The Belly of Paris Read online

  A crowd had awakened, and people were starting to fill up the sidewalk, scrambling among the vegetables, sometimes stopping, at times chattering, occasionally shouting. A loud voice could be heard in the distance screaming, “Chicory!”

  The gates of the vegetable pavilion had just been opened, and the retailers who had stalls there, white caps on their heads, shawls knotted over their black coats, and skirts pinned up to protect them from getting dirty, began gathering their day's provisions in roomy baskets that stood on the floor. These baskets were seen darting in and out between the road and the pavilion, bumping into the heads of bystanders in the thick crowds, the bystanders expressing their displeasure with coarse complaints that were lost in the growing clamor of increasingly hoarse voices.

  They could spend a quarter of an hour fighting over one sou. Florent was surprised at the calm of the marketers with their plaid clothing and tanned faces in the middle of the long-winded haggling of the market.

  Behind him on the sidewalk of the rue Rambuteau, fruit was being sold. Hampers and smaller baskets were lined up, covered with canvas or straw giving off a strong odor of overripe mirabelle plums. After listening for some time to a soft, slow voice, Florent had to turn his head and look. He saw a charming woman, small and dark, sitting on the ground and bargaining.

  “Oh, come on, Marcel,” she said. “You can take a hundred sous, won't you?” She was speaking to a man who kept his coat closely wrapped around him and did not answer. After about five very long minutes the woman went back on the attack. “Come on, Marcel, one hundred sous for that basket there and four francs for the other one. That'll make nine francs I owe you.”

  More silence.

  “All right, what's your price?”

  “Ten francs, as you well know because I already told you. And what have you done with your Jules this morning, La Sarriette?” The young woman started laughing as she grabbed a fistful of small change from her pocket.

  “Oh,” she said, “Jules is having his beauty rest this morning. He claims that men are not made for work.”

  She paid for the two baskets and carried them into the newly opened fruit pavilion. Les Halles was still wrapped in artfully lit dankness, with thousands of stripes from jalousies beneath the awnings of the long covered street already heavily trafficked with pedestrians, while the distant pavilions were still deserted. At the pointe Saint-Eustache the bakers and wine merchants were busy taking down their shutters; their red shops, gaslights aglow, were brilliant against the grayness that still covered the other buildings. Florent looked at a boulangerie4 on the left-hand side of rue Montorgueil, all full and golden with a fresh batch of bread, and he thought he could smell the fragrance of warm bread. It was 4:30 in the morning.

  Meanwhile, Madame François had sold all her produce. When Lacaille reappeared with his bag, only a few carrot bunches were left.

  “How about a sou for that?” he asked.

  “I knew I'd be seeing you again,” she answered quietly. “Go ahead. Take the rest. There are seventeen bunches.”

  “So that makes seventeen sous.”

  “No. Thirty-four.”

  They settled on twenty-five. Madame François was in a hurry to leave. Once Lacaille had wandered off with the carrots in his bag she said to Florent, “See that, he was watching me. The old bastard drifts around the market. Sometimes he waits till the last second to buy four sous' worth of goods. Oh these Parisians! They'll bicker over a few sous and then empty their pockets drinking at the wine shop.”

  When Madame François spoke of Paris, her voice was full of irony and disdain. She talked about it as though it were a distant city so ridiculous and contemptible that she condescended to set foot there only in the dark of night.

  “Now I can get out of here,” she said, sitting down next to Florent on a neighbor's vegetable pile.

  Florent bowed his head. He had just stolen something. Just as Lacaille had left, Florent had spied a piece of carrot lying on the ground, picked it up, and was grasping it tightly in his right hand. Behind him, celery stalks and parsley bunches gave off a smell that was nauseating him.

  “I'm going to get out of here,” Madame François repeated. This stranger touched her, and her senses told her that he was suffering, sitting there on the sidewalk motionless. She offered again to help him, but he again refused with an even more biting pride. He even stood up and remained on his feet to prove that he had regained his strength. Then, as Madame François turned away, he stuffed the carrot into his mouth. But despite his terrible longing to sink his teeth into it, he was forced to take it out of his mouth again, because she started examining his face again. She started to question him further with a kindhearted curiosity. Florent simply answered with nods and head shakes. Then, slowly, he began to eat the carrot.

  She was finally about to leave when a powerful voice right behind her exclaimed, “Good morning, Madame François!”

  The voice came from a skinny young man with big bones and a huge head. His face was bearded, with a delicate nose and sparkling clear eyes. He wore a rusty, beat-up black felt hat and was buttoned up in an enormous overcoat, once a soft chestnut but now discolored with long greenish streaks from the rain. Somewhat bent and shaking with nervous energy that seemed chronic, he stood in a pair of heavy laced shoes, the shortness of his pant legs revealing his blue hose.

  “Oh, hello, Monsieur Claude,” she responded cheerfully. “You know, I was expecting you on Monday, and when you didn't show up I took care of your canvas for you, hanging it on a nail in my room.”

  “Oh, Madame François, you're too kind. I'll finish that study of mine one of these days. I wasn't able to make it Monday. Does your big plum tree still have all its leaves?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I wondered because I wanted it for a corner of my painting. It would be perfect by the side of the chicken coop. I've been thinking about it all week … Ah, what beautiful vegetables this morning! I came down very early this morning, looking for the rays of a beautiful sunrise landing on the cabbages.” He demonstrated with a sweep of his arm that took in the full length of the sidewalk.

  Madame François answered, “Well, I'm leaving. Good-bye. See you soon, Monsieur Claude.” As she was leaving she introduced Florent to the young painter. “This gentleman seems to have come from far away. He's no longer at home in your pigsty called Paris. Maybe you could fill him in a bit.”

  At last she was off, happy to have left the two of them together. Claude studied Florent with interest; his gaunt, diffident face seemed to Claude to be an original. Madame François's introduction was all he needed, and with the familiarity of a street hustler experienced in chance encounters, he calmly said, “I think I'll join you. Where are you going?”

  Florent was still awkward. He did not open up so quickly. On the other hand, he had had a question on his lips ever since his arrival. Deciding to risk it, though he feared a disagreeable response, he asked, “Does the rue Pirouette still exist?”

  “It certainly does,” the painter answered. “That street is a curious corner of old Paris. It bends and turns like a dancer, and the houses have huge bellies like fat women … I did a pretty good etching of it. I'll show it to you when you come by my place … Is that where you're going?”

  Florent, heartened by the news that the rue Pirouette still existed, admitted that it was not his destination and that in fact, he had no place to go. But his distrust was reawakened by Claude's insistence. “Who cares?” said Claude. “Let's go to rue Pirouette anyway. It's the most wonderful color at night … Let's go, it's just a short hop.”

  Florent had to follow him. They walked side by side, like two old friends, stepping over baskets and piles of vegetables. On the pavement at rue Rambuteau, there were mounds of gigantic cauliflowers, stacked with surprising orderliness like cannonballs. The delicate white cauliflower flesh opened like enormous roses, surrounded by large green leaves, so that the mounds resembled bridal bouquets on display on a flower stand.
Claude stopped and emitted little whimpers of appreciation.

  Then, in front of them, was the rue Pirouette, where he pointed to the houses, one by one, with stories and information about them. One gas lamp burned by itself in a corner. The peeling houses crammed together, their overhangs protruding above the ground floor, as the painter had said, like the bellies of fat women, while the gables above them tilted back as though leaning on their neighbors for support. Three or four others, placed farther back at the edge of the shadows, leaned forward as if about to fall on their faces. The gas lamp lit one house, making it appear very white, newly whitewashed, but still resembling a decrepit old woman freshly powdered and made up to look young. The other houses stretched into the darkness, cracked and green-streaked from the rain in the gutters, in such a hodgepodge of different colors and attitudes that it made Claude laugh.

  Florent had stopped at rue de Mondétour, in front of the next to last house on the left. All three stories, each with two shutterless windows neatly covered by white curtains, appeared to be asleep. On the top floor, a faint light could be seen through the curtain moving back and forth.

  The shop beneath the overhang seemed to have a tremendous effect on Florent. It was starting to open, a shop with prepared greens. At the far end, shiny bowls could be seen, while on the display shelf in front, round domes and conical towers of spinach and chicory were placed in bowls, each notched in the back to leave space for flat serving spatulas, showing only their white metal handles.

  Florent felt as though he had been struck motionless, riveted to the pavement by this sight. He did not recognize the shop. Reading the merchant's name on a red sign, Godebœuf, he felt even more dismayed. With his arms hanging limp at his sides, he studied the cooked spinach with the air of a cursed man.

  From the opened window above, a little old woman leaned out and looked up at the sky and then at the market in the distance.

  “Ah, Mademoiselle Saget is an early bird,” said Claude, looking up. And he added, turning to Florent, “I once had an aunt living in that house. That place is a nest of gossip. Ah, now the Méhudins are starting to stir. There's a light on the second floor.”

  Florent was about to ask Claude a question, but there was something unnerving about him in his baggy, faded overcoat. Florent followed him without saying a word while Claude went on about the Méhudins. They were fishmongers; the elder woman was superb. The younger one, who sold freshwater fish, resembled a virgin in a Murillo painting, this blonde among all the carp and eels. Then he started asserting, with growing anger, that Murillo was a third-rate painter. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street and asked, “So where are you going?”

  “At the moment, I'm not going anywhere,” Florent said wearily. “We can go wherever you like.”

  As they were leaving rue Pirouette, a voice called out to Claude from the wine shop on the corner. Claude entered, with Florent behind him. They had still taken off the shutters on only one side. The gas burned in the shop's still-sleepy air. A forgotten dish towel and cards from a game the night before were scattered on the table, while a breeze from the wide-open door blew freshness into the stale warm smell of wine. The owner, Monsieur Lebigre, was serving a customer in his long-sleeved waistcoat, with his sloppy beard and fat, even features still pale with sleep. Men with deepset eyes were standing in groups drinking at the counter, coughing, spitting, and trying to wake themselves up with white wine and eau-de-vie.5 Florent recognized Lacaille, whose sack was now bursting with vegetables. He was on his third round with a friend, who was telling a story at great length about the acquisition of a basket of potatoes. Then, after emptying his glass, he went to chat with Monsieur Lebigre in a small glassed-in office in the back where the gas had not yet been lit.

  “What'll you have?” Claude asked Florent.

  When they had entered, Claude had shaken hands with the man who had called out to him. He was a fort,6 a handsome young man of no more than twenty-two, clean-shaven except for a trim mustache, with a hearty demeanor, wearing a broad-brimmed chalk-covered hat and a wool scarf with floppy laces for tightening his blue work shirt. Claude called him Alexandre, clapped him on the arm, and demanded to know when they were going back to Charentonneau. Then they reminisced about the great boat trip they had made together on the Marne. That evening they had eaten rabbit.

  “So what are you drinking?” Claude asked Florent again.

  Florent stared at the counter, feeling embarrassed. At the end were brass-ringed pots of punch and mulled wine, simmering over a gas burner's short blue-and-pink jets of flame. Finally, he admitted that he would love to have a hot drink. Monsieur Lebigre served them three glasses of punch. Near the pots was a basket of little butter rolls that had just been brought in and were still steaming. But the others didn't take any, so Florent just drank his glass of punch. He felt it falling into his stomach like a drizzle of molten lead.

  Alexandre paid.

  “He's a good guy, Alexandre,” said Claude after the two of them were back on the rue Rambuteau. “He's a lot of fun when we go to the country. He does amazing feats of strength. What a build, the oaf. I've seen him stripped. If he would only pose for me nude in the open air … Now, if you'd like, we could do a little tour through the market.”

  Florent followed passively. The glow of light at the end of rue Rambuteau announced daybreak. The great voice of Les Halles grumbled in the distance; the occasional peal of bells7 from some far-off pavilion competed with the rising bedlam. Claude and Florent turned into one of the covered streets between the fish and poultry pavilions. Florent looked up into the vaulted roof overhead, at the glistening wooden beams in between the black iron struts. As they turned onto the main thoroughfare, he imagined being in some unknown town with its various neighborhoods and suburbs, its boulevards and roads, plazas and intersections, all suddenly sheltered from a rainy day by a huge roof dropped into place as though by the whimsy of some giant.

  The shadows that lingered in the crevices of the roof multiplied the forest of pillars and expanded the delicate ribbing, the fretwork balconies, the slatted windows. And there, high above the town, nestled in the shadows, was an immense metal jungle, with stems and vines and tangled branches covering this little world that resembled the foliage of an age-old forest.

  Some sections of the market were still sleeping behind iron gates. The butter and poultry stands had long rows of trellised stalls that the gas lighting showed to be deserted. The fish pavilion was opening, and women were scurrying among the white stone slabs, which were littered with baskets and forgotten rags. The noise and activity were slowly picking up over at the vegetables, the fruit, and the flowers. Little by little morning was coming, from the working-class neighborhood, where the cabbage was piled at four in the morning, to the lazy, privileged zone, which began hanging its chickens and pheasants at eight.

  The main covered passageways teemed with life. All along the sidewalks there were many produce sellers, including small-scale gardeners from the outskirts of Paris showing their little harvests of vegetable bunches and fruit bundles from the previous night. In the midst of the crowd's incessant comings and goings, carts pulled in under the vaulted roof, the clop of the horses' hooves slowing down. Two of the wagons blocked the intersection, and in order to get around them Florent had to press against some shabby bundles that looked like coal sacks and were so heavy that they bowed the axle of the wagon carrying them. They were damp and gave off a scent of seaweed, and huge black mussels were spilling out of the split end of one sack.

  At every step they took, Claude and Florent were forced to stop for something. The seafood was arriving, and, one after another, railroad carts pulled up with tall wooden cages loaded with the bins and hampers that had been shipped by train from the coast. Trying to get out of the way of the fish carts, which were coming with increasing urgency, Claude and Florent practically dived under the wheels of the wagons filled with butter, eggs, and cheese, huge yellow chariots drawn by four-horse teams
and decorated with colored lanterns. Workers were bringing down cases of eggs and baskets of cheeses and butter, which they carried into the auction room, where men in caps made entries in notebooks by gaslight. Claude was enthralled by the scene, lost in admiration for the lighting on a group in overalls unloading a cart. Finally they moved on.

  Still traveling down the main route, they walked in a heady fragrance that surrounded them and seemed to follow them. They were in the midst of the cut flower market. On the ground, to the right and left, women sat with square baskets in front of them filled with bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and daisies. Some bunches were darker, like bloodstains; others brightened into delicate, silvery grays. A lighted candle near one of the baskets gave the surrounding blackness a sudden burst of color, the bright plumage of the daisies, the bloodred of the dahlias, the rich blueness of violets, the brilliant tints of roses. And nothing was more like spring than the tenderness of this perfume on the pavement after the biting breath of seafood and the pungent scent of butter and cheese.

  The two men went on their way meandering among the flowers. Out of curiosity they stopped in front of the women selling bunches of ferns and vine leaves, neatly tied-up bundles with twenty-five pieces in each. Then they went down a nearly deserted alley, where their footsteps echoed as though they were in a church. There they found a small cart the size of a wheelbarrow with an undersized donkey hitched to it, which was probably bored because when he saw them, he began braying so loudly that his groans echoed in the great vaulted roofs of Les Halles, which seemed to shake from the sound. The horses answered with neighing, then a stamping and scraping of hooves, a distant fracas that swelled, rolled, and then faded.