by Emile Zola
‘It’s you!’ said Octave, in a tone of annoyance.
Trublot began to laugh, without seeming the least surprised at finding Octave there at that time of night.
‘Just imagine,’ he said in a whisper, ‘that idiot Adèle didn’t give me her key, and now she’s gone down to Duveyrier’s room. What’s the matter? Didn’t you know Duveyrier sleeps with her? Oh yes, my dear fellow. He’s made it up with his wife, who lets him have it now and then; but she keeps him on strict rations so he has to fall back on Adèle. It’s convenient for him, you see, when he comes up to Paris.’
Breaking off, he stooped down again to have another look, and then muttered between clenched teeth:
‘No, there’s nobody there! He’s keeping her longer this time. What a dumbo that Adèle is! If she’d only given me the key I could’ve waited for her in bed and kept warm.’
Then he went back to the attic where he had been hiding, taking Octave with him. Octave was eager to ask him how the evening had ended at the Josserands’. But Trublot never gave him a chance to open his mouth, for he carried on talking about Duveyrier in the inky darkness and stuffy atmosphere of the space under the rafters. Yes, the dirty beast had wanted to have Julie at first, but she was a bit too clean for that sort of thing, and besides, in the country she had taken a fancy to little Gustave, a lad of sixteen, who seemed rather promising. So, having drawn a blank with Julie, and not daring to try it on with Clémence because of Hippolyte, Duveyrier had thought it more expedient to choose someone outside his own home. How on earth he had ever managed to get hold of Adèle nobody knew—behind some door, no doubt, in a draught; and that great slut just braced herself and took it like a slap in the face; certainly she would never have dared to be uncivil to the landlord.
‘For the last month he’s never missed one of the Josserands’ Tuesdays,’ said Trublot. ‘It’s very awkward. I’ll have to find Clarisse again for him, so that he leaves us in peace.’
At last Octave managed to ask him how the evening had ended. Berthe had left before midnight, apparently quite composed. No doubt she was waiting for him in Rachel’s bedroom. But Trublot, delighted to have bumped into him, would not let him go.
‘It’s stupid of her to keep me hanging about all this time,’ he resumed. ‘I’m half asleep as it is. My boss has put me into the liquidation department. Up all night three times a week, my dear boy! If Julie was there, I know she’d make room for me; but Duveyrier has only brought Hippolyte with him from the country. By the way, do you know Hippolyte, that great lout who sleeps with Clémence? Well, I just caught him in his nightshirt, sneaking into Louise’s bedroom—that ugly young thing Madame Juzeur is so anxious to save! What a great success for Madame Anything-you-like-except-that! That lump of fifteen, a filthy bundle picked up on a doorstep—a dainty morsel for that strapping, big-boned fellow, with his sweaty hands and his bull neck! I don’t care a damn myself, but it’s disgusting all the same!’
Bored though he was, Trublot seemed full of philosophical insights. He went on muttering:
‘Well, well, like master, like servant! When the landlords set the example, the flunkeys become quite immoral as well. There’s no doubt about it, France is going to the dogs!’
‘Goodbye, I must be off,’ said Octave.
But Trublot kept him back, telling him about all the servants’ rooms in which he might have slept if the summer had not emptied so many of them. The worst of it was that they all double-locked their doors, even when they just went to the end of the corridor, because they were all so frightened of being robbed by one of the others. Lisa was a lost cause, and she seemed to him to have very odd tastes. Victoire hardly tempted him, though ten years earlier she might have done. What he most deplored was Valérie’s mania for changing her cook; it was becoming positively unbearable. He counted them on his fingers—a regular string of them: one who insisted on having chocolate in the morning; one who left because her master made a mess of eating; one whom the police took away just as she was roasting a piece of veal; one who was so strong that she could not touch anything without breaking it; one who had a maid of her own to wait on her; one who went out in her mistress’s gowns, and smacked her mistress’s face when she dared to object. All those in the space of a month! There wasn’t even time to go and pinch them in their kitchen!
‘Oh! and then,’ he added, ‘there was Eugénie. You must have noticed her—a tall, beautiful looking girl, a real Venus, my dear fellow, I can tell you! People used to turn round in the street to look at her. For ten days the whole house went mad. All the women were furious; the men could hardly contain themselves. Campardon licked his chops, and Duveyrier’s trick was to come up to see if there was a leak in the roof. It was pandemonium throughout the whole bloody house. But I was careful. She was a bit too smart. There’s no doubt, my dear chap, the best ones to choose are the ugly, stupid ones, as long as you’ve got plenty to grab hold of—that’s my view. And I was right about Eugénie—she was sent packing in the end when madame saw from her sheets that she was visited every morning by the coalman from the Place Gaillon—they were as black as soot; it must have cost a small fortune to have them washed. And do you know what happened? The coalman became very ill, while the coachman of the people on the second floor, who had left him behind, that stallion of a chap who sleeps with all of them— well, he had a dose of it too, so that he could hardly drag one leg after the other. But I haven’t any sympathy for him, he’s such a nuisance.’
At last Octave managed to escape, and as he was leaving Trublot there in the darkness of the attic, the latter suddenly exclaimed, in surprise:
‘But what are you doing up here with the maids? You rogue! You come up too, then?’
He laughed gleefully, and promising not to tell he sent him off and wished him a very pleasant night. He was determined to wait for that slut Adèle who, when she was with a man, never wanted to go. Duveyrier would surely never keep her until the morning.
Back in Rachel’s room Octave was again disappointed. Berthe had still not come. He now grew angry; she had fooled him, promising him to come simply to make him stop pestering her. While he stood there fuming she was no doubt sleeping peacefully, glad to be alone and to have the whole double bed to herself. However, instead of going back to sleep in his own room, he obstinately waited, lying down in his clothes on the bed and dreaming up plans for revenge. This bare, cold maid’s room irritated him, with its dirty walls, its squalor, and its insufferable smell of an unwashed servant-girl; he could hardly bring himself to acknowledge to what depths his frenzied passion had lowered him in his craving to appease it. Far away in the distance he heard three o’clock strike. Strapping maidservants snored away to the left of him; at times bare feet made the boards creak, and then splashing as of a fountain resounded along the floor. But what most unnerved him was a continual wailing on his right, the cry of someone in pain. At last he recognized the voice—it was the boot-stitcher. Was she in labour? Poor woman, there she lay alone in her agony, close to the roof, cooped up in one of those miserable closets hardly big enough for her belly.
At about four o’clock Octave was again disturbed. It was Adèle coming to bed followed immediately by Trublot. They nearly had a quarrel. She declared that it was not her fault: the landlord had kept her, she couldn’t help it. Then Trublot accused her of being vain, whereupon she began to cry. She was not vain at all. What had she done that God made men run after her like this? When one had finished another one appeared; there seemed no end to it. But she never tried to excite them, and their stupid behaviour gave her so little pleasure that she preferred to look sluttish on purpose, so as not to give them any encouragement. But they only ran after her more than ever, and her work kept increasing. It was killing her, and she had had enough of Madame Josserand bullying her to scrub the kitchen every morning.
‘People like you’, she stammered out between sobs, ‘can sleep as long as you like afterwards. But I have to work like a slave. No, there’s no justice in
the world. I’m utterly sick of it.’
‘There, there, don’t take on so,’ said Trublot, in a sudden access of fatherly pity. ‘Mind you, some women would be glad to be in your place. If men like you, you silly thing, then let them.’
At daybreak Octave fell asleep. The house was now in complete silence. Even the boot-stitcher had stopped moaning, and lay half dead, clutching her belly with both hands. The sun was shining in through the narrow window when the door was suddenly opened. Octave woke up. It was Berthe, who had come up to see if he was still there, driven by an irresistible impulse. At first she had decided not to, but then had invented pretexts—the need to tidy up the room if, in his rage, he had left it in disorder. Nor had she expected to find him there. As she saw him rise from the little iron bedstead, pale and threatening, she was taken aback and, with head lowered, listened to his furious outburst. He challenged her to say something, to offer some sort of explanation. At last she murmured:
‘At the last moment I couldn’t do it; it was too revolting. I love you—I swear I do! But not here, not here!’
Then, as he approached her, she drew back, fearing that he might want to take advantage of the opportunity. This indeed was what he wanted. It struck eight; all the servants had gone down and Trublot had left too. Then, as he tried to catch hold of her hands, saying that when you love someone you don’t mind anything, she complained of the smell of the room and went to open the window. But he again drew her to him and, bewildered by his persistence, she was about to give in when from the courtyard below there rose a turbid wave of filthy talk.
‘You pig! You absolute slut! Shut up! Your dishcloth’s fallen on my head again!’
Berthe, trembling, broke away from his embrace, murmuring:
‘You see! Can you hear that? Oh no, not here, please! I would feel too ashamed. Can you hear those girls? They make my blood run cold. The other day they made me feel quite ill. No, leave me alone, and I promise I’ll come and see you next Tuesday in your room.’
Standing there motionless, the two lovers were forced to overhear everything.
‘Just let me catch sight of you,’ Lisa angrily continued, ‘and I’ll chuck it in your face.’
Then, leaning out of her kitchen window, Adèle retorted:
‘What a fuss about a little piece of rag! I only used it yesterday for washing up with, and it dropped down quite by accident.’
Thereupon a truce was declared, and Lisa asked her what they had had for dinner the night before. Another stew! What misers! If she lived in a hole like that she’d buy herself cutlets! And she kept urging Adèle to help herself to the sugar, the meat, and the candles, just to show her independence. For her part, never being hungry, she let Victoire rob the Campardons without even claiming her share.
‘Oh!’ cried Adèle, who by degrees was becoming corrupted, ‘the other night I hid some potatoes in my pocket and they burned my thigh. It was fun! And I do like vinegar! I don’t care, I drink it out of the cruet-stand now!’
Victoire then leant out in her turn, after finishing a glassful of cassis and brandy to which Lisa sometimes treated her in the morning as a reward for concealing her nocturnal and diurnal escapades. Louise, standing at the back of Madame Juzeur’s kitchen, put her tongue out at them, and so Victoire started shouting at her.
‘You guttersnipe, I’ll shove that tongue of yours somewhere in a minute!’
‘Come on, then, you old soak!’ cried Louise. ‘I saw you yesterday, being sick all over your plates.’
Then once more the flood of excrement surged up against the walls of the pestilential courtyard. Even Adèle, who had caught the Parisian patter, directed abuse at Louise, while Lisa cried out:
‘I’ll shut her up if she gives us any of her cheek! Yes, you little bitch, I’ll tell Clémence. She’ll soon settle you. Isn’t it sickening? Going with men at her age! But hush! Here’s the man himself, and a filthy beast too!’
Hippolyte at that moment put his head out of the Duveyriers’ window. He was cleaning his master’s boots. In spite of everything the other servants were very civil to him, for he belonged to the aristocracy; and he despised Lisa, who in turn despised Adèle with greater haughtiness than gentry who are rich look down on gentry who are hard-up. They asked him for news of Mademoiselle Clémence and Mademoiselle Julie. Good Lord! They were bored to death down there in the country, but they were both pretty well. Then, changing the subject, he said:
‘Did you hear that girl last night writhing about with her stomach-ache? Terrible nuisance, wasn’t it? It’s a good job she’s leaving. I nearly called out to her to break her waters and have done with it!’
‘Monsieur Hippolyte’s right,’ said Lisa. ‘Nothing gets on your nerves more than a woman who’s always got the belly-ache. Thank God, I don’t know what it’s like; but I think I’d try to put up with it so that other people can sleep.’
Then Victoire jokingly turned her attention to Adèle.
‘I say, old pot-belly up there! When you had your first baby, did it come out in front or behind?’
At such coarseness all the kitchens were convulsed with merriment, while Adèle, looking scared, answered:
‘A baby? No, not at all! It’s not allowed; anyway, I don’t want one.’
‘My girl,’ said Lisa, gravely, ‘everybody can have a baby, and I don’t suppose God made you any different from anyone else!’
Then they talked of Madame Campardon, who at least had no fears on that score; it was the only good thing about her physical state. Then all the ladies of the house were discussed in turn. Madame Juzeur, who took her own precautions; Madame Duveyrier, who felt only disgust towards her husband; Madame Valérie, who got her babies made for her out-of-doors, because her precious husband wasn’t man enough to make even the tail of one. Then from the fetid hole there came bursts of crude laughter.
Berthe had again turned pale. She waited, afraid even to leave the room. She looked down in shame, as if publicly dishonoured in Octave’s presence. Exasperated with the servants, he felt that their talk was becoming too filthy, and that to take her in his arms was impossible. His desire ebbed away, leaving him weary and extremely sad. Then Berthe started. Lisa had just mentioned her name.
‘Talking of fun and games, I know someone who seems to be at it pretty often! Adèle, isn’t it true that your Mademoiselle Berthe was up to all sorts of things when you used to wash her petticoats?’
‘And now,’ said Victoire, ‘she gets her husband’s assistant to give her what she wants.’
‘Ssh!’ cried Hippolyte softly.
‘What for? Her pig of a cook isn’t there today. Sly devil, she is; she looks as if she’d eat you the moment you mention her mistress! She’s a Jewess, you know, and they say she once murdered somebody where she comes from. Perhaps that handsome Octave gets her in a quiet corner too. The governor must have taken him on just to make babies for him, the big ninny!’
Then Berthe, suffering unutterable anguish, looked at her lover imploringly, as she stammered out:
‘Good God! Good God!’
Octave took her hand and squeezed it. He too was choking with impotent rage. What could they do? He could not show himself and tell them to shut up. The foul talk went on, talk such as Berthe had never heard before, like an open sewer that brimmed over every morning, close to her, though she had never suspected its existence. Their liaison, so carefully concealed, was now being trailed through all the garbage and slops of the kitchen. Though nothing had been said, the maids knew everything. Lisa related how Saturnin played the pander. Victoire laughed at the husband’s headaches, and said he would do well to get himself an extra eye. And even Adèle had a go at her mistress’s young lady, whose ailments, soiled underwear, and toilet secrets she did not scruple to lay bare. Thus were their kisses soiled and smeared by such filthy talk; their meetings too; in fact, all that was still sweet and tender in their love.
‘Look out below!’ suddenly exclaimed Victoire. ‘Here’s some of those stink
in’ carrots from yesterday. Old Gourd can have them!’
The servants, out of sheer spite, used to throw all the rubbish they could into the courtyard, so that the concierge had to sweep it up.
‘And here’s a lump of rotten kidney!’ cried Adèle in her turn.
All the scrapings from their saucepans, all the muck from their pots, were flung out in this fashion, while Lisa went on pulling Berthe and Octave to pieces, commenting on all the deceptions by which they sought to hide their adultery. Hand in hand and face to face, the lovers stood there aghast. Their hands grew icy cold, their eyes acknowledged the squalor of their relationship. The servants, in their hatred, had no sympathy for the weaknesses of their masters. This was what it had come to—fornication beneath a downpour of rotten vegetables and putrid meat!
‘And you know,’ said Hippolyte, ‘the young chap don’t care a damn for his missus. He’s only latched on to her to help him get on in the world. He’s got no real feelings, and no scruples at all; he’d as soon hit a woman as make love to her!’
Berthe, her eyes on Octave, saw him turn pale; so changed, so upset did his face seem that it frightened her.
‘Oh yes, they make a nice pair!’ rejoined Lisa. ‘She’s not up to much either. Badly brought up, her heart as hard as stone, caring for nothing but her own pleasure, sleeping with men for their money! I know that sort of woman, and I wouldn’t mind betting that she doesn’t even get any pleasure with a man!’
Tears streamed down Berthe’s cheeks. Octave saw how distraught she was. It was as if they had both been flayed before each other, laid utterly bare, without any possibility of protesting. Then the young woman, suffocating from the stench of this open cesspool, sought to flee. He did not attempt to make her stay; mutual self-disgust made each other’s company excruciating, and they longed for the relief of no longer seeing each other.
‘You promise then, next Tuesday, in my room!’
‘Yes, yes!’
Extremely upset, she hurried away. Left alone, he walked about the room, his hands twitching nervously as he rolled the bed-linen up into a bundle. He no longer listened to the servants’ gossip. Suddenly one phrase caught his ear.