LAssommoir | Page 6

and laid
down on the bed again, saying that he was sleepy, and requesting her
not to make his head ache with any more of her row. This time indeed,
he seemed to fall asleep. Gervaise, for a while, remained undecided.
She was tempted to kick the bundle of dirty clothes on one side, and to
sit down and sew. But Lantier's regular breathing ended by reassuring
her. She took the ball of blue and the piece of soap remaining from her
last washing, and going up to the little ones who were quietly playing
with some old corks in front of the window, she kissed them, and said
in a low voice:
"Be very good, don't make any noise; papa's asleep."
When she left the room, Claude's and Etienne's gentle laughter alone
disturbed the great silence beneath the blackened ceiling. It was ten
o'clock. A ray of sunshine entered by the half open window.
On the Boulevard, Gervaise turned to the left, and followed the Rue
Neuve de la Goutte-d'Or. As she passed Madame Fauconnier's shop,
she slightly bowed her head. The wash-house she was bound for was
situated towards the middle of the street, at the part where the roadway
commenced to ascend.
The rounded, gray contours of the three large zinc wash tanks, studded
with rivets, rose above the flat-roofed building. Behind them was the
drying room, a high second story, closed in on all sides by narrow-

slatted lattices so that the air could circulate freely, and through which
laundry could be seen hanging on brass wires. The steam engine's
smokestack exhaled puffs of white smoke to the right of the water
tanks.
Gervaise was used to puddles and did not bother to tuck her skirts up
before making her way through the doorway, which was cluttered with
jars of bleaching water. She was already acquainted with the mistress
of the wash-house, a delicate little woman with red, inflamed eyes, who
sat in a small glazed closet with account books in front of her, bars of
soap on shelves, balls of blue in glass bowls, and pounds of soda done
up in packets; and, as she passed, she asked for her beetle and her
scouring-brush, which she had left to be taken care of the last time she
had done her washing there. Then, after obtaining her number, she
entered the wash-house.
It was an immense shed, with large clear windows, and a flat ceiling,
showing the beams supported on cast-iron pillars. Pale rays of light
passed through the hot steam, which remained suspended like a milky
fog. Smoke arose from certain corners, spreading about and covering
the recesses with a bluish veil. A heavy moisture hung around,
impregnated with a soapy odor, a damp insipid smell, continuous
though at moments overpowered by the more potent fumes of the
chemicals. Along the washing-places, on either side of the central alley,
were rows of women, with bare arms and necks, and skirts tucked up,
showing colored stockings and heavy lace-up shoes. They were beating
furiously, laughing, leaning back to call out a word in the midst of the
din, or stooping over their tubs, all of them brutal, ungainly, foul of
speech, and soaked as though by a shower, with their flesh red and
reeking.
All around the women continuously flowed a river from hot-water
buckets emptied with a sudden splash, cold-water faucets left dripping,
soap suds spattering, and the dripping from rinsed laundry which was
hung up. It splashed their feet and drained away across the sloping
flagstones. The din of the shouting and the rhythmic beating was joined
by the patter of steady dripping. It was slightly muffled by the

moisture-soaked ceiling. Meanwhile, the steam engine could be heard
as it puffed and snorted ceaselessly while cloaked in its white mist. The
dancing vibration of its flywheel seemed to regulate the volume of the
noisy turbulence.
Gervaise passed slowly along the alley, looking to the right and left,
carrying her laundry bundle under one arm, with one hip thrust high
and limping more than usual. She was jostled by several women in the
hubbub.
"This way, my dear!" cried Madame Boche, in her loud voice. Then,
when the young woman had joined her at the very end on the left, the
concierge, who was furiously rubbing a dirty sock, began to talk
incessantly, without leaving off her work. "Put your things there, I've
kept your place. Oh, I sha'n't be long over what I've got. Boche scarcely
dirties his things at all. And you, you won't be long either, will you?
Your bundle's quite a little one. Before twelve o'clock we shall have
finished, and we can go off to lunch. I used to send my things to a
laundress in the Rue Poulet, but she destroyed