I’ve been for the last fortnight, now, at Madame Fauconnier’s.
The children go to school.
I’ve work, I’m contented. So the best is to remain as we are, isn’t it?”
And she stooped down to take her basket.
“You’re making me talk; they must be expecting me at the shop. You’ll easily find someone else prettier than I, Monsieur Coupeau, and who won’t have two boys to drag about with her.”
He looked at the clock inserted in the frame-work of the mirror, and made her sit down again, exclaiming:
“Don’t be in such a hurry!
It’s only eleven thirty-five. I’ve still twenty-five minutes. You don’t have to be afraid that I shall do anything foolish; there’s the table between us. So you detest me so much that you won’t stay and have a little chat with me.”
She put her basket down again, so as not to disoblige him; and they conversed like good friends.
She had eaten her lunch before going out with the laundry. He had gulped down his soup and beef hurriedly to be able to wait for her.
All the while she chatted amiably, Gervaise kept looking out the window at the activity on the street.
It was now unusually crowded with the lunch time rush.
Everywhere were hurried steps, swinging arms, and pushing elbows.
Some late comers, hungry and angry at being kept extra long at the job, rushed across the street into the bakery.
They emerged with a loaf of bread and went three doors farther to the Two-Headed Calf to gobble down a six-sou meat dish.
Next door to the bakery was a grocer who sold fried potatoes and mussels cooked with parsley.
A procession of girls went in to get hot potatoes wrapped in paper and cups of steaming mussels. Other pretty girls bought bunches of radishes.
By leaning a bit, Gervaise could see into the sausage shop from which children issued, holding a fried chop, a sausage or a piece of hot blood pudding wrapped in greasy paper.
The street was always slick with black mud, even in clear weather. A few laborers had already finished their lunch and were strolling aimlessly about, their open hands slapping their thighs, heavy from eating, slow and peaceful amid the hurrying crowd.
A group formed in front of the door of l’Assommoir.
“Say, Bibi-the-Smoker,” demanded a hoarse voice, “aren’t you going to buy us a round of vitriol?”
Five laborers came in and stood by the bar.
“Ah! Here’s that thief, Pere Colombe!” the voice continued.
“We want the real old stuff, you know. And full sized glasses, too.”
Pere Colombe served them as three more laborers entered.
More blue smocks gathered on the street corner and some pushed their way into the establishment.
“You’re foolish!
You only think of the present,” Gervaise was saying to Coupeau.
“Sure, I loved him, but after the disgusting way in which he left me — “
They were talking of Lantier.
Gervaise had not seen him again; she thought he was living with Virginie’s sister at La Glaciere, in the house of that friend who was going to start a hat factory.
She had no thought of running after him.
She had been so distressed at first that she had thought of drowning herself in the river. But now that she had thought about it, everything seemed to be for the best.
Lantier went through money so fast, that she probably never could have raised her children properly.
Oh, she’d let him see his children, all right, if he bothered to come round. But as far as she was concerned, she didn’t want him to touch her, not even with his finger tips.
She told all this to Coupeau just as if her plan of life was well settled.
Meanwhile, Coupeau never forgot his desire to possess her. He made a jest of everything she said, turning it into ribaldry and asking some very direct questions about Lantier. But he proceeded so gaily and which such a smile that she never thought of being offended.
“So, you’re the one who beat him,” said he at length.
“Oh! you’re not kind.
You just go around whipping people.”
She interrupted him with a hearty laugh.
It was true, though, she had whipped Virginie’s tall carcass.
She would have delighted in strangling someone on that day.
She laughed louder than ever when Coupeau told her that Virginie, ashamed at having shown so much cowardice, had left the neighborhood.
Her face, however, preserved an expression of childish gentleness as she put out her plump hands, insisting she wouldn’t even harm a fly.
She began to tell Coupeau about her childhood at Plassans.
She had never cared overmuch for men; they had always bored her.
She was fourteen when she got involved with Lantier.
She had thought it was nice because he said he was her husband and she had enjoyed playing a housewife.
She was too soft-hearted and too weak.