The Drinking Den (13 page)

Everyone now agreed that they had felt a storm coming for a long time. When they emerged from the church, M. Madinier had clearly seen what was brewing. Lorilleux said that his corns had kept him awake from three in the morning. In any event, it was bound to happen: it really had been too hot over the last three days.

‘Yes, it may be about to pour down,' Coupeau agreed, standing at the door and examining the sky anxiously. ‘We're only waiting for my sister. If she would only come, we could get started.'

Mme Lorilleux certainly was late. Mme Lerat had just been round to call for her, but she had interrupted her as she was putting on her corset, so the two of them had had a row. The lanky widow whispered to her brother: ‘I left her where she was. She's in such a mood! Wait till you see the face on her!'

And the party had to hang around for another quarter of an hour, kicking their heels in the wine-merchant's bar, jostled and pushed, among the men coming in to drink a shot of wine at the counter. From time to time, Boche, or Mme Fauconnier, or Bibi-la-Grillade would leave the rest of them and go out on to the pavement, looking upwards. There was no rain coming down at all, but the light was going and gusts of wind, blowing close to the ground, raised little eddies of white dust. At the first clap of thunder, Mlle Remanjou crossed herself. All eyes turned anxiously to the round clock over the mirror. It was already twenty minutes to two.

‘There we go!' Coupeau shouted. ‘Heaven weeps!'

A squall of rain swept across the road, down which women were in full flight, holding their skirts in both hands. It was with this first cloudburst that Mme Lorilleux at last arrived, breathless, irate, pausing in the doorway to wage war on her umbrella, which refused to shut.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it!' she stammered. ‘It caught me just as I was leaving. I was tempted to go straight back and change all my clothes – it's a real shame I didn't. A fine wedding this is, I must say! I told you! I said you should put it all off until next Saturday. And now, because you didn't listen to me, it's pouring down! Well, so much the better! Let the heavens open!'

Coupeau tried to calm her, but she wouldn't listen. He was not the one who would be paying for her dress, which was ruined. She had on a dress of black silk, which was stifling her: the top was too tight, so it dragged on the buttons and cut into her shoulders, while the skirt was cut as a sheath and so narrow across the thighs that she had to hobble along in short steps. Even so, all the women in the company were looking at her with pursed lips, impressed by the way she was turned out. She appeared not to have noticed Gervaise, who was sitting next to Mother Coupeau. She called Lorilleux over and asked for his handkerchief; then, in a corner of the shop, she carefully wiped off the drops of rain that had gathered on the silk, one by one.

Meanwhile, the squall had suddenly passed. The daylight was still fading and it was almost dark, a livid darkness shot through with broad flashes of lightning. Bibi-la-Grillade laughed and said again that it would soon be raining cats and dogs, of course. Then, the storm did
break, with extreme violence. For half an hour, the rain fell in bucketfuls and the thunder rumbled ceaselessly. The men, standing by the door, stared at the grey sheets of rain, the flooded gutters and the cloud of spray flying from the puddles lapping across the pavement. The women had gone to sit down, afraid, with their hands over their eyes. No one said anything, overwhelmed by it all. A dubious joke about the thunder from Boche, who said that St Peter was sneezing up in heaven, didn't amuse anybody. But, when the claps of thunder became less frequent as the storm moved away, they started to get impatient and vented their anger on the weather, swearing and shaking their fists at the clouds. Now a fine, interminable rain was falling out of an ashen sky.

‘It's after two o'clock,' Mme Lorilleux cried. ‘Come, come, we don't want to stay here all night!'

When Mlle Remanjou said something about going to the countryside in spite of everything, even if they only went as far as the ditch in the fortifications,
³
there was a cry of protest: the roads must be in a fine state; they wouldn't be able to sit down on the grass; and then it didn't look as though the rain was over; it might start to pour again. Coupeau, looking at a workman, dripping wet, who was calmly walking along in the rain, muttered: ‘If that Mes-Bottes is still waiting for us on the road to Saint-Denis, he won't be getting sunburn.'

This made them laugh; but there was a rising tide of irritation. It was starting to get them down. They had to make up their minds. Surely they weren't intending to stay like this until dinner-time, staring into space. So, for a quarter of an hour they racked their brains as they watched the unrelenting storm. Bibi-la-Grillade suggested they have a hand of cards; Boche, who was slyly dirty-minded by nature, knew an amusing little game called Confessions; Mme Gaudron talked of going to have some onion tart in the Chaussée Clignancourt; Mme Lerat wanted them to tell stories to one another; as for Gaudron, it didn't bother him, he felt quite happy where he was and proposed starting dinner right away. And, each time a suggestion was made, they discussed it and got angry about it: that was a silly idea; that would bore everyone rigid; people would think they were a bunch of kids. Then Lorilleux, wanting to get his word in, came up with something nice and simple: a walk along the outer boulevards as far as
the Père Lachaise Cemetery,
⁴
where they could see the tomb of Héloïse and Abélard
⁵
if they had time. At that, Mme Lorilleux erupted, unable to contain herself any longer. She was off! That's what she was doing! Were they trying to make a fool of her? She did herself up, got soaked by the rain, and all to be shut indoors at some wine merchant's! No, no, she'd had enough of this kind of wedding, she'd be better off at home. Coupeau and Lorilleux had to stand in the door to stop her. She ranted on:

‘Get out of my way! I tell you, I'm leaving!'

After her husband had managed to calm her down, Coupeau went over to Gervaise, who was still sitting quietly in a corner, talking to her mother-in-law and Mme Fauconnier.

‘You haven't made any suggestion at all,' he said, still addressing her as
vous
, not yet daring to use the familiar form
tu
with her.

‘Oh, whatever you like,' she said, with a laugh. ‘I'm not fussy. Let's go out, or not go out, it's the same to me. I feel fine, that's all I ask.'

It was true: her face was radiant with tranquil joy. Since the guests had arrived, she had been talking to each of them, her voice low and full of emotion, looking very sensible and not taking part in any of the rows. While the storm was erupting, she stayed, staring at it, watching the shafts of lightning, like someone who could see serious things, far away in the future in these sudden flashes of light.

M. Madinier had not yet suggested anything. He was leaning against the counter, with his coat-tails spread wide, preserving his dignity as a boss. He let out a long jet of spit and rolled his large eyes.

‘Of course,' he said, ‘there's always the museum…' And he stroked his chin, looking round the assembled party and blinking. ‘They've got antiquities, pictures, oil paintings, a whole load of things. It's very educational. Perhaps you don't know? It's something one ought to see, at least once.'

They all looked at one another inquiringly. No, Gervaise had never been, nor had Mme Fauconnier, or Boche, or any of the others, though Coupeau did think he had been up there one Sunday, but couldn't remember much about it. They were still trying to make up their minds, when Mme Lorilleux, much impressed by M. Madinier's air of importance, said that she thought it was a very proper and appropriate
suggestion. Since they had given up a day and had got their best clothes on, they might as well go and visit something improving. Everyone agreed. So, since it was still raining a little, they borrowed some umbrellas from the wine merchant – old umbrellas, blue, green and brown, which customers had accidentally left behind – and off they set for the museum.

The party turned right, heading for the centre of Paris down the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Coupeau and Gervaise once more led the way, running on ahead of the rest. M. Madinier now gave his arm to Mme Lorilleux, since Mme Coupeau had stayed behind at the wine merchant's because of her legs. Then came Lorilleux and Mme Lerat, Boche and Mme Fauconnier, Bibi-la-Grillade and Mlle Remanjou, with the Gaudrons bringing up the rear. There were twelve of them in all, and once again they formed a fair old line along the pavement.

‘Oh, it's nothing to do with us, I assure you,' Mme Lorilleux was explaining to M. Madinier. ‘We don't know where he picked her up – or, rather, we know only too well; but it's not our place to say anything, is it? My husband had to buy the wedding ring. This morning, we were no sooner up than we had to lend them another ten francs, without which nothing would have gone ahead. A bride who doesn't bring one single relative to her wedding! She claims that she has a sister who is a butcher's wife in Paris. So why didn't she invite her, then?'

She stopped to point to Gervaise, who was limping heavily as she went down the sloping street.

‘Look at her! I ask you! Tip-Tap!'

And the words ‘Tip-Tap' went round the company. Lorilleux said they should call her that, but Mme Fauconnier leaped to Gervaise's defence: they shouldn't make fun of her, she was clean as a new penny and really got down to her work, when she had to. Mme Lerat, who always had some suggestive remark or other when she wanted, called the girl's leg a ‘love-pin', adding that a lot of men liked that, without further explanation.

The party emerged from the Rue Saint-Denis and crossed the boulevard. They halted for a moment before the stream of carriages, then ventured out into the road, which had been changed by the storm
into a pool of flowing mud. The rain was falling again, they had just opened their umbrellas and, under the pitiful brollies held up by the men, the women lifted their skirts and the procession spread out in the dirt, extending from one pavement to the other. At this, two louts yelled out, ‘Look, look, carnival time!' Passers-by gathered and shopkeepers, with an air of amusement, stood on tiptoe behind their windows. In the roar of the crowd, against the wet, grey background of the wide street, the couples walking along shone out as splashes of violent colour: Gervaise in dark blue, Mme Fauconnier's flower-print dress and Boche's canary-yellow trousers. That stiffness adopted by people in their Sunday best really did make Coupeau's shiny frock-coat and M. Madinier's square-cut jacket look like carnival clothes, while Mme Lorilleux's fine outfit, the fringed dress of Mme Lerat and Mlle Remanjou's worn skirts offered a mixture of fashions that gave the whole group the look of poor people done up for an occasion in reach-me-down clothes. But it was chiefly the gentlemen's hats that caused the hilarity, old hats long preserved, deteriorating in the darkness of the wardrobe, with gloriously comic shapes, tall, expansive or pointed, with amazing brims, flat or turned up, either too wide or too narrow. And the smiles broadened when, bringing up the rear of the parade, was Mme Gaudron, the wool-carder, in her bright-violet dress with a pregnant belly that was enormous on her, thrust far forward. The wedding party, meanwhile, did not quicken its pace, dawdling good-humouredly, pleased at being the object of attention and amused by the quips.

‘Look!' one of the louts cried, pointing to Mme Gaudron. ‘Here comes the bride! My, oh my, she's got a fine bun in the oven!'

Everyone burst out laughing. Bibi-la-Grillade turned round to make the point that the kid had hit the nail on the head. The carder laughed louder than anybody, and spread herself even further: there was nothing shameful about it, on the contrary: plenty of the women who were staring as they went past would like to have been in her condition.

They had started down the Rue de Cléry, after which they took the Rue du Mail. When they arrived at the Place des Victoires, they made a halt. The bride's left shoelace had come undone and, while she was retying it beneath the statue of Louis XIV, the couples stopped behind
her and waited, joking about the fact that she was showing a bit of her calf. At last, after going down the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, they reached the Louvre.
⁶

M. Madinier politely asked if he could lead the way. It was very large and one could easily get lost. In any case, he knew the best places, because he had often come here with an artist, a very intelligent lad who sold his drawings to a large packaging firm, which bought them to reproduce on boxes. Downstairs, when the party was setting out into the Assyrian Rooms, they gave a little shudder. Oooh! It wasn't any too warm! The place would make a terrific cellar. And, slowly, two by two, they went forward, heads up, eyes blinking, among the colossal stone figures, the black-marble gods silent in their hieratic rigidity, half cat, half woman, with corpse-like faces, shrunken noses and swollen lips. They found them very ugly; people carved stone much better nowadays. They were amazed by an inscription in Phoenician script: it couldn't be! Surely no one had ever been able to read that gobblede-gook! But M. Madinier, who had already reached the first landing with Mme Lorilleux, called back to them, his voice echoing under the vaulted ceiling: ‘Come on up! All that stuff is nothing! What you want to see is on the first floor.'

The starkness of the staircase intimidated them. A magnificent warder in a red waistcoat, his uniform trimmed with gold braid, appeared to be waiting for them at the top of the stairs, and this made them even more anxious. Respectfully, treading as softly as they could, they entered the French galleries.

Here, without pausing, their eyes filled with the gold of the frames, they followed the succession of little rooms, watching the pictures go past, too many of them to look at properly. One would need an hour in front of each one to understand it. Holy Mary, what a lot of paintings! It was never-ending. And how much could they be worth? Then, at the end, M. Madinier stopped them suddenly in front of
The Raft of the Medusa
⁷
and explained what it was about. They all fell silent and stood motionless, enchanted. When they started to walk again, Boche summed up the general feeling: It was crazy!