The Belly of Paris Read online

  As for actually mobilizing these forces, that would be simple enough. Once the ranks had been instructed completely, you would only have to take advantage of the first public outcry. Since they would probably have nothing more than a handful of hunting guns, they would first have to overrun military posts and disarm fire stations, the guard, and regular soldiers, with as little combat as possible by inviting them to join the cause of the people. Then they would march straight to the Corps Législatif and from there to the Hôtel de Ville.

  Every night Florent returned to this plan, as though it were the script for a play that somehow relieved his frazzled nerves. It was so far only scribbling and doodles on scraps of paper, clearly showing the floundering of the author, at once scientific and childish. After Lisa read through the notes, only half understanding them, she sat there shaking, not daring to touch the papers, as though they might explode in her hands like a loaded weapon.

  One final note shocked her more than all the rest. It was a half sheet of paper on which he had drawn the different insignias to distinguish the leaders from the lieutenants, and alongside she found the banners for various companies. Captions written in pencil specified the colors for each of the twenty sectors. The insignia of the leaders were red sashes, the lieutenants were to wear armbands, also red. This made Lisa able to visualize the riot. She could see the men, decked out in red, charging past her charcuterie, firing bullets into the mirrors and the marble, stealing sausages and andouilles from her window. These treacherous plots of her brother-in-law were an attack on her, an assault on her happiness.

  She closed the drawer and looked around the room, telling herself that she was the one who had given this man a home, that he slept on her sheets and used her furniture. She was particularly irritated by the thought that he had concealed his infernal, abominable scheme in this little white wood table, an innocent, tattered table that she had used at Uncle Gradelle's house before her marriage.

  She stood there, trying to decide what to do. First of all, it would be useless to discuss this with Quenu. It occurred to her to confront Florent, but she was afraid that he would just commit the crime further away, where he could still endanger them, just to be vindictive. She calmed down and decided that the best course of action would be to keep an eye on him, and at the first sign of trouble she would return to these papers. In any event, she already had enough evidence to send him back to prison.

  Back at the shop, she found Augustine in a state. Little Pauline had been missing for at least a half hour. When Lisa questioned her, she could only say, “I don't know, Madame. She was here just a minute ago on the sidewalk, playing with a little boy. I was watching them. Then I sliced some ham for a gentleman, and they were gone.”

  “I'll bet it was Muche!” shouted Lisa. “That horrible child!”

  And it was, in fact, Muche. Pauline, who was excited because she had just gotten a new dress with blue stripes, had wanted to show it off. She had stood very rigid in front of the shop, behaving perfectly, her face pulled into the earnest expression of a six-year-old lady who does not want to get dirty. Her short, starched dress spread out like a ballerina's skirts, revealing her smooth white stockings and shiny little blue boots. The dress had a low-cut apron with embroidered edging around the shoulders, out of which came her chubby, sweet, bare pink arms. She wore turquoise studs in her ears, a small gold cross around her neck, and a blue velvet ribbon in her well-coiffed hair, and she combined the plump, fleshy good looks of her mother with the fashionable style of a new doll.

  Muche had spotted her from the market. He was releasing small dead fish into the stream, which the water washed away. He followed them along the pavement, insisting that they were swimming. But the sight of Pauline, so clean and pretty, made him cross the street, hatless, with a frayed shirt, his pants drooping down, and looking entirely like a seven-year-old street waif. His mother had forbidden him ever to play with “that fat beast stuffed by her parents until she practically explodes.” He circled for an instant, then came nearer, wanting to touch the pretty blue-striped dress. Pauline, flattered at first, put on a prudish face and stepped backward, saying in an angry tone, “Leave me alone … Mama told me not to.”

  This made Muche laugh. He was very enterprising and selfconfident. “What a dummy you are!” he said. “Who cares what your mama said? Let's play at pushing each other. Do you want to?”

  He was considering a villainous plot to get Pauline dirty. But when she saw him about to shove her in the back, she stepped backward as though she were going to go back into the shop. Then he softened and hitched up his pants like a man of the world.

  “Don't be silly it's just for a laugh. You know, you look very nice like that. Is that little cross your mama's?”

  She said it was her own.

  He quietly led her to the corner of rue Pirouette. He touched her skirt and was surprised at how oddly stiff it felt, and that greatly amused the little boy. All the time she had been posing outside, she had been upset that no one was paying any attention. But despite the flattery of Muche's attentions, she didn't want to leave the sidewalk.

  “Dumb fatso!” shouted Muche, reverting to his crude ways. “I'm going to sit you in a basket of poop, Madame Big Butt.”

  She started to panic. He had grabbed her by the hand, but seeing his mistake he spoke sweetly again as he fished around in his pocket for something. “I have a sou,” he said.

  Pauline was calmed by the sight of the sou, which he held in front of her with his fingertips, so hypnotically that she followed the coin into the street without noticing. Clearly, good fortune was coming little Muche's way.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  She did not answer immediately because she didn't know. She liked so many things. He suggested a whole lineup of scrumptious treats—licorice, molasses, gumdrops, powdered sugar. The little girl had to think carefully a minute about powdered sugar, the way you stuck your fingers in it and licked. It was very nice. But she remained quite stern until she decided, “No, I like cornets.”

  So he took her by the arm and led her away. She did not resist. They crossed rue Rambuteau and followed the wide sidewalk of Les Halles until they reached a little grocery store on rue de la Cossonnerie that was renowned for its cornets. Cornets are thin paper cones into which grocers pour the debris from their window display; broken dragées, marrons glacés that have fallen to pieces3—the dubious scraps from the candy jars.

  Muche did this well. He let Pauline choose her own cornet, one with blue paper, and he did not grab it from her when paying with his sou. Outside she emptied the assortment of crumbs into her two apron pockets, which were so small that they were filled quickly. She crunched slowly, crumb by crumb, elated, as she wet her finger to pick up the fine powder, which made the crumbs melt. Two brown stains appeared on her apron pockets. Muche laughed wickedly. He held the girl by the waist, rumpling her dress as he swung her around the corner of rue Pierre-Lescot over to square des Innocents. “Now you'll play huh?” he said. “You like what's in your pockets. See, I wasn't going to harm you, you big silly.”

  And he stuck his fingers in her pockets too. They moved into the square, which was probably exactly the place where little Muche had wanted to lure his conquest all along. He showed her around the square as though it were his own private property, and actually it was a favorite afternoon haunt. Pauline had never wandered so far away and probably would have been in tears were it not for the sugar in her pockets.

  The fountain squirted and poured down in the midst of lawns trimmed with circular flower beds. Jean Goujon's nymphs,4 so white against the gray of the stone, tilted their urns and gave grace to the seedy air of rue Saint-Denis. The children walked around watching the water empty into the six basins. They were drawn to the lawn and, no doubt, thought about scampering across the center one and into the holly and rhododendron beds that ran along the square's railings.

  Now little Muche, who had already managed to crumple the back of her
dress, said with his sly laugh, “Let's play throwing sand at each other.”

  Pauline had been completely seduced. They closed their eyes and dove into the sand, which went into her low-cut bodice and made its way down into her stockings and boots. Muche was reveling in the way the white apron was becoming yellow. But apparently she was still too clean for his taste.

  “Do you want to plant some trees?” he suddenly asked. “I can make a beautiful garden.”

  “Really! A garden!” said Pauline, struck with admiration.

  Since the groundskeeper was nowhere in sight, he had her dig holes in one of the flower beds. She was on her knees, in the middle of the soft soil, spread-eagle, facedown, her sweet pink arms buried to the elbows. For his part, he looked for broken branches to plant as the trees in the garden in the holes Pauline made. The only problem was that he was never satisfied with the depth of the holes and he played the angry boss, scolding her as an incompetent worker.

  When she stood up, she was black from head to foot, she had soil in her hair, and her face was smudged. She looked funny, with her arms looking like a coal miner's, and Muche clapped his hands, ordering, “Now we have to water them, or else they won't grow.”

  This was their crowning moment. They left the square, scooping up water from the stream in their cupped hands, and ran back to water their sticks. Along the way, Pauline, who was too fat and didn't know how to run, let the water drip from her hands down her skirt, so that by the time she had done six trips, she looked as though she had been bathing in the stream. Muche thought that she was wonderful, now that she was all dirty. He had her sit next to him, under the rhododendron in the garden they had planted. He told her that it was already starting to grow. He held her hand and called her his little wife.

  “You're not sorry you came, are you? It's a lot better than just standing on the sidewalk being bored. You see, I know all kinds of games to play in the streets. You'll have to come do this again—but don't say anything to your mama about it. Don't mess it up. If you do say anything, when I go by your place, I'll pull your hair.”

  Pauline just kept saying yes. As a crowning touch to his chivalry, he filled the two pockets of her apron with soil. Then he squeezed her hard with that street boy's impulse to be mean. But there was no more sugar, the game was over, and she was beginning to get worried. When he pinched her, she started to cry and said that she wanted to go. This provoked Muche, bringing out his outrageous side, and he threatened not to take her back to her parents. The poor little thing, completely terrified, sighed like the fair maiden at the mercy of her seducer somewhere in an unknown inn. No doubt he would have started beating her to shut her up if a shrill voice, that of Mademoiselle Saget, had not shouted out, “Well, God forgive me if it isn't Pauline! Leave her alone, you nasty little boy!”

  The elderly woman took Pauline by the hand, expressing shock at the condition of her clothes. Muche was not in the least bit intimidated. He followed them, laughing in his sly way about his handiwork, saying repeatedly that Pauline had chosen to come with him and it had been her decision to get down on the ground.

  Mademoiselle Saget was a regular at the square des Innocents. She spent at least an hour there every afternoon keeping up on the latest gossip on the locals. The square had semicircles of benches end to end on either side. Poor people from the narrow sweltering streets of the neighborhood packed tightly onto the benches, frail, shriveled old women in threadbare bonnets, young ones in camisoles with badly fastened skirts, bareheaded and exhausted and already sagging from poverty, and a few men also, tidy grandfathers, forts with soiled jackets, and suspicious-looking men in black hats, while the footpaths were jammed with children pulling toy carts with wheels missing, filling pails with sand, screaming and biting—a filthy, snot-nosed crowd of kids, swarming in the sun like vermin.

  Mademoiselle Saget was so thin that she could always manage to wriggle into a spot on a bench. She listened in on what was being said and then struck up a conversation with the person next to her, some young and sickly wife of a worker mending her linen, taking socks and handkerchiefs as full of holes as a sieve from a basket tied with a string. Mademoiselle Saget even knew some of the women.

  In the midst of the unbearable shrieking from the children and the constant rumbling of traffic from behind rue Saint-Denis, the women babbled without stopping long enough to take a breath, with tales of storekeepers, grocers, bakers, butchers—a complete listing of the district—tales soured and warped by a lack of credit and the hungry longings of the poor. It was among these needy people that she learned of the horrors that slipped out of sleazy boardinghouses and emerged from the dark caves of the con cierges, the muck and garbage that piqued her curiosity and appetite like hot pepper on the tongue.

  Facing Les Halles, the square was in front of her, with the facades of three buildings broken up by windows into which she tried to penetrate with her stare. She seemed to stretch taller and glide along each story, right up to the round flaring eyes of the attic windows. She gawked at the curtains. She could develop an entire drama from a head that appeared between two shutters. Over time she had come to know all the stories of the tenants of every house just by sitting outside, watching. Restaurant Baratte was especially interesting to her, with its wine shop and gilded fretwork awning forming a terrace that overflowed with greenery from a few pots of flowers. It was a narrow four-story house daubed and speckled with color. She liked the pale blue base with yellow trim, the fluted pillar with a shell on top. It all looked like a cardboard temple on the facade of a dilapidated old building, topped off by colored tin edging along the roof. Behind the red-striped flexible shutters she could imagine pleasant little lunches and fine dinners. She even convinced herself that this was where Florent and Gavard went to carouse with those two Méhudin floozies and imagined the abominations that took place during the dessert course.

  Meanwhile Pauline cried even more loudly as Mademoiselle Saget took her hand. The elderly woman was about to lead her away through the gate to the square when she suddenly had a different idea. She sat her down at the end of a bench and tried to get her to stop crying.

  “Come on, Pauline, stop this crying or the police will come get you. I will take you home. You know me, don't you? I'm a good friend, aren't I? Now, come on. Let me see a little smile.”

  But the tears were choking her, and she wanted to go. Calmly Mademoiselle Saget let her cry, waiting for her to finish. The poor girl was shivering. Her skirt and stockings were soaked. Her entire face was becoming muddy as she wiped away her tears with dirty fists. After the girl calmed down, the old woman said to her in a syrupy tone, “You have a good mama, don't you? She loves you very much?”

  “Yes,” said Pauline, her heart still heavy.

  “And Father isn't wicked either. He doesn't beat you, does he? What do they talk about at night when you're going to sleep?”

  “Oh, I don't know. I'm warm in my bed.”

  “Do they talk about your cousin Florent?”

  “I don't know.”

  Mademoiselle Saget adopted a stern bearing and pretended to get up as though she would walk away. “You're a liar. You know you shouldn't lie. If you lie to me, I'll leave you here and Muche will come back and pinch you.”

  Muche, who had been hanging around the bench, interrupted at this point and said in a clear, masculine voice, “Aw, she's too stupid to know anything. But I know that my good friend Florent looked pretty worked up when Mama smiled and said he could kiss her if he wanted to.”

  Pauline, afraid of being abandoned, had started crying again.

  “Be quiet, just shut up, you little brat,” Mademoiselle Saget cursed, starting to shake the little girl. “I'm not going away. I'll buy you some barley sugar,5 hmm? A little barley sugar? … So you don't like your cousin Florent, do you?”

  “No. Mama says that he's not respectable.”

  “Aha! You see, your mama did say something.”

  “I had Mouton in bed with me one night, I
sleep with Mouton. And she told Papa, ‘Your brother only escaped from the penal colony to drag us all back there.’”

  Mademoiselle Saget let out a slight squeal. She stood up shaking from head to foot. A light beam had at last shown through the shadows of her mind. She took Pauline's hand again and hustled her off to the charcuterie without saying a word, her lips squeezed into a secretive smile, her eyes shining with intense happiness. At the corner of rue Pirouette, Muche, who had been prancing alongside, enjoying the sight of the little girl running in her muddy stockings, wisely vanished.

  Lisa was in a state of extreme anxiety. When she saw her daughter coming, looking like a dishrag she was so perplexed that she spun her around to look at her from every side and didn't even want to hit her.

  “It was that Muche,” said Mademoiselle Saget with a malevolent tone. “I've brought her back to you. I found them under a tree in the square. I don't know what they were up to. You'd better take her home and look her over. That slut's son is capable of anything.”

  Lisa could find nothing to say. She could not decide where to grab her child, she was so disgusted by her muddy little boots, dirty stockings, torn skirts, and smudged face and hands. Blue velvet, little ear studs, crucifix, all were buried under a layer of dirt. But what really drove Lisa over the top was the pockets full of soil. She bent down and emptied them without regard for the pink-and-white tile floor. Still she was speechless and dragged Pauline away saying only, “Come on, you mess.”