“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.”