Read Online The Drinking Den by Émile Zola - Free Book Online Page A

hurried to finish the job, looking up at the round clock over the office. A few thumps still rang out, at intervals, amid hushed laughs and conversations muffled by a greedy sound of chomping jaws, while the steam-engine, ploughing on without halt or respite, seemed to have raised its voice, vibrating, snorting and filling the vast shed. But not one of the women heard it; it was like the very breath of the wash–house, a burning breath, which draws the eternal fog of floating steam up to beneath the roof beams. The heat was becoming intolerable. To the left, through the high windows, rays of sunlight poured in, lighting the misty vapours with opalescent streaks of delicate greyish pinks and blues. And, since voices were starting to be raised in complaint, the lad Charles went from one window to the next, pulling down coarse linen blinds; then he went over to the other side, where it was shady, and opened the fanlights. He was applauded with clapping hands, and a wave of merriment wentround the place. Soon, even the last washboards fell silent. The women, their mouths full, waved only the open knives they were holding. The silence became so profound that one could even hear at the far end the regular scraping of the shovel that the boilerman was using to fill the boiler of the engine with coal.
    All this time, Gervaise was washing her coloured linen in the hot water, thick with soap, which she had kept aside. When she had finished, she drew up a trestle and hung all the items across it, so that they made blueish puddles on the ground. And she started to rinse. The cold tap behind her was running into a huge vat, fastened to the ground, with two wooden bars across it to support the clothes. Above these, in the air, were two other bars on which the linen could drip.
    â€˜That’s almost it; not too hard, was it?’ said Mme Boche. ‘I’ll stay behind and help you to wring it all out.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t you bother, thanks all the same,’ said the young woman, who was punching and splashing the coloured linen in the clear water. ‘Now, if I had any sheets, I wouldn’t say no.’
    For all that, she was obliged to accept the concierge’s help. The two of them were busy wringing out – one at each end – a skirt and a little brown woollen garment, badly dyed so that the water from it was a yellow colour, when Mme Boche exclaimed:
    â€˜Well, look at that! It’s that Virginie, the tall one. Now, what can she want to wash, her with her four old rags in a kerchief?’
    Gervaise looked up sharply. Virginie was a woman of her own age, but taller, dark and pretty, despite a rather long face. She was wearing an old black, flounced dress and a red ribbon round her neck, and her hair was carefully brushed into a bun in a blue chenille net. For a short while, in the middle of the central aisle, she rubbed her eyes as though looking for someone; then, when she caught sight of Gervaise, she deliberately passed close by her, stiff, sneering, swinging her hips, and found a place in the same row, five tubs away.
    â€˜Whatever gave her that idea!’ Mme Boche went on, in a lower voice. ‘She’s never even washed a pair of sleeves… She’s a real lazybones, believe me! A dressmaker who doesn’t even sew the buttons on her own boots! And her sister, the polisher, is just the same – that slut Adèle, who misses work two days out of three. No one knows theirfather or mother and no one knows what they live on – though I could tell you a thing or two about that… What’s she rubbing away at over there? Huh? A skirt? It’s in a right state, it must have some pretty tales to tell, that skirt!’
    What Mme Boche wanted, of course, was to please Gervaise. The truth was that she often took coffee with Adèle and Virginie, when the two girls had some money. Gervaise said nothing, but got on with her work as fast as she could, her hands burning.