‘Oh, leave that to us,’ Mme Boche said. ‘We’re the concierges, aren’t we? So, we’re responsible for keeping the noise down. Let them come and complain, we’ll tell them where they can get off.’
In the back room, a ferocious battle had just taken place between Nana and Augustine, both wanting to scrape clean the roasting-dish. The dish itself had been bouncing around the floor for the past quarter of an hour, giving a noise like an old saucepan. Now Nana was looking after little Victor, who had a goose bone in his throat; she was sticking her fingers under his chin and forcing him to swallow large lumps of sugar, as medicine. Even so, this did not prevent her from keeping an eye on the big table and every two minutes she ran in to ask for wine, bread and meat for Etienne and Pauline.
‘Here you are. Now get lost!’ her mother said. ‘Can’t you give me a moment’s peace?’
The children couldn’t eat another thing, but they were stuffing it in even so, banging their forks in a rhythmical chant, to get themselves excited.
At the same time, in the midst of all this noise, a conversation had started between Old Bru and Mother Coupeau. The old man, a deathly pallor on his face after all that food and wine, was talking about his sons, who had died in the Crimea. Ah, if only the boys had been alive now, he would have had bread every day. But Mother Coupeau, her voice slightly slurred, leaned over and said:
‘Children are enough of a worry, believe you me! Take me: I seem happy enough, don’t I? Well, I’ve had cause to weep more than once. No, don’t wish for children.’
Old Bru shook his head.
‘No one wants to give me work anymore,’ he muttered. ‘I’m too old. When I go into a workshop, the young ones laugh and ask if I’m the one who used to polish Henry IV’s boots. Last year, I could still earn thirty sous a day painting a bridge. You had to lie on your back, with the river running underneath; I’ve been coughing ever since. Nowadays, it’s all over, they won’t take me on anywhere.’
He looked at his poor, stiff hands and added:
‘It’s fair enough, since I’m no good for anything. They’re right, I’d do the same. You see, the trouble is, I’m not dead. Yes, it’s my fault. You should lie down and die when you can’t work any longer.’
‘No, honestly,’ said Lorilleux, who had been listening, ‘I can’t see why the government doesn’t help those who are victims of illness or injury at work. I was reading about it the other day in the newspaper.’
But Poisson felt obliged to defend the government.
‘Workers are not soldiers,’ he proclaimed. ‘The Invalides is for soldiers. One can’t demand the impossible.’
The dessert was served. In the middle there was a Savoy cake, in the shape of a temple, with a dome made out of slices of melon and, on top of the dome, an artificial rose with a butterfly, made out of silver paper, hovering near it on the end of a fine wire. Two drops of gum, at the heart of the rose, were made to look like two drops of dew. Then, on the left, a piece of cream cheese was bathing in a bowl, while in another plate, on the right, was a pile of large strawberries, their juice running. However, there was still some salad left, broad leaves of cos lettuce soaked in oil.
‘What about it, Madame Boche,’ Gervaise said, graciously. ‘A bit more salad? I know how much you love it.’
‘Oh, no, thank you! I’m full up to here,’ the concierge replied.
The laundress had turned towards Virginie, who was sticking a finger in her mouth, as though stirring the food.
‘It’s true, I’m full up,’ she muttered. ‘There’s no room left. I couldn’t fit in another mouthful.’
‘Come on, force yourself,’ Gervaise went on, smiling. ‘There’s always a little hole left. You don’t need to be hungry to eat salad. You’re not going to let this cos lettuce go to waste?’
‘Keep it with the dressing on and eat it tomorrow,’ said Madame Lerat. ‘It’s better like that.’
The ladies puffed and looked regretfully at the salad bowl. Clémence described how she had once eaten three bunches of watercress for lunch. Mme Putois went even further, she would take a head of cos lettuce and munch it like that, with just a sprinkling of salt. All of them could have lived on salad, buying baskets full of it. And, with the help of such talk, they emptied the bowl.
‘Now, I could get down in a meadow on all fours,’ the concierge went on, her mouth full.
So, they laughed at the idea of dessert. A dessert didn’t count. It had come a bit late, true, but that didn’t matter: they would welcome it even so. When one was ready to burst like a bomb, you couldn’t let yourself be worried by a few strawberries and some cake. In any case, there was no hurry, they could take their time – all night, if necessary. Meanwhile, the plates were stacked with cream cheese and strawberries. The men lit their pipes and, since the vintage wine was now finished, they went back to the ordinary stuff, drinking as they smoked. But they wanted Gervaise to cut the Savoy cake at once. Poisson, very gallant, got up and took the rose, to present it to their hostess, amid general applause. She had to fasten it with a pin above her left breast, next to her heart. Every time she moved, the butterfly fluttered.
‘Look here!’ Lorilleux exclaimed, having just discovered something. ‘We’re eating off your workbench! Well, I never! I doubt if anyone has worked so hard on it!’
This pointed joke went down very well, and was followed by a shower of witticisms: Clémence could not swallow a spoonful of strawberries without saying that the iron was going back and forth; Mme Lerat claimed that the cream cheese smelled of starch, and Mme Lorilleux muttered that it was a brilliant idea, to gulp money down at such a rate, on the very place where it had been so painfully earned. A storm of cries and laughter burst out.
But suddenly a powerful voice silenced everybody. It was Boche, standing up and assuming a vulgar, debauched expression to sing ‘The Volcano of Love, or the Seductive Trooper’.
‘Blavin am I, who seduces lovely women…’4
A thunderous chorus of ‘Bravo!’ greeted the first lines. Yes, yes, let’s have a singsong! Everyone would contribute; it was the most amusing thing of all. And the whole lot of them put their elbows on the table or leaned back against their chairs, nodding at the right place and raising their glasses to the chorus. Boche, the old devil, specialized in comic songs: he could have made the wine bottles chuckle, the way he imitated the soldier saluting with his fingers spread and his hat on the back of his head. He went straight from ‘The Volcano of Love’ into ‘The Baroness de Follebiche’, one of his party pieces. When he reached the third verse, he turned towards Clémence and murmured in a slow, seductive voice:
‘There were visitors at the baroness’s
Only the lady’s sisters four
One had blonde and three brown tresses
And all in all eight lovely eyes’
At this, the whole company was roused to join in the refrain. The men stamped their feet to mark time and the women, taking their knives and tapping rhythmically on their glasses, all shouted at the tops of their voices:
‘By Jove! Who will brew
A barrel of beer for the tru-u-u-ue, for the true
By Jove! Who will brew
A barrel of beer for the tru-u-u-ue, tru-u-u-ue,
for the troo-oo-oo-pers!’
The shop windows rattled and the great gust of breath from the singers blew up the net curtains. Meanwhile, Virginie had already vanished twice and returned, leaning over to whisper some news into Gervaise’s ear. The third time, when she came back, she said, in the midst of the hubbub:
‘My dear, he’s still at François’, pretending to read the paper… Of course, there must be something going on…’
She was talking about Lantier: he was the person she had been going to look for. At each new report, Gervaise’s mood darkened.
‘Is he drunk?’ she asked Virginie.
‘No,’ the big brunette answered. ‘He seems quite composed. That’s what’s so worrying, huh? What’s he doing in the pub
if he’s quite calm and sober? Oh, my God, I hope nothing happens!’
The laundress was worried and begged her to keep quiet. Suddenly, there was a deep silence. Mme Putois had just got up and was singing: ‘All Aboard!’ The guests, silent and thoughtful, were watching her; even Poisson had put down his pipe on the edge of the table, so that he could listen. She was standing stiffly, small, fiery, the pallor of her face accentuated by her black bonnet, and she thrust her left fist forward with a convincing show of pride, growling, in a voice larger than she was:
‘Where’s the reckless privateer
That chases us afore the wind?
Woe betide the rash corsair!
No quarter for him or his kind!
Come, boys, come, and man the guns
And each will have his tot of rum!
The gibbet’s waiting, never fear,
For the pirate and the buccaneer!’
This was serious stuff. By heavens, it really gave you a feel of the thing! Poisson, who had been on a sea voyage, slowly nodded his head, to show approval of the details. Moreover, one could tell that the song suited Mme Putois’ character very well.
Coupeau leaned over to describe how, one evening in the Rue Poulet, Mme Putois had trounced four men who tried to attack her honour.
Meanwhile, Gervaise, with the help of Mother Coupeau, served up the coffee, even though they were still eating Savoy cake. Then they wouldn’t let her sit down, saying that it was her turn to sing. She went pale and protested, looking embarrassed, to the point where someone asked if the goose had upset her stomach, by any chance. So she said: ‘Ah, let me sleep…’ in a soft, tender voice; and when she came to the chorus, to that longing for a sleep peopled with lovely dreams, her eyelids started to close, and she gazed dreamily at the dark, towards the street outside. Immediately afterwards, Poisson gave a brusque nod to the ladies and started into a drinking-song, ‘The Wines of France’; but he sang like a squeaky door and only the last stanza, the patriotic one, was a success, because when he mentioned the French flag, the tricolour, he raised his glass very high, tipped it over and finally emptied it into his wide-open mouth. Then, there was a succession of ballads: they heard about Venice and its gondoliers, in Mme Boche’s barcarole; about Seville and the Andalucians, in Mme Lorilleux’s bolero; and Lorilleux even went so far as to speak of the perfumes of Arabia, in connection with the loves of Fatima the dancer. Around the laden table, in air thickened with a breath of indigestion, golden horizons were displayed, ivory necks and ebony locks went past, there were kisses beneath the moon to the music of guitars, and bayaderes5 spread the ground beneath their feet with pearls and precious stones. And the men blissfully smoked their pipes, while the ladies harboured unselfconscious smiles of pleasure, all of them imagining themselves far away, breathing these delightful scents. When Clémence began to warble ‘Make Your Nest’, with a tremor in her voice, this also delighted them, because it conjured up the image of the country, of fluttering birds, of dancing under the trellis and flowers with honey-scented petals: in short, what you could find in the Bois de Vincennes, on days when you went for a picnic. But Virginie livened up the proceedings with ‘My Little Bit’: she played the lady victualler, with one hand on her hip and her elbow out, pouring the soldiers’ liquor ration out with the other hand, into thin air, by twisting her wrist. It was so good that they begged Mother Coupeau to sing ‘The Mouse’. The old woman refused, swearing that she did not know such filth. Despite that, she began with her reedy, hesitant voice, bringing out all the double entendres and the terror of Mlle Lise holding her skirts tight at the sight of the mouse. The whole table rocked with laughter, the women unable to keep a straight face and each looking at her neighbour with a grin; after all, it wasn’t dirty, there were no rude words in it. Boche, in point of fact, was doing the mouse up Madame Vigoureux’s legs. It could have turned nasty, but Goujet, on a sign from Gervaise, imposed silence and respect once more with ‘Abd-el Kader’s Farewell’,6 which he sang in his growling bass voice. Now, there was someone with a good set of lungs: the sound emerged from his fine, spreading golden beard as from a brass trumpet. When he cried out: ‘Oh, my noble companion,’ referring to the warrior’s black mare, their hearts beat faster and they applauded without even waiting for the end, so loudly did he sing.
‘Your turn, Old Bru, your turn!’ Mother Coupeau said. ‘Sing your song. The old ones are the best, after all!’
They all turned towards the old man, insisting, urging him on. He looked round at them, bemused, with his still mask of tanned skin, appearing not to understand. They asked if he knew ‘The Five Vowels’. He lowered his chin; he couldn’t remember; all the songs of the good old days were muddled up in his noddle. Just as they were making up their minds to leave him alone, he seemed to remember something and stammered in a hollow voice:
‘Trou-la-la, trou-la-la,
Trou-la-la, trou-la-la!’
His face came alive: the refrain must have awoken distant memories of gaiety, which he was enjoying on his own, listening to his own voice, as it grew fainter and fainter, with a childlike delight:
‘Trou-la-la, trou-la-la,
Trou-la-la, trou-la-la!’
‘Listen to this, dear,’ Virginie whispered in Gervaise’s ear. ‘I’ve just been again, you know… Well, Lantier has left François’ place.’
‘You didn’t see him outside?’ the laundress asked.
‘No, I walked quickly and didn’t think to look.’
But Virginie had raised her eyes and stopped what she was saying to give a low sigh.
‘Oh, my God! He’s there, on the pavement across the street. He’s looking in here.’
Gervaise, quite overcome, risked a glance. People had gathered on the street to listen to them singing; the grocer’s boys, the tripe lady and the little watchmaker formed one group, appearing to be part of the show. There were two soldiers, some gentlemen in frock-coats and three little girls of five or six holding hands, very serious, wide-eyed with wonder. And, indeed, Lantier was there standing in the front row, calmly listening and watching. He really did have a nerve! Gervaise felt a chill rise from her legs to her heart, not daring to move, while Old Bru carried on:
‘Trou-la-la, trou-la-la,
Trou-la-la, trou-la-la!’
‘Oh, no, old chap! Give us a break!’ said Coupeau. ‘Do you know all the words? Sing it for us some other day, would you? When we’re really feeling in the mood.’
Laughter. The old man stopped dead, cast his pale eyes over the guests round the table and resumed the attitude of a meditating animal. The coffee had been drunk and Coupeau asked for more wine. For a moment the singing ceased, and the conversation turned to a woman who had been found hanged that morning, in the house next door. It was Mme Lerat’s turn, but she needed time to prepare. She dipped the corner of her napkin in a glass of water and dabbed her temples with it, because she was too hot. Then she asked for a drop of brandy, drank it and wiped her lips thoroughly.
‘“The Child of the Lord” is it?’ she murmured. ‘“The Child of the Lord”…’
Tall, mannish, with her bony nose and the bearing of a policeman, she began:
‘To the lost child whom his mother forsakes
Ever the church will shelter afford.
God from his throne sees him and takes
Care of the lost one, the child of the Lord.’
Her voice, tremulous at times, paused emotionally on certain notes; she raised her eyes to heaven, while her right hand hung above her breast and came to rest on her heart, in a gesture full of meaning. At this, Gervaise, tormented by the presence of Lantier, could not hold back her tears; she felt that the song was describing her own agony, that she was this lost child, forsaken, whom the Good Lord would protect. Clémence, very drunk, suddenly began to sob and, resting her head on the edge of the table, she tried to stifle her snuffling in the cloth. There was a highly charged silence. All the ladies had their handkerchiefs out and were wiping their eyes, their h
eads unbowed, considering that their feelings did them credit. The men, bending forward, were looking straight ahead under blinking eyelids. Poisson, choking and gritting his teeth, twice broke the end of his pipe and spat the pieces out, without ceasing to smoke. Boche, who had left his hand resting on the coal merchant’s knee, had stopped pinching her, overcome by a sense of remorse and some vague feeling of respect, while two large tears ran down his cheeks. All the revellers were tight as drums and soft as lambs: the wine was starting to come out of their eyes, huh? When she reached the second chorus, slower and more tearful than the first, they all succumbed and wept like fountains into their plates, loosening their belts and melting with sentimental emotion.
But Gervaise and Virginie, hard as they tried, could not take their eyes off the pavement opposite. Mme Boche also noticed Lantier and gave a little cry, while the tears continued to run down her cheeks. All three of them wore anxious expressions, while involuntary nods and signs passed between them. Oh, my God! Suppose Coupeau were to turn round! Suppose he were to see the other man! What slaughter there would be! What carnage! And the effect of all this was that the roofer asked:
‘What are you looking at, then?’
He leaned forward and recognized Lantier.
‘In heaven’s name!’ he muttered. ‘That really is too much! The bastard! Oh, the lousy bastard! No, that’s really too much. Just you wait…’
As he started to get up, stammering dreadful threats, Gervaise begged him in a whisper:
‘Listen, I beg you… Put the knife down… Stay here, don’t do anything foolish.’
Virginie had to take away a knife that he had picked up from the table. But she couldn’t stop him from going outside and crossing over to Lantier.
The guests, swept up on a tide of emotion, saw nothing, but wept even louder, while Mme Lerat sang on, in heart-rending tones.