‘By the way’, Pauline went on, ‘weren’t you looking for Monsieur Robineau yesterday? He’s back.’
Denise thought she was saved.
‘Thanks, I’ll go round the other way, through the silk department … It can’t be helped! They sent me upstairs to the workroom to fetch a dress that had been altered.’
They separated. Denise, with a busy look, as if she was running from cash-desk to cash-desk trying to check up on some error, arrived at the staircase and went down into the hall. It was a quarter to ten, and the bell had just gone for the first meal service. A brilliant sun was warming the glass roof, and in spite of the grey linen blinds the heat was beating down in the still air. Now and then a cool breath rose from the parquet floor which the porters were sprinkling with a thin trickle of water. An atmosphere of somnolence, a summer siesta, reigned in the empty spaces between the counters, which were like chapels filled with sleeping darkness after the last Mass. Salesmen were standing listlessly about; a few customers were going through the galleries, crossing the hall with the tired gait of women tortured by the sun.
As Denise was going downstairs Favier was just measuring out the material for a dress in fine silk with pink spots, for Madame Boutarel, who had arrived in Paris the day before from the south. Since the beginning of the month the provinces had been supplying customers; one saw nothing but dowdy women, yellow shawls, green skirts, a mass influx from the country. The bored shop assistants could not even be bothered to laugh at them. Favier accompanied Madame Boutarel to the haberdashery department, and when he reappeared he said to Hutin:
‘Yesterday they were all from Auvergne, today they’re all from Provence … I’m quite sick of them.’
But Hutin rushed forward; it was his turn, and he had recognized ‘the pretty lady’, the lovely blonde whom the department described in that way, for they knew nothing about her, not even her name! They all smiled at her; not a week passed without her coming to the Ladies’ Paradise, always alone. This time she had with her a little boy of four or five, and this provoked some comment.
‘She’s married, then?’ asked Favier, when Hutin came back from the cash-desk, where he had had thirty metres of duchess satin debited.
‘Maybe,’ Hutin replied, ‘although the kid doesn’t prove anything. He might belong to a friend … What’s certain is that she must have been crying. She looked terribly sad, and her eyes were red!’
A silence ensued. The two salesmen gazed vaguely into the depths of the shop. Then Favier said slowly:
‘If she’s married, perhaps her husband’s been hitting her.’
‘Maybe,’ Hutin repeated. ‘Unless it was a lover who’s left her in the lurch.’
And after a fresh silence he added:
‘I couldn’t care less, anyway!’
At that moment Denise was walking through the silk department, slackening her pace and looking about her, trying to find Robineau. She could not see him, so she went into the household linen gallery, then passed through the silk department a second time. The two salesmen had noticed her stratagem.
‘Here’s that skinny girl again!’ murmured Hutin.
‘She’s looking for Robineau,’ said Favier. ‘I don’t know what they’re up to. Certainly nothing dirty, Robineau isn’t like that… They say he got her a job sewing neckties … What a business, eh?’
Hutin was wondering how he could embarrass Denise. When she passed close by him he stopped her, saying:
‘Is it me you’re looking for?’
She became very red. Since the evening at Joinville she had not dared read what was in her heart, which was full of confused feelings. She kept seeing him in her mind, with the red-headed girl, and if she still trembled in his presence it was perhaps from uneasiness. Had she ever loved him? Did she love him still? She had no desire to analyse the feelings which caused her such pain.
‘No, sir,’ she replied, embarrassed.
Seeing that she was embarrassed, Hutin began to make fun of her.
‘Do you want us to serve him to you? Favier, please serve Robineau to the young lady.’
She looked at him intently, with the same calm, sad gaze with which she greeted the wounding remarks the girls were always making about her. Oh, how unpleasant he was, attacking her just like the others! And it seemed as if something snapped inside her, as if a last bond was breaking. There was such suffering in her face that Favier, not very soft-hearted by nature, came to her help.
‘Monsieur Robineau is in the stock-room,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’ll be back for lunch … You’ll find him here this afternoon, if you want to speak to him.’
Denise thanked him, and went upstairs again to the ladieswear department, where Madame Aurélie was waiting for her in cold fury. What! She’d been gone for half an hour! Where had she been? Not in the work-room, to be sure? Denise hung her head, thinking how endless were her misfortunes. If Robineau didn’t come back, all was lost. She was planning to go downstairs again, all the same.
In the silk department, Robineau’s return had set off quite a revolution. The department had been hoping that he would be so sick of the trouble people constantly made for him that he would not come back; and indeed, at one time, pressed by Vinçard to take over his business, he had almost decided to do so. Hutin’s secret campaign, the mine which, for months, he had been digging under the assistant buyer’s feet, was finally about to explode. During Robineau’s leave, Hutin, as senior salesman, had deputized for him, and had done his best to damage his reputation in the eyes of his superiors, and to install himself in his place by being over-zealous; he discovered and exposed small irregularities, he submitted plans for improvement, he invented new designs. Moreover, everyone in the department, from the newcomer dreaming of becoming a salesman to the senior salesman coveting the manager’s job, had only one fixed idea—to dislodge the colleague above them in order to climb a rung of the ladder, to devour him if he became an obstacle; and it was as if this struggle of appetites, this pressure of one against another, was what made the machine run smoothly, stimulating business and igniting the blaze of success which was astonishing Paris. Behind Hutin, there was Favier, and behind Favier there were the others, in a queue. The sound of jaws working could be heard. Robineau was condemned; everyone was already carrying away a bone. So, when the assistant buyer reappeared, there was a general grumbling. The question had to be settled, and the attitude of the salesmen had seemed so menacing to the head of the department that he had just sent Robineau to the stock-room to give the management time to come to a decision.
‘If they keep him on, we’d all rather leave,’ declared Hutin.
This affair was upsetting Bouthemont, whose natural gaiety was ill-adapted to an internal worry of this sort. It troubled him to see nothing but sullen faces around him. Nevertheless, he wanted to be fair.
‘Come on, leave him alone, he’s not doing you any harm.’
But this provoked an outburst of protests.
‘What do you mean, he’s not doing us any harm? He’s unbearable, always irritable and so stuck-up that he’d walk all over you without even noticing!’
This was the great grudge the department had against him. As well as being as nervous as a woman, Robineau was intolerably stiff and touchy. At least twenty stories were told about him, from how he had made a poor young fellow ill, to how he had humiliated customers with his cutting remarks.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Bouthemont, ‘I can’t take anything on … I’ve told the management, and I’m going to discuss it with them a little later!’
The bell was going for the second meal service; the clanging sound was coming up from the basement, distant and muffled in the dead air of the shop. Hutin and Favier went downstairs. From every department salesmen were arriving one by one, in disorder, hurrying down to the narrow entrance to the kitchen corridor, a damp passage always lit by gas jets. The crowd pushed forward without a laugh or a word, surrounded by the growing noise of crockery and a strong smell of f
ood. At the end of the corridor, there was a sudden halt at a hatch where a cook, flanked by piles of plates and armed with forks and spoons which he was plunging into copper pans, was distributing the helpings. When he stood aside, beyond his apron-clad stomach the blazing kitchen could be seen.
‘Oh, no!’ Hutin muttered, consulting the menu which was written on a blackboard above the hatch. ‘Beef with mustard sauce, or skate … They never give us any roast meat in this dump! All their stews and fish just don’t keep body and soul together …’
The fish, moreover, was universally despised, for the pan remained full. Favier, however, took the skate. Behind him Hutin bent down, saying:
‘Beef with mustard sauce.’
With a mechanical gesture the cook speared a piece of meat and then poured a spoonful of sauce over it; and Hutin, choking at the hot blast he had received in his face from the hatch, had hardly walked away with his helping when already behind him the words ‘Beef with mustard sauce,’ ‘Beef with mustard sauce,’ were being called out like a litany, while the cook continued to spear bits of meat and pour sauce over them with the rapid, rhythmic movement of a well-regulated clock.
‘The skate’s cold,’ declared Favier, whose hand could feel no warmth from the plate.
They were all moving off now, with their arms stretched out, holding their plates straight, afraid of bumping into each other. Ten paces further on was the bar, another hatch with a shining zinc counter on which the servings of wine were set out in small corkless bottles, still damp from rinsing. Everyone received one of these bottles in his empty hand as he passed, and then, heavily laden, would make his way to his table with a serious air, careful not to spill anything.
Hutin was grumbling under his breath.
‘What a walk, with all this crockery!’
The table he shared with Favier was at the end of the corridor, in the last dining-room. All the dining-rooms were the same; they had once been cellars thirteen feet by sixteen, and had been plastered with cement and fitted up as refectories, but the damp was coming through the paint, the yellow walls were covered with greenish blotches, and from the narrow ventilation shaft, opening on the street at pavement level, the daylight which fell was livid, with vague shadows of passers-by ceaselessly going through it. In July and December alike it was stifling there in the hot steam, laden with nauseating smells from the neighbouring kitchen.
Hutin went in first. On the table, which was fixed to the wall at one end and covered with oilcloth, there was nothing to indicate the places but glasses and knives and forks. Piles of spare plates stood at each end, while in the middle was a big loaf with a knife stuck in it. Hutin got rid of his bottle and put down his plate; then, after taking his napkin from the bottom of a set of pigeon-holes, the only decoration on the walls, he sat down with a sigh.
‘I’m really hungry!’ he murmured.
‘It’s always the same,’ said Favier, installing himself on his left. ‘When you’re starving, there’s nothing to eat.’
The table was rapidly filling up. It was laid for twenty-two people. At first there was nothing but the din of knives and forks, the guzzling sound of hearty young men whose stomachs were hollow from thirteen hours’ hard work. In the early days the assistants, who had an hour for their meal, had been allowed to go and have their coffee outside; so they would gobble their lunch in twenty minutes, in a hurry to get out into the street. But this stirred them up too much, and they came back inattentive, their minds distracted from their work; so the management had decided that they should no longer go out, but pay an extra fifteen centimes for a cup of coffee if they wanted one. So now they dragged out the meal, not at all anxious to go back to their departments before it was time to do so. Many of them, between huge mouthfuls, were reading a newspaper, folded and propped against their bottle. Others, once they had taken the edge off their appetite, were talking noisily, always coming back to the eternal subjects of the bad food, the money they earned, what they had done the previous Sunday, and what they were going to do the following Sunday.
‘I say, what about that Robineau bloke of yours?’ a salesman asked Hutin.
All the departments were interested in the silk department’s struggle with its assistant buyer. The question was discussed every evening until midnight at the Café Saint-Roch. Hutin, who was busy with his piece of beef, was content to reply:
‘Well, he’s back.’
Then, suddenly getting angry:
‘Damn it all, they’ve given me donkey! It really is disgusting!’
‘Don’t complain!’ said Favier. ‘I was stupid enough to take the skate … It’s putrid!’
They were all talking at once, complaining and joking. At a corner of the table, against the wall, Deloche was eating in silence. He was cursed with an inordinate appetite which he had never been able to satisfy, and, as he did not earn enough to buy himself any extras, he would cut himself huge slices of bread, and greedily devour the least tempting dishes. As a result, they all made fun of him, shouting:
‘Favier, pass your skate to Deloche … He likes it like that.’
‘And your meat, Hutin: Deloche wants it for pudding.’
The poor lad shrugged his shoulders, and did not even reply. It was not his fault if he was forever hungry. Besides, the others might hate the food, but they were stuffing themselves with it all the same.
But a low whistle silenced them. This signalled the presence of Mouret and Bourdoncle in the corridor. For some time now the complaints of the staff had been such that the management had begun to come down and pretend to judge the quality of the food for itself. Out of the thirty centimes per head per day which they gave to the cook, he had to pay everything—provisions, coal, gas, staff—and they displayed a naïve astonishment when the results were not very good. That very morning each department had chosen a spokesman, and Mignot and Liénard had undertaken to speak for their colleagues. Therefore, in the sudden silence, they strained their ears, listening to the voices coming from the next room, which Mouret and Bourdoncle had just entered. The latter was declaring that the beef was excellent; and Mignot, infuriated by this calm assurance, was repeating: ‘Chew it and see’; while Liénard, concentrating on the skate, was saying gently: ‘But it stinks, sir!’ Then Mouret launched into a cordial little speech: he would do everything for the well-being of his employees, he was a father to them, he would rather eat dry bread himself than see them badly fed.
‘I promise I’ll look into the matter,’ he finally said in conclusion, raising his voice so that he could be heard from one end of the corridor to the other.
The management’s inquiry was over; the noise of knives and forks began again. Hutin muttered:
‘Yes, if you count on that you can wait until the cows come home …! Oh, they’re not stingy with their kind words. If you want promises, you can have as many as you like. But they feed us on old boots, and kick us out like dogs!’
The salesman who had already questioned him repeated:
‘You were saying that Robineau …?’
But the clatter of crockery drowned his voice. The assistants changed their plates themselves, and the piles were diminishing at both ends of the table. When a kitchen-help brought in some large tin dishes, Hutin exclaimed:
‘Baked rice, this is the end!’
‘Let’s have a pennyworth of glue!’ said Favier, helping himself.
Some liked it, others found it too sticky. Those who were reading remained silent, engrossed in the serial story in their papers, not even knowing what they were eating. They were all mopping their brows, for the small narrow cellar was filling up with reddish steam; while the shadows of the passers-by, like black stripes, were running continuously across the table-cloth.
‘Pass Deloche the bread,’ shouted a joker.
Everyone would cut himself a slice and then plunge the knife back in the loaf up to the hilt; and the bread was going round the table all the time.
‘Who’ll swap his dessert for my rice?
’ asked Hutin.
When he had concluded this deal with a small, thin man, he tried to sell his wine as well; but no one wanted it, they thought it undrinkable.
‘As I was saying, Robineau’s back,’ he went on, in the midst of the general laughter and conversation. ‘Oh! It’s all getting very serious … You know, he leads the salesgirls astray! Yes, he gets neckties for them to sew!’
‘Quiet!’ murmured Favier. ‘They’re passing sentence on him!’
And with a glance he pointed out Bouthemont, who was walking between Mouret and Bourdoncle in the corridor; all three were absorbed in an animated, hushed conversation. The dining-room for section-managers and their deputies happened to be just opposite. When Bouthemont had seen Mouret passing by he had got up from the table, having finished, and was telling him about all the trouble in his department, and how difficult he found it. The other two were listening to him, so far refusing to sacrifice Robineau, who was a first-class salesman and had been there since Madame Hédouin’s time. But when he came to the story of the neckties, Bourdoncle got angry. The man must be mad to act as a go-between for the salesgirls who wanted extra work. The shop paid them well enough for their time; if they worked at night for themselves it was obvious that they would do less work during the day in the shop; therefore they were robbing it, risking their health, which did not belong to them. The night was made for sleeping; they must all sleep, or they’d be kicked out!
‘Things are hotting up,’ Hutin remarked.
Each time the three men walked slowly past the dining-room the assistants watched them, and commented on their slightest gestures. It made them forget the baked rice, in which a cashier had just found a trouser button.
‘I heard the word “necktie”,’ said Favier. ‘Did you see how Bourdoncle’s face suddenly turned pale?’
Mouret shared his colleague’s indignation. A salesgirl reduced to working at night seemed to him to be an attack on the very organization of the Paradise. Which of them could be so stupid that she could not support herself on her profits from sales? But when Bouthemont named Denise he softened his tone and found excuses for her. Ah, yes! that poor little thing! She was still wet behind the ears and, so he’d been assured, had dependants to look after. Bourdoncle interrupted him, declaring that she must be dismissed on the spot. They would never do anything with such a plain girl, he’d always said so; he seemed to be satisfying a personal grudge. Mouret became embarrassed and pretended to laugh. Dear me! What a hard man he was! Couldn’t they forgive her, for once? They’d call her in and give her a scolding. The long and short of it was that Robineau was really to blame, for, being a senior assistant and knowing the ways of the shop, he should have stopped her from doing it.