Complete Works of Emile Zola (464 page)

“Leave her alone,” whispered Madame Boche. “You’re not going to pull each other’s hair out, I hope. When I tell you there’s nothing to it! It isn’t her, anyhow!”

At this moment, as the young woman was hanging up the last article of clothing, there was a sound of laughter at the door of the wash-house.

“Here are two brats who want their mamma!” cried Charles.

All the women leant forward. Gervaise recognized Claude and Etienne. As soon as they caught sight of her, they ran to her through the puddles, the heels of their unlaced shoes resounding on the flagstones. Claude, the eldest, held his little brother by the hand. The women, as they passed them, uttered little exclamations of affection as they noticed their frightened though smiling faces. And they stood there, in front of their mother, without leaving go of each other’s hands, and holding their fair heads erect.

“Has papa sent you?” asked Gervaise.

But as she stooped to tie the laces of Etienne’s shoes, she saw the key of their room on one of Claude’s fingers, with the brass number hanging from it.

“Why, you’ve brought the key!” she said, greatly surprised. “What’s that for?”

The child, seeing the key which he had forgotten on his finger, appeared to recollect, and exclaimed in his clear voice:

“Papa’s gone away.”

“He’s gone to buy the lunch, and told you to come here to fetch me?”

Claude looked at his brother, hesitated, no longer recollecting. Then he resumed all in a breath: “Papa’s gone away. He jumped off the bed, he put all the things in the trunk, he carried the trunk down to a cab. He’s gone away.”

Gervaise, who was squatting down, slowly rose to her feet, her face ghastly pale. She put her hands to her cheeks and temples, as though she felt her head was breaking; and she could find only these words, which she repeated twenty times in the same tone of voice:

“Ah! good heavens! — ah! good heavens! — ah! good heavens!”

Madame Boche, however, also questioned the child, quite delighted at the chance of hearing the whole story.

“Come, little one, you must tell us just what happened. It was he who locked the door and who told you to bring the key, wasn’t it?” And, lowering her voice, she whispered in Claude’s ear: “Was there a lady in the cab?”

The child again got confused. Then he recommenced his story in a triumphant manner: “He jumped off the bed, he put all the things in the trunk. He’s gone away.”

Then, when Madame Boche let him go, he drew his brother in front of the tap, and they amused themselves by turning on the water. Gervaise was unable to cry. She was choking, leaning back against her tub, her face still buried in her hands. Brief shudders rocked her body and she wailed out long sighs while pressing her hands tighter against her eyes, as though abandoning herself to the blackness of desolation, a dark, deep pit into which she seemed to be falling.

“Come, my dear, pull yourself together!” murmured Madame Boche.

“If you only knew! If you only knew!” said she at length very faintly. “He sent me this morning to pawn my shawl and my chemises to pay for that cab.”

And she burst out crying. The memory of the events of that morning and of her trip to the pawn-place tore from her the sobs that had been choking her throat. That abominable trip to the pawn-place was the thing that hurt most in all her sorrow and despair. Tears were streaming down her face but she didn’t think of using her handkerchief.

“Be reasonable, do be quiet, everyone’s looking at you,” Madame Boche, who hovered round her, kept repeating. “How can you worry yourself so much on account of a man? You loved him, then, all the same, did you, my poor darling? A little while ago you were saying all sorts of things against him; and now you’re crying for him, and almost breaking your heart. Dear me, how silly we all are!”

Then she became quite maternal.

“A pretty little woman like you! Can it be possible? One may tell you everything now, I suppose. Well! You recollect when I passed under your window, I already had my suspicions. Just fancy, last night, when Adele came home, I heard a man’s footsteps with hers. So I thought I would see who it was. I looked up the staircase. The fellow was already on the second landing; but I certainly recognized Monsieur Lantier’s overcoat. Boche, who was on the watch this morning, saw him tranquilly nod adieu. He was with Adele, you know. Virginie has a situation now, where she goes twice a week. Only it’s highly imprudent all the same, for they’ve only one room and an alcove, and I can’t very well say where Virginie managed to sleep.”

She interrupted herself an instant, turned round, and then resumed, subduing her loud voice:

“She’s laughing at seeing you cry, that heartless thing over there. I’d stake my life that her washing’s all a pretence. She’s packed off the other two, and she’s come here so as to tell them how you take it.”

Gervaise removed her hands from her face and looked. When she beheld Virginie in front of her, amidst three or four women, speaking low and staring at her, she was seized with a mad rage. Her arms in front of her, searching the ground, she stumbled forward a few paces. Trembling all over, she found a bucket full of water, grabbed it with both hands, and emptied it at Virginie.

“The virago!” yelled tall Virginie.

She had stepped back, and her boots alone got wet. The other women, who for some minutes past had all been greatly upset by Gervaise’s tears, jostled each other in their anxiety to see the fight. Some, who were finishing their lunch, got on the tops of their tubs. Others hastened forward, their hands smothered with soap. A ring was formed.

“Ah! the virago!” repeated tall Virginie. “What’s the matter with her? She’s mad!”

Gervaise, standing on the defensive, her chin thrust out, her features convulsed, said nothing, not having yet acquired the Paris gift of street gab. The other continued:

“Get out! This girl’s tired of wallowing about in the country; she wasn’t twelve years old when the soldiers were at her. She even lost her leg serving her country. That leg’s rotting off.”

The lookers-on burst out laughing. Virginie, seeing her success, advanced a couple of steps, drawing herself up to her full height, and yelling louder than ever:

“Here! Come a bit nearer, just to see how I’ll settle you! Don’t you come annoying us here. Do I even know her, the hussy? If she’d wetted me, I’d have pretty soon shown her battle, as you’d have seen. Let her just say what I’ve ever done to her. Speak, you vixen; what’s been done to you?”

“Don’t talk so much,” stammered Gervaise. “You know well enough. Some one saw my husband last night. And shut up, because if you don’t I’ll most certainly strangle you.”

“Her husband! That’s a good one! As if cripples like her had husbands! If he’s left you it’s not my fault. Surely you don’t think I’ve stolen him, do you? He was much too good for you and you made him sick. Did you keep him on a leash? Has anyone here seen her husband? There’s a reward.”

The laughter burst forth again. Gervaise contented herself with continually murmuring in a low tone of voice:

“You know well enough, you know well enough. It’s your sister. I’ll strangle her — your sister.”

“Yes, go and try it on with my sister,” resumed Virginie sneeringly. “Ah! it’s my sister! That’s very likely. My sister looks a trifle different to you; but what’s that to me? Can’t one come and wash one’s clothes in peace now? Just dry up, d’ye hear, because I’ve had enough of it!”

But it was she who returned to the attack, after giving five or six strokes with her beetle, intoxicated by the insults she had been giving utterance to, and worked up into a passion. She left off and recommenced again, speaking in this way three times:

“Well, yes! it’s my sister. There now, does that satisfy you? They adore each other. You should just see them bill and coo! And he’s left you with your children. Those pretty kids with scabs all over their faces! You got one of them from a gendarme, didn’t you? And you let three others die because you didn’t want to pay excess baggage on your journey. It’s your Lantier who told us that. Ah! he’s been telling some fine things; he’d had enough of you!”

“You dirty jade! You dirty jade! You dirty jade!” yelled Gervaise, beside herself, and again seized with a furious trembling. She turned round, looking once more about the ground; and only observing the little tub, she seized hold of it by the legs, and flung the whole of the bluing at Virginie’s face.

“The beast! She’s spoilt my dress!” cried the latter, whose shoulder was sopping wet and whose left hand was dripping blue. “Just wait, you wretch!”

In her turn she seized a bucket, and emptied it over Gervaise. Then a formidable battle began. They both ran along the rows of tubs, seized hold of the pails that were full, and returned to dash the contents at each other’s heads. And each deluge was accompanied by a volley of words. Gervaise herself answered now:

“There, you scum! You got it that time. It’ll help to cool you.”

“Ah! the carrion! That’s for your filth. Wash yourself for once in your life.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll wash the salt out of you, you cod!”

“Another one! Brush your teeth, fix yourself up for your post to-night at the corner of the Rue Belhomme.”

They ended by having to refill the buckets at the water taps, continuing to insult each other the while. The initial bucketfuls were so poorly aimed as to scarcely reach their targets, but they soon began to splash each other in earnest. Virginie was the first to receive a bucketful in the face. The water ran down, soaking her back and front. She was still staggering when another caught her from the side, hitting her left ear and drenching her chignon which then came unwound into a limp, bedraggled string of hair.

Gervaise was hit first in the legs. One pail filled her shoes full of water and splashed up to her thighs. Two more wet her even higher. Soon both of them were soaked from top to bottom and it was impossible to count the hits. Their clothes were plastered to their bodies and they looked shrunken. Water was dripping everywhere as from umbrellas in a rainstorm.

“They look jolly funny!” said the hoarse voice of one of the women.

Everyone in the wash-house was highly amused. A good space was left to the combatants, as nobody cared to get splashed. Applause and jokes circulated in the midst of the sluice-like noise of the buckets emptied in rapid succession! On the floor the puddles were running one into another, and the two women were wading in them up to their ankles. Virginie, however, who had been meditating a treacherous move, suddenly seized hold of a pail of lye, which one of her neighbors had left there and threw it. The same cry arose from all. Everyone thought Gervaise was scalded; but only her left foot had been slightly touched. And, exasperated by the pain, she seized a bucket, without troubling herself to fill it this time, and threw it with all her might at the legs of Virginie, who fell to the ground. All the women spoke together.

“She’s broken one of her limbs!”

“Well, the other tried to cook her!”

“She’s right, after all, the blonde one, if her man’s been taken from her!”

Madame Boche held up her arms to heaven, uttering all sorts of exclamations. She had prudently retreated out of the way between two tubs; and the children, Claude and Etienne, crying, choking, terrified, clung to her dress with the continuous cry of “Mamma! Mamma!” broken by their sobs. When she saw Virginie fall she hastened forward, and tried to pull Gervaise away by her skirt, repeating the while,

“Come now, go home! Be reasonable. On my word, it’s quite upset me. Never was such a butchery seen before.”

But she had to draw back and seek refuge again between the two tubs, with the children. Virginie had just flown at Gervaise’s throat. She squeezed her round the neck, trying to strangle her. The latter freed herself with a violent jerk, and in her turn hung on to the other’s hair, as though she was trying to pull her head off. The battle was silently resumed, without a cry, without an insult. They did not seize each other round the body, they attacked each other’s faces with open hands and clawing fingers, pinching, scratching whatever they caught hold of. The tall, dark girl’s red ribbon and blue silk hair net were torn off. The body of her dress, giving way at the neck, displayed a large portion of her shoulder; whilst the blonde, half stripped, a sleeve gone from her loose white jacket without her knowing how, had a rent in her underlinen, which exposed to view the naked line of her waist. Shreds of stuff flew in all directions. It was from Gervaise that the first blood was drawn, three long scratches from the mouth to the chin; and she sought to protect her eyes, shutting them at every grab the other made, for fear of having them torn out. No blood showed on Virginie as yet. Gervaise aimed at her ears, maddened at not being able to reach them. At length she succeeded in seizing hold of one of the earrings — an imitation pear in yellow glass — which she pulled out and slit the ear, and the blood flowed.

“They’re killing each other! Separate them, the vixens!” exclaimed several voices.

The other women had drawn nearer. They formed themselves into two camps. Some were cheering the combatants on as the others were trembling and turning their heads away saying that it was making them sick. A large fight nearly broke out between the two camps as the women called each other names and brandished their fists threateningly. Three loud slaps rang out.

Madame Boche, meanwhile, was trying to discover the wash-house boy.

“Charles! Charles! Wherever has he got to?”

And she found him in the front rank, looking on with his arms folded. He was a big fellow, with an enormous neck. He was laughing and enjoying the sight of the skin which the two women displayed. The little blonde was as fat as a quail. It would be fun if her chemise burst open.

“Why,” murmured he, blinking his eye, “she’s got a strawberry birthmark under her arm.”

“What! You’re there!” cried Madame Boche, as she caught sight of him. “Just come and help us separate them. You can easily separate them, you can!”

“Oh, no! thank you, not if I know it,” said he coolly. “To get my eye scratched like I did the other day, I suppose! I’m not here for that sort of thing; I have enough to do without that. Don’t be afraid, a little bleeding does ‘em good; it’ll soften ‘em.”