The Belly of Paris (32 page)

At first he had shot her the kind of respectful glances he gave to the window displays of grocery stores and markets for salt-cured foods. But then, around the time they started raiding the market for food, when he looked at her he started to imagine taking her thick waist and ample arms into his arms, as though plunging his hands into an olive barrel or a cask of dried apples.

For some time, Marjolin had seen Beautiful Lisa every morning. She walked past Gavard's shop and paused to chat with the poultry seller. She told him that she did her own shopping to make sure she got good prices. But the truth was that she was trying to get Gavard to trust her. In her charcuterie he was very guarded, but in his own shop he held court and told anyone anything they wanted to know. Through him, she believed, she could find out what went on at Monsieur Lebigre's, for she had little confidence in her own secret
police, Mademoiselle Saget. The information she got from this horrible old gossip troubled her deeply.

Two days after her scene with Quenu she returned from her shopping trip looking very pale. She motioned for her husband to follow her into the dining room. After shutting the door she asked, “Is your brother trying to send us to the gallows? Why did you hide information from me?”

Quenu swore that he knew nothing. He made a solemn declaration that he no longer went to Monsieur Lebigre's and was never going back there.

But she shrugged and said, “That's a good thing unless you want to lose your head. Florent is mixed up in something bad. I can feel it. I've learned just enough to figure out where he's headed. He'll go back to the penal colony, you know.”
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After a silence she continued in a calmer voice, “What a fool. Here he was sitting pretty. He could have become an upstanding citizen again. He was surrounded by good role models. But no, there's something in his blood. He's going to break his neck with his politics. I want all this to stop. Do you understand, Quenu? I've warned you.”

She said the last words with particular emphasis. Quenu lowered his head, awaiting sentencing.

“First of all, tell him that he can no longer eat here. It's enough he gets a place to sleep. But he earns money, and he can feed himself.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off with “Fine, choose between him or us. I swear to you, I will leave and take my daughter with me if he stays. Do you want me to finally say it? He's a man who is capable of anything, and he has come here to wreck our home. But I'll fix that, I promise you. You've heard me. It's him or me.”

She left her husband silenced and went back into the charcuterie, where she served up a pound of foie gras with the friendly smile of the neighborhood charcuterie woman.

Gavard, in the course of a political discussion that she had slyly drawn out, had gotten worked up enough to tell her that she would
soon see everything razed to the ground, that it would take only two men of real determination such as her brother-in-law and himself, to burn her shop down. This was the bad thing that she had told Quenu that Florent was mixed up in. There was some conspiracy to which the poultry man was constantly alluding with a furtive look and a sly grin, from which he hoped a great deal would be inferred. She could picture a detachment of sergents de ville forcing their way into the charcuterie, seizing the three of them— herself, Quenu, and Pauline—and throwing them into a dungeon.

That night at dinner she was an iceberg. She didn't even serve Florent, and several times she commented, “Isn't it funny how much bread we seem to be going through lately?”

Eventually Florent understood, feeling like a poor relative being shown the door. For the past few months Lisa had been dressing him in Quenu's old pants and coats, and since he was as skinny as his brother was fat, the clothes looked very odd on him. She had also been giving him Quenu's old linens, handkerchiefs mended in dozens of spots, ripped towels, sheets good only to be torn into dishrags, threadbare shirts stretched out by his brother's potbelly and so short that they would have worked better as jackets. Nor did he sense the warmth of earlier times. The entire household shrugged their shoulders at him, exactly the way they had seen Lisa do. Auguste and Augustine would turn their backs on him, and little Pauline, with the viciousness of a child, ridiculed him for the spots on his clothes and the holes in his linen. For the last few days mealtime had been particularly painful. He would see both mother and daughter glaring at him so hard while he cut a piece of bread that he didn't dare to eat it. Quenu gazed at his plate and avoided looking up so that he would not have to participate.

What was tormenting Florent was that he did not know how to leave. For nearly a week he had been working on a sentence in his mind, something that would say that he would take his meals elsewhere. But this gentle soul lived so far from reality that he feared that his brother and sister-in-law would be hurt if he no longer ate with them. It had taken him more than two months to notice Lisa's raw hostility, and he still worried that he was misreading her. He
still thought that she was very kind to him. So unconcerned for his own well-being was he that it could no longer be counted as a virtue. It was more a matter of supreme indifference, a lack of personality. Never, even when he saw himself being pushed out little by little, did he think for an instant about the money left behind by old Gradelle or the arrangement Lisa had made for his money.

He had his budget all mapped out. With the money that Madame Verlaque left him from his salary and the thirty francs for lessons from the Beautiful Norman, he calculated that he could spend eighteen sous on his lunch and twenty-six sous on his dinner. That was sufficent. Finally, one morning, he dared to make his move. He used the excuse of the new classes he was teaching, saying they made it impossible to be at the charcuterie at mealtimes. He blushed while telling the clumsy lie. Then he began making excuses.

“It's not what I want, but the child is only available at those times. Oh, it's not a problem. I'll grab a bite somewhere. I'll come back later to say good night.”

Beautiful Lisa remained ice cold. That made Florent even more uneasy. She had not wanted to send him away, preferring to wait until he gave up, so that she would not feel as though she had done anything wrong. Now he was leaving and it was good riddance, so she didn't want to do anything that might make him change his mind. But Quenu, a little upset, blurted out, “Don't worry, eat outside if you want. You know we wouldn't send you away, for God's sake. We can dine together on Sundays sometimes.”

Florent left quickly and with a heavy heart. After he was gone Beautiful Lisa did not dare to reproach her husband for the Sunday invitation. The victory was still hers, and, breathing more easily in the light oak dining room, she was suddenly overcome with a desire to burn sugar in the room to drive off the odor she thought she could smell of perverse skinniness.

But she remained on the defensive. By the end of the week her thoughts were even more disturbing. Never seeing Florent except occasionally in the evening, she imagined terrible goings-on. Was there a sinister machine of some kind being built upstairs in
Augustine's bedroom or maybe some kind of signals being sent from the balcony to a network of roadblocks throughout the neighborhood? Gavard had become broody and would respond only with nods of his head, and he left Marjolin to run his shop for days at a time.

Beautiful Lisa resolved to find out what was going on. She knew that Florent had a day off and planned to spend it with Claude Lantier going to Nanterre to see Madame François. Since he would be leaving in the morning and not returning until the evening it occurred to Lisa that it was an opportunity to invite Gavard to dinner, where he would babble freely with food in front of his belly. But she did not run into the poultry man anywhere all morning. She went back to the market in the afternoon.

Marjolin was by himself in the shop. He snoozed for hours, recuperating from his long walks. His usual position was at the back of the shop with his legs up on another chair and his head leaning against a buffet. In the wintertime he was dazzled by the displays of game. Deer with their heads hanging down, their front legs broken and twisted around their necks, larks strung in garlands around the shop like necklaces worn by savages, large rust-colored partridges, bronze-gray waterfowl, grouse that arrived from Russia packed in straw and charcoal, and pheasants magnificent in their scarlet hoods, their throats of green satin and enameled gold mantles with their flaming tails flaring out like evening gowns. All these feathers made him think of Cadine and nights spent together in the soft depths of baskets.

On this particular day Beautiful Lisa found Marjolin sitting amid the poultry. It was a damp afternoon, but little puffs of air passed down the narrow lanes of the market. She had to bend down to catch sight of him because he was spread out in the back of the shop in a display of raw meat. Fat geese hung from spiked bars above him. The hooks plunged into bleeding wounds in their long stiff necks, and their enormous red bellies under fine down ballooned out like obscene nudes as white as linen from tail to wings.

Gray-backed rabbits also hung from the bar, their legs spread as though about to take some impressive leap and their ears lying flat
with tufts of white fur at the tail. Their heads showed sharp teeth and terrified eyes vivid with the laughing grimace of dead animals. Plucked chickens showed fleshy breasts on the display table, where they were stretched tight on skewers, while pigeons, pressed together on a wicker frame, exposed the tender naked skin of newborn babies. Tough-skinned ducks splayed their webbed feet. Three turkeys with blue shadows like a shaved face and their throats sewn up with needle and thread slept on their backs on the fans of their wide black tails. Giblets were placed in plates next to them—livers, gizzards, necks, feet, and wings—and in a nearby oval bowl sat a skinned and gutted rabbit with a blood-spattered head, its four limbs stretched wide apart, and the cavity was spread to reveal the two kidneys inside. A trickle of blood ran down to the tail and fell drop by drop, staining the pale ceramic tiles.

Marjolin had not even troubled himself to wipe the carving board, near which a few severed rabbits' paws were left. His eyes were half closed, and he was surrounded on the shop's three shelves with more dead birds piled up, birds dressed up with paper collars and such a repetitive pattern of folded thighs and plump breasts that it confounded the eye. Against the background of all this food, with his well-built, fair body, his cheeks and hands, his powerful neck, and his head of red hair, Marjolin resembled the glorious turkeys and round bellies of the fat geese.

The moment he saw Beautiful Lisa he jumped out of the chair, blushing at having been caught loafing. He was very shy and awkward in her presence, and when she asked if Monsieur Gavard was there he stammered, “No. I don't know. He was here a minute ago. Now he's gone.”

Lisa smiled. She liked him. Her hand, which was hanging at her side, lightly brushed something warm and she emitted a little cry. Under the display table, rabbits in boxes were stretched out, sniffing her skirts. “Oh,” she said, laughing, “your rabbits are tickling me.”

She bent down to pet a white rabbit, which immediately hid in the corner of the box. Then she straightened up and asked, “Will Monsieur Gavard be back soon?”

Marjolin again said that he didn't know. His hands were shaking slightly. He continued in an uncertain voice, “He might be in the storeroom. I think he told me he was going down there.”

“Then I should wait for him. Maybe you could let him know that I'm here. Or should I go down myself? Yes, that's a good idea. I've been wanting to see the storeroom for five years now. Would you take me down and show me everything?”

His face was turning bright red. He hurried out of the shop, walking very fast in front of her, leaving the store unattended and repeating, “Certainly, whatever you'd like, Madame Lisa.”

But, once down below, the beautiful charcuterie woman could not breathe in the black air. She remained on the bottom step and looked up at the vaulted ceiling in stripes of red and white brick slightly arched between iron ribs supported by short columns. What stopped her there was a warm, penetrating smell, the breath of live animals prickling her nose and throat.

“It smells awful down here,” she muttered. “It can't be healthy to live here.”

“I feel fine,” said Marjolin, a bit surprised. “The smell isn't so bad once you get used to it. And it keeps you warm in the winter. You can be very comfortable here.”

She followed him, saying that the violent smell of poultry made her so sick that she would not be able to eat chicken for two months.

The storage spaces, the narrow stalls in which the merchants kept their livestock, ran back in straight, even rows, separated from one another at right angles. The gaslights were few, and the rows slept, silent as a village when everyone is in bed. Marjolin had Lisa touch the mesh covering the iron ribs. As they passed through a row, she read the names of the owners on blue plaques.

“Monsieur Gavard is just at the end,” said Marjolin. They turned to the left and came to a dead end at a dank cave into which no light penetrated. Gavard was not there. “No matter,” said Marjolin. “I can still show you all our animals. I have the keys.”

Beautiful Lisa followed him into the heavy darkness. Then suddenly she found him wrapped in her skirts. She thought she must
have walked too fast and run into him, so she backed up and asked, “Do you think I'm going to be able to see your animals in this dark box?”

At first he didn't answer, and then he stammered that there was always a bit of candle in the storage place. But he was taking forever to open it. He couldn't find the keyhole. As she helped him with it, she could feel hot breath on her neck. Finally when he got the door open and lit the candle, she could see that he was shaking so much that she said, “You silly thing, why are you getting so worked up just because the door won't open? You're just a little girl with large fists.”