How frightful!
And Gervaise took herself off, and went down the stairs, not knowing what she was doing, her head wandering and so full of disgust that she would willingly have thrown herself under the wheels of an omnibus to have finished with her own existence.
As she hastened on, growling against cursed fate, she suddenly found herself in front of the place where Coupeau pretended that he worked.
Her legs had taken her there, and now her stomach began singing its song again, the complaint of hunger in ninety verses — a complaint she knew by heart.
However, if she caught Coupeau as he left, she would be able to pounce upon the coin at once and buy some grub.
A short hour’s waiting at the utmost; she could surely stay that out, though she had sucked her thumbs since the day before.
She was at the corner of Rue de la Charbonniere and Rue de Chartres.
A chill wind was blowing and the sky was an ugly leaden grey.
The impending snow hung over the city but not a flake had fallen as yet.
She tried stamping her feet to keep warm, but soon stopped as there was no use working up an appetite.
There was nothing amusing about.
The few passers-by strode rapidly along, wrapped up in comforters; naturally enough one does not care to tarry when the cold is nipping at your heels.
However, Gervaise perceived four or five women who were mounting guard like herself outside the door of the zinc-works; unfortunate creatures of course — wives watching for the pay to prevent it going to the dram-shop.
There was a tall creature as bulky as a gendarme leaning against the wall, ready to spring on her husband as soon as he showed himself.
A dark little woman with a delicate humble air was walking about on the other side of the way.
Another one, a fat creature, had brought her two brats with her and was dragging them along, one on either hand, and both of them shivering and sobbing.
And all these women, Gervaise like the others, passed and repassed, exchanging glances, but without speaking to one another.
A pleasant meeting and no mistake.
They didn’t need to make friends to learn what number they lived at.
They could all hang out the same sideboard, “Misery & Co.”
It seemed to make one feel even colder to see them walk about in silence, passing each other in this terrible January weather.
However, nobody as yet left the zinc-works.
But presently one workman appeared, then two, and then three, but these were no doubt decent fellows who took their pay home regularly, for they jerked their heads significantly as they saw the shadows wandering up and down.
The tall creature stuck closer than ever to the side of the door, and suddenly fell upon a pale little man who was prudently poking his head out.
Oh! it was soon settled!
She searched him and collared his coin.
Caught, no more money, not even enough to pay for a dram!
Then the little man, looking very vexed and cast down, followed his gendarme, weeping like a child.
The workmen were still coming out; and as the fat mother with the two brats approached the door, a tall fellow, with a cunning look, who noticed her, went hastily inside again to warn her husband; and when the latter arrived he had stuffed a couple of cart wheels away, two beautiful new five franc pieces, one in each of his shoes.
He took one of the brats on his arm, and went off telling a variety of lies to his old woman who was complaining.
There were other workmen also, mournful-looking fellows, who carried in their clinched fists the pay for the three or five days’ work they had done during a fortnight, who reproached themselves with their own laziness, and took drunkards’ oaths.
But the saddest thing of all was the grief of the dark little woman, with the humble, delicate look; her husband, a handsome fellow, took himself off under her very nose, and so brutally indeed that he almost knocked her down, and she went home alone, stumbling past the shops and weeping all the tears in her body.
At last the defile finished.
Gervaise, who stood erect in the middle of the street, was still watching the door. The look-out seemed a bad one.
A couple of workmen who were late appeared on the threshold, but there were still no signs of Coupeau.
And when she asked the workmen if Coupeau wasn’t coming, they answered her, being up to snuff, that he had gone off by the back-door with Lantimeche.
Gervaise understood what this meant. Another of Coupeau’s lies; she could whistle for him if she liked.
Then shuffling along in her worn-out shoes, she went slowly down the Rue de la Charbonniere.
Her dinner was going off in front of her, and she shuddered as she saw it running away in the yellow twilight.
This time it was all over.
Not a copper, not a hope, nothing but night and hunger.
Ah! a fine night to kick the bucket, this dirty night which was falling over her shoulders!
She was walking heavily up the Rue des Poissonniers when she suddenly heard Coupeau’s voice.
Yes, he was there in the Little Civet, letting My-Boots treat him.
That comical chap, My-Boots, had been cunning enough at the end of last summer to espouse in authentic fashion a lady who, although rather advanced in years, had still preserved considerable traces of beauty.
She was a lady-of-the-evening of the Rue des Martyrs, none of your common street hussies.
And you should have seen this fortunate mortal, living like a man of means, with his hands in his pockets, well clad and well fed.
He could hardly be recognised, so fat had he grown.
His comrades said that his wife had as much work as she liked among the gentlemen of her acquaintance.
A wife like that and a country-house is all one can wish for to embellish one’s life.