Complete Works of Emile Zola (486 page)

It so happened that on the morrow of Twelfth-day half-past twelve struck and still the coffee was not ready. It seemed to persist in declining to pass through the strainer. Mother Coupeau tapped against the pot with a tea-spoon; and one could hear the drops falling slowly, one by one, and without hurrying themselves any the more.

“Leave it alone,” said tall Clemence; “you’ll make it thick. To-day there’ll be as much to eat as to drink.”

Tall Clemence was working on a man’s shirt, the plaits of which she separated with her finger-nail. She had caught a cold, her eyes were frightfully swollen and her chest was shaken with fits of coughing, which doubled her up beside the work-table. With all that she had not even a handkerchief round her neck and she was dressed in some cheap flimsy woolen stuff in which she shivered. Close by, Madame Putois, wrapped up in flannel muffled up to her ears, was ironing a petticoat which she turned round the skirt-board, the narrow end of which rested on the back of a chair; whilst a sheet laid on the floor prevented the petticoat from getting dirty as it trailed along the tiles. Gervaise alone occupied half the work-table with some embroidered muslin curtains, over which she passed her iron in a straight line with her arms stretched out to avoid making any creases. All on a sudden the coffee running through noisily caused her to raise her head. It was that squint-eyed Augustine who had just given it an outlet by thrusting a spoon through the strainer.

“Leave it alone!” cried Gervaise. “Whatever is the matter with you? It’ll be like drinking mud now.”

Mother Coupeau had placed five glasses on a corner of the work-table that was free. The women now left their work. The mistress always poured out the coffee herself after putting two lumps of sugar into each glass. It was the moment that they all looked forward to. On this occasion, as each one took her glass and squatted down on a little stool in front of the stove, the shop-door opened. Virginie entered, shivering all over.

“Ah, my children,” said she, “it cuts you in two! I can no longer feel my ears. The cold is something awful!”

“Why, it’s Madame Poisson!” exclaimed Gervaise. “Ah, well! You’ve come at the right time. You must have some coffee with us.”

“On my word, I can’t say no. One feels the frost in one’s bones merely by crossing the street.”

There was still some coffee left, luckily. Mother Coupeau went and fetched a sixth glass, and Gervaise let Virginie help herself to sugar out of politeness. The workwomen moved to give Virginie a small space close to the stove. Her nose was very red, she shivered a bit, pressing her hands which were stiff with cold around the glass to warm them. She had just come from the grocery story where you froze to death waiting for a quarter-pound of cheese and so she raved about the warmth of the shop. It felt so good on one’s skin. After warming up, she stretched out her long legs and the six of them relaxed together, supping their coffee slowly, surround by all the work still to be done. Mother Coupeau and Virginie were the only ones on chairs, the others, on low benches, seemed to be sitting on the floor. Squint-eyed Augustine had pulled over a corner of the cloth below the skirt, stretching herself out on it.

No one spoke at first; all kept their noses in their glasses, enjoying their coffee.

“It’s not bad, all the same,” declared Clemence.

But she was seized with a fit of coughing, and almost choked. She leant her head against the wall to cough with more force.

“That’s a bad cough you’ve got,” said Virginie. “Wherever did you catch it?”

“One never knows!” replied Clemence, wiping her face with her sleeve. “It must have been the other night. There were two girls who were flaying each other outside the ‘Grand-Balcony.’ I wanted to see, so I stood there whilst the snow was falling. Ah, what a drubbing! It was enough to make one die with laughing. One had her nose almost pulled off; the blood streamed on the ground. When the other, a great long stick like me, saw the blood, she slipped away as quick as she could. And I coughed nearly all night. Besides that too, men are so stupid in bed, they don’t let you have any covers over you half the time.”

“Pretty conduct that,” murmured Madame Putois. “You’re killing yourself, my girl.”

“And if it pleases me to kill myself! Life isn’t so very amusing. Slaving all the blessed day long to earn fifty-five sous, cooking one’s blood from morning to night in front of the stove; no, you know, I’ve had enough of it! All the same though, this cough won’t do me the service of making me croak. It’ll go off the same way it came.”

A short silence ensued. The good-for-nothing Clemence, who led riots in low dancing establishments, and shrieked like a screech-owl at work, always saddened everyone with her thoughts of death. Gervaise knew her well, and so merely said:

“You’re never very gay the morning after a night of high living.”

The truth was that Gervaise did not like this talk about women fighting. Because of the flogging at the wash-house it annoyed her whenever anyone spoke before her and Virginie of kicks with wooden shoes and of slaps in the face. It so happened, too, that Virginie was looking at her and smiling.

“By the way,” she said quietly, “yesterday I saw some hair-pulling. They almost tore each other to pieces.”

“Who were they?” Madame Putois inquired.

“The midwife and her maid, you know, a little blonde. What a pest the girl is! She was yelling at her employer that she had got rid of a child for the fruit woman and that she was going to tell the police if she wasn’t paid to keep quiet. So the midwife slapped her right in the face and then the little blonde jumped on her and started scratching her and pulling her hair, really — by the roots. The sausage-man had to grab her to put a stop to it.”

The workwomen laughed. Then they all took a sip of coffee.

“Do you believe that she really got rid of a child?” Clemence asked.

“Oh, yes! The rumor was all round the neighborhood,” Virginie answered. “I didn’t see it myself, you understand, but it’s part of the job. All midwives do it.”

“Well!” exclaimed Madame Putois. “You have to be pretty stupid to put yourself in their hands. No thanks, you could be maimed for life. But there’s a sure way to do it. Drink a glass of holy water every evening and make the sign of the cross three times over your stomach with your thumb. Then your troubles will be over.”

Everyone thought mother Coupeau was asleep, but she shook her head in protest. She knew another way and it was infallible. You had to eat a hard-cooked egg every two hours, and put spinach leaves on your loins. Squint-eyed Augustine set up a hen-cackling when she heard this. They had forgotten about her. Gervaise lifted up the petticoat that was being ironed and found her rolling on the floor with laughter. She jerked her upright. What was she laughing about? Was it right for her to be eavesdropping when older people were talking, the little goose? Anyway it was time for her to deliver the laundry to a friend of Madame Lerat at Les Batignolles. So Gervaise hung a basket on her arm and pushed her toward the door. Augustine went off, sobbing and sniveling, dragging her feet in the snow.

Meanwhile mother Coupeau, Madame Putois and Clemence were discussing the effectiveness of hard-cooked eggs and spinach leaves. Then Virginie said softly:

“
Mon Dieu!
you have a fight, and then you make it up, if you have a generous heart.” She leaned toward Gervaise with a smile and added, “Really, I don’t hold any grudge against you for that business at the wash-house. You remember it, don’t you?”

This was what Gervaise had been dreading. She guessed that the subject of Lantier and Adele would now come up.

Virginie had moved close to Gervaise so as not to be overheard by the others. Gervaise, lulled by the excessive heat, felt so limp that she couldn’t even summon the willpower to change the subject. She foresaw what the tall brunette would say and her heart was stirred with an emotion which she didn’t want to admit to herself.

“I hope I’m not hurting your feelings,” Virginie continued. “Often I’ve had it on the tip of my tongue. But since we are now on the subject, word of honor, I don’t have any grudge against you.”

She stirred her remaining coffee and then took a small sip. Gervaise, with her heart in her throat, wondered if Virginie had really forgiven her as completely as she said, for she seemed to observe sparks in her dark eyes.

“You see,” Virginie went on, “you had an excuse. They played a really rotten, dirty trick on you. To be fair about it, if it had been me, I’d have taken a knife to her.”

She drank another small sip, then added rapidly without a pause:

“Anyway, it didn’t bring them happiness,
mon Dieu
! Not a bit of it. They went to live over at La Glaciere, in a filthy street that was always muddy. I went two days later to have lunch with them. I can tell you, it was quite a trip by bus. Well, I found them already fighting. Really, as I came in they were boxing each other’s ears. Fine pair of love birds! Adele isn’t worth the rope to hang her. I say that even if she is my own sister. It would take too long to relate all the nasty tricks she played on me, and anyhow, it’s between the two of us. As for Lantier — well, he’s no good either. He’d beat the hide off you for anything, and with his fist closed too. They fought all the time. The police even came once.”

Virginie went on about other fights. Oh, she knew of things that would make your hair stand up. Gervaise listened in silence, her face pale. It was nearly seven years since she had heard a word about Lantier. She hadn’t realized what a strong curiosity she had as to what had become of the poor man, even though he had treated her badly. And she never would have believed that just the mention of his name could put such a glowing warmth in the pit of her stomach. She certainly had no reason to be jealous of Adele any more but she rejoiced to think of her body all bruised from the beatings. She could have listened to Virginie all night, but she didn’t ask any questions, not wanting to appear much interested.

Virginie stopped to sip at her coffee. Gervaise, realizing that she was expected to say something, asked, with a pretence of indifference:

“Are they still living at La Glaciere?”

“No!” the other replied. “Didn’t I tell you? They separated last week. One morning, Adele moved out and Lantier didn’t chase after her.”

“So they’re separated!” Gervaise exclaimed.

“Who are you talking about?” Clemence asked, interrupting her conversation with mother Coupeau and Madame Putois.

“Nobody you know,” said Virginie.

She was looking at Gervaise carefully and could see that she was upset. She moved still closer, maliciously finding pleasure in bringing up these old stories. Of a sudden she asked Gervaise what she would do if Lantier came round here. Men were really such strange creatures, he might decide to return to his first love. This caused Gervaise to sit up very straight and dignified. She was a married woman; she would send Lantier off immediately. There was no possibility of anything further between them, not even a handshake. She would not even want to look that man in the face.

“I know that Etienne is his son, and that’s a relationship that remains,” she said. “If Lantier wants to see his son, I’ll send the boy to him because you can’t stop a father from seeing his child. But as for myself, I don’t want him to touch me even with the tip of his finger. That is all finished.”

Desiring to break off this conversation, she seemed to awake with a start and called out to the women:

“You ladies! Do you think all these clothes are going to iron themselves? Get to work!”

The workwomen, slow from the heat and general laziness, didn’t hurry themselves, but went right on talking, gossiping about other people they had known.

Gervaise shook herself and got to her feet. Couldn’t earn money by sitting all day. She was the first to return to the ironing, but found that her curtains had been spotted by the coffee and she had to rub out the stains with a damp cloth. The other women were now stretching and getting ready to begin ironing.

Clemence had a terrible attack of coughing as soon as she moved. Finally she was able to return to the shirt she had been doing. Madame Putois began to work on the petticoat again.

“Well, good-bye,” said Virginie. “I only came out for a quarter-pound of Swiss cheese. Poisson must think I’ve frozen to death on the way.”

She had only just stepped outside when she turned back to say that Augustine was at the end of the street, sliding on the ice with some urchins. The squint-eyed imp rushed in all red-faced and out of breath with snow all in her hair. She didn’t mind the scolding she received, merely saying that she hadn’t been able to walk fast because of the ice and then some brats threw snow at her.

The afternoons were all the same these winter days. The laundry was the refuge for anyone in the neighborhood who was cold. There was an endless procession of gossiping women. Gervaise took pride in the comforting warmth of her shop and welcomed those who came in, “holding a salon,” as the Lorilleuxs and the Boches remarked meanly.

Gervaise was always thoughtful and generous. Sometimes she even invited poor people in if she saw them shivering outside. A friendship sprang up with an elderly house-painter who was seventy. He lived in an attic room and was slowly dying of cold and hunger. His three sons had been killed in the war. He survived the best he could, but it had been two years since he had been able to hold a paint-brush in his hand. Whenever Gervaise saw Pere Bru walking outside, she would call him in and arrange a place for him close to the stove. Often she gave him some bread and cheese. Pere Bru’s face was as wrinkled as a withered apple. He would sit there, with his stooping shoulders and his white beard, without saying a word, just listening to the coke sputtering in the stove. Maybe he was thinking of his fifty years of hard work on high ladders, his fifty years spent painting doors and whitewashing ceilings in every corner of Paris.

“Well, Pere Bru,” Gervaise would say, “what are you thinking of now?”

“Nothing much. All sorts of things,” he would answer quietly.

The workwomen tried to joke with him to cheer him up, saying he was worrying over his love affairs, but he scarcely listened to them before he fell back into his habitual attitude of meditative melancholy.