The Belly of Paris Read online

  Florent tried his best to explain to her that his sister-in-law had offered him the money and was keeping it for whenever he needed it. He just didn't want it. He explained it in minute detail, trying to show her the honesty of the Quenus.

  “Wake up, wake up!” she mocked him with the words of a popular song. “I know all about them and their honesty. The fatso folds it up in the wardrobe every morning so that it won't get dirty. You make me sad, you poor thing. At least you could have the pleasure of strutting around like a rooster. But you think like a five-year-old. She'll put the money in your pocket one day and take it out the next. The trick is as easy to play as that. Do you want me to go ask for what's owed you? That would be amusing. I'd get my hands on the cash or I'd smash that place up, I promise you that.”

  “No, no, it's not your place,” Florent said, not without fear, quickly adding, “I'll have to see. I may be needing some money soon.”

  She doubted it but shook it off, muttering something about him being too soft. Her tireless obsession was to use Florent against the Quenu-Gradelles, and she tried every weapon in her arsonal, including mockery, anger, and tenderness. Then she had another idea: after she married Florent she would be the one to go to Lisa and slap her face if she did not pay up the inheritance. Lying awake in bed at night, she would picture the whole thing: walking straight into the charcuterie, sitting down in the middle of the shop at the busiest time of day, and making a terrible scene. She lovingly nurtured this plan and was so smitten by it that she would have gotten married for no other reason than to claim the forty-two thousand five hundred francs left by old Gradelle.

  Mère Méhudin was so exasperated by the rejection of Monsieur Lebigre that she went around the neighborhood screaming that her daughter was crazy and that the “big beanpole” must have slipped her some drugs. When she heard the story about Cayenne, she became furious, called him a convict and a murderer, and said it was his evil ways that kept him so thin. She was the one who spread the worst versions of the story through the neighborhood. But at home she contented herself with merely grumbling and locking the silver drawer when Florent showed up.

  One day, after a quarrel with her older daughter, she shouted, “We can't go on like this anymore. It's that horrible man who's turned you against me, isn't it. Don't push me too far, because I'll go denounce him to the prefecture.”

  “You'll denounce him,” repeated the Norman with her fists trembling and her body shaking. “Don't you dare do such a horrible thing. Oh, if you weren't my mother …”

  Claire, who witnessed the argument, started to laugh nervously, as though it tore at her throat. After some time she became more serious and more emotional, turning white, her eyes bloodshot.

  “You'll do what?” she asked. “Are you going to beat her? And then will you beat me, your own sister? That's how this will end. I'm getting out of this house. I'll go to the prefecture and save Mama the trip.”

  And while the Norman was choked with rage and stammered threats, Claire added, “You won't have to bother beating me. I'm going to jump off the bridge into the water on my way back.”

  Large tears rolled down her face, and she rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door. Mère Méhudin never said another word about denouncing Florent. But Muche reported to his mother that he had seen her talking to Monsieur Lebigre in quiet spots all over the neighborhood.

  The rivalry between the Beautiful Norman and Beautiful Lisa took on a quieter but more disturbing character. In the afternoons, when the pink-striped gray canvas awning was pulled down in front of the charcuterie, the fishmonger would call out that the fatso was scared and hiding. The store also had a window blind that provoked the Norman when it was down. It featured a luncheon of a hunting party in a forest clearing with men in black and their bare-shouldered ladies sitting on the yellow grass, eating a red pâté almost as large as the people.

  Of course, Beautiful Lisa wasn't really scared. As soon as the sun passed, she raised the awning as she knitted and looked out peacefully from her counter across the square in front of Les Halles, planted with plane trees and crawling with good-for-nothings sitting beneath trellises of leaves, poking at the gratings that protected the tree roots, while along the benches porters were smoking their pipes. At the ends of the pavement were two pillars plastered with square theater posters of green and yellow and blue and red, as colorful as a harlequin's costume. She had a perfect view of the Beautiful Norman, though all the time she appeared to be watching the traffic.

  Sometimes she would lean forward, pretending to follow the omnibus from the Bastille to place Wagram as it went up to Saint Eustache. But actually she was leaning to get a better view of the fishmonger, who avenged the blinds with large sheets of gray paper with the excuse that it protected the merchandise from summer heat. But Beautiful Lisa had the advantage. She remained very calm as the day of reckoning drew near, whereas the other, despite her attempt to maintain a grand, lofty air, invariably gave in to shouting something crude that she instantly regretted. The Norman always wanted to appear correct. Nothing upset her more than hearing her rival praised for good manners. Mère Méhudin had noticed that her daughter had this weak spot, and she too started to use it against her.

  “I saw Madame Quenu chatting by her doorway,” she would say in the evening. “It's incredible how well that woman takes care of herself. And so clean—she looks like a real lady. It's the counter, you see. A good counter is the mark of a real lady, that is what makes her distinguished.”

  Hidden in this was a reference to Monsieur Lebigre's proposals. The Beautiful Norman did not answer but sat for a moment lost in thought. She imagined herself at the other end of rue Pirouette behind the wine merchant's counter, making a bookend with Beautiful Lisa. This was the first wavering of her affections for Florent.

  In truth, Florent was becoming very hard to defend. The entire neighborhood was turning against him. It seemed as though every one of them had a reason to want to be rid of him. In Les Halles there were those who swore he was a paid police informant. Others swore they had seen him in the butter cellars trying to make holes in the wire netting for throwing in lighted matches. The slander had built to a torrent of accusations.

  There were ever more sources for it without anyone knowing where it had all originated. The fish market was the last to revolt because the fish women liked his gentle ways. For a time they defended him, but then, under pressure from the women in the butter and fruit markets, they too gave in. After that the fight was on—the thin man against enormous bellies and ponderous bosoms. Once again he was lost among the skirts, stuffed bodices nearly bursting and heaving extravagantly all around his pointy shoulders. But Florent noticed nothing and marched straight on toward his plan.

  Now, all hours of the day on most any corner, the black hat of Mademoiselle Saget could be seen amid the turmoil. Her pale little face seemed to be multiplying. She had sworn a terrible revenge on the group that met in Monsieur Lebigre's glass-paneled room. She accused them of spreading the story that she ate leftovers. In truth it was Gavard, who one evening had told them how that old goat who spied on them ate leftover garbage that the Bonapartists threw out. This made Clémence ill, and Robine quickly gulped down some beer to cleanse his mouth. But Gavard repeated his quip, “The Tuileries have belched on it.”

  He said these words with a grimace of disgust. Those slices of meat taken from the emperor's plate were unspeakable filth, the vomit of politics, the spoiled remains of all the corrupt excess of the regime. After that, as far as the people at Monsieur Lebigre's were concerned, no one would touch Mademoiselle Saget except with a pair of tweezers; she was living dung, a vile animal feeding on rot that even a dog wouldn't touch. Clémence and Gavard peddled the story around Les Halles so thoroughly that the old woman's relationship with the shopkeepers was very much damaged. When she tried to haggle over prices or stood there chatting without buying, she was sent off to the leftover stand. This cut off her sources of information. Some days she
had no idea what was going on. She wept with rage. And it was on such an occasion that she said bluntly to La Sarriette and Madame Lecœur, “You don't have to push me any further. I'm going to take care of your friend Gavard.”

  The other two were a little taken aback, but they didn't argue. The next day Mademoiselle Saget seemed to have calmed down and seemed to have again warmed to that poor Monsieur Gavard, who got such bad advice and was speeding toward ruin.

  Gavard was certainly putting himself in a difficult position. Ever since the conspiracy had begun to ripen, he had been walking around with the revolver that had frightened his concierge, Madame Léonce. It was a menacingly large revolver that he had bought from the best firearms dealer in Paris, the transaction carried out in an aura of mystery. The next day, he had showed it off to all the women in the poultry market like a little boy with a forbidden novel hidden in his desk. He let the gun stick out of a pocket and then, with a wink, drew attention to it. Then he grew reticent and would only give glimpses, playing the game of a man enjoying the pretense of being afraid.

  This pistol gave him tremendous importance. He was counted as one of the truly dangerous men in town. Sometimes in the back of his shop he would agree to take it out of his pocket and show it to two or three women. He would ask the women to stand in front of him so he would be hidden by their skirts. Then he would cock it, turn it over in his hand, and point it at a goose or turkey hanging on display. He enjoyed frightening the women but then would always comfort them by saying that it was not loaded. But he always carried cartridges with him, in a box that he opened with great care. Once they had held the cartridges, it was time to put everything back in the arsenal. And with his arms crossed he triumphantly held court for hours.

  “With a pistol like that, a man is a man,” he would say with a braggart's bravado. “Now the police are nothing to me. Sunday, I tried it out with a friend on the plaine Saint-Denis. You know, you can't let everybody know you have one of these gadgets. But I tell you, my little darlings, we shot at a tree, and every time, whack, we hit it. You'll see, you'll see, it's just a matter of time until you hear everyone talking about Anatole.”

  Anatole was his name for the revolver. He did such a thorough job that by the end of the week everyone in the pavilion knew of his pistol and the cartridges. His friendship with Florent was also thought to be suspicious. He was too rich and too fat to have the same resentments as Florent. But he lost his standing with thinking people and even managed to frighten the timid. All of this, of course, thrilled him.

  “It's unwise to carry firearms,” Mademoiselle Saget said. “That habit will lead to trouble for him.”

  At Monsieur Lebigre's, Gavard was in his glory Since Florent had stopped eating with the Quenus, he almost lived in that paneled room. He ate lunch and dinner there and came at odd hours to lock himself away behind its doors. It was almost his own room, a study where he kept his old coats and books and papers. Monsieur Lebigre accepted Florent moving in. He removed one of the two tables to put in its place an upholstered bench where, if he wanted to, Florent could sleep the night. When Florent hesitated, the landlord begged him not to worry about it and to consider the house at his disposal. Logre also displayed a warm friendship for Florent, making himself the trusty lieutenant. At all hours he would engage him in discussions of “the matter,” giving him the names of any new members and informing him of steps that were being taken. He had assumed responsibility for organizing the entire operation. He was the one who made contact with people, organizing the various districts, preparing each stitch in the vast net into which Paris would fall at a given signal. Florent remained in charge, the heart of the plot.

  The hunchback tried so hard that he seemed to sweat blood with no appreciable result. Though he swore that he knew two or three supporters who could be counted on in each district, groups like the one that gathered at Monsieur Lebigre's, so far he had produced no precise information. He simply threw out names without any real information and untiringly bragged of tossing himself into the thick of the popular enthusiasm. The closest thing to concrete information he had to report was the number of hands he had shaken—so-and-so, whom he knew well, had shaken his hand heartily and said that he “would be there.” At Gros-Caillou, a big tall fellow who would make an excellent section chief had nearly yanked his arm off. On rue Popincourt, he had been embraced by a group of workers. It sounded as though a hundred thousand men could easily be raised overnight.

  When Logre arrived looking weary and fell across the upholstered bench in the little room, Florent took notes on his reports and assumed he would deliver on his promises. The plot was coming to life in Florent's pocket. The notes became reality, the facts indisputable, and since the entire plan was built on the notes and ideas, it was now simply a matter of waiting for the right moment. Logre, with his impassioned gestures, said the whole thing would roll along as though it were on wheels.

  During this time, Florent was very content. He felt so uplifted by the intensity of his ideas for dispensing justice after all that he had suffered, he felt as though his feet didn't touch the ground when he walked. He had the faith of a child and the confidence of a hero. If Logre had reported that the statue on the Colonne de Juillet10 had climbed down from the pillar to lead them, he would have believed it. In the evenings at Lebigre's, eloquence flowed from him. He spoke of the upcoming battle as a festival to which all good people were invited. But while he spoke, while Gavard fiddled with his revolver, Charvet grew even more bitter and shrugged his shoulders as he scoffed. His rival's ascent to the leadership of the plot infuriated Charvet and made him lose interest in politics. One evening when he arrived early and was alone with only Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, he took the opportunity to unload his feelings.

  “That boy” he said, “cannot manage two political ideas at the same time. He would be more suited to teach writing at a girls' boarding school. It would be a disaster if he succeeded because we would have to look after all the damned workers with whom he locked arms in his foolish social daydreams. Don't you see, that's how we will lose. There's no room for whiners, humanitarian poets, people who are going to throw their arms around each other at the slightest scratch … But he won't succeed. He'll end up in a coffin, that's all.”

  Logre and the wine merchant said nothing. They let Charvet go on.

  “He would have been in his coffin a long time ago if he were as dangerous as he thinks he is,” Charvet continued. “His pathetic pretenses about escaping from Cayenne. I'm sure the police knew all about it the day he arrived back in Paris. He was left alone because they couldn't care less.”

  Logre shuddered slightly.

  “They've been trailing me now for fifteen years,” he added proudly. “But I'm not going to scream about it to the rooftops. I'm not going to get involved in this fracas of his. I won't play the fool. He may have half a dozen informants trailing him, ready to grab him by the collar the second the prefecture wants him.”

  “Oh, no! What an idea,” said Monsieur Lebigre, who normally didn't speak at all. He was a little pale and cast a glance at Logre, who was rubbing his hump against the glass partition.

  “This is speculation,” the hunchback muttered.

  “Call it speculation if you like,” answered the tutor. “I know how the police operate. In any case, the police aren't going to get me this time either. Let the others do what they want. But if you listen to me, especially you, Monsieur Lebigre, you won't want to put your business at risk. Because they'll shut you down.”

  Logre could not help but smile. Several times Charvet had spoken to them in this way. He must have thought he could separate the two of them from Florent by scaring them. He was always surprised by their calm and confidence. Nevertheless, he still came regularly in the evening with Clémence. The big brunette was no longer a clerk in the fish market. Monsieur Manoury had fired her.

  “Those agents are all bastards,” grumbled Logre.

  Clémence leaned her chair back against
the partition, rolling a cigarette in her long, thin fingers, and answered in her crisp voice, “It's a fair fight. We don't have the same politics, you see. That Manoury, who brings in moneybags as fat as he is, licks the emperor's boots. If I had a business, I would keep him on my staff twenty-four hours a day.”

  The truth was, it was her offbeat sense of humor that had caused the trouble. One day she had thought it would be funny to write on the sales boards, right next to the dabs and skates and mackerel, the names of the best-known ladies and gentlemen of the court. The fishy nicknames given to highly placed dignitaries—countesses and barons for sale at thirty sous apiece—had deeply shocked Monsieur Manoury. Gavard was still laughing about it.

  “Don't worry about it,” he said, patting Clémence on the arm. “You're a real man.”

  Clémence had found a new way of mixing grog. First she filled the glass with hot water. Then, after adding sugar, she poured in the rum, one drop at a time, on a floating slice of lemon, so that the rum did not mix with the water. Then she lit it and watched it burn with great earnestness, slowly smoking, her face lit green by the licks of the flame. But it was an expensive drink, and she'd had to drop it when she lost her job. Charvet would comment with biting laughter that she wasn't rich anymore.

  She earned a little money giving French lessons to a young woman at the head of rue Miromesnil who was secretly polishing her education and hiding it from her maid. So this evening Clémence ordered nothing more than a beer, which she drank, accepting her fate philosophically.

  Evenings in the glassed-in room were not as tumultuous as they once had been. Charvet, pale and in an icy rage, had fits of silence when they ignored him to listen to his rival. The thought that he had once ruled there, that before the other man came he had been a despot lording over the group, had planted in his heart the cancer of a deposed king. If he continued going there, it was only his nostalgia for this crowded little corner where he recalled lovely hours of tyranny over Robine and Gavard. It was a time when he owned not only Logre's hunchback but the meaty arms of Alexandre and the somber face of Lacaille. With one word he could bend them, stuff his opinion down their throats, and hold his scepter above their shoulders. But nowadays it was too painful, and he stopped talking entirely, stiffening his back, whistling a casual tune, and considering it beneath him to bother refuting the stupidities he was hearing. What most upset him was the way he had been pushed away little by little, so gradually that he had failed to notice. He could not understand how Florent had dominated. He would often say, after listening to his soft voice and seeing his sad demeanor during the endless hours he was speaking, “Why, that boy is a priest. He's only lacking the skullcap.”