The first winter they occasionally had a fire, choosing to keep warm rather than to eat.
But the second winter, the stove stood mute with its rust, adding a chill to the room, standing there like a cast-iron gravestone.
And what took the life out of their limbs, what above all utterly crushed them was the rent.
Oh! the January quarter, when there was not a radish in the house and old Boche came up with the bill!
It was like a bitter storm, a regular tempest from the north.
Monsieur Marescot then arrived the following Saturday, wrapped up in a good warm overcoat, his big hands hidden in woolen gloves; and he was for ever talking of turning them out, whilst the snow continued to fall outside, as though it were preparing a bed for them on the pavement with white sheets.
To have paid the quarter’s rent they would have sold their very flesh.
It was the rent which emptied the larder and the stove.
No doubt the Coupeaus had only themselves to blame.
Life may be a hard fight, but one always pulls through when one is orderly and economical — witness the Lorilleuxs, who paid their rent to the day, the money folded up in bits of dirty paper.
But they, it is true, led a life of starved spiders, which would disgust one with hard work.
Nana as yet earned nothing at flower-making; she even cost a good deal for her keep.
At Madame Fauconnier’s Gervaise was beginning to be looked down upon.
She was no longer so expert. She bungled her work to such an extent that the mistress had reduced her wages to two francs a day, the price paid to the clumsiest bungler.
But she was still proud, reminding everyone of her former status as boss of her own shop.
When Madame Fauconnier hired Madame Putois, Gervaise was so annoyed at having to work beside her former employee that she stayed away for two weeks.
As for Coupeau, he did perhaps work, but in that case he certainly made a present of his labor to the Government, for since the time he returned from Etampes Gervaise had never seen the color of his money.
She no longer looked in his hands when he came home on paydays.
He arrived swinging his arms, his pockets empty, and often without his handkerchief; well, yes, he had lost his rag, or else some rascally comrade had sneaked it.
At first he always fibbed; there was a donation to charity, or some money slipped through the hole in his pocket, or he paid off some imaginary debts.
Later, he didn’t even bother to make up anything.
He had nothing left because it had all gone into his stomach.
Madame Boche suggested to Gervaise that she go to wait for him at the shop exit. This rarely worked though, because Coupeau’s comrades would warn him and the money would disappear into his shoe or someone else’s pocket.
Yes, it was their own fault if every season found them lower and lower.
But that’s the sort of thing one never tells oneself, especially when one is down in the mire.
They accused their bad luck; they pretended that fate was against them.
Their home had become a regular shambles where they wrangled the whole day long.
However, they had not yet come to blows, with the exception of a few impulsive smacks, which somehow flew about at the height of their quarrels.
The saddest part of the business was that they had opened the cage of affection; all their better feelings had taken flight, like so many canaries.
The genial warmth of father, mother and child, when united together and wrapped up in each other, deserted them, and left them shivering, each in his or her own corner.
All three — Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana — were always in the most abominable tempers, biting each other’s noses off for nothing at all, their eyes full of hatred; and it seemed as though something had broken the mainspring of the family, the mechanism which, with happy people, causes hearts to beat in unison.
Ah! it was certain Gervaise was no longer moved as she used to be when she saw Coupeau at the edge of a roof forty or fifty feet above the pavement.
She would not have pushed him off herself, but if he had fallen accidentally, in truth it would have freed the earth of one who was of but little account.
The days when they were more especially at enmity she would ask him why he didn’t come back on a stretcher.
She was awaiting it. It would be her good luck they were bringing back to her.
What use was he — that drunkard?
To make her weep, to devour all she possessed, to drive her to sin.
Well! Men so useless as he should be thrown as quickly as possible into the hole and the polka of deliverance be danced over them.
And when the mother said
“Kill him!” the daughter responded
“Knock him on the head!”
Nana read all of the reports of accidents in the newspapers, and made reflections that were unnatural for a girl.
Her father had such good luck an omnibus had knocked him down without even sobering him.
Would the beggar never croak?
In the midst of her own poverty Gervaise suffered even more because other families around her were also starving to death.
Their corner of the tenement housed the most wretched. There was not a family that ate every day.
Gervaise felt the most pity for Pere Bru in his cubbyhole under the staircase where he hibernated.
Sometimes he stayed on his bed of straw without moving for days.
Even hunger no longer drove him out since there was no use taking a walk when no one would invite him to dinner.
Whenever he didn’t show his face for several days, the neighbors would push open his door to see if his troubles were over.