The Ladies' Paradise (BBC tie-in) (Oxford World's Classics) (27 page)

‘Good-night, sir,’ murmured Denise, continuing on her way upstairs without waiting.

He did not answer, but watched her disappear. Then he returned to his own rooms.

W
HEN
the summer slack season came, there was quite a panic at the Ladies’ Paradise. Everyone lived in terror of dismissal, of the mass discharges with which the management cleaned out the shop, now empty of customers during the heat of July and August.

Each morning, during his tour of inspection with Bourdoncle, Mouret would take aside the heads of departments whom he had urged to take on more salesmen than they needed during the winter, so that sales would not suffer, at the risk of having to weed out their staff later on. Now it was a question of reducing costs by turning into the street one-third of the assistants, the weak ones who let themselves be devoured by the strong.

‘Come on,’ he would say, ‘you’ve got some who are no use to you … We can’t keep them on so that they can just stand about with nothing to do.’

And if the head of the department hesitated, not knowing whom to sacrifice, he would say:

‘You must decide; six salesmen are all you need … You can take on more in October, there are enough of them hanging about the streets!’

It was Bourdoncle, in any case, who dealt with executions. He had a terrible way of saying through his thin lips ‘Go and collect your wages!’—words which fell like a blow from an axe. He made anything a pretext for getting rid of superfluous staff. He would invent misdeeds, seizing on the slightest act of carelessness. ‘You were sitting down, sir: go and collect your wages! You’re answering back, I believe: go and collect your wages! Your shoes are not clean: go and collect your wages!’ Even the brave trembled at the carnage he left in his wake. Then, as this technique did not work quickly enough, he devised a trap in which, in a few days, he effortlessly garrotted the number of salesmen condemned in advance. From eight o’clock he stood at the entrance door, watch in hand; and if they were three minutes late, the out-of-breath young men were axed by his implacable:
‘Go and collect your wages!’ The job was done quickly and without fuss.

‘You there, you’ve got an ugly mug!’ he even said one day to a poor devil whose crooked nose got on his nerves. ‘Go and collect your wages!’

Favoured employees were given a fortnight’s holiday without pay, which was a more humane way of cutting costs. In any case, the salesmen accepted their precarious position, for they were forced to do so by necessity and habit. Ever since their arrival in Paris they had roamed about, beginning their apprenticeship in one shop, finishing it in another, getting dismissed or leaving of their own accord on the spur of the moment, as chance and their interests dictated. When the factories lay idle, the workers were deprived of their daily bread; and this took place with the unfeeling motion of a machine—the useless cog was calmly thrown aside, like an iron wheel to which no gratitude is shown for services rendered. So much the worse for those who did not know how to look after themselves!

The departments now talked of nothing else. Each day fresh stories circulated. The names of salesmen who had been dismissed were mentioned in the same way as one counts the dead during epidemics. The shawl and woollen departments suffered especially: seven assistants disappeared from them in a week. Next, a drama convulsed the lingerie department: a customer had felt ill and accused the girl who was serving her of eating garlic; the salesgirl was dismissed on the spot, although, badly fed and always hungry, she had simply been finishing off a store of crusts at the counter. At the slightest complaint from customers the management was merciless; no excuse was accepted, the employee was always wrong, and had to disappear like a defective tool which harmed the smooth working of the business; while his colleagues hung their heads and did not even try to defend him. In the general panic everyone trembled for himself; one day, when Mignot in spite of the rule was leaving with a parcel under his overcoat, he was nearly caught and, for a moment, thought himself in the street; Liénard, whose laziness was legendary, owed it to his father’s position in the drapery trade that he was not sacked one afternoon when Bourdoncle found him dozing between two piles of English velvet. But the
Lhommes were especially worried, for they expected every day to hear that their son Albert had been dismissed. There was great dissatisfaction with the way he kept his cash-desk; women often came and distracted him; twice Madame Aurélie was obliged to intercede with the management.

Denise was in such danger, in the midst of the clean sweep which was being made, that she lived in constant fear of a catastrophe. It was in vain that she tried to be brave, struggling with all her cheerfulness and good sense not to give in to her feelings; tears would blind her as soon as she closed the door of her room. She was in despair at the thought of finding herself in the street, on bad terms with her uncle, not knowing where to go, without any savings, and with the two children on her hands. The feelings she had experienced in the first few weeks were stirring again; she felt she was a grain of millet beneath a powerful millstone, and she was utterly forlorn at feeling herself so insignificant in that huge machine, which would crush her with its calm indifference. It was impossible to have any illusions: if one of the salesgirls from the ladieswear department was to be dismissed, she knew it would be her. No doubt, during the trip to Rambouillet the girls had stirred up Madame Aurélie against her, for since then the latter had been treating her with an air of severity which seemed to betray a certain spite. In any case, they had not forgiven her for going to Joinville, which they considered a sign of rebellion, a means of defying the whole department by parading about outside the shop with a girl from a rival counter. Never had Denise suffered so much in the department, and now she had begun to despair of ever winning it over.

‘Don’t take any notice of them!’ Pauline would say. ‘They’re just stuck up, the silly things!’

But it was precisely their ladylike ways that intimidated Denise. From their daily contact with rich customers, nearly all the salesgirls had acquired airs and graces, and had ended up by forming a vague class floating between the working and middle classes; and often, beneath their dress sense, beneath the manners and phrases they had learned, there was nothing but a false, superficial education, picked up from reading cheap newspapers, from tirades in the theatre, and from all the latest follies of the Paris streets.

‘You know, that unkempt girl has got a child!’ Clara said one morning as she came into the department.

There was some astonishment, so she went on:

‘I saw her yesterday taking the kid for a walk! She must have it stowed away somewhere.’ Two days later, on returning from dinner, Marguerite had a fresh piece of news.

‘I must tell you, I’ve just seen her lover … A workman, just fancy! Yes, a dirty little workman, with yellow hair, who was watching her through the windows.’

From then on it was an accepted fact: Denise had a lover who was a navvy, and a child whom she was hiding somewhere in the neighbourhood. They bombarded her with nasty innuendoes. When she realized what they meant she became very pale at the monstrosity of their conjectures. It was abominable; she wanted to explain, and stammered:

‘But they’re my brothers!’

‘Oh, her brothers!’ said Clara, in a mocking tone.

Madame Aurélie was obliged to intervene.

‘Be quiet, young ladies, you’d do better to change these price tickets … Mademoiselle Baudu is quite free to misbehave outside thé shop. If only she worked while she’s here!’

This curt defence was a condemnation. Denise, as flabbergasted as if she had been accused of a crime, tried vainly to explain the facts. They laughed and shrugged their shoulders, and this wounded her to the quick. When the rumour spread, Deloche was so indignant that he talked of boxing the ears of the girls in the ladieswear department; and it was only the fear of compromising her that held him back. Since the evening at Joinville his love for her was submissive, his friendship almost religious, as he showed by gazing at her like a faithful dog. He was anxious that the others should not suspect their friendship, for they would have laughed at them; but that did not prevent him from dreaming of acts of sudden violence, of the avenging blow, if ever anyone should attack her in his presence.

In the end Denise stopped replying to their insults. It was too odious; no one would believe it. When one of the girls ventured to make some fresh allusion, she merely looked at her steadily, with a sad, calm air. In any case, she had other troubles, material anxieties which worried her much more. Jean was still behaving
unreasonably, always pestering her for money. Hardly a week passed without her receiving some story from him, four pages long; and when the shop postman brought her these letters written in big, passionate handwriting, she would hasten to hide them in her pocket, for the salesgirls took much pleasure in laughing about them, singing bawdy songs as they did so. Then, having invented a pretext for going to decipher the letters at the other end of the shop, she would be overwhelmed with fear; she felt that poor Jean was lost. She believed all his fibs about extraordinary amorous adventures, and her ignorance of such things made her exaggerate the dangers even more. Sometimes it was forty centimes to save him from a woman’s jealousy, at other times five francs or six francs to restore the honour of a poor girl whose father would otherwise kill her. And so, as her salary and commission were insufficient, she had conceived the idea of looking for a little extra work after business hours. She had spoken about it to Robineau, who had continued to show a certain sympathy for her since their first meeting at Vinçard’s; and he had found her a little job sewing neckties at twenty-five centimes a dozen. At night, between nine o’clock and one, she could sew six dozen of them, which earned her one franc fifty, from which she had to deduct a candle at twenty centimes. But as this one franc thirty a day kept Jean, she did not complain about the lack of sleep, and would have considered herself very happy had not a catastrophe once more upset her budget. At the end of the second fortnight, when she went to see the woman through whom she obtained the neckties, she found the door closed; the woman had become insolvent, bankrupt, which meant that Denise lost eighteen francs thirty centimes, a considerable sum on which she had been absolutely counting for a week. All her troubles in the department paled before this disaster.

‘You look sad,’ said Pauline, whom she met in the furniture department. ‘Do you need anything?’

But Denise already owed her friend twelve francs. Trying to smile, she replied:

‘No, thank you … I slept badly, that’s all.’

It was the twentieth of July, at the very height of the panic about dismissals. Out of the four hundred employees,
Bourdoncle had already sacked fifty; and there were rumours of fresh executions. However, she gave no thought to the danger of dismissal; she was completely preoccupied by the distress caused by a fresh adventure of Jean’s which was even more alarming than the others. That day he needed fifteen francs; that sum alone could save him from the vengeance of a deceived husband. The day before she had received a first letter announcing the drama; then, in rapid succession, two other letters had arrived, and in the last one above all, which she had just finished when Pauline had met her, Jean announced that he would die that evening if she did not give him the fifteen francs. She was racking her brains. She could not take it out of Pépé’s board and lodging, which she had paid two days before. All her misfortunes were coming at the same time, for she had hoped to get her eighteen francs thirty centimes back through Robineau, who would perhaps be able to find the necktie dealer; but Robineau, having got a fortnight’s holiday, had not returned the night before as expected.

Meanwhile Pauline was still questioning her in a friendly way. When they met like that, in some out-of-the-way department, they would chat for a few minutes, keeping a look-out as they did so. Suddenly Pauline made as if to run off; she had just caught sight of the white tie of a shopwalker who was coming out of the shawl department.

‘Oh! it’s only old Jouve,’ she murmured, relieved. ‘I don’t know why the old boy laughs like that when he sees us together … If I was you I’d be worried; he’s much too nice to you. An old humbug whose day’s done, a nasty piece of work who still thinks he’s talking to his troops.’

Indeed, old Jouve was hated by all the salesmen because his supervision was so strict. More than half the dismissals were the result of his reports. His large red nose—the nose of a rakish ex-captain—became human only in the departments staffed by women.

‘Why should I be afraid?’ asked Denise.

‘Well,’ replied Pauline, laughing, ‘he may ask you to show some gratitude … Several of the girls try to humour him.’

Jouve had moved away, pretending not to see them, and they heard him shouting at a salesman in the lace department who was
guilty of looking at a horse which had fallen down in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin.

‘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.