L\'Assommoir

E >> Emile Zola >> L\'Assommoir

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When Gervaise entered the alley which led to the Hotel Boncoeur her
tears choked her. It was a long, dark, narrow alley, with a gutter
on one side close to the wall, and the loathsome smell brought to her
mind the recollection of having passed through there with Lantier
a fortnight previous.

And what had that fortnight been? A succession of quarrels and
dissensions, the remembrance of which would be forevermore a regret
and bitterness.

Her room was empty, filled with the glowing sunlight from the open
window. This golden light rendered more apparent the blackened ceiling
and the walls with the shabby, dilapidated paper. There was not an
article beyond the furniture left in the room, except a woman's fichu
that seemed to have caught on a nail near the chimney. The children's
bed was pulled out into the center of the room; the bureau drawers
were wide open, displaying their emptiness. Lantier had washed and had
used the last of the pomade--two cents' worth on the back of a playing
card--the dirty water in which he had washed still stood in the basin.
He had forgotten nothing; the corner hitherto occupied by his trunk
now seemed to Gervaise a vast desert. Even the small mirror was gone.
With a presentiment of evil she turned hastily to the chimney. Yes,
she was right, Lantier had carried away the tickets. The pink papers
were no longer between the candlesticks!

She threw her bundle of linen into a chair and stood looking first at
one thing and then at another in a dull agony that no tears came to
relieve.

She had but one sou in the world. She heard a merry laugh from her
boys who, already consoled, were at the window. She went toward them
and, laying a hand on each of their heads, looked out on that scene
on which her weary eyes had dwelt so long that same morning.

Yes, it was on that street that she and her children would soon be
thrown, and she turned her hopeless, despairing eyes toward the outer
boulevards--looking from right to left, lingering at the two
extremities, seized by a feeling of terror, as if her life
thenceforward was to be spent between a slaughterhouse and a hospital.

CHAPTER II

GERVAISE AND COUPEAU

Three weeks later, about half-past eleven one fine sunny morning,
Gervaise and Coupeau, the tinworker, were eating some brandied fruit
at the Assommoir.

Coupeau, who was smoking outside, had seen her as she crossed the
street with her linen and compelled her to enter. Her huge basket
was on the floor, back of the little table where they sat.

Father Colombe's Tavern, known as the Assommoir, was on the corners
of the Rue des Poissonniers and of the Boulevard de Rochechouart.
The sign bore the one single word in long, blue letters:

DISTILLATION

And this word stretched from one end to the other. On either side of
the door stood tall oleanders in small casks, their leaves covered
thick with dust. The enormous counter with its rows of glasses, its
fountain and its pewter measures was on the left of the door, and the
huge room was ornamented by gigantic casks painted bright yellow and
highly varnished, hooped with shining copper. On high shelves were
bottles of liquors and jars of fruits; all sorts of flasks standing in
order concealed the wall and repeated their pale green or deep crimson
tints in the great mirror behind the counter.

The great feature of the house, however, was the distilling apparatus
which stood at the back of the room behind an oak railing on which the
tipsy workmen leaned as they stupidly watched the still with its long
neck and serpentine tubes descending to subterranean regions--a very
devil's kitchen.

At this early hour the Assommoir was nearly empty. A stout man in his
shirt sleeves--Father Colombe himself--was serving a little girl not
more than twelve years old with four cents' worth of liquor in a cup.

The sun streamed in at the door and lay on the floor, which was black
where the men had spat as they smoked. And from the counter, from the
casks, from all the room, rose an alcoholic emanation which seemed to
intoxicate the very particles of dust floating in the sunshine.

In the meantime Coupeau rolled a new cigarette. He was very neat and
clean, wearing a blouse and a little blue cloth cap and showing his
white teeth as he smiled.

The lower jaw was somewhat prominent and the nose slightly flat; he
had fine brown eyes and the face of a happy child and good-natured
animal. His hair was thick and curly. His complexion was delicate
still, for he was only twenty-six. Opposite him sat Gervaise in a
black gown, leaning slightly forward, finishing her fruit, which she
held by the stem.

They were near the street, at the first of the four tables arranged
in front of the counter. When Coupeau had lighted his cigar he placed
both elbows on the table and looked at the woman without speaking.
Her pretty face had that day something of the delicate transparency
of fine porcelain.

Then continuing something which they apparently had been previously
discussing, he said in a low voice:

"Then you say no, do you? Absolutely no?"

"Of course. No it must be, Monsieur Coupeau," answered Gervaise with
a smile. "Surely you do not intend to begin that again here! You
promised to be reasonable too. Had I known, I should certainly have
refused your treat."

He did not speak but gazed at her more intently than before with
tender boldness. He looked at her soft eyes and dewy lips, pale at the
corners but half parted, allowing one to see the rich crimson within.

She returned his look with a kind and affectionate smile. Finally she
said:

"You should not think of such a thing. It is folly! I am an old woman.
I have a boy eight years old. What should we do together?"

"Much as other people do, I suppose!" answered Coupeau with a wink.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"You know nothing about it, Monsieur Coupeau, but I have had some
experience. I have two mouths in the house, and they have excellent
appetites. How am I to bring up my children if I trifle away my time?
Then, too, my misfortune has taught me one great lesson, which is that
the less I have to do with men, the better!"

She then proceeded to explain all her reasons, calmly and without
anger. It was easy to see that her words were the result of grave
consideration.

Coupeau listened quietly, saying only at intervals:

"You are hurting my feelings. Yes, hurting my feelings."

"Yes, I see that," she answered, "and I am really very sorry for you.
If I had any idea of leading a different life from that which I follow
today it might as well be with you as with another. You have the look
of a good-natured man. But what is the use? I have now been with
Madame Fauconnier for a fortnight. The children are going to school,
and I am very happy, for I have plenty to do. Don't you see,
therefore, that it is best for us to remain as we are?"

And she stooped to pick up her basket.

"You are keeping me here to talk," she said, "and they are waiting for
me at my employer's. You will find some other woman, Monsieur Coupeau,
far prettier than I, who will not have two children to bring up!"

He looked at the clock and made her sit down again.

"Wait!" he cried. "It is still thirty-five minutes of eleven. I have
twenty-five minutes still, and don't be afraid of my familiarity, for
the table is between us! Do you dislike me so very much that you can't
stay and talk with me for five minutes?"

She put down her basket, unwilling to seem disobliging, and they
talked for some time in a friendly sort of way. She had breakfasted
before she left home, and he had swallowed his soup in the greatest
haste and laid in wait for her as she came out. Gervaise, as she
listened to him, watched from the windows--between the bottles of
brandied fruit--the movement of the crowd in the street, which at
this hour--that of the Parisian breakfast--was unusually lively.
Workmen hurried into the baker's and, coming out with a loaf under
their arms, they went into the Veau a Deux Tetes, three doors higher
up, to breakfast at six sous. Next the baker's was a shop where fried
potatoes and mussels with parsley were sold. A constant succession of
shopgirls carried off paper parcels of fried potatoes and cups filled
with mussels, and others bought bunches of radishes. When Gervaise
leaned a little more toward the window she saw still another shop,
also crowded, from which issued a steady stream of children holding
in their hands, wrapped in paper, a breaded cutlet or a sausage,
still warm.

A group formed around the door of the Assommoir.

"Say, Bibi-la-Grillade," asked a voice, "will you stand a drink all
around?"

Five workmen went in, and the same voice said:

"Father Colombe, be honest now. Give us honest glasses, and no
nutshells, if you please."

Presently three more workmen entered together, and finally a crowd
of blouses passed in between the dusty oleanders.

"You have no business to ask such questions," said Gervaise to
Coupeau; "of course I loved him. But after the manner in which he
deserted me--"

They were speaking of Lantier. Gervaise had never seen him again;
she supposed him to be living with Virginie's sister, with a friend
who was about to start a manufactory for hats.

At first she thought of committing suicide, of drowning herself,
but she had grown more reasonable and had really begun to trust that
things were all for the best. With Lantier she felt sure she never
could have done justice to the children, so extravagant were his
habits.

He might come, of course, and see Claude and Etienne. She would not
show him the door; only so far as she herself was concerned, he had
best not lay his finger on her. And she uttered these words in a tone
of determination, like a woman whose plan of life is clearly defined,
while Coupeau, who was by no means inclined to give her up lightly,
teased and questioned her in regard to Lantier with none too much
delicacy, it is true, but his teeth were so white and his face so
merry that the woman could not take offense. "Did you beat him?"
he asked finally. "Oh, you are none too amiable. You beat people
sometimes, I have heard."

She laughed gaily.

Yes, it was true she had whipped that great Virginie. That day she
could have strangled someone with a glad heart. And she laughed again,
because Coupeau told her that Virginie, in her humiliation, had left
the _Quartier_.

Gervaise's face, as she laughed, however, had a certain childish
sweetness. She extended her slender, dimpled hands, declaring she
would not hurt a fly. All she knew of blows was that she had received
a good many in her life. Then she began to talk of Plassans and of her
youth. She had never been indiscreet, nor was she fond of men. When
she had fallen in with Lantier she was only fourteen, and she regarded
him as her husband. Her only fault, she declared, was that she was too
amiable and allowed people to impose on her and that she got fond of
people too easily; were she to love another man, she should wish and
expect to live quietly and comfortably with him always, without any
nonsense.

And when Coupeau slyly asked her if she called her dear children
nonsense she gave him a little slap and said that she, of course,
was much like other women. But women were not like men, after all;
they had their homes to take care of and keep clean; she was like
her mother, who had been a slave to her brutal father for more than
twenty years!

"My very lameness--" she continued.

"Your lameness?" interrupted Coupeau gallantly. "Why, it is almost
nothing. No one would ever notice it!"

She shook her head. She knew very well that it was very evident, and
at forty it would be far worse, but she said softly, with a faint
smile, "You have a strange taste, to fall in love with a lame woman!"

He, with his elbows on the table, still coaxed and entreated, but she
continued to shake her head in the negative. She listened with her
eyes fixed on the street, seemingly fascinated by the surging crowd.

The shops were being swept; the last frying pan of potatoes was taken
from the stove; the pork merchant washed the plates his customers had
used and put his place in order. Groups of mechanics were hurrying out
from all the workshops, laughing and pushing each other like so many
schoolboys, making a great scuffling on the sidewalk with their
hobnailed shoes; while some, with their hands in their pockets,
smoked in a meditative fashion, looking up at the sun and winking
prodigiously. The sidewalks were crowded and the crowd constantly
added to by men who poured from the open door--men in blouses and
frocks, old jackets and coats, which showed all their defects in
the clear morning light.

The bells of the various manufactories were ringing loudly, but the
workmen did not hurry. They deliberately lighted their pipes and then
with rounded shoulders slouched along, dragging their feet after them.

Gervaise mechanically watched a group of three, one man much taller
than the other two, who seemed to be hesitating as to what they should
do next. Finally they came directly to the Assommoir.

"I know them," said Coupeau, "or rather I know the tall one. It is
Mes-Bottes, a comrade of mine."

The Assommoir was now crowded with boisterous men. Two glasses rang
with the energy with which they brought down their fists on the
counter. They stood in rows, with their hands crossed over their
stomachs or folded behind their backs, waiting their turn to be
served by Father Colombe.

"Hallo!" cried Mes-Bottes, giving Coupeau a rough slap on the
shoulders. "How fine you have got to be with your cigarettes and
your linen shirt bosom! Who is your friend that pays for all this?
I should like to make her acquaintance."

"Don't be so silly!" returned Coupeau angrily.

But the other gave a knowing wink.

"Ah, I understand. 'A word to the wise--'" And he turned round with
a fearful lurch to look at Gervaise, who shuddered and recoiled. The
tobacco smoke, the odor of humanity added to this air heavy with
alcohol, was oppressive, and she choked a little and coughed.

"Ah, what an awful thing it is to drink!" she said in a whisper to her
friend, to whom she then went on to say how years before she had drunk
anisette with her mother at Plassans and how it had made her so very
sick that ever since that day she had never been able to endure even
the smell of liquors.

"You see," she added as she held up her glass, "I have eaten, the
fruit, but I left the brandy, for it would make me ill."

Coupeau also failed to understand how a man could swallow glasses of
brandy and water, one after the other. Brandied fruit, now and again,
was not bad. As to absinthe and similar abominations, he never touched
them--not he, indeed. His comrades might laugh at him as much as they
pleased; he always remained on the other side of the door when they
came in to swallow perdition like that.

His father, who was a tinworker like himself, had fallen one day from
the roof of No. 25, in La Rue Coquenaud, and this recollection had
made him very prudent ever since. As for himself, when he passed
through that street and saw the place he would sooner drink the water
in the gutter than swallow a drop at the wineshop. He concluded with
the sentence:

"You see, in my trade a man needs a clear head and steady legs."

Gervaise had taken up her basket; she had not risen from her chair,
however, but held it on her knees with a dreary look in her eyes, as
if the words of the young mechanic had awakened in her mind strange
thoughts of a possible future.

She answered in a low, hesitating tone, without any apparent
connection:

"Heaven knows I am not ambitious. I do not ask for much in this world.
My idea would be to live a quiet life and always have enough to eat--a
clean place to live in--with a comfortable bed, a table and a chair or
two. Yes, I would like to bring my children up in that way and see
them good and industrious. I should not like to run the risk of being
beaten--no, that would not please me at all!"

She hesitated, as if to find something else to say, and then resumed:

"Yes, and at the end I should wish to die in my bed in my own home!"

She pushed back her chair and rose. Coupeau argued with her vehemently
and then gave an uneasy glance at the clock. They did not, however,
depart at once. She wished to look at the still and stood for some
minutes gazing with curiosity at the great copper machine. The
tinworker, who had followed her, explained to her how the thing
worked, pointing out with his finger the various parts of the machine,
and showed the enormous retort whence fell the clear stream of
alcohol. The still, with its intricate and endless coils of wire and
pipes, had a dreary aspect. Not a breath escaped from it, and hardly
a sound was heard. It was like some night task performed in daylight
by a melancholy, silent workman.

In the meantime Mes-Bottes, accompanied by his two comrades, had
lounged to the oak railing and leaned there until there was a corner
of the counter free. He laughed a tipsy laugh as he stood with his
eyes fixed on the machine.

"By thunder!" he muttered. "That is a jolly little thing!"

He went on to say that it held enough to keep their throats fresh for
a week. As for himself, he would like to hold the end of that pipe
between his teeth, and he would like to feel that liquor run down his
throat in a steady stream until it reached his heels.

The still did its work slowly but surely. There was not a glimmer on
its surface--no firelight reflected in its clean-colored sides. The
liquor dropped steadily and suggested a persevering stream which would
gradually invade the room, spread over the streets and boulevard and
finally deluge and inundate Paris itself.

Gervaise shuddered and drew back. She tried to smile, but her lips
quivered as she murmured:

"It frightens me--that machine! It makes me feel cold to see that
constant drip."

Then returning to the idea which had struck her as the acme of human
happiness, she said:

"Say, do you not think that would be very nice? To work and have
plenty to eat, to have a little home all to oneself, to bring up
children and then die in one's bed?"

"And not be beaten," added Coupeau gaily. "But I will promise never
to beat you, Madame Gervaise, if you will agree to what I ask. I will
promise also never to drink, because I love you too much! Come now,
say yes."

He lowered his voice and spoke with his lips close to her throat,
while she, holding her basket in front of her, was making a path
through the crowd of men.

But she did not say no or shake her head as she had done. She glanced
up at him with a half-tender smile and seemed to rejoice in the
assurance he gave that he did not drink.

It was clear that she would have said yes if she had not sworn never
to have anything more to do with men.

Finally they reached the door and went out of the place, leaving it
crowded to overflowing. The fumes of alcohol and the tipsy voices of
the men carousing went out into the street with them.

Mes-Bottes was heard accusing Father Colombe of cheating by not
filling his glasses more than half full, and he proposed to his
comrades to go in future to another place, where they could do
much better and get more for their money.

"Ah," said Gervaise, drawing a long breath when they stood on the
sidewalk, "here one can breathe again. Good-by, Monsieur Coupeau,
and many thanks for your politeness. I must hasten now!"

She moved on, but he took her hand and held it fast.

"Go a little way with me. It will not be much farther for you.
I must stop at my sister's before I go back to the shop."

She yielded to his entreaties, and they walked slowly on together.
He told her about his family. His mother, a tailoress, was the
housekeeper. Twice she had been obliged to give up her work on account
of trouble with her eyes. She was sixty-two on the third of the last
month. He was the youngest child. One of his sisters, Mme Lerat,
a widow, thirty-six years old, was a flower maker and lived at
Batignolles, in La Rue Des Moines. The other, who was thirty, had
married a chainmaker--a man by the name of Lorilleux. It was to their
rooms that he was now going. They lived in that great house on the
left. He ate his dinner every night with them; it was an economy for
them all. But he wanted to tell them now not to expect him that night,
as he was invited to dine with a friend.

Gervaise interrupted him suddenly:

"Did I hear your friend call you Cadet-Cassis?"

"Yes. That is a name they have given me, because when they drag me
into a wineshop it is cassis I always take. I had as lief be called
Cadet-Cassis as Mes-Bottes, any time."

"I do not think Cadet-Cassis so very bad," answered Gervaise, and she
asked him about his work. How long should he be employed on the new
hospital?

"Oh," he answered, "there was never any lack of work." He had always
more than he could do. He should remain in that shop at least a year,
for he had yards and yards of gutters to make.

"Do you know," he said, "when I am up there I can see the Hotel
Boncoeur. Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my hand,
but you did not see me."

They by this time had turned into La Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. He stopped
and looked up.

"There is the house," he said, "and I was born only a few doors
farther off. It is an enormous place."

Gervaise looked up and down the facade. It was indeed enormous. The
house was of five stories, with fifteen windows on each floor. The
blinds were black and with many of the slats broken, which gave an
indescribable air of ruin and desolation to the place. Four shops
occupied the _rez-de-chaussee_. On the right of the door was a
large room, occupied as a cookshop. On the left was a charcoal vender,
a thread-and-needle shop and an establishment for the manufacture of
umbrellas.

The house appeared all the higher for the reason that on either side
were two low buildings, squeezed close to it, and stood square, like
a block of granite roughly hewn, against the blue sky. Totally without
ornament, the house grimly suggested a prison.

Gervaise looked at the entrance, an immense doorway which rose to the
height of the second story and made a deep passage, at the end of
which was a large courtyard. In the center of this doorway, which was
paved like the street, ran a gutter full of pale rose-colored water.

"Come up," said Coupeau; "they won't eat you."

Gervaise preferred to wait for him in the street, but she consented
to go as far as the room of the concierge, which was within the porch,
on the left.

When she had reached this place she again looked up.

Within there were six floors, instead of five, and four regular
facades surrounded the vast square of the courtyard. The walls were
gray, covered with patches of leprous yellow, stained by the dripping
from the slate-covered roof. The wall had not even a molding to break
its dull uniformity--only the gutters ran across it. The windows had
neither shutters nor blinds but showed the panes of glass which were
greenish and full of bubbles. Some were open, and from them hung
checked mattresses and sheets to air. Lines were stretched in front
of others, on which the family wash was hung to dry--men's shirts,
women's chemises and children's breeches! There was a look as if the
dwellers under that roof found their quarters too small and were
oozing out at every crack and aperture.

For the convenience of each facade there was a narrow, high doorway,
from which a damp passage led to the rear, where were four staircases
with iron railings. These each had one of the first four letters of
the alphabet painted at the side.

The _rez-de-chaussee_ was divided into enormous workshops and lit
by windows black with dust. The forge of a locksmith blazed in one;
from another came the sound of a carpenter's plane, while near the
doorway a pink stream from a dyeing establishment poured into the
gutter. Pools of stagnant water stood in the courtyard, all littered
with shavings and fragments of charcoal. A few pale tufts of grass
struggled up between the flat stones, and the whole courtyard was
lit but dimly.

In the shade near the water faucet three small hens were pecking
with the vain hope of finding a worm, and Gervaise looked about her,
amazed at the enormous place which seemed like a little world and as
interested in the house as if it were a living creature.

"Are you looking for anyone?" asked the concierge, coming to her door
considerably puzzled.

But the young woman explained that she was waiting for a friend and
then turned back toward the street. As Coupeau still delayed, she
returned to the courtyard, finding in it a strange fascination.

The house did not strike her as especially ugly. At some of the
windows were plants--a wallflower blooming in a pot--a caged canary,
who uttered an occasional warble, and several shaving mirrors caught
the light and shone like stars.

A cabinetmaker sang, accompanied by the regular whistling sounds
of his plane, while from the locksmith's quarters came a clatter
of hammers struck in cadence.

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