed, she went out, as he asked her to, bemused, with nothing to say that would comfort him. In the room next door, she picked up her basket, but still found herself unable to go out, trying to find the right words… Mme Goujet went on with her darning, without looking up; eventually, she was the one who said:

‘Very well, good-evening. Send me back my laundry. We'll settle up later.'

‘Yes, that's right. Good-evening,' Gervaise stammered.

She shut the door slowly, casting a final glance at this clean, well-ordered household, feeling that she was leaving a part of her own decency behind here. She went back towards the shop with the listless manner of a cow going back to its field, not troubling about the way. Mother Coupeau was on a chair by the boiler, out of bed for the first time. But the laundress did not even say a word against her: she was too tired, her bones ached as though she had been beaten, and she thought that in the end life was simply too hard, but if one didn't die straight away, one couldn't be expected to tear one's own heart out.

From now on, Gervaise didn't give a damn for anything. She had a vague wave that she would make, which meant that everyone could go to hell. With every fresh worry, she resorted increasingly to her one pleasure, which was eating three times a day. The shop could have collapsed; provided she was not underneath it, she would have left it behind happily, without a shirt on her back. And the shop was collapsing, not all at once, but bit by bit day after day. One by one the customers lost patience and took their washing elsewhere. M. Madinier,
Mlle Remanjou, even the Boches, had gone back to Mme Fauconnier, who was more punctual and more careful. People eventually got tired of asking for the same pair of stockings for three weeks on end and wearing shirts with last Sunday's grease stains still on them. Gervaise didn't miss a mouthful, but said good riddance, giving them all a piece of her mind and saying she was only too delighted at not having to handle their filthy clothes. Yes, indeed! The whole neighbourhood could leave, she would be spared a fine heap of muck; and she would have that much less work. Meanwhile, she kept only those who paid badly, a few tarts and Mme Gaudron, whose washing smelled so bad that no other laundry in the Rue Neuve wanted to take it. The business was in ruins, she had to dismiss her last assistant, Mme Putois, and was left with only her apprentice, squinting Augustine, who was getting more stupid as she got older. Even then, they did not always have enough work between the two of them, but would sit around on a stool for a whole afternoon. In short, the slippery slope. She was heading for disaster.

Of course, with laziness and poverty, in came dirt. It was impossible to recognize the lovely sky-blue shop that had once been Gervaise's pride and joy. The window-panes and window-frames, which no one bothered to wash, were spattered from top to bottom with mud from passing carriages. In the window, hanging on the brass rod, were three grey rags, left behind by customers who had died in hospital. Inside, it was still more squalid. The damp from the clothes hanging up to dry had loosened the wallpaper; the Pompadour chintz was falling in shreds that hung like spiders' webs laden with dust; the boiler, broken, with holes driven in it by the poker, was surrounded in its corner by the tangle of old iron that you find in a junk shop; the trestle-table seemed to have served a whole regiment, so stained it was with coffee and wine, and smeared with jam and grease from the Monday feasts. On top of all this, there was a sour odour of starch, a smell compounded of mould, burned fat and grime. But Gervaise felt quite contented here. She had not noticed the shop deteriorate; she gave in and got used to the torn paper and the greasy woodwork, just as she managed to wear torn skirts and to stop washing her ears. Dirt was even a warm nest in which she liked to crouch. Letting things slide, waiting for dust
to fill up the holes and leave a velvet blanket over everything, feeling the house sink around one into a drowsy idleness: all this intoxicated her with a real sensual pleasure. Let her be left in peace, first and foremost; she didn't care about the rest. Even though her debts were still mounting, they no longer worried her. She was losing all sense of honesty; she would pay, or perhaps not: it was all left vague, she preferred not to know about it. When a tradesman refused to allow her any more credit, she would open an account with the one next door. She owed money everywhere and had debts every ten yards along the street. In the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or alone, she no longer dared walk in front of the coal merchant's, the grocer's or the fruiterer's; so, when she went to the wash-house, she had to make a detour by the Rue des Poissonniers, a round trip often minutes at least. Shopkeepers started to call her a cheat. One evening, the man who had sold Lantier's furniture caused an uproar among the neighbours, yelling that he would give her a good hiding and repossess her goods if she didn't cough up his money. Naturally, such scenes left her trembling all over, but she would shake herself like a beaten dog and that was it; she wouldn't eat with any less appetite the next evening. What a cheek they had, bothering her! She didn't have any money – she couldn't mint it for herself, could she? In any case, shopkeepers stole so much themselves, they should expect to wait. And she would go back to sleep in her hole, trying not to think of what must inevitably happen. Yes, damnation take it, she would go under one day, but until then she preferred to be left alone.

Meanwhile, Mother Coupeau was enjoying a recovery. For another year, the business staggered on. Needless to say, in summer, there was always a little more work: the white skirts and cotton dresses of the streetwalkers from the outer boulevard. It had turned into a gradual collapse, their noses scraping a little more in the mud each week, yet some ups as well as downs – evenings when they were rubbing their bellies before an empty larder, others when they were stuffing themselves with veal. Mother Coupeau was constantly to be seen on the streets with parcels hidden under her apron, strolling towards the pawnbroker's in Rue Polonceau. She hunched her back, with the smug and greedy look of a pious old woman on her way to mass; and she
took a certain pleasure in it. All these money dealings amused her, all this haggling among pedlars and pawnshops titillated an old gossip's fancy. Shop assistants in the Rue Polonceau knew her well, calling her ‘Old Mother Four Francs', because she always asked for four francs when they offered her three, on parcels as large as two
sous
' worth of butter. Gervaise would have flogged off the business; she was seized with a passion for putting things in hock and would have shaved her head if anyone had offered her money against her hair. It was too convenient: one couldn't help going there for a bit of change when one was short of the money for a loaf of bread. The whole caboodle went the same way: linen, clothes, even tools and furniture. To start with, she took advantage of good times to get stuff out of the pawnbroker's, only to put it back in hock a week later. Then she began not to care about her possessions and let them go, selling the pawn slips. Only one thing broke her heart and that was putting her clock in pawn, to pay a twenty-franc bill when the bailiff came with a summons. Up to then, she had sworn she would starve rather than part with her clock. When Mother Coupeau took it away in a little hat box, she slumped into a chair, her arms dangling, tears in her eyes, as though her whole fortune had been taken away. But when Mother Coupeau came back with twenty-five francs, this unexpected loan – five francs more than she had expected – consoled her. She immediately sent the old woman back out to fetch four
sous
' worth of brandy in a glass, simply to celebrate the hundred-
sou
piece. Often nowadays, when they were getting on well, they would have a tipple together on the corner of the trestle-table – a mixture of spirits and cassis. Mother Coupeau had a knack of bringing a full glass back in the pocket of her apron, without spilling a drop. No need for the neighbours to know, was there? The truth was that the neighbours knew perfectly well. The fruiterer, the tripe merchant and the grocer's boys would say: ‘How about that! The old girl's going to my aunt's'; or: ‘Look: the old girl's bringing her hooch back in her pocket.' Inevitably, this turned people even more against Gervaise. She was guzzling it all up, she would soon have done for her business altogether. Yes, indeed: three or four more mouthfuls and the place would be as clean as a picked bone.