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Updated: May 24, 2025
Her heart was heavy within her whenever she thought of him, alone, abandoned by God and man, dying by inches or drying, rather, as an orange dries on the chimney piece. Gervaise was also troubled by the vicinity of the undertaker Bazonge a wooden partition alone separated their rooms.
Father Bazonge was a man of fifty; his clothes were covered with mud where he had fallen in the street. "You need not be afraid," continued Lorilleux; "he will do you no harm. He is a neighbor of ours the third room on the left in our corridor." But Father Bazonge was talking to Gervaise. "I am not going to eat you, little one," he said.
Bazonge held the screws in his mouth and waited for the family to take their last farewell. Then Coupeau, his two sisters and Gervaise kissed their mother, and their tears fell fast on her cold face. The lid was put on and fastened down.
"Ah," she said to herself, "it is no use to disguise the fact: people are very much in the way after they are dead, no matter how much you have loved them!" Father Bazonge, who was never known to be sober, appeared with the coffin and the pall. When he saw Gervaise he stood with his eyes starting from his head.
"I beg you pardon," he said, "but I thought it was for you," and he was turning to go away. "Leave the coffin!" cried Gervaise, growing very pale. Bazonge began to apologize: "I heard them talking yesterday, but I did not pay much attention. I congratulate you that you are still alive. Though why I do, I do not know, for life is not such a very agreeable thing."
One day she was altering a dress of Nana's for her, and when the child tried it on Gervaise was chilled with horror at seeing her whole back purple and bruised, the tiny arm bleeding all the innocent flesh of childhood martyrized by the brute her father. Bazonge might get the coffin ready, she thought, for the little girl could not bear this long.
"It will come for you another time," he said with a laugh; "you have only to make me a little sign. I am a great consolation to women sometimes, and you need not sneer at poor Father Bazonge, for he has held many a fine lady in his arms, and they made no complaint when he laid them down to sleep in the shade of the evergreens."
Bazonge, feeling that it was not proper to argue with a lady, said: "You are right. I have buried three women today, who would each have given me a jolly little sum out of gratitude, if they could have put their hands in their pockets. But you see, my dear woman, it is not such an easy thing you are asking of me." "Take me!" cried Gervaise. "Take me! I want to go away!"
"I have drunk too much, I know very well, but when the work is done the machinery should be greased a little now and then." Gervaise retreated farther into the doorway and with difficulty kept back a sob. She nervously entreated Coupeau to take the man away. Bazonge staggered off, muttering as he did so: "You won't mind it so much one of these days, my dear. I know something about women.
One night she was sick and feverish, and instead of throwing herself out of the window as she was tempted to do, she rapped on the partition and called loudly: "Father Bazonge! Father Bazonge!" The undertaker was kicking off his slippers, singing a vulgar song as he did so. "What is the matter?" he answered. But at his voice Gervaise awoke as from a nightmare. What had she done?
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