The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (47 page)

The shop assistants’ dining-room was now an immense hall in which five hundred could be accommodated with ease for each of the three meal services. The places were laid on long mahogany tables arranged in parallel lines across the room; at either end of the hall similar tables were set apart for shopwalkers and heads of departments; and in the middle there was a counter where extra dishes were served. Large windows on the right and left illuminated this great gallery with a white light; the ceiling, in spite of being almost fourteen feet high, seemed low, crushed by the enormous development of the other dimensions. On the walls, painted a pale yellow, shelves for the table-napkins were the sole ornaments. Beyond this first dining-room came that of the porters and coachmen, where the meals were served irregularly, when their work permitted.

‘What! You’ve got a leg as well, Mignot!’ said Favier, as he took his place at one of the tables opposite his companion.

Other shop assistants sat down around them. There was no table-cloth; the plates made a cracked sound on the bare mahogany, and everyone was complaining noisily in this corner of the room.

‘These birds are all legs!’ remarked Mignot.

Those who had bits of carcass were annoyed. However, the food had greatly improved since the new alterations. Mouret no longer dealt with a contractor for a fixed sum; he now ran the kitchen himself, and had made it an organized service like one of his departments, with a cook, under-cooks, and an inspector; and if he spent more as a result, he got more work out of his better-fed staff—a calculation based on practical humanitarianism which had for a long time dismayed Bourdoncle.

‘Mine’s pretty tender all the same,’ Mignot resumed. ‘Pass the bread!’

The big loaf was going round, and after cutting himself a slice he stuck the knife back into the crust. Some latecomers hurried in one after another; ferocious appetites, sharpened by the morning’s work, were raging all down the long tables, from one end of the dining-room to the other. There was a growing clatter of forks, the sound of bottles being emptied, the clink of glasses being put down too hard, the grinding sound of five hundred powerful jaws energetically munching. Words, which were rare, were stifled in mouths full of food.

Meanwhile Deloche, seated between Baugé and Liénard, found himself nearly opposite Favier, only a few places away. Each had cast a spiteful glance at the other. Their neighbours, who knew about their quarrel of the day before, were whispering. They had laughed at Deloche’s bad luck; he was always starving and, as if by some cruel fatality, always chanced on the worst bits at the table. This time he had arrived with a chicken neck and some bits of carcass. Without saying a word he let them carry on joking, swallowing great mouthfuls of bread and picking at the neck with the infinite skill of a lad who held meat in respect.

‘Why don’t you complain?’ Baugé said to him.

But he shrugged his shoulders. What was the point? It never worked. When he did complain, it got even worse.

‘You know, the cotton-reelers have got their own club now,’ remarked Mignot suddenly. ‘Yes, really, the Reel Club … They meet in a wine-merchant’s place in the Rue Saint-Honoré; they hire a room there on Saturdays.’

He was talking of the haberdashery salesmen. At that, the whole table began to joke. Between two mouthfuls, their voices clogged with food, each one made some remark, added a detail; it was only the most determined readers who remained silent, absorbed, their noses buried in their newspapers. Everyone was agreed: every year shop assistants were bettering themselves. About half of them could now speak German or English. It was no longer smart to go and live it up at Bullier,
*
to do the rounds of the music-halls in order to whistle derisively at the ugly
singers. No, about twenty of them would get together now and found a club.

‘Have they got a piano like the linen dealers?’ asked Liénard.

‘Has the Reel Club got a piano? I should jolly well think so!’ exclaimed Mignot. ‘And they play on it, and they sing! There’s even one of them, that little fellow Bavoux, who recites poetry.’

Their mirth was redoubled, and they made fun of Bavoux; however, beneath their laughter there was great respect. They talked about a play at the Vaudeville, in which a draper’s assistant played an unpleasant part; several of them expressed their annoyance at this, while others were worrying about when they would be able to get away that evening, for they had been invited to parties given by bourgeois families. From every corner of the immense hall similar conversations were going on, in the midst of the growing clatter of crockery. In order to get rid of the smell of food and the hot steam which was rising from the five hundred plates, they had opened the windows, and the lowered blinds were burning hot in the fierce August sun. Blasts of hot air were coming from the street, and golden reflections were making the ceiling yellow, bathing the sweating men in a reddish light as they ate.

‘How can they shut people up on a Sunday like this!’ Favier repeated.

This remark brought them back to the subject of the stocktaking. It was a superb year. And they went on to talk about salaries, rises, the eternal subject, the great questions which always stirred them. It was always the same on the days when they had chicken, wild excitement would break out; the noise would finally become unbearable. When the waiters brought the artichokes they could no longer hear themselves speak. The inspector on duty had orders to be tolerant.

‘By the way,’ Favier exclaimed. ‘Have you heard the news?’

But his voice was drowned. Mignot was asking:

‘Who doesn’t like artichokes? I’ll swop my dessert for an artichoke.’

No one replied. Everyone liked artichokes. This lunch would go down as a good one, for they had seen that there were peaches for dessert.

‘He’s invited her to dinner, old man,’ Favier was saying to his right-hand neighbour, concluding the story. ‘What! You didn’t know?’

The whole table knew, and they were tired of talking about it all morning. The same old jokes passed from mouth to mouth. Deloche was trembling; in the end he fixed his eye on Favier, who was insistently repeating:

‘If he hasn’t had her, he will do … and he won’t be the first to have her. Oh no, he won’t be the first!’

He, too, was looking at Deloche. He added provocatively:

‘Those who like them bony can have her for five francs.’

Suddenly, he ducked his head. Deloche, yielding to an irresistible urge, had just thrown his last glass of wine into Favier’s face, stammering:

‘Take that! You dirty liar, I should have done it yesterday!’

This caused quite a scene. Favier’s neighbours had been spattered with a few drops, while he only had his hair slightly wet; the wine, thrown too hard, had fallen on the other side of the table. But the others were annoyed. She must be his mistress, if he defended her like that! What a ruffian! He deserved a good hiding to teach him some manners. They lowered their voices, however, for they spotted an inspector approaching, and there was no point in involving the management in the quarrel. Favier was content to say:

‘If he’d got me you’d really have seen something!’

It ended in jeers. When Deloche, still trembling, wanted to have a drink to hide his embarrassment and mechanically seized his empty glass, there was a burst of laughter. He put his glass down again awkwardly, and began sucking the artichoke leaves which he had already eaten.

‘Pass the carafe to Deloche,’ said Mignot calmly, ‘he’s thirsty.’

The laughter increased. The young men were taking clean plates from the piles which were standing at intervals on the table: the waiters were taking round the dessert, baskets full of peaches. And they all clutched their sides with laughter when Mignot added:

‘Everyone to his own taste. Deloche has wine with his peaches.’

The latter remained motionless. His head bowed, as if deaf, he seemed not to hear the jokes; he was feeling hopeless regret for what he had just done. They were right, what business was it of his to defend her? Now they would say all sorts of terrible things; he could have kicked himself for having compromised her like that, when he had wanted to prove her innocent. It was his usual luck; it would have been better if he had died on the spot, for he could not even give way to the instincts of his heart without doing something stupid. Tears came to his eyes. Wasn’t it his fault, too, that the shop was talking about the letter the governor had written? He could hear them all sniggering and making crude comments about the invitation, which had been confided only to Liénard, and he blamed himself: he should not have allowed Pauline to mention it in front of a third person; he held himself responsible for the indiscretion which had been committed.

‘Why did you tell everyone about it?’ he murmured finally, in a sorrowful voice. ‘That was very bad.’

‘Me!’ replied Liénard. ‘But I only told one or two people, and told them to keep it secret… You never know how things get out.’

When Deloche finally drank a glass of water, the whole table burst out laughing again. The meal was finishing, and they were lolling back in their chairs, waiting for the bell, shouting to each other with a lack of restraint brought on by the meal. Few extras had been asked for at the big central counter, especially as it was the shop which was paying for the coffee. Cups were steaming, perspiring faces were shining under the haze of fumes floating like clouds of blue cigarette smoke. In the windows the blinds were hanging down motionless, without flapping at all. One of them rolled up again, and the sunshine flooded across the hall, lighting up the ceiling. The hubbub of voices was beating against the walls with such force that at first the sound of the bell was heard only by those sitting at the tables near the door. They got up, and the stampede as they left filled the corridors for a long time.

Deloche, however, lagged behind to escape the malicious jokes which were still being made. Even Baugé went out ahead of him; and Baugé was usually the last to leave the dining-room, for
he would go a roundabout way and meet Pauline as she was going into the women’s dining-hall: they had agreed on this scheme as the only way they could see each other for a minute during working hours. But this time, just as they were kissing each other full on the lips in a corner of the corridor, they were surprised by Denise, who was also going up to lunch. She was walking with difficulty, because of her foot.

‘Oh, my dear!’ stammered Pauline, very red, ‘you won’t say anything, will you?’

Baugé, with his huge limbs and giant build, was trembling like a little boy. He murmured:

‘You know, they’d very probably throw us out… Our marriage may have been announced, but those monsters don’t allow you to kiss!’

Denise, quite upset, pretended that she had not seen them. And Baugé was making his escape when Deloche, who was going the longest way round, appeared in his turn. He tried to apologize, stammering out phrases which Denise did not at first understand. Then, as he was reproaching Pauline for having spoken in front of Liénard, and as Pauline became embarrassed, Denise finally understood the words people had been whispering behind her back all morning. So it was the story of the letter which was going round! Once more the shiver which this letter had given her ran down her spine; she felt she was being undressed by all those men.

‘I didn’t know,’ Pauline was repeating. ‘In any case, there’s nothing bad about it… Let them talk, they’re all jealous, of course!’

‘My dear,’ said Denise in the end, in her sensible way. ‘I’m not cross with you at all… You’ve only said the truth. I’ve received a letter, and it’s up to me to answer it.’

Deloche went away heart-broken, for he had understood that Denise was accepting the situation and would keep the appointment that evening. When the two salesgirls had lunched, in a small dining-room next to the big one, where the women were served more comfortably, Pauline had to help Denise downstairs, as her foot was getting tired.

Downstairs, in the bustle of the afternoon, the stock-taking was proceeding more vigorously than ever. The time had come
for the supreme effort, when, faced with the lack of progress made in the morning, everything was done to finish by the evening. The voices became even louder; nothing could be seen but waving arms, still emptying shelves, throwing down the merchandise; and it was no longer possible to walk about, for the rising tide of bales and piles of goods on the floor was now as high as the counters. A sea of heads, brandished fists, and flying limbs seemed to extend to the further reaches of the departments, like the distant confusion of a riot. It was the final fever, the machine at breaking point; while in front of the plate-glass windows all round the closed shop there were still occasional passers-by, pale with the stifling boredom of Sunday. On the pavement in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, three tall, bare-headed girls with a sluttish look about them had taken their stand, their faces brazenly pressed against the windows, trying to make out what sort of mess was being cooked up inside.

When Denise returned to the ladieswear department Madame Aurélie left Marguerite to finish calling out the garments. The checking still had to be done and, requiring quiet in which to do it, she retired into the pattern-room, taking Denise with her.

‘Come with me, we’ll compare the two lists … Then you can add up the totals.’

But, as she wanted to leave the door open in order to keep an eye on the girls, the din came in and they could hardly hear each other, even at the far end of the room. It was a vast, square room, furnished only with chairs and three long tables. In one corner stood great mechanical cutters for making the patterns. Whole lengths of material went through them; in one year more than sixty thousand francs’ worth of material was sent out, cut up into strips. From morning to night the cutters sliced up silk, wool, and linen with the sound of a scythe. Then the pattern-books had to be put together, either glued or sewn. And there was also, between the two windows, a little printing-press for the labels.

‘Not so loud, please!’ cried Madame Aurélie from time to time, unable to hear Denise reading out the articles.