L'Assommoir, Émile Zola [book series to read .TXT] 📗

In the centre of the table was a Savoy cake in the form of a temple, with a dome fluted with melon slices; and this dome was surmounted by an artificial rose, close to which was a silver paper butterfly, fluttering at the end of a wire. Two drops of gum in the centre of the flower imitated dew. Then, to the left, a piece of cream cheese floated in a deep dish; whilst in another dish to the right, were piled up some large crushed strawberries, with the juice running from them. However, there was still some salad left, some large coss lettuce leaves soaked with oil.

“Come, Madame Boche,” said Gervaise, coaxingly, “a little more salad. I know how fond you are of it.”

“No, no, thank you! I’ve already had as much as I can manage,” replied the concierge.

The laundress turning towards Virginie, the latter put her finger in her mouth, as though to touch the food she had taken.

“Really, I’m full,” murmured she. “There’s no room left. I couldn’t swallow a mouthful.”

“Oh! but if you tried a little,” resumed Gervaise with a smile. “One can always find a tiny corner empty. Once doesn’t need to be hungry to be able to eat salad. You’re surely not going to let this be wasted?”

“You can eat it to-morrow,” said Madame Lerat; “it’s nicer when its wilted.”

The ladies sighed as they looked regretfully at the salad-bowl. Clemence related that she had one day eaten three bunches of watercresses at her lunch. Madame Putois could do more than that, she would take a coss lettuce and munch it up with some salt just as it was without separating the leaves. They could all have lived on salad, would have treated themselves to tubfuls. And, this conversation aiding, the ladies cleaned out the salad-bowl.

“I could go on all fours in a meadow,” observed the concierge with her mouth full.

Then they chuckled together as they eyed the dessert. Dessert did not count. It came rather late but that did not matter; they would nurse it all the same. When you’re that stuffed, you can’t let yourself be stopped by strawberries and cake. There was no hurry. They had the entire night if they wished. So they piled their plates with strawberries and cream cheese. Meanwhile the men lit their pipes. They were drinking the ordinary wine while they smoked since the special wine had been finished. Now they insisted that Gervaise cut the Savoy cake. Poisson got up and took the rose from the cake and presented it in his most gallant manner to the hostess amidst applause from the other guests. She pinned it over her left breast, near the heart. The silver butterfly fluttered with her every movement.

“Well, look,” exclaimed Lorilleux, who had just made a discovery, “it’s your worktable that we’re eating off! Ah, well! I daresay it’s never seen so much work before!”

This malicious joke had a great success. Witty allusions came from all sides. Clemence could not swallow a spoonful of strawberries without saying that it was another shirt ironed; Madame Lerat pretended that the cream cheese smelt of starch; whilst Madame Lorilleux said between her teeth that it was capital fun to gobble up the money so quickly on the very boards on which one had had so much trouble to earn it. There was quite a tempest of shouts and laughter.

But suddenly a loud voice called for silence. It was Boche who, standing up in an affected and vulgar way, was commencing to sing “The Volcano of Love, or the Seductive Trooper.”

A thunder of applause greeted the first verse. Yes, yes, they would sing songs! Everyone in turn. It was more amusing than anything else. And they all put their elbows on the table or leant back in their chairs, nodding their heads at the best parts and sipping their wine when they came to the choruses. That rogue Boche had a special gift for comic songs. He would almost make the water pitchers laugh when he imitated the raw recruit with his fingers apart and his hat on the back of his head. Directly after “The Volcano of Love,” he burst out into “The Baroness de Follebiche,” one of his greatest successes. When he reached the third verse he turned towards Clemence and almost murmured it in a slow and voluptuous tone of voice:

“The baroness had people there, Her sisters four, oh! rare surprise; And three were dark, and one was fair; Between them, eight bewitching eyes.”

Then the whole party, carried away, joined in the chorus. The men beat time with their heels, whilst the ladies did the same with their knives against their glasses. All of them singing at the top of their voices:

“By Jingo! who on earth will pay A drink to the pa—to the pa—pa—? By Jingo! who on earth will pay A drink to the pa—to the pa—tro—o—l?”

The panes of glass of the shop-front resounded, the singers’ great volume of breath agitated the muslin curtains. Whilst all this was going on, Virginie had already twice disappeared and each time, on returning, had leant towards Gervaise’s ear to whisper a piece of information. When she returned the third time, in the midst of the uproar, she said to her:

“My dear, he’s still at Francois’s; he’s pretending to read the newspaper. He’s certainly meditating some evil design.”

She was speaking of Lantier. It was him that she had been watching. At each fresh report Gervaise became more and more grave.

“Is he drunk?” asked she of Virginie.

“No,” replied the tall brunette. “He looks as though he had merely had what he required. It’s that especially which makes me anxious. Why does he remain there if he’s had all he wanted? Mon Dieu! I hope nothing is going to happen!”

The laundress, greatly upset, begged her to leave off. A profound silence suddenly succeeded the clamor. Madame Putois had just risen and was about to sing “The Boarding of the Pirate.” The guests, silent and thoughtful, watched her; even Poisson had laid his pipe down on the edge of the table the better to listen to her. She stood up to the full height of her little figure, with a fierce expression about her, though her face looked quite pale beneath her black cap; she thrust out her left fist with a satisfied pride as she thundered in a voice bigger than herself:

“If the pirate audacious Should o’er the waves chase us, The buccaneer slaughter, Accord him no quarter. To the guns every man, And with rum fill each can! While these pests of the seas Dangle from the cross-trees.”

That was something serious. By Jove! it gave one a fine idea of the real thing. Poisson, who had been on board ship nodded his head in approval of the description. One could see too that that song was in accordance with Madame Putois’s own feeling. Coupeau then told how Madame Putois, one evening on Rue Poulet, had slapped the face of four men who sought to attack her virtue.

With the assistance of mother Coupeau, Gervaise was now serving the coffee, though some of the guests had not yet finished their Savoy cake. They would not let her sit down again, but shouted that it was her turn. With a pale face, and looking very ill at ease, she tried to excuse herself; she seemed so queer that someone inquired whether the goose had disagreed with her. She finally gave them “Oh! let me slumber!” in a sweet and feeble voice. When she reached the chorus with its wish for a sleep filled with beautiful dreams, her eyelids partly closed and her rapt gaze lost itself in the darkness of the street.

Poisson stood next and with an abrupt bow to the ladies, sang a drinking song: “The Wines of France.” But his voice wasn’t very musical and only the final verse, a patriotic one mentioning the tricolor flag, was a success. Then he raised his glass high, juggled it a moment, and poured the contents into his open mouth.

Then came a string of ballads; Madame Boche’s barcarolle was all about Venice and the gondoliers; Madame Lorilleux sang of Seville and the Andalusians in her bolero; whilst Lorilleux went so far as to allude to the perfumes of Arabia, in reference to the loves of Fatima the dancer.

Golden horizons were opening up all around the heavily laden table. The men were smoking their pipes and the women unconsciously smiling with pleasure. All were dreaming they were far away.

Clemence began to sing softly “Let’s Make a Nest” with a tremolo in her voice which pleased them greatly for it made them think of the open country, of songbirds, of dancing beneath an arbor, and of flowers. In short, it made them think of the Bois de Vincennes when they went there for a picnic.

But Virginie revived the joking with “My Little Drop of Brandy.” She imitated a camp follower, with one hand on her hip, the elbow arched to indicate the little barrel; and with the other hand she poured out the brandy into space by turning her fist round. She did it so well that the party then begged mother Coupeau to sing “The Mouse.” The old woman refused, vowing that she did not know that naughty song. Yet she started off with the remnants of her broken voice; and her wrinkled face with its lively little eyes underlined the allusions, the terrors of Mademoiselle Lise drawing her skirts around her at the sight of a mouse. All the table laughed; the women could not keep their countenances, and continued casting bright glances at their neighbors; it was not indecent after all, there were no coarse words in it. All during the song Boche was playing mouse up and down the legs of the lady coal-dealer. Things might have gotten a bit out of line if Goujet, in response to a glance from Gervaise, had not brought back the respectful silence with “The Farewell of Abdul-Kader,” which he sang out loudly in his bass voice. The song rang out from his golden beard as if from a brass trumpet. All the hearts skipped a beat when he cried, “Ah, my noble comrade!” referring to the warrior’s black mare. They burst into applause even before the end.

“Now, Pere Bru, it’s your turn!” said mother Coupeau. “Sing your song. The old ones are the best any day!”

And everybody turned towards the old man, pressing him and encouraging him. He, in a state of torpor, with his immovable mask of tanned skin, looked at them without appearing to understand. They asked him if he knew the “Five Vowels.” He held down his head; he could not recollect it; all the songs of the good old days were mixed up in his head. As they made up their minds to leave him alone, he seemed to remember, and began to stutter in a cavernous voice:

“Trou la la, trou la la, Trou la, trou la, trou la la!”

His face assumed an animated expression, this chorus seemed to awake some far-off gaieties within him, enjoyed by himself alone, as he listened with a childish delight to his voice which became more and more hollow.

“Say there, my dear,” Virginie came and whispered in Gervaise’s ear, “I’ve just been there again, you know. It worried me. Well! Lantier has disappeared from Francois’s.”

“You didn’t meet him outside?” asked the laundress.

“No, I walked quickly, not as if I was looking for him.”

But Virginie raised her eyes, interrupted herself and heaved a smothered sigh.

“Ah! Mon Dieu! He’s there, on the pavement opposite; he’s looking this way.”

Gervaise, quite beside herself, ventured to glance in the direction indicated. Some persons had collected in the street to hear the party sing. And