No, he was still alive, just barely. Even Death seemed to have neglected him.
Whenever Gervaise had any bread she gave him the crusts.
Even when she hated all men because of her husband, she still felt sincerely sorry for Pere Bru, the poor old man. They were letting him starve to death because he could no longer hold tools in his hand.
The laundress also suffered a great deal from the close neighborhood of Bazouge, the undertaker’s helper.
A simple partition, and a very thin one, separated the two rooms. He could not put his fingers down his throat without her hearing it.
As soon as he came home of an evening she listened, in spite of herself, to everything he did. His black leather hat laid with a dull thud on the chest of drawers, like a shovelful of earth; the black cloak hung up and rustling against the walls like the wings of some night bird; all the black toggery flung into the middle of the room and filling it with the trappings of mourning.
She heard him stamping about, felt anxious at the least movement, and was quite startled if he knocked against the furniture or rattled any of his crockery.
This confounded drunkard was her preoccupation, filling her with a secret fear mingled with a desire to know.
He, jolly, his belly full every day, his head all upside down, coughed, spat, sang “Mother Godichon,” made use of many dirty expressions and fought with the four walls before finding his bedstead.
And she remained quite pale, wondering what he could be doing in there. She imagined the most atrocious things. She got into her head that he must have brought a corpse home, and was stowing it away under his bedstead.
Well! the newspapers had related something of the kind — an undertaker’s helper who collected the coffins of little children at his home, so as to save himself trouble and to make only one journey to the cemetery.
For certain, directly Bazouge arrived, a smell of death seemed to permeate the partition.
One might have thought oneself lodging against the Pere Lachaise cemetery, in the midst of the kingdom of moles.
He was frightful, the animal, continually laughing all by himself, as though his profession enlivened him.
Even when he had finished his rumpus and had laid himself on his back, he snored in a manner so extraordinary that it caused the laundress to hold her breath.
For hours she listened attentively, with an idea that funerals were passing through her neighbor’s room.
The worst was that, in spite of her terrors, something incited Gervaise to put her ear to the wall, the better to find out what was taking place.
Bazouge had the same effect on her as handsome men have on good women: they would like to touch them.
Well! if fear had not kept her back, Gervaise would have liked to have handled death, to see what it was like.
She became so peculiar at times, holding her breath, listening attentively, expecting to unravel the secret through one of Bazouge’s movements, that Coupeau would ask her with a chuckle if she had a fancy for that gravedigger next door.
She got angry and talked of moving, the close proximity of this neighbor was so distasteful to her; and yet, in spite of herself, as soon as the old chap arrived, smelling like a cemetery, she became wrapped again in her reflections, with the excited and timorous air of a wife thinking of passing a knife through the marriage contract.
Had he not twice offered to pack her up and carry her off with him to some place where the enjoyment of sleep is so great, that in a moment one forgets all one’s wretchedness?
Perhaps it was really very pleasant.
Little by little the temptation to taste it became stronger.
She would have liked to have tried it for a fortnight or a month.
Oh! to sleep a month, especially in winter, the month when the rent became due, when the troubles of life were killing her!
But it was not possible — one must sleep forever, if one commences to sleep for an hour; and the thought of this froze her, her desire for death departed before the eternal and stern friendship which the earth demanded.
However, one evening in January she knocked with both her fists against the partition.
She had passed a frightful week, hustled by everyone, without a sou, and utterly discouraged.
That evening she was not at all well, she shivered with fever, and seemed to see flames dancing about her.
Then, instead of throwing herself out of the window, as she had at one moment thought of doing, she set to knocking and calling:
“Old Bazouge!
Old Bazouge!”
The undertaker’s helper was taking off his shoes and singing,
“There were three lovely girls.”
He had probably had a good day, for he seemed even more maudlin than usual.
“Old Bazouge!
Old Bazouge!” repeated Gervaise, raising her voice.
Did he not hear her then?
She was ready to give herself at once; he might come and take her on his neck, and carry her off to the place where he carried his other women, the poor and the rich, whom he consoled.
It pained her to hear his song,
“There were three lovely girls,” because she discerned in it the disdain of a man with too many sweethearts.
“What is it? what is it?” stuttered Bazouge; “who’s unwell?
We’re coming, little woman!”
But the sound of this husky voice awoke Gervaise as though from a nightmare.
And a feeling of horror ascended from her knees to her shoulders at the thought of seeing herself lugged along in the old fellow’s arms, all stiff and her face as white as a china plate.
“Well! is there no one there now?” resumed Bazouge in silence.
“Wait a bit, we’re always ready to oblige the ladies.”
“It’s nothing, nothing,” said the laundress at length in a choking voice.
“I don’t require anything, thanks.”