The Belly of Paris (11 page)

When the days of February bloodied Paris, he became distraught and ran to all the “clubs,”
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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 December
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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.
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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,
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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 that 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:

“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

As Quenu undressed, he would listen to Lisa getting ready for bed. The partition between them was so thin that they could hear each other's every move. He would think, “Ah, now she's closing the curtains. I wonder what she's doing in front of the dresser. There, now she's sitting down and taking her shoes off. Well, good night, she's blown out the candle. Let's sleep.” When he heard the bed creak, he would chuckle to himself, “Damn, she's no feather, that Lisa.” This thought amused him and made him laugh, but then he would fall asleep dreaming of hams and strips of petit salé
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that he had to prepare the next day.

It went on like this for a year without a blush from Lisa or any embarrassment from Quenu. In the morning, the busiest time of day, when the young girl came down to the kitchen, their hands would meet amid the ground meat. Sometimes she helped him,
holding the sausage skins with her chubby fingers while he stuffed them with meats and lardoons.
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Sometimes they tasted the raw sausage meat on the tips of their tongues, to make sure it was well seasoned. She helped him with her knowledge of recipes from the Midi, with which he experimented with great success. Often he could feel her over his shoulder, looking into his pots, leaning so close he felt her neck in his back. She would pass him a spoon or a plate. The heat of the fire made their skin flush. Still, nothing in the world would have made this young man stop stirring his fatty bouillies
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that he was thickening on the stove, as she pronounced with gravity on the proper cooking time. In the afternoon, when the shop was quiet, they would chat together for hours.

Lisa sat at the counter, leaning back slightly, calmly knitting. Quenu sat on a big oak block, dangling his feet and tapping his heels against the oak. They reveled in each other's company, talking about everything from the most banal cooking discussions to Uncle Gradelle and life in the neighborhood. She told him stories the way you would to a child. She knew very pretty tales of miracles, full of lambs and little angels, which she told in a soft, high-pitched voice with an air of mock gravity. If a customer happened to come in, she asked Quenu to fetch the lard pot or the box of snails so that she did not have to disturb herself.

At eleven o'clock they slowly climbed the stairs as they did each night before. As they closed the doors they said in their peaceful voices:

“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

One morning Uncle Gradelle dropped dead while making a galantine.
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He fell forward with his face on the chopping block. Lisa, without losing her composure, pointed out that the dead man could not very well be left sprawled in the middle of the kitchen and had the body dragged into the small back room where he had slept. Then she established the official story with the helpers. They all had to agree that he had died in his bed because otherwise the entire neighborhood would be repulsed and they would lose business. Quenu helped carry the dead man away, feeling amazed and
very surprised at his inability to produce any tears. But later on, he and Lisa cried together. Quenu and his brother, Florent, were the sole heirs. The neighborhood gossips claimed that Gradelle had a considerable fortune. But the truth was that there was not one piece of silver to be found. Lisa grew uneasy, and Quenu noticed how pensive she had become, always looking around as though she had lost something. Finally she decided to undertake a massive shop cleaning, claiming that people were beginning to talk, that the story of the old man's death had gotten out and they had to have a spotless shop.

One afternoon, after having spent the past two hours in the basement washing the salting tubs, Lisa came up carrying something in her apron. Quenu was grinding up a pig's liver. She waited for him to finish, chatting with him in a nonchalant way. But her eyes had a special glow and she smiled her beautiful smile, while saying she wanted to talk to him about something. She climbed the stairs awkwardly, her legs impeded by whatever it was she was carrying that was almost bursting her apron open. At the third floor she had to stop and lean on the banister to catch her breath. Quenu, taken aback, said nothing and followed her into her bedroom. It was the first time she had ever invited him in. She closed the door and, releasing the corners of her apron, which her cramped fingers could no longer hold up, she let softly rain on her bed a shower of gold and silver coins. She had found Uncle Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of the salting tub. The pile of money made a deep depression in the young woman's delicate, fluffy bed.

Quenu and Lisa suppressed their joy as they sat on the bed, Lisa at the head, Quenu at the foot, on either side of the money pile, counting it out on the bedspread to muffle the sound of the coins. They had forty thousand francs in gold, three thousand francs in silver, and forty-two thousand francs in banknotes in a tin box. It took a good two hours to add it all up. Quenu's hands were shaking, and Lisa did most of the work. She stacked the gold on the pillow, leaving the silver in the hollow of the bed. When they had reached the total, eighty-five thousand francs, an enormous sum for them, they began to discuss their future, their marriage, without
having ever talked about love. The money seemed to loosen their tongues. They gradually slid themselves farther back on the bed so that they were leaning against the wall under the white muslin curtains with their legs stretched out. As they chattered on, their hands, caressing the silver coins between them, met and stayed together against a pile of one-hundred-sou coins.