The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (35 page)

She wanted to reason with him. But the shop-door opened, and she suddenly drew back, pale and mute. It was her uncle Baudu, with his sallow face looking aged. Bourras seized his neighbour by the buttonholes, and shouted into his face without letting him say a word:

‘D’you know what they’ve had the nerve to offer me? Eighty thousand francs! They’ve stooped to that, the sharks! They think I’ll sell myself like a prostitute … Ah! They’ve bought the house and they think they’ve got me! Well, that’s it, they won’t get it! I might have given in perhaps, but now that it belongs to them, just let them try to get it!’

‘So it’s true?’ said Baudu in his slow voice. ‘I was told it was, and I came over to find out.’

‘Eighty thousand francs!’ Bourras was repeating. ‘Why not a hundred thousand? It’s all that money which makes me so angry. Do they think they’ll make me do such a foul thing, with their money? They won’t get it, by God! Never, never, d’you hear?’

Denise broke her silence to say in her calm way:

‘They’ll get it in nine years’ time, when your lease expires.’

And, despite the presence of her uncle, she begged the old man to accept. The struggle was becoming impossible; he was fighting against a superior force, he was mad to refuse the fortune they were offering. But he still refused. In nine years’ time, he truly hoped he would be dead, so as not to see them take over.

‘D’you hear that, Monsieur Baudu?’ he resumed. ‘Your niece is on their side, it’s her they’ve told to corrupt me … She’s on the side of those scoundrels, my word of honour!’

Her uncle, until then, had appeared not to notice Denise. He was tossing his head with the surly movement he affected on the doorstep of his shop every time she passed. But he slowly turned round and looked at her. His thick lips were trembling.

‘Yes, I know,’ he answered in a low voice.

He carried on looking at her. Denise, moved to the point of tears, found him much changed by grief. He was overwhelmed with secret remorse at not having helped her, and was perhaps thinking of the life of poverty she had just been through. Then the sight of Pépé asleep on the chair, in the middle of all the noise of the discussion, seemed to soften his heart.

‘Denise,’ he said simply, ‘come tomorrow with the little one and have some soup with us. My wife and Geneviève asked me to invite you if I saw you.’

She blushed deeply and kissed him. And as he was leaving, Bourras, pleased about this reconciliation, shouted after him:

‘She just needs a good talking to, she isn’t a bad girl… As far as I’m concerned, the house can fall down; they’ll find me in the rubble.’

‘Our houses are already falling down, neighbour,’ said Baudu with a gloomy air. ‘And we’ll all be buried in them.’

M
EANWHILE
, the whole neighbourhood was talking about the great thoroughfare which was going to be opened up from the new Opéra
*
to the Bourse, and which was to be called the Rue du Dix-Décembre. The expropriation notices had been served, and two gangs of demolition workers were already attacking the site at both ends, one pulling down the old mansions in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, the other knocking down the flimsy walls of the old Vaudeville; and, as the pickaxes could be heard getting closer to each other, the Rue de Choiseul and the Rue de la Michodière got very excited about their condemned houses. Before a fortnight was out the breach would make a great gash through them, full of noise and sunshine.

But the neighbourhood was even more agitated by the building work going on at the Ladies’ Paradise. There was talk of considerable extensions, of gigantic shops occupying the three frontages of the Rue de la Michodière, the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, and the Rue Monsigny.
*
Mouret, it was said, had made a deal with Baron Hartmann, the chairman of the Crédit Immobilier, and was to occupy the whole block, except the future frontage on the Rue du Dix-Décembre where the Baron wanted to build a rival to the Grand Hotel. Everywhere the Paradise was buying up leases, shops were closing, tenants were moving out; and, in the empty buildings, an army of workmen was starting on the alterations, beneath clouds of plaster. In the midst of the upheaval, old Bourras’s narrow hovel was the only one that remained standing and intact, obstinately hanging on between the high walls swarming with bricklayers.

When, the next day, Denise went with Pépé to her uncle Baudu’s, the street was blocked up by a line of tip-carts which were unloading bricks outside what had once been the Hôtel Duvillard. Baudu was standing at his shop-door, looking on with a gloomy air. It seemed as if the Vieil Elbeuf was shrinking as the Ladies’ Paradise expanded. Denise thought the window-panes looked blacker, crushed even more beneath the low mezzanine floor with its round, prison-like bay windows; the damp had
further discoloured the old green signboard; the whole front of the house, livid and somehow shrunken, was oozing with anguish.

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Baudu. ‘Be careful! They’ll run you over!’ Inside the shop Denise felt the same sense of sadness. It now seemed even gloomier, more overcome by the somnolence of ruin; empty corners formed dark cavities, dust was invading the counters and cash-desks, while a smell of cellars and saltpetre was coming from the bales of cloth, which were no longer moved around. At the cash-desk Madame Baudu and Geneviève stood mute and motionless, as if in some lonely spot where no one ever came to disturb them. The mother was hemming dusters. The daughter, her hands resting on her knees, was gazing into space.

‘Good-evening, Aunt,’ said Denise. ‘I’m so happy to see you again, and if I hurt your feelings, please forgive me.’

Madame Baudu, deeply moved, kissed her.

‘My dear,’ she replied, ‘if that was all that bothered me, you’d find me much more cheerful!’

‘Good evening, Cousin,’ Denise went on, kissing Geneviève on the cheeks.

The latter seemed to wake up with a start. She returned her kisses, but could find nothing to say. Then the two women picked up Pépé, who was holding out his little arms. The reconciliation was complete.

‘Well! It’s six o’clock, let’s have dinner,’ said Baudu. ‘Why didn’t you bring Jean?’

‘Well, he was supposed to be coming,’ murmured Denise, embarrassed. ‘I saw him this morning, and he faithfully promised me … Oh! You mustn’t wait for him, his employer must have kept him late.’

She suspected some extraordinary adventure, and wanted to make excuses for him in advance.

‘Then let’s sit down,’ her uncle said.

Then, turning towards the dark back of the shop, he called: ‘Colomban, you can have your dinner at the same time as us. No one will come.’

Denise had not noticed the shop assistant. Her aunt explained that they had had to dismiss the other salesman and the girl. Business was becoming so bad that they only needed Colomban;
and even he spent hours doing nothing, apathetic, dropping off to sleep with his eyes open.

In the dining-room the gas was burning, although they were still enjoying the long days of summer. Denise shivered slightly as she went in, her shoulders chilled by the coldness given off by the walls. Once more she saw the round table, the places laid on the oilcloth, the window getting its air and light from the depths of the stinking alley of the little yard. And these things, like the shop, seemed to her to have become gloomier than ever, and to be shedding tears.

‘Father,’ said Geneviève, embarrassed for Denise, ‘shall I close the window? It doesn’t smell very nice.’

He could smell nothing, and seemed surprised.

‘Close the window if you want,’ he answered finally, ‘but we won’t get any air if you do.’

And indeed it became quite stifling. The dinner was a family affair, very simple. After the soup, as soon as the maid had served the boiled beef, Baudu inevitably began to talk about the people opposite. At first he was very tolerant, and allowed his niece to have a different opinion.

‘Of course, you’re quite free to stick up for those hulking great shops … Everyone to his own taste, my dear … Since you didn’t mind too much being kicked out in that awful way, you must have good reasons for liking them; and if you went back there, you know, I wouldn’t hold it against you. Isn’t that so? No one here would hold it against you.’

‘Oh, no!’ murmured Madame Baudu.

Denise calmly stated her view, giving the same reasons as she had at Robineau’s: the logical development of business, the needs of modern times, the magnitude of these new creations, and finally the increasing well-being of the public. Baudu, with his round eyes and thick mouth, was listening with a visible mental effort. Then, when she had finished, he shook his head.

‘It’s all illusion. Business is business, you can’t get away from it… Oh! They’re successful, I grant you that, but that’s all. For a long time I thought they’d crash; yes, that’s what I expected, I was waiting patiently for it to happen, you remember? Well, no! It seems that nowadays it’s thieves who make fortunes, while honest folk are starving to death … That’s what we’ve come to,
and I’ve got to bow to the facts. And I’m bowing, by God! I’m bowing!’

His repressed rage was gradually rising. Suddenly he brandished his fork and said:

‘But the Vieil Elbeuf will never make any concessions … I told Bourras, you know: “Neighbour, you’re coming to terms with those charlatans, that crude paint of yours is a disgrace.”’

‘Eat your dinner,’ Madame Baudu interrupted, worried at seeing him so worked up.

‘Wait a minute, I want my niece to know my motto. Listen, my girl: I’m like this jug, I don’t budge. They’re successful—so much the worse for them! As for me, I protest—that’s all!’

The maid brought in a piece of roast veal. He carved it with trembling hands; he no longer had his sure judgement, the authority with which he had weighed the helpings. The consciousness of his defeat had deprived him of the self-assurance he used to have as a respected employer. Pépé thought his uncle was getting angry, and they had to pacify him by giving him his dessert, some biscuits near his plate, straight away. Then his uncle, lowering his voice, tried to talk about something else. For a moment he discussed the demolition work, approving of the Rue du Dix-Décembre, the opening up of which would certainly increase business in the neighbourhood. But that again brought him back to the Ladies’ Paradise; everything brought him back to it, it was a morbid obsession. They were covered in plaster, and business had stopped now that the builders’ carts were blocking the road. In any case, its sheer size would soon make it look ridiculous; the customers would get lost, they might just as well take over the Halles.
*
And in spite of his wife’s imploring looks, and in spite of himself, he went on from the rebuilding to discuss the shop’s turnover. Wasn’t it inconceivable? In less than four years they had increased it fivefold; their annual takings, formerly eight million, were approaching the figure of forty million according to the last stock-taking. It was madness, it was unheard of, and it was pointless to struggle against it any longer. They were getting bigger all the time, they now had a thousand employees, they were proclaiming that they had twenty-eight departments. It was this figure of twenty-eight departments that enraged him more than anything. No doubt they had split some
of them into two, but others were completely new: a furniture department for example, and a fancy-goods department. What an idea! Fancy goods! Really, those people had no pride, they’d end up selling fish. While pretending to respect Denise’s opinions, Baudu was trying to win her over.

‘Frankly, you can’t defend them. Can you see me adding a saucepan department to my drapery business? You’d say I was mad … At least admit that you have no respect for them.’

Denise merely smiled, embarrassed, realizing how useless sound reasoning was. He went on:

‘So, you’re on their side. We won’t talk about it any more, there’s no point in letting them make us fall out again. It would be too much to see them coming between me and my family! Go back to them if you want, but please don’t let me hear anything more about them!’

A silence fell. His former violence was subsiding into feverish resignation. As it was stifling in the narrow room, heated by the gas burner, the maid had to open the windows again; and the damp stench from the yard wafted over the table. Some sautéd potatoes had appeared. They helped themselves slowly, without a word.

‘Look at those two,’ Baudu resumed, pointing to Geneviève and Colomban with his knife. ‘Ask them if they like it, your Ladies’ Paradise!’

Side by side, in the accustomed place where they had been meeting twice a day for the past twelve years, Colomban and Geneviève were eating with restraint. They had not said a word. Colomban, exaggerating the stolid good nature of his face, seemed to be hiding, behind his drooping eyelids, the inner fire which was consuming him; whereas Geneviève, her head drooping even more under the weight of her hair, seemed to be giving way to despair, as if stricken by some secret suffering.

‘Last year was disastrous,’ Baudu was explaining. ‘Their marriage just had to be postponed … Ask them, just for fun, what they think of your friends.’

Denise, to satisfy him, questioned the young people.

‘I can’t be very fond of them,’ Geneviève replied. ‘But don’t worry, not everyone hates them.’

She was looking at Colomban, who was rolling a pellet of
bread with an absorbed air. When he felt the girl’s eyes upon him, he launched into a series of violent exclamations:

‘It’s a rotten shop! They’re scoundrels, every one of them! In fact, it’s a real blot on the neighbourhood!’

‘Can you hear what he’s saying, can you hear what he’s saying?’ shouted Baudu, delighted. ‘That’s one person they’ll never get! Believe me, you’re the last, my boy, there won’t be any more like you!’

But Geneviève, with her grave, suffering look, did not take her eyes off Colomban. She was penetrating to his very heart, and he, feeling uncomfortable, became even more abusive. Facing them, Madame Baudu, anxious and silent, was looking from one to the other as if she had foreseen that a fresh misfortune was about to overtake them. For some time her daughter’s sadness had been alarming her; she felt that she was dying.