The Belly of Paris Page 8

  The next day, when he reviewed the situation, he was afraid that he would not even have enough money to pay the fare back to Paris. At any cost, he did not want to stay in Le Vigan. Fortunately he was able to sell the ribbon business, which raised enough money to pay his mother's debts. Despite her frugality she had run up bills. Since there was nothing left for him, the neighbor, the furniture merchant, offered him five hundred francs for the furniture and linens of the deceased. It was a bargain for the dealer, but the young man nonetheless thanked him with tears in his eyes. He bought his brother new clothes and took him away that same evening.

  Back in Paris there was no question of his continuing law school. Florent deferred all his ambitions. He took on a few pupils and set himself up with little Quenu on rue Royer-Collard at the corner of rue Saint-Jacques in a large bedroom that he furnished with two iron frame beds, a wardrobe, and a table with four chairs. From now on he would raise a child, and he was pleased by this sudden paternity. At first he tried to give Quenu lessons when he came home in the evening, but the thickheaded child barely listened and refused to learn anything. Instead he would start sobbing and recall with nostalgia the days when his mother had let him run in the streets. In despair, Florent stopped the lessons and promised the boy an indefinite vacation. He excused his own weakness by repeatedly arguing that he had not brought the boy to Paris to harass him. His singular code of conduct became making sure that the boy's childhood was a happy one. He adored him, was enthralled by his laughter, took endless delight in being surrounded by the child's well-being and carefree life.

  Florent remained skinny in his threadbare black coat, his face yellowing with the grinding burden of teaching, while Quenu became a cheerful, plump man, a bit slow, barely able to read, but with a pleasant good spirit that nothing could shake. He gave brightness to the large, somber room on the rue Royer-Collard.

  The years went by. Florent, with a devotion like that of his mother, kept Quenu at home as though he were his grown-up, shiftless daughter. He did not even bother Quenu about household tasks, doing the shopping and cooking the food himself. This, Florent reasoned, helped him to escape his own dark thoughts. He had a sad nature and thought he had evil tendencies. In the evening, when he returned home, splattered with mud, his head bowed by his irritation with other people's children, he would be revived by the big, chunky boy whom he found spinning a top on the tile floor. Quenu laughed at his brother's ineptitude at making omelettes and the seriousness with which he prepared a pot-au-feu. When the lamp was put out, Florent sometimes grew sad again as he lay in his bed. He dreamed of returning to his law studies and plotted how to divide his time in order to take courses at the law school. Once he had figured this out, he felt content. But then a slight bout of fever that kept him home for eight days created such a hole in his budget and worried him so much that he dropped all thoughts of returning to his studies.

  His child grew. Florent found a position as instructor at a school on rue de l'Estrapade at a salary of eighteen hundred francs a year. This was a fortune. With some frugality he could even save some money for Quenu. When Quenu was already eighteen years old, Florent was still treating him like a daughter whose dowry must be set aside.

  While his brother was having his brief illness, Quenu too had spent time reflecting. One morning he announced that he wanted to work, that he was now old enough to earn his living. Florent was deeply moved. Just across the street from them lived a watchmaker whom Quenu could see through the curtainless window, leaning over his little table all day, adjusting delicate things and patiently studying them through a magnifying glass. Seduced by this sight, the boy declared a taste for watchmaking. But after fifteen days, he became restless and started crying like a ten-year-old that the work was too complicated and that he would never know “all the dumb little things that go into a watch.”

  Then he decided he would like to be a locksmith but found the work tedious. In the next two years he tried more than ten trades. Florent thought that Quenu was right, that he shouldn't take up a trade if his heart was not in it. Meanwhile, Quenu's noble ambition to earn his own living was putting a serious strain on the budget of the two young men. Since he had started hopping from craft to craft, there had been constant new expenses, the cost of clothing, outside meals, entertaining new colleagues. Florent's eighteen hundred francs were no longer enough. He had to take on two night students. For eight years now he had been wearing the same worn-out coat.

  But the two brothers had made a friend. The building they lived in had a side on rue Saint-Jacques, where there was a shop that roasted chickens run by a respectable man named Gavard whose wife was dying of lung disease caused by the constant smell of chicken grease. On evenings when Florent came home too late to cook a bit of meat, he got into the habit of spending a dozen sous at the rotisserie for a piece of turkey or goose. Such an evening was like a feast day. Gavard became interested in the skinny young man and learned his story. He invited Quenu into the shop and soon the youth spent all his time there. As soon as his brother went to work, Quenu went downstairs and installed himself in the back of the shop, infatuated with the four giant skewers that turned with a soft noise in front of the high bright flames.

  The large copper pots at the fireplace glistened, the birds smoked, the fat sang as it dripped in the pan. The spits seemed to chat with one another and eventually threw a few kind words toward Quenu, who, with a long-stemmed ladle, lovingly basted the golden breasts of huge turkeys and plump geese. He passed hours this way, his face turning red in the dancing flames, looking a bit stupid as he snickered at the large animals getting cooked. He didn't move until they were taken off the spits. The birds fell on the platters, the skewers slid from their stomachs, the stomachs emptied all steaming, with the juice running from the holes behind and at the throat, drenching the shop in the strong scent of roasted meat. Then the youth, who had stood up to follow the operation with his eyes, started clapping his hands and talking to the birds, telling them how nice they were and how they would be eaten up and there would be only bones left for the cats. And he jumped up if Gavard gave him a piece of crusty bread that he would put in the drip pan, leaving it there to stew for a half hour.

  It was no doubt there that Quenu found his love of cooking. Later on, after trying out every other trade, he returned, as though it were his destiny, to the skewered animals whose juice made you lick your fingers. At first he was worried about irritating his brother, a man of little appetite who spoke of tasty things with the disdain of a man who has not tasted. But then, watching Florent listen to him as Quenu explained some very complicated dish, he decared it to be his true vocation and started working for a large restaurant. From that time on, a new pattern was established for the two brothers. They continued to live in the room on rue Royer-Collard, where they returned every evening—the one with a face lit by the heat of the ovens, the other with the beaten face of a mud-spattered teacher. Florent kept his old black coat, losing himself in his students' homework, while Quenu, to make himself comfortable, tied on his apron, put on his white coat and white chef's hat, and stood over the stove rattling the skillet and entertaining himself by cooking some delicacy.

  Sometimes they smiled at the way they looked, the one all in black and the other all in white. The two contrasting outfits, one cheerful and one morose, seemed to make the big room half festive and half somber, in between merry and mournful. Still, never was a household marked by such disparity so harmonious. The elder brother grew ever thinner, consumed by the intensity he had inherited from his Provençal father, while the younger one grew ever fatter, like a true son of Normandy. But they loved each other with a brotherhood that came from their mother, a woman who had been nothing but love.

  A relative in Paris, their mother's brother, Gradelle, had a charcuterie in the Les Halles neighborhood, on rue Pirouette. He was a fat, cheap, heartless man, who received his nephews as starving street waifs when they first introduced themselves, and they had rarely returned.
On his saint's day, Quenu would take him a bouquet of flowers and Gradelle would hand him a ten-sou coin. Florent, always proud, hated the way Gradelle would peruse his threadbare clothes with the worried, suspicious glance of a miser who feared being asked for a free dinner or a hundred sous. One day, without intending anything in particular, Florent asked his uncle to change a hundred-franc bill, and ever after that the uncle was less apprehensive when he sighted the “youngsters,” as he called them. But still the relationship never progressed.

  To Florent, the years passed like a bittersweet dream. He tasted all the bitter joys of parenthood. At home there was nothing but love. But out in the world, with the humiliations of his students and the shoving and pushing of the streets, he felt himself souring. He was embittered by his crushed ambition. It was a long time before he could accept his fate as a plain, poor, and ordinary man. To escape turning mean, he embraced idealism and took refuge in principles of truth and justice. It was then that he became a republican,2 entering republicanism the way a heartbroken girl enters a convent. If he could not find a republic warm and peaceful enough to numb his troubles, he would invent one. Books no longer pleased him; all the marked-up paper with which he was surrounded reminded him of the stinking classroom, the boys' chewed-up spit-balls, the agony of long, sterile hours. Besides, books spoke only of revolution and pride, and he felt an overwhelming need for peace and withdrawal. To soothe and still himself, to dream that he was serenely happy, that the entire world was reaching this same state, to construct in his imagination the ideal republican city in which he would like to live, became his recreation, the work of his leisure hours. He no longer read except what was necessary for teaching, preferring to wander the rue Saint-Jacques all the way to the outer boulevards, sometimes going even farther, returning by the barrière d'Italie with his eyes toward the Quartier Mouffetard, all the time working out measures of great moral import, humanitarian legal projects, that would transform this suffering city into a city of bliss.

  When the days of February bloodied Paris, he became distraught and ran to all the “clubs,”3 demanding that they atone for the bloodshed with “the eternal embrace of republicans the world over.” He became an enraptured orator, preaching revolution as the new religion, full of gentleness and redemption. It took the dark days of December4 to break him from the doctrine of the brotherhood of man. But he was unarmed and let himself be taken like a sheep and was then treated as though he were a wolf. When he was awakened from the grip of the brotherhood of man, he found himself starving on the cold stones of a cell in Bicêtre.

  Quenu, only twenty-two years old at the time, was overtaken with burning anguish when his brother did not come home. The following day, he went to look for him at the Montmartre cemetery among the dead from the streets, who had been lined up and covered with straw, their heads sticking out grotesquely. Quenu's courage failed, his eyes became blinded with tears, and he had to make a second pass along the row. Finally, after eight long days, he found out at the Prefecture of Police that his brother had been imprisoned. He was not allowed to see him, and when he tried to insist they threatened to arrest him. So he ran to Uncle Gradelle, whom he saw as a man of influence, hoping that he could help Florent. But Gradelle flew into a rage, saying that it served Florent right, that the idiot had no business being mixed up with those lowlife republicans. Then he added that he had always known that Florent would turn out badly, that it was written all over his face.

  Quenu cried out every tear in his body, nearly choking. His uncle, feeling a bit ashamed, felt that he should do something for the young man and offered to take him in. He needed an assistant and knew that Quenu was a good cook. Quenu, finding the thought of returning to the large, empty room on rue Royer-Collard unbearable, accepted the offer. That same night he slept at his uncle's, in a dark hole of a garret where he had barely enough space to stretch out to his full length. But he cried less there than he would have across from his brother's empty bed.

  After a long effort he managed to get permission to see Florent. But on his return from Bicêtre, he was bedridden with a fever. For nearly three weeks he lay in a lifeless, barely conscious state. That was his first and only illness. Meanwhile, Gradelle regularly cursed his republican nephew. One morning when he found out that Florent was being shipped to Cayenne, he went upstairs, tapped Quenu on the hand to wake him up, and brutally blurted out the news, provoking such a reaction that the next day the young man was up and out of bed. His sorrow melted, and his flabby flesh seemed to absorb all his tears. A month later he laughed and then grew angry with himself for laughing, but his lighthearted nature won out and soon he would laugh without reason.

  He learned the charcuterie trade. It gave him even more pleasure than being a cook. Uncle Gradelle told him that he should not neglect the pots, that it was rare to find a charcutier who was also a good cook, and that he was lucky to have trained at a restaurant before coming to him. Gradelle made full use of Quenu's talents, having him cook dinners sent out to customers and putting him especially in charge of grilling and pork chops with cornichons.5 Since the young man was actually of great help, Gradelle grew fond of him in his way and would pinch his chubby arm when in a good mood. He sold the cheap furniture from the rue Royer-Collard and kept the money, forty francs and change—for safekeeping, he said, so that Quenu wouldn't just let the money slip through his fingers. Instead he gave him six francs each month for spending money.

  Quenu, short of money and sometimes abused, was perfectly happy. He liked to have life parceled out for him. Florent had indulged him like a lazy daughter. Besides, he had made a friend at his uncle's. When his wife died, Gradelle had had to hire a girl to look after the shop and had deliberately chosen one healthy and attractive-looking, knowing that a good-looking girl would show off his charcuterie and charm his clients. He knew a widow living on rue Cuvier, near the Jardin des Plantes, whose late husband had been postmaster at Plassans,6 the seat of a subprefecture in the south of France. This woman, who lived modestly, her rent subsidized by an annuity, had brought to town a plump, pretty child whom she had raised as her daughter. Lisa, as the child was named, looked after the woman with a tranquil air, an even temper, and a serious demeanor, but she was lovely when she smiled. In fact, her great charm appeared on the rare occasions on which she showed her smile. Then she could caress with her eyes, and her usual seriousness gave an incalculable value to this unpredictable science of seduction. The elderly woman often said that Lisa's smile would lead her to perdition.

  When the woman died of asthma, she left all her savings, some ten thousand francs, to her adopted daughter. Lisa stayed by herself at the rue Cuvier apartment for eight days before Gradelle went there to look for her. He knew her because the elderly woman had often brought her along on visits to the rue Pirouette. But at the funeral she was so strikingly beautiful and sturdily built that he followed her all the way to the cemetery. As the coffin was being lowered, he was thinking what a great thing it would be to have her at the charcuterie counter. He pondered and finally resolved to offer her thirty francs a month with room and board. When he made the proposal, Lisa asked for twenty-four hours to think it over. In the morning she turned up with a small bundle of clothes and ten thousand francs hidden in the bodice of her dress.

  A month later she seemed to own the store, Gradelle, Quenu, and even the little kitchen boy. Quenu in particular would have chopped off his fingers just to please her. When she deigned to smile, he was frozen on the spot, laughing with delight as he looked at her.

  Lisa, the oldest daughter of the Macquarts from Plassans, still had a father. But she said he lived abroad, and she never wrote him. She sometimes let it drop that her mother had been a very hard worker and that she took after her. In fact, she was indefatigable. She sometimes added that the good woman had worked herself to death in order to support her family. Then she would hold forth on the relative duties of husbands and wives, doing so with such wisdom and candor that Quenu was enchanted. He said t
hat he completely agreed with her ideas. Lisa's ideas were that everyone should work to earn a living, that everyone had a duty to pursue his own happiness, that it was a mistake to encourage idleness, and that the presence of so much misery in the world was in large part due to laziness. This pet theory was a sweeping condemnation of the drunkenness and legendary idleness of her father, the elder Macquart. But though she could not see it, there was much of Macquart in her. She was just a steady, sensible Macquart with a rational desire for comfort, who understood that the best way to fall asleep blissfully is to make a comfortable bed to lie in. She gave all her time and effort to the preparation of this fluffy soft couch. Even when only six years old, she was willing to sit still on her little chair all day, as long as she was given her evening cake.

  At Gradelle's charcuterie her life was calm and dependable and periodically lit up by her beautiful smiles. She had not taken his offer with a sense of adventure; in Gradelle, she knew she could find a protector, and perhaps she saw in this somber shop on the rue Pirouette, where there were people on whom fortune had smiled, the future of her dreams of a healthy, pleasant life with steady work that was not exhausting, in which each hour brought its own reward. She looked after her counter with the same quiet care that she had given to the postmaster's widow. Soon the cleanliness of Lisa's aprons became legendary in the neighborhood. Uncle Gradelle was so pleased by this beautiful girl that he sometimes said to Quenu as he was tying up sausages, “If I wasn't over sixty, I swear to God, I'd be fool enough to marry her. She's like a bar of gold, my boy a woman like that in trade.”

  Quenu was becoming infatuated with her. He laughed with slightly too broad a smile one day when a neighbor accused him of being in love with her. But he wasn't bothered by it. They were great friends. In the evening they climbed the stairs together to go to bed. Lisa slept in a small room adjoining the young man's black hole. She had brightened her room with muslin curtains. The couple would stand together for a moment on the landing, each holding a candle, and chat as they put their keys in the locks. And as they closed their doors they would say, in a friendly tone: