Complete Works of Emile Zola (514 page)

“What is the matter?” she asked.

The room was very clean. One could see that Lalie had carefully swept it, and arranged everything during the morning. Misery might blow into the room as much as it liked, carry off the chattels and spread all the dirt and refuse about. Lalie, however, came behind and tidied everything, imparting, at least, some appearance of comfort within. She might not be rich, but you realized that there was a housewife in the place. That afternoon her two little ones, Henriette and Jules, had found some old pictures which they were cutting out in a corner. But Gervaise was greatly surprised to see Lalie herself in bed, looking very pale, with the sheet drawn up to her chin. In bed, indeed, then she must be seriously ill!

“What is the matter with you?” inquired Gervaise, feeling anxious.

Lalie no longer groaned. She slowly raised her white eyelids, and tried to compel her lips to smile, although they were convulsed by a shudder.

“There’s nothing the matter with me,” she whispered very softly. “Really nothing at all.”

Then, closing her eyes again, she added with an effort:

“I made myself too tired during the last few days, and so I’m doing the idle; I’m nursing myself, as you see.”

But her childish face, streaked with livid stains, assumed such an expression of anguish that Gervaise, forgetting her own agony, joined her hands and fell on her knees near the bed. For the last month she had seen the girl clinging to the walls for support when she went about, bent double indeed, by a cough which seemed to presage a coffin. Now the poor child could not even cough. She had a hiccough and drops of blood oozed from the corners of her mouth.

“It’s not my fault if I hardly feel strong,” she murmured, as if relieved. “I’ve tired myself to-day, trying to put things to rights. It’s pretty tidy, isn’t it? And I wanted to clean the windows as well, but my legs failed me. How stupid! However, when one has finished one can go to bed.”

She paused, then said, “Pray, see if my little ones are not cutting themselves with the scissors.”

And then she relapsed into silence, trembling and listening to a heavy footfall which was approaching up the stairs. Suddenly father Bijard brutally opened the door. As usual he was far gone, and his eyes shone with the furious madness imparted by the vitriol he had swallowed. When he perceived Lalie in bed, he tapped on his thighs with a sneer, and took the whip from where it hung.

“Ah! by blazes, that’s too much,” he growled, “we’ll soon have a laugh. So the cows lie down on their straw at noon now! Are you poking fun at me, you lazy beggar? Come, quick now, up you get!”

And he cracked the whip over the bed. But the child beggingly replied:

“Pray, papa, don’t — don’t strike me. I swear to you you will regret it. Don’t strike!”

“Will you jump up?” he roared still louder, “or else I’ll tickle your ribs! Jump up, you little hound!”

Then she softly said, “I can’t — do you understand? I’m going to die.”

Gervaise had sprung upon Bijard and torn the whip away from him. He stood bewildered in front of the bed. What was the dirty brat talking about? Do girls die so young without even having been ill? Some excuse to get sugar out of him no doubt. Ah! he’d make inquiries, and if she lied, let her look out!

“You will see, it’s the truth,” she continued. “As long as I could I avoided worrying you; but be kind now, and bid me good-bye, papa.”

Bijard wriggled his nose as if he fancied she was deceiving him. And yet it was true she had a singular look, the serious mien of a grown up person. The breath of death which passed through the room in some measure sobered him. He gazed around like a man awakened from a long sleep, saw the room so tidy, the two children clean, playing and laughing. And then he sank on to a chair stammering, “Our little mother, our little mother.”

Those were the only words he could find to say, and yet they were very tender ones to Lalie, who had never been much spoiled. She consoled her father. What especially worried her was to go off like this without having completely brought up the little ones. He would take care of them, would he not? With her dying breath she told him how they ought to be cared for and kept clean. But stultified, with the fumes of drink seizing hold of him again, he wagged his head, watching her with an uncertain stare as she was dying. All kind of things were touched in him, but he could find no more to say and he was too utterly burnt with liquor to shed a tear.

“Listen,” resumed Lalie, after a pause. “We owe four francs and seven sous to the baker; you must pay that. Madame Gaudron borrowed an iron of ours, which you must get from her. I wasn’t able to make any soup this evening, but there’s some bread left and you can warm up the potatoes.”

Till her last rattle, the poor kitten still remained the little mother. Surely she could never be replaced! She was dying because she had had, at her age, a true mother’s reason, because her breast was too small and weak for so much maternity. And if her ferocious beast of a father lost his treasure, it was his own fault. After kicking the mother to death, hadn’t he murdered the daughter as well? The two good angels would lie in the pauper’s grave and all that could be in store for him was to kick the bucket like a dog in the gutter.

Gervaise restrained herself not to burst out sobbing. She extended her hands, desirous of easing the child, and as the shred of a sheet was falling, she wished to tack it up and arrange the bed. Then the dying girl’s poor little body was seen. Ah!
Mon Dieu!
what misery! What woe! Stones would have wept. Lalie was bare, with only the remnants of a camisole on her shoulders by way of chemise; yes, bare, with the grievous, bleeding nudity of a martyr. She had no flesh left; her bones seemed to protrude through the skin. From her ribs to her thighs there extended a number of violet stripes — the marks of the whip forcibly imprinted on her. A livid bruise, moreover, encircled her left arm, as if the tender limb, scarcely larger than a lucifer, had been crushed in a vise. There was also an imperfectly closed wound on her right leg, left there by some ugly blow and which opened again and again of a morning, when she went about doing her errands. From head to foot, indeed, she was but one bruise! Oh! this murdering of childhood; those heavy hands crushing this lovely girl; how abominable that such weakness should have such a weighty cross to bear! Again did Gervaise crouch down, no longer thinking of tucking in the sheet, but overwhelmed by the pitiful sight of this martyrdom; and her trembling lips seemed to be seeking for words of prayer.

“Madame Coupeau,” murmured the child, “I beg you — “

With her little arms she tried to draw up the sheet again, ashamed as it were for her father. Bijard, as stultified as ever, with his eyes on the corpse which was his own work, still wagged his head, but more slowly, like a worried animal might do.

When she had covered Lalie up again, Gervaise felt she could not remain there any longer. The dying girl was growing weaker and ceased speaking; all that was left to her was her gaze — the dark look she had had as a resigned and thoughtful child and which she now fixed on her two little ones who were still cutting out their pictures. The room was growing gloomy and Bijard was working off his liquor while the poor girl was in her death agonies. No, no, life was too abominable! How frightful it was! How frightful! And Gervaise took herself off, and went down the stairs, not knowing what she was doing, her head wandering and so full of disgust that she would willingly have thrown herself under the wheels of an omnibus to have finished with her own existence.

As she hastened on, growling against cursed fate, she suddenly found herself in front of the place where Coupeau pretended that he worked. Her legs had taken her there, and now her stomach began singing its song again, the complaint of hunger in ninety verses — a complaint she knew by heart. However, if she caught Coupeau as he left, she would be able to pounce upon the coin at once and buy some grub. A short hour’s waiting at the utmost; she could surely stay that out, though she had sucked her thumbs since the day before.

She was at the corner of Rue de la Charbonniere and Rue de Chartres. A chill wind was blowing and the sky was an ugly leaden grey. The impending snow hung over the city but not a flake had fallen as yet. She tried stamping her feet to keep warm, but soon stopped as there was no use working up an appetite.

There was nothing amusing about. The few passers-by strode rapidly along, wrapped up in comforters; naturally enough one does not care to tarry when the cold is nipping at your heels. However, Gervaise perceived four or five women who were mounting guard like herself outside the door of the zinc-works; unfortunate creatures of course — wives watching for the pay to prevent it going to the dram-shop. There was a tall creature as bulky as a gendarme leaning against the wall, ready to spring on her husband as soon as he showed himself. A dark little woman with a delicate humble air was walking about on the other side of the way. Another one, a fat creature, had brought her two brats with her and was dragging them along, one on either hand, and both of them shivering and sobbing. And all these women, Gervaise like the others, passed and repassed, exchanging glances, but without speaking to one another. A pleasant meeting and no mistake. They didn’t need to make friends to learn what number they lived at. They could all hang out the same sideboard, “Misery & Co.” It seemed to make one feel even colder to see them walk about in silence, passing each other in this terrible January weather.

However, nobody as yet left the zinc-works. But presently one workman appeared, then two, and then three, but these were no doubt decent fellows who took their pay home regularly, for they jerked their heads significantly as they saw the shadows wandering up and down. The tall creature stuck closer than ever to the side of the door, and suddenly fell upon a pale little man who was prudently poking his head out. Oh! it was soon settled! She searched him and collared his coin. Caught, no more money, not even enough to pay for a dram! Then the little man, looking very vexed and cast down, followed his gendarme, weeping like a child. The workmen were still coming out; and as the fat mother with the two brats approached the door, a tall fellow, with a cunning look, who noticed her, went hastily inside again to warn her husband; and when the latter arrived he had stuffed a couple of cart wheels away, two beautiful new five franc pieces, one in each of his shoes. He took one of the brats on his arm, and went off telling a variety of lies to his old woman who was complaining. There were other workmen also, mournful-looking fellows, who carried in their clinched fists the pay for the three or five days’ work they had done during a fortnight, who reproached themselves with their own laziness, and took drunkards’ oaths. But the saddest thing of all was the grief of the dark little woman, with the humble, delicate look; her husband, a handsome fellow, took himself off under her very nose, and so brutally indeed that he almost knocked her down, and she went home alone, stumbling past the shops and weeping all the tears in her body.

At last the defile finished. Gervaise, who stood erect in the middle of the street, was still watching the door. The look-out seemed a bad one. A couple of workmen who were late appeared on the threshold, but there were still no signs of Coupeau. And when she asked the workmen if Coupeau wasn’t coming, they answered her, being up to snuff, that he had gone off by the back-door with Lantimeche. Gervaise understood what this meant. Another of Coupeau’s lies; she could whistle for him if she liked. Then shuffling along in her worn-out shoes, she went slowly down the Rue de la Charbonniere. Her dinner was going off in front of her, and she shuddered as she saw it running away in the yellow twilight. This time it was all over. Not a copper, not a hope, nothing but night and hunger. Ah! a fine night to kick the bucket, this dirty night which was falling over her shoulders!

She was walking heavily up the Rue des Poissonniers when she suddenly heard Coupeau’s voice. Yes, he was there in the Little Civet, letting My-Boots treat him. That comical chap, My-Boots, had been cunning enough at the end of last summer to espouse in authentic fashion a lady who, although rather advanced in years, had still preserved considerable traces of beauty. She was a lady-of-the-evening of the Rue des Martyrs, none of your common street hussies. And you should have seen this fortunate mortal, living like a man of means, with his hands in his pockets, well clad and well fed. He could hardly be recognised, so fat had he grown. His comrades said that his wife had as much work as she liked among the gentlemen of her acquaintance. A wife like that and a country-house is all one can wish for to embellish one’s life. And so Coupeau squinted admiringly at My-Boots. Why, the lucky dog even had a gold ring on his little finger!

Gervaise touched Coupeau on the shoulder just as he was coming out of the little Civet.

“Say, I’m waiting; I’m hungry! I’ve got an empty stomach which is all I ever get from you.”

But he silenced her in a capital style, “You’re hungry, eh? Well, eat your fist, and keep the other for to-morrow.”

He considered it highly improper to do the dramatic in other people’s presence. What, he hadn’t worked, and yet the bakers kneaded bread all the same. Did she take him for a fool, to come and try to frighten him with her stories?

“Do you want me to turn thief?” she muttered, in a dull voice.

My-Boots stroked his chin in conciliatory fashion. “No, that’s forbidden,” said he. “But when a woman knows how to handle herself — “

And Coupeau interrupted him to call out “Bravo!” Yes, a woman always ought to know how to handle herself, but his wife had always been a helpless thing. It would be her fault if they died on the straw. Then he relapsed into his admiration for My-Boots. How awfully fine he looked! A regular landlord; with clean linen and swell shoes! They were no common stuff! His wife, at all events, knew how to keep the pot boiling!

The two men walked towards the outer Boulevard, and Gervaise followed them. After a pause, she resumed, talking behind Coupeau’s back: “I’m hungry; you know, I relied on you. You must find me something to nibble.”