One ends by getting tired of asking for a pair of stockings for three weeks straight, and of putting on shirts with grease stains dating from the previous Sunday.
Gervaise, without losing a bite, wished them a pleasant journey, and spoke her mind about them, saying that she was precious glad she would no longer have to poke her nose into their filth.
The entire neighborhood could quit her; that would relieve her of the piles of stinking junk and give her less work to do.
Now her only customers were those who didn’t pay regularly, the street-walkers, and women like Madame Gaudron, whose laundry smelled so bad that not one of the laundresses on the Rue Neuve would take it.
She had to let Madame Putois go, leaving only her apprentice, squint-eyed Augustine, who seemed to grow more stupid as time passed.
Frequently there was not even enough work for the two of them and they sat on stools all afternoon doing nothing.
Whilst idleness and poverty entered, dirtiness naturally entered also.
One would never have recognised that beautiful blue shop, the color of heaven, which had once been Gervaise’s pride.
Its window-frames and panes, which were never washed, were covered from top to bottom with the splashes of the passing vehicles.
On the brass rods in the windows were displayed three grey rags left by customers who had died in the hospital.
And inside it was more pitiable still; the dampness of the clothes hung up at the ceiling to dry had loosed all the wallpaper; the Pompadour chintz hung in strips like cobwebs covered with dust; the big stove, broken and in holes from the rough use of the poker, looked in its corner like the stock in trade of a dealer in old iron; the work-table appeared as though it had been used by a regiment, covered as it was with wine and coffee stains, sticky with jam, greasy from spilled gravy.
Gervaise was so at ease among it all that she never even noticed the shop was getting filthy. She became used to it all, just as she got used to wearing torn skirts and no longer washing herself carefully. The disorder was like a warm nest.
Her own ease was her sole consideration; she did not care a pin for anything else.
The debts, though still increasing, no longer troubled her.
Her honesty gradually deserted her; whether she would be able to pay or not was altogether uncertain, and she preferred not to think about it.
When her credit was stopped at one shop, she would open an account at some other shop close by.
She was in debt all over the neighborhood, she owed money every few yards.
To take merely the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, she no longer dared pass in front of the grocer’s, nor the charcoal-dealer’s, nor the greengrocer’s; and this obliged her, whenever she required to be at the wash-house, to go round by the Rue des Poissonniers, which was quite ten minutes out of her way.
The tradespeople came and treated her as a swindler.
One evening the dealer from whom she had purchased Lantier’s furniture made a scene in the street.
Scenes like this upset her at the time, but were soon forgotten and never spoiled her appetite.
What a nerve to bother her like that when she had no money to pay.
They were all robbers anyway and it served them right to have to wait.
Well, she’d have to go bankrupt, but she didn’t intend to fret about it now.
Meanwhile mother Coupeau had recovered.
For another year the household jogged along.
During the summer months there was naturally a little more work — the white petticoats and the cambric dresses of the street-walkers of the exterior Boulevard.
The catastrophe was slowly approaching; the home sank deeper into the mire every week; there were ups and downs, however — days when one had to rub one’s stomach before the empty cupboard, and others when one ate veal enough to make one burst.
Mother Coupeau was for ever being seen in the street, hiding bundles under her apron, and strolling in the direction of the pawn-place in the Rue Polonceau.
She strutted along with the air of a devotee going to mass; for she did not dislike these errands; haggling about money amused her; this crying up of her wares like a second-hand dealer tickled the old woman’s fancy for driving hard bargains.
The clerks knew her well and called her
“Mamma Four Francs,” because she always demanded four francs when they offered three, on bundles no bigger than two sous’ worth of butter.
At the start, Gervaise took advantage of good weeks to get things back from the pawn-shops, only to put them back again the next week.
Later she let things go altogether, selling her pawn tickets for cash.
One thing alone gave Gervaise a pang — it was having to pawn her clock to pay an acceptance for twenty francs to a bailiff who came to seize her goods.
Until then, she had sworn rather to die of hunger than to part with her clock.
When mother Coupeau carried it away in a little bonnet-box, she sunk on to a chair, without a particle of strength left in her arms, her eyes full of tears, as though a fortune was being torn from her.
But when mother Coupeau reappeared with twenty-five francs, the unexpected loan, the five francs profit consoled her; she at once sent the old woman out again for four sous’ worth of brandy in a glass, just to toast the five-franc piece.
The two of them would often have a drop together, when they were on good terms with each other.
Mother Coupeau was very successful at bringing back a full glass hidden in her apron pocket without spilling a drop.
Well, the neighbors didn’t need to know, did they.
But the neighbors knew perfectly well.
This turned the neighborhood even more against Gervaise.
She was devouring everything; a few more mouthfuls and the place would be swept clean.
In the midst of this general demolishment, Coupeau continued to prosper.
The confounded tippler was as well as well could be. The sour wine and the “vitriol” positively fattened him.
He ate a great deal, and laughed at that stick Lorilleux, who accused drink of killing people, and answered him by slapping himself on the stomach, the skin of which was so stretched by the fat that it resembled the skin of a drum.
He would play him a tune on it, the glutton’s vespers, with rolls and beats loud enough to have made a quack’s fortune.
Lorilleux, annoyed at not having any fat himself, said that it was soft and unhealthy.
Coupeau ignored him and went on drinking more and more, saying it was for his health’s sake.