The Belly of Paris Page 7

  Florent was gripped by a fever. The bland smell of the butchers and the pungent smell of the tripe agitated him. He got out of the covered passageway, preferring the open air of rue du Pont-Neuf.

  He was in misery. Shuddering suddenly in the morning air, his teeth chattering, he was afraid that he was about to faint. He looked for but could not find even a corner of a bench to sit on, a place to sleep, even if it meant being awakened by the sergents de ville. About to pass out, he propped himself against a tree, his eyes closed, and a humming sound filled his ears. The raw carrot he had eaten, barely chewing it, was now wrenching his stomach, while the punch befuddled his head. He was drunk with illness, exhaustion, and hunger. Once again a flame burned in his chest, and he clutched at his body as though trying to block an opening through which his entire being might slip away. The pavement seemed to be listing sharply. His pain grew so unbearable that he tried to keep walking in order to distract himself. He walked straight ahead and became lost in the vegetables. He followed one narrow path, turned down another, tried to retrace his steps, but took a wrong turn and was once again lost in the greens. The heaps were piled so high that people were walking between two walls of bundles and bunches. Only their heads could be seen over these battlements, white or black depending on the color of their hats, gliding by while enormous swinging baskets, at the same height as the top of the piles, looked like wicker boats adrift on a stagnant mossy lake.

  Florent stumbled over a thousand obstructions—forts hefting their loads and market women arguing in coarse voices. He slipped on a bed of discarded leaves and stalks lying thickly on the sidewalk and nearly choked on the scent of crushed greens. At last falling into a stupor, he stopped and gave in to the shoving and insults, reduced to flotsam adrift on ocean swells.

  Cowardice was breaking his spirit. He could easily have stooped to begging, and he was infuriated by his stupid pride of the night before. If he had accepted the charity of Madame François, if he had not been so foolishly intimidated by Claude, he would not now be at nearly his last breath, here among the cabbages. What particularly annoyed him was that he had not questioned the painter about rue Pirouette. And now he might very well drop dead on the pavement like a stray dog.

  For the last time he raised his eyes and looked at the market glittering in the sun. Bright sunshine was streaming through the covered passageway from the other end, splitting the pavilions with a beam of light, while fiery shafts poured down on the distant expanse of roofs. The great iron framework grew less clear and turned bluish, a mere silhouette outlined against the flaming sunlight. High above, a windowpane caught fire and flame dripped down the sloping zinc roof all the way to the gutter. Below, the tumultuous metropolis was lit by a cloud of golden dust.

  The day's awakening was spreading from the snoring of the market gardeners, wrapped in their thick coats, to the rolling wagons, more active than ever. Now the entire city had opened its gratings, the sidewalks were humming, the pavilions were abuzz. The air was thick with voices. It was as though the mutterings Florent had heard in the shadowy early hours from four o'clock on were now blossoming into full sentences.

  To the right, to the left, everywhere, the shrill cries sent the treble notes of a flute into the bass rumble of the crowd. It was the sound of seafood, butter, poultry, and meat being sold. The pealing of bells sent added vibrations through the noisy market. All around Florent, sunlight set vegetables on fire with color. The pale water-color he had seen at dawn had vanished. The ample hearts of lettuce were aflame. The hues of the greenery had turned brilliant, the carrots glowed bloodred, the turnips turned incandescent in the triumphal sunlight.

  Loads of cabbage were being unloaded to the left of Florent. He turned away and saw in the distance even more wagons being unloaded on rue de Turbigo. The tide was still rising. At first he had felt it around his ankles, then at stomach height, and now it was threatening to rise over his head. Blinded, drowning, his ears ringing, his stomach demolished by all that he had seen and guessing that there were even greater, unfathomable depths of food to come, he asked for mercy. Mad sorrow gripped him at the thought that he would starve to death here at the heart of glutted Paris, in the midst of the market's resplendent daybreak. Fat, hot tears dripped from his eyes.

  Now he reached one of the wider alleys. Two women, a small elderly one and a tall withered one, walked by him, headed toward the pavilions.

  “So you have come to do your shopping, Mademoiselle Saget?” the tall withered one asked.

  “Well, Madame Lecœur, if you can call it shopping. You know how it is for a woman alone, living on almost nothing. I wanted a nice little cauliflower. But it's too expensive. What about the butter, how much is that today?”

  “Thirty-four sous. I have some that is very nice. Come with me and I'll show you.”

  “Yes, well, I don't know. I still have a little lard left …”

  Florent, with a supreme effort, followed the two women. He remembered having heard Claude mention the little elderly woman. He told himself that after she left the tall woman, he would go up and question her.

  “And how is your niece?” Mademoiselle Saget asked.

  “La Sarriette does what she wants,” Madame Lecœur answered bitterly. “She's decided to go off on her own, and her business is no longer my problem. When all her boyfriends have cleaned her out, don't expect me to give her a bite of bread.”

  “You were so good to her. She ought to be doing well this year. Fruits are getting good prices. And how is your brother-in-law?”

  “Oh, he—” Madame Lecœur bit her lips and did not seem to want to say anything else.

  “The same as always, huh?” Mademoiselle Saget continued. “He's a decent man. But I've heard it said that he goes through money …”

  “Who knows how he spends his money?” Madame Lecœur said abruptly. “He's very secretive and also stingy. You know, he's the kind of man who would let you drop dead before he'd loan you a hundred sous. He knows perfectly well that butter, not to mention cheese and eggs, have not had a good season. He's selling poultry as fast as he can get them. But never, not once, not one time, has he offered to help me. Of course, I'm too proud to accept it, you understand, but I would have appreciated the gesture.”

  “Oh, look, here he is now,” said Mademoiselle Saget in a low voice.

  The two women turned around to look at someone crossing the street to enter the covered passage.

  “I'm in a hurry,” Madame Lecœur muttered. “I left my shop with no one watching it. But also, I don't want to talk to him.”

  Florent too had mechanically turned to see the man. He was a short, burly man with a cheerful demeanor and grayish stubble for hair. He carried a fat goose under each arm with their heads hanging down and bumping into his legs. Suddenly Florent opened his arms in pleasure and, completely forgetting his exhaustion, ran after the man. When he caught up with him, he shouted, “Gavard!” and slapped him on the back.

  The other man looked up and, caught by surprise, studied this tall black figure whom he did not recognize.

  Then, all of a sudden, he shouted, “It's you!” Seemingly confused, he added, “Is it really you?”

  He almost dropped his fat geese. He still could not control his amazement. But then, seeing his sister-in-law and Mademoiselle Saget, who were observing the encounter from a distance with interest, he continued walking.

  “Don't stand there. Come on. There are too many eyes and tongues around here.”

  Once under the covered passage, they began talking. Florent told how he had gone to the rue Pirouette, which seemed to amuse Gavard greatly. Then he told Florent that Florent's brother, Quenu, had moved his charcuterie11 nearby, to rue Rambuteau, across from Les Halles.12 What amused him even more was that Florent had just spent the morning walking around with Claude Lantier, an oddball who by chance was the nephew of Madame Quenu. Gavard was going to take Florent to the charcuterie, but when Florent told him that he had entered France with false papers, he
became very serious and secretive. He tried to keep about five steps ahead of him so as not to attract attention. After passing by the poultry pavilion, where he dropped off his two geese on a counter, he crossed rue Rambuteau with Florent following close behind. Stopping in the middle of the street, he glanced knowingly at a large, handsome charcuterie.

  Diagonal sunbeams struck rue Rambuteau, lighting up the fronts of the buildings, with the entrance to rue Pirouette in the center of the block appearing like a black hole. At the other end, the great hulk of Saint Eustache glittered in the sunlight like a sparkling casket. In the middle of the crowd, an army of street sweepers emerged from a distant intersection, marching forward in a line and swinging their brooms in unison. At the same time, cleaners were picking up trash on their forks and tossing it into carts that stopped every twenty paces with a sound like smashing pottery. But Florent noticed nothing but the sight of the large charcuterie sparkling in the sunlight.

  He was almost at the corner of the rue Pirouette, and the shop was a joy to behold. It was filled with laughter and bright light and brilliant colors that popped out next to the white of the marble countertops. There was a sign; a painting covered with glass with the name QUENU-GRADELLE in large gilded letters framed in leafy branches. The two side panels of the storefront, also glass-covered paintings, depicted chubby cupids frolicking amid animal heads, with pork chops and garlands of sausages, and these still lifes, adorned with rolls and rosettes, were such pretty paintings that the raw meat looked like reddish fruit preserves. Within this lovely frame was the window display on a bed of delicately shredded blue paper, with a few well-placed sprigs of fern making plates of food look like bouquets with greenery. It was a world of good things, mouthwatering things, rich things.

  First of all, close to the windowpane, was a row of crocks full of rillettes13 alternating with jars of mustard. The next row was nice round boned jambonneaux14 with golden breadcrumb coatings. Behind these were platters: stuffed Strasbourg tongues all red and looking as if they had been varnished, appearing almost bloody next to the pale sausages and pigs' feet; boudin15 coiled like snakes; andouilles16 piled two by two and plump with health; dried sausages in silvery casings lined up like choirboys; pâtés,17 still warm, with little labels stuck on them like flags; big, fat hams; thick cuts of veal and pork whose juices had jellied clear as crystal candy. In the back were other dishes and earthenware casseroles in which minced and sliced meats slept under blankets of fat. Between the plates and dishes, on a bed of blue paper, were pickling jars of sauces and stocks and preserved truffles, terrines of foie gras, and tins of tuna and sardines. A box of creamy cheeses and one of escargot, wood snails with parsley and butter, were casually strewn in opposite corners.

  At the top of the window display, draped with symmetry on a bar armed with sharp wolves' teeth, were links of sausages, dried saucissons18 and cervelas,19 their lacy membranes hanging like cords and tassels. On the highest rung in this gourmand's chapel, amid the membranes and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the window was crowned by a small, square aquarium decorated with rocks and housing two goldfish that never stopped swimming.

  The sight gave Florent goose bumps. He noticed a woman in the doorway standing in the sunlight. She had a prosperous, contented look that went with the cheerful displays of fat food. A handsome woman, she nearly filled the doorway not too large but full-busted and ample for a woman of only thirty. It was early in the morning, but her hair was well brushed and arranged over her temples— a tidy-looking woman. She had that fine shine and milky pink complexion of people who spend their days around fats and raw meat. She had a slightly grave demeanor, very calm and slow, with eyes that smiled while her lips remained serious. A white starched collar encircled her neck, white cuffs reached up to her elbows, and a white apron covered her to the tips of her shoes, all of which allowed only an occasional glimpse of her black cashmere dress, round shoulders, and ample bosom. The sun glared on all this white. But despite the glow from her bluish black hair, her pink complexion, and her glaring sleeves and apron, she never blinked. She bathed herself in the morning sun, her soft eyes taking in the overflowing Les Halles. The woman was visibly respectable.

  “That's your brother's wife, your sister-in-law, Lisa,” Gavard told Florent. He had acknowledged her with a slight nod but then ducked down an alleyway, continuing to take every precaution, not wanting Florent to enter the shop even though it was empty. He was clearly thrilled to be having this slight adventure, enjoying the intrigue.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I'll go see if your brother is alone. When I clap my hands, you can come in.”

  He pushed open a door at the end of the alley. But the minute Florent heard his brother's voice behind the door, he bounded in. Quenu, who adored him, threw his arms round Florent's neck. They kissed like children. “Oh my God, it's really you!” Quenu stammered. “I can't believe it. I thought you were dead! Just yesterday I was saying to Lisa, ‘Poor Florent’”

  He stopped, turned his head toward the shop, and shouted, “Hey, Lisa! Lisa!” Then he turned to a little girl hiding in a corner. “Pauline, go find your mother.”

  But the little girl did not move. She was a beautiful five-year-old with a chubby round build, who looked very much like the beautiful charcuterie woman. She held in her arms an enormous tabby cat, which had contentedly surrendered to the child's embrace, its paws hanging loose while the little girl squeezed it tightly in her little arms, as though afraid that this badly dressed man would try to steal her pet.

  Slowly Lisa came over to them.

  “This is Florent. My brother,” Quenu repeated.

  Lisa addressed him as “Monsieur” and welcomed him. She quietly studied him from head to foot without showing any unpleasant surprise. Only her lips showed a slight downward curl. She just stood there until she started to smile at the way her husband was embracing him. As Quenu calmed down, he noticed Florent's emaciated, wretched appearance.

  “Oh, poor fellow,” he said. “That place didn't agree with you. Look at me, you see how I've fattened up.”

  He was fat, too, quite fat for a man of only thirty. He was bursting out of his shirt and apron, all wrapped up in white linen like a big stuffed doll. His clean-shaven face was sticking out, slightly resembling the snout of one of the pigs he was with all day. Florent had barely recognized him. Seated, Quenu cast a glance at the lovely Lisa and little Pauline. They looked brimming with good health, solidly built, fit, and trim. The two in their turn looked at Florent with that uneasiness that fleshy people always feel in the presence of someone who is extremely skinny. Even their cat was puffed up with fat and stared at Florent suspiciously with dilated yellow eyes.

  “You can wait until we have breakfast, can't you?” asked Quenu. “We eat early, about ten o'clock.”

  The shop was filled with the smells of cooking. Florent thought back on the horrible night he had just passed, how he had arrived with the vegetables, his agony in the heart of Les Halles, drowning in the endless sea of food that he had just escaped. Then, in a low voice with a sweet smile, he said:

  “No, I can't wait. You see, I'm really hungry.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Florent had just begun studying law in Paris when his mother died. She lived in Le Vigan in the Gard.1 She had taken a second husband, someone named Quenu from Yvetot in Normandy. Some subprefect had sent Quenu to the Midi and then forgotten him. He continued working at the subprefect's office, finding the region charming, the wine good, the women pleasant. Indigestion took him away three years after his marriage. All he left his wife was a hefty boy who looked like him. The mother was already struggling to pay for the education of Florent, her first son from a previous marriage. He was her great joy sweet-natured and hardworking and always winning the school prizes. It was on him that she lavished her affections and pinned all her hopes. It might be that her favoritism for the pale, skinny boy came from her fondness for her first husband, a Provençal with warm country charm who had bee
n devoted to her. Perhaps Quenu, whose good humor had at first touched her, had shown himself to be too self-satisfied and confident. She decided that her younger son—and in southern families the younger son is often sacrificed—would never amount to much. So she sent him to a school run by a neighbor, an old spinster, where the boy learned nothing but how to be footloose on the neighborhood streets. The two brothers grew up far apart from each other, like strangers.

  By the time Florent got to Le Vigan, his mother had already been buried. She had insisted on concealing her illness from him until the last moment because she did not want to disturb his studies. He found the little Quenu, then twelve years old, sitting at a table, crying. A furniture dealer, a neighbor, had told him of his poor mother's suffering. She had run out of money and had worked herself to death so that her older son could finish studying law. To her little ribbon business, which never brought in very much money, she'd had to add other activities that kept her working late into the night. An obsession with this singular idea to see Florent become a lawyer, a man of substance in the town, had turned her hard and miserly and pitiless to herself and everyone else. Little Quenu ran around with holes in his pants and shirts with frayed sleeves. He never served himself at the table but waited for his mother to cut him his share of bread. And she cut thin slices. This was the way of life that had destroyed her, along with the great despair of having failed to accomplish her goal.

  This story had a terrible impact on Florent's gentle character. He choked with tears. Taking his brother in his arms, he held him to his chest and kissed him as though trying to give him back the love of which he had deprived him. Then he looked at the boy's worn-out shoes, his torn sleeves and dirty hands, all the wretchedness of an abandoned child. Over and over again, he told him that he would take him away and they would be happy together.