It still rained and blew icy cold.
Gervaise lost Coupeau, found him and then lost him again.
She wished to go home; she felt the shops to find her way.
This sudden darkness surprised her immensely.
At the corner of the Rue des Poissonniers, she sat down in the gutter thinking she was at the wash-house.
The water which flowed along caused her head to swim, and made her very ill.
At length she arrived, she passed stiffly before the concierge’s room where she perfectly recognized the Lorilleuxs and the Poissons seated at the table having dinner, and who made grimaces of disgust on beholding her in that sorry state.
She never remembered how she had got up all those flights of stairs.
Just as she was turning into the passage at the top, little Lalie, who heard her footsteps, hastened to meet her, opening her arms caressingly, and saying, with a smile:
“Madame Gervaise, papa has not returned.
Just come and see my little children sleeping. Oh! they look so pretty!”
But on beholding the laundress’ besotted face, she tremblingly drew back.
She was acquainted with that brandy-laden breath, those pale eyes, that convulsed mouth.
Then Gervaise stumbled past without uttering a word, whilst the child, standing on the threshold of her room, followed her with her dark eyes, grave and speechless.
CHAPTER XI
Nana was growing up and becoming wayward.
At fifteen years old she had expanded like a calf, white-skinned and very fat; so plump, indeed, you might have called her a pincushion.
Yes, such she was — fifteen years old, full of figure and no stays.
A saucy magpie face, dipped in milk, a skin as soft as a peach skin, a funny nose, pink lips and eyes sparkling like tapers, which men would have liked to light their pipes at.
Her pile of fair hair, the color of fresh oats, seemed to have scattered gold dust over her temples, freckle-like as it were, giving her brow a sunny crown.
Ah! a pretty doll, as the Lorilleuxs say, a dirty nose that needed wiping, with fat shoulders, which were as fully rounded and as powerful as those of a full-grown woman.
Nana no longer needed to stuff wads of paper into her bodice, her breasts were grown.
She wished they were larger though, and dreamed of having breasts like a wet-nurse.
What made her particularly tempting was a nasty habit she had of protruding the tip of her tongue between her white teeth.
No doubt on seeing herself in the looking-glasses she had thought she was pretty like this; and so, all day long, she poked her tongue out of her mouth, in view of improving her appearance.
“Hide your lying tongue!” cried her mother.
Coupeau would often get involved, pounding his fist, swearing and shouting:
“Make haste and draw that red rag inside again!”
Nana showed herself very coquettish.
She did not always wash her feet, but she bought such tight boots that she suffered martyrdom in St. Crispin’s prison; and if folks questioned her when she turned purple with pain, she answered that she had the stomach ache, so as to avoid confessing her coquetry.
When bread was lacking at home it was difficult for her to trick herself out.
But she accomplished miracles, brought ribbons back from the workshop and concocted toilettes — dirty dresses set off with bows and puffs.
The summer was the season of her greatest triumphs.
With a cambric dress which had cost her six francs she filled the whole neighborhood of the Goutte-d’Or with her fair beauty.
Yes, she was known from the outer Boulevards to the Fortifications, and from the Chaussee de Clignancourt to the Grand Rue of La Chapelle.
Folks called her “chickie,” for she was really as tender and as fresh-looking as a chicken.
There was one dress which suited her perfectly, a white one with pink dots. It was very simple and without a frill.
The skirt was rather short and revealed her ankles. The sleeves were deeply slashed and loose, showing her arms to the elbow. She pinned the neck back into a wide V as soon as she reached a dark corner of the staircase to avoid getting her ears boxed by her father for exposing the snowy whiteness of her throat and the golden shadow between her breasts.
She also tied a pink ribbon round her blond hair.
Sundays she spent the entire day out with the crowds and loved it when the men eyed her hungrily as they passed.
She waited all week long for these glances.
She would get up early to dress herself and spend hours before the fragment of mirror that was hung over the bureau. Her mother would scold her because the entire building could see her through the window in her chemise as she mended her dress.
Ah! she looked cute like that said father Coupeau, sneering and jeering at her, a real Magdalene in despair!
She might have turned “savage woman” at a fair, and have shown herself for a penny.
Hide your meat, he used to say, and let me eat my bread!
In fact, she was adorable, white and dainty under her overhanging golden fleece, losing temper to the point that her skin turned pink, not daring to answer her father, but cutting her thread with her teeth with a hasty, furious jerk, which shook her plump but youthful form.
Then immediately after breakfast she tripped down the stairs into the courtyard.
The entire tenement seemed to be resting sleepily in the peacefulness of a Sunday afternoon. The workshops on the ground floor were closed. Gaping windows revealed tables in some apartments that were already set for dinner, awaiting families out working up an appetite by strolling along the fortifications.
Then, in the midst of the empty, echoing courtyard, Nana, Pauline and other big girls engaged in games of battledore and shuttlecock.
They had grown up together and were now becoming queens of their building.