The Belly of Paris (6 page)

On a January night six weeks later, a guard had awakened him and taken him to a courtyard with about four hundred other prisoners. An hour later this first convoy had been marched in handcuffs between two columns of gendarmes with loaded rifles, to be shipped into exile. They had crossed the Austerlitz bridge and followed the boulevards to the Gare du Havre.

It was a festive carnival night. The windows of the restaurants along the boulevards were open. At the top of the rue Vivienne, right where he had found the dead woman—that unknown woman whose face he always carried with him—there was now a large carriage full of masked women, bare-shouldered and with laughing voices, irritated by being held up and appalled by “this interminable line of prisoners.”

From Paris to Le Havre the prisoners had not been given a drink of water or a mouthful of bread. Someone had forgotten to distribute rations before they left. For thirty-six hours they had had nothing to eat, until they were packed into the hold of the frigate
Canada
.

The hunger had never left him. Florent searched through his past and could not recall a moment of plenty. He had become dry and emaciated, with a shrunken stomach and skin that drooped from his bones. And now that he was back in Paris, it seemed to him to be fat, haughty, and overloaded with food, while surrounded by sadness. He had returned on a bed of vegetables, rolling into town on a huge wave of food that troubled him.

Had that festive carnival night continued all these seven years? Again he saw the open windows of the boulevard restaurants, laughing women, the city of gluttony he had left on that January day long ago. It seemed to him that everything had expanded and enlarged as though to keep up with the huge market, Les Halles, whose heavy breathing he was beginning to hear, still sluggish with yesterday's indigestion.

Mère Chantemesse had finally decided on a dozen turnip bunches. She gathered them up in her apron, pressing them to her midriff, which made her look even plumper than usual, and she stayed on to chat some more in her drawling voice. When she finally left, Madame François sat beside Florent again.

“Poor old Mère Chantemesse,” she said. “She must be at least seventy-two. I remember when I was a kid, her buying turnips from my father. And she has no family, only some little waif that she picked up God knows where, who gives her nothing but grief. But she gets by, selling a little and making a couple of francs' profit a day. If it were me, I could never spend all my days on the streets of Paris. She doesn't even have relatives.”

Seeing that Florent was not talking, she asked, “Do you have relatives in Paris?”

He seemed not to hear her. His old mistrust returned. His mind was swirling with old tales of police, their undercover agents on every street corner, and women selling the secrets they had pried loose from sad souls they took in. As he sat beside Madame François, she looked honest enough with her full, calm face and the black-and-yellow scarf around her head. She seemed about thirty-five, sturdy, with handsome good looks from her outdoor life. Her masculine bearing was softened by kind, soft dark eyes. She was a bit nosy, but it was a good-natured curiosity.

“I have a nephew in Paris,” she said, continuing the one-sided conversation, not the least offended by Florent's silence. “He hasn't turned out to be any good. Now he's enlisted … It's always good to have somewhere to go. I suppose your parents will be surprised to see you. It feels good to get home, doesn't it?”

All the while she talked, she never took her eyes off Florent, probably feeling sorry for him because he was so skinny. Then too, she guessed that there was a gentleman somewhere inside that tattered black overcoat, which was why she did not dare press a silver coin into his palm. But finally she did say, “You know, if you ever need anything—”

But Florent cut her off with clumsy pride, saying that he had everything he needed and knew exactly where he was going. This
seemed to please her, and she repeated several times, as though to reassure herself, “Oh good, then you just have to wait for daybreak.”

A huge bell at the corner of the fruit market, right above Florent's head, started ringing. Its slow, regular notes seemed to awaken the market little by little. The carts kept coming with the growing ruckus of shouting wagoneers, the cracks of their whips, the iron wheel bands and horseshoes grinding into the stone pavement. The wagons, unable to move forward except in sudden jolts, lined up and slowly faded into the distant gray. All along rue du Pont-Neuf the carts unloaded, pulled close to the sidewalk, where the horses stood motionless in a line as though at a horse fair.

Florent examined a cart filled with magnificent cabbages. It had been backed up to the sidewalk with great care and effort, and its leafy pile rose above a gas lamp whose light fell on the large leaves, making them look like crimped pieces of green velvet. A young farm girl of about sixteen, wearing a blue linen coat and cap, climbed up on the cart and was up to her shoulders in cabbages. She began tossing them one by one to someone hidden in shadow below. Every now and then the girl would slip and disappear in a cabbage avalanche. Then her pink nose would be seen sticking out of the green and she would be heard laughing as the cabbages were tossed between Florent and the gaslight. He counted them automatically until the cart was empty, which left him feeling somehow disappointed.

The piles of vegetables were now spilling into the road, with narrow paths between them so that people could pass. The sidewalk was covered end to end with the dark vegetable mounds. But in the flicker of lantern light, you could barely make out the lush fullness of a bouquet of artichokes, the delicate green of the lettuce, the flush coral of carrots, the soft ivory finish of turnips. Flashes of the bright colors skipped across the mounds with the flickering of the light.

A crowd had awakened, and people were starting to fill up the sidewalk, scrambling among the vegetables, sometimes stopping, at times chattering, occasionally shouting. A loud voice could be heard in the distance screaming, “Chicory!”

The gates of the vegetable pavilion had just been opened, and the retailers who had stalls there, white caps on their heads, shawls knotted over their black coats, and skirts pinned up to protect them from getting dirty, began gathering their day's provisions in roomy baskets that stood on the floor. These baskets were seen darting in and out between the road and the pavilion, bumping into the heads of bystanders in the thick crowds, the bystanders expressing their displeasure with coarse complaints that were lost in the growing clamor of increasingly hoarse voices.

They could spend a quarter of an hour fighting over one sou. Florent was surprised at the calm of the marketers with their plaid clothing and tanned faces in the middle of the long-winded haggling of the market.

Behind him on the sidewalk of the rue Rambuteau, fruit was being sold. Hampers and smaller baskets were lined up, covered with canvas or straw giving off a strong odor of overripe mirabelle plums. After listening for some time to a soft, slow voice, Florent had to turn his head and look. He saw a charming woman, small and dark, sitting on the ground and bargaining.

“Oh, come on, Marcel,” she said. “You can take a hundred sous, won't you?” She was speaking to a man who kept his coat closely wrapped around him and did not answer. After about five very long minutes the woman went back on the attack. “Come on, Marcel, one hundred sous for that basket there and four francs for the other one. That'll make nine francs I owe you.”

More silence.

“All right, what's your price?”

“Ten francs, as you well know because I already told you. And what have you done with your Jules this morning, La Sarriette?” The young woman started laughing as she grabbed a fistful of small change from her pocket.

“Oh,” she said, “Jules is having his beauty rest this morning. He claims that men are not made for work.”

She paid for the two baskets and carried them into the newly opened fruit pavilion. Les Halles was still wrapped in artfully lit dankness, with thousands of stripes from jalousies beneath the
awnings of the long covered street already heavily trafficked with pedestrians, while the distant pavilions were still deserted. At the pointe Saint-Eustache the bakers and wine merchants were busy taking down their shutters; their red shops, gaslights aglow, were brilliant against the grayness that still covered the other buildings. Florent looked at a
boulangerie
⁴
on the left-hand side of rue Montorgueil, all full and golden with a fresh batch of bread, and he thought he could smell the fragrance of warm bread. It was 4:30 in the morning.

Meanwhile, Madame François had sold all her produce. When Lacaille reappeared with his bag, only a few carrot bunches were left.

“How about a sou for that?” he asked.

“I knew I'd be seeing you again,” she answered quietly. “Go ahead. Take the rest. There are seventeen bunches.”

“So that makes seventeen sous.”

“No. Thirty-four.”

They settled on twenty-five. Madame François was in a hurry to leave. Once Lacaille had wandered off with the carrots in his bag she said to Florent, “See that, he was watching me. The old bastard drifts around the market. Sometimes he waits till the last second to buy four sous' worth of goods. Oh these Parisians! They'll bicker over a few sous and then empty their pockets drinking at the wine shop.”

When Madame François spoke of Paris, her voice was full of irony and disdain. She talked about it as though it were a distant city so ridiculous and contemptible that she condescended to set foot there only in the dark of night.

“Now I can get out of here,” she said, sitting down next to Florent on a neighbor's vegetable pile.

Florent bowed his head. He had just stolen something. Just as Lacaille had left, Florent had spied a piece of carrot lying on the ground, picked it up, and was grasping it tightly in his right hand. Behind him, celery stalks and parsley bunches gave off a smell that was nauseating him.

“I'm going to get out of here,” Madame François repeated. This
stranger touched her, and her senses told her that he was suffering, sitting there on the sidewalk motionless. She offered again to help him, but he again refused with an even more biting pride. He even stood up and remained on his feet to prove that he had regained his strength. Then, as Madame François turned away, he stuffed the carrot into his mouth. But despite his terrible longing to sink his teeth into it, he was forced to take it out of his mouth again, because she started examining his face again. She started to question him further with a kindhearted curiosity. Florent simply answered with nods and head shakes. Then, slowly, he began to eat the carrot.

She was finally about to leave when a powerful voice right behind her exclaimed, “Good morning, Madame François!”

The voice came from a skinny young man with big bones and a huge head. His face was bearded, with a delicate nose and sparkling clear eyes. He wore a rusty, beat-up black felt hat and was buttoned up in an enormous overcoat, once a soft chestnut but now discolored with long greenish streaks from the rain. Somewhat bent and shaking with nervous energy that seemed chronic, he stood in a pair of heavy laced shoes, the shortness of his pant legs revealing his blue hose.

“Oh, hello, Monsieur Claude,” she responded cheerfully. “You know, I was expecting you on Monday, and when you didn't show up I took care of your canvas for you, hanging it on a nail in my room.”

“Oh, Madame François, you're too kind. I'll finish that study of mine one of these days. I wasn't able to make it Monday. Does your big plum tree still have all its leaves?”

“Absolutely.”

“I wondered because I wanted it for a corner of my painting. It would be perfect by the side of the chicken coop. I've been thinking about it all week … Ah, what beautiful vegetables this morning! I came down very early this morning, looking for the rays of a beautiful sunrise landing on the cabbages.” He demonstrated with a sweep of his arm that took in the full length of the sidewalk.

Madame François answered, “Well, I'm leaving. Good-bye. See you soon, Monsieur Claude.” As she was leaving she introduced
Florent to the young painter. “This gentleman seems to have come from far away. He's no longer at home in your pigsty called Paris. Maybe you could fill him in a bit.”

At last she was off, happy to have left the two of them together. Claude studied Florent with interest; his gaunt, diffident face seemed to Claude to be an original. Madame François's introduction was all he needed, and with the familiarity of a street hustler experienced in chance encounters, he calmly said, “I think I'll join you. Where are you going?”

Florent was still awkward. He did not open up so quickly. On the other hand, he had had a question on his lips ever since his arrival. Deciding to risk it, though he feared a disagreeable response, he asked, “Does the rue Pirouette still exist?”

“It certainly does,” the painter answered. “That street is a curious corner of old Paris. It bends and turns like a dancer, and the houses have huge bellies like fat women … I did a pretty good etching of it. I'll show it to you when you come by my place … Is that where you're going?”

Florent, heartened by the news that the rue Pirouette still existed, admitted that it was not his destination and that in fact, he had no place to go. But his distrust was reawakened by Claude's insistence. “Who cares?” said Claude. “Let's go to rue Pirouette anyway. It's the most wonderful color at night … Let's go, it's just a short hop.”

Florent had to follow him. They walked side by side, like two old friends, stepping over baskets and piles of vegetables. On the pavement at rue Rambuteau, there were mounds of gigantic cauliflowers, stacked with surprising orderliness like cannonballs. The delicate white cauliflower flesh opened like enormous roses, surrounded by large green leaves, so that the mounds resembled bridal bouquets on display on a flower stand. Claude stopped and emitted little whimpers of appreciation.

Then, in front of them, was the rue Pirouette, where he pointed to the houses, one by one, with stories and information about them. One gas lamp burned by itself in a corner. The peeling houses crammed together, their overhangs protruding above the ground
floor, as the painter had said, like the bellies of fat women, while the gables above them tilted back as though leaning on their neighbors for support. Three or four others, placed farther back at the edge of the shadows, leaned forward as if about to fall on their faces. The gas lamp lit one house, making it appear very white, newly whitewashed, but still resembling a decrepit old woman freshly powdered and made up to look young. The other houses stretched into the darkness, cracked and green-streaked from the rain in the gutters, in such a hodgepodge of different colors and attitudes that it made Claude laugh.