The lamplight flecked their rosy skin with gold specks, especially Gervaise who was so pleasantly rounded. On these nights Goujet would be overcome by the heat from the stove and the odor of linen steaming under the hot irons. He would drift into a sort of giddiness, his thinking slowed and his eyes obsessed by these hurrying women as their naked arms moved back and forth, working far into the night to have the neighborhood’s best clothes ready for Sunday.
Everything around the laundry was slumbering, settled into sleep for the night.
Midnight rang, then one o’clock, then two o’clock.
There were no vehicles or pedestrians.
In the dark and deserted street, only their shop door let out any light.
Once in a while, footsteps would be heard and a man would pass the shop.
As he crossed the path of light he would stretch his neck to look in, startled by the sound of the thudding irons, and carry with him the quick glimpse of bare-shouldered laundresses immersed in a rosy mist.
Goujet, seeing that Gervaise did not know what to do with Etienne, and wishing to deliver him from Coupeau’s kicks, had engaged him to go and blow the bellows at the factory where he worked.
The profession of bolt-maker, if not one to be proud of on account of the dirt of the forge and of the monotony of constantly hammering on pieces of iron of a similar kind, was nevertheless a well paid one, at which ten and even twelve francs a day could be earned.
The youngster, who was then twelve years old, would soon be able to go in for it, if the calling was to his liking.
And Etienne had thus become another link between the laundress and the blacksmith.
The latter would bring the child home and speak of his good conduct.
Everyone laughingly said that Goujet was smitten with Gervaise.
She knew it, and blushed like a young girl, the flush of modesty coloring her cheeks with the bright tints of an apple.
The poor fellow, he was never any trouble!
He never made a bold gesture or an indelicate remark.
You didn’t find many men like him.
Gervaise didn’t want to admit it, but she derived a great deal of pleasure from being adored like this.
Whenever a problem arose she thought immediately of the blacksmith and was consoled.
There was never any awkward tension when they were alone together.
They just looked at each other and smiled happily with no need to talk.
It was a very sensible kind of affection.
Towards the end of the summer, Nana quite upset the household.
She was six years old and promised to be a thorough good-for-nothing.
So as not to have her always under her feet her mother took her every morning to a little school in the Rue Polonceau kept by Mademoiselle Josse. She fastened her playfellows’ dresses together behind, she filled the school-mistress’s snuff-box with ashes, and invented other tricks much less decent which could not be mentioned.
Twice Mademoiselle Josse expelled her and then took her back again so as not to lose the six francs a month.
Directly lessons were over Nana avenged herself for having been kept in by making an infernal noise under the porch and in the courtyard where the ironers, whose ears could not stand the racket, sent her to play.
There she would meet Pauline, the Boches’ daughter, and Victor, the son of Gervaise’s old employer — a big booby of ten who delighted in playing with very little girls.
Madame Fauconnier who had not quarreled with the Coupeaus would herself send her son.
In the house, too, there was an extraordinary swarm of brats, flights of children who rolled down the four staircases at all hours of the day and alighted on the pavement of the courtyard like troops of noisy pillaging sparrows.
Madame Gaudron was responsible for nine of them, all with uncombed hair, runny noses, hand-me-down clothes, saggy stockings and ripped jackets.
Another woman on the sixth floor had seven of them.
This hoard that only got their faces washed when it rained were in all shapes and sizes, fat, thin, big and barely out of the cradle.
Nana reigned supreme over this host of urchins; she ordered about girls twice her own size, and only deigned to relinquish a little of her power in favor of Pauline and Victor, intimate confidants who enforced her commands.
This precious chit was for ever wanting to play at being mamma, undressing the smallest ones to dress them again, insisting on examining the others all over, messing them about and exercising the capricious despotism of a grown-up person with a vicious disposition.
Under her leadership they got up tricks for which they should have been well spanked.
The troop paddled in the colored water from the dyer’s and emerged from it with legs stained blue or red as high as the knees; then off it flew to the locksmith’s where it purloined nails and filings and started off again to alight in the midst of the carpenter’s shavings, enormous heaps of shavings, which delighted it immensely and in which it rolled head over heels exposing their behinds.
The courtyard was her kingdom. It echoed with the clatter of little shoes as they stampeded back and forth with piercing cries.
On some days the courtyard was too small for them and the troop would dash down into the cellar, race up a staircase, run along a corridor, then dash up another staircase and follow another corridor for hours. They never got tired of their yelling and clambering.
“Aren’t they abominable, those little toads?” cried Madame Boche.
“Really, people can have but very little to do to have time get so many brats.
And yet they complain of having no bread.”
Boche said that children pushed up out of poverty like mushrooms out of manure.
All day long his wife was screaming at them and chasing them with her broom.
Finally she had to lock the door of the cellar when she learned from Pauline that Nana was playing doctor down there in the dark, viciously finding pleasure in applying remedies to the others by beating them with sticks.
Well, one afternoon there was a frightful scene.
It was bound to have come sooner or later.
Nana had thought of a very funny little game.
She had stolen one of Madame Boche’s wooden shoes from outside the concierge’s room. She tied a string to it and began dragging it about like a cart.
Victor on his side had had the idea to fill it with potato parings.