As the roof was almost flat, he had set up his bench on it, a wide shutter supported on two trestles.
A beautiful May sun was setting, giving a golden hue to the chimney-pots.
And, right up at the top, against the clear sky, the workman was quietly cutting up his zinc with a big pair of shears, leaning over the bench, and looking like a tailor in his shop cutting out a pair of trousers.
Close to the wall of the next house, his boy, a youngster of seventeen, thin and fair, was keeping the fire of the chafing dish blazing by the aid of an enormous pair of bellows, each puff of which raised a cloud of sparks.
“Hi! Zidore, put in the irons!” cried Coupeau.
The boy stuck the soldering irons into the midst of the charcoal, which looked a pale rose color in the daylight.
Then he resumed blowing.
Coupeau held the last sheet of zinc.
It had to be placed at the edge of the roof, close to the gutter-pipe; there was an abrupt slant there, and the gaping void of the street opened beneath.
The zinc-worker, just as though in his own home, wearing his list-shoes, advanced, dragging his feet, and whistling the air, “Oh! the little lambs.”
Arrived in front of the opening, he let himself down, and then, supporting himself with one knee against the masonry of a chimney-stack, remained half-way out over the pavement below.
One of his legs dangled.
When he leant back to call that young viper, Zidore, he held on to a corner of the masonry, on account of the street beneath him.
“You confounded dawdler!
Give me the irons!
It’s no use looking up in the air, you skinny beggar!
The larks won’t tumble into your mouth already cooked!”
But Zidore did not hurry himself.
He was interested in the neighboring roofs, and in a cloud of smoke which rose from the other side of Paris, close to Grenelle; it was very likely a fire.
However, he came and laid down on his stomach, his head over the opening, and he passed the irons to Coupeau.
Then the latter commenced to solder the sheet. He squatted, he stretched, always managing to balance himself, sometimes seated on one side, at other times standing on the tip of one foot, often only holding on by a finger.
He had a confounded assurance, the devil’s own cheek, familiar with danger, and braving it.
It knew him.
It was the street that was afraid, not he.
As he kept his pipe in his mouth, he turned round every now and then to spit onto the pavement.
“Look, there’s Madame Boche,” he suddenly exclaimed and called down to her.
“Hi! Madame Boche.”
He had just caught sight of the concierge crossing the road. She raised her head and recognised him, and a conversation ensured between them.
She hid her hands under her apron, her nose elevated in the air.
He, standing up now, his left arm passed round a chimney-pot, leant over.
“Have you seen my wife?” asked he.
“No, I haven’t,” replied the concierge.
“Is she around here?”
“She’s coming to fetch me. And are they all well at home?”
“Why, yes, thanks; I’m the most ill, as you see. I’m going to the Chaussee Clignancourt to buy a small leg of mutton.
The butcher near the Moulin-Rouge only charges sixteen sous.”
They raised their voices, because a vehicle was passing. In the wide, deserted Rue de la Nation, their words, shouted out with all their might, had only caused a little old woman to come to her window; and this little old woman remained there leaning out, giving herself the treat of a grand emotion by watching that man on the roof over the way, as though she expected to see him fall, from one minute to another.
“Well! Good evening,” cried Madame Boche.
“I won’t disturb you.”
Coupeau turned round, and took back the iron that Zidore was holding for him.
But just as the concierge was moving off, she caught sight of Gervaise on the other side of the way, holding Nana by the hand.
She was already raising her head to tell the zinc-worker, when the young woman closed her mouth by an energetic gesture, and, in a low voice, so as not to be heard up there, she told her of her fear: she was afraid, by showing herself suddenly, of giving her husband a shock which might make him lose his balance.
During the four years, she had only been once to fetch him at his work.
That day was the second time.
She could not witness it, her blood turned cold when she beheld her old man between heaven and earth, in places where even the sparrows would not venture.
“No doubt, it’s not pleasant,” murmured Madame Boche.
“My husband’s a tailor, so I have none of these terrors.”
“If you only knew, in the early days,” said Gervaise again,
“I had frights from morning till night.
I was always seeing him on a stretcher, with his head smashed. Now, I don’t think of it so much.