You’re better here than splashing about outside. Well, yes; I didn’t come home as I promised, I had business to attend to.
Though you may pull a long face, it won’t alter matters. Make room, you others.”
“If madame would accept my knees she would find them softer than the seat,” gallantly said My-Boots.
Gervaise, not wishing to attract attention, took a chair and sat down at a short distance from the table.
She looked at what the men were drinking, some rotgut brandy which shone like gold in the glasses; a little of it had dropped upon the table and Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst, dipped his finger in it whilst conversing and wrote a woman’s name — “Eulalie” — in big letters.
She noticed that Bibi-the-Smoker looked shockingly jaded and thinner than a hundred-weight of nails.
My-Boot’s nose was in full bloom, a regular purple Burgundy dahlia.
They were all quite dirty, their beards stiff, their smocks ragged and stained, their hands grimy with dirt.
Yet they were still quite polite.
Gervaise noticed a couple of men at the bar. They were so drunk that they were spilling the drink down their chins when they thought they were wetting their whistles.
Fat Pere Colombe was calmly serving round after round.
The atmosphere was very warm, the smoke from the pipes ascended in the blinding glare of the gas, amidst which it rolled about like dust, drowning the customers in a gradually thickening mist; and from this cloud there issued a deafening and confused uproar, cracked voices, clinking of glasses, oaths and blows sounding like detonations.
So Gervaise pulled a very wry face, for such a sight is not funny for a woman, especially when she is not used to it; she was stifling, with a smarting sensation in her eyes, and her head already feeling heavy from the alcoholic fumes exhaled by the whole place.
Then she suddenly experienced the sensation of something more unpleasant still behind her back. She turned round and beheld the still, the machine which manufactured drunkards, working away beneath the glass roof of the narrow courtyard with the profound trepidation of its hellish cookery.
Of an evening, the copper parts looked more mournful than ever, lit up only on their rounded surface with one big red glint; and the shadow of the apparatus on the wall at the back formed most abominable figures, bodies with tails, monsters opening their jaws as though to swallow everyone up.
“Listen, mother Talk-too-much, don’t make any of your grimaces!” cried Coupeau.
“To blazes, you know, with all wet blankets!
What’ll you drink?”
“Nothing, of course,” replied the laundress.
“I haven’t dined yet.”
“Well! that’s all the more reason for having a glass; a drop of something sustains one.”
But, as she still retained her glum expression, My-Boots again did the gallant.
“Madame probably likes sweet things,” murmured he.
“I like men who don’t get drunk,” retorted she, getting angry.
“Yes, I like a fellow who brings home his earnings, and who keeps his word when he makes a promise.”
“Ah! so that’s what upsets you?” said the zinc-worker, without ceasing to chuckle.
“Yes, you want your share.
Then, big goose, why do you refuse a drink?
Take it, it’s so much to the good.”
She looked at him fixedly, in a grave manner, a wrinkle marking her forehead with a black line.
And she slowly replied:
“Why, you’re right, it’s a good idea.
That way, we can drink up the coin together.”
Bibi-the-Smoker rose from his seat to fetch her a glass of anisette.
She drew her chair up to the table.
Whilst she was sipping her anisette, a recollection suddenly flashed across her mind, she remembered the plum she had taken with Coupeau, near the door, in the old days, when he was courting her.
At that time, she used to leave the juice of fruits preserved in brandy.
And now, here was she going back to liqueurs.
Oh! she knew herself well, she had not two thimblefuls of will.
One would only have had to have given her a walloping across the back to have made her regularly wallow in drink.
The anisette even seemed to be very good, perhaps rather too sweet and slightly sickening.
She went on sipping as she listened to Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst, tell of his affair with fat Eulalie, a fish peddler and very shrewd at locating him.
Even if his comrades tried to hide him, she could usually sniff him out when he was late. Just the night before she had slapped his face with a flounder to teach him not to neglect going to work.
Bibi-the-Smoker and My-Boots nearly split their sides laughing. They slapped Gervaise on the shoulder and she began to laugh also, finding it amusing in spite of herself. They then advised her to follow Eulalie’s example and bring an iron with her so as to press Coupeau’s ears on the counters of the wineshops.
“Ah, well, no thanks,” cried Coupeau as he turned upside down the glass his wife had emptied.
“You pump it out pretty well.
Just look, you fellows, she doesn’t take long over it.”
“Will madame take another?” asked Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst.
No, she had had enough.
Yet she hesitated.