The anisette had slightly bothered her stomach.
She should have taken straight brandy to settle her digestion.
She cast side glances at the drunkard manufacturing machine behind her.
That confounded pot, as round as the stomach of a tinker’s fat wife, with its nose that was so long and twisted, sent a shiver down her back, a fear mingled with a desire.
Yes, one might have thought it the metal pluck of some big wicked woman, of some witch who was discharging drop by drop the fire of her entrails.
A fine source of poison, an operation which should have been hidden away in a cellar, it was so brazen and abominable!
But all the same she would have liked to have poked her nose inside it, to have sniffed the odor, have tasted the filth, though the skin might have peeled off her burnt tongue like the rind off an orange.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” asked she slyly of the men, her eyes lighted up by the beautiful golden color of their glasses.
“That, old woman,” answered Coupeau, “is Pere Colombe’s camphor.
Don’t be silly now and we’ll give you a taste.”
And when they had brought her a glass of the vitriol, the rotgut, and her jaws had contracted at the first mouthful, the zinc-worker resumed, slapping his thighs:
“Ha!
It tickles your gullet!
Drink it off at one go.
Each glassful cheats the doctor of six francs.”
At the second glass Gervaise no longer felt the hunger which had been tormenting her.
Now she had made it up with Coupeau, she no longer felt angry with him for not having kept his word.
They would go to the circus some other day; it was not so funny to see jugglers galloping about on houses.
There was no rain inside Pere Colombe’s and if the money went in brandy, one at least had it in one’s body; one drank it bright and shining like beautiful liquid gold.
Ah! she was ready to send the whole world to blazes!
Life was not so pleasant after all, besides it seemed some consolation to her to have her share in squandering the cash.
As she was comfortable, why should she not remain?
One might have a discharge of artillery; she did not care to budge once she had settled in a heap.
She nursed herself in a pleasant warmth, her bodice sticking to her back, overcome by a feeling of comfort which benumbed her limbs.
She laughed all to herself, her elbows on the table, a vacant look in her eyes, highly amused by two customers, a fat heavy fellow and a tiny shrimp, seated at a neighboring table, and kissing each other lovingly.
Yes, she laughed at the things to see in l’Assommoir, at Pere Colombe’s full moon face, a regular bladder of lard, at the customers smoking their short clay pipes, yelling and spitting, and at the big flames of gas which lighted up the looking-glasses and the bottles of liqueurs.
The smell no longer bothered her, on the contrary it tickled her nose, and she thought it very pleasant.
Her eyes slightly closed, whilst she breathed very slowly, without the least feeling of suffocation, tasting the enjoyment of the gentle slumber which was overcoming her.
Then, after her third glass, she let her chin fall on her hands; she now only saw Coupeau and his comrades, and she remained nose to nose with them, quite close, her cheeks warmed by their breath, looking at their dirty beards as though she had been counting the hairs.
My-Boots drooled, his pipe between his teeth, with the dumb and grave air of a dozing ox.
Bibi-the-Smoker was telling a story — the manner in which he emptied a bottle at a draught, giving it such a kiss that one instantly saw its bottom.
Meanwhile Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst, had gone and fetched the wheel of fortune from the counter, and was playing with Coupeau for drinks.
“Two hundred!
You’re lucky; you get high numbers every time!”
The needle of the wheel grated, and the figure of Fortune, a big red woman placed under glass, turned round and round until it looked like a mere spot in the centre, similar to a wine stain.
“Three hundred and fifty!
You must have been inside it, you confounded lascar!
Ah! I shan’t play any more!”
Gervaise amused herself with the wheel of fortune.
She was feeling awfully thirsty, and calling My-Boots “my child.”
Behind her the machine for manufacturing drunkards continued working, with its murmur of an underground stream; and she despaired of ever stopping it, of exhausting it, filled with a sullen anger against it, feeling a longing to spring upon the big still as upon some animal, to kick it with her heels and stave in its belly.
Then everything began to seem all mixed up. The machine seemed to be moving itself and she thought she was being grabbed by its copper claws, and that the underground stream was now flowing over her body.
Then the room danced round, the gas-jets seemed to shoot like stars.
Gervaise was drunk.
She heard a furious wrangle between Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst, and that rascal Pere Colombe.
There was a thief of a landlord who wanted one to pay for what one had not had!
Yet one was not at a gangster’s hang-out.
Suddenly there was a scuffling, yells were heard and tables were upset.
It was Pere Colombe who was turning the party out without the least hesitation, and in the twinkling of an eye.
On the other side of the door they blackguarded him and called him a scoundrel.