Gervaise had taken up her basket again.
She did not rise from her seat however, but held the basket on her knees, with a vacant look in her eyes and lost in thought, as though the young workman’s words had awakened within her far-off thoughts of existence.
And she said again, slowly, and without any apparent change of manner:
“Mon Dieu!
I’m not ambitious; I don’t ask for much. My desire is to work in peace, always to have bread to eat and a decent place to sleep in, you know; with a bed, a table, and two chairs, nothing more.
If I can, I’d like to raise my children to be good citizens.
Also, I’d like not to be beaten up, if I ever again live with a man.
It’s not my idea of amusement.” She pondered, thinking if there was anything else she wanted, but there wasn’t anything of importance.
Then, after a moment she went on, “Yes, when one reaches the end, one might wish to die in one’s bed. For myself, having trudged through life, I should like to die in my bed, in my own home.”
And she rose from her seat.
Coupeau, who cordially approved her wishes, was already standing up, anxious about the time.
But they did not leave yet.
Gervaise was curious enough to go to the far end of the room for a look at the big still behind the oak railing. It was chugging away in the little glassed-in courtyard.
Coupeau explained its workings to her, pointing at the different parts of the machinery, showing her the trickling of the small stream of limpid alcohol.
Not a single gay puff of steam was coming forth from the endless coils. The breathing could barely be heard. It sounded muffled as if from underground. It was like a sombre worker, performing dark deeds in the bright daylight, strong but silent.
My-Boots, accompanied by his two comrades, came to lean on the railing until they could get a place at the bar.
He laughed, looking at the machine.
Tonnerre de Dieu, that’s clever.
There’s enough stuff in its big belly to last for weeks.
He wouldn’t mind if they just fixed the end of the tube in his mouth, so he could feel the fiery spirits flowing down to his heels like a river.
It would be better than the tiny sips doled out by Pere Colombe!
His two comrades laughed with him, saying that My-Boots was quite a guy after all.
The huge still continued to trickle forth its alcoholic sweat.
Eventually it would invade the bar, flow out along the outer Boulevards, and inundate the immense expanse of Paris.
Gervaise stepped back, shivering.
She tried to smile as she said:
“It’s foolish, but that still and the liquor gives me the creeps.” Then, returning to the idea she nursed of a perfect happiness, she resumed: “Now, ain’t I right? It’s much the nicest isn’t it — to have plenty of work, bread to eat, a home of one’s own, and to be able to bring up one’s children and to die in one’s bed?”
“And never to be beaten,” added Coupeau gaily.
“But I would never beat you, if you would only try me, Madame Gervaise.
You’ve no cause for fear. I don’t drink and then I love you too much. Come, shall it be marriage? I’ll get you divorced and make you my wife.”
He was speaking low, whispering at the back of her neck while she made her way through the crowd of men with her basket held before her. She kept shaking her head “no.”
Yet she turned around to smile at him, apparently happy to know that he never drank.
Yes, certainly, she would say “yes” to him, except she had already sworn to herself never to start up with another man.
Eventually they reached the door and went out.
When they left, l’Assommoir was packed to the door, spilling its hubbub of rough voices and its heavy smell of vitriol into the street.
My-Boots could be heard railing at Pere Colombe, calling him a scoundrel and accusing him of only half filling his glass.
He didn’t have to come in here. He’d never come back.
He suggested to his comrades a place near the Barriere Saint-Denis where you drank good stuff straight.
“Ah,” sighed Gervaise when they reached the sidewalk. “You can breathe out here.
Good-bye, Monsieur Coupeau, and thank you. I must hurry now.”
He seized her hand as she started along the boulevard, insisting,
“Take a walk with me along Rue de la Goutte-d’Or.
It’s not much farther for you.
I’ve got to see my sister before going back to work. We’ll keep each other company.”
In the end, Gervaise agreed and they walked beside each other along the Rue des Poissonniers, although she did not take his arm.
He told her about his family.
His mother, an old vest-maker, now had to do housekeeping because her eyesight was poor.
Her birthday was the third of last month and she was sixty-two.
He was the youngest.
One of his sisters, a widow of thirty-six, worked in a flower shop and lived in the Batignolles section, on Rue des Moines.