To begin with, Gervaise embarrassed him quite a lot. Then, in a few weeks, he became accustomed to her. He waited for her to come home so that he could carry up her shopping or laundry, and treated her as a sister, with brusque familiarity, cutting out pictures for her. One morning, however, opening the door without knocking, he surprised her half naked, washing her neck, and for a week would not look her straight in the eye, so much so that in the end she herself started to blush.
Cadet-Cassis, with his ready Parisian tongue, thought Gueule-d’Or a bit of a dummy. It was all very well not getting sozzled and not running after girls in the street; but a man should be a man; otherwise he might as well slip into a skirt straight away. He would tease him in front of Gervaise, accusing him of giving the glad eye to all the women in the neighbourhood, which the great drum-major Goujet hotly denied. This didn’t stop the two workmen being friends. They called for one another in the morning, left for work together and sometimes had a glass of beer before coming home. Since the christening dinner they had used the familiar tu with each other, because constantly saying vous9 is so longwinded. That was the point they had reached, when Gueule-d’Or did Cadet-Cassis a real favour, one of those outstanding favours that you remember for the rest of your life. It was on the 2nd of December.10 The roofer, just for a lark, had the brilliant idea of going to see the uprising. Not that he gave a toss about the Republic, Bonaparte or any of that; but he liked gunpowder and thought that gunshots were entertaining. And he was on the point of getting himself trapped behind a barricade, if the blacksmith had not come across him, just in time to protect him with his huge body and help him to escape. Goujet, as they went back up the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, walked fast, with a serious look on his face. Now, he did concern himself with politics: he was a Republican, sensibly, in the name of justice and the general good. Despite that, he had not taken up arms. He explained why: the common people was tired of having to bear the cost of the chestnuts that it pulled out of the fire for the sake of the bourgeoisie, getting its fingers burned. February and June11 had been real lessons. From now on, the working-class suburbs would let the middle-class down town manage things as they saw fit. Then, when they reached the top, at the Rue des Poissonniers, he turned round, looking back at Paris. After all there was some dirty work going on down there, and one day the people might regret having stood by with folded arms. But Coupeau sniggered and said that you had to be a bit silly to risk your hide just so that those lazy good-for-nothings in Parliament could keep on getting their twenty-five francs. That evening, the Coupeaus invited the Goujets to dinner. Over the dessert, Cadet-Cassis and Gueule-d’Or planted two big kisses on each other’s cheeks. From now on it was life or death.
For three years, the life of the two families went on uneventfully on either side of the landing. Gervaise had managed to bring up the girl while never losing more than two days of work in a week. She had become a skilled worker for fine linen and earned up to three francs a day; so she decided to put Etienne, who was coming up to eight, in a little school in the Rue de Chartres, which cost her five francs for the week. Despite having two children to care for, the couple put aside twenty or thirty francs each month in the savings bank. When their savings reached the sum of six hundred francs, the young woman started to lose sleep over it, obsessed by her daydream of setting up her own business, renting a little shop and employing her own workers. She had it all figured out. After twenty years, if the enterprise prospered, they might be able to purchase an annuity, which could keep them for the rest of their lives, somewhere in the country. But she was afraid to take the risk. She said that she was still looking for a shop, so that she could have time to consider it. The money was quite safe in the savings bank; in fact, it was multiplying. In those three years, she had satisfied only one of her desires: she had bought herself a clock; and even then this timepiece, a rosewood clock with twisted columns and a copper gilt pendulum, had to be paid off over a year, at the rate of five francs every Monday. She got cross when Coupeau said he would wind it up, because only she was allowed to take off the glass globe and religiously wipe the columns, as though the marble top of her chest of drawers had been transformed into a chapel. Under the glass cover, behind the clock, she hid the savings book. And often, when she was dreaming about her shop, she would sit there, miles away, in front of the dial, staring at the turning hands, for all the world as if she was waiting for some particular, solemn moment before she made up her mind.
Almost every Sunday, the Coupeaus went out with the Goujets. These were quiet, pleasant outings: fried fish at Saint-Ouen or a rabbit in Vincennes, eaten without any fuss under the foliage on the veranda outside a caterer’s. The two men quenched their thirst and came home as sober as judges, offering an arm to the ladies. In the evening, before they went to bed, the couples did their sums and divided the expenses between them; but never was there any argument over a sou more or less. The Lorilleux were jealous of the Goujets. It seemed odd to them, after all, that Cadet-Cassis and Tip-Tap were constantly mixing with these strangers when they had family of their own. Oh, no! They didn’t give a fig for the family! Now that they had a few sous put aside, you should see the airs they were putting on. Mme Lorilleux, very annoyed to see her brother escaping from her clutches, no longer had a good word for Gervaise, while Mme Lerat, on the contrary, took the young woman’s side and defended her by telling the most astonishing stories, tales of attempted seduction at night on the boulevard, from which she showed Gervaise extricating herself like a romantic heroine, beating off her aggressors. As for Mother Coupeau, she tried to reconcile everybody and to keep on good terms with all her children. Her sight was failing steadily and she had only one cleaning job left, so she was glad to get five francs from both of them.
The very day when Nana reached three, Coupeau came back from work to find Gervaise in a dreadful state. She refused to tell him anything: there was nothing at all wrong with her, she said. But since she was laying the table back to front and pausing with the plates in her hands while her mind wandered, her husband absolutely insisted.
‘Well, if you must know,’ she confessed at last, ‘the little draper’s shop in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or is up to rent. I saw it an hour ago, when I went to buy some thread. It gave me a real turn.’
It was a very clean shop, which happened to be in the large house where they had once dreamed of finding somewhere to live. There was the shop and the living quarters behind, with two other rooms, to right and left. In short, just what they wanted, rather small rooms, but well-arranged. The only trouble was, she thought it a little over-priced: the owner was talking about five hundred francs.
‘Ah, so you went to see him and asked the price, did you?’ said Coupeau.
‘Oh, you know, I was just curious!’ she replied, affecting indifference. ‘You look round, you go in wherever there’s a sign, it doesn’t commit you to anything. But that one is definitely too dear. And then perhaps it would be a mistake to try and set up on my own.’
Even so, after dinner, she returned to the subject of the draper’s shop. She made a drawing of the premises in the margin of a newspaper. And, gradually, she talked it over, measured the walls and arranged the rooms, as though she were about to move her furniture in next day. At that, Coupeau urged her to rent it, seeing how much she wanted to: she would certainly not find anything decent at below five hundred francs; and, in any case, perhaps they would get a reduction. The only annoying thing was going to live in the same house as the Lorilleux, which, according to him, she wouldn’t be able to endure. But she got cross at this: she didn’t hate anybody; and, in the heat of her desire, she even found herself defending the Lorilleux. Underneath they were not bad people, they would get on very well together. After they went to bed, she was still mentally arranging the furniture, with Coupeau fast asleep, though she had not yet definitely made up her mind to go ahead with the project.
The next day, when she was alone, she could not resist the urge to lift the gla
ss dome off the clock and consult the savings book. Just imagine: her shop was in there, in those pages blackened with nasty scribbles! Before setting off for work, she consulted Mme Goujet, who strongly approved of her plan to set up in business. With a husband like hers, well-behaved and not a drinker, she was sure to make a success of it and not lose out. At lunch-time, Gervaise even went up to see the Lorilleux to get their opinion; she didn’t want it to appear as though she was hiding something from the family. Mme Lorilleux was quite taken aback. What! Tip-Tap was going to have a shop now, was she? And, though profoundly outraged, she muttered something and had to look as though she was very pleased: no doubt the shop was convenient, Gervaise was right to take it. However, once she had somewhat recovered her composure, she and her husband talked about the dampness in the courtyard and the dim lighting in those ground-floor rooms. Oh, it was certainly a fine place to catch rheumatism! But then, since she had made up her mind to rent the shop – which she had, hadn’t she? – then nothing they said, of course, would stop her doing it.
That evening, Gervaise admitted frankly, with a laugh, that she would have fallen ill if she had been prevented from taking the shop. But despite that, before finally saying: ‘That’s it!’, she wanted to see the premises and try to get a discount on the rent.
‘Very well, tomorrow, if you want,’ her husband said. ‘Come and fetch me at around six at the house where I’m working, in the Rue de la Nation, and we’ll go round to the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or on our way home.’
At the time, Coupeau was finishing off the roof of a newly built, three-storey house. This was the very day when he was to put the last sheets of zinc in place. Since the roof was almost flat, he had set up his workbench there, a wide shutter on two trestles. A lovely May sun was setting, gilding the chimneys, and way up there, in the clear sky, the workman was quietly cutting the metal sheets with some shears, bent over his table like a tailor in his workshop cutting out a pair of trousers. Against the wall of the neighbouring house, his assistant, a slim, fair-haired lad of seventeen, was keeping up the fire in a brazier by means of a huge bellows, each breath of which threw up a shower of sparks.
‘Hey, Zidore! Put the irons in the fire!’ Coupeau shouted.
The apprentice thrust the soldering-irons into the middle of the brazier, which was pale pink in the daylight. Then he went back to working his bellows. Coupeau was holding the last sheet of zinc, which still had to be laid, on the edge of the roof, near the gutter. Here, the roof suddenly sloped away above the gaping hole of the street. The roofer, as if in his own house, was wearing felt slippers; he eased his way forward, dragging his feet and humming ‘Oh, the little lambs!’ When he was positioned above the hole, he slid down, bracing himself with one knee against the brickwork of a chimney, and stayed there, hanging halfway, with one of his legs dangling above the pavement. When he turned round to shout to that lazybones Zidore, he steadied himself against a corner of the brickwork, because of the street, down there, beneath him.
‘Wretched dawdler, come on! Give me the irons! No sense staring into thin air, you silly beanpole! The larks won’t be dropping ready roasted out of the sky!’
But Zidore was in no hurry. He was interested in the neighbouring roofs and a large plume of smoke rising in the distance above Paris, somewhere by Grenelle, which could be a fire. But he did at last lie down flat on the roof, with his head above the void, and passed the irons to Coupeau, who began to solder the sheet of zinc. He bent down and reached up, always keeping his balance, sitting on one buttock, perching on the tip of a foot, held in place by a finger. He had a superb sense of balance, and nerves of steel, quite at home defying danger. They were on familiar terms. It was the street that was afraid of him. Since he had not put down his pipe, he turned round from time to time and calmly spat into the street.
‘Hey there, Madame Boche!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Hallo! Madame Boche!’
He had just seen the concierge crossing the road. She looked up and recognized him; and a conversation began from the roof to the pavement. She had her hands under her apron and her head back. He was now standing, with his left arm round a pipe, leaning over.
‘Have you seen my wife?’ he asked.
‘No, of course not,’ the concierge replied. ‘Is she here?’
‘She’s meant to be coming to fetch me… Is the family well?’
‘Yes, yes, thank you. I’m the most ill of all of them – and look at me! I’m off to the Chaussée Clignancourt to get a little leg of mutton. The butcher by the Moulin Rouge sells it for only sixteen sous.’
They raised their voices because a carriage was going by in the Rue de la Nation, wide and otherwise deserted; but their words, shouted at the top of their voices, brought only a little old lady to her window, where she stayed, leaning against the sill, enjoying the thrill of watching the man on the roof opposite, as though hoping to see him fall off at any moment.
‘Well, goodbye then!’ Mme Boche shouted. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’
Coupeau turned back and took the iron that Zidore was holding out for him. But just as the concierge was leaving, she noticed Gervaise on the opposite side of the street, holding Nana’s hand. She was just looking up, to call out to the roofer, when the young woman made a violent gesture to her to keep quiet, and in an undertone, so as not to be heard from above, explained her fear: she was afraid that if she appeared suddenly, it might startle her husband and make him fall. In four years, she had only once gone to fetch him from work; today was the second time. She couldn’t watch it, her heart always missed a beat, when she saw her man hanging between heaven and earth, in places where even the sparrows wouldn’t dare to perch.
‘I agree, it’s not very nice,’ muttered Mme Boche. ‘Mine’s a tailor, so I don’t have these worries.’
‘If you only knew,’ said Gervaise. ‘In the early days, I worried about it all day, from morning to night. I kept seeing him with his head cracked open, lying on a stretcher. Nowadays, I don’t think about it so much. One gets used to anything. You have to earn a living. But even so, it’s hard-earned bread when you risk your life and limb more than most.’
She paused, hiding Nana in her skirts, afraid that the child might cry out. In spite of herself, she looked, blanching. Coupeau was just soldering the furthest edge of the sheet, near the gutter; he was leaning as far over as he could, unable to reach the end, so he ventured a little further, with those slowed-down movements that workmen make, full of ease and weight. For a moment, he was right above the pavement, not holding on, calmly going about his work; from below, one could see the little white flame of the soldering-iron sputtering as it was moved along with a careful hand. Gervaise, speechless, her throat tight with anxiety, had clasped her hands and raised them in a mechanical gesture of supplication. She was panting for breath. Coupeau had just gone back on to the roof, without hurrying, taking the time to spit one last time into the street.
‘Are you spying on me now?’ he called merrily when he saw her. ‘She’s being silly, isn’t she, Mme Boche? She didn’t want to call up to me. Wait a moment, I’ll be finished in ten minutes.’
He just had to put on a chimney cowl, a simple little job. The washerwoman and the concierge stayed on the pavement, talking about the neighbourhood and watching Nana, to see that she didn’t go paddling in the gutter where she was looking for minnows; and the two women kept turning back to the roof, with smiles and nods, as if to show that they were not in any hurry. Opposite, the old woman was still at her window, watching the man and waiting.
‘What’s she keeping an eye on him for?’ said Mme Boche. ‘I don’t like the look of her.’
Up above, they could hear the roofer’s strong voice singing ‘A-picking strawberries!’ Now, bending over his workbench, he was artistically cutting out the zinc. With a turn of the compass, he had drawn a line and cut out a wide, fan-shaped semi-circle with the help of a pair of curved scissors. Then, gently, with a hammer, he was bending the fan into the sha
pe of a pointed mushroom. Zidore had returned to pumping up the fire with the bellows. The sun was setting behind the house, in a great burst of pink light, gradually turning pale and shading into soft lilac. And, up in the sky, at this quiet moment of the day, the silhouettes of the two workmen, seeming abnormally large, stood out against the clear air, with the dark line of the bench and the strange shape of the bellows.
When he had shaped the cowl, he called out again: ‘Zidore, the irons!’
But Zidore was nowhere to be seen. The roofer swore and looked around for him, calling through the skylight into the attic, which had been left open. Finally, he spotted him on a nearby roof, two houses away. The lad had gone off for a walk, exploring the neighbourhood, with his thin blond hair flying about in the breeze, blinking at the immensity of Paris.
‘Here, lazybones! Do you think you’re in the country or something?’ Coupeau said angrily. ‘You’re like Monsieur Béranger, composing your verses, perhaps? Would you mind very much passing me the irons? Has anyone seen anything like it, wandering around on the rooftops! Why not bring your sweetheart here at once, so you can sing her a ditty? Will you give me those irons, you nincompoop!’
He did the soldering and shouted down to Gervaise: ‘That’s it, I’m coming down!’
The pipe on which he was going to attach the cowl was in the middle of the roof. Gervaise, her mind now at rest, smiled as she watched him. Nana, suddenly reassured by the sight of her father, clapped her two little hands. She had sat down on the pavement, so that she could look upwards more easily.