L'Assommoir - Émile Zola (best romantic books to read txt) 📗

cardboard business was barely surviving. He had let two girl workers go yesterday. The business ate up all his money, leaving his children to run around in rags. And that Madame Gaudron was pregnant again; this was almost indecent at her age. The landlord was going to evict the Coquets on the fifth floor. They owed nine months’ rent, and besides, they insisted on lighting their stove out on the landing. Last Saturday the old lady on the sixth floor, Mademoiselle Remanjou, had arrived just in time to save the Linguerlot child from being badly burned. Mademoiselle Clemence, one who took in ironing, well, she lived life as she pleased. She was so kind to animals though and had such a good heart that you couldn’t say anything against her. It was a pity, a fine girl like her, the company she kept. She’d be walking the streets before long.

“Look, here’s one,” said Lorilleux to his wife, giving her the piece of chain he had been working on since his lunch. “You can trim it.” And he added, with the persistence of a man who does not easily relinquish a joke: “Another four feet and a half. That brings me nearer to Versailles.”

Madame Lorilleux, after tempering it again, trimmed it by passing it through the regulating draw-plate. Then she put it in a little copper saucepan with a long handle, full of lye-water, and placed it over the fire of the forge. Gervaise, again pushed forward by Coupeau, had to follow this last operation. When the chain was thoroughly cleansed, it appeared a dull red color. It was finished, and ready to be delivered.

“They’re always delivered like that, in their rough state,” the zinc-worker explained. “The polishers rub them afterwards with cloths.”

Gervaise felt her courage failing her. The heat, more and more intense, was suffocating her. They kept the door shut, because Lorilleux caught cold from the least draught. Then as they still did not speak of the marriage, she wanted to go away and gently pulled Coupeau’s jacket. He understood. Besides, he also was beginning to feel ill at ease and vexed at their affectation of silence.

“Well, we’re off,” said he. “We mustn’t keep you from your work.”

He moved about for a moment, waiting, hoping for a word or some allusion or other. At length he decided to broach the subject himself.

“I say, Lorilleux, we’re counting on you to be my wife’s witness.”

The chainmaker pretended, with a chuckle, to be greatly surprised; whilst his wife, leaving her draw-plates, placed herself in the middle of the workroom.

“So it’s serious then?” murmured he. “That confounded Young Cassis, one never knows whether he is joking or not.”

“Ah! yes, madame’s the person involved,” said the wife in her turn, as she stared rudely at Gervaise. “Mon Dieu! We’ve no advice to give you, we haven’t. It’s a funny idea to go and get married, all the same. Anyhow, it’s your own wish. When it doesn’t succeed, one’s only got oneself to blame, that’s all. And it doesn’t often succeed, not often, not often.”

She uttered these last words slower and slower, and shaking her head, she looked from the young woman’s face to her hands, and then to her feet as though she had wished to undress her and see the very pores of her skin. She must have found her better than she expected.

“My brother is perfectly free,” she continued more stiffly. “No doubt the family might have wished—one always makes projects. But things take such funny turns. For myself, I don’t want to have any unpleasantness. Had he brought us the lowest of the low, I should merely have said: ‘Marry her and go to blazes!’ He was not badly off though, here with us. He’s fat enough; one can very well see he didn’t fast much; and he always found his soup hot right on time. I say, Lorilleux, don’t you think madame’s like Therese—you know who I mean, that woman who used to live opposite, and who died of consumption?”

“Yes, there’s a certain resemblance,” replied the chainmaker.

“And you’ve got two children, madame? Now, I must admit I said to my brother: ‘I can’t understand how you can want to marry a woman who’s got two children.’ You mustn’t be offended if I consult his interests; its only natural. You don’t look strong either. Don’t you think, Lorilleux, that madame doesn’t look very strong?”

“No, no, she’s not strong.”

They did not mention her leg; but Gervaise understood by their side glances, and the curling of their lips, that they were alluding to it. She stood before them, wrapped in her thin shawl with the yellow palms, replying in monosyllables, as though in the presence of her judges. Coupeau, seeing she was suffering, ended by exclaiming:

“All that’s nothing to do with it. What you are talking about isn’t important. The wedding will take place on Saturday, July 29. I calculated by the almanac. Is it settled? Does it suit you?”

“Oh, it’s all the same to us,” said his sister. “There was no necessity to consult us. I shan’t prevent Lorilleux being witness. I only want peace and quiet.”

Gervaise, hanging her head, not knowing what to do with herself had put the toe of her boot through one of the openings in the wooden screen which covered the tiled floor of the workroom; then afraid of having disturbed something when she had withdrawn it, she stooped down and felt about with her hand. Lorilleux hastily brought the lamp, and he examined her fingers suspiciously.

“You must be careful,” said he, “the tiny bits of gold stick to the shoes, and get carried away without one knowing it.”

It was all to do with business. The employers didn’t allow a single speck for waste. He showed her the rabbit’s foot he used to brush off any flecks of gold left on the cheville and the leather he kept on his lap to catch any gold that fell. Twice weekly the shop was swept out carefully, the sweepings collected and burned and the ashes sifted. This recovered up to twenty-five or thirty francs’ worth of gold a month.

Madame Lorilleux could not take her eyes from Gervaise’s shoes.

“There’s no reason to get angry,” murmured she with an amiable smile. “But, perhaps madame would not mind looking at the soles of her shoes.”

And Gervaise, turning very red, sat down again, and holding up her feet showed that there was nothing clinging to them. Coupeau had opened the door, exclaiming: “Good-night!” in an abrupt tone of voice. He called to her from the corridor. Then she in her turn went off, after stammering a few polite words: she hoped to see them again, and that they would all agree well together. Both of the Lorilleux had already gone back to their work at the far end of their dark hole of a workroom. Madame Lorilleux, her skin reflecting the red glow from the bed of coals, was drawing on another wire. Each effort swelling her neck and making the strained muscles stand out like taut cords. Her husband, hunched over beneath the greenish gleam of the globe was starting another length of chain, twisting each link with his pliers, pressing it on one side, inserting it into the next link above, opening it again with the pointed tool, continuously, mechanically, not wasting a motion, even to wipe the sweat from his face.

When Gervaise emerged from the corridor on to the landing, she could not help saying, with tears in her eyes:

“That doesn’t promise much happiness.”

Coupeau shook his head furiously. He would get even with Lorilleux for that evening. Had anyone ever seen such a miserly fellow? To think that they were going to walk off with two or three grains of his gold dust! All the fuss they made was from pure avarice. His sister thought perhaps that he would never marry, so as to enable her to economize four sous on her dinner every day. However, it would take place all the same on July 29. He did not care a hang for them!

Nevertheless, Gervaise still felt depressed. Tormented by a foolish fearfulness, she peered anxiously into every dark shadow along the stair-rail as she descended. It was dark and deserted at this hour, lit only by a single gas jet on the second floor. In the shadowy depths of the dark pit, it gave a spot of brightness, even with its flamed turned so low. It was now silent behind the closed doors; the weary laborers had gone to sleep after eating. However, there was a soft laugh from Mademoiselle Clemence’s room and a ray of light shone through the keyhole of Mademoiselle Remanjou’s door. She was still busy cutting out dresses for the dolls. Downstairs at Madame Gaudron’s, a child was crying. The sinks on the landings smelled more offensive than ever in the midst of the darkness and stillness.

In the courtyard, Gervaise turned back for a last look at the tenement as Coupeau called out to the concierge. The building seemed to have grown larger under the moonless sky. The drip-drip of water from the faucet sounded loud in the quiet. Gervaise felt that the building was threatening to suffocate her and a chill went through her body. It was a childish fear and she smiled at it a moment later.

“Watch your step,” warned Coupeau.

To get to the entrance, Gervaise had to jump over a wide puddle that had drained from the dye shop. The puddle was blue now, the deep blue of a summer sky. The reflections from the night light of the concierge sparkled in it like stars.

 

CHAPTER III.

Gervaise did not want to have a wedding-party! What was the use of spending money? Besides, she still felt somewhat ashamed; it seemed to her quite unnecessary to parade the marriage before the whole neighborhood. But Coupeau cried out at that. One could not be married without having a feed. He did not care a button for the people of the neighborhood! Nothing elaborate, just a short walk and a rabbit ragout in the first eating-house they fancied. No music with dessert. Just a glass or two and then back home.

The zinc-worker, chaffing and joking, at length got the young woman to consent by promising her that there should be no larks. He would keep his eye on the glasses, to prevent sunstrokes. Then he organized a sort of picnic at five francs a head, at the “Silver Windmill,” kept by Auguste, on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. It was a small cafe with moderate charges and had a dancing place in the rear, beneath the three acacias in the courtyard. They would be very comfortable on the first floor. During the next ten days, he got hold of guests in the house where his sister lived in the Rue de la Goutted’Or—Monsieur Madinier, Mademoiselle Remanjou, Madame Gaudron and her husband. He even ended by getting Gervaise to consent to the presence of two of his comrades—Bibi-the-Smoker and My-Boots. No doubt My-Boots was a boozer; but then he had such a fantastic appetite that he was always asked to join those sort of gatherings, just for the sight of the caterer’s mug when he beheld that bottomless pit swallowing his twelve pounds of bread. The young woman on her side, promised to bring her employer Madame Fauconnier and the Boches, some very agreeable people. On counting, they found there would be fifteen to sit down to table, which was quite enough. When there are too many, they always wind up by quarrelling.

Coupeau however, had no money. Without wishing to show off, he intended to behave handsomely. He borrowed fifty francs of his employer. Out of that, he first of all purchased the wedding-ring—a twelve franc gold wedding-ring, which Lorilleux