The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (36 page)

‘There’s no one looking after the shop,’ she said at last, getting up from the table, wishing to put an end to the scene. ‘Have a look, Colomban, I thought I heard someone.’

They had finished, and stood up. Baudu and Colomban went to talk to a commercial traveller who had come to take orders. Madame Baudu took Pépé off to show him some pictures. The maid had quickly cleared the table, and Denise stood lost in thought near the window, gazing at the little yard, when, turning round, she saw that Geneviève was still sitting at her place, staring at the oilcloth, still damp from the sponge with which it had been wiped.

‘Is something the matter?’ Denise asked her.

The girl did not answer, but carried on studying a crack in the oilcloth, as if totally preoccupied by her thoughts. Then she raised her head painfully, and looked at the sympathetic face which was leaning towards her. The others had gone, then? What was she doing sitting on this chair? Suddenly she was choked with sobs; her head fell forward on to the table again. She was weeping, soaking her sleeve with tears.

‘Oh, dear! What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Denise in dismay. ‘Shall I call someone?’

Geneviève had nervously seized her by the arm. She held on to it, stammering:

‘No, no, no, stay … Oh! Don’t let Mamma know! With you I don’t mind, but the others … not the others! I just can’t help it,
I swear to you … It was when I saw I was all alone … Wait a minute, I’m better, I’m not crying any more.’

But fresh waves of tears overwhelmed her, shaking her frail body with great shudders. It seemed as if her piled up black hair was weighing down on her neck. As she rolled her feverish head on her folded arms, a hairpin came undone and her hair fell down over her neck, burying it beneath its dark folds. Meanwhile, for fear of attracting attention, Denise was trying to comfort her without making any noise. She unfastened her dress, and was heart-broken to see how thin and sickly she was; the poor girl had the hollow chest of a child, the nothingness of a virgin wasted by anaemia. Denise picked up her hair by the handful, that superb hair which seemed to be absorbing her life; then she tied it up firmly, in order to free her and give her some air.

‘Thank you, you are kind,’ Geneviève said. Oh! ‘I’m not fat, am I? I used to be fatter, and it’s all gone … Do up my dress again, Mamma might see my shoulders. I hide them as much as I can … Oh goodness! I’m not well, I’m not well.’

However, the crisis was subsiding. She sat there on her chair, exhausted, staring fixedly at her cousin. After a pause, she asked:

‘Tell me the truth, does he love her?’

Denise felt her cheeks going red. She understood perfectly well that Geneviève was referring to Colomban and Clara. But she pretended to be surprised.

‘Who do you mean, dear?’

Geneviève shook her head with an incredulous air.

‘Please don’t lie to me. Do me the favour of telling me for certain, at least… You must know, I feel you do. Yes, you used to know that woman, and I’ve seen Colomban following you, whispering to you. He was giving you messages for her, wasn’t he? Oh, for pity’s sake, tell me the truth, I swear to you it’ll do me good.’

Never had Denise been in such a dilemma. Faced with this child who never said a word and yet guessed everything, she lowered her eyes. However, she found sufficient strength to go on deceiving her.

‘But it’s you he loves!’

At that Geneviève made a gesture of despair.

‘All right, you don’t want to tell me … It doesn’t make any difference, in any case. I’ve seen them. He’s always going outside to look at her. And she, up there, laughs like anything … Of course they meet outside.’

‘No, they don’t, I swear to you!’ cried Denise, forgetting herself, carried away by the desire to give her at least that consolation.

The girl took a deep breath, and smiled feebly. Then, with the weak voice of a convalescent, she said:

‘I’d love a glass of water … I’m sorry to bother you. Over there, in the sideboard.’

When she had taken the jug, she emptied a big glass with one gulp. With one hand she held Denise at a distance, for the latter was afraid that she might do herself some harm.

‘No, no, leave me, I’m always thirsty … At night I always get up to drink.’

There was another silence. Then she went on quietly:

‘If only you knew—for ten years I’ve been accustomed to the idea of this marriage. When I was still wearing short dresses Colomban was already destined for me … And then, I can’t remember any more how it all happened. From always living together, staying shut up with each other here without ever having any fun together, I must have ended up thinking he was my husband before he actually was. I didn’t know if I loved him, I was his wife, that’s all… And now he wants to go off with someone else! Oh, God! It’s breaking my heart! You see, I’ve never felt pain like this before. I feel it in my chest and in my head, and then it spreads all over. It’s killing me!’

Her eyes were filled with tears again. Denise, whose own eyes were growing moist with pity, asked her:

‘Does my aunt suspect anything?’

‘Yes, Mamma does suspect something, I think … As for Papa, he’s too worried, he doesn’t know the pain he’s causing me by postponing the marriage … Mamma’s questioned me several times. She’s very worried to see me wasting away. She’s never been strong herself, she’s often said to me: “You poor thing, I didn’t make you very strong.” Besides, in these shops, one doesn’t grow much. But she must think I’m really getting too thin … Look at my arms, that’s not normal, is it?’

With a trembling hand she had picked up the jug again. Her cousin wanted to stop her drinking.

‘No, I’m too thirsty, let me have some water!’

They could hear Baudu raising his voice. Then, yielding to an impulse of her heart, Denise knelt down and put her arms round Geneviève in a sisterly way. She kissed her, swearing to her that everything would be all right, that she would marry Colomban, that she would get well and would be happy. Quickly, she stood up again. Her uncle was calling her.

‘Come on, Jean’s here.’

It was indeed Jean. He had just arrived for dinner, and seemed agitated. When he was told that it was striking eight, he looked amazed. It couldn’t be; he had only just left his employer’s. They teased him about this—no doubt he had come by way of the Bois de Vincennes!
*
But as soon as he could get near his sister he whispered to her:

‘It’s a little laundress who was taking back her washing … I’ve got a hired cab outside. Give me five francs.’

He went out for a minute and then came back to have dinner, for Madame Baudu absolutely refused to let him go away again without at least having some soup. Geneviève had reappeared, as silent and unobtrusive as ever. Colomban was half asleep behind a counter. The evening passed, slowly and sadly, enlivened only by Baudu’s footsteps as he walked up and down the empty shop. A single gas jet was burning; the dark shadows were falling from the ceiling in great shovelfuls, like black earth into a grave.

Months passed. Denise would call in nearly every day to cheer up Geneviève for a moment. But the melancholy in the Baudu house was increasing. The building work going on opposite was constant torture, and seemed to heighten their misfortune. Even when they had an hour of hope, some unexpected joy, the din of a cart full of bricks, or a stone-cutter’s saw, or simply the shout of a bricklayer, was enough to spoil it immediately. It shook the whole neighbourhood, in fact. From behind the wooden fence which skirted and blocked off the three streets, there came a whir of feverish activity. Although the architect was making use of the existing buildings, he was opening them up on all sides in order to convert them; and in the middle, in the gap made by the backyards, he was building a central gallery as vast as a church,
which was to lead out into the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin through a grand entrance in the centre of the façade. They had at first had great difficulty in building the basements, for they had come across drain seepage, and also some loose earth full of human bones. Next, the sinking of the well had caused tremendous anxiety in the neighbouring houses: a well a hundred metres deep, which was to provide five hundred litres a minute. The walls were now up to the first floor, and scaffolding and wooden towers enclosed the whole island; there was an incessant noise from the creaking of windlasses pulling up blocks of stone, the sudden unloading of metal plates, the clamour of the army of workmen, accompanied by the noise of pickaxes and hammers. But what deafened people above all was the jarring noise of machinery; everything worked by steam, and the air was rent with piercing whistles; while at the slightest breath of wind a cloud of plaster would fly up and descend on the neighbouring roofs like a fall of snow. The Baudus, in despair, watched this relentless dust penetrating everywhere, getting through the most closely fitting woodwork, soiling the materials in the shop, even infiltrating their beds; and the idea that they were forced to breathe it in, that they would end up dying of it, was poisoning their existence.

Moreover, the situation was to become even worse. In September the architect, afraid of not being ready in time, decided that the work should go on throughout the night. Powerful electric lamps were installed, and the general uproar became continuous; gangs succeeded each other, hammers never stopped, machines whistled endlessly, the din which never diminished seemed to lift and scatter the plaster. Now the exasperated Baudus even had to forgo their sleep; they were shaken in their bed, the noises turned into nightmares as soon as exhaustion overcame them. Then, if they got up barefoot to calm their fever, and went and lifted the curtain, they were terrified by the vision of the Ladies’ Paradise blazing away in the darkness, like a colossal forge, forging their ruin. In the middle of the half-built walls, pitted with empty windows, electric lamps were casting broad blue rays of blinding intensity. It would strike two o’clock in the morning, then three, then four o’clock. In its troubled sleep the neighbourhood saw the site enlarged by this lunar
brightness, grown colossal and fantastic, crawling with black shadows and noisy workmen, whose silhouettes gesticulated against the garish white of the new walls.

As uncle Baudu had foretold, the small tradespeople of the neighbouring streets were receiving yet another terrible blow. Each time the Ladies’ Paradise created new departments, there was fresh ruin among the shopkeepers round about. The disaster was spreading; even the oldest shops could be heard cracking. Mademoiselle Tatin of the underwear shop in the Passage Choiseul had just been declared bankrupt; Quinette, the glove-maker, could hardly hold out for another six months; the Vanpouilles, the furriers, were obliged to sublet part of their premises; and if Bédoré the hosier and his sister were still holding out in the Rue Gaillon, it was obviously because they were living on what they had saved up in the past. Now fresh cases of ruin were about to be added to those long since foreseen: the fancy-goods department was threatening Deslignières, a fat, red-faced man who owned a trinket shop in the Rue Saint-Roch, while the furniture department was hitting Piot and Rivoire, whose shops slept in the shadow of the Passage Sainte-Anne. It was even feared that the trinket dealer might have apoplexy for, having seen the Paradise advertise purses at a thirty per cent reduction, he was in a constant state of fury. The furniture dealers, who were calmer, pretended to joke about these counter-jumpers who were now trying to sell tables and cupboards; but customers were already leaving them—the success of the rival department promised to be tremendous. It was no good; they had no choice but to bow their heads in resignation; after them others would be swept away, and there was no longer any reason why all the remaining businesses should not be driven from their counters, one after another. One day the roof of the Paradise would cover the whole neighbourhood.

Nowadays, morning and evening, when the thousand employees were going in and leaving, they stretched out in such a long queue in the Place Gaillon that people would stop to look at them, as they would at a passing regiment. They blocked up the pavements for ten minutes; and the shopkeepers standing at their doors would think of their sole assistant whom they already had trouble feeding. The big shop’s last stock-taking, when the
turnover had been forty million, had also revolutionized the neighbourhood. The figure had spread from house to house, amidst cries of surprise and rage. Forty million! It was unimaginable! Doubtless with their heavy trade expenses and their system of low prices the net profit was at most four per cent. But a profit of sixteen hundred thousand francs was still a pretty good sum; one could be content with four per cent when one operated on such a scale. It was said that Mouret’s starting capital of five hundred thousand francs, increased every year by the total profits, a capital which by now must have become four million, had thus passed ten times over the counters in the form of goods. Robineau, when he made this calculation before Denise, after dinner, was overcome for a moment, his eyes fixed on his empty plate: she was right, it was this incessant renewal of capital that constituted the invincible strength of the new way of business. Bourras alone, as proud and stupid as a monument, still denied the facts, and refused to understand. They were just a pack of thieves, and nothing more! A bunch of liars! Charlatans, who would be fished out of the river one fine morning!

The Baudus, however, in spite of their wish not to make any changes in the ways of the Vieil Elbeuf, were still trying to compete. The customers no longer came to them, so they did all they could to go to the customers by using agents. There was at that time in the Place de Paris an agent who had connections with all the great tailors, and who was the salvation of small shops selling cloth and flannel when he chose to represent them. Naturally there was a lot of competition to get him; he was becoming an important personality; and Baudu, having haggled with him over his fee, had the misfortune of seeing him come to an agreement with the Matignons in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. Two other agents robbed him in quick succession; a third, who was honest, did nothing to help him. They were dying a slow death: there were no shocks, just a continuous slowing-down of business as customers disappeared one after another. Eventually it became difficult to pay the bills. Until then, they had been living on their savings; from now on they began to accumulate debts. In December, Baudu, terrified by the number of his promissory notes, resigned himself to the cruellest of sacrifices: he sold his country house at Rambouillet, the house
which cost so much money in continual repairs, and for which the tenants had not even paid the rent when he decided to get rid of it. This sale killed the only dream of his life, and his heart bled for it as for the loss of a loved one. And he had to accept seventy thousand francs for a property which had cost him more than two hundred thousand. He was lucky, indeed, to find the Lhommes, his neighbours, whose desire to add to their property made them decide to buy it. The seventy thousand francs would keep the shop going for a little while longer. In spite of all the set-backs, the idea of a fight was reviving: if they were careful, they might still be able to win through.