The Belly of Paris Read online

  That was her joy this perpetual roaming, which exercised her legs after the long hours sitting on a low chair with her knees folded, making bouquets. Now she could bunch her violets as she walked, wrapping them in her fingers with incredible dexterity, counting out six or eight flowers depending on the season, adding a leaf, wrapping a string around it, then cutting the string with her sharp little teeth. She performed this trick so rapidly that the little bouquets seemed to grow on their own out of the moss on the tray. Along the streets, amid the bustling crowds, her swift fingers sprouted flowers without her even glancing at them. Her face was instead raised defiantly, surveying the shops and the passing people.

  Occasionally she rested in the shelter of a doorway. There she would bring to the rushing gutters, greasy with dishwater, a touch of spring and blue-flowered woods. Her bouquets reflected her bad moods and her soft moments, some shaggy and prickly, wrapped angrily in an untidy paper cone, others peaceful and amorous, smiling from a crisp paper collar. Wherever she passed she left behind a sweet scent.

  Marjolin followed her, mesmerized. Now she smelled of only one thing from head to foot. When he took hold of her and sniffed from her skirt to her bodice, from her hands to her face, he said that she was nothing but a violet, a huge and most lovely violet. He buried his face in her and repeated, “Remember the day we went to Romainville? It's all like that. Especially in your sleeve. Don't ever change work again. You smell too good.”

  And she never did change. It was her final choice. But the two children were growing up. Often she neglected her tray of violets just to run around the neighborhood. The construction of Les Halles was an object of endless adventures. They climbed into the construction site through a crack in the wooden fencing. They climbed down into the excavations of the building foundations. And they scaled the first steel scaffolding to go up.

  They left a little bit of themselves and their games in every hole that was dug and every structure that was raised. The market was built under their little hands. From this sprang an enduring affection for Les Halles, and the market returned their affection. They were intimate with the buildings, old friends whose every bolt they had seen driven in. They had no fear of the monster and patted its enormity with their skinny fists, treating it like a well-behaved child or a friend with whom they were comfortable. And Les Halles seemed to be smiling at these two ragamuffins, who were an ode to footloose freedom, an idyll that sprang from the market's great belly.

  Cadine and Marjolin did not sleep together in the vegetable wagon at Mère Chantemesse's anymore. The old woman, who continued to hear them chattering into the night, made up a separate bed for the boy on the floor in front of the wardrobe. But the next morning she would find the boy back under the old covers. So she sent him to sleep with a neighbor. This made the two children extremely unhappy. During the day, when Mère Chantemesse wasn't there, they lay down fully dressed in each other's arms on the floor as though it were a bed, and there they had fun.

  Later on they started misbehaving, seeking out the dark corners of the bedroom or, more often, hidden in the back of the shop on rue au Lard behind the apple pile and the orange crates. They were free and without shame, like sparrows mating on a rooftop.

  It was in the basement of the poultry pavilion that they were able to sleep together. It was their special tradition, and finding a way to sleep against each other, the old way they had lost, made them feel warm. There by the slaughtering table and the big baskets of feathers, they could stretch out. As soon as night fell, they slipped in and stayed there all evening, warming themselves, happy in the softness of their bed, with down up to their eyes. They dragged their basket away from the gaslight. They were alone with the strong smell of poultry, awakened by the sudden crowing of roosters in the darkness. And they laughed and kissed, filled with an affection that they were not sure how to express.

  Marjolin was very stupid. Cadine beat him, overcome with anger toward him but not knowing why. But with her street-savvy instincts, she was awakening him. Slowly, there in the basket of feathers, they came to know everything. It was a game. The hens and roosters lying next to them did not have a sweeter innocence.

  Even later, they filled Les Halles with their love like insouciant sparrows. They lived like happy young animals, ruled by their instincts, satisfying their appetites in the midst of mountains of food, where they had grown like plants made of flesh and blood. At sixteen Cadine was a girl set free, a dark gypsy of the streets, gluttonous and sensual. At eighteen Marjolin was already showing signs of the fat man he would become, devoid of intelligence and living by instinct. Often at night Cadine would leave her bed to join him in the poultry cellar. The next day she would laugh brazenly at Mère Chantemesse, who would chase her around the room, missing with her broom handle, while Cadine mocked her and claimed she had stayed out “to see if the moon grew horns.”

  As for Marjolin, he lived like a vagabond. The nights that Cadine left him alone he spent in the pavilions with the night watchmen. He slept in sacks or in crates or in any quiet corner he came across. Neither of them ever left Les Halles for more than a few moments. It was their perch, their stable, the colossal manger where they slept, loved, and lived on a huge bed of meat, butter, and vegetables.

  But they always had a special place in their hearts for the big baskets of feathers. They returned there for nights of love. The feathers were completely unsorted. There were long black turkey feathers and goose plumes, white and slick, which tickled their ears when they turned over. They sank into duck down as though it were cotton wool. There were light hen feathers, golden and speckled, which rose in a cloud with each breath they exhaled, looking like a jumble of flies in the sunlight. In the winter they also slept in the purple of pheasants, the ashen gray of larks, in the silky plumage of grouse, quail, and thrushes.

  The feathers seemed to still be alive, warm with their scent, and they brushed the children's lips with the quiver of wings and the warmth of a nest. To them, the feathers felt like the great broad back of an enormous bird on which they rested, which swept them away as they swooned in each other's arms.

  In the morning, Marjolin looked for Cadine, lost at the bottom of the basket, as though buried in new-fallen snow. Disheveled, she climbed up, shook herself, emerging from a cloud. A few feathers always stuck to her bun.

  They found another place for their pleasures, in the wholesale market for butter, eggs, and cheese. Every morning a wall of empty baskets formed there. The two would find a way through this wall to carve out a hiding place. As soon as they had built their room inside, they pulled in a basket to close it off. Then they were at home. They had a house. They could kiss without fear. And their great joke at everyone's expense was that only a thin wall of wicker separated them from the crowds of Les Halles, whose loud voices they heard all around them.

  Often they burst into laughter when they heard some unsuspecting person stop only two steps away from them. They would make peepholes to take a look. When cherries were in season, Cadine would throw the pits at the heads of women who came their way. The terrified women could not figure out where the hail of cherry pits came from.

  They also crept in the shadows of the cellars, knowing all the darkest corners, able to squeeze through the most carefully sealed gates. A favorite game was to penetrate through to the tracks of the underground railroad that was supposed to connect the cellars of the different pavilions one day. Already connections had been built and were ready to hook up. Cadine and Marjolin had found a loose plank of wood by the railway that they could move to slip in and out.

  Once inside, they were cut off from the world, though they could still hear the feet of Paris walking around on the streets overhead. The lines stretched into avenues of deserted galleries, spotted with daylight through the steel grates and lit by gas in the darker parts. They wandered around as though it were their own private castle, certain that no one would disturb them, content in the rumbling silence, dank light, and subterranean privacy, wh
ere their chatty childish love took on the suggestion of melodrama.

  From the neighboring cellars, fenced off by timbers, came all kinds of smells—the dull scent of vegetables, the pungent smell of fish, the overpowering rankness of cheese, the warm breath of poultry.

  Between kisses they were inhaling nourishment, in the dark alcove where they passed hours lying across the rails. At other times, when the night was beautiful, the dawn clear, they would climb over the rooftops by means of ladders in the turrets at the corner of each pavilion. At the top they had a view of sprawling meadows of zinc, with pathways and open spaces, a vast expanse of flowing countryside ruled by them. They toured the square roofs of the market, following the outstretched roofs of the covered streets, climbing up and down the slopes, losing themselves in endless journeys. Then, bored with the foothills, they climbed even higher, ascending the iron ladders where Cadine's skirts fluttered like flags.

  Then they ran along the second tier of roofs beneath the open heavens with nothing above them but the stars. All kinds of sounds rose up from the market, clattering, rumbling, and the distant roar of a storm in the night. At that height the morning breeze swept away the foul smells, the fetid breath of the awakening market. They would kiss each other along the gutters like sparrows pecking. The first rays of the sun set them aglow. Cadine laughed to be so high in the air, and her neck reflected iridescent tints like a dove's while Marjolin bent down to look at the streets still murky and dark, his hands clasping the zinc edge like the feet of a pigeon. When they came back to earth again, exuberant from their trip in the open air, they pretended they were returning from a trip to the country.

  They met Claude Lantier in the tripe market. They had been going there every day, drawn by the taste of blood, the cruelty of street urchins titillated by the sight of severed heads. A rust-colored stream ran through the pavilion. They dipped the tips of their shoes in it and made dams with leaves, creating little bloody puddles. They were fascinated by the arrival of cartloads of offal, which stank even after thorough washing. They watched the unloading of bundles of sheeps' feet, which were piled on the ground like dirty paving stones; huge stiff tongues still bleeding where they had been ripped from the throat; and beef hearts, like huge church bells, unmounted and silent. But what most made them shudder with pleasure was the big baskets dripping blood, filled with sheeps' heads, their greasy horns and black muzzles and strips of wooly skin left hanging from bleeding flesh. They looked at these bloody hampers and imagined guillotines lopping off countless heads and throwing them into baskets.

  They followed the baskets to the bottom of the cellar, watching them glide along the rails laid over the steps and listening to the wheezing cry made by the castors as the wagons went down. Below was exquisite horror. They entered into the scent of death, walked among dark, cloudy puddles that sometimes appeared to be lit by glowing purple eyes. The floor felt sticky on the soles of their shoes as they splashed through, revolted yet entranced by this horrifying muck. The gas jets had low flames like the batting lid of a bloodshot eye. Near the faucets, in the pale light that came through the grates, they came to the chopping blocks. Mesmerized, they watched the butchers, their aprons stiffened with gore, smashing sheeps' heads with mallets. They lingered for hours until all the baskets were empty, held rapt by the crack of bones, until the last tongue was torn out, the last brain knocked loose by blows to the skull. Sometimes a worker walked behind them, hosing down the cellar floor, the water bursting out with the rush of an open floodgate. But although the flood was so powerful that it wore away at the floor, it did not have the power to remove either the stain or the stench of blood.

  Toward evening, between four and five, Cadine and Marjolin knew that they would run into Claude at the wholesale beef lung auction. He was always right there, standing where the tripe vendors parked their carts, amid a mob of men in blue work overalls and white aprons, being shoved and jostled, his ears splitting from voices bellowing out bids. But he never felt the jabs of their elbows; he stood in a peaceful stupor in front of the gigantic lungs hanging from the auction hooks.

  He often told Cadine and Marjolin that this was the most beautiful sight in the world. The lungs were a gentle pink, gradually deepening in color down the length of the organs until the bottom was bordered in a brilliant crimson. Claude compared them to watered satin, unable to find any other way to describe the supple silkiness of the lengths of flesh, bunched in folds like the gathered skirts of dancers. He spoke of gauze and lace that revealed the thigh of a beautiful woman. When a ray of sunlight fell on the huge lungs and gave off a golden halo, Claude looked enraptured, as if he had seen a host of resplendently naked Grecian goddesses or perhaps fair ladies in their castles dressed in brocaded gowns.

  The painter became a close friend of the two children. He was a great admirer of savage beauty and for a long time envisioned a large painting of Cadine and Marjolin as lovers wandering Les Halles amid the vegetables, the seafood, the meat. He would pose them seated on a bed of food, their arms embracing each other, exchanging an idyllic kiss. In this he saw an artistic manifesto, positivism in art,3 a modern art that was completely experimental and materialistic, but also as satire, as a punch in the mouth of the old school. But for almost two years he constantly redid his sketches, never able to strike the exact right note. He must have torn up at least fifteen canvases.

  He judged himself harshly for this failure, but he continued to spend his time with his two models, held by a kind of unrequited love for his unrealized painting. Often when he ran into them, wandering about in the afternoon, he would join them, drifting through the Les Halles neighborhood, killing off time with his hands jammed deep into his pockets, fascinated by the street life around him.

  The three ambled together, dragging their heels and scuffling along the pavement, forcing passersby into the street. They inhaled the odors of Paris, their noses in the air. They could have recognized every corner with their eyes shut, just by the scent of alcohol of the wine merchants, the warm breath of bakeries and pastry makers, or the vague impression of fruit. They took long walks. They loved to cross the round hall of the grain market, a huge, weighty stone cage, past the white piles of sacks of flour, listening to the echo of their footsteps in the silent vault.

  They had their favorite sections of the neighborhood streets, silent now, sad and dark as the edge of a ghost town—rue Babille, rue Sauval, rue des Deux-Ecus, rue de Viarmes, pale with powder from the many flour mills in the neighborhood but full of life at four o'clock, when the grain exchange was open. Usually this would be their point of departure. Slowly they meandered along rue Vauvilliers, stopping to look into cheap restaurants, laughing loudly at the large yellow number on a house with drawn shades. Where the street narrowed to rue Prouvaires, Claude squinted to examine, in front of him at the end of the covered street, beneath the facade of a building as large as a train station, a side door of Saint Eustache with its glass rosette and its two levels of arched windows. He announced, as though making a challenge, that all of medieval and Renaissance architecture could be found in the Les Halles neighborhood. Then, as they walked along the broad new streets rue du Pont-Neuf and rue des Halles, he explained to the two youths about modern life, the excellent pavement, high buildings, and luxurious shops. He expressed a hopeful belief that a new art would be coming soon and bemoaned his fear that he would never master it.

  But Cadine and Marjolin preferred the peaceful, simple life of rue des Bourdonnais, where they could shoot marbles in the street and not worry about getting run over. The young girl nevertheless primped as she passed the wholesale hat and glove stores. At each door, bored young assistant salesmen with pens tucked behind their ears followed her with their eyes. These young people preferred what little of the old Paris was still standing, such as rue de la Poterie and rue de la Lingerie, with their potbellied houses, their shops full of butter, eggs, and cheese, or rue de la Ferronerie and rue de l'Aiguillerie, beautiful old streets from before, with t
heir narrow hidden shops, and especially rue Courtalon, a squalid black alley that ran from place Sainte-Opportune to rue Saint-Denis, peppered along the way with fetid little passageways where they had carried on when they were younger.

  Rue Saint-Denis took them to the candy gourmand zone. They grinned at candied apples, licorice sticks, prunes, and rock candy sold at grocery stores and pharmacies. Their meanderings always ended up in thoughts of treats, with the craving to gobble up with their eyes all of the window displays. For them the neighborhood was like a huge table set out before them, perpetual dessert time, and they longed to dip their fingers in it. They barely wasted a moment visiting the clusters of dilapidated hovels on rue Pirouette, rue de Mondétour, rue de la Petite-Truanderie, and rue de la Grande-Truanderie, where their interest was held only briefly by the snail center, the herbalist, the shacks where they sold tripe or liquors.

  But in the middle of this foul-smelling neighborhood, there was also a soap factory that gave off a sweet perfume. Marjolin always stopped there and waited for someone to go in or come out so that he could catch a whiff of the air coming out the door. Then they returned quickly to rue Pierre-Lescot or rue Rambuteau. Cadine adored salt-cured food and stood admiring bundles of pickled herring, barrels of anchovies and capers, tubs of cornichons and olives with wooden spoons in them. The smell of vinegar tickled her throat deliciously The pungency of rolled cod and smoked salmon, salt pork and ham, the tartness of a basket of lemons, drew the tip of her tongue, moist and hungry, to her lips. But she also enjoyed the sight of cans of sardines, rising like elaborate metal sculptures amid the sacks and boxes.

  Rue Montorgueil and rue Montmartre had even more attractive restaurants and grocery stores with wonderful smells always coming from them, lively displays of poultry and game, preserved foods at the doorways where crates were overflowing with yellow sauerkraut, tangled as old lace. On rue Coquillière they lost themselves in the aroma of truffles. There was a big food store that gave off such a fragrance into the street that Cadine and Marjolin, by closing their eyes, could imagine devouring exquisite things. It would upset Claude, who said it made him feel empty. He would go back to the grain market by way of rue Oblin, examining the lettuces sold in doorways and the kitchen crockery spread out on the pavement, leaving “the two barbarians” on the scent of truffles, the strongest scent in the neighborhood.