‘Lost, lost was the orphan child
And none to hear her in the wild
But the tall trees and the wind…’
The last line trailed away like the dreadful blast of a storm. Mme Putois, who was taking a sip of wine, was so overcome that she spilled it on the tablecloth. And Gervaise remained frozen, one fist pressed against her mouth to prevent her from crying out, blinking with terror and expecting at any moment to see one or other of the men drop senseless in the middle of the street. Virginie and Mme Boche were also following the scene with deep interest. Coupeau, stunned by the cold air, almost sat down in the gutter as he tried to throw himself at Lantier. The latter, his hands in his pockets, had simply stepped aside. Now the two men were shouting at one another, the roofer, especially, giving the other a proper telling-off, calling him a sick swine and threatening to have his guts for garters. You could hear the furious sounds of the voices and make out the violent gestures, their arms whirling as though they were about to come unwound. Gervaise felt faint and shut her eyes, because it had been going on for too long and she kept thinking they were about to bite off one another’s noses, so close did one face get to the other. Then, since she could no longer hear shouting, she opened her eyes and was left gaping at the sight of the two men calmly chatting to one another.
Mme Lerat’s voice swelled with cooing, tearful tones, as she started a new verse:
‘The next day, on the point of death
The little child was taken in…’
‘Some women are real sluts, you have to admit!’ said Mme Lorilleux, to general approval.
Gervaise had exchanged looks with Mme Boche and Virginie. Were they making up then? Coupeau and Lantier went on chatting at the edge of the pavement. They were still insulting one another, but in a friendly way. They were saying, ‘You ugly brute,’ but with a hint of affection. As they were being watched, they eventually started to walk quietly along beside one another, in the shadow of the houses, turning round after every ten steps. The conversation was very animated. Suddenly, Coupeau seemed to be losing his temper again, while the other man was refusing to do something. It was the roofer who urged Lantier on, forcing him to cross the street and come into the shop.
‘Honestly, I mean it!’ he shouted. ‘Come and have a glass of wine… Men are men, no? We should get along…’
Mme Lerat was coming to the end of the last chorus. The ladies all joined in, twisting their handkerchiefs in their hands:
‘… the lost one, the child of the Lord!’
They all praised the singer warmly as she sat down, pretending to be quite drained. She asked for something to drink, because she would put too much feeling into that song and was always afraid she might do her nerves an injury. Meanwhile, the whole table was staring at Lantier, calmly seated next to Coupeau and already eating the last portion of the Savoy cake, dipping it into a glass of wine. Apart from Virginie and Mme Boche, no one knew him. The Lorilleux did suspect that something funny was going on, but as they didn’t know what, they just pursed their lips. Goujet, who had noticed that Gervaise was upset, was looking askance at the newcomer. Since an awkward silence had fallen over them, Coupeau said simply:
‘This is a friend of mine.’
Then, turning to his wife:
‘Come, come! Get a move on! Maybe there’s some hot coffee left.’
Gervaise looked from one to the other, with a sweet and stupid air. At first, when her husband had pushed her former lover into the shop, she had clasped her head in both hands with the same instinctive gesture that she used in stormy weather, at every crash of thunder. She thought it wasn’t possible: the walls were going to fall in and crush everybody. Then, when she saw the two men sitting down and not even the net curtains moved, she suddenly found this quite normal. The goose was lying rather heavily on her stomach; she had definitely eaten too much of it and it was preventing her from thinking. She was overcome with a pleasurable feeling of laziness, which kept her slumped across the table, requiring only to be left alone. Good Lord! Why get all worked up when no one else did and things seemed to be arranging themselves to the satisfaction of all concerned? She got up to go and see if there was any coffee left.
In the back room, the children were asleep. Boss-eyed Augustine had terrorized them throughout the dessert, stealing their strawberries and intimidating them with ghastly threats. Now she was quite ill, bent double on a little bench, her face white, not uttering a word. Fat Pauline had let her head fall against the shoulder of Etienne, who was himself asleep at the table. Nana was sitting on the bedside rug next to Victor, holding him pressed against her with one arm around his neck while, her face shining and her eyes shut, she kept repeating weakly:
‘Oh, Mamma, I’m not well… oh, Mamma, I’m not well…’
‘Gracious me!’ Augustine muttered, her head rolling from side to side. ‘They’re sozzled. They’ve been boozing like the grown-ups.’
Gervaise had a fresh shock when she saw Etienne. She felt as though she could hardly breathe when she thought that this child’s father was there, next door, eating cake, and had not even expressed a wish to kiss the child. She was about to wake Etienne up and carry him in; but, then, once more, she decided that the calm manner in which things were being settled was very satisfactory. It would surely not be appropriate to disturb the end of the dinner. She returned with the coffee-pot and poured out a cup for Lantier, who in any case appeared to be taking no notice of her.
‘So it’s my turn now,’ Coupeau stuttered, with a thick voice. ‘No? I’m being kept for the final titbit. Very well, I’ll give you “The Filthy Little Brat”.’
‘Yes, yes, “The Filthy Little Brat”!’ everyone shouted round the table.
The hubbub resumed and Lantier was forgotten. The ladies prepared their glasses and their knives, to follow the chorus. They were already laughing and looking at the roofer who was taking up a saucy stance. He put on the croaking voice of an old woman.
‘Ev’ry mornin’, when I wake,
I feels all upside-down
I sends him off to get some hooch
For roughly half a crown.
He takes his time along the way
I know just what he’s at.
He’s stealing half my drink away
The filthy little brat!’
And the ladies, banging on their glasses, picked up the chorus in a mood of awesome merriment.
‘The filthy little brat!
The filthy little brat!’
The whole Rue de la Goutte-d’Or was now joining in. The entire neighbourhood was singing ‘The Filthy Little Brat’! Opposite, the little watchmaker, the grocer’s boys, the tripe-seller and the fruiterer, who all knew the song, picked up the chorus, slapping one another on the back for the fun of it. Admittedly, the street was becoming drunk; just the smell alone of the festivities that emerged from the Coupeaus made the people on the pavement feel merry. And it must be said that they were really far gone inside. It had been mounting little by little from the first glass of unmixed wine after the soup. Now they had reached the full flowering, all of them yelling, all bursting with food, in the reddish haze of the two guttering lamps. The noise of this monstrous merrymaking drowned the clattering of the last carriages. Two constables ran up, thinking there must be a riot, but when they saw Poisson they gave a little nod of understanding. They went off slowly, side by side, alongside the black houses.
Coupeau had got to the verse:
‘On Sunday out at La Villette
When the sun is going down
We go and see Uncle Tinette
Who empties cesspools round the town.
We have some cherry stones to perk
Us up – and coming back
He falls right in my uncle’s work
The dirty little brat!
The dirty little brat!’
At this the house exploded and such a bawling rose into the calm, warm air of the night that the bawlers applauded themselves, because th
ere was no point in trying to shout any louder.
No one ever could quite remember how the party ended. It must have been very late, that was sure, because not a cat was left on the street. It may well have been, after all, that they did dance around the table holding hands. It was all lost in a yellow fog, with red figures leaping, their mouths cracking from one ear to the other. They definitely had some wine punch towards the end; but they were no longer sure whether someone hadn’t played a trick by putting salt in the glasses. The children must have got undressed and into bed by themselves. The next day, Mme Boche boasted of having boxed Boche around the ears, in a corner, where he had been chatting up the lady coal merchant; but Boche, who couldn’t remember a thing, said this was a joke. The one thing that everyone agreed was indecent was the behaviour of Clémence, who was definitely not someone to ask out again: she had got to the point where she exhibited everything she had, before being overcome by a need to throw up, so that she completely ruined one of the net curtains. At least, the men had gone out into the street for that. Lorilleux and Poisson, when their stomachs were upset, got as far as the pork butcher’s. You can always tell when someone’s been properly brought up. In the same way, the ladies, Mme Putois, Mme Lerat and Virginie, when they were discomfited by the heat, had simply gone to the back room to take off their corsets; Virginie had even had a lie down on the bed for a while, to avoid any unpleasant consequences. After that, the party had seemed to break up, some vanishing behind others, all of them accompanying each other, blending into the dark of the neighbourhood, in one final burst of noise, a violent argument between the Lorilleux, and a stubborn, mournful ‘Trou-la-la, trou-la-la’ from Old Bru. Gervaise really thought that Goujet had started to sob as he left; Coupeau was still singing; and, as for Lantier, he must have stayed to the very end. She could even feel, still, at one moment, a breath in her hair, but was unable to say whether the breath came from Lantier or from the warm night air.
Meanwhile, as Mme Lerat was refusing to go back to Batignolles at that time of night, they took a mattress off the bed and spread it out for her in a corner of the shop, after pushing back the table. There she slept, amid the debris of the dinner. And all night long, as the Coupeaus, exhausted, slept off the effects of the party, a neighbour’s cat, taking advantage of an open window, was gnawing the bones of the goose and completed the burial of the bird, with the little sound of its sharp teeth.
CHAPTER 8
At around ten o’clock the following Saturday, Coupeau, who had not come home for dinner, brought Lantier with him. They had eaten sheep’s feet together at Thomas’s restaurant in Montmartre.
‘Don’t be cross, old girl,’ Coupeau said. ‘We’ve been behaving, see… Oh, there’s no risk of going astray with him; he keeps you on the straight and narrow.’
He described how they had bumped into one another in the Rue Rochechouart. After eating, Lantier had refused a drink at the Boule Noire café, saying that when you were married with a decent, good-natured wife, you shouldn’t spend your time hanging around every pub and bar. Gervaise listened with a little smile. No, of course she wasn’t going to get cross; she felt too awkward. Since the party, she had been expecting to see her former lover again at any time; but the arrival of the two men just now, when she was about to go to bed, had taken her by surprise, and her hands trembled as she tied up her hair, which she had let fall loose.
‘You know,’ Coupeau said, ‘since he was gracious enough to refuse a drink outside, you can give us one here. Well, that’s the least you can do!’
The girls had left long ago. Mother Coupeau and Nana had just gone to bed. Gervaise, who had already picked up one of the shutters when they arrived, left the shop open and put some glasses and the remains of a bottle of cognac down on the work-table. Lantier remained standing, deliberately not talking to her directly. However, when she served him, he exclaimed:
‘Just a drop for me, Madame, if you don’t mind.’
Coupeau looked at them and spoke out frankly. Surely they weren’t going to act ridiculously about this! What was done was done, no? If people were to carry on feeling bitter after nine or ten years, then eventually they wouldn’t be speaking to anybody at all. No, no! He was quite sincere! To start with, he knew them both: they were both decent people, two friends, no? He knew neither of them would let him down, so he had nothing to worry about.
‘Oh, yes, of course… Of course…’ Gervaise repeated, eyes downcast, not understanding what she was saying.
‘She’s a sister to me now, nothing more than that,’ Lantier murmured in his turn.
‘Shake hands, then, for heaven’s sake,’ Coupeau cried. ‘And to hell with the bourgeoisie! When you have something like that under your hat, you’re better off than a millionaire. For me, friendship comes first – because friendship is friendship, and there’s nothing above that.’
He kept banging his fist against his stomach, with such emotion that they had to restrain him. Then all four of them clinked glasses and drank in silence. Now Gervaise had a chance to look properly at Lantier; because on the day of the party she had seen him only through a mist. He had put on weight, becoming plump and round, his legs and arms seeming heavier because he was short. But his features were still attractive, even though an idle life had filled them out; and as he tended his slim moustache carefully, he looked no older than his age, which was thirty-five. That day, he had on grey trousers and a dark-blue coat, like a gentleman, with a round hat; he was even carrying a watch and a silver chain, with a memento – a ring – hanging from it.
‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I live miles away.’
He was already on the street when the roofer called him back and got him to promise that he would never again pass the door without dropping in to say hallo. Meanwhile, Gervaise, who had quietly slipped off, came back pushing Etienne in front of her, in his night-shirt, his face already heavy with sleep. The child was smiling and rubbing his eyes; but when he saw Lantier, he stopped, shivering and uneasy, looking anxiously towards his mother and Coupeau.
‘Don’t you know this gentleman?’ the latter asked.
The child hung his head without replying. Then he gave a little nod to show that he did recognize the gentleman.
‘Well, then, don’t be so silly. Go and give him a kiss.’
Lantier waited, calm and serious. When Etienne finally came across to him, he bent over, offering his two cheeks, then himself planted a large kiss on the boy’s forehead. At this, the child plucked up courage to look at his father, but suddenly burst into tears and ran off like a madman, his clothes flapping, while Coupeau scolded him, saying he was a mannerless savage.
‘It’s all too much for him,’ said Gervaise, pale and upset herself.
‘Oh, he’s very nice, very well-behaved usually,’ Coupeau explained. ‘I’ve brought him up properly, you see… He’ll get used to you. He just needs time to know people. At any rate, if only for the sake of the child, we couldn’t be at daggers drawn for ever, could we? We should have done this for him ages ago, because I’d rather put my head on the block than stop a father from seeing his own child.’
At that, he suggested finishing off the bottle of brandy. The three of them clinked glasses again. Lantier was not surprised at anything, but remained calm and reserved. Before leaving, to show his appreciation to Coupeau, he insisted on helping him to shut up the shop. Then, brushing his hands clean, he wished the couple good-night.
‘Sleep well,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try to catch the bus. I promise to see you again soon.’
From that evening on, Lantier often appeared in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or. He came when the roofer was there, asking after him as soon as he crossed the threshold and pretending that he was only coming for that reason. Then, sitting with his back to the window, always wearing a frock-coat, shaved and with his hair neatly brushed, he chatted politely, like a man who has some education. In this way the Coupeaus gradually learned something about his life. For a time in the past eight
years, he had managed a hat factory; when they asked why he gave it up, he just referred vaguely to some trickster of a partner, a man from his own part of the country, a real waster who had spent all the firm’s money on women. But, having once been a boss, he carried the aura of his former status around with him, like a title of nobility that he could never discard. He kept saying that he was about to pull off some splendid deal: certain millinery firms were going to set him up and entrust him with tremendous responsibilities. In the meantime, he did absolutely nothing, walking around in the sun with his hands in his pockets, like some bourgeois. When occasionally he complained, if anyone ventured to say that there was a factory needing workers, he would smile pityingly: he had no wish to starve while slaving himself to death for other people. And yet, as Coupeau said, there was a fellow who didn’t live on air. No, no! He was a smart one, who knew how to get by and was cooking up some deal or other, because he looked pretty well off, and he must have had a bit of money to afford white shirts and fancy neckties. One morning, the roofer saw him having his shoes shined on the Boulevard Montmartre. The real truth of it was that Lantier, who had lots to say about other people’s affairs, either kept quiet or lied when it was a matter of his own. He didn’t even want to tell people where he lived. No, he was staying with a friend, someplace, nowhere special, just long enough to find himself a good position; and he wouldn’t allow them to come and see him because he was never in.
‘You see ten jobs going before you find one,’ he would often say. ‘It’s simply not worth joining a firm where you won’t even stay one day… For example, I started one Monday with Champion’s at Montrouge. Well, by the evening, Champion was arguing with me over politics; we didn’t see eye to eye at all. Well, then, on Tuesday morning, I was off. After all, they’ve abolished slavery and I don’t want to sell myself for seven francs a day.’
They were now in the first days of November.1 Lantier, in a gesture of gallantry, brought bouquets of violets for Gervaise and the two employees. Gradually, he started to visit them more often, until he was coming almost every day. He seemed to want to seduce the whole household, the whole neighbourhood, and he started by courting Clémence and Mme Putois, paying them both the most pressing attentions, regardless of age. After a month of this, the two women adored him. The Boches, who were greatly flattered when he used to go and greet them in their lodge, went into raptures over his good manners. As for the Lorilleux, when they first learned who this gentleman was who had arrived with the dessert on the day of the party, they poured out their bile against Gervaise for daring to bring her former lover into the house. But one day Lantier went up to see them and made such a good impression by ordering a chain for a lady of his acquaintance, that they told him to sit down and kept him for an hour, delighted with his conversation; they even wondered how it was that such a distinguished man could ever have lived with Tip-Tap. By the end, the hatter had so successfully managed to insinuate himself into the good graces of everyone in the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or that his visits to the Coupeaus no longer upset anyone and appeared quite natural. Only Goujet remained glum. If he happened to be there when the other man arrived, he would take his leave, to avoid having to make the acquaintance of that individual.