He could smell nothing, and seemed surprised.
‘Close the window if you want,’ he answered finally, ‘but we won’t get any air if you do.’
And indeed it became quite stifling. The dinner was a family affair, very simple. After the soup, as soon as the maid had served the boiled beef, Baudu inevitably began to talk about the people opposite. At first he was very tolerant, and allowed his niece to have a different opinion.
‘Of course, you’re quite free to stick up for those hulking great shops … Everyone to his own taste, my dear … Since you didn’t mind too much being kicked out in that awful way, you must have good reasons for liking them; and if you went back there, you know, I wouldn’t hold it against you. Isn’t that so? No one here would hold it against you.’
‘Oh, no!’ murmured Madame Baudu.
Denise calmly stated her view, giving the same reasons as she had at Robineau’s: the logical development of business, the needs of modern times, the magnitude of these new creations, and finally the increasing well-being of the public. Baudu, with his round eyes and thick mouth, was listening with a visible mental effort. Then, when she had finished, he shook his head.
‘It’s all illusion. Business is business, you can’t get away from it… Oh! They’re successful, I grant you that, but that’s all. For a long time I thought they’d crash; yes, that’s what I expected, I was waiting patiently for it to happen, you remember? Well, no! It seems that nowadays it’s thieves who make fortunes, while honest folk are starving to death … That’s what we’ve come to, and I’ve got to bow to the facts. And I’m bowing, by God! I’m bowing!’
His repressed rage was gradually rising. Suddenly he brandished his fork and said:
‘But the Vieil Elbeuf will never make any concessions … I told Bourras, you know: “Neighbour, you’re coming to terms with those charlatans, that crude paint of yours is a disgrace.”’
‘Eat your dinner,’ Madame Baudu interrupted, worried at seeing him so worked up.
‘Wait a minute, I want my niece to know my motto. Listen, my girl: I’m like this jug, I don’t budge. They’re successful—so much the worse for them! As for me, I protest—that’s all!’
The maid brought in a piece of roast veal. He carved it with trembling hands; he no longer had his sure judgement, the authority with which he had weighed the helpings. The consciousness of his defeat had deprived him of the self-assurance he used to have as a respected employer. Pépé thought his uncle was getting angry, and they had to pacify him by giving him his dessert, some biscuits near his plate, straight away. Then his uncle, lowering his voice, tried to talk about something else. For a moment he discussed the demolition work, approving of the Rue du Dix-Décembre, the opening up of which would certainly increase business in the neighbourhood. But that again brought him back to the Ladies’ Paradise; everything brought him back to it, it was a morbid obsession. They were covered in plaster, and business had stopped now that the builders’ carts were blocking the road. In any case, its sheer size would soon make it look ridiculous; the customers would get lost, they might just as well take over the Halles.* And in spite of his wife’s imploring looks, and in spite of himself, he went on from the rebuilding to discuss the shop’s turnover. Wasn’t it inconceivable? In less than four years they had increased it fivefold; their annual takings, formerly eight million, were approaching the figure of forty million according to the last stock-taking. It was madness, it was unheard of, and it was pointless to struggle against it any longer. They were getting bigger all the time, they now had a thousand employees, they were proclaiming that they had twenty-eight departments. It was this figure of twenty-eight departments that enraged him more than anything. No doubt they had split some of them into two, but others were completely new: a furniture department for example, and a fancy-goods department. What an idea! Fancy goods! Really, those people had no pride, they’d end up selling fish. While pretending to respect Denise’s opinions, Baudu was trying to win her over.
‘Frankly, you can’t defend them. Can you see me adding a saucepan department to my drapery business? You’d say I was mad … At least admit that you have no respect for them.’
Denise merely smiled, embarrassed, realizing how useless sound reasoning was. He went on:
‘So, you’re on their side. We won’t talk about it any more, there’s no point in letting them make us fall out again. It would be too much to see them coming between me and my family! Go back to them if you want, but please don’t let me hear anything more about them!’
A silence fell. His former violence was subsiding into feverish resignation. As it was stifling in the narrow room, heated by the gas burner, the maid had to open the windows again; and the damp stench from the yard wafted over the table. Some sautéd potatoes had appeared. They helped themselves slowly, without a word.
‘Look at those two,’ Baudu resumed, pointing to Geneviève and Colomban with his knife. ‘Ask them if they like it, your Ladies’ Paradise!’
Side by side, in the accustomed place where they had been meeting twice a day for the past twelve years, Colomban and Geneviève were eating with restraint. They had not said a word. Colomban, exaggerating the stolid good nature of his face, seemed to be hiding, behind his drooping eyelids, the inner fire which was consuming him; whereas Geneviève, her head drooping even more under the weight of her hair, seemed to be giving way to despair, as if stricken by some secret suffering.
‘Last year was disastrous,’ Baudu was explaining. ‘Their marriage just had to be postponed … Ask them, just for fun, what they think of your friends.’
Denise, to satisfy him, questioned the young people.
‘I can’t be very fond of them,’ Geneviève replied. ‘But don’t worry, not everyone hates them.’
She was looking at Colomban, who was rolling a pellet of bread with an absorbed air. When he felt the girl’s eyes upon him, he launched into a series of violent exclamations:
‘It’s a rotten shop! They’re scoundrels, every one of them! In fact, it’s a real blot on the neighbourhood!’
‘Can you hear what he’s saying, can you hear what he’s saying?’ shouted Baudu, delighted. ‘That’s one person they’ll never get! Believe me, you’re the last, my boy, there won’t be any more like you!’
But Geneviève, with her grave, suffering look, did not take her eyes off Colomban. She was penetrating to his very heart, and he, feeling uncomfortable, became even more abusive. Facing them, Madame Baudu, anxious and silent, was looking from one to the other as if she had foreseen that a fresh misfortune was about to overtake them. For some time her daughter’s sadness had been alarming her; she felt that she was dying.
‘There’s no one looking after the shop,’ she said at last, getting up from the table, wishing to put an end to the scene. ‘Have a look, Colomban, I thought I heard someone.’
They had finished, and stood up. Baudu and Colomban went to talk to a commercial traveller who had come to take orders. Madame Baudu took Pépé off to show him some pictures. The maid had quickly cleared the table, and Denise stood lost in thought near the window, gazing at the little yard, when, turning round, she saw that Geneviève was still sitting at her place, staring at the oilcloth, still damp from the sponge with which it had been wiped.
‘Is something the matter?’ Denise asked her.
The girl did not answer, but carried on studying a crack in the oilcloth, as if totally preoccupied by her thoughts. Then she raised her head painfully, and looked at the sympathetic face which was leaning towards her. The others had gone, then? What was she doing sitting on this chair? Suddenly she was choked with sobs; her head fell forward on to the table again. She was weeping, soaking her sleeve with tears.
‘Oh, dear! What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Denise in dismay. ‘Shall I call someone?’
Geneviève had nervously seized her by the arm. She held on to it, stammering:
‘No, no, no, stay … Oh! Don’t let Mamma know! With you I don’t m
ind, but the others … not the others! I just can’t help it, I swear to you … It was when I saw I was all alone … Wait a minute, I’m better, I’m not crying any more.’
But fresh waves of tears overwhelmed her, shaking her frail body with great shudders. It seemed as if her piled up black hair was weighing down on her neck. As she rolled her feverish head on her folded arms, a hairpin came undone and her hair fell down over her neck, burying it beneath its dark folds. Meanwhile, for fear of attracting attention, Denise was trying to comfort her without making any noise. She unfastened her dress, and was heart-broken to see how thin and sickly she was; the poor girl had the hollow chest of a child, the nothingness of a virgin wasted by anaemia. Denise picked up her hair by the handful, that superb hair which seemed to be absorbing her life; then she tied it up firmly, in order to free her and give her some air.
‘Thank you, you are kind,’ Geneviève said. Oh! ‘I’m not fat, am I? I used to be fatter, and it’s all gone … Do up my dress again, Mamma might see my shoulders. I hide them as much as I can … Oh goodness! I’m not well, I’m not well.’
However, the crisis was subsiding. She sat there on her chair, exhausted, staring fixedly at her cousin. After a pause, she asked:
‘Tell me the truth, does he love her?’
Denise felt her cheeks going red. She understood perfectly well that Geneviève was referring to Colomban and Clara. But she pretended to be surprised.
‘Who do you mean, dear?’
Geneviève shook her head with an incredulous air.
‘Please don’t lie to me. Do me the favour of telling me for certain, at least… You must know, I feel you do. Yes, you used to know that woman, and I’ve seen Colomban following you, whispering to you. He was giving you messages for her, wasn’t he? Oh, for pity’s sake, tell me the truth, I swear to you it’ll do me good.’
Never had Denise been in such a dilemma. Faced with this child who never said a word and yet guessed everything, she lowered her eyes. However, she found sufficient strength to go on deceiving her.
‘But it’s you he loves!’
At that Geneviève made a gesture of despair.
‘All right, you don’t want to tell me … It doesn’t make any difference, in any case. I’ve seen them. He’s always going outside to look at her. And she, up there, laughs like anything … Of course they meet outside.’
‘No, they don’t, I swear to you!’ cried Denise, forgetting herself, carried away by the desire to give her at least that consolation.
The girl took a deep breath, and smiled feebly. Then, with the weak voice of a convalescent, she said:
‘I’d love a glass of water … I’m sorry to bother you. Over there, in the sideboard.’
When she had taken the jug, she emptied a big glass with one gulp. With one hand she held Denise at a distance, for the latter was afraid that she might do herself some harm.
‘No, no, leave me, I’m always thirsty … At night I always get up to drink.’
There was another silence. Then she went on quietly:
‘If only you knew—for ten years I’ve been accustomed to the idea of this marriage. When I was still wearing short dresses Colomban was already destined for me … And then, I can’t remember any more how it all happened. From always living together, staying shut up with each other here without ever having any fun together, I must have ended up thinking he was my husband before he actually was. I didn’t know if I loved him, I was his wife, that’s all… And now he wants to go off with someone else! Oh, God! It’s breaking my heart! You see, I’ve never felt pain like this before. I feel it in my chest and in my head, and then it spreads all over. It’s killing me!’
Her eyes were filled with tears again. Denise, whose own eyes were growing moist with pity, asked her:
‘Does my aunt suspect anything?’
‘Yes, Mamma does suspect something, I think … As for Papa, he’s too worried, he doesn’t know the pain he’s causing me by postponing the marriage … Mamma’s questioned me several times. She’s very worried to see me wasting away. She’s never been strong herself, she’s often said to me: “You poor thing, I didn’t make you very strong.” Besides, in these shops, one doesn’t grow much. But she must think I’m really getting too thin … Look at my arms, that’s not normal, is it?’
With a trembling hand she had picked up the jug again. Her cousin wanted to stop her drinking.
‘No, I’m too thirsty, let me have some water!’
They could hear Baudu raising his voice. Then, yielding to an impulse of her heart, Denise knelt down and put her arms round Geneviève in a sisterly way. She kissed her, swearing to her that everything would be all right, that she would marry Colomban, that she would get well and would be happy. Quickly, she stood up again. Her uncle was calling her.
‘Come on, Jean’s here.’
It was indeed Jean. He had just arrived for dinner, and seemed agitated. When he was told that it was striking eight, he looked amazed. It couldn’t be; he had only just left his employer’s. They teased him about this—no doubt he had come by way of the Bois de Vincennes!* But as soon as he could get near his sister he whispered to her:
‘It’s a little laundress who was taking back her washing … I’ve got a hired cab outside. Give me five francs.’
He went out for a minute and then came back to have dinner, for Madame Baudu absolutely refused to let him go away again without at least having some soup. Geneviève had reappeared, as silent and unobtrusive as ever. Colomban was half asleep behind a counter. The evening passed, slowly and sadly, enlivened only by Baudu’s footsteps as he walked up and down the empty shop. A single gas jet was burning; the dark shadows were falling from the ceiling in great shovelfuls, like black earth into a grave.
Months passed. Denise would call in nearly every day to cheer up Geneviève for a moment. But the melancholy in the Baudu house was increasing. The building work going on opposite was constant torture, and seemed to heighten their misfortune. Even when they had an hour of hope, some unexpected joy, the din of a cart full of bricks, or a stone-cutter’s saw, or simply the shout of a bricklayer, was enough to spoil it immediately. It shook the whole neighbourhood, in fact. From behind the wooden fence which skirted and blocked off the three streets, there came a whir of feverish activity. Although the architect was making use of the existing buildings, he was opening them up on all sides in order to convert them; and in the middle, in the gap made by the backyards, he was building a central gallery as vast as a church, which was to lead out into the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin through a grand entrance in the centre of the façade. They had at first had great difficulty in building the basements, for they had come across drain seepage, and also some loose earth full of human bones. Next, the sinking of the well had caused tremendous anxiety in the neighbouring houses: a well a hundred metres deep, which was to provide five hundred litres a minute. The walls were now up to the first floor, and scaffolding and wooden towers enclosed the whole island; there was an incessant noise from the creaking of windlasses pulling up blocks of stone, the sudden unloading of metal plates, the clamour of the army of workmen, accompanied by the noise of pickaxes and hammers. But what deafened people above all was the jarring noise of machinery; everything worked by steam, and the air was rent with piercing whistles; while at the slightest breath of wind a cloud of plaster would fly up and descend on the neighbouring roofs like a fall of snow. The Baudus, in despair, watched this relentless dust penetrating everywhere, getting through the most closely fitting woodwork, soiling the materials in the shop, even infiltrating their beds; and the idea that they were forced to breathe it in, that they would end up dying of it, was poisoning their existence.
Moreover, the situation was to become even worse. In September the architect, afraid of not being ready in time, decided that the work should go on throughout the night. Powerful electric lamps were installed, and the general uproar became continuous; gangs succeeded each other, hammers never stopped, machines whis
tled endlessly, the din which never diminished seemed to lift and scatter the plaster. Now the exasperated Baudus even had to forgo their sleep; they were shaken in their bed, the noises turned into nightmares as soon as exhaustion overcame them. Then, if they got up barefoot to calm their fever, and went and lifted the curtain, they were terrified by the vision of the Ladies’ Paradise blazing away in the darkness, like a colossal forge, forging their ruin. In the middle of the half-built walls, pitted with empty windows, electric lamps were casting broad blue rays of blinding intensity. It would strike two o’clock in the morning, then three, then four o’clock. In its troubled sleep the neighbourhood saw the site enlarged by this lunar brightness, grown colossal and fantastic, crawling with black shadows and noisy workmen, whose silhouettes gesticulated against the garish white of the new walls.
As uncle Baudu had foretold, the small tradespeople of the neighbouring streets were receiving yet another terrible blow. Each time the Ladies’ Paradise created new departments, there was fresh ruin among the shopkeepers round about. The disaster was spreading; even the oldest shops could be heard cracking. Mademoiselle Tatin of the underwear shop in the Passage Choiseul had just been declared bankrupt; Quinette, the glove-maker, could hardly hold out for another six months; the Vanpouilles, the furriers, were obliged to sublet part of their premises; and if Bédoré the hosier and his sister were still holding out in the Rue Gaillon, it was obviously because they were living on what they had saved up in the past. Now fresh cases of ruin were about to be added to those long since foreseen: the fancy-goods department was threatening Deslignières, a fat, red-faced man who owned a trinket shop in the Rue Saint-Roch, while the furniture department was hitting Piot and Rivoire, whose shops slept in the shadow of the Passage Sainte-Anne. It was even feared that the trinket dealer might have apoplexy for, having seen the Paradise advertise purses at a thirty per cent reduction, he was in a constant state of fury. The furniture dealers, who were calmer, pretended to joke about these counter-jumpers who were now trying to sell tables and cupboards; but customers were already leaving them—the success of the rival department promised to be tremendous. It was no good; they had no choice but to bow their heads in resignation; after them others would be swept away, and there was no longer any reason why all the remaining businesses should not be driven from their counters, one after another. One day the roof of the Paradise would cover the whole neighbourhood.