Bijard was twisting his nose, fearful that he was being fooled. She really did have a peculiar look, the long and serious face of a grown-up. The scent of death, hanging over the room, sobered him. He looked around, like a man waking from a long sleep, and saw the tidy room and the two children washed and brushed, playing and laughing together. And he fell on to a chair, stammering:
‘Little Mother… Our little Mother…’
This was all he could say, but it was affectionate enough for Lalie, who had never been treated so well. She consoled her father. Most of all, she was sorry to leave them like this, before she had brought her children up. He would take care of them, wouldn’t he? With her dying breaths, she told him how to look after them, how to keep them clean. But the fumes of alcohol had overtaken him again: he was dazed and his head rolled as he watched her, round-eyed. All sorts of things were stirring inside him, but he could find nothing more to say and his hide was too thick for him to weep.
‘Listen, now,’ said Lalie, after a pause. ‘We owe the baker six francs seven sous. We must pay him… Mme Gaudron has an iron of ours, which you can get back from her… I couldn’t make any soup this evening, but there is some bread left and you can heat up the potatoes.’
Until her last gasp, this poor kitten remained her whole family’s little mother. Of course, they would never replace her. She was dying because at her age she had had the instincts of a true mother in a breast too tender and too narrow to contain such a huge maternal spirit. And, if he was now losing this treasure, it was indeed the fault of her wild beast of a father. After kicking the mother to death, he was killing the daughter! Those two angels would be in their graves and he would be left to die like a dog beside the road.
Gervaise, meanwhile, was holding back her tears. She held out her hands to comfort the child and, as the scrap of sheet was falling aside, she tried to put it back and make the bed. This revealed the poor little body of the dying girl: oh, God, what a pitiful and wretched sight! It was enough to make the stones weep. Lalie was quite naked, with a scrap of a slip round her shoulders in place of a night shirt; yes, quite naked, and with the painful, bleeding nudity of a martyr. There was no flesh left on her; her bones were sticking through her skin. Narrow violet stripes extended from the ribs down to the thighs, still fresh from the lashing of the whip. A livid blotch encircled the left arm, as though the jaws of a vice had crushed the tender limb, no thicker than a matchstick. The right leg displayed an unhealed gash, some wound reopened every morning as she did the housework. She was one bruise from head to toe. What a massacre of the innocents: those great male hooves crushing that dear little thing! What an abomination that such weakness should groan beneath such a cross! There are naked saints lashed with thongs who are worshipped in church and yet less pure. Gervaise had fallen, once again, to her knees, not thinking to put back the sheet, overwhelmed by the sight of this pitiful scrap lying on the bed, and her trembling lips tried to form a prayer.
‘Madame Coupeau, please…’ the child murmured.
She was trying, with her short arms, to pull the sheet back, full of modesty and shame for her father. Bijard, struck dumb, staring at this corpse that was his work, still rolled his head with the slow movement of a wild beast not knowing where to turn.
When she had covered Lalie’s body again, Gervaise could not stay there any longer. The dying girl was getting weaker, not speaking now, with nothing left but her eyes, staring at her two children as they continued to cut out their pictures with a look which was at once that of a young girl, yet old and sombre too, pensive and resigned. Darkness filled the room, while Bijard sank into an uncomprehending stupor away from this death-agony. No, no, life was too frightful! What a dreadful thing! Oh, what a dreadful thing! And Gervaise left, going down the staircase in a daze, her head reeling, so desperate with misery that she would happily have lain down under the wheels of an omnibus, to have done with it all.
As she ran along, railing against accursed fate, she found herself in front of the door of the yard where Coupeau claimed to be working. Her legs had carried her there and her stomach resumed its old song, the dirge of hunger in ninety couplets, a piece that she knew by heart. In this way, if she caught Coupeau as he came out, she could get her hands on the money and buy food. She would have to wait, at the most, for one short hour; she could manage that, after sucking her thumbs all day.
She was in the Rue de la Charbonnière, on the corner of the Rue de Chartres, a nasty crossroads where the wind came at you from all sides. Heavens above! It was not warm work, marching up and down the pavement. It would be a different matter with a fur coat, now! The sky was still the same evil-looking leaden colour, and the snow that had gathered up there had cast an icy veil across the city. None of it was falling, but there was a heavy silence in the air, showing that it was preparing a complete disguise and that it would soon dress Paris up in a pretty, brand-new white gown. Gervaise looked up, praying to God that he would not let this muslin flutter down too soon. She stamped her feet and looked across the road at a grocer’s shop, then turned on her heels, because it was pointless to make herself more hungry in advance. There was nothing else to amuse her at this crossroads. The occasional passers-by sped past, wrapped up in mufflers; because, obviously, people don’t stroll along when the cold is pinching their bottoms. However, Gervaise did notice four or five women mounting guard like herself at the gate of the builders’ – more unfortunates, of course, wives waiting to pounce on their pay and stop it going straight to the wine shop. There was one tall harridan, looking like a gendarme, tight against the wall, ready to leap out at her husband. Another, a small woman all in black, was walking back and forth on the far side of the street, looking humble and delicate. Another ungainly creature had brought her two children and was dragging them, first one way, then the other, shivering and crying. And all of them, Gervaise and the rest of those on sentry duty, went up and down past one another, looking sideways as they did so, but saying nothing. A pleasant meeting, indeed – I don’t think! They didn’t need to make each other’s acquaintance to know what they were about. They all lived at the same hotel run by Poverty & Co. It made one even colder to see them marching past one another, in silence, in this frightful January cold.
Meanwhile, not a cat was creeping out of the yard. At last, one workman appeared, then two, then three; but these must have been good guys, who dutifully brought home their wages, because they shook their heads when they saw the shades lurking around the gate. The tall harridan shrank back even further against the wall; then, suddenly, she fell on a palish little man who was cautiously sticking out his head. In a moment, it was all over: she had frisked him and seized the money! Got you, not a penny left to buy a drop of drink! The little man, desperately vexed, followed his gendarme, weeping big tears like a baby. Workmen were still emerging and as the stout woman with the two kids came up, a tall, brown-haired man, with a crafty look, saw her and quickly slipped back to warn the husband, so that when the latter came along, he had stuffed two fine new hundred-sou coins – ‘rear wheels’, as they call them – one in each shoe. He lifted one of his boys on his arm and went off telling some tale to his old woman who was arguing with him. There were some merry fellows who came bounding into the street, in a hurry to consume their fortnight’s pay with their friends. There were also some lugubrious chaps, looking down in the mouth as they grasped the pay for the three or four days that they had done out of the fortnight, calling themselves lazy blighters and making drunkards’ promises. But the saddest of all was the sorrow of the little woman in black, so mild and delicate: her man, a handsome youth, had just marched right past her, and so roughly that he nearly knocked her over. She was going home alone, staggering along close to the shops, weeping every tear in her body.
Then, finally, the procession ended. Gervaise, standing in the middle of the street, was still watching the gate. It was starting to look bad. Two stragglers came out, but there was no sign of Coupeau. And when she asked them
whether Coupeau was coming, they, knowing how things stood, told her, joking, that he had just gone with Thingy out of the back door, to take the hens to pee. Gervaise understood. Coupeau had been lying again; she could twiddle her thumbs. So, slowly, dragging her worn-out shoes along, she went down the Rue de la Charbonnière. Her dinner was running away ahead of her and she watched it run, in the yellow dusk, with a little shudder. This time, it was all over. Not a scrap, not a glimmer of hope, nothing ahead except night and hunger. It would be a fine night to die, this filthy night lowering around her shoulders.
She was dragging herself up the Rue des Poissonniers when she heard Coupeau’s voice. Yes, there he was, in the Petite Civette, getting Mes-Bottes to buy him a round. That rogue Mes-Bottes, at the end of the previous summer, had managed to get himself married to a lady, a pretty decrepit one, admittedly, but with some decent remains – and a lady from the Rue des Martyrs, not some piece of rubbish who scoured the outer boulevards. You should have seen the man, living like a bourgeois, the lucky devil, with his hands in his pockets, well dressed and well fed. He was so plump you wouldn’t recognize him. His friends said that his wife had as much work as she wanted with some gentlemen of her acquaintance. A wife like that and a house in the country: what more did one need to make life pleasant? Coupeau regarded Mes-Bottes with admiration. Didn’t the rascal even have a gold ring on his little finger!
Gervaise put a hand on Coupeau’s shoulder, just as he was coming out of the Petite Civette.
‘Hey, you, I’ve been waiting… I’m hungry. Is that all I’m getting out of you?’
But he snapped straight back at her.
‘If you’re hungry, eat your fist! And keep the other one for tomorrow!’
He thought it was outrageous, making a scene in front of everyone. So what! He hadn’t worked, but the bakers were making bread all the same. Perhaps she thought he was some kind of cutthroat, to come threatening him with her nonsense!
‘Do you want me to steal?’ she asked, in a dull voice.
Mes-Bottes rubbed his chin in a conciliatory sort of way.
‘No, that’s illegal,’ he said. ‘But when a woman knows how to use her assets – ’
Coupeau broke in to say: ‘Hear, hear!’ Yes, a woman should know how to use her assets. But his had always been an old hag, a gormless bitch. It would be her fault if they died like animals. Then he reverted to his idolization of Mes-Bottes. Look how smart he was, the rotter! A proper gent, with white linen and really neat pumps! By heaven! It was not any old rubbish. Here, at any rate, was one fellow whose old woman knew how to manage things.
The two men were walking down towards the outer boulevard. Gervaise followed. After a pause, she repeated, addressing Coupeau’s back:
‘I’m hungry, you know… I was counting on you. You’ve got to find some grub for me.’
He didn’t reply, so she repeated in a painfully heart-rending tone:
‘So, is that all you’ll give me?’
‘How can I, in God’s name! I haven’t got anything!’ he yelled, turning round angrily. ‘Leave me alone, won’t you! Or I’ll thump you!’
His fist was already raised. She shrank back and seemed to make up her mind.
‘Very well, then, I’m off. I’ll find myself a man.’
At that, the roofer began to laugh, pretending it was a joke. Without appearing to, he urged her on. Now that was a fine idea! At night, under a streetlight, she might still look attractive enough. If she did pull some man, he recommended the Capucin restaurant: they had little private rooms where you could eat very decently. And, as she set off for the outer boulevard, fierce and deathly pale, he shouted after her:
‘Listen, you can bring me back the dessert. I like cakes. And if your gentleman is well turned out, ask him for an old coat, it would make my day.’
Gervaise, with this infernal chatter following her, walked quickly away. Then, finding that she was all alone in the midst of the crowd, she slowed down. Her mind was made up. Between stealing and doing that, she preferred that, because at least it would not harm anyone. She would just be using what belonged to her. Of course, it wasn’t very decent; but decency and indecency were all mixed up in her head at this moment. When you are dying of hunger, you don’t spend much time on philosophy, you eat whatever bread is to hand. She had reached the Chaussée Clignancourt. It seemed as though night would never fall. So, biding her time, she walked along the boulevards like a lady taking the evening air before going in to dinner.
She felt ashamed being in this neighbourhood, it was improving so much, now open on all sides. The Boulevard Magenta, coming up from the heart of Paris, and the Boulevard Ornano, going off into the countryside, had driven right through the old barrier: a tremendous amount of houses had been torn down to make way for these two great avenues, still white with plaster, which had spared the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière and the Rue des Poissonniers, the two ends of which, cut short and mutilated, twisted like dark bowels, and led away on either side. The outer boulevards had long since been enlarged by the people who demolished the toll barrier, and given carriageways on each side and a promenade in the middle for pedestrians, set with four rows of little plane trees. It was a vast crossroads extending its endless roadways towards the distant horizon, with their bustling crowds merging into the chaos of building works. But among the tall new houses, several rickety old shacks remained standing; between the sculptured façades, black holes gaped, yawning kennels, exposing their ragged windows. Beneath the growing luxury of Paris, the poverty of the slums was undermining and besmirching this workshop of a new city, so hastily put up.2
Gervaise felt entirely alone and abandoned in the bustle of the broad pavement, beside the little plane trees. These vistas along the avenues into the far distance made her stomach feel even more empty. Just imagine: in this stream of humanity, where there were people who were really quite well off, not a Christian soul guessed her situation and slipped ten sous into her hand. Yes, it was all too big and too beautiful; her head swam and her legs gave way under her, beneath this exaggerated breadth of grey sky spread above such a vast expanse of land. Dusk had that dirty-yellow hue of Parisian sunsets, a colour that makes one want to die at once because it makes the sight of the streets so ugly. There was a suspect ambivalence about the moment: a muddy tint blurred the distant edges of the view. Gervaise, who was already exhausted, had arrived at the very time when workers were going home. This was the hour when ladies with hats and smartly turned-out gentlemen who lived in the new houses were swamped by the common people, streams of men and women still pale from the tainted atmosphere of the factories. Hordes of them emerged from the Boulevard Magenta and the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, panting from the uphill walk. Amid the duller rumbling of omnibuses and cabs, among the drays, curtained carriages and goods’ wagons returning empty at the gallop, an ever-growing swarm of smocks and linen jackets spread across the roadway. Street porters were returning, with their hooks over their shoulders. Two workmen were striding along briskly side by side, talking very loudly and gesticulating, but not looking at one another. Others, alone, in caps and cloth coats, walked along the edge of the pavement, their heads bent. Still others came in groups of five or six, in a line, not talking, hands in pockets, pale-eyed. A few kept their dead pipes in their mouths. Bricklayers, in a cab which they had hired for four together, their hods bouncing along on top, went by, exhibiting their white faces at the windows. Painters were swinging their paint-pots, a roofer carried a long ladder, narrowly avoiding putting out everyone’s eyes with it, while a late-returning fountain-keeper, his box on his back, was playing the tune of ‘Le Bon Roi Dagobert’, a melancholy air, on his trumpet. Oh, what sad music it was, seeming to mark time to the tramping of the herd, these beasts of burden dragging themselves along, exhausted! Another day done! Honestly, the days were too long and there were too many of them. One hardly had time to cram in some food and digest it before it was already daylight and time again to put on the yoke of mis
ery. Yet these chaps were whistling, tapping their feet, marching straight ahead, their eyes fixed on supper.
Gervaise let the stream of people go past, indifferent to knocks, elbowed right and left, rolled along in the midst of the current; for men have no time to spend on gallantry when they are broken with fatigue and raging with hunger.
Suddenly, looking up, the laundress saw the former Hôtel Boncoeur in front of her. The little house, after being for a time a dubious café, which was closed down by the police, now stood abandoned, its shutters covered with posters and its lamp broken, crumbling and disintegrating from top to bottom under the rain, its tawdry wine-coloured distemper mouldering away. And nothing around seemed to have changed. The newsagent’s and the tobacconist’s were still there. Above these low buildings, one could still see the peeling façades and dilapidated outlines of the five-storey houses behind. Only the dance-hall of the Grand Balcon was no longer there; the hall with its ten blazing windows had just been turned over to a sugar-mill, from which continual humming sounds emerged. Yet it was here, in the depths of that shack, the Hôtel Boncoeur, that all this had started. She remained standing, looking at the first-floor window, where there was a shutter hanging off, and recalled her youth with Lantier, their first quarrels and the disgusting way in which he had left her. No matter, she had been young and all this now seemed light-hearted to her, at this distance. A mere twenty years, and now, good Lord, she was on the streets. The sight of the house pained her, so she walked up the boulevard towards Montmartre.
On piles of sand, between the benches, children were still playing as night fell. The procession continued, women workers trotting past, hurrying to make up time spent looking in shop windows. One tall girl had stopped and given her hand to a boy who was accompanying her to three doors away from her home; others, as they parted, made arrangements to meet that night in the Grand Salon de la Folie or the Boule-Noire. In the midst of the groups, some home-workers were carrying their work under their arms. A chimney-sweep, in a harness, was pulling a cart full of debris and nearly got run down by an omnibus. Meanwhile, as the crowd thinned, a few women ran out bare-headed after lighting their fires, to get something for dinner; they pushed through the crowd, rushed into the butcher’s and the pork butcher’s, hurriedly bought their meat and left with it in their hands. There were little girls of eight, sent out to do the shopping, walking past the shops clasping great four-pound loaves as tall as they were, like lovely yellow dolls, who stopped and stared for five minutes at a picture in a window, their cheeks pressed against the bread. Then the flow petered out, the groups became more widely spaced, the workers had gone home; and in the blazing of the gaslights, now that the day was over, one could hear the dull retaliation of idleness and merry-making, as they started to awake.