The other sister was thirty years old now.
She had married a deadpan chainmaker named Lorilleux.
That’s where he was going now.
They lived in a big tenement on the left side.
He ate with them in the evenings; it saved a bit for all of them.
But he had been invited out this evening and he was going to tell her not to expect him.
Gervaise, who was listening to him, suddenly interrupted him to ask, with a smile: “So you’re called ‘Young Cassis,’ Monsieur Coupeau?”
“Oh!” replied he, “it’s a nickname my mates have given me because I generally drink ‘cassis’ when they force me to accompany them to the wineshop. It’s no worse to be called Young Cassis than My-Boots, is it?”
“Of course not.
Young Cassis isn’t an ugly name,” observed the young woman.
And she questioned him about his work.
He was still working there, behind the octroi wall at the new hospital.
Oh! there was no want of work, he would not be finished there for a year at least.
There were yards and yards of gutters!
“You know,” said he, “I can see the Hotel Boncoeur when I’m up there. Yesterday you were at the window, and I waved my arms, but you didn’t notice me.”
They had already gone about a hundred paces along the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, when he stood still and raising his eyes, said:
“That’s the house. I was born farther on, at No. 22. But this house is, all the same, a fine block of masonry!
It’s as big as a barrack inside!”
Gervaise looked up, examining the facade.
On the street side, the tenement had five stories, each with fifteen windows, whose black shutters with their broken slats gave an air of desolation to the wide expanse of wall.
Four shops occupied the ground floor.
To the right of the entrance, a large, greasy hash house, and to the left, a coal dealer, a notions seller, and an umbrella merchant.
The building appeared even larger than it was because it had on each side a small, low building which seemed to lean against it for support.
This immense, squared-off building was outlined against the sky. Its unplastered side walls were as bare as prison walls, except for rows of roughly jutting stones which suggested jaws full of decayed teeth yawning vacantly.
Gervaise was gazing at the entrance with interest. The high, arched doorway rose to the second floor and opened onto a deep porch, at the end of which could be seen the pale daylight of a courtyard.
This entranceway was paved like the street, and down the center flowed a streamlet of pink-stained water.
“Come in,” said Coupeau, “no one will eat you.”
Gervaise wanted to wait for him in the street.
However, she could not resist going through the porch as far as the concierge’s room on the right.
And there, on the threshold, she raised her eyes.
Inside, the building was six stories high, with four identical plain walls enclosing the broad central court. The drab walls were corroded by yellowish spots and streaked by drippings from the roof gutters.
The walls went straight up to the eaves with no molding or ornament except the angles on the drain pipes at each floor. Here the sink drains added their stains. The glass window panes resembled murky water. Mattresses of checkered blue ticking were hanging out of several windows to air. Clothes lines stretched from other windows with family washing hanging to dry.
On a third floor line was a baby’s diaper, still implanted with filth.
This crowded tenement was bursting at the seams, spilling out poverty and misery through every crevice.
Each of the four walls had, at ground level, a narrow entrance, plastered without a trace of woodwork. This opened into a vestibule containing a dirt-encrusted staircase which spiraled upward.
They were each labeled with one of the first four letters of the alphabet painted on the wall.
Several large work-shops with weather-blackened skylights were scattered about the court.
Near the concierge’s room was the dyeing establishment responsible for the pink streamlet.
Puddles of water infested the courtyard, along with wood shavings and coal cinders.
Grass and weeds grew between the paving stones. The unforgiving sunlight seemed to cut the court into two parts.
On the shady side was a dripping water tap with three small hens scratching for worms with their filth-smeared claws.
Gervaise slowly gazed about, lowering her glance from the sixth floor to the paving stones, then raising it again, surprised at the vastness, feeling as it were in the midst of a living organ, in the very heart of a city, and interested in the house, as though it were a giant before her.
“Is madame seeking for any one?” called out the inquisitive concierge, emerging from her room.
The young woman explained that she was waiting for a friend.
She returned to the street; then as Coupeau did not come, she went back to the courtyard seized with the desire to take another look. She did not think the house ugly.
Amongst the rags hanging from the windows she discovered various cheerful touches — a wall-flower blooming in a pot, a cage of chirruping canaries, shaving-glasses shining like stars in the depth of the shadow.
A carpenter was singing in his work-shop, accompanied by the whining of his plane. The blacksmith’s hammers were ringing rhythmically.
In contrast to the apparent wretched poverty, at nearly every open window appeared the begrimed faces of laughing children. Women with peaceful faces could be seen bent over their sewing.
The rooms were empty of men who had gone back to work after lunch.
The whole tenement was tranquil except for the sounds from the work-shops below which served as a sort of lullaby that went on, unceasingly, always the same.