Coupeau might celebrate Saint Monday for weeks altogether, go off on the spree for months at a time, come home mad with liquor, and seek to sharpen her as he said, she had grown accustomed to it, she thought him tiresome, but nothing more.
It was on these occasions that she wished him somewhere else.
Yes, somewhere, her beast of a man and the Lorilleuxs, the Boches, and the Poissons too; in fact, the whole neighborhood, which she had such contempt for.
She sent all Paris there with a gesture of supreme carelessness, and was pleased to be able to revenge herself in this style.
One could get used to almost anything, but still, it is hard to break the habit of eating.
That was the one thing that really annoyed Gervaise, the hunger that kept gnawing at her insides. Oh, those pleasant little snacks she used to have.
Now she had fallen low enough to gobble anything she could find.
On special occasions, she would get waste scraps of meat from the butcher for four sous a pound. Blacked and dried out meat that couldn’t find a purchaser.
She would mix this with potatoes for a stew.
On other occasions, when she had some wine, she treated herself to a sop, a true parrot’s pottage.
Two sous’ worth of Italian cheese, bushels of white potatoes, quarts of dry beans, cooked in their own juice, these also were dainties she was not often able to indulge in now.
She came down to leavings from low eating dens, where for a sou she had a pile of fish-bones, mixed with the parings of moldy roast meat.
She fell even lower — she begged a charitable eating-house keeper to give her his customers’ dry crusts, and she made herself a bread soup, letting the crusts simmer as long as possible on a neighbor’s fire.
On the days when she was really hungry, she searched about with the dogs, to see what might be lying outside the tradespeople’s doors before the dustmen went by; and thus at times she came across rich men’s food, rotten melons, stinking mackerel and chops, which she carefully inspected for fear of maggots.
Yes, she had come to this.
The idea may be a repugnant one to delicate-minded folks, but if they hadn’t chewed anything for three days running, we should hardly see them quarreling with their stomachs; they would go down on all fours and eat filth like other people.
Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one’s stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden!
And to think that Gervaise used to fill her belly with fat goose!
Now the thought of it brought tears to her eyes.
One day, when Coupeau bagged two bread tickets from her to go and sell them and get some liquor, she nearly killed him with the blow of a shovel, so hungered and so enraged was she by this theft of a bit of bread.
However, after a long contemplation of the pale sky, she had fallen into a painful doze.
She dreamt that the snow-laden sky was falling on her, so cruelly did the cold pinch.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet, awakened with a start by a shudder of anguish.
Mon Dieu! was she going to die?
Shivering and haggard she perceived that it was still daylight.
Wouldn’t the night ever come?
How long the time seems when the stomach is empty!
Hers was waking up in its turn and beginning to torture her.
Sinking down on the chair, with her head bent and her hands between her legs to warm them, she began to think what they would have for dinner as soon as Coupeau brought the money home: a loaf, a quart of wine and two platefuls of tripe in the Lyonnaise fashion. Three o’clock struck by father Bazouge’s clock.
Yes, it was only three o’clock.
Then she began to cry.
She would never have strength enough to wait until seven.
Her body swayed backwards and forwards, she oscillated like a child nursing some sharp pain, bending herself double and crushing her stomach so as not to feel it.
Ah! an accouchement is less painful than hunger!
And unable to ease herself, seized with rage, she rose and stamped about, hoping to send her hunger to sleep by walking it to and fro like an infant.
For half an hour or so, she knocked against the four corners of the empty room.
Then, suddenly, she paused with a fixed stare.
So much the worse!
They might say what they liked; she would lick their feet if needs be, but she would go and ask the Lorilleuxs to lend her ten sous.
At winter time, up these stairs of the house, the paupers’ stairs, there was a constant borrowing of ten sous and twenty sous, petty services which these hungry beggars rendered each other.
Only they would rather have died than have applied to the Lorilleuxs, for they knew they were too tight-fisted.
Thus Gervaise displayed remarkable courage in going to knock at their door.
She felt so frightened in the passage that she experienced the sudden relief of people who ring a dentist’s bell.
“Come in!” cried the chainmaker in a sour voice.
How warm and nice it was inside.
The forge was blazing, its white flame lighting up the narrow workroom, whilst Madame Lorilleux set a coil of gold wire to heat.
Lorilleux, in front of his worktable, was perspiring with the warmth as he soldered the links of a chain together. And it smelt nice. Some cabbage soup was simmering on the stove, exhaling a steam which turned Gervaise’s heart topsy-turvy, and almost made her faint.
“Ah! it’s you,” growled Madame Lorilleux, without even asking her to sit down.
“What do you want?”
Gervaise did not answer for a moment.