L\'Assommoir

E >> Emile Zola >> L\'Assommoir

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Gervaise muttered her thanks and went with rapid steps to the
Assommoir.

A fine rain was falling. The gas in the tavern was blazing brightly,
lighting up the mirrors, the bottles and glasses. She stood at the
window and looked in. He was sitting at a table with his comrades.
The atmosphere was thick with smoke, and he looked stupefied and
half asleep.

She shivered and wondered why she should stay there and, so thinking,
turned away, only to come back twice to look again.

The water lay on the uneven sidewalk in pools, reflecting all the
lights from the Assommoir. Finally she determined on a bold step: she
opened the door and deliberately walked up to her husband. After all,
why should she not ask him why he had not kept his promise of taking
her to the circus? At any rate, she would not stay out there in the
rain and melt away like a cake of soap.

"She is crazy!" said Coupeau when he saw her. "I tell you, she is
crazy!"

He and all his friends shrieked with laughter, but no one condescended
to say what it was that was so very droll. Gervaise stood still, a
little bewildered by this unexpected reception. Coupeau was so amiable
that she said:

"Come, you know it is not too late to see something."

"Sit down a minute," said her husband, not moving from his seat.

Gervaise saw she could not stand there among all those men, so she
accepted the offered chair. She looked at the glasses, whose contents
glittered like gold. She looked at these dirty, shabby men and at the
others crowding around the counter. It was very warm, and the pipe
smoke thickened the air.

Gervaise felt as if she were choking; her eyes smarted, and her head
was heavy with the fumes of alcohol. She turned around and saw the
still, the machine that created drunkards. That evening the copper
was dull and glittered only in one round spot. The shadows of the
apparatus on the wall behind were strange and weird--creatures with
tails, monsters opening gigantic jaws as if to swallow the whole
world.

"What will you take to drink?" said Coupeau.

"Nothing," answered his wife. "You know I have had no dinner!"

"You need it all the more then! Have a drop of something!"

As she hesitated Mes-Bottes said gallantly:

"The lady would like something sweet like herself."

"I like men," she answered angrily, "who do not get tipsy and talk
like fools! I like men who keep their promises!"

Her husband laughed.

"You had better drink your share," he said, "for the devil a bit of
a circus will you see tonight."

She looked at him fixedly. A heavy frown contracted her eyebrows. She
answered slowly:

"You are right; it is a good idea. We can drink up the money
together."

Bibi brought her a glass of anisette. As she sipped it she remembered
all at once the brandied fruit she had eaten in the same place with
Coupeau when he was courting her. That day she had left the brandy and
took only the fruit, and now she was sitting there drinking liqueur.

But the anisette was good. When her glass was empty she refused
another, and yet she was not satisfied.

She looked around at the infernal machine behind her--a machine that
should have been buried ten fathoms deep in the sea. Nevertheless, it
had for her a strange fascination, and she longed to quench her thirst
with that liquid fire.

"What is that you have in your glasses?" she asked.

"That, my dear," answered her husband, "is Father Colombe's own
especial brew. Taste it."

And when a glass of the vitriol was brought to her Coupeau bade her
swallow it down, saying it was good for her.

After she had drunk this glass Gervaise was no longer conscious of the
hunger that had tormented her. Coupeau told her they could go to the
circus another time, and she felt she had best stay where she was. It
did not rain in the Assommoir, and she had come to look upon the scene
as rather amusing. She was comfortable and sleepy. She took a third
glass and then put her head on her folded arms, supporting them on the
table, and listened to her husband and his friends as they talked.

Behind her the still was at work with constant drip-drip, and she felt
a mad desire to grapple with it as with some dangerous beast and tear
out its heart. She seemed to feel herself caught in those copper fangs
and fancied that those coils of pipe were wound around her own body,
slowly but surely crushing out her life.

The whole room danced before her eyes, for Gervaise was now in the
condition which had so often excited her pity and indignation with
others. She vaguely heard a quarrel arise and a crash of chairs and
tables, and then Father Colombe promptly turned everyone into the
street.

It was still raining and a cold, sharp wind blowing. Gervaise lost
Coupeau, found him and then lost him again. She wanted to go home,
but she could not find her way. At the corner of the street she took
her seat by the side of the gutter, thinking herself at her washtub.
Finally she got home and endeavored to walk straight past the door
of the concierge, within whose room she was vaguely conscious of
the Poissons and Lorilleuxs holding up their hands in disgust at
her condition.

She never knew how she got up those six flights of stairs. But when
she turned into her own corridor little Lalie ran toward her with
loving, extended arms.

"Dear Madame Gervaise," she cried, "Papa has not come in; please
come and see my children. They are sleeping so sweetly!"

But when she looked up in the face of the clearstarcher she recoiled,
trembling from head to foot. She knew only too well that alcoholic
smell, those wandering eyes and convulsed lips.

Then as Gervaise staggered past her without speaking the child's arms
fell at her side, and she looked after her friend with sad and solemn
eyes.

CHAPTER XI

LITTLE NANA

Nana was growing fast--fair, fresh and dimpled--her skin velvety, like
a peach, and eyes so bright that men often asked her if they might not
light their pipes at them. Her mass of blonde hair--the color of ripe
wheat--looked around her temples as if it were powdered with gold.
She had a quaint little trick of sticking out the tip of her tongue
between her white teeth, and this habit, for some reason, exasperated
her mother.

She was very fond of finery and very coquettish. In this house, where
bread was not always to be got, it was difficult for her to indulge
her caprices in the matter of costume, but she did wonders. She
brought home odds and ends of ribbons from the shop where she worked
and made them up into bows and knots with which she ornamented her
dirty dresses. She was not overparticular in washing her feet, but
she wore her boots so tight that she suffered martyrdom in honor of
St Crispin, and if anyone asked her what the matter was when the pain
flushed her face suddenly, she always and promptly laid it to the
score of the colic.

Summer was the season of her triumphs. In a calico dress that cost
five or six francs she was as fresh and sweet as a spring morning and
made the dull street radiant with her youth and her beauty. She went
by the name of "The Little Chicken." One gown, in particular, suited
her to perfection. It was white with rose-colored dots, without
trimming of any kind. The skirt was short and showed her feet. The
sleeves were very wide and displayed her arms to the elbows. She
turned the neck away and fastened it with pins--in a corner in the
corridor, dreading her father's jests--to exhibit her pretty rounded
throat. A rose-colored ribbon, knotted in the rippling masses of her
hair, completed her toilet. She was a charming combination of child
and woman.

Sundays at this period of her life were her days for coquetting with
the public. She looked forward to them all the week through with a
longing for liberty and fresh air.

Early in the morning she began her preparations and stood for hours in
her chemise before the bit of broken mirror nailed by the window, and
as everyone could see her, her mother would be very much vexed and ask
how long she intended to show herself in that way.

But she, quite undisturbed, went on fastening down the little curls on
her forehead with a little sugar and water and then sewed the buttons
on her boots or took a stitch or two in her frock, barefooted all this
time and with her chemise slipping off her rounded shoulders.

Her father declared he would exhibit her as the "Wild Girl," at two
sous a head.

She was very lovely in this scanty costume, the color flushing her
cheeks in her indignation at her father's sometimes coarse remarks.
She did not dare answer him, however, but bit off her thread in silent
rage. After breakfast she went down to the courtyard. The house was
wrapped in Sunday quiet; the workshops on the lower floor were closed.
Through some of the open windows the tables were seen laid for
dinners, the families being on the fortifications "getting an
appetite."

Five or six girls--Nana, Pauline and others--lingered in the courtyard
for a time and then took flight altogether into the streets and thence
to the outer boulevards. They walked in a line, filling up the whole
sidewalk, with ribbons fluttering in their uncovered hair.

They managed to see everybody and everything through their downcast
lids. The streets were their native heath, as it were, for they had
grown up in them.

Nana walked in the center and gave her arm to Pauline, and as they
were the oldest and tallest of the band, they gave the law to the
others and decided where they should go for the day and what they
should do.

Nana and Pauline were deep ones. They did nothing without
premeditation. If they ran it was to show their slender ankles, and
when they stopped and panted for breath it was sure to be at the side
of some youths--young workmen of their acquaintance--who smoked in
their faces as they talked. Nana had her favorite, whom she always
saw at a great distance--Victor Fauconnier--and Pauline adored a
young cabinetmaker, who gave her apples.

Toward sunset the great pleasure of the day began. A band of
mountebanks would spread a well-worn carpet, and a circle was formed
to look on. Nana and Pauline were always in the thickest of the
crowd, their pretty fresh dresses crushed between dirty blouses, but
insensible to the mingled odors of dust and alcohol, tobacco and dirt.
They heard vile language; it did not disturb them; it was their own
tongue--they heard little else. They listened to it with a smile,
their delicate cheeks unflushed.

The only thing that disturbed them was the appearance of their
fathers, particularly if these fathers seemed to have been drinking.
They kept a good lookout for this disaster.

"Look!" cried Pauline. "Your father is coming, Nana."

Then the girl would crouch on her knees and bid the others stand
close around her, and when he had passed on after an inquiring look
she would jump up and they would all utter peals of laughter.

But one day Nana was kicked home by her father, and Boche dragged
Pauline away by her ear.

The girls would ordinarily return to the courtyard in the twilight and
establish themselves there with the air of not having been away, and
each invented a story with which to greet their questioning parents.
Nana now received forty sous per day at the place where she had been
apprenticed. The Coupeaus would not allow her to change, because she
was there under the supervision of her aunt, Mme Lerat, who had been
employed for many years in the same establishment.

The girl went off at an early hour in her little black dress, which
was too short and too tight for her, and Mme Lerat was bidden,
whenever she was after her time, to inform Gervaise, who allowed her
just twenty minutes, which was quite long enough. But she was often
seven or eight minutes late, and she spent her whole day coaxing her
aunt not to tell her mother. Mme Lerat, who was fond of the girl and
understood the follies of youth, did not tell, but at the same time
she read Nana many a long sermon on her follies and talked of her own
responsibility and of the dangers a young girl ran in Paris.

"You must tell me everything," she said. "I am too indulgent to you,
and if evil should come of it I should throw myself into the Seine.
Understand me, my little kitten; if a man should speak to you you must
promise to tell me every word he says. Will you swear to do this?"

Nana laughed an equivocal little laugh. Oh yes, she would promise. But
men never spoke to her; she walked too fast for that. What could they
say to her? And she explained her irregularity in coming--her five or
ten minutes delay--with an innocent little air. She had stopped at a
window to look at pictures or she had stopped to talk to Pauline. Her
aunt might follow her if she did not believe her.

"Oh, I will watch her. You need not be afraid!" said the widow to her
brother. "I will answer for her, as I would for myself!"

The place where the aunt and niece worked side by side was a large
room with a long table down the center. Shelves against the wall were
piled with boxes and bundles--all covered with a thick coating of
dust. The gas had blackened the ceiling. The two windows were so large
that the women, seated at the table, could see all that was going on
in the street below.

Mme Lerat was the first to make her appearance in the morning, but in
another fifteen minutes all the others were there. One morning in July
Nana came in last, which, however, was the usual case.

"I shall be glad when I have a carriage!" she said as she ran to the
window without even taking off her hat--a shabby little straw.

"What are you looking at?" asked her aunt suspiciously. "Did your
father come with you?"

"No indeed," answered Nana carelessly; "nor am I looking at anything.
It is awfully warm, and of all things in the world, I hate to be in a
hurry."

The morning was indeed frightfully hot. The workwomen had closed the
blinds, leaving a crack, however, through which they could inspect the
street, and they took their seats on each side of the table--Mme Lerat
at the farther end. There were eight girls, four on either side, each
with her little pot of glue, her pincers and other tools; heaps of
wires of different lengths and sizes lay on the table, spools of
cotton and of different-colored papers, petals and leaves cut out of
silk, velvet and satin. In the center, in a goblet, one of the girls
had placed a two-sou bouquet,--which was slowly withering in the heat.

"Did you know," said Leonie as she picked up a rose leaf with her
pincers, "how wretched poor Caroline is with that fellow who used
to call for her regularly every night?"

Before anyone could answer Leonie added:

"Hush! Here comes Madame."

And in sailed Mme Titreville, a tall, thin woman, who usually remained
below in the shop. Her employees stood in dread terror of her, as she
was never known to smile. She went from one to another, finding fault
with all; she ordered one woman to pull a marguerite to pieces and
make it over and then went out as stiffly and silently as she had
come in.

"Houp! Houp!" said Nana under her breath, and a giggle ran round the
table.

"Really, young ladies," said Mme Lerat, "you will compel me to severe
measures."

But no one was listening, and no one feared her. She was very
tolerant. They could say what they pleased, provided they put it
in decent language.

Nana was certainly in a good school! Her instincts, to be sure,
were vicious, but these instincts were fostered and developed in
this place, as is too often the case when a crowd of girls are
herded together. It was the story of a basket of apples, the good
ones spoiled by those that were already rotten. If two girls were
whispering in a corner, ten to one they were telling some story that
could not be told aloud.

Nana was not yet thoroughly perverted, but the curiosity which had
been her distinguishing characteristic as a child had not deserted
her, and she scarcely took her eyes from a girl by the name of Lisa,
about whom strange stories were told.

"How warm it is!" she exclaimed, suddenly rising and pushing open the
blinds. Leonie saw a man standing on the sidewalk opposite.

"Who is that old fellow?" she said. "He has been there a full quarter
of an hour."

"Some fool who has nothing better to do, I suppose," said Mme Lerat.
"Nana, will you come back to your work? I have told you that you
should not go to that window."

Nana took up her violets, and they all began to watch this man. He was
well dressed, about fifty, pale and grave. For a full hour he watched
the windows.

"Look!" said Leonie. "He has an eyeglass. Oh, he is very chic. He is
waiting for Augustine." But Augustine sharply answered that she did
not like the old man.

"You make a great mistake then," said Mme Lerat with her equivocal
smile.

Nana listened to the conversation which followed--reveling in
indecency--as much at home in it as a fish is in water. All the time
her fingers were busy at work. She wound her violet stems and fastened
in the leaves with a slender strip of green paper. A drop of gum--and
then behold a bunch of delicate fresh verdure which would fascinate
any lady. Her fingers were especially deft by nature. No instruction
could have imparted this quality.

The gentleman had gone away, and the workshop settled down into quiet
once more. When the bell rang for twelve Nana started up and said she
would go out and execute any commissions. Leonie sent for two sous'
worth of shrimp, Augustine for some fried potatoes, Sophie for a
sausage and Lisa for a bunch of radishes. As she was going out, her
aunt said quietly:

"I will go with you. I want something."

Lo, in the lane running up by the shop was the mysterious stranger.
Nana turned very red, and her aunt drew her arm within her own and
hurried her along.

So then he had come for her! Was not this pretty behavior for a girl
of her age? And Mme Lerat asked question after question, but Nana knew
nothing of him, she declared, though he had followed her for five
days.

Mme Lerat looked at the man out of the corners of her eyes. "You must
tell me everything," she said.

While they talked they went from shop to shop, and their arms grew
full of small packages, but they hurried back, still talking of the
gentleman.

"It may be a good thing," said Mme Lerat, "if his intentions are only
honorable."

The workwomen ate their breakfast on their knees; they were in no
hurry, either, to return to their work, when suddenly Leonie uttered
a low hiss, and like magic each girl was busy. Mme Titreville entered
the room and again made her rounds.

Mme Lerat did not allow her niece after this day to set foot on the
street without her. Nana at first was inclined to rebel, but, on the
whole, it rather flattered her vanity to be guarded like a treasure.
They had discovered that the man who followed her with such
persistency was a manufacturer of buttons, and one night the aunt
went directly up to him and told him that he was behaving in a most
improper manner. He bowed and, turning on his heel, departed--not
angrily, by any means--and the next day he did as usual.

One day, however, he deliberately walked between the aunt and the
niece and said something to Nana in a low voice. This frightened Mme
Lerat, who went at once to her brother and told him the whole story,
whereupon he flew into a violent rage, shook the girl until her teeth
chattered and talked to her as if she were the vilest of the vile.

"Let her be!" said Gervaise with all a woman's sense. "Let her be!
Don't you see that you are putting all sorts of things into her head?"

And it was quite true; he had put ideas into her head and had taught
her some things she did not know before, which was very astonishing.
One morning he saw her with something in a paper. It was _poudre de
riz_, which, with a most perverted taste, she was plastering upon
her delicate skin. He rubbed the whole of the powder into her hair
until she looked like a miller's daughter. Another time she came in
with red ribbons to retrim her old hat; he asked her furiously where
she got them.

Whenever he saw her with a bit of finery her father flew at her with
insulting suspicion and angry violence. She defended herself and her
small possessions with equal violence. One day he snatched from her
a little cornelian heart and ground it to dust under his heel.

She stood looking on, white and stern; for two years she had longed
for this heart. She said to herself that she would not bear such
treatment long. Coupeau occasionally realized that he had made a
mistake, but the mischief was done.

He went every morning with Nana to the shop door and waited outside
for five minutes to be sure that she had gone in. But one morning,
having stopped to talk with a friend on the corner for some time, he
saw her come out again and vanish like a flash around the corner. She
had gone up two flights higher than the room where she worked and had
sat down on the stairs until she thought him well out of the way.

When he went to Mme Lerat she told him that she washed her hands of
the whole business; she had done all she could, and now he must take
care of his daughter himself. She advised him to marry the girl at
once or she would do worse.

All the people in the neighborhood knew Nana's admirer by sight. He
had been in the courtyard several times, and once he had been seen
on the stairs.

The Lorilleuxs threatened to move away if this sort of thing went on,
and Mme Boche expressed great pity for this poor gentleman whom this
scamp of a girl was leading by the nose.

At first Nana thought the whole thing a great joke, but at the end of
a month she began to be afraid of him. Often when she stopped before
the jeweler's he would suddenly appear at her side and ask her what
she wanted.

She did not care so much for jewelry or ornaments as she did for many
other things. Sometimes as the mud was spattered over her from the
wheels of a carriage she grew faint and sick with envious longings
to be better dressed, to go to the theater, to have a pretty room all
to herself. She longed to see another side of life, to know something
of its pleasures. The stranger invariably appeared at these moments,
but she always turned and fled, so great was her horror of him.

But when winter came existence became well-nigh intolerable. Each
evening Nana was beaten, and when her father was tired of this
amusement her mother scolded. They rarely had anything to eat and
were always cold. If the girl bought some trifling article of dress
it was taken from her.

No! This life could not last. She no longer cared for her father. He
had thoroughly disgusted her, and now her mother drank too. Gervaise
went to the Assommoir nightly--for her husband, she said--and remained
there. When Nana saw her mother sometimes as she passed the window,
seated among a crowd of men, she turned livid with rage, because youth
has little patience with the vice of intemperance. It was a dreary
life for her--a comfortless home and a drunken father and mother. A
saint on earth could not have remained there; that she knew very well,
and she said she would make her escape some fine day, and then perhaps
her parents would be sorry and would admit that they had pushed her
out of the nest.

One Saturday Nana, coming in, found her mother and father in a
deplorable condition--Coupeau lying across the bed and Gervaise
sitting in a chair, swaying to and fro. She had forgotten the dinner,
and one untrimmed candle lighted the dismal scene.

"Is that you, girl?" stammered Gervaise. "Well, your father will
settle with you!"

Nana did not reply. She looked around the cheerless room, at the
cold stove, at her parents. She did not step across the threshold.
She turned and went away.

And she did not come back! The next day when her father and mother
were sober, they each reproached the other for Nana's flight.

This was really a terrible blow to Gervaise, who had no longer the
smallest motive for self-control, and she abandoned herself at once
to a wild orgy that lasted three days. Coupeau gave his daughter up
and smoked his pipe quietly. Occasionally, however, when eating his
dinner, he would snatch up a knife and wave it wildly in the air,
crying out that he was dishonored and then, laying it down as
suddenly, resumed eating his soup.

In this great house, whence each month a girl or two took flight, this
incident astonished no one. The Lorilleuxs were rather triumphant at
the success of their prophecy. Lantier defended Nana.

"Of course," he said, "she has done wrong, but bless my heart, what
would you have? A girl as pretty as that could not live all her days
in such poverty!"

"You know nothing about it!" cried Mme Lorilleux one evening when they
were all assembled in the room of the concierge. "Wooden Legs sold her
daughter out and out. I know it! I have positive proof of what I say.
The time that the old gentleman was seen on the stairs he was going to
pay the money. Nana and he were seen together at the Ambigu the other
night! I tell you, I know it!"

They finished their coffee. This tale might or might not be true; it
was not improbable, at all events. And after this it was circulated
and generally believed in the _Quartier_ that Gervaise had sold
her daughter.

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