Read The Drinking Den for Free Online Page B

would suddenly halt, then spill out in pools across the roadway, this endless procession of labourers on their way to work, carrying their tools on their backs and a loaf of bread under their arms, a throng that poured past, to be sucked into Paris, unceasingly. Whenever Gervaise thought that she could make out the figure of Lantier among all these people, she leaned further out, at the risk of falling; and afterwards pressed her handkerchief more firmly against her mouth, as though to drive back her pain.
    A cheerful young voice called her away from the window:
    â€˜The boss isn’t in then, Madame Lantier?’
    â€˜No, Monsieur Coupeau, he isn’t,’ she replied, forcing a smile.
    Coupeau was a roofing-worker, who had a ten-franc room at the top of the house. Finding the key in the door, and being a friend, he came in with his bag slung over his shoulder.
    â€˜I’m working over there, you know,’ he went on. ‘At the hospital… Fine month of May we’re having, I must say! It’s a bit nippy this morning.’
    He looked at Gervaise, her face red from crying. When he saw that the bed had not been slept in, he gently shook his head; then he went over to the children, still sleeping, with their pink cherubs’ cheeks, and said, in a whisper:
    â€˜What about that! The old man’s been misbehaving, has he? Don’t you fret, Madame Lantier. He’s been taking a lot of interest in politics. He was acting quite crazy the other day, when they were voting for Eugène Sue, 3 who’s meant to be a decent sort. Perhaps he spent the night with some friends saying what he thought of that rotter Bonaparte.’ 4
    She forced herself to say: ‘No, no, it’s not what you think. I knowwhere Lantier is… We’ve got problems, like everyone else, heaven knows!’
    Coupeau winked, to show that he was not taken in by the lie, and then left, offering to fetch the milk for her if she didn’t want to go out: she was a fine, plucky woman, who could count on him if she was ever in trouble. As soon as he had gone, Gervaise went back to the window.
    The herd was still pouring through the city gate in the cold of early morning. You could pick out the locksmiths in their blue dungarees, the bricklayers in their white jerkins and the painters by their short jackets with long smocks underneath. From the distance, the crowd had a muddy uniformity, a neutral colour in which the dominant tones were washed-out blue and dirty grey. From time to time, a workman would stop in his tracks to relight his pipe, while the others went on walking around him, without a smile, not exchanging a single word with a friend, their pasty faces fixed on Paris, which sucked them in, one by one, through the gaping mouth of the Faubourg-Poissonnière. However, at both corners of the Rue des Poissonniers, by the doors of the two wine merchants who were just putting up their shutters, some men slowed down and, before they entered, paused outside in the street, glancing sideways towards Paris, their arms dangling loosely, already deciding to take the day off work. Inside, standing at the counters, groups of men were buying drinks for one another, hanging around, filling the rooms, spitting, coughing, rinsing out their gullets with tots of brandy.
    Gervaise was watching the door of Père Colombe’s, on the left of the street, where she thought she had seen Lantier, when a fat woman, bareheaded, shouted up to her from the middle of the road:
    â€˜Hey there, Madame Lantier! You’re an early riser!’
    Gervaise leaned forward.
    â€˜Why, hallo, Madame Boche… Yes, I’ve got heaps of work today!’
    â€˜Don’t I know about it! And it doesn’t get done by itself!’
    So a conversation was struck up, from window to pavement. Madame Boche was the concierge in the house where the restaurant, the Veau à Deux Têtes, occupied the ground floor. Gervaise had often waited