Читать книгу Piping Hot! (Pot-Bouille) - Emile Zola - Страница 14

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So soon as the fish was served, skate of doubtful freshness with black butter, which that bungler Adèle had drowned in a flood of vinegar, Hortense and Berthe, seated on the right and left of uncle Bachelard, incited him to drink, filling his glass one after the other, and repeating:

“It's your saint's-day, drink now, drink! Here's your health, uncle!”

They had plotted together to make him give them twenty francs. Every year, their provident mother placed them thus on either side of her brother, abandoning him to them. But it was a difficult task, and required all the greediness of two girls prompted by dreams of Louis XV. shoes and five button gloves. To get him to give the twenty francs, it was necessary to make the uncle completely drunk. He was ferociously miserly whenever he found himself amongst his relations, though out of doors he squandered in crapulous boozes the eighty thousand francs he made each year out of his commission business. Fortunately, that evening, he was already half fuddled when he arrived, having passed the afternoon with the wife of a dyer of the Faubourg Montmartre, who kept a stock of Marseilles vermouth expressly for him.

“Your health, my little ducks!” replied he each time, with his thick husky voice, as he emptied his glass.

Covered with jewellery, a rose in his button-hole, enormous in build, he filled the middle of the table, with his broad shoulders of a boozing and brawling tradesman, who has wallowed in every vice. His false teeth lit up with too harsh a whiteness his ravaged face, the big red nose of which blazed beneath the snowy crest of his short cropped hair; and, now and again, his eyelids dropped of themselves over his pale and misty eyes. Gueulin, the son of one of his wife's sisters, affirmed that his uncle had not been sober during the ten years he had been a widower.

“Narcisse, a little skate, I can recommend it,” said Madame Josserand, smiling at her brother's tipsy condition, though at heart it made her feel rather disgusted.

She was sitting opposite to him, having little Gueulin on her left, and another young man on her right, Hector Trublot, to whom she was desirous of showing some politeness. She usually took advantage of family gatherings like the present to get rid of certain invitations she had to return; and it was thus that a lady living in the house, Madame Juzeur, was also present, seated next to Monsieur Josserand. As the uncle behaved very badly at table, and it was the expectation of his fortune alone which enabled them to put up with him without absolute disgust, she only had intimate acquaintances to meet him or else persons whom she thought it was no longer worth while trying to dazzle. For instance, she had at one time thought of finding a son-in-law in young Trublot, who was employed at a stockbroker's, whilst waiting till his father, a wealthy man, purchased him a share in the business; but, Trublot having professed a determined objection to matrimony, she no longer stood upon ceremony with him, even placing him next to Saturnin, who had never known how to eat decently. Berthe, who always had a seat beside her brother, was commissioned to subdue him with a look, whenever he put his fingers too much into the gravy.

After the fish came a meat pie, and the young ladies thought the moment arrived to commence their attack.

“Take another glass, uncle!” said Hortense. “It is your saint's day. Don't you give anything when it's your saint's-day?”

“Dear me! why of course,” added Berthe naively. “People always give something on their saint's-day. You must give us twenty francs.”

On hearing them speak of money, Bachelard at once exaggerated his tipsy condition. It was his usual dodge; his eyelids dropped, and he became quite idiotic.

“Eh? what?” stuttered he.

“Twenty francs. You know very well what twenty francs are, it is no use your pretending you don't,” resumed Berthe. “Give us twenty francs, and we will love you, oh! we will love you so much!”

They threw their arms round his neck, called him the most endearing names, and kissed his inflamed face without the least repugnance for the horrid odour of debauchery which he exhaled. Monsieur Josserand, whom these continual fumes of absinthe, tobacco and musk upset, had a feeling of disgust on seeing his daughters' virgin charms rubbing up against those infamies gathered in the vilest places.

“Leave him alone!” cried he.

“Why?” asked Madame Josserand, giving her husband a terrible look. “They are amusing themselves. If Narcisse wishes to give them twenty francs, he is quite at liberty to do so.”

“Monsieur Bachelard is so good to them!” complacently murmured little Madame Juzeur.

But the uncle struggled, becoming more idiotic than ever, and repeating, with his mouth full of saliva:

“It's funny. I don't know, word of honour! I don't know.”

Then, Hortense and Berthe, exchanging a glance, released him. No doubt he had not had enough to drink. And they again resorted to filling his glass, laughing like courtesans who intend robbing a man. Their bare arms, of an adorable youthful plumpness, kept passing every minute under the uncle's big flaming nose.

Meanwhile, Trublot, like a quiet fellow who takes his pleasures alone, was watching Adèle as she turned heavily round the table. Being very short-sighted he thought her pretty, with her pronounced Breton features and her hair the colour of dirty hemp. When she brought in the roast, a piece of veal, she leant right over his shoulder, to reach the centre of the table; and he, pretending to pick up his napkin, gave her a good pinch on the calf of her leg. The servant, not understanding, looked at him, as though he had asked her for some bread.

“What is it?” said Madame Josserand. “Did she knock against you, sir? Oh! that girl! she is so awkward! But, you know, she is quite new to the work; she will be better when she has had a little training.”

“No doubt, there is no harm done,” replied Trublot, stroking his bushy black beard with the serenity of a young Indian god.

The conversation was becoming more animated in the diningroom, at first icy cold, and now gradually warming with the fumes of the dishes. Madame Juzeur was once more confiding to Monsieur Josserand the dreariness of her thirty years of solitary existence. She raised her eyes to heaven, and contented herself with this discreet allusion to the drama of her life: her husband had left her after ten days of married bliss, and no one knew why; she said nothing more. Now, she lived by herself in a lodging that was as soft as down and always closed, and which was frequented by priests.

“It is so sad, at my age!” murmured she languishingly, cutting up her veal with delicate gestures.

“A very unfortunate little woman,” whispered Madame Josserand in Trublot's ear, with an air of profound sympathy.

But Trublot glanced indifferently at this clear-eyed devotee, so full of reserve and hidden meanings. She was not his style.

Then there was a regular panic. Saturnin, whom Berthe was not watching so closely, being too busy with her uncle, had amused himself by cutting up his meat into various designs on his plate. This poor creature exasperated his mother, who was both afraid and ashamed of him; she did not know how to get rid of him, not daring through pride to make a workman of him, after having sacrificed him to his sisters by having removed him from the school where his slumbering intelligence was too long awakening; and, during the years he had been hanging about the house, useless and stinted, she was in a constant state of fright whenever she had to let him appear before company. Her pride suffered cruelly.

“Saturnin!” cried she.

But Saturnin began to chuckle, delighted with the mess he had made in his plate. He did not respect his mother, but called her roundly a great liar and a horrid nuisance, with the perspicacity of madmen who think out loud. Things certainly seemed to be going wrong. He would have thrown his plate at her head, if Berthe, reminded of her duties, had not looked him straight in the face. He tried to resist; then the fire in his eyes died out; he remained gloomy and depressed on his chair, as though in a dream, until the end of the meal.

“I hope, Gueulin, that you have brought your flute?” asked Madame Josserand, trying to dispel her guests' uneasiness.

Gueulin was an amateur flute-player, but solely in the houses where he was treated without ceremony.

“My flute! Of course I have,” replied he.

He was absent-minded, his carroty hair and whiskers were more bristly than usual, as he watched with deep interest the young ladies' manoeuvres around their uncle. Employed at an assurance office, he would go straight to Bachelard on leaving off work, and stick to him, visiting the same cafés and the same disreputable places. Behind the big, ill-shaped body of the one, the little pale face of the other was sure always to be seen.

“Cheerily, there! stick to him!” said he, suddenly, like a true sportsman.

The uncle was indeed losing ground. When, after the vegetables, French beans swimming in water, Adèle placed a vanilla and currant ice on the table, it caused unexpected delight amongst the guests; and the young ladies took advantage of the situation to make the uncle drink half of the bottle of champagne, which Madame Josserand had bought for three francs of a neighbouring grocer. He was becoming quite affectionate, and forgetting his pretended idiocy.

“Eh, twenty francs! Why twenty francs? Ah! you want twenty francs! But I have not got them, really now. Ask Gueulin. Is it not true, Gueulin, that I forgot my purse, and that you had to pay at the café? If I had them, my little ducks, I would give them to you, you are so nice.”

Gueulin was laughing in his cool way, making a noise like a pulley that required greasing. And he murmured:

“The old swindler!”

Then, suddenly, unable to restrain himself, he cried:

“Search him!”

So Hortense and Berthe again threw themselves on the uncle, this time without the least restraint. The desire for the twenty francs, which their good education had hitherto kept within bounds, bereft them of their senses in the end, and they forgot everything else. The one, with both hands, examined his waistcoat pockets, whilst the other buried her fingers inside the pockets of his frock-coat. The uncle, however, pressed back on his chair, still struggled; but he gradually burst out into a laugh—a laugh broken by drunken hiccoughs.

“On my word of honour, I haven't a sou! Leave off, do; you're tickling me.”