The Drinking Den (23 page)

But since the washerwoman protested that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to get it done that day, Gervaise agreed to give her the dirty linen at once. They went to look for the bundles in the room on the left, where Etienne slept, and came back with huge armfuls, which they dumped on the stone floor at the back of the shop. Sorting it out took a good half-hour. Gervaise made piles around her, heaping up men's shirts in one pile, women's blouses in another, handkerchiefs, socks and dishcloths… When an item from a new customer came into her hands, she marked it with a cross in red cotton, so that she would recognize it. A musty smell rose from all this dirty linen as they spread it around in the hot atmosphere.

‘Oh, la, la, doesn't it stink!' said Clémence, holding her nose.

‘Puh! If it was clean, they wouldn't be giving it to us,' Gervaise remarked calmly. ‘It smells like what it is, doesn't it? Didn't we say fourteen women's blouses, Madame Bijard? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…'

She went on counting out loud. She found nothing disgusting in it, being used to filth. She buried her pink, naked arms into shirts yellow with dirt, clothes stiffened by grease from the washing-up water, socks that were rotten with sweat. Yet, even in the powerful smell that beat against her face as she leaned over the pile, she was seized with a sort of blithe content. She was seated on the edge of a stool, bent double, her arms reaching to left and right, with slow movements, as though she were intoxicated by this human stench, vaguely smiling, her eyes misted over. It was as though her first taste of idleness came from there, from the asphyxiating breath of old clothes poisoning the air around her.

Just as she was shaking out a child's nappy that was so soaked with piss that she didn't recognize it, Coupeau came in.

‘Bless me, what a scorcher!' he stammered. ‘It hits you right on the head!'

The roofer had to steady himself against the workbench to avoid falling over. It was the first time he had been so drunk. Up to then, he had got a bit tipsy, nothing more; but this time, he had a black eye,
a real shiner, from some friendly tap picked up in a fight. His curly hair, already showing some grey threads in it, must have collided with some corner in a low wine shop, because he had a cobweb hanging down on the back of his neck. In any case, he still liked a laugh, though his features were now a little drawn and older, his lower jaw stuck out more, but he was still good-tempered, he said, with skin soft enough to excite the envy of a duchess.

‘I'll tell you all about it,' he continued, turning towards Gervaise. ‘It was Celery-Stalk, you know who I mean, the one with the wooden leg? Well, he's off home to the country, so he wanted to buy us all a drink. Oh, we'd have been fine if it wasn't for this bloody sun. Out in the street, everyone's sick. I mean it! Everyone's reeling!'

As big Clémence was laughing at this idea of him seeing the street drunk, he himself was overcome by such a fit of merriment that he almost suffocated. He shouted: ‘No? The goddam drunkards! They're such a joke! But it's not their fault! It's the sun!'

The whole shop was laughing now, even Mme Putois, who did not like drunkards. Cross-eyed Augustine cackled like a hen, with her mouth open, gasping for breath. But Gervaise suspected that Coupeau had not come straight home, but had spent an hour with the Lorilleux, who were giving him bad advice. When he swore that this wasn't so, she joined in the laughter, quite ready to forgive him, not even blaming him for missing yet another day's work.

‘What rubbish he talks!' she muttered. ‘Have you ever heard such rubbish!'

Then, in a motherly tone, she added: ‘Go and lie down, why don't you? You can see we're busy; you're in our way. Now, that's thirty-two handkerchiefs, Mme Bijard; plus two, makes thirty-four…'

But Coupeau didn't feel sleepy. He stayed where he was, swaying from one side to the other, like a pendulum in a clock, sniggering with a defiant, provocative air. Gervaise was anxious to get rid of Mme Bijard, so she called Clémence over and got her to count out the clothes, while she wrote them down. But at every item, the great good-for-nothing would let out some obscenity, some dirty word; she pointed up all the customers' little flaws, their intimate secrets, and had private, laundress's jokes for all the holes and all the stains that
went through her hands. Augustine pretended not to understand, straining her ears, like the vicious little thing that she was. Mme Putois pursed her lips and thought it stupid to say all this in front of Coupeau. A man shouldn't be dealing with linen: it's one of those exhibitions that you don't make in front of respectable people. As for Gervaise, she was serious, preoccupied with what she was doing and seemed not to be listening. Even as she wrote, she followed each item carefully, to recognize each one as it went past; and she never made a mistake, putting a name to each, sensing it by smell or colour. Those towels belonged to the Goujets, it was obvious: they had been used to wipe the bottoms of frying-pans. Now that pillowcase definitely came from the Boches, because of the hair oil that Mme Boche got all over her linen. And there was no need to stick your nose right into M. Madinier's flannel vests, either: the man's skin was so greasy that he discoloured the wool. And she knew all sorts of other peculiarities, too, the secrets of each person's personal habits, the underclothes of the neighbours who crossed the street in silk skirts, the number of stockings, handkerchiefs and shirts that each one dirtied every week, and how some people would tear particular garments, always at the same place. So she was full of stories. Mlle Remanjou's blouses, for example, were the subject of endless comment: they wore away at the top, so the old girl must have pointed collar-bones; and they were never dirty, even when she had worn them for a fortnight, which just went to show that at that age one is almost like a plank of wood, from which it would be very hard to extract a drop of anything. In this way, every time the linen was sorted in the shop, they undressed the whole neighbourhood of La Goutte-d'Or.

‘This is really choice,' Clémence exclaimed, opening a new bundle.

Gervaise, suddenly experiencing a feeling of disgust, shrank back.

‘Mme Gaudron's,' she said. ‘I don't want to do hers any more, I'm looking for some excuse. I mean, I'm no more fussy than the next person, I've handled some pretty repulsive clothes in my time; but I tell you, I can't take that one any longer. It makes me want to throw up. What can she be doing, that woman, to get her laundry in such a state!'

She told Clémence to have it done quickly. But the girl continued
her commentary, sticking her fingers through the holes, with a different remark on each item, which she brandished like the flags of dirt triumphant. Now the piles of clothing had risen around Gervaise. Still sitting on the edge of the stool, she had almost vanished among the shirts and skirts; in front of her, she had the sheets, trousers and tablecloths, a chaos of soiled linen; and, in the midst of this expanding lake, she still had her arms and neck bare, with the little locks of blonde hair sticking to her temples making her seem pinker and more languid. She had regained her poise, the smile of a shopkeeper who is at once careful and attentive, forgetting Mme Gaudron's washing, not smelling it any more, but rummaging around with one hand in the piles to make sure that there were no mistakes. Boss-eyed Augustine, who loved to put shovelfuls of coke into the boiler, had just stuffed it so full that the cast-iron plates were turning red. The slanting sun beat on the window and the shop blazed. At this, Coupeau, made more drunk by the heat, was overcome with a rush of affection. He came towards Gervaise, open-armed and emotional.

‘You're a good little woman,' he stammered. ‘Let me give you a kiss.'

But he got tangled up in the petticoats, which were in his way, and almost fell over.

‘What a bore you are!' Gervaise said, without irritation. ‘Just stay there quietly, we're almost done.'

No, no, he wanted to give her a kiss, he had to, because he loved her. Stammering away, he went round the pile of petticoats, stumbled against the pile of shirts and then, since he wouldn't give up, his feet became entangled and he fell full-length, with his face in the handkerchiefs. Gervaise, starting to get impatient, pushed him and yelled that he would mix everything up. But Clémence and even Mme Putois told her she was in the wrong. After all, he was being nice. He wanted to give her a kiss. She could let him kiss her, couldn't she?

‘You don't know your luck, now, Madame Coupeau,' said Mme Bijard, whose husband, a locksmith and a drunkard, would beat her up every night when he got home. ‘If only mine was like that, when he'd had a skinful, he'd be a pleasure to live with!'

Gervaise had calmed down and was already regretting having snapped at him. She helped him back on his feet, then offered her cheek, with a smile. But the roofer, without a blush, grabbed her breasts in front of everybody.

‘No offence meant,' he said, ‘but your washing does stink! And I still love you, even so!'

‘Leave me alone, you're tickling,' she said, laughing still louder. ‘What an animal! What a way to behave!'

Now that he had his hands on her, he refused to let go. She abandoned the struggle, stunned by the slight dizziness that swept over her from the pile of washing, unrepelled by Coupeau's winey breath. And the lingering kiss that they gave one another, mouth to mouth, in the midst of the dirty laundry that she worked with, was like a first slip in the gradual degradation of their lives.

Mme Bijard, meanwhile, had been tying the washing up in bundles, while chatting about her little girl, two years old, a child called Eulalie, who already had the good sense of a grown woman. You could leave her alone, she never cried, she didn't play with matches. Finally, she carried off the bundles of washing one by one, her waist bending under the weight and her face blotched with purple.

‘This is unbearable, we're boiling,' said Gervaise, wiping her face, before turning back to Mme Boche's bonnet.

And there was talk of giving Augustine a good slap, when they noticed that the boiler was red-hot. The irons, too, were turning red. There must be the devil in that girl! You couldn't turn your back without her getting up to some mischief. Now they would have to wait a quarter of an hour before they could use the irons. Gervaise damped down the fire with two shovels full of clinker. In addition, she had the idea of stretching a pair of sheets across the brass wires on the ceiling, like blinds, in order to protect them from the sun. After that, it was quite pleasant in the shop. The temperature was still very warm, but you would have thought you were in an alcove, in white light, shut in as one might be at home, far from everything, even though, through the sheets, they could still hear people walking quickly along the pavement. Now they were able to put themselves at their ease. Clémence took off her bodice. Coupeau still refused to go to bed, so he was
allowed to stay, provided he promised to keep quiet in a corner, because this was not the moment to nod off on the job.

‘What has that pest done with the
polonais
this time?' Gervaise asked, speaking about Augustine.

They always had to look for the little iron, which they would find in some odd place, where they claimed that the apprentice had hidden it. Gervaise at last finished the border of Mme Boche's bonnet. She had done the lace trimmings roughly, pulling them out by hand, then stuck them up with a touch of the iron. The bonnet had a very elaborate front made up of ruffles alternating with embroidered lace inserts; so she had to take care, working in silence, meticulously ironing the ruffles and the inserts with a
coq
, an iron egg held by a rod in a wooden stand.

Now, silence reigned. For a moment, all that could be heard were dull blows, muffled by a blanket. The boss, her two workers and the apprentice stood on either side of the large square table, all leaning over their work, with backs bent and arms continually moving backwards and forwards. To her right, each of them had her square, a flat brick, scorched by hot irons. In the middle of the table, on the edge of a dish full of clear water, lay a cloth and a little brush. A bunch of great lilies was blooming, in what had been a jar of cherries in brandy, bringing a touch of the royal garden
⁴
to the place, with the cluster of their snow-white petals. Mme Putois had started work on the basket of washing that Gervaise had got ready: towels, knickers, bodices and pairs of sleeves. Augustine was dawdling over her stockings and napkins, her nose in the air, watching a large fly buzzing around. As for Clémence, she had reached her thirty-fifth man's shirt since the morning.

‘Always wine, never fire-water!' said the roofer, who felt compelled to utter this remark. ‘Fire-water's not good for me, mustn't have it.'

Clémence took an iron off the stove with her leather and iron handle, and held it up to her cheek, to make sure it was hot enough. She rubbed it on her square, wiped it on a cloth hanging from her waist, and started on her thirty-fifth shirt, starting with the yoke and the two sleeves.

‘I don't know, Monsieur Coupeau,' she said, after a minute. ‘There's nothing wrong with a little shot of gin. It perks me up no end. And, you know, the sooner you go, the better it is. Oh, I have no illusions about it, I won't make old bones.'

‘What a pain you are, with your thing about burial!' Mme Putois interrupted; she didn't like morbid conversations.

Coupeau had got up and was getting cross, thinking that he had been accused of drinking spirits. He swore on his oath and on the heads of his wife and child, that there was not a drop of spirits in his body. And he went over to Clémence, breathing into her face so that she could smell his breath. Then, when he had his nose on her bare shoulders, he started to snigger. He wanted to have a look. Clémence, after folding the back of the shirt and running the iron across each side, had moved on to the cuffs and collar. But as he was still pushing her, he made her put a crease in the wrong place, and she had to take the brush from the edge of the dish to moisten the starch.