The Belly of Paris Read online

  Florent generally arrived just as the Méhudins were finishing dinner. Muche would leap on him, and Florent would take a seat while the boy was still clinging to him and chattering away. Once the oilcloth table covering had been cleaned, they began the lesson at a corner of the table. The Beautiful Norman welcomed him. She would knit or mend linen, seated at the table working by the same light as the lesson, and she would often stop working to listen to it, as she found it intriguing. She soon began to feel a warm appreciation for this clever man, who could speak to her child with the gentleness of a woman and showed the patience of an angel in repeating the same material over and over again. She no longer considered him unattractive and even felt a little jealous of Beautiful Lisa. She would pull her chair even closer and study Florent with an embarrassing smile.

  “Mama, you're bumping my elbow and I can't write,” Muche would say irritably. “There's the blot you made me do. Can't you move back?”

  More and more, the Beautiful Norman said mean things about Beautiful Lisa. She claimed that she lied about her age, that she laced her corset so tight that she couldn't breathe, that if she appeared in the morning so perfectly put together without a hair out of place, it must be because she looked horrendous before she got dressed. Then the Norman would raise her arms to show that she was not wearing a corset. She would smile as she puffed out her breasts, round and alive, under a thin, badly fastened camisole. Florent would listen and even laugh, thinking what funny creatures women were. How the rivalry between the Beautiful Norman and Beautiful Lisa entertained him.

  Muche, meanwhile, had finished his page of writing. Florent, who had good penmanship, wrote large, round letters on pieces of paper. He chose long words that took an entire line, with a notable preference for such words as “tyrannically,” “liberticide,” “unconstitutional,” and “revolutionary.” He sometimes had the boy copy such sentences as “The day of justice will come” or “The suffering of the just man is the condemnation of the oppressor” or “When the hour strikes, the guilty will fall.” In preparing these writing samples, he was simply following the ideas that were swirling in his mind. He forgot about Muche, the Beautiful Norman, everything around him. Muche would have copied The Social Contract12 had he been told to copy it. He filled pages, line after line, with “tyrannically” and “unconstitutional,” carefully tracing each letter.

  The whole time Florent was there, old Madame Méhudin would circle the table, fidgeting. She continued to nurse a fearsome grudge against him. According to her, it was ridiculous to make a child work at night at an hour when he should be in bed. She almost certainly would have thrown the big beanpole out the door if the Beautiful Norman, after a tempestuous fight, had not threatened to move to another home if she were not allowed to choose her guests. After that, the same fight started up every night.

  “Say what you want,” said the old woman, “he has shifty eyes. Besides, you can't trust skinny people. A skinny man will do just about anything. I've never met a good one yet. His stomach looks like it slipped into his butt, that's for sure, because he's flat as a board. And he's ugly. I may be past sixty-five, but I still wouldn't want him by my night table.”

  She said all this because she could see what was happening. Then she started praising Monsieur Lebigre, who in fact showed a great interest in the Beautiful Norman. Aside from the huge dowry that he imagined she would bring, he thought the young woman would be fantastic for his business. The old woman never missed a chance to praise him. At least he wasn't skinny as a rail. He was strong as a Turk. She even praised his calves, which, actually, were a bit fat.

  But the Norman only shrugged and said sourly, “I don't care about his calves. I don't need anybody's calves. I do as I like.”

  If the old woman pushed too hard, her daughter would say, “It's none of your business, and besides, it isn't true. And if it were true, I wouldn't need your permission, so just leave me alone.” With that she would go to her room and slam the door. In the household she had achieved a certain measure of power that she was now abusing. At night, if the old woman imagined she heard an odd noise, she would get up and walk barefoot to her daughter's door and listen, trying to hear if Florent was in there with her.

  But Florent had an even more vehement enemy in the Méhudin household. As soon as he arrived, Claire would get up without saying a word, take a candle, and go to her room on the other side of the landing. She could be heard locking her door in a fit of icy anger. One evening when her sister invited the teacher to dinner, Claire fixed her own food on the landing and ate it in her room. Often she closed herself in so adroitly that she wasn't seen for a week. She usually remained soft and easygoing in appearance, but sometimes she turned to iron, her eyes glaring under her pale, wild locks like the stare of a distrustful animal. Mère Méhudin, thinking she would be free to express her feelings about Florent in Claire's presence, only enraged her when she talked about him. So the exasperated old woman would tell people how she would have liked to have gone off by herself but was afraid that her daughters would devour each other without her supervision.

  One evening as he was leaving, Florent passed in front of Claire's door, which was wide open. She was looking at him, which made his face turn bright red. The girl's hostility saddened him, and it was only his shyness in front of women that kept him from demanding an explanation. On this particular evening, however, he would probably have walked into her room if he hadn't noticed Mademoiselle Saget's small white face peeking over the banister of the floor above. So he continued on his way out and had not taken ten steps when Claire's door slammed shut behind him so violently that it rattled the entire staircase. It was then that Mademoiselle Saget reached the conclusion that Madame Quenu's cousin slept with both Méhudin girls.

  But Florent barely thought about those two beautiful women. His usual attitude toward women was that it was a field at which he was not very good. He had wasted his virility on dreaming. Yes, he had come to feel a real friendship for the Beautiful Norman, who had a good heart when she wasn't putting on airs. But that was as far as he would ever go. In the evening, when she pulled her chair to the lamp as though to lean across Muche's page of writing, he did feel a certain uneasy sensation from her warm, powerful body next to his.

  She seemed colossal, weighty, troubling, with her great breasts. He withdrew his pointy elbows and thin shoulders, fearing that he would inadvertently stab this flesh. His thin bones felt anguish in contact with her fat bosom. He lowered his head and shrank even thinner, incapacitated by the strong scent that rose from her. When her camisole was open a bit, he thought he saw the breath of health and life rise up between her two white breasts and pass over his face, still warm as if mingling for an instant with the stench of Les Halles on a hot July evening.

  It was an insistent perfume, clinging to smooth, silken skin, a sea sweat running from her fine breasts, her regal arms and supple waist, bringing a strong, distinct dimension to her womanly scent. She had tried all kinds of aromatic oils, but as soon as the freshness of bathing wore off, her blood carried to her very fingertips the bland scent of salmon, the violet musk of smelts, and the pungency of herring and skates. The swing of her skirts released this mist. She walked as though through an evaporation of slimy seaweed. She was, with the body of a goddess, with her fantastic paleness and purity, like a fine ancient marble statue rolled in the sea and brought back in a sardine net. Florent suffered from it, but he did not desire it. His senses had been revolted by afternoons in the fish market. He found it upsetting, too salty, too bitter with a beauty that was too grand and smelled too strong.

  Mademoiselle Saget, on the other hand, swore by all the gods that he was the Beautiful Norman's lover. She was still holding a grudge against her over ten sous' worth of dabs. Since that clash, she had become extremely friendly with Beautiful Lisa, hoping to become acquainted with what she termed “the game plan” of the Quenus. Since Florent continued to avoid her, she felt like a body without a soul, as she put it, withou
t letting on about the cause of this grief. A young girl desperately chasing after a boy could not have been more upset than this horrid old woman feeling the secret of the cousin slipping from her fingers. She spied on the cousin, followed him, mentally undressed him, looked him up and down, furious because her overstimulated curiosity could not be sated.

  Since he had begun visiting the Méhudins, she no longer moved from the stairs. Then she realized that Beautiful Lisa was very annoyed at the way Florent was always visiting “those women.” So she made a point of dropping by the charcuterie every morning with news from rue Pirouette. In cold weather she would walk in, shriveled by frost, and warm her hands on the heating stove. Thawing her fingers, standing by the counter but buying nothing, she would say, in her reedy voice, “He was at their place again yesterday. He barely seems to leave anymore. Oh, and the Norman called him ‘my dear’ when they were on the stairway.”

  She would embellish in order to linger at the heater a little longer. The morning after the evening when she had heard Claire slam her door on Florent, she managed to spend a good half hour stretching out her story. What a disgrace, the cousin hopping from one bed to another!

  “I saw him,” she said. “When he's had enough of the Norman, he tiptoes over to the little blonde. Yesterday he was leaving the blonde, no doubt going back to the big brunette, when he spotted me and changed course. It goes on all night. And the old lady sleeps in a closet between the two daughters' rooms.”

  Lisa showed her contempt. She said very little, and Mademoiselle Saget was encouraged by the silence. But she listened closely. When the details were too sordid, she would mutter, “No, no, it's not acceptable. I can't believe that there are women like that.”

  Then Mademoiselle Saget would answer, “My God, did you think all women were as decent as you?” Then she would feign great understanding for Florent. Men chase every skirt that passes their way. And maybe he's not even married? She slipped the question out without appearing to question. But Lisa refused to be judgmental about her cousin. She just shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips. After Mademoiselle Saget had left, she would look with disdain at the spot on the metal heater where the old lady had left a mark with her grubby little hands.

  “Augustine!” she shouted. “Bring a rag to wipe off the heater. It's disgusting.”

  The rivalry between Beautiful Lisa and the Beautiful Norman intensified. The Beautiful Norman fantasized that she had snatched away a lover from her enemy, and Beautiful Lisa was furious that this lowlife, by luring Florent to her home, would end up compromising the standing of her entire family. Each pursued the conflict in a manner suiting her own temperament. One was calm and contemptuous, with the demeanor of a woman who hikes up her skirts to avoid soiling the hem. The other swaggered, flouncing down the street with the defiance of a duelist, daring someone to challenge her. The slightest skirmish between them would be the topic of the fish market gossip for an entire day. When the Beautiful Norman sighted Beautiful Lisa in the charcuterie doorway, she would go out of her way to walk by her, brushing her apron against her; then the two would glare at each other like two swords crossing with the flash and thrust of sharpened steel.

  For her part, when Beautiful Lisa went to the fish market she always approached the Beautiful Norman's stall wearing an expression of disgust. Then she would make a major purchase, a turbot or a salmon, at the neighboring stall, spreading her money out on the marble slab, an act that she noticed greatly pained the “lowlife,” who would stop laughing. Listening to the two rivals, one would have had the impression that they sold nothing but rotten fish and tainted sausages.

  The principal combat took place with the Beautiful Norman at her stall and Beautiful Lisa at her counter, glaring ferociously at each other across rue Rambuteau. They were enthroned in their great white aprons, coiffed and bejeweled. Battle commenced at dawn.

  “Look at that, the cow has stood up!” shouted the Beautiful Norman. “She's encased as tight as her sausages, that woman. Oh my, she's wearing the same collar she wore on Saturday. And she's still wearing that poplin dress.”

  At the same moment, on the other side of the street, Beautiful Lisa was telling her shopgirl, “Just look at that creature over there, staring at us. The kind of life she leads is beginning to show on her. See those earrings she's wearing. I think they're those big pears, aren't they? What a shame, such jewels on a girl like that.”

  “Just think what they must have cost,” answered Augustine, playing along.

  Any time one of them had a new piece of jewelry it was a victory and the other nearly died of chagrin. Every morning they would count and analyze each other's customers and become irritable if it seemed that “The big thing across the way” was doing a better business.

  Next came lunchtime espionage. Each knew the other's eating habits in detail, down to digestion. In the afternoon, the one seated among prepared meats and the other among her fish, they posed, taking great pains to be devastating in their beauty. The Beautiful Norman embroidered, choosing the most delicate and demanding needlework, which exasperated Beautiful Lisa.

  “She'd be better off,” Lisa said, “mending her son's socks so he wouldn't go barefoot. Just look at that fine lady with her red hands stinking of fish.”

  Lisa, on the other hand, usually knit.

  “She's still on the same sock,” the other one commented. “She eats so much that she dozes off while working. I feel sorry for her poor cuckolded husband if he's waiting for those socks to warm his feet.”

  Into the evening the two remained implacable, each noting the other's customers with keen eyes down to the most minute details, while other women said they could see none of this at such a distance. Mademoiselle Saget could not help but admire Madame Quenu's extraordinary eyesight when she noted a scratch on the left cheek of the fish vendor one day. “With eyes like those,” she said, “you could see through a door.” Often night fell without a decisive victor. Sometimes one was clearly down, but the next day she would get her revenge. Neighbors started waging bets, some putting their money on Beautiful Lisa and others on the Beautiful Norman.

  They ended up forbidding their children to speak to each other. Pauline and Muche had been good friends despite Pauline's stiff petticoats and perfect-little-lady demeanor and Muche's foul mouth and tendency to act like a wagon driver. When they played together on the sidewalk by the fish market, Pauline always pretended to be a handcart. But one day when Muche went to Lisa's house looking for his playmate, with no idea that there was a problem, Lisa sent him away, saying that he was a street tramp.

  “You never know what children brought up like that might do,” she said. “He's such a bad example that I worry what his influence might be on my child.”

  The child was seven years old.

  Mademoiselle Saget, who happened to be there, said, “You're absolutely right. He's always running around with little girls in the neighborhood. Once he was found in a basement with the coal seller's daughter.”

  When Muche came home crying, the Beautiful Norman was furious. She wanted to run over to the Quenu-Gradelles' and wreck their shop immediately. Instead she gave Muche a beating. “If you ever go back there,” she shouted in a rage, “you'll answer to me for it!”

  But the real victim of these two women was Florent, who in truth was the one who had set off this war. They wouldn't even be fighting if it wasn't for him. Ever since he had arrived, things had gone badly. He was the one who had compromised, angered, and disturbed this world, which until then had been sleepily peaceful. When he spent too much time with the Quenus, the Beautiful Norman wanted to claw him. Simply because of her rivalry with Lisa, she had to win Florent over. Meanwhile, Beautiful Lisa presented a judicial bearing when confronted with her brother-in-law's bad conduct, allowing his relationship with the Méhudins to become a neighborhood scandal. She was extremely annoyed, though she tried not to let her jealousy show. It was an odd jealousy, considering her disapproval of Florent and the appropria
te coldness toward him that decency required. Yet she became exasperated every time he left the charcuterie to go to rue Pirouette, and she imagined the forbidden pleasures that he tasted there.

  Dinner at the Quenus' became less cordial. The prim dining room took on an acidic character. Florent could sense reproach, a kind of condemnation in the white oak setting, the too-polished lamp, the too-new carpet. He could barely bring himself to eat for fear of dropping bread crumbs. Still he had a bright-eyed simplicity that prevented him from seeing clearly. He still told everyone how sweet Lisa was, and in fact, on the surface, she did still appear to treat him with great kindness.

  One day she said to him with a smile as though she were about to tell a joke, “It's funny, you've been eating fairly well but you don't get any fatter. The food isn't doing you much good.”

  Quenu laughed loudly and patted his brother's stomach, claiming that all the food in the shop could pass through Florent's stomach and not leave enough fat to cover a small coin. But in Lisa's inquiry the distrust and dislike of thin people could be heard, the same sentiment that Mère Méhudin expressed more harshly. There also was a subtle allusion to the wayward life she imagined Florent to be leading. But she never referred directly to the Beautiful Norman in front of him. Quenu alluded to her in a joke one evening but Lisa's response was so icy that the good-natured husband dropped the subject. They lingered at the table after dessert. Florent, who had noticed his sister-in-law's displeasure when he left too soon after dinner, tried to start a conversation. He was right next to her. He did not find her warm and alive with a scent of the sea, tasty and spicy. Instead she smelled of fat—the blandness of good meat. There was no thrill to her tight-fitted bodice, which showed not a wrinkle. Contact with the firm presence of Lisa threw him even more than the tender approaches of the Beautiful Norman. Gavard once told him, in strict confidence, that Madame Quenu was most certainly a beautiful woman but he liked them “less armored than that.”