The Belly of Paris Read online

  Despite the excessive cleanliness, grease dominated; it oozed from the white and blue tiles, shone on the red floor tiles, gave a gray sheen to the stove, polished the chopping block to the glow of varnished oak. And in the vapor from the three continuously steaming pots of melting pork, the condensation, falling drop by drop, ensured that there was not, from floor to ceiling, so much as a nail that did not drip grease.

  The Quenu-Gradelles made everything themselves. The only items they bought from outside were potted meats from celebrated houses, rillettes, conserves in jars, canned sardines, cheeses, and escargots. Starting in September, the cellar, which had been emptied in the summer, had to be refilled. After the shop closed they worked late into the evening. With the help of Auguste and Léon, Quenu stuffed saucisson, prepared hams, melted saindoux, and prepared the poitrine, lard, and strips for larding. It made an impressive clatter of pots and grinders, and the scent of the kitchen rose and filled the entire house. All of this had to be done in addition to the daily preparation of fresh pork, pâté de foie gras, galantines, hare pâté, fresh sausages, and boudin.

  By eleven that evening Quenu had two pots of saindoux working and was starting on the boudin. Auguste was helping him. At a corner of the square table Lisa and Augustine were mending linen, while across from them sat Florent, his face turned toward the stove, smiling. Little Pauline had stepped onto his feet and wanted him to send her “jumping in the air.” Behind him Léon was chopping sausage meat with slow and even strokes on the chopping block.

  Auguste went to look for two jugs of pig's blood in the courtyard. He had bled them himself at the slaughterhouse. He brought the blood and entrails back to the shop and left the pig carcass for the kitchen boys to dress and cart over in the afternoon. Quenu claimed that no one in all of Paris bled a pig better than Auguste. In truth, Auguste was an expert judge of blood and the boudin was good anytime Auguste said, “The boudin is going to be good.”

  “So, are we going to have good boudin?” Lisa asked.

  Auguste put the two jugs down and slowly answered, “I think so, Madame Quenu, yes, I think so … The first sign is the way the blood flows. When I pull out the knife, if the blood runs off too slowly, that's not a good sign. It shows that the blood is poor quality.”

  “But,” Quenu interrupted, “doesn't that also depend on how far in the knife was pushed?”

  Auguste's pale face showed a smile. “No, no,” he answered. “I always stick the knife in exactly four fingers. That's how you measure it. But you see, the best sign is when the blood runs out and I beat it with my hand in the bucket. It has to be a good, warm temperature, smooth but not too thick.”

  Augustine had put down her mending needle and raised her eyes to look at Auguste. On her ruddy face, framed by frizzy chestnut brown hair, was a look of absorbed fascination. Lisa and even little Pauline listened with considerable interest. “I beat and beat and beat, you see?” the young man continued, whisking his hand through the air as though it were beating cream. “Then, when I pull the hand out and look at it, it should be completely lubricated by the blood, like a red glove of even color all around. Then you can safely say, ‘The boudin will be good.’”

  He kept his hand in the air for another instant, looking pleased. Against the white cuff of his shirt his hand, which frequented buckets of blood, was deep rose, the nails at the ends of the fingers bright red. Quenu nodded his approval.

  Now there was silence. Léon was still chopping. Pauline, looking dreamy, climbed back on her cousin's feet and shouted, “Tell me, cousin, tell me that story of the man who was eaten by wild animals.” In the child's mind, the idea of pig's blood stirred up the story of “the man eaten by wild animals.” Not understanding, Florent asked which man that was. Lisa laughed.

  “She wants that story of that poor man, you know, the one you were telling Gavard the other night. She must have been listening.”

  Florent became morose. The little girl took the fat yellow cat in her arms and carried it to her cousin, placing it in his lap and explaining that Mouton would also like to hear the story. But Mouton jumped onto the table and remained seated there with his back arched, contemplating the tall, scrawny man who over the past fifteen days had been a continual object of fascination. But Pauline tapped her feet angrily. She wanted the story.

  Since the little girl was becoming unbearable, Lisa said, “Oh, Florent, tell her the story she wants so we can have some peace and quiet.”

  Florent remained silent another few seconds, staring at the floor. Then, slowly raising his head, he fixed his gaze first on the two women with their mending needles, then on Quenu and Auguste, preparing a pot for boudin. The gaslight was burning, the heat from the stove was comforting, and all the kitchen's fat produced the kind of peaceful feeling that accompanies good digestion. Then he placed Pauline on his lap and, smiling a sad smile, addressed the child:

  “Once upon a time there was a poor man. He was sent far, far away to the other side of the ocean. The boat that carried him held four hundred convicts, and he was thrown among them. He was forced to live for five weeks among those thieves, dressed like them in rough sailcloth and eating from their trough. Big fat lice preyed on him, and fever took all his strength from him. The kitchen and bakery and ship engines so heated the bottom deck that ten convicts died from it. During the day they were sent topside, fifty at a time, to catch a breath of sea air. The crew of the ship feared them and trained the cannons on them. The poor man was very happy when his turn to go up came. But although his terrible sweating let up, he still felt too sick to eat. At night, when he was again shackled in irons and the rolling of the ship on the rough sea made him bump into the two men next to him, he broke down and began to cry, relieved to be crying where he could not be seen …”

  Pauline listened with big eyes and her two little hands crossed dutifully in front of her. “But,” she interrupted, “but this isn't the story of the man who was eaten by the animals. This is a different story, isn't it, cousin?”

  “Wait and see,” Florent answered gently. “We'll get to the story of that gentleman. I'm telling you the whole story.”

  “All right,” said the child happily. But she looked pensive, apparently struggling to resolve some problem. Finally she asked, “But what had the poor man done that he was sent away and put on the boat?”

  Lisa and Augustine were smiling, enthralled by the child's vision. And Lisa, without answering the question, used the opportunity to teach the child a lesson, smacking her soundly and asserting, “Bad children are sent on boats like that.”

  “So really,” Pauline replied judiciously “it served my cousin's poor man right to be crying all night.”

  Lisa picked up her sewing again, slumping her shoulders. Quenu had not been listening. He had just cut and thrown into the pot a few onion slices that began to crackle in the heat, chirping like crickets on a hot day. It smelled good. When Quenu plunged his big wooden spoon into the pot, they sang all the louder, filling the kitchen with the penetrating scent of cooked onions. Auguste was preparing pork fat. Léon's chopper came down faster and faster, occasionally scraping across the block to gather the sausage meat, which was turning into a paste.

  Florent continued, “As soon as they arrived, they took the man to an island called Devil's Island. He found that he was there with other men like himself who had all been taken away from their country. They were all very unhappy. They were made to work like convicts. The gendarmes who guarded them counted them every day to make sure that no one was missing. Later they were left to do as they liked. They were locked up at night in a large wooden building where they slept in hammocks hung from two bars. By the end of a year they were all going barefoot. And their clothes were so ragged that their skin showed. They had built some huts with tree trunks for shelter from the sun, which broiled everything. But the huts could not protect them from the mosquitoes, which covered them with welts and inflammations. It killed a number of them. The rest became yellow, so wretched a
nd lost, with their bushy beards, that they were pitiful to look at.”

  “Auguste, hand me the fat!” shouted Quenu. Then he slowly let the chunks slide into the skillet and stirred them with his spoon. The fat melted. An even richer steam rose from the stove.

  “What did they get for food there?” asked Pauline, engrossed in the story.

  “Wormy rice and bad-smelling meat,” Florent answered, his voice lower. “You had to pick the worms out to eat the rice. If the meat was roasted and very cooked, you could manage to eat it. But if it was boiled it stank so badly, just the smell could make you sick.”

  “I'd rather live on dry bread,” said Pauline after mulling the matter over.

  Léon, having finished chopping, carried the platter of sausage meat to the square table. Mouton, who had remained sitting, his eyes fixed on Florent as though shocked by his story, had to back off a few steps, which he did clumsily. Then he rolled himself into a ball with his nose by the sausage meat and began purring.

  But Lisa could not conceal either her shock nor her disgust: wormy rice and foul-smelling meat seemed scarcely believable obscenities and a disgrace for those who had eaten them. And on her handsome calm face, in the swell of her neck, rose a wave of fear, facing this man who had eaten unspeakable things.

  “No, it was not a land of delicacies,” Florent continued, forgetting Pauline, his eyes wandering to the steaming stove. “Every day brought its own annoyances, a continual crushing oppression, a violation of all justice, contempt for all human kindness, that exasperated the prisoners and slowly burned them into a fever of bitter rancor. You lived like animals with the whip forever held over your back. They would have liked to have killed the man. You can't forget such things. It's just not possible. Such suffering cries out for vengeance someday.”

  He had lowered his voice, and the lardoons, hissing merrily in the skillet, drowned out the bubbling of the boiling pots. But Lisa heard Florent and was frightened by the determined expression that had suddenly come over his face. She judged him to be a pretender who wore a sweet and gentle mask.

  The deadened tone of Florent's voice had enchanted Pauline, who bounced on her cousin's lap, excited by the story.

  “And the man, what about the man?” she urged.

  Looking at little Pauline, Florent seemed to find himself again, and his sad smile returned.

  “Well, the man was not at all happy to be on the island. He had but one idea, to get out and cross the sea to the mainland, whose white coastline could be seen on a clear day. But it wasn't easy. He'd have to build a raft. Because several prisoners had already escaped that way, all the trees on the island had been chopped down so there would be no wood available. The island was so stripped and bare, so scorched by the broiling sun, that life on it had become even more dangerous and unbearable than before. That was when the man and two companions got the idea to use the tree trunks from which their huts were built. One night they put to sea on two rotting beams held together by dry branches. The wind carried them toward the coast. But as day was breaking the raft struck a sandbar with such violence that the two tree trunks broke away and were carried off by the waves. The three poor men were nearly swallowed up by the sand. Two were stuck up to their waists, and one up to his chin. The other two had to pull him out. At last they reached a boulder barely big enough for the three to sit on.

  “When the sun came up, they could see the coast, a row of gray cliffs reaching to the horizon. Two of them, knowing how to swim, decided to go to the cliffs. It was better to drown quickly than starve to death slowly on a rock. They promised the third they would come back for him, when they reached the shore and could find a boat.”

  “Oh, I've got it!” shouted little Pauline, clapping her hands happily. “Now comes the story of the man who was eaten by the wild animals!”

  “They managed to reach the coast,” Florent continued. “But it was deserted, and it took them four full days to find a boat. When they got back to the rock, they found their companion lying on his back, his hands and feet eaten away, his face gnawed up, and his stomach full of a swarm of crabs that shook the skin along his sides, making it look as though a death rattle still shuddered the half-eaten corpse.”

  A moan of revulsion slipped from Lisa and Augustine. Léon was preparing the casings for the blood sausage. Quenu stopped his work and looked at Augustine, who seemed overtaken by a bout of nausea. Only Pauline was laughing. The image of the belly crawling with crabs seemed to have strangely appeared in the middle of the kitchen, mixing its dubious odors with the perfume of lard and onions.

  “Can I have the blood?” shouted Quenu, who was not paying attention to the story. Auguste brought the two jugs and slowly poured the blood into the skillet in thin red streams, while Quenu frantically stirred the thickening liquid in the pan. Once the jugs were emptied, Quenu reached up to one of the drawers above the stove and took some pinches of spice. He seasoned especially abundantly with pepper.

  “They left him there, right?” asked Lisa. “And got back safely?”

  “As they were going back,” Florent answered, “the wind shifted and they were blown out to sea. A wave carried off one of their oars, and they took on water so rapidly with each gust of wind that they were completely occupied with trying to bail out with their hands. They rolled around, carried off by the squall and then driven back by the tide, without anything to eat, having used up their meager provisions. It continued like that for three days.”

  “Three days!” exclaimed the stupified Lisa. “Three days without eating anything!”

  “Yes, three days without any food. When the east wind finally washed them to shore, one of them was so weak he remained on the beach all morning. He died that evening. His companion had tried in vain to feed him leaves from trees.”

  At that point Augustine let out a little chuckle, but then, embarrassed and not wishing to appear heartless, she stammered, “No, no. I wasn't laughing about that. It was Mouton … Look at Mouton, Madame.”

  Lisa too began to smile. Mouton, who had remained with his nose by the sausage meat, had probably decided all that meat was too much and had gotten up and was clawing the table with his paw as though trying to bury the platter, the way cats try to bury their mess. Then he turned away from the platter and lay on his side, stretching himself out, half closing his eyes, and rubbing his head against the table. They all paid compliments to Mouton for not having tried to steal any meat. Pauline related, not exactly in keeping with the conversation, that he licked her fingers and washed her face after dinner without trying to bite her.

  But Lisa wanted to get back to the question of whether it was possible to go three days without food. It wasn't possible. “No! I don't believe it! No one can go three days without eating. When someone says, ‘I'm dying of hunger,’ that's just an expression. You always get something to eat, more or less. You would have to be one of the world's most miserable, a completely abandoned wretch, a lost person …”

  She was doubtless going to add something like “worthless rabble,” but after looking at Florent she held back. But the scornful pout on her lips and the hard look in her eyes clearly indicated her belief that only lowly, disreputable people fell into such circumstances. To her, any man who was capable of lasting three days without eating was a dangerous person. After all, honest folk would never put themselves in such a situation.

  By now Florent was suffocating. He was seated opposite a stove into which Léon had just tossed several shovelfuls of coal and that was snoring like a choirmaster sleeping in the sun. It was becoming quite hot. Auguste, who had taken charge of the pots of saindoux, was sweating as he watched, and Quenu mopped his forehead with his shirtsleeve as he waited for the blood to be ready. The kitchen had an air of indigestion, the sleepiness that follows overeating.

  “When the man had buried his companion in the sand,” Florent slowly began again, “he walked off alone straight forward. Dutch Guiana, where he had ended up, is a country of forests carved up by rivers
and marshes. The man walked for more than eight days without seeing a dwelling of any kind. All around him he could feel death waiting for him. Though his stomach ached with hunger, he did not dare eat most of the brilliant-colored fruit that hung from the trees. He was afraid even to touch the metallic, glowing berries for fear they were poisonous. For entire days he did not see a glimpse of sky but pushed on under the thick branches of a green cover swarming with living horror. Huge birds flew over his head with roaring flapping sounds and sudden cries that resembled death rattles. Monkeys leaped, and wild animals charged through the brush, bending branches and causing deluges of green leaves to fall, as though a sudden windstorm were blowing through. But more than anything, it was the snakes that turned his blood to ice, when he stepped on a clump of dry leaves and it suddenly moved and he could see little lean heads slithering through monstrous entanglements of roots.

  “In some dark, wet crannies, swarming clusters of reptiles suddenly popped out and scurried away—some black, some yellow, some purple, some striped, some spotted, and some looking like dead grass. Then the man would stop, seeking out a rock on which he could escape the mushy earth into which he kept sinking. He would rest there for hours, dreading a boa suddenly appearing in the next clearing, tail coiled and head erect, perched like a giant gold-spotted tree trunk.

  “At night he slept in the trees, frightened by the least rustling, imagining he could hear snakes sliding through the darkness. He was drowning in endless leaves. He was gripped by stifling heat as though from a furnace, a dripping humidity, a pestilent sweat infused with the coarse smells of odiferous wood and rank-smelling flowers. And when at last the man made it out at the end of a very long march and saw the sky, he was in front of a series of wide rivers that barred him from going any further. He went down the banks, keeping an eye on the gray backs of caimans and clumps of drifting greenery, until he found safer-looking water and swam across. On the other side, the forest began again. But there were also stretches of vast grassy plains, places covered with thick vegetation, and sometimes far off he could see the reflecting blue of a little lake. The man then took a giant detour, going forward only after testing the ground, having nearly been killed, swallowed up in one of those pleasant plains that he could hear cracking with every step. The giant grass, fed by the amassed humus, concealed infested marshes with deep pools of liquid mud, and over the huge grassy expanses stretching to the horizon, there were only narrow jetties of firm ground, which had to be found to avoid disappearing forever.