The Drinking Den (56 page)

‘It would be so good of you! You can't imagine… Yes, this is what it's come to, my God! This is what it's come to… '

The Lorilleux pursed their lips and gave each other a pinched look. Tip-Tap was begging now, was she? Well, then, her fall was complete. Now here was something they didn't like. If they had known, they would have barred the door, because one should always be on one's guard with beggars, people who insinuate themselves into your apartment on some pretext or other, then slip away with your treasures. It was all the more serious in that they did actually have something to steal; you could reach out anywhere and pick up thirty or forty francs' worth just by closing your hand. They had already been suspicious several times before on noticing the odd face that Gervaise had on her when
she saw the gold. This time they were certainly going to keep an eye on her. And since she was moving closer to them, walking across the wooden duckboard, the chain-maker shouted at her coarsely, otherwise ignoring her request:

‘Hey, there! You be careful or you'll be taking away more scraps of gold on the soles of your shoes. In fact, one might think you had put grease on them so that it would stick.'

Gervaise slowly retreated. She had leaned against a shelf and, seeing Mme Lorilleux examining her hands, opened them wide and showed them to her, saying in a flat voice, without anger, like a fallen woman who will accept any insult:

‘I haven't taken anything, you can see.'

And she left, because the strong smell of cabbage soup and the comfortable warmth of the workshop were making her ill.

The Lorilleux didn't try to stop her, you can believe that! Good riddance and the devil take them if they opened to her again! They had seen enough of her face and didn't want other people's poverty and suffering around them, when these things were deserved. They positively wallowed in egotism, considering how clever they were to be here in the warm with a delicious soup waiting for them. Boche, too, was in expansive mood, puffing out his cheeks to such an extent that his laugh became quite indecent. They were all well and truly avenged for Tip-Tap's earlier behaviour, for the blue shop, for the lavish meals and all the rest. It couldn't be better, just proving where a love of food got you. Down with gourmands, lazybones and shameless hussies!

‘What do you think of that? Coming and begging for ten
sous,'
Mme Lorilleux exclaimed as soon as Gervaise's back was turned. ‘Yes, really! I'm going to lend her ten
sous
just like that, aren't I? So that she can go and drink it.'

Gervaise dragged her feet along the corridor, weighed down, her shoulders hunched. When she reached her door, she didn't go in, the room frightened her. She might as well walk, she would be warmer that way and the time would pass more quickly. As she went, she looked in on Old Bru's cupboard under the stairs; there was another one who must have worked up a fine appetite, since he had been
lunching and dining on air for three days. But he wasn't there. His hole was empty: she felt a twinge of jealousy, imagining that someone might have invited him out. Then, as she was going past the Bijards', she heard a sound of moaning and went in, since the key was still in the lock.

‘What's the matter?' she asked.

The room was very clean. It was evident that Lalie only that morning had swept and tidied up. Even though the cold blast of destitution blew through it, carrying off the clothes and strewing its litter of dirt and rubbish, Lalie would come after, tidying everything up and making it look nice. It didn't look rich but it smacked of housework in Lalie's room. That day, her two children, Henriette and Jules, had found some old pictures, which they were quietly cutting out in a corner. But Gervaise was quite surprised to find Lalie lying down in her narrow trestle-bed, with the sheets up to her chin and very pale. Lalie in bed! Whatever next! She must be really ill!

‘What's the matter with you?' Gervaise asked, anxiously.

Lalie didn't complain. She slowly raised her white eyelids and tried to smile, her lips convulsed by a shudder.

‘It's nothing,' she murmured very softly. ‘Truly. Nothing at all!'

Then, closing her eyes again, she said with an effort:

‘I have been getting so tired these last few days, so as you see I'm being lazy and spoiling myself.'

But her child's face, covered in livid white blotches, had such an expression of extreme pain that Gervaise, forgetting her own suffering, clasped her hands and fell on her knees beside her. For the past month she had seen the girl support herself against the wall as she walked, doubled up with a cough that had a real graveyard ring to it. Now she could not even cough. She gave a hiccup and two ribbons of blood ran down from the corners of her mouth.

‘It's not my fault, I'm not feeling very strong,' she murmured, with something resembling relief. ‘I dragged myself around and tidied up a bit… It's quite clean, isn't it? I wanted to clean the windows, but my legs gave way under me. How silly it is! But then, when you're done, you lie down.'

She paused and said:

‘Could you see that my children aren't cutting themselves with their scissors.'

She fell silent, trembling at the sound of a heavy step coming up the stairs. Old Bijard flung open the door. As usual, he'd had his fill of drink and his eyes were blazing with the insanity of the poison. When he saw Lalie lying down, he slapped his thigh with a sneer and took down the great whip, snarling:

‘Now, that's the limit! Good God! Just you wait! The cows are lying down in the barn in the middle of the day now, are they? Are you having us all on, you lazy baggage? Come on, up! Up! Out of there!'

He was already cracking the whip above the bed. But the child, begging him, kept on saying:

‘No, Father, please, don't hit me! I promise you'll be sorry. Don't hit me.'

‘Out, will you!' he yelled, even louder. ‘Out, or I'll tickle your ribs! Get up, you little bitch!'

But she just said softly:

‘I can't. Don't you see, I can't. I'm going to die.'

Gervaise had thrown herself at Bijard and seized the whip from him. He stood beside the trestle-bed, looking dazed. What was she saying now, the brat? Did people die at her age, without being ill? This was some trick to get him to give her something. Oh, don't worry, he'd find out if she was lying…

‘You will see, it's true,' she whispered. ‘As long as I could, I spared you any suffering. Please, be good to me, Father, and bid me farewell.'

Bijard was twisting his nose, fearful that he was being fooled. She really did have a peculiar look, the long and serious face of a grown-up. The scent of death, hanging over the room, sobered him. He looked around, like a man waking from a long sleep, and saw the tidy room and the two children washed and brushed, playing and laughing together. And he fell on to a chair, stammering:

‘Little Mother… Our little Mother…'

This was all he could say, but it was affectionate enough for Lalie, who had never been treated so well. She consoled her father. Most of all, she was sorry to leave them like this, before she had brought her children up. He would take care of them, wouldn't he? With her dying
breaths, she told him how to look after them, how to keep them clean. But the fumes of alcohol had overtaken him again: he was dazed and his head rolled as he watched her, round-eyed. All sorts of things were stirring inside him, but he could find nothing more to say and his hide was too thick for him to weep.

‘Listen, now,' said Lalie, after a pause. ‘We owe the baker six francs seven
sous
. We must pay him… Mme Gaudron has an iron of ours, which you can get back from her… I couldn't make any soup this evening, but there is some bread left and you can heat up the potatoes.'

Until her last gasp, this poor kitten remained her whole family's little mother. Of course, they would never replace her. She was dying because at her age she had had the instincts of a true mother in a breast too tender and too narrow to contain such a huge maternal spirit. And, if he was now losing this treasure, it was indeed the fault of her wild beast of a father. After kicking the mother to death, he was killing the daughter! Those two angels would be in their graves and he would be left to die like a dog beside the road.

Gervaise, meanwhile, was holding back her tears. She held out her hands to comfort the child and, as the scrap of sheet was falling aside, she tried to put it back and make the bed. This revealed the poor little body of the dying girl: oh, God, what a pitiful and wretched sight! It was enough to make the stones weep. Lalie was quite naked, with a scrap of a slip round her shoulders in place of a night shirt; yes, quite naked, and with the painful, bleeding nudity of a martyr. There was no flesh left on her; her bones were sticking through her skin. Narrow violet stripes extended from the ribs down to the thighs, still fresh from the lashing of the whip. A livid blotch encircled the left arm, as though the jaws of a vice had crushed the tender limb, no thicker than a matchstick. The right leg displayed an unhealed gash, some wound reopened every morning as she did the housework. She was one bruise from head to toe. What a massacre of the innocents: those great male hooves crushing that dear little thing! What an abomination that such weakness should groan beneath such a cross! There are naked saints lashed with thongs who are worshipped in church and yet less pure. Gervaise had fallen, once again, to her knees, not thinking to put back
the sheet, overwhelmed by the sight of this pitiful scrap lying on the bed, and her trembling lips tried to form a prayer.

‘Madame Coupeau, please…' the child murmured.

She was trying, with her short arms, to pull the sheet back, full of modesty and shame for her father. Bijard, struck dumb, staring at this corpse that was his work, still rolled his head with the slow movement of a wild beast not knowing where to turn.

When she had covered Lalie's body again, Gervaise could not stay there any longer. The dying girl was getting weaker, not speaking now, with nothing left but her eyes, staring at her two children as they continued to cut out their pictures with a look which was at once that of a young girl, yet old and sombre too, pensive and resigned. Darkness filled the room, while Bijard sank into an uncomprehending stupor away from this death-agony. No, no, life was too frightful! What a dreadful thing! Oh, what a dreadful thing! And Gervaise left, going down the staircase in a daze, her head reeling, so desperate with misery that she would happily have lain down under the wheels of an omnibus, to have done with it all.

As she ran along, railing against accursed fate, she found herself in front of the door of the yard where Coupeau claimed to be working. Her legs had carried her there and her stomach resumed its old song, the dirge of hunger in ninety couplets, a piece that she knew by heart. In this way, if she caught Coupeau as he came out, she could get her hands on the money and buy food. She would have to wait, at the most, for one short hour; she could manage that, after sucking her thumbs all day.

She was in the Rue de la Charbonnière, on the corner of the Rue de Chartres, a nasty crossroads where the wind came at you from all sides. Heavens above! It was not warm work, marching up and down the pavement. It would be a different matter with a fur coat, now! The sky was still the same evil-looking leaden colour, and the snow that had gathered up there had cast an icy veil across the city. None of it was falling, but there was a heavy silence in the air, showing that it was preparing a complete disguise and that it would soon dress Paris up in a pretty, brand-new white gown. Gervaise looked up, praying to God that he would not let this muslin flutter down too soon. She
stamped her feet and looked across the road at a grocer's shop, then turned on her heels, because it was pointless to make herself more hungry in advance. There was nothing else to amuse her at this crossroads. The occasional passers-by sped past, wrapped up in mufflers; because, obviously, people don't stroll along when the cold is pinching their bottoms. However, Gervaise did notice four or five women mounting guard like herself at the gate of the builders' – more unfortunates, of course, wives waiting to pounce on their pay and stop it going straight to the wine shop. There was one tall harridan, looking like a
gendarme
, tight against the wall, ready to leap out at her husband. Another, a small woman all in black, was walking back and forth on the far side of the street, looking humble and delicate. Another ungainly creature had brought her two children and was dragging them, first one way, then the other, shivering and crying. And all of them, Gervaise and the rest of those on sentry duty, went up and down past one another, looking sideways as they did so, but saying nothing. A pleasant meeting, indeed – I don't think! They didn't need to make each other's acquaintance to know what they were about. They all lived at the same hotel run by Poverty & Co. It made one even colder to see them marching past one another, in silence, in this frightful January cold.

Meanwhile, not a cat was creeping out of the yard. At last, one workman appeared, then two, then three; but these must have been good guys, who dutifully brought home their wages, because they shook their heads when they saw the shades lurking around the gate. The tall harridan shrank back even further against the wall; then, suddenly, she fell on a palish little man who was cautiously sticking out his head. In a moment, it was all over: she had frisked him and seized the money! Got you, not a penny left to buy a drop of drink! The little man, desperately vexed, followed his
gendarme
, weeping big tears like a baby. Workmen were still emerging and as the stout woman with the two kids came up, a tall, brown-haired man, with a crafty look, saw her and quickly slipped back to warn the husband, so that when the latter came along, he had stuffed two fine new hundred-
sou
coins – ‘rear wheels', as they call them – one in each shoe. He lifted one of his boys on his arm and went off telling some tale to his old woman who was arguing with him. There were some merry fellows
who came bounding into the street, in a hurry to consume their fortnight's pay with their friends. There were also some lugubrious chaps, looking down in the mouth as they grasped the pay for the three or four days that they had done out of the fortnight, calling themselves lazy blighters and making drunkards' promises. But the saddest of all was the sorrow of the little woman in black, so mild and delicate: her man, a handsome youth, had just marched right past her, and so roughly that he nearly knocked her over. She was going home alone, staggering along close to the shops, weeping every tear in her body.