The Vatard Sisters Read Online Free PDF

singing began again.
    ‘Come on, ladies…ladies, a little quiet!’ begged the female supervisor.
    Then, in a huge crescendo, forty women cried out: ‘We want our pay! We want our pay!’ Then they joined in with the falsetto of one of them, a voice so sharp it seemed as if it would stick into the ceiling:

    Have pity on my suff–er–in’,
    Go, soldiers, be on your way!
    We only serve wine in this inn,
    We only serve wine in this inn,
    To the brave boys of France!

    Paper-knives were being banged against table tops, wine bottles were being passed from mouth to mouth, dripping saliva and wine; one woman, standing and wanting to regain her place, was being crushed in the belly by the backs of her companions’ chairs. Another girl blew her nose, blaring like a trumpet; the neck of a wine bottle broke against the edge of a table, spilling cheap wine over dresses; two women yelled obscene insults at each other, their companions holding them apart by their hair and their tattered dresses, but they twisted and barked, chins thrust out and teeth bared, slavering, hurling themselves at each other, arms raised, the hollows of their armpits exposed beneath their ripped blouses.
    There was another moment of respite and one could hear nothing but the muffled tapping of the binding machines in the other room.
    The voices of the bindery women were like broken kazoos, droning.
    Then one of them brought up that stupid question that was repeated like an endless refrain whenever no one had anything to say:
    ‘Mam’selle Elisabeth, what’s your heart’s desire?’
    Another woman got up stiffly, poked around in the stove and, gripped by the heat, remained bent double, eyelids fluttering, mouth wide open before the flaming hole.
    At that moment, voices rasped out:

    But whether the branches
    Be covered in white
    Or the grass is greening in spring,
    Rose, I love you
    And I always will,
    Because love knows no season!

    ‘Ladies, a little qui…’
    It struck seven o’clock, interrupting the supervisor’s sentence.
    ‘Seven o’clock,’ said a voice, ‘the man I love is in bed.’
    Then the workshop got a new lease of life and shouted out pitifully: ‘We want our pay! We want our pay!’
    A man came out of a small office adjoining the main room and called out: ‘Madame Eugénie Voblat!’
    Cheers rang out: ‘Ah, at last! Not a moment too soon! We’re finally going to get our hands on our dosh!’ And they clapped, eyes sparkling, while the chairs groaned beneath the gallop of their rumps.
    The Voblat woman, a mass of flabby flesh, a monster of hideous fatness, made her way through the tables, jostled and disorientated by all the female louts who were grabbing at her smock; she detached herself, scratching at faces at random, and, hoisting up her petticoats, she entered the boss’s office. She came out, shouting: ‘Your turn Angéle!’
    The nightshift was coming to an end. The women were shattered by fatigue, worn down by lack of sleep, their heads in their hands. Those who’d got their money hurried off. The paying of wages was going slowly. The boss would call out a name, and another woman would come up. – ‘Madame Teston!’ – ‘Ain’t here.’ – ‘Who’s going to take her money?’ And a friend of the absent woman would run up and ask for her money at the same time, then there’d be furious complaints, stubborn arguments over a sou, the tenacity of a savage obstinately refusing to understand. ‘Stitching was so badly paid!’ ‘The poor were so unfortunate!’ It was the eternal refrain: ‘Oh, M’sieur! couldn’t you give me some small change with the sous?’ Then numbed fingers would let fall what they held and there’d be the flattening of a body on the floor, backside protruding, hands sifting through the dust in search of the fallen money.
    The bindery women gathered opposite the water tank next to the pump; some propped against piles of paper, nodding faces as pale as calves’ heads in a