The Drinking Den (59 page)

‘Come with me,' he said.

He walked ahead, she followed. The pair of them went through the soundless neighbourhood, saying nothing, hugging the walls. Poor Mme Goujet had died that October, of rheumatic fever, but Goujet still lived in the little house in the Rue Neuve, alone and heavy-hearted. He had been out late that day at the bedside of an injured workmate. When he had opened the door and lit a lamp, he turned to Gervaise, who was standing shamefaced on the landing. Very quietly, as though his mother could still hear them, he said:

‘Come in.'

The first room, Mme Goujet's, had been piously preserved just as she left it. The lace frame was lying on a chair near the window, beside the large armchair that seemed to be waiting for the old lace-maker to return. The bed was made and she could have slept there if she had left the cemetery to spend the evening with her son. The room had a stillness about it, an atmosphere of goodness and decency.

‘Come in,' the blacksmith repeated, more loudly.

She did as he said, fearful, like a woman from the streets coming into somewhere respectable. He was quite pale and trembling at the idea of bringing a woman into his dead mother's room like this. They tiptoed across the floor as though trying to avoid the shame of being heard. Then, after he had pushed Gervaise into his room, he closed the door. Here, he was in his own place. It was the same narrow bedroom that she remembered, a lodger's room, with a little iron bedstead and white curtains. However, the cut-out pictures on the walls had spread even further and now reached the ceiling. Gervaise didn't dare come forward in the bright light and shrank back, away from the lamp. So, without a word, in a fit of passion, he tried to grasp her and crush her in his arms. But she was overcome with faintness and murmured:

‘My God! Oh, my God!'

The stove, damped down with coal-dust, was still burning and the remains of a stew, which the blacksmith had left to keep warm for when he came back, was steaming in front of the ashpan. Gervaise, thawing out in the heat of the room, would have gone down on all fours to eat from the dish. Unable to control herself, her stomach torn apart, she bent down with a sigh. But Goujet had realized what she wanted. He put the stew on the table, cut some bread and poured her a drink.

‘Thank you, thank you!' she said. ‘Oh, how kind you are! Thank you!'

She was stammering, unable to form the words. When she picked up the fork, she was trembling so much that it fell from her hand. The hunger gripped her so that her head shook like an old woman's. She had to pick the food up with her fingers. When she put the first potato in her mouth, she started to sob. Great tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the bread. She kept on eating, greedily devouring the bread, wet from her tears, breathing heavily, her chin twitching. Goujet forced her to drink so that she would not suffocate; and the glass clattered against her teeth.

‘Would you like some more bread?' he asked softly.

She was weeping, she said yes, then no, she didn't know. Oh, Lord, how good and sad it is to eat when you are dying!

He stood in front of her and looked. Now he could see her clearly in the bright light from the lamp. How old and decrepit she was! The warmth was melting the snow on her hair and her clothes and water was pouring off her. Her poor nodding head was quite grey, grey locks tossed by the wind, and her neck had sunk into her shoulders; it made you want to weep to see her like that, thickened, ugly and fat. He recalled the love he had felt for her, when she was fresh and pink, tapping her irons and showing the baby's fold that left such a pretty collar round her neck. At that time, he used to stare at her for hours, satisfied just to see her. Later, she came to the forge and they enjoyed such pleasure when he would beat his iron, while she followed the dancing of the hammer. How many times then had he bitten his pillow at night, longing to have her like this in his room! Oh, he would have broken her, had he taken her then, he desired her so much! Now she
was his, he could have her. She was finishing her bread and wiping up her own tears from the bottom of the dish, the big, silent tears that were still falling into her food.

Gervaise got up. She had finished. She stayed for a moment with her head bent, embarrassed, not knowing if he wanted her. Then, thinking she could see a spark in his eyes, she put her hand on her bodice, undoing the top button. But Goujet had fallen to his knees, he was taking her hands and saying softly:

‘I love you, Madame Gervaise. Oh, I love you still, despite everything, I swear!'

‘Don't say that, Monsieur Goujet!' she exclaimed, horrified at seeing him at her feet. ‘No, don't say that. I can't bear it!'

And when he repeated that he could not have two such loves in his life, she became even more desperate.

‘No, no. I don't want that any more, I'm too ashamed… For the love of God, get up! I am the one who should be on the ground.'

He got up, shaking all over and stammered:

‘Would you allow me to kiss you?'

Overwhelmed with surprise and emotion, she could not speak, but she nodded. For heaven's sake! She was his, he could do what he liked with her. But he merely extended his lips.

‘That's enough between us, Madame Gervaise,' he murmured. ‘That's all our friendship, isn't it?'

He kissed her on the forehead, on a lock of her grey hair. He had not kissed anyone since his mother died. Only his good friend Gervaise remained for him in this life. So when he had kissed her with so much respect, he stepped back and fell across his bed, his throat shaken with sobs. Gervaise could not stay there any longer. It was too sad, too frightful, meeting again in these circumstances when they loved one another. She called to him:

‘I love you, Monsieur Goujet, I love you, too… Oh, I realize that it is not possible… Farewell, farewell! It would suffocate us both!'

She ran through Mme Goujet's room and found herself outside in the street. When she regained her senses, she was ringing at the house in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. Boche released the door catch for her. The house was completely dark and she stepped inside as though in
mourning. At this time of night, the gaping, shabby porch seemed like an open maw. To think that at one time she had aspired to have a corner of this barracks! Had her ears been blocked, for her not to hear then the dreadful music of despair groaning behind its walls? Since the day she first set foot here, she had started to go downhill. Yes, it must bring bad luck to be piled one on top of the other in these great working—class tenements: you could catch the cholera of poverty. That evening, everybody seemed to be dead. All she could hear were the Boches snoring on the right, while on the left, Lantier and Virginie gave off a purring sound, like cats who are not sleeping, but enjoying the warmth with eyes closed. In the courtyard, she imagined herself to be in the midst of a real cemetery. The snow made a pale square on the ground, while the tall façades rose, livid grey, without a single light, like the walls of a ruined building. And not a sigh came out of this whole village, shrouded in darkness, stiff with cold and hunger. She had to step over a black stream, a pond that had flowed out of the dyeworks, steaming and cutting a muddy trail through the whiteness of the snow. The colour of the liquid mirrored her thoughts. The tender blues and soft pinks had ceased to flow for her!

Then, climbing up the six floors in the dark, she was unable to suppress a laugh, a cruel laugh, which hurt her. She remembered what had once been her ideal: to quietly get on with her work, always have bread to eat and a reasonably decent hole in which to sleep, to bring her children up well, not to be beaten and to die in her bed. No, honestly, it was quite funny the way it was all turning out! She was no longer working, she was no longer eating, she slept in filth, her daughter was a whore, her husband beat her black and blue; nothing was left for her now except to die on the street – and that would happen soon enough, if she could find the courage to throw herself out of the window when she got home. You might think that she had asked heaven for an income of thirty thousand francs and a position in life! Well, it's true, in this life, however modest your wishes, you may still end up penniless. Not even a crust and a bed – that's the common lot of humanity. And what made her laugh even more was to recall her fine hopes of retiring to the country, after twenty years in the laundry
business. Well, the countryside was where she was headed; she wanted her little patch of greenery in the Père Lachaise.

By the time she started down the corridor, she was like a madwoman. Her poor head was reeling. Her grief came, underneath it all, from having said a last farewell to the blacksmith. It was over between them and they would never meet again. But on top of that all the other feelings of unhappiness were pouring in and addling her mind. As she went by she looked in at the Bijards and saw Lalie dead, seeming happy to be laid out, asleep for all eternity. Well, children were luckier than grown-ups. And since there was a ray of light under Old Bazouge's door, she went straight in to see him, with a furious desire to be gone on the same journey as the little girl.

That jolly old fellow Bazouge had come back, that evening, in a state of extreme merriment. He had had such a bellyful that he was snoring on the floor, despite the cold; and it didn't seem to prevent him from enjoying a pleasant dream, because he appeared to be laughing away in his sleep. The candle was still burning, casting its light on his clothes: his black hat flattened in a corner, his black cloak pulled up over his knees, as a kind of blanket.

When she saw him, Gervaise gave out such a wail that it woke him up.

‘For Christ's sake, close the door! It's bitterly cold here! What! Is it you? What's the matter? What do you want?'

So Gervaise held out her arms, no longer knowing what she was saying, and begged him passionately, in a stammering voice:

‘Take me away! I've had enough, I want to go… Don't hold anything against me… I didn't know; my God! One never knows, when one isn't ready! Oh, yes, the day comes when you are glad to go. Take me, take me! I'll be grateful for it!'

She fell to her knees, shaken all over with a desire that drained the blood from her features. Never before had she prostrated herself before a man in this way. Old Bazouge's face, with his twisted mouth and his skin smeared with the dust of burials, seemed to her as lovely and resplendent as a sun. The old man, however, was only half awake and thought this must be some kind of joke.

‘Now, then!' he said. ‘You mustn't tease me!'

‘Take me!' Gervaise repeated, with increased fervour. ‘Do you remember one evening when I knocked on the wall, and afterwards said it wasn't true, because I was still too silly… But now, look, give me your hands, I'm not afraid any more. Take me to bye-byes, you'll feel it if I move… Oh, that's all I wish for! I'll love you for it!'

Bazouge, always a bit of a ladies' man, thought he should not give the push to one who seemed to have such a fancy for him. She was not in her prime, but she still had some good points when she made an effort.

‘You're only too right there,' he said, with conviction. ‘I put away another three today who would have given me a fine tip if they could have reached for their pockets. The trouble is, my dear, it can't be managed just like that.'

‘Take me, take me!' Gervaise cried. ‘I want to go!'

‘Damn it, there's a little procedure to be gone through first… You know: click!'

And he made a noise in his throat as though swallowing his tongue. Then, thinking this was a good joke, he sniggered.

Gervaise had slowly got to her feet. So, was this another one who could do nothing for her? She went back to her room in a daze and threw herself on the straw, feeling sorry that she had ever eaten. No, definitely, poverty didn't kill quickly enough.

Puh! Gervaise wasn't going to put herself out. He knew the way, he could quite easily get himself back home from the asylum; they had cured him there so many times that they would no doubt play the same rotten trick on her and get him back on his feet. Hadn't someone told her that very morning that for the past week Coupeau had been seen, drunk as a lord, going round all the wine shops in Belleville in the company of Mes-Bottes. Exactly. Mes-Bottes was even the one paying for it; he must have got his hands on his old woman's purse and taken the savings that she had earned you know how. Oh, it was really clean money they were drinking there, money that could give you every sort of disease. So much the better, if Coupeau had got a belly-ache. And what made Gervaise most angry was the idea that these two selfish buggers hadn't even thought of coming to get her, to invite her out for a drop. Can you imagine it! A week-long spree and not one little
present for the ladies? Those who drink alone, die alone; and that's all there is to it!

However, on Monday, as Gervaise had a nice little meal for the evening, some haricot beans and a bit of wine, she gave herself the excuse that a walk would give her an appetite. The letter from the asylum was getting on her nerves, sitting there on the chest of drawers. The snow had melted and the weather was mild as milk, soft and grey, with a touch of cold in the air that put a spring in your step. She set out at midday, because it was a fair distance; she had to walk right across Paris, with that leg of hers still trailing behind. Moreover, the streets were full of people, but the people entertained her and she arrived in good spirits. When she had given her name, they told her a frightful story. It seems that Coupeau had been pulled out of the river at the Pont-Neuf. He had jumped over the parapet, thinking he saw a bearded man blocking his way. A fine jump, no? As for how Coupeau managed to be on the Pont-Neuf in the first place, that was something that even he could not explain.

Meanwhile, a warder was showing Gervaise the way. As they were climbing a staircase, she heard a howling that chilled her to the marrow of her bones.

‘See? He's giving a proper concert!' the warder said.

‘Who is?' she asked.

‘Why, your man! He's been screaming like that since the day before yesterday. And he dances, as you'll see.'

Oh, my God! What a sight! She remained rooted to the spot. The cell was padded from top to bottom. There were two straw mats on the ground, one on top of the other, and in one corner a mattress and a bolster, nothing more. Inside the cell, Coupeau was leaping around and shouting, like a carnival figure from La Courtille,
¹
with his smock in shreds and his limbs waving around; but not a funny carnival figure, no; a figure whose antics made your hair stand on end. He was disguised as The-One-About-To-Die. Heavens, what a one-man show! He crashed against the window, came away backwards with his arms beating time, shaking his hands as if he wanted to break them and send them flying into everyone's face. You meet jokers in pubs who imitate this, but theirs is a poor imitation; if you want to see how cute it is,
you have to see the drunkard's dance done for real. The song is quite something, too, a continual carnival whoop, with mouth wide open, emitting the same notes, like an off-key trombone, for hours on end. Coupeau's cry was that of an animal with a crushed paw. Let the orchestra strike up, take your partners!

‘My Lord! What's wrong with him? What's wrong with him?' Gervaise kept saying, scared out of her wits.

A young doctor, a great pink, fair-haired lad in a white apron, was calmly sitting there, taking notes. It was an interesting case, so he remained with the patient.

‘Stay for a moment, if you like,' he told the laundress. ‘But keep calm… Try to talk to him, he won't recognize you.'

Indeed, Coupeau did not even seem to notice his wife. She had not had a good look at him as she came in, he was leaping around so much. When she did look at him closely, she was amazed. God, was it possible for him to have such a face, with those bloodshot eyes and scabby lips? She would certainly not have recognized him. To start with, he was grimacing too much, without saying why, his mouth would suddenly twist round, his nostrils flare and his cheeks shrink until he had a face like an animal. His skin was so hot that the air was steaming around him, and his hide looked as though it were varnished, pouring with a heavy sweat that dripped off him. Despite his furious waltz, one could still grasp that he was not comfortable, but that his head was heavy and all his limbs ached.

Gervaise had gone over to the doctor, who was drumming his fingers on the back of his chair.

‘I say, Monsieur, is it serious then, this time?'

The doctor shook his head without answering.

‘Tell me, isn't he saying something there, quietly? No? Can you hear what he's saying?'

‘Things that he can see,' the young man muttered. ‘Be quiet and let me listen.'

Coupeau was talking in broken phrases; but a spark of fun lit up his eyes. He was looking at the floor, on the right, on the left, and walking around, as though he were strolling through the Bois de Vincennes, talking to himself.

‘Oh, that's nice, that's sweet… There are little houses, a real fair. And such pretty music! What a feast! They're breaking the dishes, in there… Very smart! Now it's lighting-up time; red balloons in the air and they're bouncing around, they're flying away. Oh, oh! So many lanterns in the trees! Isn't that pretty! It's pissing down all around, fountains, waterfalls, singing water, singing in a choirboy's voice… They're glorious, the waterfalls!'

He was standing up, as though trying to hear the delightful song of the water. He was breathing in deeply, imagining that he was enjoying the cool rain from the fountains. Then, bit by bit, his face reverted to an expression of pain and anxiety, and he bent double, running faster around the walls of the cell, muttering threats.

‘More of your tricks! I suspected as much! Quiet, you villains! Yes, you're having me on. You're drinking and yelling in there with your whores, just to annoy me! I'll take you all to pieces, that I will, you in your chalet. In God's name, won't you leave me alone!'

He clenched his fists, then gave a harsh cry and tripped over as he ran. He was stammering, his teeth chattering with terror:

‘You want me to kill myself! No, I won't jump! All that water means I haven't got the heart for it. No, I'm not going to throw myself into it!'

The cascades of water, which went away as he approached, came forward when he moved backwards. Suddenly, he looked around him in stupefaction and stammered in a barely audible voice:

‘It's not possible! They've brought in doctors against me!'

‘I'm off, Monsieur,' said Gervaise. ‘Good-night. This is upsetting me too much. I'll come back later.'

She was ashen. Coupeau continued his one-man performance, from the window to the mattress, from the mattress to the window, sweating, twisting around, always marking the same time. So she left. But even though she dashed down the stairs, she could hear the terrible noise made by her husband right down to the bottom. Oh, my God! How good it was outside! You could breathe.

That evening, the whole of the house in the Rue de la Goutte-d'Or was talking about old Coupeau's strange sickness. The Boches, who looked on Tip-Tap nowadays with utter contempt, actually offered her a cassis in their lodge, so that they could hear the details. Mme
Lorilleux came in, so did Mme Poisson. There were endless discussions. Boche knew a cabinet-maker who had stripped naked in the Rue Saint-Martin and died as he danced the polka; he used to drink absinthe. The ladies crumpled up with laughter, because they thought this was funny, even though it was sad. Then, as they didn't understand exactly, Gervaise pushed everyone back and shouted for them to give her room; and, in the middle of the lodge, while the others watched, she did Coupeau, braying, leaping and falling around with frightful expressions on his face. Yes, on my word, that's just how it was! So the others looked amazed: impossible! A man would not last three hours at that kind of thing. No? She swore by everything that was most sacred to her: Coupeau had been at it since the day before, thirty-six hours already. Anyway, they could go and have a look if they didn't believe her. But Mme Lorilleux said: ‘No thank you!' She'd had quite enough of Sainte-Anne; she wouldn't even let Lorilleux set foot there. As for Virginie, whose business was going from bad to worse, she went around with a mournful look on her face nowadays. She merely remarked that life was not always much fun, by God, no, it wasn't! They finished off the cassis and Gervaise wished them all good-night. When she stopped speaking, her face immediately adopted the expression of a madwoman from Chaillot, with staring eyes. No doubt she could see her man leaping around. The following day, when she got up, she promised herself that she would not go there again. What was the point? She didn't want to go off her head herself. Yet every ten minutes she would relapse into her thoughts; she was gone, as they say. Wouldn't it be odd if he was still jumping about? When midday struck, she could bear it no longer; she didn't even notice the length of the journey because her mind was so preoccupied with the desire to go and the fear of what was awaiting her.

Well, she had no need to ask for news of him. As soon as she reached the bottom of the staircase, she heard Coupeau's song: still the same tune, still the same dance. She could well believe she had just come down and was now turning round to go back. The warder from the day before, who was carrying pots of camomile tea along the corridor, gave her a wink when they met, to be friendly.

‘Still the same?' she asked.

‘Yes, still the same,' he replied, without stopping.

She went in, but stayed standing in the doorway, because Coupeau was not alone. The pink-faced, blond doctor was on his feet, having relinquished his chair to an old, bald gentleman with a face like a ferret, who was wearing a decoration. Naturally, this was the head doctor: his eyes were narrow and piercing as gimlets. All such sudden-death merchants look at you in this way.

Gervaise, however, had not come for this gentleman; she stood on tiptoe behind him, staring at Coupeau. The lunatic was jumping around and yelling even louder than the previous day. In the past, she had seen dances in mid Lent when sturdy lads from the wash-house had danced for a whole night; but never, never in her life, would she have imagined that a man could enjoy himself for such a long time – when she said ‘enjoy himself' that was a manner of speaking, because there is no enjoyment to be had from leaping about involuntarily, like a fish out of water or as if one had swallowed a powder-keg. Coupeau, bathed in sweat, was steaming more, that was all. His mouth seemed larger from shouting. A pregnant woman had better stay away. He had walked so much from the mattress to the window that one could see his path on the ground: the straw matting was marked by his slippers.

No, honestly, there was nothing attractive about it; and Gervaise, shaking, wondered why she had come back. Just think: last night at the Boches, she had been accused of exaggerating. Well, she hadn't shown them the half of it! Now she had a better view of what Coupeau was doing and she would never forget that glimpse into the abyss. Meanwhile, she caught the odd phrase exchanged between the young doctor and the older one. The former was describing what had happened overnight, using words that she could not understand. Basically, what it meant was that all night her man had chatted away and whirled around. Then the bald old man, who incidentally was not very polite, seemed suddenly to notice that she was there. And when the young man told him that she was the patient's wife, he started to question her, with the nasty manner of a police commissioner.

‘Did this man's father drink?'

‘Yes, Monsieur, a little, as everyone does… He died by falling off a roof one day, when he was drunk.'

‘Did his mother drink?'

‘Gracious, Monsieur! Like anyone else. You know: a drop here, a drop there… Oh, it's a very good family… There was a brother, who died very young, in convulsions.'

The doctor looked at her with his piercing eyes, then asked in his rough manner:

‘And do you drink, too?'

Gervaise stammered, denying it and putting her hand on her heart to give her word.

‘Yes, you drink! Look out, you can see where drink leads… One day or another, you'll die like this.'

She stayed pressed against the wall. The doctor had turned his back on her. He was squatting down, not worried about picking up the dust from the matting on his frock-coat. For a long time, he studied Coupeau's trembling, waiting for him to go past, following him with his eyes. That day, the trembling had gone down from the hands into the feet and the legs were jumping in their turn; he was like a real puppet, with someone pulling his strings, his limbs flying this way and that while the trunk remained stiff as a board. Little by little, the sickness was gaining ground. It was like a musical beat under the skin; it would start up every three or four seconds and throb for a moment; then it would stop before starting up again, just that little shudder that goes through a lost dog sheltering in a doorway in winter, when it's cold. Already the belly and the shoulders were simmering like water about to boil.

Even so, it was an odd sort of collapse, to be taken off, twisting around like a girl succumbing to being tickled.

Meanwhile, Coupeau was groaning in a dull voice. He seemed to be in much greater pain than the day before. His broken moans suggested every kind of discomfort. Thousands of pins were digging into him. There was something heavy weighing on every part of his skin; a cold, wet creature was hanging on his thighs and digging its fangs into his flesh. Then there were other creatures, hanging on his shoulders, tearing his back apart with their claws.

‘I'm thirsty! I'm thirsty!' he complained constantly.