The Drinking Den

by Emile Zola

  ‘Now then, don’t try to bamboozle me! I don’t like to be tied down. Strewth! You look lovely; that’s a pretty dress. Where did you get it, you cow? You’ve been walking the streets, haven’t you? Just wait until I get my hands on you! Huh? You’re hiding your fancy man behind your skirts. What’s that? Curtsy, so that we can see. Jesus! It’s him again!’

  With a fearful leap he tried to ram his head against the wall, but the padding softened the blow. All that one could hear was his body hitting the matting, where he had been thrown by the shock.

  ‘So, what can you see?’ the junior doctor asked.

  ‘The hatter, the hatter!’ Coupeau screamed.

  The doctor questioned Gervaise, but she stammered without being able to reply, because this scene brought back all the troubles she had suffered in her life. The roofer had his fists raised.

  ‘It’s between us, now, my lad! I’ve got to do for you, at last! Oh, you come along, just like that, with this hag on your arm and make a fool of me in public. Well, I’m going to strangulate you now, yes, yes, I am, and without gloves on, either! No need to strut around. Take that! And that! And that! And that!’

  He was punching the air. And then a fury seized him. Bumping against the wall as he stepped back, he thought that he was being attacked from behind. He swung round and threw himself at the padding. He leaped around, jumping from one corner to another, hitting with his stomach, his bottom and his shoulder, rolling, getting back on his feet. His bones were softening, his body gave off a sound like wet tow. And he accompanied this fine display with frightful threats and savage, guttural cries. However, it looked as though the battle was not going well for him, because his breathing was becoming shallow and his eyes were bulging from their sockets. And bit by bit he seemed to be overcome by a childish feeling of cowardice.

  ‘Murder! Murder! Be off with the both of you! Oh, the scoundrels, they’re laughing! The bitch, there she is with her arms and legs in the air! She’s got to go, that’s certain! Oh, the bandit, he’s killing her! He’s cutting off one of her pegs with his knife! The other one’s on the ground, her belly’s slit, buckets of blood! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’

  Bathed in sweat, his hair standing on his head, giving him a fearful appearance, he backed away, furiously waving his arms as though to drive away the dreadful scene. Then he gave two pitiful cries as he got his heels caught in the mattress and fell backwards on to it.

  ‘Monsieur, Monsieur, he’s dead!’ Gervaise exclaimed, clasping her hands.

  The junior doctor had gone over to Coupeau and was pulling him on to the middle of the mattress. No, he wasn’t dead. They took off his shoes and his naked feet stuck out at the end, dancing all alone, from one side to the other, rhythmically, in a regular, hurried little dance.

  At this point, the other doctor came in. He brought two colleagues, one thin, the other fat, both wearing decorations, as was he. The three of them leaned over, saying nothing, examining the man all over. Then, hastily, in an undertone, they talked. They had uncovered Coupeau from his legs to his shoulders and, as Gervaise got up, she saw this naked torso displayed in front of her. Well, now the cycle was complete: the trembling had gone down from the arms and up from the legs; now the trunk too was joining in the fun! The puppet was quite clearly having a belly-laugh. There were tickles along the ribs and a heaving of the belly, which seemed to be dying with laughter. Everything was in movement: the muscles going this way and that, the skin shuddering like a drum and the hairs nodding to one another as they waltzed. In short it must be the ‘rout’, as they call the final gallop at a ball, when day is breaking and all the dancers hold hands and beat time with their feet.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ the head doctor murmured.

  And he pointed out the man’s face to the other two. Coupeau’s eyes were closed and there were little nervous tics running all over his face. He was still more frightful like this, flat on his back, with his jaw jutting out and wearing the twisted mask of a dead man having nightmares. But the doctors, noticing the feet, went to examine them with great interest. The feet were still dancing. Even though Coupeau was asleep, his feet danced. Yes, the boss could snore away, it was none of their business, they went on with what they were doing, without slowing or speeding up at all. They were real mechanical feet, feet having fun while they could.

  Meanwhile, when she saw the doctors put their hands on her man’s chest, Gervaise wanted to feel him herself. She went up quietly and put a hand on his shoulder, leaving it there for a minute. My God! Whatever was going on in there? The shivering went right to the depths of his flesh; even the bones must be throbbing. Shudders and undulations came up from far away and ran along like a river under the skin. When she pressed on it a little, she felt the agonized cries from deep inside. With the naked eye, one could see only the little waves making furrows, as on the surface of a whirlpool; but in the depths, there must be a dreadful commotion. What a frightful business – like a mole at work! It was the vitriol from the drinking den bashing away in there with its pickaxe. The whole body was permeated with it; and, by God, the task eventually had to be finished, shattering Coupeau to pieces and carrying him away in a continuous, all-over shuddering of his whole body.

  The doctors left. After an hour, Gervaise, who had stayed behind with the junior doctor, said again quietly:

  ‘Monsieur, Monsieur, he’s dead…’

  But, looking at Coupeau’s feet, the doctor shook his head. The naked feet, outside the bed, were not very clean, and the toenails were long; and they were still jumping. More hours passed. Suddenly, the feet stiffened and remained motionless. At this, the junior doctor turned to Gervaise and said:

  ‘That’s it.’

  Only death had stopped those feet.

  When Gervaise got back to the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, she found a whole gaggle of women at the Boches’ chattering away loudly nineteen to the dozen. She thought they were waiting for her to arrive with news, as they had on the other days.

  ‘He’s snuffed it,’ she said as she quietly pushed open the door, her face haggard and bewildered.

  They were not listening. The whole house was in turmoil. Something incredible! Poisson had found his wife with Lantier. No one was quite sure of the facts, because everyone told the story in a different way. What it came down to was that Poisson had surprised them just when they were not expecting it. There were even supplementary details that the ladies exchanged through pinched lips. The sight had, naturally, driven Poisson to quite uncharacteristic fury. A real tiger, he was! This man of few words, who seemed to go around with a pole up his backside, had begun to roar and leap around. Then, it all went quiet. Lantier must have explained it all to the husband. Too bad, it couldn’t go on. And Boche announced that the daughter of the people who owned the restaurant next door was definitely taking on the premises to set up a tripe shop there. That sly devil the hatter loved tripe.

  Gervaise, seeing Mme Lorilleux and Mme Lerat come in, said in an expressionless voice:

  ‘He’s snuffed it. My God, after four days leaping and yelling!’

  So there was nothing the two sisters could do, except take out their handkerchiefs. Their brother had had plenty of faults, but he was their brother, after all. Boche shrugged his shoulders, saying loudly enough for everyone to hear:

  ‘Huh! That’s one drunkard less!’

  From that day onwards, since Gervaise often lost her head, one of the sights of the house was to watch her doing Coupeau. They no longer needed to ask for it, she would put on the performance for free, her hands and feet trembling, while she let out little spontaneous cries. No doubt, she had picked this up in Sainte-Anne, spending too long watching her husband. But she had no luck: she didn’t die of it as he had. With her, it was nothing more than the grimacing of a monkey that had escaped from somewhere, and urchins would throw cabbage stalks at her in the street.

  She hung on like this for months. She slipped further and further down, accepting every degradation and
starving a little every day. As soon as she had four sous, she would drink and start hammering the walls. People would give her all the dirty jobs to do. One evening, they bet that she would not eat something disgusting, and she did, just for ten sous. M. Marescot had decided to evict her from the room on the sixth floor; but as Old Bru had just been found dead in his hole under the staircase, the landlord was willing to let her have that little nook. Now she was in Old Bru’s cubby-hole. It was there, on some old straw, that she starved, her belly empty and her bones chilled to the marrow. The earth, it seemed, was rejecting her. She lost her wits and didn’t even think to throw herself on to the cobbles from the sixth floor, to have done with it. Death had to take her little by little, piece by piece, dragging her right to the end of the awful life she had made for herself. No one even knew exactly what she died of. There was talk of cold and warmth, but the fact was that she died of poverty, of the filth and weariness of her ruined life. She died of letting herself go, as the Lorilleux said. One morning, as there was a bad smell in the corridor, people remembered that they hadn’t seen her for two days, and discovered her already decaying in her cubby-hole.

  It was Old Bazouge himself who came, with his pauper’s box under his arm, to parcel her up. He was still pretty drunk that day, but a good fellow even so, and merry as a lark. When he recognized the customer he had to deal with, he delivered himself of some philosophical reflections as he got his things ready.

  ‘Everyone goes there in the end… No need to push and shove, there’s room for us all… And it’s silly to be in a hurry, because you only get there more slowly… As far as I’m concerned, I want only to give satisfaction. Some want it, others not. Now, let’s try this and see how it goes… Here’s one who didn’t want to, then she did. So she had to wait. And now, it’s over, and she’s got what she wanted! Hey-ho, off we go!’

  And when he picked Gervaise up in his large hands, he had a moment of tenderness for her, gently lifting this woman who had had such a fancy for him for so long. So, laying her down at the bottom of the coffin with fatherly concern, he mumbled, between two hiccups:

  ‘Now listen here: it’s me, Bibi-la-Gaîeté, called the ladies’ consolation. There, you’re happy now. So sleep, my sweet one.’

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  1. Grand Balcon: a famous dance-hall on the Boulevard de la Chapelle.

  2. Barrière Poissonnière: the action of the novel takes place on the northern outskirts of Paris in what is now the area behind the Gare du Nord. The Barrière Poissonnière was one of the historic gateways into the city.

  3. Eugène Sue: the writer Eugène Sue (1804–57) was elected a left-wing deputy to the National Assembly in April 1850.

  4. Bonaparte: the book starts in 1850 when Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was President of the Second Republic. In December 1852 he would seize power, installing himself as Emperor Napoleon III and ushering in the regime of the Second Empire, which forms the background to all the novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle (see Introduction).

  5. sous: the sou was a unit of currency, created at the time of the Revolution, which was equal to five centimes, or one twentieth of a franc. It was worth roughly a halfpenny in English (pre-decimal) currency. A worker at the time would earn between three and five francs a day.

  6. Rue Neuve de la Goutte-d’Or. now the Rue de la Goutte-d’Or, a small street just north of the Boulevard de la Chapelle, where much of the action of the novel takes place.

  7. beetle: the heavy wooden tool used for beating the washing.

  8. Plassans: ‘Plassans’, where the saga of the Rougon-Macquart family starts (in La Fortune des Rougon), is a fictitious town, modelled on Aix-en-Provence.

  9. Rue Belhomme: a small street off the Boulevard Rochechouart, in a district that has remained notorious as a centre of low life and prostitution.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. drinking den: the French title of the novel, L’Assommoir, is a slang word for a working-class bar, derived from the word assommer, ‘to bludgeon, to stun’ (referring to the effects of cheap spirits on the consumer). The name belonged originally to a cabaret in the district of Belleville and was little used until Zola popularized it.

  2. Bibi-la-Grillade: there is a small group of men who play supporting roles in the novel, designated only by nicknames; I have left these in the original and, in one or two cases, added some explanation in the Notes. Bibi is a childish word for ‘me’; grillade means ‘grilled meat’. However, we are given no reason why this character should have this particular nickname. Coupeau himself is called Cadet-Cassis (‘Junior Cassis’, a name which he does later explain to Gervaise); his friend, Mes-Bottes (‘My Boots’) appears later in this same chapter; and so on. Zola borrowed the names directly from Poulot’s Le Sublime (see Introduction).

  3. used to beat her mother up: see La Fortune des Rougon, the first book in the series.

  4. join stones: (pierres d’attente) the bricks or stones on the end walls of a house, ready to link it to the next building alongside it. References in the novel to building, including Coupeau’s profession as a roofer, help to fix it at a time (the 1860s) when Paris was being extensively rebuilt. (See Chapter 12 n. 2.)

  5. carder, a woman who cards wool.

  6. draw die: a tool used for drawing metal threads of various sizes.

  7. water globe: a globe full of water, which would concentrate the light on the goldsmith’s work.

  8. borax: a solution of borate of sodium, used for cleaning metals.

  9. caustic soda: caustic soda and potassium were used for descaling gold.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. bolivar: a kind of wide-brimmed top hat.

  2. Code Civil: a legal marriage in France must involve a civil ceremony at the town hall in front of the Mayor, who reads the couple the appropriate passage from the statutes relating to marriage. This civil ceremony cannot be avoided or replaced by a church wedding.

  3. fortifications: the old fortifications of Paris.

  4. Père Lachaise Cemetery: the most famous of the Parisian cemeteries.

  5. Héloïse and Abélard: the suggestion is not as incongruous as it sounds. Héloïse and Abélard were the twelfth-century lovers, driven apart by her uncle, who stand as examples of undying love.

  6. they reached the Louvre: the street names have not altered, so the wedding party’s progress can be followed easily on a modern map of Paris.

  7. The Raft of the Medusa: painting by Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), illustrating a scene from a famous shipwreck. The painting shocked bourgeois taste when it was first exhibited, and is no doubt included by Zola for that reason.

  8. Charles IX fired on the people: King Charles IX (1560–74) is supposed to have shot at the Huguenots during the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre.

  9. The Supper at Cana: painting by Paolo Veronese (1525–88). It has been pointed out that the paintings mentioned here relate in some way or other to the work of Zola’s friends, the Impressionists. In the case of Veronese, the Impressionists admired him for his use of colour.

  10. Mona Lisa: the celebrated painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who also painted La Belle Ferronnière, mentioned in the next paragraph.

  11. Antiope’s thighs: by Correggio, Italian painter (1494–1534), also appreciated by Zola’s artist friends for his unconventional approach to composition.

  12. Murillo: Spanish painter (1618–82). His Virgin is the sort of sentimental work that would appeal to the general public of Zola’s time.

  13. Titian: Italian painter(1488–1576). Manet was one of Zola’s contemporaries who admired Titian and was influenced by his work.

  14. Ambigu: the Théâtre de l’Ambigu specialized in melodrama, farce and pantomime.

  15. Rubens’ Kermesse: by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640); it shows a scene of feasting and popular merrymaking that is deliberately contrasted with the Coupeaus’ rather more meagre and restrained wedding dinner.

  16. Place Vendôme…
the column: the column was set up to commemorate Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz in 1805.

  17. the Invalides… Pantheon… Notre-Dame… Tour Saint-Jacques… Montmartre: landmarks in Paris: the Invalides: a hospital for war veterans, which houses the tomb of Napoleon I; Pantheon: the temple commemorating the country’s illustrious dead; Notre-Dame: medieval cathedral of Paris; Tour Saint-Jacques: the only remaining part of the sixteenth-century church of Saint-Jacques, in the Rue de Rivoli; Montmartre: district on a hill to the north of the city, later to be the site of the Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur.

  18. Palissy: Bernard Palissy (1510–89/90) was a fine potter, who worked for the Court of Cathérine des Médicis, as well as a writer and scientist. Under the old regime, only the nobility had the right to carry swords.

  19. zinc: Coupeau’s profession, which I have translated as ‘roofer’, is that of a zingueur, a workman in zinc, the material used for roofing on Parisian houses. He would need to know how to cut, bend, work and solder the metal.

  20. law of May the 31st… an abomination: parliamentary decrees in France are referred to by the date on which they become law. The measure referred to here limited the right to vote to those who had been resident at the same address for a given period, disenfranchising many working-class voters.

  21. Elysée Palace: the official residence of the President of the Republic.

  22. Comte de Chambord: Henri de Bourbon (1820–83), Count of Chambord, was the grandson of King Charles X (1757–1836) who reigned from 1824 to 1830, when the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown by the Orleanists under Louis-Philippe; Chambord was considered the rightful heir to the French throne by the Legitimist supporters of the Bourbon dynasty.

  23. pastourelle: the fourth movement of the quadrille.

  CHAPTER 4

  1. four years’ hard work: this chapter covers the period from 1850 to 1854.