Sometimes Nana opened an eye, closed it again, and then stretched herself out all the more.
One day after reproaching her with the life she led and asking her if she had taken on an entire battalion of soldiers, Gervaise put her threat into execution to the extent of shaking her dripping hand over Nana’s body.
Quite infuriated, the girl pulled herself up in the sheet, and cried out:
“That’s enough, mamma.
It would be better not to talk of men.
You did as you liked, and now I do the same!”
“What!
What!” stammered the mother.
“Yes, I never spoke to you about it, for it didn’t concern me; but you didn’t used to be very fussy.
I often saw you when we lived at the shop sneaking off as soon as papa started snoring.
So just shut up; you shouldn’t have set me the example.”
Gervaise remained pale, with trembling hands, turning round without knowing what she was about, whilst Nana, flattened on her breast, embraced her pillow with both arms and subsided into the torpor of her leaden slumber.
Coupeau growled, no longer sane enough to think of launching out a whack.
He was altogether losing his mind.
And really there was no need to call him an unprincipled father, for liquor had deprived him of all consciousness of good and evil.
Now it was a settled thing.
He wasn’t sober once in six months; then he was laid up and had to go into the Sainte-Anne hospital; a pleasure trip for him.
The Lorilleuxs said that the Duke of Bowel-Twister had gone to visit his estates.
At the end of a few weeks he left the asylum, repaired and set together again, and then he began to pull himself to bits once more, till he was down on his back and needed another mending.
In three years he went seven times to Sainte-Anne in this fashion.
The neighborhood said that his cell was kept ready for him.
But the worst of the matter was that this obstinate tippler demolished himself more and more each time so that from relapse to relapse one could foresee the final tumble, the last cracking of this shaky cask, all the hoops of which were breaking away, one after the other.
At the same time, he forgot to improve in appearance; a perfect ghost to look at!
The poison was having terrible effects.
By dint of imbibing alcohol, his body shrunk up like the embryos displayed in glass jars in chemical laboratories.
When he approached a window you could see through his ribs, so skinny had he become.
Those who knew his age, only forty years just gone, shuddered when he passed by, bent and unsteady, looking as old as the streets themselves.
And the trembling of his hands increased, the right one danced to such an extent, that sometimes he had to take his glass between both fists to carry it to his lips.
Oh! that cursed trembling! It was the only thing that worried his addled brains.
You could hear him growling ferocious insults against those hands of his.
This last summer, during which Nana usually came home to spend her nights, after she had finished knocking about, was especially bad for Coupeau.
His voice changed entirely as if liquor had set a new music in his throat.
He became deaf in one ear.
Then in a few days his sight grew dim, and he had to clutch hold of the stair railings to prevent himself from falling.
As for his health, he had abominable headaches and dizziness.
All on a sudden he was seized with acute pains in his arms and legs; he turned pale; was obliged to sit down, and remained on a chair witless for hours; indeed, after one such attack, his arm remained paralyzed for the whole day.
He took to his bed several times; he rolled himself up and hid himself under the sheet, breathing hard and continuously like a suffering animal.
Then the strange scenes of Sainte-Anne began again.
Suspicious and nervous, worried with a burning fever, he rolled about in a mad rage, tearing his blouse and biting the furniture with his convulsed jaws; or else he sank into a great state of emotion, complaining like a child, sobbing and lamenting because nobody loved him.
One night when Gervaise and Nana returned home together they were surprised not to find him in his bed.
He had laid the bolster in his place.
And when they discovered him, hiding between the bed and the wall, his teeth were chattering, and he related that some men had come to murder him.
The two women were obliged to put him to bed again and quiet him like a child.
Coupeau knew only one remedy, to toss down a pint of spirits; a whack in his stomach, which set him on his feet again.
This was how he doctored his gripes of a morning.
His memory had left him long ago, his brain was empty; and he no sooner found himself on his feet than he poked fun at illness.
He had never been ill.
Yes, he had got to the point when a fellow kicks the bucket declaring that he’s quite well.
And his wits were going a-wool-gathering in other respects too.
When Nana came home after gadding about for six weeks or so he seemed to fancy she had returned from doing some errand in the neighborhood.