She never complained, no matter how exhausted she became.
Goujet developed a very deep affection for Gervaise in this atmosphere of unselfish devotion.
One day he said to the invalid, “Well, old man, now you’re patched up again!
I wasn’t worried about you.
Your wife works miracles.”
Goujet was supposed to be getting married.
His mother had found a suitable girl, a lace-mender like herself, whom she was urging him to marry.
He had agreed so as not to hurt her feelings and the wedding had been set for early September.
Money had long since been saved to set them up in housekeeping.
However, when Gervaise referred to his coming marriage, he shook his head, saying,
“Not every woman is like you, Madame Coupeau.
If all women were like you, I’d marry ten of them.”
At the end of two months, Coupeau was able to get up.
He did not go far, only from the bed to the window, and even then Gervaise had to support him.
There he would sit down in the easy-chair the Lorilleuxs had brought, with his right leg stretched out on a stool.
This joker, who used to laugh at the people who slipped down on frosty days, felt greatly put out by his accident.
He had no philosophy.
He had spent those two months in bed, in cursing, and in worrying the people about him.
It was not an existence, really, to pass one’s life on one’s back, with a pin all tied up and as stiff as a sausage.
Ah, he certainly knew the ceiling by heart; there was a crack, at the corner of the alcove, that he could have drawn with his eyes shut.
Then, when he was made comfortable in the easy-chair, it was another grievance.
Would he be fixed there for long, just like a mummy?
Nobody ever passed along the street, so it was no fun to watch. Besides, it stank of bleach water all day.
No, he was just growing old; he’d have given ten years of his life just to go see how the fortifications were getting along.
He kept going on about his fate.
It wasn’t right, what had happened to him.
A good worker like him, not a loafer or a drunkard, he could have understood in that case.
“Papa Coupeau,” said he, “broke his neck one day that he’d been boozing.
I can’t say that it was deserved, but anyhow it was explainable. I had had nothing since my lunch, was perfectly quiet, and without a drop of liquor in my body; and yet I came to grief just because I wanted to turn round to smile at Nana!
Don’t you think that’s too much?
If there is a providence, it certainly arranges things in a very peculiar manner.
I, for one, shall never believe in it.”
And when at last he was able to use his legs, he retained a secret grudge against work.
It was a handicraft full of misfortunes to pass one’s days, like the cats, on the roofs of the houses.
The employers were no fools!
They sent you to your death — being far too cowardly to venture themselves on a ladder — and stopped at home in safety at their fire-sides without caring a hang for the poorer classes; and he got to the point of saying that everyone ought to fix the zinc himself on his own house.
Mon Dieu! It was the only fair way to do it! If you don’t want the rain to come in, do the work yourself.
He regretted he hadn’t learned another trade, something more pleasant, something less dangerous, maybe cabinetmaking.
It was really his father’s fault.
Lots of fathers have the foolish habit of shoving their sons into their own line of work.
For another two months Coupeau hobbled about on crutches.
He had first of all managed to get as far as the street, and smoke his pipe in front of the door.
Then he had managed to reach the exterior Boulevard, dragging himself along in the sunshine, and remaining for hours on one of the seats.
Gaiety returned to him; his infernal tongue got sharper in these long hours of idleness.
And with the pleasure of living, he gained there a delight in doing nothing, an indolent feeling took possession of his limbs, and his muscles gradually glided into a very sweet slumber.
It was the slow victory of laziness, which took advantage of his convalescence to obtain possession of his body and unnerve him with its tickling.
He regained his health, as thorough a banterer as before, thinking life beautiful, and not seeing why it should not last for ever.
As soon as he could get about without the crutches, he made longer walks, often visiting construction jobs to see old comrades.
He would stand with his arms folded, sneering and shaking his head, ridiculing the workers slaving at the job, stretching out his leg to show them what you got for wearing yourself out.
Being able to stand about and mock others while they were working satisfied his spite against hard work.