As they went up to bed, the Coupeaus agreed that everything had gone very well and that the Poissons were not such bad people. Gervaise even thought that the shop was nicely done out. She had expected to suffer, spending an evening in her old home where someone else was now settling in comfortably, so she was surprised not to have felt a moment’s bitterness. Nana, getting undressed, asked her mother if the dress of the lady on the second floor, who got married last month, was chiffon like hers.
However, this was the family’s last day of happiness. Two years passed in which things went from bad to worse. It was the winters most of all that did for them. Though they could still eat bread in fine weather, rain and cold brought pangs of hunger, searching the larder and dining on air in the little Siberia that was their room. That cruel knave, December, would sneak in beneath the door, bringing every sort of ill: idle workshops, the numbing torpor of frosts, the black misery of wet weather. The first winter, they still lit a fire from time to time, snuggling around the stove, preferring to keep warm rather than eat. The second winter, the stove remained unused, chilling the room with its mournful countenance, like a cast-iron post. The thing that brought them to their knees, that destroyed them, was having to find the rent. Oh, that January quarter, when there was not a bean in the house and old Boche handed them the bill! It was another cold blast from the North. Then, the following Saturday, M. Marescot arrived, wrapped in a fine overcoat, with his great paws thrust into a pair of woollen gloves and the word ‘eviction’ constantly on his lips, while the snow was falling outside as though getting a bed with white sheets ready for them on the pavement. They would have sold their own flesh to pay the quarter’s rent; it was the rent that emptied the larder and the stove. In point of fact, the same lament rose from every part of the building and there was weeping on every floor, a chorus of misery swelling as it filled the stairways and corridors. If every family had been mourning a loved one, it would not have produced such frightful music. A real Last Judgement, the end of everything, life unendurable, the trampling of the poor. The woman on the third floor went out to spend a week on the corner of the Rue Belhomme. One workman, the builder on the fifth, had stolen from his employer.
Of course, the Coupeaus had only themselves to blame. Even when life is hard, one can always get by, with thrift and good housekeeping: look at the Lorilleux, who regularly put their rent aside, wrapped up in scraps of dirty paper – though, in truth, they did lead the lives of scrawny spiders, enough to put you off work altogether. For the time being, Nana was not earning anything from her flowers; it even cost quite a bit to keep her. Eventually, Gervaise’s reputation at Mme Fauconnier’s declined. She was losing her touch, and more and more often she would make a hash of the work, so that the boss cut her pay to forty sous, the same as the worst workers. Despite that, she was very proud and easily offended, letting everyone know that she had once had a place of her own. She stayed off work for days at a time or left the laundry in a fit of pique: once, she was so put out at seeing Mme Fauconnier take on Mme Putois and at having to work next to her former employee, that she did not come in again for a fortnight. After these outbursts, they took her on again out of pure charity, which made her even more bitter. Needless to say, she had little to take home at the end of the week; and, as she would remark bitterly, the Saturday would come when she would end up owing her employer. As for Coupeau, perhaps he did work, but in that case he was surely making a present of his wages to the government, because since his job in Etampes, Gervaise had not seen the colour of his money. Now, on pay-days when he came home, she didn’t even look at his hands. He would arrive with his arms hanging at his side, his pockets empty and often without even a handkerchief. Yes, for God’s sake, he had lost his snot-rag or some scoundrel among his workmates had got it. At first, he would draw up a balance sheet, invent some story: ten francs for a subscription or twenty francs that had fallen out of a hole in his pocket – he would show the hole – or fifty francs to pay off some imaginary debt. After a while, he ceased to care. The money melted away, that’s all. It wasn’t in his pocket any longer, it was in his belly, which was another, less amusing way of bringing it home to his wife. On the advice of Mme Boche, the laundress sometimes went to wait for her husband at the gate to his works, to grab the wage-packet while it was still warm; but this was no use, because his friends would warn Coupeau and the money would be smuggled by in his shoes or in some still less savoury wallet. Mme Boche was very cunning on this score, because Boche would spirit ten-franc pieces past her, little hoards designed to treat some accommodating ladies that he knew; so she would search through every nook and cranny in his clothes, and would usually find the coin that had gone missing in the peak of his cap, sewn in between the leather and the material. Ah, but the roofer was not one to be padding his clothes with gold; he chose to put his money inside him. And Gervaise could hardly take her scissors and cut him open.
Yes, it was the fault of the family, if they slipped back season by season. But these are things that one never tells oneself, especially when one is down in the gutter. They blamed misfortune and claimed that God was against them. The home was a real shambles now: they were at one another all day long. They still didn’t hit each other, even so, apart from a few slaps that were let off in spite of them at the height of an argument. The saddest thing was that they had opened the cage of friendship and their feelings had flown out like canaries. They lost the good warmth that envelops fathers, mothers and children when they all stick together as a bunch, and were left shivering, each alone in a corner. All three of them, Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana, turned on each other for a wrong word, flying off the handle at the slightest excuse, hatred filling their eyes. It was as though something had broken, the mainspring of the family, the mechanism that makes people’s hearts beat together when they are happy. It went without saying that Gervaise no longer felt the same fluttering when she saw Coupeau on the edge of a roof, twelve or fifteen metres above the pavement. She would not have given him a shove herself, but by God if he had fallen of his own accord, then the world would not have missed much. On days when they had a thundering good row, she might exclaim: ‘Would they never bring him back to her on a stretcher?’ She was just waiting for it, they would be bringing back her happiness. What use was he, the old soak, apart from making her cry, eating her out of house and home and driving her to do something she shouldn’t? Well, then: when you had a man who was that useless, you stuck him in his hole as soon as you could, and danced the freedom waltz on his grave. And when the mother cried: ‘Kill!’, the daughter echoed: ‘Thump him!’ Nana used to read the accidents in the newspaper, making unnatural asides for a child. Her father had such darned luck that when a bus did knock him down it didn’t even make him sober. When would he die, the bastard?
In the midst of this life driven mad by poverty, Gervaise still suffered from the sounds of hunger that she could hear all around her. This part of the house was the beggar’s corner, where there were two or three families who seemed to have agreed not to have bread every day. Even though the doors opened, they hardly ever let out cooking smells. There was a silence of death along the corridor and the walls sounded hollow like an empty stomach. From time to time, an orchestra would strike up: women’s tears, the crying of a hungry child, or a family devouring itself to ward off the pangs. Here, there was a general cramp in the jaw, mirrored in all these gaping mouths; and chests grew hollow just from breathing this air in which not even gnats could live for lack of food. What upset Gervaise most was Old Bru, in his hole under the little staircase. He would creep in there like a dormouse, curling up in a ball to escape the cold, and would stay for days, without moving, on a heap of straw. Even hunger would not bring him out any longer, because it would have been a waste of time going to work up an appetite outside, when no one had invited him to dinner. When he didn’t appear for three or four days, the neighbours would push open his door and look to see if he wasn’t done for. No, he was still alive, not much, but
a little, just one eye: even death had forgotten him! Whenever Gervaise had some bread, she would throw him the crusts. Even though, because of her husband, she was becoming embittered and hated men, she could still feel genuinely sorry for animals; and poor Old Bru, who was being left to die because he could no longer hold a tool in his hand, was like a dog to her, a discarded beast, which even the knackers didn’t want for his skin and fat. It was like a weight on her heart, knowing that he was always there on the far side of the corridor, abandoned by God and men, feeding off himself alone and returning to the size of a child, withered and dried out like an orange shrivelling on a mantelpiece.
The laundress also strongly disliked living next door to Bazouge, the undertaker. The two rooms were separated by a mere partition, very thin. He could not put a finger in his mouth without her hearing it. In the evening, when he got home, she reluctantly followed everything that went on in his little home: the black leather hat giving a dull sound as it hit the chest of drawers, like a shovelful of earth; the black coat, hung up and brushing against the wall with the noise of a night-bird’s wings; all the old black clothes that he threw into the middle of the room, filling it with a sound of discarded mourning. She listened to him stamping around, anxious at the slightest sound of movement, jumping if he bumped against a table or rattled his washing-up. The confounded drunkard became a major preoccupation with her, some vague fear mingling with a desire for knowledge. He was merry enough, tipsy every day, out of his head on Sundays, coughing, spitting, singing ‘La Mère Godichon’, swearing obscenely and boxing with all four walls before he could find his bed. It would leave her quite pale, wondering what on earth he was up to in there: she imagined some dreadful things, getting the idea that he must have brought back a body and be hiding it under the bed. Good Lord! The papers were full of some story about an undertaker’s assistant who collected the coffins of little children in his home, intending to save himself some bother by making just one trip to the cemetery. Decidedly, when Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seeped under the partition. You would think you were living opposite the Père Lachaise, right in the kingdom of the moles. There was something terrifying about that creature, the way he laughed constantly to himself, as though his work made him light-hearted. Even when he had finished his dance of death and was flat on his back in bed, he snored in an extraordinary manner, which kept Gervaise holding her breath. For hours, she would strain her ears, thinking that there was a funeral procession passing through the neighbour’s room.
Yes, but the worst thing was that, even in the midst of her terror, Gervaise felt such an attraction that she would press her ear against the wall, to find out more. Bazouge had the same effect on her as a handsome man does on a respectable woman: they would like to touch, but dare not; their upbringing prevents them. Well, if fear had not held her back, she would like to have touched death, to find out what it was made of. She behaved so oddly at times, waiting for Bazouge’s movements to give her the key to the matter, that Coupeau would ask her with a snigger whether she had a fancy for the undertaker next door. She would get angry and talk about moving home, she was so repelled by this proximity to him; but, despite herself, as soon as the old man came back with his graveyard smell, she resumed her train of thought, with the look – at once excited and fearful – of a wife who is considering breaking her marriage vows. Had he not twice offered to wrap her up and take her with him, in a slumber where the pleasure of sleep is so great that one suddenly forgets all one’s woes? Perhaps it was really that good. Little by little, she started to feel a more insistent urge to experience it. She would like to try, just for a fortnight, or a month! If only she could sleep for a month, especially in winter, the month when the quarter was due and her worries were killing her! But it wasn’t possible, you had to go on sleeping for ever even if you did it for just one hour; and the idea chilled her through; the allure of death was dissipated by the stern and everlasting friendship that the earth demanded.
Yet one January evening, she banged with both fists against the partition. She had spent a dreadful week, penniless, harassed by everyone, at the end of her tether. That evening she was unwell, shivering with fever and seeing flames dancing in front of her. So, instead of throwing herself out of the window, as she had considered doing at one point, she started to bang on the wall and shout: ‘Bazouge! Old Bazouge!’
The undertaker was removing his shoes and singing ‘Il était trois belles filles’. He must have had a good day at work, because he seemed even more emotional than usual.
‘Old Bazouge! Old Bazouge!’ Gervaise called, raising her voice.
Couldn’t he hear her? She was giving herself to him at once, he could take her by the neck and drag her off to where he took those other women of his, the poor and the rich alike whom he consoled. It pained her to hear him singing about ‘three lovely girls’, because she saw in this the contempt of a man who has too many women in love with him.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Bazouge stammered. ‘Who’s ill? I’m coming, duckie.’
However, at the sound of this hoarse voice, Gervaise seemed to wake as from a nightmare. What had she done? She had banged on the partition, for sure. It was like being hit across the back with a stick; fear tightened her buttocks and she shrank back, thinking she could see the undertaker’s huge hands reaching through the wall to grab her by the hair. No, no, she didn’t want him, she was not ready. If she struck the wall, it must have been by accident with her elbow as she turned over. And a feeling of horror swept through her from her knees to her shoulders, at the idea of being swept away in that old man’s arms, stiff as a board, her face as pale as a china plate.
‘Is there nobody there?’ Bazouge went on in the silence. ‘Come on, I’m very obliging to the ladies.’
‘Nothing, it’s nothing,’ the laundress said eventually, in a strangled voice. ‘I’m all right, thank you.’
For as long as the undertaker was growling and falling asleep, she remained anxious, listening to him, not daring to move for fear that he might think he had heard her tapping again. She swore that she would be careful from now on. She could be on her last gasp, she would still not ask for the neighbour’s help. And she said this to reassure herself, because at some moments, despite her fear, she felt the same terrified fascination.
Even in this miserable hole, surrounded by her own worries and those of others, Gervaise did witness a fine example of courage in the Bijards. Little Lalie, the eight-year-old no bigger than two sous’ worth of butter, kept house as neatly as a grown-up. And it was a hard task; she had care of two little ones, her brother Jules and her sister Henriette, kids of three and five years old, on whom she had to keep her eye all day long, even while she was sweeping the floor or washing the dishes. Lalie had been the little mother of this brood ever since old Bijard killed his wife by kicking her in the belly. Of her own accord, without saying anything, she had taken over her mother’s place – so much so that her dumb brute of a father, no doubt wishing to complete the resemblance, was now beating the child as he used to beat the mother. When he came home drunk, he needed a woman to batter. He didn’t even notice that Lalie was quite small; he couldn’t have tanned an old hide any harder. A single blow from his hand would cover her whole face and her skin was still so soft that it would bear the mark of his five fingers for two days. These were outrageous assaults, a hail of blows for any trifle, a savage wolf bearing down on a poor little cat, tender and timorous, pitifully thin, who took it all without complaining, with a look of resignation in her large eyes. No, Lalie never rebelled. She might bend her neck to protect her face, but she never cried out, to avoid causing any upheaval in the house. Then, when her father was tired of knocking her around the room with his shoe, she gathered enough strength to get up again; and she would go back to her tasks, washing the children, cooking, not leaving a speck of dust on the furniture. It was part of her day’s work to be beaten.
Gervaise had conceived a great affection for her little neig
hbour. She treated her as an equal, as a grown-up woman who knows about life. It must be said that Lalie had a pale, serious face with a spinsterish look. To hear her talk, you would have thought she was thirty. She knew how to shop, to darn and to keep house, and spoke about the children as though she had already given birth two or three times in her life. People would smile to listen to her – an eight-year-old; then they would feel a lump in their throats and slip away before they began to cry. Gervaise took her in as often as possible and gave her whatever she could: food, old dresses… One day, as she was trying an old jacket of Nana’s on, she was choked to see that her back was blue and her elbow grazed and still bleeding – and the innocent child’s tortured flesh clinging to her bones. Well, then: Old Bazouge could get his box ready, because at this rate she would not carry on much further. But the child begged the laundress to say nothing; she didn’t want anyone to make trouble for her father on her account. She defended him, insisting that he would not have been unkind, had he not been drinking. He was mad, he no longer knew what he was doing. Oh, she forgave him: you had to forgive a mad person!
From that time on, Gervaise kept her eyes open and tried to intervene as soon as she heard Old Bijard coming up the staircase. Most of the time, however, all she got for her pains was a thump from him. In the daytime, when she went in, she often found Lalie tied to the foot of the iron bedstead. This was an idea of the locksmith’s: before leaving he would tie her up by the legs and round the middle with thick ropes, no one knew why; probably the whim of a brain unhinged by drink, intending no doubt to tyrannize the child even in his absence. Lalie, stiff as a board, with pins and needles in her legs, would stay tied up for whole days at a time; she even stayed there one night, too, when Bijard forgot to come home. When Gervaise indignantly offered to untie her, Lalie begged her not to disturb a single rope, because her father became furious if he did not find all the knots tied in the same way. Honestly, she was all right, it gave her a rest; and she would say this with a smile, her short cherub’s legs swollen and deadened. What bothered her was that the work was not getting done while she was fastened to the bed, staring at the mess. Her father might at least have thought up something different. Even so, she kept charge of her children, told them what to do and called Henriette and Jules over to blow their noses. Since her hands were free, she would knit while waiting to be released, so as not to waste her time altogether. She felt the pain most when Bijard came to untie her. For a quarter of an hour she would drag herself around on the ground, unable to stand upright, because the blood was not flowing properly.