Chapter XII

It must have been the Saturday after rent day, something like the twelfth or thirteenth of January, Gervaise wasn’t really sure. She was going off her nut because it was such ages since she’d had anything warm in her belly. Oh, what a bloody...

Chapter VIII

The following Saturday Coupeau, who hadn’t come in for dinner, brought Lantier home with him about ten o’clock. They’d had a dish of sheep’s trotters together at Thomas’s in Montmartre. ‘You mustn’t scold us, old lady,’ said the roofer: ‘We’re behavin’ ourselves, as you see...

Chapter II

Three weeks later, at about half-past-eleven on a lovely sunny morning, Gervaise and Coupeau the roofer were having a brandied plum together at Père Colombe’s bar, the Assommoir.* Coupeau had been smoking a cigarette outside on the pavement when Gervaise crossed the...

Chapter XI

Nana was getting taller and becoming quite a dish. At fifteen she’d grown like a young calf and was very fair-skinned and well-rounded, in fact as plump as a pin cushion. Yes, that was Nana at fifteen, fully developed but no corset as yet....

Chapter IX

That winter, a fit of wheezing almost carried Maman Coupeau off. Every year, in December, she could count on her asthma keeping her flat on her back for two or three weeks. She wasn’t a young thing any longer, she’d be seventy-three come the...

Chapter VI

One autumn afternoon, after delivering some washing to a customer in the Rue des Portes-Blanches, Gervaise found herself at the bottom of the Rue des Poissonniers just as dusk was falling. It had rained that morning, the air was very mild, and a smell...

Chapter III

Gervaise didn’t want a fancy wedding. Why spend the money? Besides, she still felt a bit bashful and couldn’t see the point of drawing attention to the marriage all over the neighbourhood. But Coupeau protested that you couldn’t get married just like that, without...

Chapter VII

Gervaise’s saint’s day was the 19th of June. The Coupeaus spent money like water on these occasions, celebrating with binges which left you round as a barrel, your belly stuffed full for the week. Everyone’s spare cash was scraped together. In that household, the...

Chapter IV

There followed four years of hard work. In the neighbourhood Gervaise and Coupeau were known as a happy couple who kept themselves to themselves, didn’t fight, and regularly took their Sunday walk over Saint-Ouen* way. The wife put in twelve-hour days at...