No doubt he’d have to go back to it, but he’d put it off as long as possible.
He had a reason now to be lazy. Besides, it seemed good to him to loaf around like a bum!
On the afternoons when Coupeau felt dull, he would call on the Lorilleuxs.
The latter would pity him immensely, and attract him with all sorts of amiable attentions.
During the first years following his marriage, he had avoided them, thanks to Gervaise’s influence.
Now they regained their sway over him by twitting him about being afraid of his wife.
He was no man, that was evident!
The Lorilleuxs, however, showed great discretion, and were loud in their praise of the laundress’s good qualities.
Coupeau, without as yet coming to wrangling, swore to the latter that his sister adored her, and requested that she would behave more amiably to her.
The first quarrel which the couple had occurred one evening on account of Etienne.
The zinc-worker had passed the afternoon with the Lorilleuxs.
On arriving home, as the dinner was not quite ready, and the children were whining for their soup, he suddenly turned upon Etienne, and boxed his ears soundly.
And during an hour he did not cease to grumble; the brat was not his; he did not know why he allowed him to be in the place; he would end by turning him out into the street.
Up till then he had tolerated the youngster without all that fuss.
On the morrow he talked of his dignity.
Three days after, he kept kicking the little fellow, morning and evening, so much so that the child, whenever he heard him coming, bolted into the Goujets’ where the old lace-mender kept a corner of the table clear for him to do his lessons.
Gervaise had for some time past, returned to work.
She no longer had the trouble of looking under the glass cover of the clock; all the savings were gone; and she had to work hard, work for four, for there were four to feed now.
She alone maintained them.
Whenever she heard people pitying her, she at once found excuses for Coupeau.
Recollect!
He had suffered so much; it was not surprising if his disposition had soured!
But it would pass off when his health returned.
And if any one hinted that Coupeau seemed all right again, that he could very well return to work, she protested: No, no; not yet!
She did not want to see him take to his bed again.
They would allow her to know best what the doctor said, perhaps!
It was she who prevented him returning to work, telling him every morning to take his time and not to force himself.
She even slipped twenty sou pieces into his waistcoat pocket.
Coupeau accepted this as something perfectly natural. He was always complaining of aches and pains so that she would coddle him.
At the end of six months he was still convalescing.
Now, whenever he went to watch others working, he was always ready to join his comrades in downing a shot.
It wasn’t so bad, after all. They had their fun, and they never stayed more than five minutes.
That couldn’t hurt anybody.
Only a hypocrite would say he went in because he wanted a drink.
No wonder they had laughed at him in the past.
A glass of wine never hurt anybody.
He only drank wine though, never brandy.
Wine never made you sick, didn’t get you drunk, and helped you to live longer.
Soon though, several times, after a day of idleness in going from one building job to another, he came home half drunk.
On those occasions Gervaise pretended to have a terrible headache and kept their door closed so that the Goujets wouldn’t hear Coupeau’s drunken babblings.
Little by little, the young woman lost her cheerfulness.
Morning and evening she went to the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or to look at the shop, which was still to be let; and she would hide herself as though she were committing some childish prank unworthy of a grown-up person.
This shop was beginning to turn her brain.
At night-time, when the light was out she experienced the charm of some forbidden pleasure by thinking of it with her eyes open.
She again made her calculations; two hundred and fifty francs for the rent, one hundred and fifty francs for utensils and moving, one hundred francs in hand to keep them going for a fortnight — in all five hundred francs at the very lowest figure.
If she was not continually thinking of it aloud, it was for fear she should be suspected of regretting the savings swallowed up by Coupeau’s illness.
She often became quite pale, having almost allowed her desire to escape her and catching back her words, quite confused as though she had been thinking of something wicked.
Now they would have to work for four or five years before they would succeed in saving such a sum.
Her regret was at not being able to start in business at once; she would have earned all the home required, without counting on Coupeau, letting him take months to get into the way of work again; she would no longer have been uneasy, but certain of the future and free from the secret fears which sometimes seized her when he returned home very gay and singing, and relating some joke of that animal My-Boots, whom he had treated to a drink.
One evening, Gervaise being at home alone, Goujet entered, and did not hurry off again, according to his habit.