L'Assommoir: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

GOUJET AT HIS FORGE

One autumnal afternoon Gervaise, who had been to carry a basket of
clothes home to a customer who lived a good way off, found herself in
La Rue des Poissonniers just as it was growing dark. It had rained in
the morning, and the air was close and warm. She was tired with her
walk and felt a great desire for something good to eat. Just then she
lifted her eyes and, seeing the name of the street, she took it into
her head that she would call on Goujet at his forge. But she would ask
for Etienne, she said to herself. She did not know the number, but she
could find it, she thought. She wandered along and stood bewildered,
looking toward Montmartre; all at once she heard the measured click of
hammers and concluded that she had stumbled on the place at last. She
did not know where the entrance to the building was, but she caught a
gleam of a red light in the distance; she walked toward it and was met
by a workman.

"Is it here, sir," she said timidly, "that my child--a little boy,
that is to say--works? A little boy by the name of Etienne?"

"Etienne! Etienne!" repeated the man, swaying from side to side. The
wind brought from him to her an intolerable smell of brandy, which
caused Gervaise to draw back and say timidly:

"Is it here that Monsieur Goujet works?"

"Ah, Goujet, yes. If it is Goujet you wish to see go to the left."

Gervaise obeyed his instructions and found herself in a large room
with the forge at the farther end. She spoke to the first man she saw,
when suddenly the whole room was one blaze of light. The bellows had
sent up leaping flames which lit every crevice and corner of the dusty
old building, and Gervaise recognized Goujet before the forge with two
other men. She went toward him.

"Madame Gervaise!" he exclaimed in surprise, his face radiant with
joy, and then seeing his companions laugh and wink, he pushed Etienne
toward his mother. "You came to see your boy," he said; "he does his
duty like a hero.

"I am glad of it," she answered, "but what an awful place this is to
get at!"

And she described her journey, as she called it, and then asked why
no one seemed to know Etienne there.

"Because," said the blacksmith, "he is called Zou Zou here, as his
hair is cut short as a Zouave's."

This visit paid by Gervaise to the forge was only the first of many
others. She often went on Saturdays when she carried the clean linen
to Mme Goujet, who still resided in the same house as before. The
first year Gervaise had paid them twenty francs each month, or rather
the difference between the amount of their washing, seven or eight
francs, and the twenty which she agreed upon. In this way she had paid
half the money she had borrowed, when one quarter day, not knowing
to whom to turn, as she had not been able to collect her bills
punctually, she ran to the Goujets' and borrowed the amount of her
rent from them. Twice since she had asked a similar favor, so that the
amount of her indebtedness now stood at four hundred and twenty-five
francs.

Now she no longer paid any cash but did their washing. It was not that
she worked less hard or that her business was falling off. Quite the
contrary; but money had a way of melting away in her hands, and she
was content nowadays if she could only make both ends meet. What was
the use of fussing, she thought? If she could manage to live that was
all that was necessary. She was growing quite stout withal.

Mme Goujet was always kind to Gervaise, not because of any fear of
losing her money, but because she really loved her and was afraid of
her going wrong in some way.

The Saturday after the first visit paid by Gervaise to the forge was
also the first of the month. When she reached Mme Goujet's her basket
was so heavy that she panted for two good minutes before she could
speak. Every one knows how heavy shirts and such things are.

"Have you brought everything?" asked Mme Goujet, who was very exacting
on this point. She insisted on every piece being returned each week.
Another thing she exacted was that the clothes should be brought back
always on the same day and hour.

"Everything is here," answered Gervaise with a smile. "You know I
never leave anything behind."

"That is true," replied the elder woman. "You have many faults, my
dear, but not that one yet."

And while the laundress emptied her basket, laying the linen on
the bed, Mme Goujet paid her many compliments. She never burned her
clothes or ironed off the buttons or tore them, but she did use a
trifle too much bluing and made her shirts too stiff.

"Feel," she said; "it is like pasteboard. My son never complains,
but I know he does not like them so."

"And they shall not be so again," said Gervaise. "No one ever touches
any of your things but myself, and I would do them over ten times
rather than see you dissatisfied."

She colored as she spoke.

"I have no intention of disparaging your work," answered Mme Goujet.
"I never saw anyone who did up laces and embroideries as you do, and
the fluting is simply perfect; the only trouble is a little too much
starch, my dear. Goujet does not care to look like a fine gentleman."

She took up her book and drew a pen through the pieces as she spoke.
Everything was there. She brought out the bundle of soiled clothes.
Gervaise put them in her basket and hesitated.

"Madame Goujet," she said at last, "if you do not mind I should like
to have the money for this week's wash."

The account this month was larger than usual, ten francs and over.
Mme Goujet looked at her gravely.

"My child," she said slowly, "it shall be as you wish. I do not refuse
to give you the money if you desire it; only this is not the way to
get out of debt. I say this with no unkindness, you understand. Only
you must take care."

Gervaise, with downcast eyes, received the lesson meekly. She needed
the ten francs to complete the amount due the coal merchant, she said.

But her friend heard this with a stern countenance and told her
she should reduce her expenses, but she did not add that she, too,
intended to do the same and that in future she should do her washing
herself, as she had formerly done, if she were to be out of pocket
thus.

When Gervaise was on the staircase her heart was light, for she cared
little for the reproof now that she had the ten francs in her hand;
she was becoming accustomed to paying one debt by contracting another.

Midway on the stairs she met a tall woman coming up with a fresh
mackerel in her hand, and behold! it was Virginie, the girl whom she
had whipped in the lavatory. The two looked each other full in the
face. Gervaise instinctively closed her eyes, for she thought the girl
would slap her in the face with the mackerel. But, no; Virginie gave a
constrained smile. Then the laundress, whose huge basket filled up the
stairway and who did not choose to be outdone in politeness, said:

"I beg your pardon--"

"Pray don't apologize," answered Virginie in a stately fashion.

And they stood and talked for a few minutes with not the smallest
allusion, however, to the past.

Virginie, then about twenty-nine, was really a magnificent-looking
woman, head well set on her shoulders and a long, oval face crowned by
bands of glossy black hair. She told her history in a few brief words.
She was married. Had married the previous spring a cabinetmaker who
had given up his trade and was hoping to obtain a position on the
police force. She had just been out to buy this mackerel for him.

"He adores them," she said, "and we women spoil our husbands, I think.
But come up. We are standing in a draft here."

When Gervaise had, in her turn, told her story and added that Virginie
was living in the very rooms where she had lived and where her child
was born, Virginie became still more urgent that she should go up. "It
is always pleasant to see a place where one has been happy," she said.
She herself had been living on the other side of the water but had got
tired of it and had moved into these rooms only two weeks ago. She was
not settled yet. Her name was Mme Poisson.

"And mine," said Gervaise, "is Coupeau."

Gervaise was a little suspicious of all this courtesy. Might not some
terrible revenge be hidden under it all? And she determined to be well
on her guard. But as Virginie was so polite just now she must be
polite in her turn.

Poisson, the husband, was a man of thirty-five with a mustache and
imperial; he was seated at a table near the window, making little
boxes. His only tools were a penknife, a tiny saw and a gluepot; he
was executing the most wonderful and delicate carving, however. He
never sold his work but made presents of it to his friends. It amused
him while he was awaiting his appointment.

Poisson rose and bowed politely to Gervaise, whom his wife called an
old friend. But he did not speak, his conversational powers not being
his strong point. He cast a plaintive glance at the mackerel, however,
from time to time. Gervaise looked around the room and described her
furniture and where it had stood. How strange it was, after losing
sight of each other so long, that they should occupy the same
apartment! Virginie entered into new details. He had a small
inheritance from his aunt, and she herself sewed a little, made a
dress now and then. At the end of a half-hour Gervaise rose to depart;
Virginie went to the head of the stairs with her, and there both
hesitated. Gervaise fancied that Virginie wished to say something
about Lantier and Adele, but they separated without touching on these
disagreeable topics.

This was the beginning of a great friendship. In another week Virginie
could not pass the shop without going in, and sometimes she remained
for two or three hours. At first Gervaise was very uncomfortable;
she thought every time Virginie opened her lips that she would hear
Lantier's name. Lantier was in her mind all the time she was with Mme
Poisson. It was a stupid thing to do, after all, for what on earth
did she care what had become of Lantier or of Adele? But she was,
nonetheless, curious to know something about them.

Winter had come, the fourth winter that the Coupeaus had spent in La
Rue de la Goutte-d'Or. This year December and January were especially
severe, and after New Year's the snow lay three weeks in the street
without melting. There was plenty of work for Gervaise, and her shop
was delightfully warm and singularly quiet, for the carriages made
no noise in the snow-covered streets. The laughs and shouts of the
children were almost the only sounds; they had made a long slide and
enjoyed themselves hugely.

Gervaise took especial pleasure in her coffee at noon. Her apprentices
had no reason to complain, for it was hot and strong and unadulterated
by chicory. On the morning of Twelfth-day the clock had struck twelve
and then half past, and the coffee was not ready. Gervaise was ironing
some muslin curtains. Clemence, with a frightful cold, was, as usual,
at work on a man's shirt. Mme Putois was ironing a skirt on a board,
with a cloth laid on the floor to prevent the skirt from being soiled.
Mamma Coupeau brought in the coffee, and as each one of the women took
a cup with a sigh of enjoyment the street door opened and Virginie
came in with a rush of cold air.

"Heavens!" she cried. "It is awful! My ears are cut off!"

"You have come just in time for a cup of hot coffee," said Gervaise
cordially.

"And I shall be only too glad to have it!" answered Virginie with a
shiver. She had been waiting at the grocer's, she said, until she was
chilled through and through. The heat of that room was delicious, and
then she stirred her coffee and said she liked the damp, sweet smell
of the freshly ironed linen. She and Mamma Coupeau were the only ones
who had chairs; the others sat on wooden footstools, so low that they
seemed to be on the floor. Virginie suddenly stooped down to her
hostess and said with a smile:

"Do you remember that day at the lavatory?"

Gervaise colored; she could not answer. This was just what she had
been dreading. In a moment she felt sure she would hear Lantier's
name. She knew it was coming. Virginie drew nearer to her. The
apprentices lingered over their coffee and told each other as they
looked stupidly into the street what they would do if they had an
income of ten thousand francs. Virginie changed her seat and took
a footstool by the side of Gervaise, who felt weak and cowardly and
helpless to change the conversation or to stave off what was coming.
She breathlessly awaited the next words, her heart big with an emotion
which she would not acknowledge to herself.

"I do not wish to give you any pain," said Virginie blandly. "Twenty
times the words have been on my lips, but I hesitated. Pray don't
think I bear you any malice."

She tipped up her cup and drank the last drop of her coffee. Gervaise,
with her heart in her mouth, waited in a dull agony of suspense,
asking herself if Virginie could have forgiven the insult in the
lavatory. There was a glitter in the woman's eyes she did not like.

"You had an excuse," Virginie added as she placed her cup on the
table. "You had been abominably treated. I should have killed
someone." And then, dropping her little-affected tone, she continued
more rapidly:

"They were not happy, I assure you, not at all happy. They lived in a
dirty street, where the mud was up to their knees. I went to breakfast
with them two days after he left you and found them in the height of
a quarrel. You know that Adele is a wretch. She is my sister, to be
sure, but she is a wretch all the same. As to Lantier--well, you know
him, so I need not describe him. But for a yes or a no he would not
hesitate to thresh any woman that lives. Oh, they had a beautiful
time! Their quarrels were heard all over the neighborhood. One day
the police were sent for, they made such a hubbub."

She talked on and on, telling things that were enough to make the hair
stand up on one's head. Gervaise listened, as pale as death, with a
nervous trembling of her lips which might have been taken for a smile.
For seven years she had never heard Lantier's name, and she would
not have believed that she could have felt any such overwhelming
agitation. She could no longer be jealous of Adele, but she smiled
grimly as she thought of the blows she had received in her turn from
Lantier, and she would have listened for hours to all that Virginia
had to tell, but she did not ask a question for some time. Finally
she said:

"And do they still live in that same place?"

"No indeed! But I have not told you all yet. They separated a week
ago."

"Separated!" exclaimed the clearstarcher.

"Who is separated?" asked Clemence, interrupting her conversation
with Mamma Coupeau.

"No one," said Virginie, "or at least no one whom you know."

As she spoke she looked at Gervaise and seemed to take a positive
delight in disturbing her still more. She suddenly asked her what
she would do or say if Lantier should suddenly make his appearance,
for men were so strange; no one could ever tell what they would do.
Lantier was quite capable of returning to his old love. Then Gervaise
interrupted her and rose to the occasion. She answered with grave
dignity that she was married now and that if Lantier should appear
she would ask him to leave. There could never be anything more between
them, not even the most distant acquaintance.

"I know very well," she said, "that Etienne belongs to him, and if
Lantier desires to see his son I shall place no obstacle in his way.
But as to myself, Madame Poisson, he shall never touch my little
finger again! It is finished."

As she uttered these last words she traced a cross in the air to seal
her oath, and as if desirous to put an end to the conversation, she
called out to her women:

"Do you think the ironing will be done today if you sit still? To
work! To work!"

The women did not move; they were lulled to apathy by the heat, and
Gervaise herself found it very difficult to resume her labors. Her
curtains had dried in all this time, and some coffee had been spilled
on them, and she must wash out the spots.

"Au revoir!" said Virginie. "I came out to buy a half pound of cheese.
Poisson will think I am frozen to death!"

The better part of the day was now gone, and it was this way every
day, for the shop was the refuge and haunt of all the chilly people
in the neighborhood. Gervaise liked the reputation of having the
most comfortable room in the _Quartier_, and she held her receptions,
as the Lorilleux and Boche clique said, with a sniff of disdain. She
would, in fact, have liked to bring in the very poor whom she saw
shivering outside. She became very friendly toward a journeyman
painter, an old man of seventy, who lived in a loft of the house,
where he shivered with cold and hunger. He had lost his three sons
in the Crimea, and for two years his hand had been so cramped by
rheumatism that he could not hold a brush.

Whenever Gervaise saw Father Bru she called him in, made a place for
him near the stove and gave him some bread and cheese. Father Bru,
with his white beard and his face wrinkled like an old apple, sat
in silent content for hours at a time, enjoying the warmth and the
crackling of the coke.

"What are you thinking about?" Gervaise would say gaily.

"Of nothing--of all sorts of things," he would reply with a dazed air.

The workwomen laughed and thought it a good joke to ask if he were in
love. He paid little heed to them but relapsed into silent thought.

From this time Virginie often spoke to Gervaise of Lantier, and one
day she said she had just met him. But as the clearstarcher made no
reply Virginie then said no more. But on the next day she returned to
the subject and told her that he had talked long and tenderly of her.
Gervaise was much troubled by these whispered conversations in the
corner of her shop. The name of Lantier made her faint and sick at
heart. She believed herself to be an honest woman. She meant, in every
way, to do right and to shun the wrong, because she felt that only in
doing so could she be happy. She did not think much of Coupeau because
she was conscious of no shortcomings toward him. But she thought of
her friend at the forge, and it seemed to her that this return of her
interest in Lantier, faint and undecided as it was, was an infidelity
to Goujet and to that tender friendship which had become so very
precious to her. Her heart was much troubled in these days. She dwelt
on that time when her first lover left her. She imagined another day
when, quitting Adele, he might return to her--with that old familiar
trunk.

When she went into the street it was with a spasm of terror. She
fancied that every step behind her was Lantier's. She dared not
look around lest his hand should glide about her waist. He might
be watching for her at any time. He might come to her door in the
afternoon, and this idea brought a cold sweat to her forehead, because
he would certainly kiss her on her ear as he had often teased her by
doing in the years gone by. It was this kiss she dreaded. Its dull
reverberation deafened her to all outside sounds, and she could hear
only the beatings of her own heart. When these terrors assailed her
the forge was her only asylum, from whence she returned smiling and
serene, feeling that Goujet, whose sonorous hammer had put all her
bad dreams to flight, would protect her always.

What a happy season this was after all! The clearstarcher always
carried a certain basket of clothes to her customer each week, because
it gave her a pretext for going into the forge, as it was on her
way. As soon as she turned the corner of the street in which it was
situated she felt as lighthearted as if she were going to the country.
The black charcoal dust in the road, the black smoke rising slowly
from the chimneys, interested and pleased her as much as a mossy path
through the woods. Afar off the forge was red even at midday, and
her heart danced in time with the hammers. Goujet was expecting her
and making more noise than usual, that she might hear him at a great
distance. She gave Etienne a light tap on his cheek and sat quietly
watching these two--this man and boy, who were so dear to her--for an
hour without speaking. When the sparks touched her tender skin she
rather enjoyed the sensation. He, in his turn, was fully aware of
the happiness she felt in being there, and he reserved the work which
required skill for the time when she could look on in wonder and
admiration. It was an idyl that they were unconsciously enacting all
that spring, and when Gervaise returned to her home it was in a spirit
of sweet content.

By degrees her unreasonable fears of Lantier were conquered. Coupeau
was behaving very badly at this time, and one evening as she passed
the Assommoir she was certain she saw him drinking with Mes-Bottes.
She hurried on lest she should seem to be watching him. But as she
hastened she looked over her shoulder. Yes, it was Coupeau who was
tossing down a glass of liquor with an air as if it were no new
thing. He had lied to her then; he did drink brandy. She was in utter
despair, and all her old horror of brandy returned. Wine she could
have forgiven--wine was good for a working man--liquor, on the
contrary, was his ruin and took from him all desire for the food that
nourished and gave him strength for his daily toil. Why did not the
government interfere and prevent the manufacture of such pernicious
things?

When she reached her home she found the whole house in confusion. Her
employees had left their work and were in the courtyard. She asked
what the matter was.

"It is Father Bijard beating his wife; he is as drunk as a fool, and
he drove her up the stairs to her room, where he is murdering her.
Just listen!"

Gervaise flew up the stairs. She was very fond of Mme Bijard, who was
her laundress and whose courage and industry she greatly admired. On
the sixth floor a little crowd was assembled. Mme Boche stood at an
open door.

"Have done!" she cried. "Have done, or the police will be summoned."

No one dared enter the room, because Bijard was well known to be like
a madman when he was tipsy. He was rarely thoroughly sober, and on the
occasional days when he condescended to work he always had a bottle
of brandy at his side. He rarely ate anything, and if a match had been
touched to his mouth he would have taken fire like a torch.

"Would you let her be killed?" exclaimed Gervaise, trembling from head
to foot, and she entered the attic room, which was very clean and very
bare, for the man had sold the very sheets off the bed to satisfy his
mad passion for drink. In this terrible struggle for life the table
had been thrown over, and the two chairs also. On the floor lay the
poor woman with her skirts drenched as she had come from the washtub,
her hair streaming over her bloody face, uttering low groans at each
kick the brute gave her.

The neighbors whispered to each other that she had refused to give
him the money she had earned that day. Boche called up the staircase
to his wife:

"Come down, I say; let him kill her if he will. It will only make one
fool the less in the world!"

Father Bru followed Gervaise into the room, and the two expostulated
with the madman. But he turned toward them, pale and threatening;
a white foam glistened on his lips, and in his faded eyes there was a
murderous expression. He grasped Father Bru by the shoulder and threw
him over the table and shook Gervaise until her teeth chattered and
then returned to his wife, who lay motionless, with her mouth wide
open and her eyes closed; and during this frightful scene little
Lalie, four years old, was in the corner, looking on at the murder
of her mother. The child's arms were round her sister Henriette,
a baby who had just been weaned. She stood with a sad, solemn face
and serious, melancholy eyes but shed no tears.

When Bijard slipped and fell Gervaise and Father Bru helped the poor
creature to her feet, who then burst into sobs. Lalie went to her
side, but she did not cry, for the child was already habituated to
such scenes. And as Gervaise went down the stairs she was haunted by
the strange look of resignation and courage in Lalie's eyes; it was
an expression belonging to maturity and experience rather than to
childhood.

"Your husband is on the other side of the street," said Clemence
as soon as she saw Gervaise; "he is as tipsy as possible!"

Coupeau reeled in, breaking a square of glass with his shoulder as
he missed the doorway. He was not tipsy but drunk, with his teeth set
firmly together and a pinched expression about the nose. And Gervaise
instantly knew that it was the liquor of the Assommoir which had
vitiated his blood. She tried to smile and coaxed him to go to bed.
But he shook her off and as he passed her gave her a blow.

He was just like the other--the beast upstairs who was now snoring,
tired out by beating his wife. She was chilled to the heart and
desperate. Were all men alike? She thought of Lantier and of her
husband and wondered if there was no happiness in the world.

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