L\'Assommoir

E >> Emile Zola >> L\'Assommoir

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At almost all the open windows the laughing, dirty faces of merry
children were seen, and women sat with their calm faces in profile,
bending over their work. It was the quiet time--after the morning
labors were over and the men were gone to their work and the house
was comparatively quiet, disturbed only by the sounds of the various
trades. The same refrain repeated hour after hour has a soothing
effect, Gervaise thought.

To be sure, the courtyard was a little damp. Were she to live there,
she should certainly prefer a room on the sunny side.

She went in several steps and breathed that heavy odor of the homes of
the poor--an odor of old dust, of rancid dirt and grease--but as the
acridity of the smells from the dyehouse predominated, she decided it
to be far better than the Hotel Boncoeur.

She selected a window--a window in the corner on the left, where there
was a small box planted with scarlet beans, whose slender tendrils
were beginning to wind round a little arbor of strings.

"I have made you wait too long, I am afraid," said Coupeau, whom she
suddenly heard at her side. "They make a great fuss when I do not dine
there, and she did not like it today, especially as my sister had
bought veal. You are looking at this house," he continued. "Think of
it--it is always lit from top to bottom. There are a hundred lodgers
in it. If I had any furniture I would have had a room in it long ago.
It would be very nice here, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," murmured Gervaise, "very nice indeed. At Plassans there were
not so many people in one whole street. Look up at that window on the
fifth floor--the window, I mean, where those beans are growing. See
how pretty that is!"

He, with his usual recklessness, declared he would hire that room
for her, and they would live there together.

She turned away with a laugh and begged him not to talk any more
nonsense. The house might stand or fall--they would never have a room
in it together.

But Coupeau, all the same, was not reproved when he held her hand
longer than was necessary in bidding her farewell when they reached
Mme Fauconnier's laundry.

For another month the kindly intercourse between Gervaise and Coupeau
continued on much the same footing. He thought her wonderfully
courageous, declared she was killing herself with hard work all day
and sitting up half the night to sew for the children. She was not
like the women he had known; she took life too seriously, by far!

She laughed and defended herself modestly. Unfortunately, she said,
she had not always been discreet. She alluded to her first confinement
when she was not more than fourteen and to the bottles of anisette she
had emptied with her mother, but she had learned much from experience,
she said. He was mistaken, however, in thinking she was persevering
and strong. She was, on the contrary, very weak and too easily
influenced, as she had discovered to her cost. Her dream had always
been to live in a respectable way among respectable people, because
bad company knocks the life out of a woman. She trembled when she
thought of the future and said she was like a sou thrown up in the
air, falling, heads up or down, according to chance, on the muddy
pavement. All she had seen, the bad example spread before her childish
eyes, had given her valuable lessons. But Coupeau laughed at these
gloomy notions and brought back her courage by attempting to put his
arm around her waist. She slapped his hands, and he cried out that
"for a weak woman, she managed to hurt a fellow considerably!"

As for himself, he was always as merry as a grig, and no fool, either.
He parted his hair carefully on one side, wore pretty cravats and
patent-leather shoes on Sunday and was as saucy as only a fine
Parisian workman can be.

They were of mutual use to each other at the Hotel Boncoeur. Coupeau
went for her milk, did many little errands for her and carried home
her linen to her customers and often took the children out to walk.
Gervaise, to return these courtesies, went up to the tiny room where
he slept and in his absence looked over his clothes, sewed on buttons
and mended his garments. They grew to be very good and cordial
friends. He was to her a constant source of amusement. She listened
to the songs he sang and to their slang and nonsense, which as yet
had for her much of the charm of novelty. But he began to grow uneasy,
and his smiles were less frequent. He asked her whenever they met the
same question, "When shall it be?"

She answered invariably with a jest but passed her days in a fire
of indelicate allusions, however, which did not bring a flush to
her cheek. So long as he was not rough and brutal, she objected to
nothing, but one day she was very angry when he, in trying to steal
a kiss, tore out a lock of her hair.

About the last of June Coupeau became absolutely morose, and Gervaise
was so much disturbed by certain glances he gave her that she fairly
barricaded her door at night. Finally one Tuesday evening, when he had
sulked from the previous Sunday, he came to her door at eleven in the
evening. At first she refused to open it, but his voice was so gentle,
so sad even, that she pulled away the barrier she had pushed against
the door for her better protection. When he came in she was startled
and thought him ill; he was so deadly pale and his eyes were so
bright. No, he was not ill, he said, but things could not go on
like this; he could not sleep.

"Listen, Madame Gervaise," he exclaimed with tears in his eyes and a
strange choking sensation in his throat. "We must be married at once.
That is all there is to be said about it."

Gervaise was astonished and very grave.

"Oh, Monsieur Coupeau, I never dreamed of this, as you know very well,
and you must not take such a step lightly."

But he continued to insist; he was certainly fully determined. He had
come down to her then, without waiting until morning, merely because
he needed a good sleep. As soon as she said yes he would leave her.
But he would not go until he heard that word.

"I cannot say yes in such a hurry," remonstrated Gervaise. "I do not
choose to run the risk of your telling me at some future day that
I led you into this. You are making a great mistake, I assure you.
Suppose you should not see me for a week--you would forget me
entirely. Men sometimes marry for a fancy and in twenty-four hours
would gladly take it all back. Sit down here and let us talk a
little."

They sat in that dingy room lit only by one candle, which they forgot
to snuff, and discussed the expediency of their marriage until after
midnight, speaking very low, lest they should disturb the children,
who were asleep with weir heads on the same pillow.

And Gervaise pointed them out to Coupeau. That was an odd sort of
dowry to carry a man, surely! How could she venture to go to him with
such encumbrances? Then, too, she was troubled about another thing.
People would laugh at him. Her story was known; her lover had been
seen, and there would be no end of talk if she should marry now.

To all these good and excellent reasons Coupeau answered with a shrug
of his shoulders. What did he care for talk and gossip? He never
meddled with the affairs of others; why should they meddle with his?

Yes, she had children, to be sure, and he would look out for them with
her. He had never seen a woman in his life who was so good and so
courageous and patient. Besides, that had nothing to do with it! Had
she been ugly and lazy, with a dozen dirty children, he would have
wanted her and only her.

"Yes," he continued, tapping her on the knee, "you are the woman I
want, and none other. You have nothing to say against that, I
suppose?"

Gervaise melted by degrees. Her resolution forsook her, and a weakness
of her heart and her senses overwhelmed her in the face of this brutal
passion. She ventured only a timid objection or two. Her hands lay
loosely folded on her knees, while her face was very gentle and sweet.

Through the open window came the soft air of a fair June night; the
candle flickered in the wind; from the street came the sobs of a
child, the child of a drunken man who was lying just in front of the
door in the street. From a long distance the breeze brought the notes
of a violin playing at a restaurant for some late marriage festival--a
delicate strain it was, too, clear and sweet as musical glasses.

Coupeau, seeing that the young woman had exhausted all her arguments,
snatched her hands and drew her toward him. She was in one of those
moods which she so much distrusted, when she could refuse no one
anything. But the young man did not understand this, and he contented
himself with simply holding her hands closely in his.

"You say yes, do you not?" he asked.

"How you tease," she replied. "You wish it--well then, yes. Heaven
grant that the day will not come when you will be sorry for it."

He started up, lifting her from her feet, and kissed her loudly. He
glanced at the children.

"Hush!" he said. "We must not wake the boys. Good night."

And he went out of the room. Gervaise, trembling from head to foot,
sat for a full hour on the side of her bed without undressing. She was
profoundly touched and thought Coupeau very honest and very kind. The
tipsy man in the street uttered a groan like that of a wild beast, and
the notes of the violin had ceased.

The next evening Coupeau urged Gervaise to go with him to call on his
sister. But the young woman shrank with ardent fear from this visit to
the Lorilleuxs'. She saw perfectly well that her lover stood in dread
of these people.

He was in no way dependent on this sister, who was not the eldest
either. Mother Coupeau would gladly give her consent, for she had
never been known to contradict her son. In the family, however, the
Lorilleuxs were supposed to earn ten francs per day, and this gave
them great weight. Coupeau would never venture to marry unless they
agreed to accept his wife.

"I have told them about you," he said. "Gervaise--good heavens, what
a baby you are! Come there tonight with me; you will find my sister
a little stiff, and Lorilleux is none too amiable. The truth is they
are much vexed, because, you see, if I marry I shall no longer dine
with them--and that is their great economy. But that makes no odds;
they won't put you out of doors. Do what I ask, for it is absolutely
necessary."

These words frightened Gervaise nearly out of her wits. One Saturday
evening, however, she consented. Coupeau came for her at half-past
eight. She was all ready, wearing a black dress, a shawl with printed
palm leaves in yellow and a white cap with fluted ruffles. She had
saved seven francs for the shawl and two francs fifty centimes for
the cap; the dress was an old one, cleaned and made over.

"They expect you," said Coupeau as they walked along the street, "and
they have become accustomed to the idea of seeing me married. They are
really quite amiable tonight. Then, too, if you have never seen a gold
chain made you will be much amused in watching it. They have an order
for Monday."

"And have they gold in these rooms?" asked Gervaise.

"I should say so! It is on the walls, on the floors--everywhere!"

By this time they had reached the door and had entered the courtyard.
The Lorilleuxs lived on the sixth floor--staircase B. Coupeau told her
with a laugh to keep tight hold of the iron railing and not let it go.

She looked up, half shutting her eyes, and gasped as she saw the
height to which the staircase wound. The last gas burner, higher up,
looked like a star trembling in a black sky, while two others on
alternate floors cast long, slanting rays down the interminable
stairs.

"Aha!" cried the young man as they stopped a moment on the second
landing. "I smell onion soup; somebody has evidently been eating onion
soup about here, and it smells good too."

It is true. Staircase B, dirty and greasy, both steps and railing with
plastering knocked off and showing the laths beneath, was permeated
with the smell of cooking. From each landing ran narrow corridors,
and on either side were half-open doors painted yellow and black, with
finger marks about the lock and handles, and through the open window
came the damp, disgusting smell of sinks and sewers mingling with the
odor of onions.

Up to the sixth floor came the noises from the
_rez-de-chaussee_--the rattling of dishes being washed, the
scraping of saucepans, and all that sort of thing. On one floor
Gervaise saw through an open door on which were the words DESIGNER AND
DRAUGHTSMAN in large letters two men seated at a table covered with a
varnished cloth; they were disputing violently amid thick clouds of
smoke from their pipes. The second and third floors were the quietest.
Here through the open doors came the sound of a cradle rocking, the
wail of a baby, a woman's voice, the rattle of a spoon against a cup.
On one door she read a placard, MME GAUDRON, CARDER; on the next, M.
MADINIER, MANUFACTURER OF BOXES.

On the fourth there was a great quarrel going on--blows and
oaths--which did not prevent the neighbors opposite from playing cards
with their door wide open for the benefit of the air. When Gervaise
reached the fifth floor she was out of breath. Such innumerable stairs
were a novelty to her. These winding railings made her dizzy. One
family had taken possession of the landing; the father was washing
plates in a small earthen pan near the sink, while the mother was
scrubbing the baby before putting it to sleep. Coupeau laughingly bade
Gervaise keep up her courage, and at last they reached the top, and
she looked around to see whence came the clear, shrill voice which
she had heard above all other sounds ever since her foot touched the
first stair. It was a little old woman who sang as she worked, and her
work was dressing dolls at three cents apiece. Gervaise clung to the
railing, all out of breath, and looked down into the depths below--the
gas burner now looked like a star at the bottom of a deep well. The
smells, the turbulent life of this great house, seemed to rush over
her in one tremendous gust. She gasped and turned pale.

"We have not got there yet," said Coupeau; "we have much farther
to go." And he turned to the left and then to the right again. The
corridor stretched out before them, faintly lit by an occasional gas
burner; a succession of doors, like those of a prison or a convent,
continued to appear, nearly all wide open, showing the sordid
interiors. Finally they reached a corridor that was entirely dark.

"Here we are," said the tinworker. "Isn't it a journey? Look out
for three steps. Hold onto the wall."

And Gervaise moved cautiously for ten paces or more. She counted the
three steps, and then Coupeau pushed open a door without knocking.
A bright light streamed forth. They went in.

It was a long, narrow apartment, almost like a prolongation of the
corridor; a woolen curtain, faded and spotted, drawn on one side,
divided the room in two.

One compartment, the first, contained a bed pushed under the corner
of the mansard roof; a stove, still warm from the cooking of the
dinner; two chairs, a table and a wardrobe. To place this last piece
of furniture where it stood, between the bed and the door, had
necessitated sawing away a portion of the ceiling.

The second compartment was the workshop. At the back, a tiny forge
with bellows; on the right, a vice screwed against the wall under
an _etagere_, where were iron tools piled up; on the left, in front
of the window, was a small table covered with pincers, magnifying
glasses, tiny scales and shears--all dirty and greasy.

"We have come!" cried Coupeau, going as far as the woolen curtain.

But he was not answered immediately.

Gervaise, much agitated by the idea that she was entering a place
filled with gold, stood behind her friend and did not know whether
to speak or retreat.

The bright light which came from a lamp and also from a brazier of
charcoal in the forge added to her trouble. She saw Mme Lorilleux,
a small, dark woman, agile and strong, drawing with all the vigor
of her arms--assisted by a pair of pincers--a thread of black metal,
which she passed through the holes of a drawplate held by the vice.
Before the desk or table in front of the window sat Lorilleux, as
short as his wife, but with broader shoulders. He was managing a tiny
pair of pincers and doing some work so delicate that it was almost
imperceptible. It was he who first looked up and lifted his head with
its scanty yellow hair. His face was the color of old wax, was long
and had an expression of physical suffering.

"Ah, it is you, is it? Well! Well! But we are in a hurry, you
understand. We have an order to fill. Don't come into the workroom.
Remain in the chamber." And he returned to his work; his face was
reflected in a ball filled with water, through which the lamp sent
on his work a circle of the brightest possible light.

"Find chairs for yourselves," cried Mme Lorilleux. "This is the lady,
I suppose. Very well! Very well!"

She rolled up her wire and carried it to the forge, and then she
fanned the coals a little to quicken the heat.

Coupeau found two chairs and made Gervaise seat herself near the
curtain. The room was so narrow that he could not sit beside her, so
he placed his chair a little behind and leaned over her to give her
the information he deemed desirable.

Gervaise, astonished by the strange reception given her by these
people and uncomfortable under their sidelong glances, had a buzzing
in her ears which prevented her from hearing what was said.

She thought the woman very old looking for her thirty years and also
extremely untidy, with her hair tumbling over her shoulders and her
dirty camisole.

The husband, not more than a year older, seemed to Gervaise really
an old man with thin, compressed lips and bowed figure. He was in his
shirt sleeves, and his naked feet were thrust into slippers down at
the heel.

She was infinitely astonished at the smallness of the atelier, at the
blackened walls and at the terrible heat.

Tiny drops bedewed the waxed forehead of Lorilleux himself, while Mme
Lorilleux threw off her sack and stood in bare arms and chemise half
slipped off.

"And the gold?" asked Gervaise softly.

Her eager eyes searched the corners, hoping to discover amid all the
dirt something of the splendor of which she had dreamed.

But Coupeau laughed.

"Gold?" he said. "Look! Here it is--and here--and here again, at your
feet."

He pointed in succession to the fine thread with which his sister was
busy and at another package of wire hung against the wall near the
vice; then falling down on his hands and knees, he gathered up from
the floor, on the tip of his moistened finger, several tiny specks
which looked like needle points.

Gervaise cried out, "That surely is not gold! That black metal which
looks precisely like iron!"

Her lover laughed and explained to her the details of the manufacture
in which his brother-in-law was engaged. The wire was furnished them
in coils, just as it hung against the wall, and then they were obliged
to heat and reheat it half a dozen times during their manipulations,
lest it should break. Considerable strength and a vast deal of skill
were needed, and his sister had both. He had seen her draw out the
gold until it was like a hair. She would never let her husband do it
because he always had a cough.

All this time Lorilleux was watching Gervaise stealthily, and after
a violent fit of coughing he said with an air as if he were speaking
to himself:

"I make columns."

"Yes," said Coupeau in an explanatory voice, "there are four different
kinds of chains, and his style is called a column."

Lorilleux uttered a little grunt of satisfaction, all the time at
work, with the tiny pincers held between very dirty nails.

"Look here, Cadet-Cassis," he said. "This very morning I made a little
calculation. I began my work when I was only twelve years old. How
many yards do you think I have made up to this day?"

He lifted his pale face.

"Eight thousand! Do you understand? Eight thousand! Enough to twist
around the necks of all the women in this _Quartier_."

Gervaise returned to her chair, entirely disenchanted. She thought it
was all very ugly and uninteresting. She smiled in order to gratify
the Lorilleuxs, but she was annoyed and troubled at the profound
silence they preserved in regard to her marriage, on account of which
she had called there that evening. These people treated her as if she
were simply a spectator whose curiosity had induced Coupeau to bring
her to see their work.

They began to talk; it was about the lodgers in the house. Mme
Lorilleux asked her brother if he had not heard those Benard people
quarreling as he came upstairs. She said the husband always came home
tipsy. Then she spoke of the designer, who was overwhelmed with debts,
always smoking and always quarreling. The landlord was going to turn
out the Coquets, who owed three quarters now and who would put their
furnace out on the landing, which was very dangerous. Mlle Remanjon,
as she was going downstairs with a bundle of dolls, was just in time
to rescue one of the children from being burned alive.

Gervaise was beginning to find the place unendurable. The heat was
suffocating; the door could not be opened, because the slightest draft
gave Lorilleux a cold. As they ignored the marriage question utterly,
she pulled her lover's sleeve to signify her wish to depart. He
understood and was himself annoyed at this affectation of silence.

"We are going," he said coldly, "We do not care to interrupt your
work any longer."

He lingered a moment, hoping for a word or an allusion. Suddenly he
decided to begin the subject himself.

"We rely on you, Lorilleux. You will be my wife's witness," he said.

The man lifted his head in affected surprise, while his wife stood
still in the center of the workshop.

"Are you in earnest?" he murmured, and then continued as if
soliloquizing, "It is hard to know when this confounded Cadet-Cassis
is in earnest."

"We have no advice to give," interrupted his wife. "It is a foolish
notion, this marrying, and it never succeeds. Never--no--never."

She drawled out these last words, examining Gervaise from head to foot
as she spoke.

"My brother is free to do as he pleases, of course," she continued.
"Of course his family would have liked--But then people always plan,
and things turn out so different. Of course it is none of my business.
Had he brought me the lowest of the low, I should have said, 'Marry
her and let us live in peace!' He was very comfortable with us,
nevertheless. He has considerable flesh on his bones and does not look
as if he had been starved. His soup was always ready to the minute.
Tell me, Lorilleux, don't you think that my brother's friend looks
like Therese--you know whom I mean--that woman opposite, who died of
consumption?"

"She certainly does," answered the chainmaker contemplatively.

"And you have two children, madame? I said to my brother I could not
understand how he could marry a woman with two children. You must not
be angry if I think of his interests; it is only natural. You do not
look very strong. Say, Lorilleux, don't you think that Madame looks
delicate?"

This courteous pair made no allusion to her lameness, but Gervaise
felt it to be in their minds. She sat stiff and still before them, her
thin shawl with its yellow palm leaves wrapped closely about her, and
answered in monosyllables, as if before her judges. Coupeau, realizing
her sufferings, cried out:

"This is all nonsense you are talking! What I want to know is if the
day will suit you, July twenty-ninth."

"One day is the same as another to us," answered his sister severely.
"Lorilleux can do as he pleases in regard to being your witness. I
only ask for peace."

Gervaise, in her embarrassment, had been pushing about with her feet
some of the rubbish on the floor; then fearing she had done some harm,
she stooped to ascertain. Lorilleux hastily approached her with a lamp
and looked at her fingers with evident suspicion.

"Take care," he said. "Those small bits of gold stick to the shoes
sometimes and are carried off without your knowing it."

This was a matter of some importance, of course, for his employers
weighed what they entrusted to him. He showed the hare's-foot with
which he brushed the particles of gold from the table and the skin
spread on his knees to receive them. Twice each week the shop was
carefully brushed; all the rubbish was kept and burned, and the ashes
were examined, where were found each month twenty-five or thirty
francs of gold.

Mme Lorilleux did not take her eyes from the shoes of her guest.

"If Mademoiselle would be so kind," she murmured with an amiable
smile, "and would just look at her soles herself. There is no cause
for offense, I am sure!"

Gervaise, indignant and scarlet, reseated herself and held up her
shoes for examination. Coupeau opened the door with a gay good night,
and she followed him into the corridor after a word or two of polite
farewell.

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