The Belly of Paris (38 page)

La Sarriette said, “Mademoiselle Saget wants to talk to you, Aunt.”

Madame Lecœur stopped and pulled her bonnet back over her hair with butter-covered fingers, not seeming to worry about grease spots.

“I'm done. Just ask her to wait a moment,” she answered.

“She's got something very interesting to tell you.”

“Just wait a second, dear.”

She stuck her arms in again, and the butter was up to her elbows. Softened first in warm water, her parchment skin was oiled, which made the thick purple veins stand out like varicose ropes. La Sarriette was repulsed by such ugly arms laboring in the depths of the melting paste. She remembered this work. At one time she too had kept her lovely little hands buried in butter for entire afternoons. It had served as a substitute for hand cream, a lotion that kept her skin white and her nails pink and from which her well-formed fingers had become soft. After a silence she added, “This will not be a good blend, Aunt. Your butters are too strong.”

“I know,” said Madame Lecœur with a grunt. “But what can I do? Everything's got to be used up. Some people want to buy cheap. So you have to make it cheap. It always ends up too good for the customers.”

La Sarriette was thinking that she wouldn't want to eat butter mixed with her aunt's arms. She looked at a little jar containing red dye. “Your raucourt
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is too light,” she said.

Raucourt is used to give butter a nice yellow color. Merchants are believed to keep its formula a closely guarded secret, but the truth is that it is simply made from the seeds of the raucou tree. It is also true that it is sometimes made from carrots and marigolds.

“Come on, let's go,” said the young woman, whose patience was
running out. Also, she was no longer used to the foul smell of the cellar. “Mademoiselle Saget may have left already. She must have something serious to tell us about Uncle Gavard.”

Madame Lecœur stopped. She left the mixture and the raucourt. She did not even wipe her arms. She adjusted her bonnet again with a light tap and followed quickly on the heels of her niece, climbing the stairway, asking anxiously, “Do you think she didn't wait?”

But she was reassured when she saw Mademoiselle Saget seated among the cheeses. She was not going to leave. The three women took seats in the back of the narrow shop. They were almost on top of one another, talking nose to nose.

Mademoiselle Saget remained silent for a good two minutes; then, when she could see that the other two were burning up with curiosity, she said in her piercing little voice, “You know this Florent. Well, now I can tell you where he came from.”

She let the words hang on her lips an instant longer.

“He comes from the penal colony,” she finally said, lowering and deepening her awful voice.

All around her, cheeses were stinking. Huge blocks of butter were lined up on the two shelves at the back of the shop. Brittany butter was overflowing from its baskets. Normandy butters, wrapped in canvas, looked like models of stomachs onto which some sculptor had thrown wet cloths to keep them from drying out. Other blocks, already in use, cut with large knives into jagged rocks with valleys and crevices, looked like landslides on a mountain gilded by the pale evening light of autumn. Under the gray-veined red marble display counter were baskets of chalk white eggs, and in their crates on straw pallets were bondons, end to end, gourneys
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arranged on a platter like medals, in darker colors with greenish tints. But most of the cheeses were piled up on tables, and there, next to the one-pound packs of butter, was an enormous Cantal cheese on beet greens, looking as if it had been chopped with a hatchet, then a golden Chester and a Gruyère that looked like the fallen wheel of a primitive wagon. From Holland, there were balls
like decapitated heads smeared with dried blood with the hard shell of an empty skull, which has given them the name “têtes-de-mort.”
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A Parmesan added an aromatic pungence to the heavy smell. Three Bries on round boards were sad as waning moons. Two very dry ones were full. The third, in its second quarter, was oozing, emitting a white cream that spread into a lake, flooding over the thin boards that had been put there to stem the flow. Port Saluts shaped like ancient discuses had the names of the producers inscribed around the perimeters. A Romantour, wrapped in silver paper, was reminiscent of a nougat bar, a sugary cheese that had strayed into the land of sour fermentation. The Roqueforts, under their glass bells, had a regal bearing, their fat, marbled faces veined in blue and yellow as though they were the victims of some disgraceful disease that strikes wealthy people who eat too many truffles. Alongside them were the goat cheeses, fat as a child's fist, hard and gray like the stones rams kick down a path when they lead the flock.

And then there were the smells: the pale yellow Mont d'Ors released a sweet fragrance, the Troyes, which were thick and bruised on the edges, were stronger-smelling than the others, adding a fetid edge like a damp cellar; the Camemberts, with their scent of decomposing game; the Neufchâtels, the Limbourgs, the Marolles, the Pont l'Evêques, each one playing its own shrill note in a composition that was almost sickening; the Livarots, dyed red, harsh and sulfurous in the throat; and the Olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves the way peasants cover rotting carcasses of animals lying by the side of the road in the heat of the sun with branches.

The warm afternoon had softened the cheeses, the mold on the rinds was melting and glazing in rich reds and greens of exposed copper, looking like badly healed wounds. The skin of an Olivet beneath an oak leaf lifted up and heaved like the chest of a sleeping man. A flood of life had made a hole in the Livarot, releasing a cluster of worms. And behind the scale in a narrow box was a Géromé seeded with anise that was so tainted that flies had dropped dead all around it on the veined red marble.

This Géromé was almost directly under the nose of Mademoiselle Saget. She recoiled and leaned her head against the large sheets of yellow and white paper that hung by a corner at the back of the shop.

“Yes,” repeated Mademoiselle Saget, grimacing with disgust, “He came from Cayenne … The Quenu-Gradelles don't have any reason to act so smug.”

But Madame Lecœur and La Sarriette were crying out in surprise, “That can't be true! What would he have been sent to prison for? Who would have thought that Madame Quenu, whose impeccable character is the pride of the neighborhood, would have a convict for a lover?”

“Well, you don't see it!” the old woman shouted impatiently. “Listen to me. I knew I'd seen that big oaf somewhere before.”

She told them Florent's story. Now she remembered rumors going around at the time that one of old Gradelle's nephews had been sent to Cayenne for killing six gendarmes at a barricade. She had even seen him once on rue Pirouette. And this was him, all right. That was the so-called cousin. She started feeling sorry for herself, complaining that she was losing her memory, she was through and soon would remember nothing at all. She bemoaned this memory loss like a scholar who sees a lifetime of notes being scattered in the wind.

“Six gendarmes!” sputtered La Sarriette with admiration. “He must have a hard fist, that one.”

“That's probably not all he has,” Mademoiselle Saget added. “I would advise you not to meet him at midnight.”

“What a thug!” stammered Madame Lecœur, completely overcome.

The sun angled into the pavilion, making the cheese smell even stronger. At this point the Marolles were particularly powerful. They let out a smell like the stink of an uncleaned stable into the dull smell of butter. Then the wind shifted and the three women were struck by a deadly whiff of Limbourg, bitter and sour like the breath of a dying man.

“But wait a minute,” Madame Lecœur said, returning to the
subject. “If he is Fat Lisa's brother-in-law … then he's not sleeping with her.”

They stared at one another, surprised by this new side of the case of Florent. It was annoying to have to change the original version. The old spinster shrugged her shoulders. “That wouldn't necessarily stop him … It does seem a bit much … but I wouldn't put anything past him.”

“Oh, well,” said La Sarriette. “That's an old story, anyway. He wouldn't still be sleeping with her, since you've seen him with both the Méhudins.”

“Absolutely. As sure as I'm standing here looking at you, my sweet!” Mademoiselle Saget cried, annoyed that she was being questioned. “Every evening he's there in the Méhudins' skirts. But what do we care? He can sleep with whomever he likes, don't you think? As for us, we're respectable women. What a rogue he is.”

“He certainly is,” the other two agreed. “He's as sly as they come.”

Now the story was becoming tragic. They were feeling sorry for poor Lisa. There was nothing to do but wait for Florent to bring about some terrible calamity. Of course he was up to some evil. People like that escape only to breathe fire wherever they go. He certainly wouldn't have come to Les Halles if he were not planning something. The most extraordinary plots were proposed as to his likely mission. The two shopkeepers declared that they would put an additional padlock on their storage areas. La Sarriette recalled that just the other week a basket of peaches had been stolen from her. But Mademoiselle Saget terrified them by informing them that this was not the way the “reds” operated. They didn't care about baskets of peaches. They organized into groups of two or three hundred, killed everyone, and then helped themselves to whatever they wanted.

“That's their approach,” she said with the superiority of someone who knows. Madame Lecœur was starting to feel queasy. She could picture Les Halles in flames with Florent and his cohorts hiding deep in a cellar, ready to spring on Paris.

Suddenly the elderly woman said, “Now that I think about it,
there is the inheritance from old Gradelle. My, my, the Quenus have nothing to laugh about.”

Now she was happy. The gossip continued. They started talking about the Quenus, and she told the story of the treasure in the salting tub, which she knew down to the most petty detail. She could even cite the figure of eighty-five thousand francs, though neither Lisa not her husband could recall telling this to a single soul. It didn't matter. The point was that they had not given “the skinny man” his fair share. He was too poorly dressed. Maybe he didn't even know the story about the salting tub. The whole bunch of them were thieves.

The women then put their heads together, lowering their voices, and decided that it might be dangerous to attack Beautiful Lisa; they had better keep an eye on the Red so that he didn't eat up any more of poor Monsieur Gavard's money.

At the mention of Gavard's name, they fell into silence. They all looked at one another cautiously. And since they were breathing heavily, it was the Camembert they smelled. The Camembert had a scent like venison and had won out over less assertive smells such as the Marolles and Limbourgs. It exhaled more extensively, smothering the other smells with its surprising amount of foul breath. Into this powerful assertion, the Parmesan still periodically added a thin high note as from a panpipe while the Bries kept thudding like damp tambourines. Then the Livarot smothered with its reprise and the symphony was held for an instant by the high sharp note of anise-seeded Géromé, suspended like the breathing chord of an organ.

“I saw Madame Léonce,” continued Mademoiselle Saget with a look fraught with meaning.

This made the two others pay attention. Madame Léonce was Gavard's concierge on rue de la Cossonnerie. There she lived in an old house that was set back from the street. The ground floor was occupied by a distributor of oranges and lemons who had painted the facade blue, clear up to the second floor. Madame Léonce looked after Gavard's housekeeping, kept the keys to the cupboards, and brought him herbal tea when he had a cold. She was a
stern woman, a bit more than fifty years old, who spoke slowly and interminably. One day she was angry because Gavard had pinched her, but that hadn't stopped her from placing leeches on him in a very delicate spot after he hurt himself in a fall.

Mademoiselle Saget, who had coffee at her home every Wednesday night, had forged an even closer friendship with her when the poulterer moved in. They chatted for hours about the fine man. They were very fond of him and wished him well.

“Yes, I saw Madame Léonce,” Mademoiselle Saget said again. “We had coffee together yesterday. She was extremely upset. Apparently Monsieur Gavard does not come home before one in the morning anymore. On Sunday she thought he wasn't looking well, so she brought him up some broth.”

“She knows what she's doing,” said Madame Lecœur, who was bothered by the concierge's attentions.

“Not at all. You're mistaken. Madame Léonce is too good for her station in life. She's a very proper woman. Obviously, if she had wanted to help herself to Monsieur Gavard's things by the handful, she could have long ago. All she had to do was open her hands. It seems he leaves everything just lying around. That's really what I wanted to talk to you about, but you have to promise not to breathe a word of this. You have to swear to it.”

They swore to the gods in Heaven that their lips would be sealed. They stretched their necks to get closer. Then Mademoiselle Saget said with great solemnity, “You know, this has been going on with Monsieur Gavard for some time. He has bought a weapon—one of those big pistols that revolves, you know. Madame Léonce said that it's horrible, that the pistol is always on the table or the mantel and she's afraid to do the dusting. And that's not all. His money …”

“His money,” Madame Lecœur repeated, her cheeks turning bright red.

“Well, there are no more stocks. They've all been sold. All he has left is a pile of gold in the closet.”

“A pile of gold!” repeated the enraptured La Sarriette.

“Yes, a big pile of gold. A whole shelf stuffed with it. It's stunning.
Madame Léonce told me that one morning he opened the armoire when she was there, and it glowed so brightly, it hurt her eyes.”

Silence fell once again. The three woman batted their eyes as though they had just seen the pile of gold. La Sarriette was the first to start laughing as she muttered, “If my uncle gave it all to me, what a time I could have with Jules. We'd never get up. We'd have scrumptious treats brought to us by the restaurant.”