The Belly of Paris Page 21

  Then, when the shadows became more lively and they all seemed to have lost their self-control, she felt an irresistible urge to go downstairs and take a look. So she bought her black-currant liqueur at night, claiming that she was feeling under the weather and needed to have a few sips to get out of bed in the morning. The evening that she identified Quenu's giant head crossed by the nervous thrusts of Charvet's skinny arm, she showed up at Monsieur Lebigre's out of breath. Stalling for time, she made Rose rinse out her bottle but was finally about to return to her room when she heard the voice of the charcutier say with naive candor, “No, we won't take it anymore. With one blow we'll drive them all out, that gang of clowns, the deputies and the ministers, at last send them all running.”

  The next day Mademoiselle Saget was at the charcuterie at eight o'clock sharp. There she found Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette, their noses diving into the heating stove as they bought warmed sausages for their lunch. Since the old woman had dragged them into the feud with the Beautiful Norman over the ten sous' worth of dabs, they had befriended Beautiful Lisa again. Now that fishmonger wasn't worth a brick of butter. And they derided the Méhudins as worthless girls who were interested only in men's money. The truth was that Mademoiselle Saget had let Madame Lecœur believe that Florent sometimes shared the Beautiful Norman and her sister with Gavard and that the four of them had nighttime orgies at Baratte's, arranged at the poultry dealer's expense. Madame Lecœur was visibly upset, her eyes yellow and watery.

  That morning it was Madame Quenu the old girl was aiming for. She looked around the counter, and then, in a sweet voice, she murmured, “I saw Monsieur Quenu last night. I must say, they seem to enjoy themselves in that little room. They certainly make noise.”

  Lisa had turned toward the street, listening carefully but trying not to show it. Mademoiselle Saget paused, hoping for a question. Then, lowering her voice, she added, “They had a woman with them. Oh, I don't mean Monsieur Quenu. I'm not saying that, I don't know …”

  “It's Clémence,” La Sarriette interrupted. “A cold fish who puts on airs because she went to boarding school. She lives with a shabby-looking teacher. I've seen them together. They always look like they're turning each other in to the police.”

  “I know, I know,” said the old woman, who knew both Charvet and Clémence well and was only trying to upset Lisa.

  But Lisa did not flinch. She gave the impression that she was watching something tremendously interesting in the market. So the old woman had to use more drastic means. She turned to Madame Lecœur. “I want to tell you that you would be wise to advise your brother-in-law to be more careful. They shout alarming things in that room. Men aren't rational once they start on politics. If they were overheard, it could be very bad for them.”

  “Gavard does what he wants,” sighed Madame Lecœur. “He doesn't worry about it. But I will die of worry if he is ever thrown in prison.” And a spark shot out of her foggy eyes.

  La Sarriette laughed, shaking her head, her little face as fresh as the morning air. “Jules is the one,” she said, “who takes care of anyone who says anything bad about the empire. They should all be thrown in the Seine, because, as he explained it to me, there isn't one good man among them.”

  “Oh,” said Mademoiselle Saget, “it doesn't do any harm if an imprudent remark is overheard by someone like me. I'd sooner have my hand cut off. You know that. For example, last night Monsieur Quenu was saying …”

  She stopped again, detecting a slight movement in Lisa.

  “Monsieur Quenu was saying that the deputies and ministers, the whole gang, ought to be shot.”

  This time Lisa turned abruptly, her face turned white, her hands gripping her apron. “Quenu said that?” she asked curtly.

  “And other things that I don't remember. You understand, it was just me who heard them. No need to worry about it, Madame Quenu. You know that with me nothing goes any further. I'm old enough to understand the harm that could be done if something like that got out. It stays between us.”

  Lisa regained her equilibrium. She took pride in a happy home, and she would not acknowledge the least shadow of a disagreement between herself and her husband. She just shrugged her shoulders and said with a smile, “Silly stories for children.”

  As soon as the three women were out on the sidewalk, they all agreed that Beautiful Lisa had looked peculiar. This whole business with the cousin, the Méhudins, Gavard, Quenu, and their stories, which no one understood, was all going to end badly. Madame Lecœur asked what they did to people who were arrested for their politics. All Mademoiselle Saget knew was that they were never seen again, never. This led La Sarriette to say that they were probably thrown into the Seine, just as Jules had told her. At the charcuterie, during both lunch and dinner, Lisa avoided any reference to the matter. In the evening, when Florent and Quenu started off for Monsieur Lebigre's, she seemed to have lost the hard look in her eyes. It happened that this same evening, the question of the new constitution was being discussed, and it was one in the morning before the debaters managed to leave the little room. The shutters were already in place, and they had to exit by a small door, ducking down one at a time to clear the door frame.

  Quenu returned home with a troubled conscience. He opened the three or four doors on the way to his bedroom as quietly as he could. He tiptoed across the living room with his arms stretched out to avoid bumping into furniture.

  Everyone was asleep. When he reached the bedroom, he was annoyed to find that Lisa had left the candle burning. It burned in silence, with a tall, sullen flame. As Quenu slipped off his shoes and placed them on a corner of the rug, the clock struck half past one with such a clear ring that he turned in panic, almost afraid to move, and saw, glaring with a look of reproach, the gilded Gutenberg standing there with his finger on a book.

  He could see only Lisa's back. Her head was buried in a pillow. But he could sense that she was not asleep, and her eyes were probably wide open, staring at the wall. Her broad back, chubby at the shoulders, was pale and smooth. He exhaled and remained motionless, aware of the accusation for which he had no response.

  Unnerved by the back that seemed to accuse him with the somber face of a judge, he slipped under the covers, blew out the candle, and lay motionless. He lay at the edge of the bed to avoid touching his wife. He could have sworn that she was awake. Then he slipped into sleep, in despair over her silence and not even daring to say “good night.” He was pinned helplessly against this massive back, which blocked his apologies from crossing to the other side of the bed.

  He slept late the next morning. When he woke up, he was spread across the middle of the bed, the eiderdown comforter pulled up to his chin. He saw Lisa sitting at the desk, putting papers in order. In the deep sleep brought on by the previous night's debauch, he had not stirred when she got up. He mustered the courage to speak from the depth of the alcove. “Well! Why didn't you wake me up? What are you doing?”

  “I'm organizing these drawers,” she said calmly in her ordinary voice.

  He felt relieved. But Lisa added, “You never know what will happen. If the police were to come …”

  “The police? Why the police?”

  “Why not, since you have become political.”

  He sat straight up in bed, completely thrown by this harsh, unforeseen attack.

  “I've become political? All right, I've become political. But it doesn't have anything to do with the police. I'm not in any trouble.”

  “Oh no,” Lisa answered, shrugging her shoulders. “You just talk about having everyone shot.”

  “Me! Me!”

  “And you shout this at a wine shop … Mademoiselle Saget heard you. Now the whole neighborhood knows you're a red.”

  He lay back in the bed. He was not yet awake. Lisa's words echoed back from the door of the bedroom, as though he were already hearing the stamping of policemen's boots. He studied her, enclosed in her corset, her hair done, her usual circumspect self, and was even more thrown
by finding her so carefully composed for such a dramatic moment.

  “You know,” she said, “I leave you free to do what you want.” She went on arranging her papers and, after a pause, continued, “I don't want to wear the pants, as the saying goes. You're the master of your household. You can put us in danger, damage our credit, ruin us … As for me, I only look after Pauline's interests.”

  He started to protest, but she cut him off with a hand gesture. “I'm not saying a thing. I'm not starting an argument or even asking for an explanation. If only you had asked my advice, if we had talked about it together. It's wrong to think that women don't understand politics … Do you want to know what I think, what my politics are?”

  She stood up and walked from the bed to the window, removing specks of dust with her finger from the polished mahogany armoire and the dressing table. “It's the politics of respectable people. I support the government when my business is going well, when I can earn my living peacefully, and when I can sleep undisturbed by gunshots. That was a fine time in '48, wasn't it? Uncle Gradelle, a good man, showed us his books for that period. He lost more than six thousand francs … Now that we have the empire, everything's going well, business is prospering. You can't say that it's not. So what do you want? What more will you have after you have shot everyone?”

  She stood with her hands folded in front of the night table opposite Quenu, who had disappeared under the quilt. He tried to explain what his colleagues wanted, but he stumbled over the political and social systems of Charvet and Florent. He spoke of little-understood principles, the advent of democracy, and the regeneration of societies, jumbling it all up in such a strange way that Lisa shrugged her shoulders without understanding. Finally he extricated himself by attacking the empire as a regime of debauchery, scandal, and armed robbery.

  “You see,” he said, remembering a phrase used by Logre, “we're the victims of a gang of pirates who plunder, rape, and murder all of France … They have to go!”

  Lisa still only shrugged.

  “Is that all you have to say?” Lisa responded in her cold-blooded splendor. “What does that have to do with me, those things you're talking about? And even if they were true, what next? Am I urging you to be dishonest? Do I tell you not to pay your bills or to cheat the customers, and hoard ill-gotten money? You're going to make me mad! We're good people, and we don't plunder or murder anyone. That's enough. I don't care what others do. They can be as bad as they want.”

  She was spectacular and triumphant. She started pacing the room again, puffing out her chest. “To please those who have nothing, are we supposed to give up earning a living? Of course I take advantage of every opportunity, and I support a government that's good for business. If they commit acts of evil, I don't want to know. As for me, I know that I don't commit them, and I have nothing to fear from finger-pointing in the neighborhood. It's just too stupid to be charging at windmills. Remember during the elections Gavard said that the emperor's candidate had gone into bankruptcy and was involved in all kinds of unsavory affairs? That might have been true, I'm not saying it wasn't. But still you voted for him, and you were right to do so because that wasn't the point. You weren't being asked to go into business with him or lend him money but to show the government that you were happy to see the charcuterie prospering.”

  Meanwhile Quenu remembered another phrase, this time from Charvet, who had declared that “The bloated bourgeoisie, the fattened shopkeepers who support government by gluttony, should be the first to be taken to the wall.” It was thanks to them, thanks to their selfish worship of the belly, that despotism had seized hold of the nation. He was trying to get to the end of the statement when Lisa cut him off, full of indignation.

  “Enough of this. My conscience is not troubled. I don't owe one sou, I'm not involved in any swindles, I buy and sell good merchandise, I don't charge any more than my neighbors. What you say may apply to our cousins, the Saccards. They pretend not to even know that I'm in Paris, but I have more pride than they have, and I don't care about all their millions. They say that Saccard is involved in destroying other businesses, that he steals from everyone. That wouldn't surprise me, he was already headed that way. He loves money so much he wants to roll around in it, throw it out the window like an idiot. I agree with criticizing people like that, who build up fortunes that are too large. That I understand. Personally, if you want to know, I have little regard for Saccard. But we who live quietly, working fifteen years to make a comfortable living, never getting involved in politics, wanting only to raise our daughter in peace and have our business prosper—you must be joking. We're honest people.”

  She came and sat on the edge of the bed. Quenu was shaken.

  “Listen to me carefully,” she said in a deeper voice. “You don't want, I imagine, to have your shop raided, your cellar cleaned out, your money stolen? If those men at Monsieur Lebigre's won, do you think that the next day you would be warmly snuggled in your bed the way you are now? And when you went down to the kitchen, do you think you would merrily start making your galantines like you will in a few minutes? No, you wouldn't, would you? So why do you talk about overthrowing the government that protects you and lets you prosper? You have a wife and a daughter. You should put them first. You would be to blame if you risked their well-being. It's only the people without hearth and home, with nothing to lose, who want the shooting to start. You don't want to be anyone's clown, do you? Then stay home, you big dope, sleep well, eat well, make money, keep a pure conscience, and let France work out her own problems, even if she is troubled by the empire. France does not need you!”

  Then she laughed a lovely laugh, and Quenu was completely convinced. She was right, after all, and she was a beautiful woman, sitting on the edge of the bed, even so early in the morning, so clean and fresh and crisp in her white linen. While listening to her, his eyes fell upon their portraits on either side of the fireplace. Of course they were honest people. They had an aura of respectability, dressed in black and framed in gold. The bedroom too was the room of notable people. The lacy antimacassars gave the chairs an air of respectability. The rug, the curtains, the porcelain vases with country scenes bespoke their hard work and their taste for a good life. He wriggled deeper under the quilt, where he warmed himself as though taking a hot bath. It seemed to him that he had barely escaped losing all of this at Monsieur Lebigre's—his huge bed, his cozy bedroom, his charcuterie, to which his thoughts now returned with a sense of remorse. And from Lisa, from all the lovely things around her, arose a suffocating—but pleasant—sense of well-being.

  “What a fool,” said his wife, seeing that she had won the argument. “Look at the path you were taking. But you see, you could have gone down that road only by trampling us, Pauline and me. Now, don't worry about judging the government. In the first place, all governments are the same. If you don't support one, you end up supporting another. It's inescapable. The main thing, when you grow old, is to spend your earnings in peace, with the knowledge that you came by the money honestly.”

  Quenu nodded in approval. He wanted to explain himself. “It was Gavard …”

  But she became serious and abruptly interrupted him. “No, it isn't Gavard. I know who it is. And he would do well to look after his own safety before compromising the security of others.”

  “Are you talking about Florent?” Quenu timidly asked after a long pause.

  She did not respond right away. She got up and turned to her desk, as though trying to control herself. Then in a clear voice she said, “Yes, Florent. You know how patient I am. I wouldn't make trouble between you and your brother for anything in the world. Family ties are sacred. But I have come to the end of my rope. Since he came here, things have steadily gotten worse. Besides … no, I won't say any more. I better not.”

  Silence fell again. Then, while her husband stared at the ceiling in embarrassment, she continued more aggressively, “The truth is that he seems not to understand how much we've done for him. We've put ours
elves out for him. We gave him Augustine's bedroom, and the poor girl sleeps in a stuffy closet without a complaint. We feed him morning and night and look after his every need. But no, he just takes it all as his due. He earns money, but no one knows what he does with it—or rather, everyone knows all too well.”

  “He's entitled to a share of the inheritance,” Quenu hazarded. It was painful for him to hear his brother attacked.

  Lisa suddenly turned straight as a pole as though jolted, and her anger left. “You're right, the inheritance. There's the account in that drawer. He didn't want it. You were there, don't you remember? That alone proves that he is both aimless and brainless. If he had anything going on in his head, he would have done something with that money by now. If it were up to me, I would not still have it, I would gladly be rid of it. I've told him so twice, but he refuses to listen to me. You ought to talk to him about it.”

  Quenu responded with a grunt. Lisa, believing she had done what she had to, did not press him further.

  “No, he's not like other men,” she started up again. “He's not a comfortable person to have around. I wouldn't have said this if you hadn't brought it up. I don't concern myself about his conduct even though it causes the entire neighborhood to gossip about us. The fact that he eats and sleeps here doesn't bother me. I can accept it. What I cannot tolerate is him dragging us into his politics. If he tries to lead you astray again or in any way put us in danger, I'm warning you, I'll get rid of him. I'm warning you, you understand!”

  Florent had been denounced. It was with great effort that she restrained herself, holding back her rancor. Florent and his ways irritated her every instinct. He wounded her, scared her, and made her unhappy.