The Drinking Den (7 page)

The conversation went on, very loudly. At times, the concierge had to lean forward to catch what Gervaise was saying. All the white linen was beaten – and how! – and Gervaise threw it back into the tub, then took each piece out one by one to soap a second time, and scrub it. She held the garment on the washboard with one hand, while with the other, holding the short scrubbing brush, she drove out of the material a froth of dirty suds, which hung down in long strands. Now, having only the slight noise from the brush to contend with, the two women came closer and talked more privately.

‘No, we're not married,' Gervaise said. ‘I don't try to hide it. Lantier's not such a nice chap that you'd want to marry him. And if it wasn't for the children… I was fourteen and him eighteen when we had our first… The other one came four years after that. It happened as it always does, you know how it is. I wasn't happy at home. Old Papa Macquart would kick me up the backside at the least excuse, and when it's like that, you start having fun outside… We might have got married, but one way or another our parents didn't like the idea.'

She shook her hands, which were going red beneath the white suds.

‘The water's that hard in Paris,' she said.

Mine Boche was washing only half-heartedly. She stopped, making her soaping time last, so that she could stay there and listen to this story, which had been tormenting her with curiosity for the past fortnight. Her lips were half open in her plump face and her popping eyes glowed. Satisfied at having guessed the situation, she was thinking: That's right, the girl's giving too much away: there must have been a row. Then, aloud, she said:

‘Doesn't he treat you well then?'

‘Don't talk to me about it!' Gervaise answered. ‘Back home, he was real good to me, but since we came up to Paris, I can't make it out…
I should tell you, his mother died last year and left him something, around seventeen hundred francs. He wanted to set off for Paris. So, seeing as Papa Macquart was still laying into me as and when he felt like it, I agreed to go with him; and we made the journey with the two kids. He was meant to set me up as a laundress and work at his own trade, which is hat-making. We could have been happy as a pair of larks… But the thing is, Lantier's ambitious, a spendthrift, a man who only thinks of his own enjoyment. In a word, he's a bit of a good-for-nothing… So we came to live in the Hôtel Montmartre, in the Rue Montmartre – and it was dinners here, carriages there, the theatre, a watch for him, a silk dress for me, because he's quite a decent sort when he's loaded. You can imagine: the full works, so that in two months, we were cleaned out. So we moved into the Hôtel Boncoeur and that's when this lousy life began – '

She stopped, with a sudden lump in her throat, holding back her tears. She had finished scrubbing the clothes.

‘Got to fetch my hot water,' she muttered.

But Mme Boche, annoyed at seeing the flow of confidences interrupted in this way, called over the wash-house boy who happened to be passing.

‘Charlie, be a good lad and fetch over some hot water for this lady; she's in a hurry.'

The boy took the bucket and brought it back full. Gervaise paid him: it was one
sou
a bucket. She poured the hot water into the tub and gave the linen one last soaping, by hand, leaning over the washboard in a cloud of steam that left threads of grey smoke in her blonde hair.

‘Hey, why don't you put some crystals in, I've got some here,' the concierge said, obligingly. And she emptied the remains of a bag of soda, which she had brought with her, into Gervaise's tub. She also offered her some bleach, but the other woman refused: that was for when you had grease or wine stains on the clothes.

‘I think he's a bit of a ladies' man,' Mme Boche went on, coming back to the subject of Lantier, but without naming him.

Gervaise, bent double, her hands thrust deep and clenching the clothes, merely shook her head.

‘No, no, I do,' the concierge insisted. ‘I've noticed a lot of little things…'

But when Gervaise pulled herself up and stared at her, white as a sheet, she changed her mind.

‘Oh, no, I'm not saying I know anything… He likes a good laugh, I think, that's all… You know the two girls who live in our house, Adèle and Virginie, well, he has a bit of fun with them, but I'm sure that's as far as it goes.'

The young woman was now standing in front of her, sweat pouring down her face, her arms streaming, and staring intently at her. This irritated the concierge, who struck her breast and gave her word of honour, shouting: ‘I don't know nothing, I swear I don't!'

Then, more calmly, she added in the sort of soothing tones one uses with someone who doesn't want to know the truth: ‘If you ask me, he has honest eyes… He'll marry you, sweetie, I swear he will!'

Gervaise wiped her brow with her wet hand, then pulled another piece of clothing out of the water, shaking her head. For a short while, neither of them said anything. Around them, the wash-house had gone quiet. Eleven o'clock struck. Half the women, sitting with one leg on the rim of their tubs and a litre of wine uncorked between their feet, were eating sausages in slit loaves of bread; only the housewives, who had come to wash their little bundles of clothes, hurried to finish the job, looking up at the round clock over the office. A few thumps still rang out, at intervals, amid hushed laughs and conversations muffled by a greedy sound of chomping jaws, while the steam-engine, ploughing on without halt or respite, seemed to have raised its voice, vibrating, snorting and filling the vast shed. But not one of the women heard it; it was like the very breath of the wash–house, a burning breath, which draws the eternal fog of floating steam up to beneath the roof beams. The heat was becoming intolerable. To the left, through the high windows, rays of sunlight poured in, lighting the misty vapours with opalescent streaks of delicate greyish pinks and blues. And, since voices were starting to be raised in complaint, the lad Charles went from one window to the next, pulling down coarse linen blinds; then he went over to the other side, where it was shady, and opened the fanlights. He was applauded with clapping hands, and a wave of merriment went
round the place. Soon, even the last washboards fell silent. The women, their mouths full, waved only the open knives they were holding. The silence became so profound that one could even hear at the far end the regular scraping of the shovel that the boilerman was using to fill the boiler of the engine with coal.

All this time, Gervaise was washing her coloured linen in the hot water, thick with soap, which she had kept aside. When she had finished, she drew up a trestle and hung all the items across it, so that they made blueish puddles on the ground. And she started to rinse. The cold tap behind her was running into a huge vat, fastened to the ground, with two wooden bars across it to support the clothes. Above these, in the air, were two other bars on which the linen could drip.

‘That's almost it; not too hard, was it?' said Mme Boche. ‘I'll stay behind and help you to wring it all out.'

‘Oh, don't you bother, thanks all the same,' said the young woman, who was punching and splashing the coloured linen in the clear water. ‘Now, if I had any sheets, I wouldn't say no.'

For all that, she was obliged to accept the concierge's help. The two of them were busy wringing out – one at each end – a skirt and a little brown woollen garment, badly dyed so that the water from it was a yellow colour, when Mme Boche exclaimed:

‘Well, look at that! It's that Virginie, the tall one. Now, what can she want to wash, her with her four old rags in a kerchief?'

Gervaise looked up sharply. Virginie was a woman of her own age, but taller, dark and pretty, despite a rather long face. She was wearing an old black, flounced dress and a red ribbon round her neck, and her hair was carefully brushed into a bun in a blue chenille net. For a short while, in the middle of the central aisle, she rubbed her eyes as though looking for someone; then, when she caught sight of Gervaise, she deliberately passed close by her, stiff, sneering, swinging her hips, and found a place in the same row, five tubs away.

‘Whatever gave her that idea!' Mme Boche went on, in a lower voice. ‘She's never even washed a pair of sleeves… She's a real lazybones, believe me! A dressmaker who doesn't even sew the buttons on her own boots! And her sister, the polisher, is just the same – that slut Adèle, who misses work two days out of three. No one knows their
father or mother and no one knows what they live on – though I could tell you a thing or two about that… What's she rubbing away at over there? Huh? A skirt? It's in a right state, it must have some pretty tales to tell, that skirt!'

What Mme Boche wanted, of course, was to please Gervaise. The truth was that she often took coffee with Adèle and Virginie, when the two girls had some money. Gervaise said nothing, but got on with her work as fast as she could, her hands burning. She had just done her blueing, in a little tub on a three-legged stand. She soaked her white linens, shook them around a bit in the tinted water, which had an almost crimson sheen, and, after wringing them lightly, hung them on the upper wooden bars. All the time that she was doing this, she made a point of keeping her back towards Virginie, but she could hear her sniggering and feel her sideways glances on her back. Virginie seemed to have come there solely to provoke her. For one moment, Gervaise turned round and they stared at one another.

‘Don't take no notice of her,' Mme Boche murmured. ‘No point in you tearing each other's hair out… And I tell you, there's nothing in it! She's not the one!'

At that moment, while the young woman was hanging up her last garment to dry, there was laughter at the wash-house door.

‘Two kids asking for their mum!' Charles shouted.

All the women craned their necks. Gervaise recognized Claude and Etienne. As soon as they saw her, they ran over, through the puddles of water, thumping the heels of their unlaced shoes against the stone floor. Claude, the elder, was holding his little brother's hand. As they went past, the women gave exclamations of affection, seeing that they were a bit scared, but smiling all the same. They came to a stop in front of their mother, still holding on to one another, their blond heads looking up at her.

‘Was it Dad that sent you?' Gervaise asked.

But as she bent to tie up Etienne's shoes, she saw that dangling from one finger Claude had the key to the room with its numbered copper tag.

‘What's this? You've got the key?' she said, in astonishment. ‘Why's that?'

The child glanced down, as if remembering the key, which he seemed to have forgotten, was on his finger, and said in a loud, clear voice:

‘Daddy's gone.'

‘He went to buy something for dinner. Did he tell you to come here for me?'

Claude looked at his brother and hesitated, not knowing what to say; then, without pausing to draw breath, he continued:

‘Daddy's gone, he jumped out of bed, put all his things in the trunk, took the trunk down to a cab… He's gone.'

Gervaise, who was squatting down, got up slowly, bringing her hands to her ashen cheeks and temples, as if she could hear her head breaking open. She could only think of one thing to say and repeated it twenty times in the same tone of voice: ‘Oh, my God!… Oh, my God!… Oh, my God!'

Mme Boche, on the other hand was questioning the child in her turn, delighted to find herself involved in this affair.

‘Now, come on, sweetie, tell us all about it… He shut the door and told you to bring the key, did he?'

And, lowering her voice, whispered in Claude's ear: ‘Was there a lady in the cab?'

The child seemed confused again. He went back to his story, repeating with an air of triumph: ‘He jumped out of bed, put all his things in the trunk, and he left…'

At this, Mme Boche let him go, so he dragged his brother over to the tap and they started to play with it, making the water run.

Gervaise was beyond tears. She felt stifled, still holding her head between her hands and half sitting on the tub. Brief shudders ran through her and from time to time she gave a deep sigh, at the same time pressing her fists harder against her eyes, as though seeking oblivion in the blackness of abandonment – a pit of darkness into which she felt she was falling.

‘Come, come now, sweetie, what the hell?' Mme Boche murmured.

‘If only you knew, if only you knew!' she said at last, in a quiet voice.