The Drinking Den by Émile Zola

of it: those cooked meats don’t last long… Of course I don’t have money. I’ve got four
sous
5 for the wash… I don’t earn it the way some women do.’
    He ignored the jibe. He had got up off the bed and was looking over the few rags hanging around the room. In the end, he took down thetrousers and the scarf, opened the chest of drawers and added a woman’s shift and two blouses to the heap; then, piling all of them on to Gervaise’s arm, said: ‘Right, take this lot to the pawnshop.’
    â€˜Perhaps you’d like me take the children too?’ she replied. ‘Huh? if they lent money on kids, there’d be a real clear-out!’
    She did go to the pawnbroker’s, even so. When she came back, half an hour later, she put down a five-franc piece on the mantelpiece, adding the pawn ticket to the others, between the two candlesticks.
    â€˜There’s what they gave me,’ she said. ‘I asked for six, but no way… No! They won’t starve to death, that’s for sure. You always see plenty of people in there.’
    Lantier did not take the five-franc coin straight away. He would have liked her to have got some change, so that he could leave her something, but when he looked at the chest and saw some leftover ham, wrapped in a piece of paper, as well as a scrap of bread, he decided to slip the coin into his waistcoat pocket.
    â€˜I didn’t go to the dairy because we owe them for a week already,’ Gervaise added. ‘But I’ll come back early, so while I’m out, you go down and get a loaf, and some chops cooked in egg and breadcrumbs, and we can have a meal together… Fetch up a litre of wine, as well.’
    He did not say no. The quarrel seemed to be over. The young woman finished wrapping up the dirty clothes, but when she started to take Lantier’s shirts and socks from the bottom of the trunk, he shouted at her to leave them alone.
    â€˜You leave my washing, do you hear? I won’t have it!’
    â€˜What won’t you have?’ she asked, straightening herself. ‘I don’t suppose you intend to put these grubby things on again, do you? They’ve got to be washed.’
    All the time she was anxiously watching him, seeing the same hard expression on the young man’s handsome face, as though nothing now would ever soften it again. He lost his temper and grabbed the washing, which he threw back into the trunk.
    â€˜God in heaven, why don’t you do what I tell you for once! I told you I wouldn’t have it.’
    â€˜Why on earth not?’ she stammered, going pale as a dreadful suspicionentered her head. ‘You don’t need your shirts right now, you’re not going out anywhere… What does it matter to you if I take them?’
    He hesitated for a moment, slightly put out by the burning look in her eyes.
    â€˜Why? Why?’ he blurted out. ‘God, woman, you’ll be telling everybody that you’re keeping me, taking in washing and sewing. Well, I don’t like it, see? You do your things, I’ll do mine… Washerwomen expect to be paid for their work.’
    She begged him, saying that she had never complained, but he slammed the trunk shut and sat down on top of it, shouting: ‘No!’ in her face. He was the boss of his own things. Then, to escape her look, which followed him around, he went back to the bed and lay down, saying that he was tired and telling her to stop bothering him. And this time he really did seem to go to sleep…
    Gervaise hesitated for a moment. She was tempted to put the bundle of washing down and to sit there, sewing. In the end, Lantier’s regular breathing reassured her. She picked up the ball of blueing and the piece of soap that she had left from the last wash, and went over to the children who were quietly playing with some old corks, by the window. She kissed them and whispered: ‘Mind you be good now and