CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER I.
Gervaise had waited up for Lantier until two in the morning. Then,
shivering from having remained in a thin loose jacket, exposed to the
fresh air at the window, she had thrown herself across the bed, drowsy,
feverish, and her cheeks bathed in tears.
For a week past, on leaving the “Two-Headed Calf,” where they took
their meals, he had sent her home with the children and never
reappeared himself till late at night, alleging that he had been in
search of work. That evening, while watching for his return, she
thought she had seen him enter the dancing-hall of the “Grand-Balcony,”
the ten blazing windows of which lighted up with the glare of a
conflagration the dark expanse of the exterior Boulevards; and five or
six paces behind him, she had caught sight of little Adele, a
burnisher, who dined at the same restaurant, swinging her hands, as if
she had just quitted his arm so as not to pass together under the
dazzling light of the globes at the door.
When, towards five o’clock, Gervaise awoke, stiff and sore, she broke
forth into sobs. Lantier had not returned. For the first time he had
slept away from home. She remained seated on the edge of the bed, under
the strip of faded chintz, which hung from the rod fastened to the
ceiling by a piece of string. And slowly, with her eyes veiled by
tears, she glanced round the wretched lodging, furnished with a walnut
chest of drawers, minus one drawer, three rush-bottomed chairs, and a
little greasy table, on which stood a broken water-jug. There had been
added, for the children, an iron bedstead, which prevented any one
getting to the chest of drawers, and filled two-thirds of the room.
Gervaise’s and Lantier’s trunk, wide open, in one corner, displayed its
emptiness, and a man’s old hat right at the bottom almost buried
beneath some dirty shirts and socks; whilst, against the walls, above
the articles of furniture, hung a shawl full of holes, and a pair of
trousers begrimed with mud, the last rags which the dealers in
second-hand clothes declined to buy. In the centre of the mantel-piece,
lying between two odd zinc candle-sticks, was a bundle of pink
pawn-tickets. It was the best room of the hotel, the first floor room,
looking on to the Boulevard.
The two children were sleeping side by side, with their heads on the
same pillow. Claude, aged eight years, was breathing quietly, with his
little hands thrown outside the coverlet; while Etienne, only four
years old, was smiling, with one arm round his brother’s neck. And
bare-footed, without thinking to again put on the old shoes that had
fallen on the floor, she resumed her position at the window, her eyes
searching the pavements in the distance.
The hotel was situated on the Boulevard de la Chapelle, to the left of
the Barriere Poissonniere. It was a building of two stories high,
painted a red, of the color of wine dregs, up to the second floor, and
with shutters all rotted by the rain. Over a lamp with starred panes of
glass, one could manage to read, between the two windows, the words,
“Hotel Boncoeur, kept by Marsoullier,” painted in big yellow letters,
several pieces of which the moldering of the plaster had carried away.
The lamp preventing her seeing, Gervaise raised herself on tiptoe,
still holding the handkerchief to her lips. She looked to the right,
towards the Boulevard Rochechouart, where groups of butchers, in aprons
smeared with blood, were hanging about in front of the
slaughter-houses; and the fresh breeze wafted occasionally a stench of
slaughtered beasts. Looking to the left, she scanned a long avenue that
ended nearly in front of her, where the white mass of the Lariboisiere
Hospital was then in course of construction. Slowly, from one end of
the horizon to the other, she followed the octroi wall, behind which
she sometimes heard, during night time, the shrieks of persons being
murdered; and she searchingly looked into the remote angles, the dark
corners, black with humidity and filth, fearing to discern there
Lantier’s body, stabbed to death.
She looked at the endless gray wall that surrounded the city with its
belt of desolation. When she raised her eyes higher, she became aware
of a bright burst of sunlight. The dull hum of the city’s awakening
already filled the air. Craning her neck to look at the Poissonniere
gate, she remained for a time watching the constant stream of men,
horses, and carts which flooded down from the heights of Montmartre and
La Chapelle, pouring between the two squat octroi lodges. It was like a
herd of plodding cattle, an endless throng widened by sudden stoppages
into eddies that spilled off the sidewalks into the street, a steady
procession of laborers on their way back to work with tools slung over
their back and a loaf of bread under their arm. This human inundation
kept pouring down into Paris to be constantly swallowed up. Gervaise
leaned further out at the risk of falling when she thought she
recognized Lantier among the throng. She pressed the handkerchief
tighter against her mouth, as though to push back the pain within her.
The sound of a young and cheerful voice caused her to leave the window.
“So the old man isn’t here, Madame Lantier?”
“Why, no, Monsieur Coupeau,” she replied, trying to smile.
Coupeau, a zinc-worker who occupied a ten franc room on the top floor,
having seen the door unlocked, had walked in as friends will do.
“You know,” he continued, “I’m now working over there in the hospital.
What beautiful May weather, isn’t it? The air is rather sharp this
morning.”
And he looked at Gervaise’s face, red with weeping. When he saw that
the bed had not been slept in, he shook his head gently; then he went
to the children’s couch where they were sleeping, looking as rosy as
cherubs, and, lowering his voice, he said,
“Come, the old man’s not been home, has he? Don’t worry yourself,
Madame Lantier. He’s very much occupied with politics. When they were
voting for Eugene Sue the other day, he was acting almost crazy. He has
very likely spent the night with some friends blackguarding crapulous
Bonaparte.”
“No, no,” she murmured with an effort. “You don’t think that. I know
where Lantier is. You see, we have our little troubles like the rest of
the world!”
Coupeau winked his eye, to indicate he was not a dupe of this
falsehood; and he went off, after offering to fetch her milk, if she
did not care to go out: she was a good and courageous woman, and might
count upon him on any day of trouble.
As soon as he was gone, Gervaise again returned to the window. At the
Barriere, the tramp of the drove still continued in the morning air:
locksmiths in short blue blouses, masons in white jackets, house
painters in overcoats over long smocks. From a distance the crowd
looked like a chalky smear of neutral hue composed chiefly of faded
blue and dingy gray. When one of the workers occasionally stopped to
light his pipe the others kept plodding past him, without sparing a
laugh or a word to a comrade. With cheeks gray as clay, their eyes were
continually drawn toward Paris which was swallowing them one by one.
At both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers however, some of the men
slackened their pace as they neared the doors of the two wine-dealers
who were taking down their shutters; and, before entering, they stood
on the edge of the pavement, looking sideways over Paris, with no
strength in their arms and already inclined for a day of idleness.
Inside various groups were already buying rounds of drinks, or just
standing around, forgetting their troubles, crowding up the place,
coughing, spitting, clearing their throats with sip after sip.
Gervaise was watching Pere Colombe’s wineshop to the left of the
street, where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a stout woman,
bareheaded and wearing an apron called to her from the middle of the
roadway:
“Hey, Madame Lantier, you’re up very early!”
Gervaise leaned out. “Why! It’s you, Madame Boche! Oh! I’ve got a lot
of work to-day!”
“Yes, things don’t do themselves, do they?”
The conversation continued between roadway and window. Madame Boche was
concierge of the building where the “Two-Headed Calf” was on the ground
floor. Gervaise had waited for Lantier more than once in the
concierge’s lodge, so as not to be alone at table with all the men who
ate at the restaurant. Madame Boche was going to a tailor who was late
in mending an overcoat for her husband. She mentioned one of her
tenants who had come in with a woman the night before and kept
everybody awake past three in the morning. She looked at Gervaise with
intense curiosity.
“Is Monsieur Lantier, then, still in bed?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes, he’s asleep,” replied Gervaise, who could not avoid blushing.
Madame Boche saw the tears come into her eyes; and, satisfied no doubt,
she turned to go, declaring men to be a cursed, lazy set. As she went
off, she called back:
“It’s this morning you go to the wash-house, isn’t it? I’ve something
to wash, too. I’ll keep you a place next to me, and we can chat
together.” Then, as if moved with sudden pity, she added:
“My poor little thing, you had far better not remain there; you’ll take
harm. You look quite blue with cold.”
Gervaise still obstinately remained at the window during two mortal
hours, till eight o’clock. Now all the shops had opened. Only a few
work men were still hurrying along.
The working girls now filled the boulevard: metal polishers, milliners,
flower sellers, shivering in their thin clothing. In small groups they
chattered gaily, laughing and glancing here and there. Occasionally
there would be one girl by herself, thin, pale, serious-faced, picking
her way along the city wall among the puddles and the filth.
After the working girls, the office clerks came past, breathing upon
their chilled fingers and munching penny rolls. Some of them are gaunt
young fellows in ill-fitting suits, their tired eyes still fogged from
sleep. Others are older men, stooped and tottering, with faces pale and
drawn from long hours of office work and glancing nervously at their
watches for fear of arriving late.
In time the Boulevards settle into their usual morning quiet. Old folks
come out to stroll in the sun. Tired young mothers in bedraggled skirts
cuddle babies in their arms or sit on a bench to change diapers.
Children run, squealing and laughing, pushing and shoving.
Then Gervaise felt herself choking, dizzy with anguish, all hopes gone;
it seemed to her that everything was ended, even time itself, and that
Lantier would return no more. Her eyes vacantly wandered from the old
slaughter-house, foul with butchery and with stench, to the new white
hospital which, through the yawning openings of its ranges of windows,
disclosed the naked wards, where death was preparing to mow. In front
of her on the other side of the octroi wall the bright heavens dazzled
her, with the rising sun which rose higher and higher over the vast
awaking city.
The young woman was seated on a chair, no longer crying, and with her
hands abandoned on her lap, when Lantier quietly entered the room.
“It’s you! It’s you!” she cried, rising to throw herself upon his neck.
“Yes, it’s me. What of it?” he replied. “You are not going to begin any
of your nonsense, I hope!”
He had pushed her aside. Then, with a gesture of ill-humor he threw his
black felt hat to the chest of drawers. He was a young fellow of
twenty-six years of age, short and very dark, with a handsome figure,
and slight moustaches which his hand was always mechanically twirling.
He wore a workman’s overalls and an old soiled overcoat, which he had
belted tightly at the waist, and he spoke with a strong Provencal
accent.
Gervaise, who had fallen back on her chair, gently complained, in short
sentences: “I’ve not had a wink of sleep. I feared some harm had
happened to you. Where have you been? Where did you spend the night?
For heaven’s sake! Don’t do it again, or I shall go crazy. Tell me
Auguste, where have you been?”
“Where I had business, of course,” he returned shrugging his shoulders.
“At eight o’clock, I was at La Glaciere, with my friend who is to start
a hat factory. We sat talking late, so I preferred to sleep there. Now,
you know, I don’t like being spied upon, so just shut up!”
The young woman recommenced sobbing. The loud voices and the rough
movements of Lantier, who upset the chairs, had awakened the children.
They sat up in bed, half naked, disentangling their hair with their
tiny hands, and, hearing their mother weep, they uttered terrible
screams, crying also with their scarcely open eyes.
“Ah! there’s the music!” shouted Lantier furiously. “I warn you, I’ll
take my hook! And it will be for good, this time. You won’t shut up?
Then, good morning! I’ll return to the place I’ve just come from.”
He had already taken his hat from off the chest of drawers. But
Gervaise threw herself before him, stammering: “No, no!”
And she hushed the little ones’ tears with her caresses, smoothed their
hair, and soothed them with soft words. The children, suddenly quieted,
laughing on their pillow, amused themselves by punching each other. The
father however, without even taking off his boots, had thrown himself
on the bed looking worn out, his face bearing signs of having been up
all night. He did not go to sleep, he lay with his eyes wide open,
looking round the room.
“It’s a mess here!” he muttered. And after observing Gervaise a moment,
he malignantly added: “Don’t you even wash yourself now?”
Gervaise was twenty-two, tall and slim with fine features, but she was
already beginning to show the strain of her hard life. She seemed to
have aged ten years from the hours of agonized weeping. Lantier’s mean
remark made her mad.
“You’re not fair,” she said spiritedly. “You well know I do all I can.
It’s not my fault we find ourselves here. I would like to see you, with
two children, in a room where there’s not even a stove to heat some
water. When we arrived in Paris, instead of squandering your money, you
should have made a home for us at once, as you promised.”
“Listen!” Lantier exploded. “You cracked the nut with me; it doesn’t
become you to sneer at it now!”
Apparently not listening, Gervaise went on with her own thought. “If we
work hard we can get out of the hole we’re in. Madame Fauconnier, the
laundress on Rue Neuve, will start me on Monday. If you work with your
friend from La Glaciere, in six months we will be doing well. We’ll
have enough for decent clothes and a place we can call our own. But
we’ll have to stick with it and work hard.”
Lantier turned over towards the wall, looking greatly bored. Then
Gervaise lost her temper.
“Yes, that’s it, I know the love of work doesn’t trouble you much.
You’re bursting with ambition, you want to be dressed like a gentleman.
You don’t think me nice enough, do you, now that you’ve made me pawn
all my dresses? Listen, Auguste, I didn’t intend to speak of it, I
would have waited a bit longer, but I know where you spent the night; I
saw you enter the ‘Grand-Balcony’ with that trollop Adele. Ah! you
choose them well! She’s a nice one, she is! She does well to put on the
airs of a princess! She’s been the ridicule of every man who frequents
the restaurant.”
At a bound Lantier sprang from the bed. His eyes had become as black as
ink in his pale face. With this little man, rage blew like a tempest.
“Yes, yes, of every man who frequents the restaurant!” repeated the
young woman. “Madame Boche intends to give them notice, she and her
long stick of a sister, because they’ve always a string of men after
them on the staircase.”
Lantier raised his fists; then, resisting the desire of striking her,
he seized hold of her by the arms, shook her violently and sent her
sprawling upon the bed of the children, who recommenced crying. And he
lay down again, mumbling, like a man resolving on something that he
previously hesitated to do:
“You don’t know what you’ve done, Gervaise. You’ve made a big mistake;
you’ll see.”
For an instant the children continued sobbing. Their mother, who
remained bending over the bed, held them both in her embrace, and kept
repeating the same words in a monotonous tone of voice.
“Ah! if it weren’t for you! My poor little ones! If it weren’t for you!
If it weren’t for you!”
Stretched out quietly, his eyes raised to the faded strip of chintz,
Lantier no longer listened, but seemed to be buried in a fixed idea. He
remained thus for nearly an hour, without giving way to sleep, in spite
of the fatigue which weighed his eyelids down.
He finally turned toward Gervaise, his face set hard in determination.
She had gotten the children up and dressed and had almost finished
cleaning the room. The room looked, as always, dark and depressing with
its sooty black ceiling and paper peeling from the damp walls. The
dilapidated furniture was always streaked and dirty despite frequent
dustings. Gervaise, devouring her grief, trying to assume a look of
indifference, hurried over her work.
Lantier watched as she tidied her hair in front of the small mirror
hanging near the window. While she washed herself he looked at her bare
arms and shoulders. He seemed to be making comparisons in his mind as
his lips formed a grimace. Gervaise limped with her right leg, though
it was scarcely noticeable except when she was tired. To-day, exhausted
from remaining awake all night, she was supporting herself against the
wall and dragging her leg.
Neither one spoke, they had nothing more to say. Lantier seemed to be
waiting, while Gervaise kept busy and tried to keep her countenance
expressionless. Finally, while she was making a bundle of the dirty
clothes thrown in a corner, behind the trunk, he at length opened his
lips and asked:
“What are you doing there? Where are you going?”
She did not answer at first. Then, when he furiously repeated his
question, she made up her mind, and said:
“I suppose you can see for yourself. I’m going to wash all this. The
children can’t live in filth.”
He let her pick up two or three handkerchiefs. And, after a fresh
pause, he resumed: “Have you got any money?”
At these words she stood up and looked him full in the face, without
leaving go of the children’s dirty clothes, which she held in her hand.
“Money! And where do you think I can have stolen any? You know well
enough that I got three francs the day before yesterday on my black
skirt. We’ve lunched twice off it, and money goes quick at the
pork-butcher’s. No, you may be quite sure I’ve no money. I’ve four sous
for the wash-house. I don’t have an extra income like some women.”
He let this allusion pass. He had moved off the bed, and was passing in
review the few rags hanging about the room. He ended by taking up the
pair of trousers and the shawl, and searching the drawers, he added two
chemises and a woman’s loose jacket to the parcel; then, he threw the
whole bundle into Gervaise’s arms, saying:
“Here, go and pop this.”
“Don’t you want me to pop the children as well?” asked she. “Eh! If
they lent on children, it would be a fine riddance!”
She went to the pawn-place, however. When she returned at the end of
half an hour, she laid a hundred sou piece on the mantel-shelf, and
added the ticket to the others, between the two candlesticks.
“That’s what they gave me,” said she. “I wanted six francs, but I
couldn’t manage it. Oh! they’ll never ruin themselves. And there’s
always such a crowd there!”
Lantier did not pick up the five franc piece directly. He would rather
that she got change, so as to leave her some of it. But he decided to
slip it into his waistcoat pocket, when he noticed a small piece of ham
wrapped up in paper, and the remains of a loaf on the chest of drawers.
“I didn’t dare go to the milkwoman’s, because we owe her a week,”
explained Gervaise. “But I shall be back early; you can get some bread
and some chops whilst I’m away, and then we’ll have lunch. Bring also a
bottle of wine.”
He did not say no. Their quarrel seemed to be forgotten. The young
woman was completing her bundle of dirty clothes. But when she went to
take Lantier’s shirts and socks from the bottom of the trunk, he called
to her to leave them alone.
“Leave my things, d’ye hear? I don’t want ’em touched!”
“What’s it you don’t want touched?” she asked, rising up. “I suppose
you don’t mean to put these filthy things on again, do you? They must
be washed.”
She studied his boyishly handsome face, now so rigid that it seemed
nothing could ever soften it. He angrily grabbed his things from her
and threw them back into the trunk, saying:
“Just obey me, for once! I tell you I won’t have ’em touched!”
“But why?” she asked, turning pale, a terrible suspicion crossing her
mind. “You don’t need your shirts now, you’re not going away. What can
it matter to you if I take them?”
He hesitated for an instant, embarrassed by the piercing glance she
fixed upon him. “Why—why—” stammered he, “because you go and tell
everyone that you keep me, that you wash and mend. Well! It worries me,
there! Attend to your own business and I’ll attend to mine, washerwomen
don’t work for dogs.”
She supplicated, she protested she had never complained; but he roughly
closed the trunk and sat down upon it, saying, “No!” to her face. He
could surely do as he liked with what belonged to him! Then, to escape
from the inquiring looks she leveled at him, he went and laid down on
the bed again, saying that he was sleepy, and requesting her not to
make his head ache with any more of her row. This time indeed, he
seemed to fall asleep. Gervaise, for a while, remained undecided. She
was tempted to kick the bundle of dirty clothes on one side, and to sit
down and sew. But Lantier’s regular breathing ended by reassuring her.
She took the ball of blue and the piece of soap remaining from her last
washing, and going up to the little ones who were quietly playing with
some old corks in front of the window, she kissed them, and said in a
low voice:
“Be very good, don’t make any noise; papa’s asleep.”
When she left the room, Claude’s and Etienne’s gentle laughter alone
disturbed the great silence beneath the blackened ceiling. It was ten
o’clock. A ray of sunshine entered by the half open window.
On the Boulevard, Gervaise turned to the left, and followed the Rue
Neuve de la Goutte-d’Or. As she passed Madame Fauconnier’s shop, she
slightly bowed her head. The wash-house she was bound for was situated
towards the middle of the street, at the part where the roadway
commenced to ascend.
The rounded, gray contours of the three large zinc wash tanks, studded
with rivets, rose above the flat-roofed building. Behind them was the
drying room, a high second story, closed in on all sides by
narrow-slatted lattices so that the air could circulate freely, and
through which laundry could be seen hanging on brass wires. The steam
engine’s smokestack exhaled puffs of white smoke to the right of the
water tanks.
Gervaise was used to puddles and did not bother to tuck her skirts up
before making her way through the doorway, which was cluttered with
jars of bleaching water. She was already acquainted with the mistress
of the wash-house, a delicate little woman with red, inflamed eyes, who
sat in a small glazed closet with account books in front of her, bars
of soap on shelves, balls of blue in glass bowls, and pounds of soda
done up in packets; and, as she passed, she asked for her beetle and
her scouring-brush, which she had left to be taken care of the last
time she had done her washing there. Then, after obtaining her number,
she entered the wash-house.
It was an immense shed, with large clear windows, and a flat ceiling,
showing the beams supported on cast-iron pillars. Pale rays of light
passed through the hot steam, which remained suspended like a milky
fog. Smoke arose from certain corners, spreading about and covering the
recesses with a bluish veil. A heavy moisture hung around, impregnated
with a soapy odor, a damp insipid smell, continuous though at moments
overpowered by the more potent fumes of the chemicals. Along the
washing-places, on either side of the central alley, were rows of
women, with bare arms and necks, and skirts tucked up, showing colored
stockings and heavy lace-up shoes. They were beating furiously,
laughing, leaning back to call out a word in the midst of the din, or
stooping over their tubs, all of them brutal, ungainly, foul of speech,
and soaked as though by a shower, with their flesh red and reeking.
All around the women continuously flowed a river from hot-water buckets
emptied with a sudden splash, cold-water faucets left dripping, soap
suds spattering, and the dripping from rinsed laundry which was hung
up. It splashed their feet and drained away across the sloping
flagstones. The din of the shouting and the rhythmic beating was joined
by the patter of steady dripping. It was slightly muffled by the
moisture-soaked ceiling. Meanwhile, the steam engine could be heard as
it puffed and snorted ceaselessly while cloaked in its white mist. The
dancing vibration of its flywheel seemed to regulate the volume of the
noisy turbulence.
Gervaise passed slowly along the alley, looking to the right and left,
carrying her laundry bundle under one arm, with one hip thrust high and
limping more than usual. She was jostled by several women in the
hubbub.
“This way, my dear!” cried Madame Boche, in her loud voice. Then, when
the young woman had joined her at the very end on the left, the
concierge, who was furiously rubbing a dirty sock, began to talk
incessantly, without leaving off her work. “Put your things there, I’ve
kept your place. Oh, I sha’n’t be long over what I’ve got. Boche
scarcely dirties his things at all. And you, you won’t be long either,
will you? Your bundle’s quite a little one. Before twelve o’clock we
shall have finished, and we can go off to lunch. I used to send my
things to a laundress in the Rue Poulet, but she destroyed everything
with her chlorine and her brushes; so now I do the washing myself. It’s
so much saved; it only costs the soap. I say, you should have put those
shirts to soak. Those little rascals of children, on my word! One would
think their bodies were covered with soot.”
Gervaise, having undone her bundle, was spreading out the little ones’
shirts, and as Madame Boche advised her to take a pailful of lye, she
answered, “Oh, no! warm water will do. I’m used to it.” She had sorted
her laundry with several colored pieces to one side. Then, after
filling her tub with four pails of cold water from the tap behind her,
she plunged her pile of whites into it.
“You’re used to it?” repeated Madame Boche. “You were a washerwoman in
your native place, weren’t you, my dear?”
Gervaise, with her sleeves pushed back, displayed the graceful arms of
a young blonde, as yet scarcely reddened at the elbows, and started
scrubbing her laundry. She spread a shirt out on the narrow rubbing
board which was water-bleached and eroded by years of use. She rubbed
soap into the shirt, turned it over, and soaped the other side. Before
replying to Madame Boche she grasped her beetle and began to pound away
so that her shouted phrases were punctuated with loud and rhythmic
thumps.
“Yes, yes, a washerwoman—When I was ten—That’s twelve years ago—We used
to go to the river—It smelt nicer there than it does here—You should
have seen, there was a nook under the trees, with clear running
water—You know, at Plassans—Don’t you know Plassans?—It’s near
Marseilles.”
“How you go at it!” exclaimed Madame Boche, amazed at the strength of
her blows. “You could flatten out a piece of iron with your little
lady-like arms.”
The conversation continued in a very high volume. At times, the
concierge, not catching what was said, was obliged to lean forward. All
the linen was beaten, and with a will! Gervaise plunged it into the tub
again, and then took it out once more, each article separately, to rub
it over with soap a second time and brush it. With one hand she held
the article firmly on the plank; with the other, which grasped the
short couch-grass brush, she extracted from the linen a dirty lather,
which fell in long drips. Then, in the slight noise caused by the
brush, the two women drew together, and conversed in a more intimate
way.
“No, we’re not married,” resumed Gervaise. “I don’t hide it. Lantier
isn’t so nice for any one to care to be his wife. If it weren’t for the
children! I was fourteen and he was eighteen when we had our first one.
It happened in the usual way, you know how it is. I wasn’t happy at
home. Old man Macquart would kick me in the tail whenever he felt like
it, for no reason at all. I had to have some fun outside. We might have
been married, but—I forget why—our parents wouldn’t consent.”
She shook her hands, which were growing red in the white suds. “The
water’s awfully hard in Paris.”
Madame Boche was now washing only very slowly. She kept leaving off,
making her work last as long as she could, so as to remain there, to
listen to that story, which her curiosity had been hankering to know
for a fortnight past. Her mouth was half open in the midst of her big,
fat face; her eyes, which were almost at the top of her head, were
gleaming. She was thinking, with the satisfaction of having guessed
right.
“That’s it, the little one gossips too much. There’s been a row.”
Then, she observed out loud, “He isn’t nice, then?”
“Don’t mention it!” replied Gervaise. “He used to behave very well in
the country; but, since we’ve been in Paris, he’s been unbearable. I
must tell you that his mother died last year and left him some
money—about seventeen hundred francs. He would come to Paris, so, as
old Macquart was forever knocking me about without warning, I consented
to come away with him. We made the journey with two children. He was to
set me up as a laundress, and work himself at his trade of a hatter. We
should have been very happy; but, you see, Lantier’s ambitious and a
spendthrift, a fellow who only thinks of amusing himself. In short,
he’s not worth much. On arriving, we went to the Hotel Montmartre, in
the Rue Montmartre. And then there were dinners, and cabs, and the
theatre; a watch for himself and a silk dress for me, for he’s not
unkind when he’s got the money. You understand, he went in for
everything, and so well that at the end of two months we were cleaned
out. It was then that we came to live at the Hotel Boncoeur, and that
this horrible life began.”
She interrupted herself. A lump had suddenly risen in her throat, and
she could scarcely restrain her tears. She had finished brushing the
things.
“I must go and fetch my hot water,” she murmured.
But Madame Boche, greatly disappointed at this break off in the
disclosures, called to the wash-house boy, who was passing, “My little
Charles, kindly get madame a pail of hot water; she’s in a hurry.”
The youth took the bucket and brought it back filled. Gervaise paid
him; it was a sou the pailful. She poured the hot water into the tub,
and soaped the things a last time with her hands, leaning over them in
a mass of steam, which deposited small beads of grey vapor in her light
hair.
“Here put some soda in, I’ve got some by me,” said the concierge,
obligingly.
And she emptied into Gervaise’s tub what remained of a bag of soda
which she had brought with her. She also offered her some of the
chemical water, but the young woman declined it; it was only good for
grease and wine stains.
“I think he’s rather a loose fellow,” resumed Madame Boche, returning
to Lantier, but without naming him.
Gervaise, bent almost double, her hands all shriveled, and thrust in
amongst the clothes, merely tossed her head.
“Yes, yes,” continued the other, “I have noticed several little
things—” But she suddenly interrupted herself, as Gervaise jumped up,
with a pale face, and staring wildly at her. Then she exclaimed, “Oh,
no! I don’t know anything! He likes to laugh a bit, I think, that’s
all. For instance, you know the two girls who lodge at my place, Adele
and Virginie. Well, he larks about with ’em, but he just flirts for
sport.”
The young woman standing before her, her face covered with
perspiration, the water dripping from her arms, continued to stare at
her with a fixed and penetrating look. Then the concierge got excited,
giving herself a blow on the chest, and pledging her word of honor, she
cried:
“I know nothing, I mean it when I say so!”
Then calming herself, she added in a gentle voice, as if speaking to a
person on whom loud protestations would have no effect, “I think he has
a frank look about the eyes. He’ll marry you, my dear, I’m sure of it.”
Gervaise wiped her forehead with her wet hand. Shaking her head again,
she pulled another garment out of the water. Both of them kept silence
for a moment. The wash-house was quieting down, for eleven o’clock had
struck. Half of the washerwomen were perched on the edge of their tubs,
eating sausages between slices of bread and drinking from open bottles
of wine. Only housewives who had come to launder small bundles of
family linen were hurrying to finish.
Occasional beetle blows could still be heard amid the subdued laughter
and gossip half-choked by the greedy chewing of jawbones. The steam
engine never stopped. Its vibrant, snorting voice seemed to fill the
entire hall, though not one of the women even heard it. It was like the
breathing of the wash-house, its hot breath collecting under the
ceiling rafters in an eternal floating mist.
The heat was becoming intolerable. Through the tall windows on the left
sunlight was streaming in, touching the steamy vapors with opalescent
tints of soft pinks and grayish blues. Charles went from window to
window, letting down the heavy canvas awnings. Then he crossed to the
shady side to open the ventilators. He was applauded by cries and hand
clapping and a rough sort of gaiety spread around. Soon even the last
of the beetle-pounding stopped.
With full mouths, the washerwomen could only make gestures. It became
so quiet that the grating sound of the fireman shoveling coal into the
engine’s firebox could be heard at regular intervals from far at the
other end.
Gervaise was washing her colored things in the hot water thick with
lather, which she had kept for the purpose. When she had finished, she
drew a trestle towards her and hung across it all the different
articles; the drippings from which made bluish puddles on the floor;
and she commenced rinsing. Behind her, the cold water tap was set
running into a vast tub fixed to the ground, and across which were two
wooden bars whereon to lay the clothes. High up in the air were two
other bars for the things to finish dripping on.
“We’re almost finished, and not a bad job,” said Madame Boche. “I’ll
wait and help you wring all that.”
“Oh! it’s not worth while; I’m much obliged though,” replied the young
woman, who was kneading with her hands and sousing the colored things
in some clean water. “If I’d any sheets, it would be another thing.”
But she had, however, to accept the concierge’s assistance. They were
wringing between them, one at each end, a woolen skirt of a washed-out
chestnut color, from which dribbled a yellowish water, when Madame
Boche exclaimed:
“Why, there’s tall Virginie! What has she come here to wash, when all
her wardrobe that isn’t on her would go into a pocket handkerchief?”
Gervaise jerked her head up. Virginie was a girl of her own age, taller
than she was, dark and pretty in spite of her face being rather long
and narrow. She had on an old black dress with flounces, and a red
ribbon round her neck; and her hair was done up carefully, the chignon
being enclosed in a blue silk net. She stood an instant in the middle
of the central alley, screwing up her eyes as though seeking someone;
then, when she caught sight of Gervaise, she passed close to her,
erect, insolent, and with a swinging gait, and took a place in the same
row, five tubs away from her.
“There’s a freak for you!” continued Madame Boche in a lower tone of
voice. “She never does any laundry, not even a pair of cuffs. A
seamstress who doesn’t even sew on a loose button! She’s just like her
sister, the brass burnisher, that hussy Adele, who stays away from her
job two days out of three. Nobody knows who their folks are or how they
make a living. Though, if I wanted to talk . . . What on earth is she
scrubbing there? A filthy petticoat. I’ll wager it’s seen some lovely
sights, that petticoat!”
Madame Boche was evidently trying to make herself agreeable to
Gervaise. The truth was she often took a cup of coffee with Adele and
Virginia, when the girls had any money. Gervaise did not answer, but
hurried over her work with feverish hands. She had just prepared her
blue in a little tub that stood on three legs. She dipped in the linen
things, and shook them an instant at the bottom of the colored water,
the reflection of which had a pinky tinge; and after wringing them
lightly, she spread them out on the wooden bars up above. During the
time she was occupied with this work, she made a point of turning her
back on Virginie. But she heard her chuckles; she could feel her
sidelong glances. Virginie appeared only to have come there to provoke
her. At one moment, Gervaise having turned around, they both stared
into each other’s faces.
“Leave her alone,” whispered Madame Boche. “You’re not going to pull
each other’s hair out, I hope. When I tell you there’s nothing to it!
It isn’t her, anyhow!”
At this moment, as the young woman was hanging up the last article of
clothing, there was a sound of laughter at the door of the wash-house.
“Here are two brats who want their mamma!” cried Charles.
All the women leant forward. Gervaise recognized Claude and Etienne. As
soon as they caught sight of her, they ran to her through the puddles,
the heels of their unlaced shoes resounding on the flagstones. Claude,
the eldest, held his little brother by the hand. The women, as they
passed them, uttered little exclamations of affection as they noticed
their frightened though smiling faces. And they stood there, in front
of their mother, without leaving go of each other’s hands, and holding
their fair heads erect.
“Has papa sent you?” asked Gervaise.
But as she stooped to tie the laces of Etienne’s shoes, she saw the key
of their room on one of Claude’s fingers, with the brass number hanging
from it.
“Why, you’ve brought the key!” she said, greatly surprised. “What’s
that for?”
The child, seeing the key which he had forgotten on his finger,
appeared to recollect, and exclaimed in his clear voice:
“Papa’s gone away.”
“He’s gone to buy the lunch, and told you to come here to fetch me?”
Claude looked at his brother, hesitated, no longer recollecting. Then
he resumed all in a breath: “Papa’s gone away. He jumped off the bed,
he put all the things in the trunk, he carried the trunk down to a cab.
He’s gone away.”
Gervaise, who was squatting down, slowly rose to her feet, her face
ghastly pale. She put her hands to her cheeks and temples, as though
she felt her head was breaking; and she could find only these words,
which she repeated twenty times in the same tone of voice:
“Ah! good heavens!—ah! good heavens!—ah! good heavens!”
Madame Boche, however, also questioned the child, quite delighted at
the chance of hearing the whole story.
“Come, little one, you must tell us just what happened. It was he who
locked the door and who told you to bring the key, wasn’t it?” And,
lowering her voice, she whispered in Claude’s ear: “Was there a lady in
the cab?”
The child again got confused. Then he recommenced his story in a
triumphant manner: “He jumped off the bed, he put all the things in the
trunk. He’s gone away.”
Then, when Madame Boche let him go, he drew his brother in front of the
tap, and they amused themselves by turning on the water. Gervaise was
unable to cry. She was choking, leaning back against her tub, her face
still buried in her hands. Brief shudders rocked her body and she
wailed out long sighs while pressing her hands tighter against her
eyes, as though abandoning herself to the blackness of desolation, a
dark, deep pit into which she seemed to be falling.
“Come, my dear, pull yourself together!” murmured Madame Boche.
“If you only knew! If you only knew!” said she at length very faintly.
“He sent me this morning to pawn my shawl and my chemises to pay for
that cab.”
And she burst out crying. The memory of the events of that morning and
of her trip to the pawn-place tore from her the sobs that had been
choking her throat. That abominable trip to the pawn-place was the
thing that hurt most in all her sorrow and despair. Tears were
streaming down her face but she didn’t think of using her handkerchief.
“Be reasonable, do be quiet, everyone’s looking at you,” Madame Boche,
who hovered round her, kept repeating. “How can you worry yourself so
much on account of a man? You loved him, then, all the same, did you,
my poor darling? A little while ago you were saying all sorts of things
against him; and now you’re crying for him, and almost breaking your
heart. Dear me, how silly we all are!”
Then she became quite maternal.
“A pretty little woman like you! Can it be possible? One may tell you
everything now, I suppose. Well! You recollect when I passed under your
window, I already had my suspicions. Just fancy, last night, when Adele
came home, I heard a man’s footsteps with hers. So I thought I would
see who it was. I looked up the staircase. The fellow was already on
the second landing; but I certainly recognized Monsieur Lantier’s
overcoat. Boche, who was on the watch this morning, saw him tranquilly
nod adieu. He was with Adele, you know. Virginie has a situation now,
where she goes twice a week. Only it’s highly imprudent all the same,
for they’ve only one room and an alcove, and I can’t very well say
where Virginie managed to sleep.”
She interrupted herself an instant, turned round, and then resumed,
subduing her loud voice:
“She’s laughing at seeing you cry, that heartless thing over there. I’d
stake my life that her washing’s all a pretence. She’s packed off the
other two, and she’s come here so as to tell them how you take it.”
Gervaise removed her hands from her face and looked. When she beheld
Virginie in front of her, amidst three or four women, speaking low and
staring at her, she was seized with a mad rage. Her arms in front of
her, searching the ground, she stumbled forward a few paces. Trembling
all over, she found a bucket full of water, grabbed it with both hands,
and emptied it at Virginie.
“The virago!” yelled tall Virginie.
She had stepped back, and her boots alone got wet. The other women, who
for some minutes past had all been greatly upset by Gervaise’s tears,
jostled each other in their anxiety to see the fight. Some, who were
finishing their lunch, got on the tops of their tubs. Others hastened
forward, their hands smothered with soap. A ring was formed.
“Ah! the virago!” repeated tall Virginie. “What’s the matter with her?
She’s mad!”
Gervaise, standing on the defensive, her chin thrust out, her features
convulsed, said nothing, not having yet acquired the Paris gift of
street gab. The other continued:
“Get out! This girl’s tired of wallowing about in the country; she
wasn’t twelve years old when the soldiers were at her. She even lost
her leg serving her country. That leg’s rotting off.”
The lookers-on burst out laughing. Virginie, seeing her success,
advanced a couple of steps, drawing herself up to her full height, and
yelling louder than ever:
“Here! Come a bit nearer, just to see how I’ll settle you! Don’t you
come annoying us here. Do I even know her, the hussy? If she’d wetted
me, I’d have pretty soon shown her battle, as you’d have seen. Let her
just say what I’ve ever done to her. Speak, you vixen; what’s been done
to you?”
“Don’t talk so much,” stammered Gervaise. “You know well enough. Some
one saw my husband last night. And shut up, because if you don’t I’ll
most certainly strangle you.”
“Her husband! That’s a good one! As if cripples like her had husbands!
If he’s left you it’s not my fault. Surely you don’t think I’ve stolen
him, do you? He was much too good for you and you made him sick. Did
you keep him on a leash? Has anyone here seen her husband? There’s a
reward.”
The laughter burst forth again. Gervaise contented herself with
continually murmuring in a low tone of voice:
“You know well enough, you know well enough. It’s your sister. I’ll
strangle her—your sister.”
“Yes, go and try it on with my sister,” resumed Virginie sneeringly.
“Ah! it’s my sister! That’s very likely. My sister looks a trifle
different to you; but what’s that to me? Can’t one come and wash one’s
clothes in peace now? Just dry up, d’ye hear, because I’ve had enough
of it!”
But it was she who returned to the attack, after giving five or six
strokes with her beetle, intoxicated by the insults she had been giving
utterance to, and worked up into a passion. She left off and
recommenced again, speaking in this way three times:
“Well, yes! it’s my sister. There now, does that satisfy you? They
adore each other. You should just see them bill and coo! And he’s left
you with your children. Those pretty kids with scabs all over their
faces! You got one of them from a gendarme, didn’t you? And you let
three others die because you didn’t want to pay excess baggage on your
journey. It’s your Lantier who told us that. Ah! he’s been telling some
fine things; he’d had enough of you!”
“You dirty jade! You dirty jade! You dirty jade!” yelled Gervaise,
beside herself, and again seized with a furious trembling. She turned
round, looking once more about the ground; and only observing the
little tub, she seized hold of it by the legs, and flung the whole of
the bluing at Virginie’s face.
“The beast! She’s spoilt my dress!” cried the latter, whose shoulder
was sopping wet and whose left hand was dripping blue. “Just wait, you
wretch!”
In her turn she seized a bucket, and emptied it over Gervaise. Then a
formidable battle began. They both ran along the rows of tubs, seized
hold of the pails that were full, and returned to dash the contents at
each other’s heads. And each deluge was accompanied by a volley of
words. Gervaise herself answered now:
“There, you scum! You got it that time. It’ll help to cool you.”
“Ah! the carrion! That’s for your filth. Wash yourself for once in your
life.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll wash the salt out of you, you cod!”
“Another one! Brush your teeth, fix yourself up for your post to-night
at the corner of the Rue Belhomme.”
They ended by having to refill the buckets at the water taps,
continuing to insult each other the while. The initial bucketfuls were
so poorly aimed as to scarcely reach their targets, but they soon began
to splash each other in earnest. Virginie was the first to receive a
bucketful in the face. The water ran down, soaking her back and front.
She was still staggering when another caught her from the side, hitting
her left ear and drenching her chignon which then came unwound into a
limp, bedraggled string of hair.
Gervaise was hit first in the legs. One pail filled her shoes full of
water and splashed up to her thighs. Two more wet her even higher. Soon
both of them were soaked from top to bottom and it was impossible to
count the hits. Their clothes were plastered to their bodies and they
looked shrunken. Water was dripping everywhere as from umbrellas in a
rainstorm.
“They look jolly funny!” said the hoarse voice of one of the women.
Everyone in the wash-house was highly amused. A good space was left to
the combatants, as nobody cared to get splashed. Applause and jokes
circulated in the midst of the sluice-like noise of the buckets emptied
in rapid succession! On the floor the puddles were running one into
another, and the two women were wading in them up to their ankles.
Virginie, however, who had been meditating a treacherous move, suddenly
seized hold of a pail of lye, which one of her neighbors had left there
and threw it. The same cry arose from all. Everyone thought Gervaise
was scalded; but only her left foot had been slightly touched. And,
exasperated by the pain, she seized a bucket, without troubling herself
to fill it this time, and threw it with all her might at the legs of
Virginie, who fell to the ground. All the women spoke together.
“She’s broken one of her limbs!”
“Well, the other tried to cook her!”
“She’s right, after all, the blonde one, if her man’s been taken from
her!”
Madame Boche held up her arms to heaven, uttering all sorts of
exclamations. She had prudently retreated out of the way between two
tubs; and the children, Claude and Etienne, crying, choking, terrified,
clung to her dress with the continuous cry of “Mamma! Mamma!” broken by
their sobs. When she saw Virginie fall she hastened forward, and tried
to pull Gervaise away by her skirt, repeating the while,
“Come now, go home! Be reasonable. On my word, it’s quite upset me.
Never was such a butchery seen before.”
But she had to draw back and seek refuge again between the two tubs,
with the children. Virginie had just flown at Gervaise’s throat. She
squeezed her round the neck, trying to strangle her. The latter freed
herself with a violent jerk, and in her turn hung on to the other’s
hair, as though she was trying to pull her head off. The battle was
silently resumed, without a cry, without an insult. They did not seize
each other round the body, they attacked each other’s faces with open
hands and clawing fingers, pinching, scratching whatever they caught
hold of. The tall, dark girl’s red ribbon and blue silk hair net were
torn off. The body of her dress, giving way at the neck, displayed a
large portion of her shoulder; whilst the blonde, half stripped, a
sleeve gone from her loose white jacket without her knowing how, had a
rent in her underlinen, which exposed to view the naked line of her
waist. Shreds of stuff flew in all directions. It was from Gervaise
that the first blood was drawn, three long scratches from the mouth to
the chin; and she sought to protect her eyes, shutting them at every
grab the other made, for fear of having them torn out. No blood showed
on Virginie as yet. Gervaise aimed at her ears, maddened at not being
able to reach them. At length she succeeded in seizing hold of one of
the earrings—an imitation pear in yellow glass—which she pulled out and
slit the ear, and the blood flowed.
“They’re killing each other! Separate them, the vixens!” exclaimed
several voices.
The other women had drawn nearer. They formed themselves into two
camps. Some were cheering the combatants on as the others were
trembling and turning their heads away saying that it was making them
sick. A large fight nearly broke out between the two camps as the women
called each other names and brandished their fists threateningly. Three
loud slaps rang out.
Madame Boche, meanwhile, was trying to discover the wash-house boy.
“Charles! Charles! Wherever has he got to?”
And she found him in the front rank, looking on with his arms folded.
He was a big fellow, with an enormous neck. He was laughing and
enjoying the sight of the skin which the two women displayed. The
little blonde was as fat as a quail. It would be fun if her chemise
burst open.
“Why,” murmured he, blinking his eye, “she’s got a strawberry birthmark
under her arm.”
“What! You’re there!” cried Madame Boche, as she caught sight of him.
“Just come and help us separate them. You can easily separate them, you
can!”
“Oh, no! thank you, not if I know it,” said he coolly. “To get my eye
scratched like I did the other day, I suppose! I’m not here for that
sort of thing; I have enough to do without that. Don’t be afraid, a
little bleeding does ’em good; it’ll soften ’em.”
The concierge then talked of fetching the police; but the mistress of
the wash-house, the delicate young woman with the red, inflamed eyes,
would not allow her to do this. She kept saying:
“No, no, I won’t; it’ll compromise my establishment.”
The struggle on the ground continued. All on a sudden, Virginie raised
herself up on her knees. She had just gotten hold of a beetle and held
it on high. She had a rattle in her throat and in an altered voice, she
exclaimed,
“Here’s something that’ll settle you! Get your dirty linen ready!”
Gervaise quickly thrust out her hand, and also seized a beetle, and
held it up like a club; and she too spoke in a choking voice,
“Ah! you want to wash. Let me get hold of your skin that I may beat it
into dish-cloths!”
For a moment they remained there, on their knees, menacing each other.
Their hair all over their faces, their breasts heaving, muddy, swelling
with rage, they watched one another, as they waited and took breath.
Gervaise gave the first blow. Her beetle glided off Virginie’s
shoulder, and she at once threw herself on one side to avoid the
latter’s beetle, which grazed her hip. Then, warming to their work they
struck at each other like washerwomen beating clothes, roughly, and in
time. Whenever there was a hit, the sound was deadened, so that one
might have thought it a blow in a tub full of water. The other women
around them no longer laughed. Several had gone off saying that it
quite upset them; those who remained stretched out their necks, their
eyes lighted up with a gleam of cruelty, admiring the pluck displayed.
Madame Boche had led Claude and Etienne away, and one could hear at the
other end of the building the sound of their sobs, mingled with the
sonorous shocks of the two beetles. But Gervaise suddenly yelled.
Virginie had caught her a whack with all her might on her bare arm,
just above the elbow. A large red mark appeared, the flesh at once
began to swell. Then she threw herself upon Virginie, and everyone
thought she was going to beat her to death.
“Enough! Enough!” was cried on all sides.
Her face bore such a terrible expression, that no one dared approach
her. Her strength seemed to have increased tenfold. She seized Virginie
round the waist, bent her down and pressed her face against the
flagstones. Raising her beetle she commenced beating as she used to
beat at Plassans, on the banks of the Viorne, when her mistress washed
the clothes of the garrison. The wood seemed to yield to the flesh with
a damp sound. At each whack a red weal marked the white skin.
“Oh, oh!” exclaimed the boy Charles, opening his eyes to their full
extent and gloating over the sight.
Laughter again burst forth from the lookers-on, but soon the cry,
“Enough! Enough!” recommenced. Gervaise heard not, neither did she
tire. She examined her work, bent over it, anxious not to leave a dry
place. She wanted to see the whole of that skin beaten, covered with
contusions. And she talked, seized with a ferocious gaiety, recalling a
washerwoman’s song,
“Bang! Bang! Margot at her tub.
Bang! Bang! Beating rub-a-dub.
Bang! Bang! Tries to wash her heart.
Bang! Bang! Black with grief to part.”
And then she resumed,
“That’s for you, that’s for your sister.
That’s for Lantier.
When you next see them,
You can give them that.
Attention! I’m going to begin again.
That’s for Lantier, that’s for your sister.
That’s for you.
Bang! Bang! Margot at her tub.
Bang! Bang! Beating rub-a-dub—”
The others were obliged to drag Virginie away from her. The tall, dark
girl, her face bathed in tears and purple with shame, picked up her
things and hastened away. She was vanquished. Gervaise slipped on the
sleeve of her jacket again, and fastened up her petticoats. Her arm
pained her a good deal, and she asked Madame Boche to place her bundle
of clothes on her shoulder. The concierge referred to the battle, spoke
of her emotions, and talked of examining the young woman’s person, just
to see.
“You may, perhaps, have something broken. I heard a tremendous blow.”
But Gervaise wanted to go home. She made no reply to the pitying
remarks and noisy ovation of the other women who surrounded her, erect
in their aprons. When she was laden she gained the door, where the
children awaited her.
“Two hours, that makes two sous,” said the mistress of the wash-house,
already back at her post in the glazed closet.
Why two sous? She no longer understood that she was asked to pay for
her place there. Then she gave the two sous; and limping very much
beneath the weight of the wet clothes on her shoulder, the water
dripping from off her, her elbow black and blue, her cheek covered with
blood, she went off, dragging Claude and Etienne with her bare arms,
whilst they trotted along on either side of her, still trembling, and
their faces besmeared with their tears.
Once she was gone, the wash-house resumed its roaring tumult. The
washerwomen had eaten their bread and drunk their wine. Their faces
were lit up and their spirits enlivened by the fight between Gervaise
and Virginie.
The long lines of tubs were astir again with the fury of thrashing
arms, of craggy profiles, of marionettes with bent backs and slumping
shoulders that twisted and jerked violently as though on hinges.
Conversations went on from one end to the other in loud voices.
Laughter and coarse remarks crackled through the ceaseless gurgling of
the water. Faucets were sputtering, buckets spilling, rivulets flowing
underneath the rows of washboards. Throughout the huge shed rising
wisps of steam reflected a reddish tint, pierced here and there by
disks of sunlight, golden globes that had leaked through holes in the
awnings. The air was stiflingly warm and odorous with soap.
Suddenly the hall was filled with a white mist. The huge copper lid of
the lye-water kettle was rising mechanically along a notched shaft, and
from the gaping copper hollow within its wall of bricks came whirling
clouds of vapor. Meanwhile, at one side the drying machines were hard
at work; within their cast-iron cylinders bundles of laundry were being
wrung dry by the centrifugal force of the steam engine, which was still
puffing, steaming, jolting the wash-house with the ceaseless labor of
its iron limbs.
When Gervaise turned into the entry of the Hotel Boncoeur, her tears
again mastered her. It was a dark, narrow passage, with a gutter for
the dirty water running alongside the wall; and the stench which she
again encountered there caused her to think of the fortnight she had
passed in the place with Lantier—a fortnight of misery and quarrels,
the recollection of which was now a bitter regret. It seemed to bring
her abandonment home to her.
Upstairs the room was bare, in spite of the sunshine which entered
through the open window. That blaze of light, that kind of dancing
golden dust, exposed the lamentable condition of the blackened ceiling,
and of the walls half denuded of paper, all the more. The only thing
left hanging in the room was a woman’s small neckerchief, twisted like
a piece of string. The children’s bedstead, drawn into the middle of
the apartment, displayed the chest of drawers, the open drawers of
which exposed their emptiness. Lantier had washed himself and had used
up the last of the pomatum—two sous’ worth of pomatum in a playing
card; the greasy water from his hands filled the basin. And he had
forgotten nothing. The corner which until then had been filled by the
trunk seemed to Gervaise an immense empty space. Even the little mirror
which hung on the window-fastening was gone. When she made this
discovery, she had a presentiment. She looked on the mantel-piece.
Lantier had taken away the pawn tickets; the pink bundle was no longer
there, between the two odd zinc candlesticks.
She hung her laundry over the back of a chair and just stood there,
gazing around at the furniture. She was so dulled and bewildered that
she could no longer cry. She had only one sou left. Then, hearing
Claude and Etienne laughing merrily by the window, their troubles
already forgotten, she went to them and put her arms about them, losing
herself for a moment in contemplation of that long gray avenue where,
that very morning, she had watched the awakening of the working
population, of the immense work-shop of Paris.
At this hour immense heat was rising from the pavement and from all the
furnaces in the factories, setting alight a reflecting oven over the
city and beyond the octroi wall. Out upon this very pavement, into this
furnace blast, she had been tossed, alone with her little ones. As she
glanced up and down the boulevard, she was seized with a dull dread
that her life would be fixed there forever, between a slaughter-house
and a hospital.