The Drinking Den (46 page)

The evening before, while Nana was just looking in wonder at the presents spread out on the chest of drawers, Coupeau came back in a dreadful state. He was starting to breathe the Parisian air again. He set about his wife and child, on some excuse that made sense only to his drunkard's mind, using foul language that was quite inappropriate in the situation. As it happened, Nana herself was starting to become foul-mouthed because of the talk that she heard all the time around her. When there was an argument, she happily called her mother a bitch or an old cow.

‘And some bread!' the roofer yelled. ‘I want my soup, you bunch of harpies! Look at these women with their bits of rag! I don't give a damn for your dressing-up, you know, as long as I haven't got my soup!'

‘What a bore he is when he's sloshed!' Gervaise muttered impatiently.
Then, turning towards him, added: ‘It's heating up, so leave us alone.'

Nana kept quiet, because she thought it was nice to be like that today. She was still looking at the presents on the chest, with her eyes lowered, pretending not to understand the vile things her father was saying. But he could be a real pain when he was drunk. He stuck his face up against hers and said:

‘I'll give you white dresses! Huh? Are you going to make yourself some tits with bits of paper in your bodice, as you did the other Sunday? Oh, yes, just you wait! I can see you wiggling your behind. It excites you having nice clothes, doesn't it? Goes to your head… Would you shift from there, you little worm. Get your hands off that and stick it in a drawer before I thump you with it.'

Nana, hanging her head, still said nothing. She had picked up the little tulle bonnet and was asking her mother how much it cost. And as Coupeau was reaching over to grab it from her, Gervaise pushed him back, shouting:

‘Leave her alone, won't you! She's being good, she's not doing any harm.'

At this, the roofer really let fly.

‘Oh, the bitches! Mother and daughter – a right pair! Off they go, eating the Good Lord and having a sly wink at the men, meanwhile! Just you dare deny it, you little slut! I'll put a sack on you and we'll see how that tickles you! Yes, a sack: that'll make you sick of it, you and your priests! Do I really need someone to make you more vicious than you are already? In God's name, will you listen to me, the pair of you!'

Suddenly Nana swung round in a fury, while Gervaise had to reach out to protect the clothes that Coupeau was threatening to tear up. The child stared hard at her father; then, forgetting what her confessor had told her about a modest bearing, she spat out through clenched teeth: ‘Pig!'

As soon as Coupeau had eaten his soup, he fell asleep. The next day, when he woke up, he was all sweetness and light. He had a bit of drink in him left over from the night before, just enough to be pleasant. He watched the girl getting ready, waxed sentimental over the white
dress and remarked that it took nothing to make the little pest like a proper young lady. Well, as he said, in such circumstances, a father is naturally proud of his daughter. And you should have seen how smart Nana looked, giving embarrassed smiles, like a bride, in her dress that was too short. When they went down and she saw Pauline at the door of the concierge's lodge, similarly dressed, Nana stopped, quickly looked her all over, then put on her most amiable manner, having decided that Pauline was not as well turned out as herself, but was in fact done up like a parcel. The two families left together for the church, Nana and Pauline leading the way, with their missals in their hands, holding down their veils, which were blowing up in the wind. They said nothing, dying with pleasure at the sight of the shops emptying and putting on pious expressions when they heard people say how sweet they looked. Mme Boche and Mme Lorilleux hung back so that they could exchange views about Tip-Tap, a spendthrift whose daughter would never have made her first communion if the relatives hadn't given her everything, yes, everything, even a new blouse, out of respect for the holy altar. Mme Lorilleux was especially concerned about the dress, her present, shouting at Nana and calling her a ‘great slattern' every time the child picked up some dust with her skirt by going too close to the shops.

In church, Coupeau cried all the time. It was silly, but he couldn't stop himself. It got to him: the priest raising his arms, the little girls like angels joining their hands… And the organ music hit him in the pit of the stomach, while the good scent of incense made him sniff as though someone had shoved a bunch of flowers in his face. In short, he was carried away; he had a lump in his throat. There was one particular canticle, such a sweet piece of music, while the kids were taking communion: it seemed to flow down his neck and send a shiver all the way along his spine. And, anyway, everyone around him with an ounce of feeling was dabbing their eyes. Yes, indeed, it was a lovely day; the best day of their lives. However, as they were coming out of the church and he was going to have a glass with Lorilleux, who had remained dry-eyed and was teasing him about it, he lost his temper and accused those wizards in their black surplices of burning the devil's herbs to undermine a man's strength. Then, after all, he didn't deny
it, he had shed a tear or two; it just proved that he didn't have a stone in his chest. And he ordered another round.

The house-warming at the Poissons' that evening was very merry. Friendship reigned from one end of the meal to the other, without a hitch. When bad times come, there are good evenings such as this, moments when there is good fellowship between people who hate one another. Lantier, with Gervaise on his left and Virginie on his right, was charming to both of them, smothering them with affection like a cockerel who wants his hens to live in peace. Opposite them, Poisson maintained his constable's state of reverie, calm and stern, being in the habit of thinking about nothing, with hooded eyes, during a long spell on the beat. But the two girls, Nana and Pauline, were the queens of the feast. They had been allowed to keep their white dresses on and sat bolt upright, for fear of staining them; at every mouthful, someone called out to them to lift their chins and swallow properly. Eventually, Nana got bored and dribbled all her wine over her bodice, which caused a great stir. They undressed her and immediately washed the bodice with a glass of water.

Then, over dessert, they began to talk seriously about the children's future. Mme Boche had taken a decision: Pauline was to start with the cutters in a jeweller's, working on gold and silver. You could make five or six francs. Gervaise was not yet sure; Nana showed no particular inclination. Well, of course, she ran about, she had that inclination all right; but where anything else was concerned, she was a wet rag.

‘If I were you,' said Mme Lerat, ‘I'd make her a florist. That's a clean, respectable job.'

‘Florists!' Lorilleux muttered. ‘They're all slags.'

‘And what about me?' the widow asked, thin-lipped. ‘You're polite, I must say. Do you think I'm some old bitch who falls flat on her back whenever someone whistles?'

But they all told her to mind what she said.

‘Madame Lerat! No, really, Madame Lerat!'

And they nodded towards the two first communicants, who were hiding their faces in their plates so as not to laugh. For reasons of decency, even the men had been careful to use only posh words up to then. But Mme Lerat rejected their criticisms. What she had just said,
she had heard in the best company. In any case, she prided herself on knowing her own language; she had often been complimented on the way that she spoke about things, even in front of children, without ever causing offence.

‘Let me tell you: there are very fine women who are florists!' she exclaimed. ‘They are built just like other women and, of course, they are not devoid of tender feelings. But they restrain themselves and show taste when they choose, if they're going to fall… Yes, it's something that they get from the flowers. That's what kept me from harm.'

‘Good heavens,' said Gervaise, ‘I've got nothing against flowers. It must be what Nana likes, that's all. One shouldn't force children when it comes to a vocation. Come on, Nana, tell us, don't just sit there looking stupid. Do you like flowers?'

The girl, leaning over her plate, was picking up bits of cake on her wet finger and then sucking it. She didn't hurry, but gave that lewd smile of hers.

‘Yes, Mummy, I like them,' she said at last.

So the matter was settled there and then. Coupeau was happy for Mme Lerat to take the child to her shop in the Rue du Caire the very next day. And everyone started to talk gravely about responsibilities in life. Boche said that Nana and Pauline were women now that they had made their communion. Poisson added that they should now know how to cook, darn socks and run a home. People even talked to them about marriage and the children they would be having one day. The two girls listened and laughed at it all, prodding one another, their hearts full at the idea of womanhood, red and embarrassed in their white dresses. But what excited them the most was when Lantier joked with them, asking if they didn't already have any little husbands. And they forced Nana to admit that she rather liked Victor Fauconnier, the son of her mother's employer.

‘That's that!' Mme Lorilleux told the Boches as they were leaving. ‘She's our god-daughter, but if they're going to make a florist out of her, that's the last we want to hear of her. There's another whore on the streets. In less than six months, she'll be a real pain in the ass for them.'

As they went up to bed, the Coupeaus agreed that everything had gone very well and that the Poissons were not such bad people. Gervaise even thought that the shop was nicely done out. She had expected to suffer, spending an evening in her old home where someone else was now settling in comfortably, so she was surprised not to have felt a moment's bitterness. Nana, getting undressed, asked her mother if the dress of the lady on the second floor, who got married last month, was chiffon like hers.

However, this was the family's last day of happiness. Two years passed in which things went from bad to worse. It was the winters most of all that did for them. Though they could still eat bread in fine weather, rain and cold brought pangs of hunger, searching the larder and dining on air in the little Siberia that was their room. That cruel knave, December, would sneak in beneath the door, bringing every sort of ill: idle workshops, the numbing torpor of frosts, the black misery of wet weather. The first winter, they still lit a fire from time to time, snuggling around the stove, preferring to keep warm rather than eat. The second winter, the stove remained unused, chilling the room with its mournful countenance, like a cast-iron post. The thing that brought them to their knees, that destroyed them, was having to find the rent. Oh, that January quarter, when there was not a bean in the house and old Boche handed them the bill! It was another cold blast from the North. Then, the following Saturday, M. Marescot arrived, wrapped in a fine overcoat, with his great paws thrust into a pair of woollen gloves and the word ‘eviction' constantly on his lips, while the snow was falling outside as though getting a bed with white sheets ready for them on the pavement. They would have sold their own flesh to pay the quarter's rent; it was the rent that emptied the larder and the stove. In point of fact, the same lament rose from every part of the building and there was weeping on every floor, a chorus of misery swelling as it filled the stairways and corridors. If every family had been mourning a loved one, it would not have produced such frightful music. A real Last Judgement, the end of everything, life unendurable, the trampling of the poor. The woman on the third floor went out to spend a week on the corner of the Rue Belhomme. One workman, the builder on the fifth, had stolen from his employer.

Of course, the Coupeaus had only themselves to blame. Even when life is hard, one can always get by, with thrift and good housekeeping: look at the Lorilleux, who regularly put their rent aside, wrapped up in scraps of dirty paper – though, in truth, they did lead the lives of scrawny spiders, enough to put you off work altogether. For the time being, Nana was not earning anything from her flowers; it even cost quite a bit to keep her. Eventually, Gervaise's reputation at Mme Fauconnier's declined. She was losing her touch, and more and more often she would make a hash of the work, so that the boss cut her pay to forty
sous
, the same as the worst workers. Despite that, she was very proud and easily offended, letting everyone know that she had once had a place of her own. She stayed off work for days at a time or left the laundry in a fit of pique: once, she was so put out at seeing Mme Fauconnier take on Mme Putois and at having to work next to her former employee, that she did not come in again for a fortnight. After these outbursts, they took her on again out of pure charity, which made her even more bitter. Needless to say, she had little to take home at the end of the week; and, as she would remark bitterly, the Saturday would come when she would end up owing her employer. As for Coupeau, perhaps he did work, but in that case he was surely making a present of his wages to the government, because since his job in Etampes, Gervaise had not seen the colour of his money. Now, on pay-days when he came home, she didn't even look at his hands. He would arrive with his arms hanging at his side, his pockets empty and often without even a handkerchief. Yes, for God's sake, he had lost his snot-rag or some scoundrel among his workmates had got it. At first, he would draw up a balance sheet, invent some story: ten francs for a subscription or twenty francs that had fallen out of a hole in his pocket – he would show the hole – or fifty francs to pay off some imaginary debt. After a while, he ceased to care. The money melted away, that's all. It wasn't in his pocket any longer, it was in his belly, which was another, less amusing way of bringing it home to his wife. On the advice of Mme Boche, the laundress sometimes went to wait for her husband at the gate to his works, to grab the wage-packet while it was still warm; but this was no use, because his friends would warn Coupeau and the money would be smuggled by in his shoes or in some still less
savoury wallet. Mme Boche was very cunning on this score, because Boche would spirit ten-franc pieces past her, little hoards designed to treat some accommodating ladies that he knew; so she would search through every nook and cranny in his clothes, and would usually find the coin that had gone missing in the peak of his cap, sewn in between the leather and the material. Ah, but the roofer was not one to be padding his clothes with gold; he chose to put his money inside him. And Gervaise could hardly take her scissors and cut him open.