The Belly of Paris (37 page)

The elderly woman took Pauline by the hand, expressing shock at the condition of her clothes. Muche was not in the least bit intimidated. He followed them, laughing in his sly way about his handiwork, saying repeatedly that Pauline had chosen to come with him and it had been her decision to get down on the ground.

Mademoiselle Saget was a regular at the square des Innocents. She spent at least an hour there every afternoon keeping up on the latest gossip on the locals. The square had semicircles of benches end to end on either side. Poor people from the narrow sweltering streets of the neighborhood packed tightly onto the benches, frail, shriveled old women in threadbare bonnets, young ones in camisoles with badly fastened skirts, bareheaded and exhausted and already sagging from poverty, and a few men also, tidy grandfathers, forts with soiled jackets, and suspicious-looking men in black hats, while the footpaths were jammed with children pulling toy carts with wheels missing, filling pails with sand, screaming and biting—a filthy, snot-nosed crowd of kids, swarming in the sun like vermin.

Mademoiselle Saget was so thin that she could always manage to wriggle into a spot on a bench. She listened in on what was being said and then struck up a conversation with the person next to her, some young and sickly wife of a worker mending her linen, taking socks and handkerchiefs as full of holes as a sieve from a basket tied with a string. Mademoiselle Saget even knew some of the women.

In the midst of the unbearable shrieking from the children and the constant rumbling of traffic from behind rue Saint-Denis, the women babbled without stopping long enough to take a breath, with tales of storekeepers, grocers, bakers, butchers—a complete listing of the district—tales soured and warped by a lack of credit and the hungry longings of the poor. It was among these needy
people that she learned of the horrors that slipped out of sleazy boardinghouses and emerged from the dark caves of the con cierges, the muck and garbage that piqued her curiosity and appetite like hot pepper on the tongue.

Facing Les Halles, the square was in front of her, with the facades of three buildings broken up by windows into which she tried to penetrate with her stare. She seemed to stretch taller and glide along each story, right up to the round flaring eyes of the attic windows. She gawked at the curtains. She could develop an entire drama from a head that appeared between two shutters. Over time she had come to know all the stories of the tenants of every house just by sitting outside, watching. Restaurant Baratte was especially interesting to her, with its wine shop and gilded fretwork awning forming a terrace that overflowed with greenery from a few pots of flowers. It was a narrow four-story house daubed and speckled with color. She liked the pale blue base with yellow trim, the fluted pillar with a shell on top. It all looked like a cardboard temple on the facade of a dilapidated old building, topped off by colored tin edging along the roof. Behind the red-striped flexible shutters she could imagine pleasant little lunches and fine dinners. She even convinced herself that this was where Florent and Gavard went to carouse with those two Méhudin floozies and imagined the abominations that took place during the dessert course.

Meanwhile Pauline cried even more loudly as Mademoiselle Saget took her hand. The elderly woman was about to lead her away through the gate to the square when she suddenly had a different idea. She sat her down at the end of a bench and tried to get her to stop crying.

“Come on, Pauline, stop this crying or the police will come get you. I will take you home. You know me, don't you? I'm a good friend, aren't I? Now, come on. Let me see a little smile.”

But the tears were choking her, and she wanted to go. Calmly Mademoiselle Saget let her cry, waiting for her to finish. The poor girl was shivering. Her skirt and stockings were soaked. Her entire face was becoming muddy as she wiped away her tears with dirty fists. After the girl calmed down, the old woman said to her in a
syrupy tone, “You have a good mama, don't you? She loves you very much?”

“Yes,” said Pauline, her heart still heavy.

“And Father isn't wicked either. He doesn't beat you, does he? What do they talk about at night when you're going to sleep?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm warm in my bed.”

“Do they talk about your cousin Florent?”

“I don't know.”

Mademoiselle Saget adopted a stern bearing and pretended to get up as though she would walk away. “You're a liar. You know you shouldn't lie. If you lie to me, I'll leave you here and Muche will come back and pinch you.”

Muche, who had been hanging around the bench, interrupted at this point and said in a clear, masculine voice, “Aw, she's too stupid to know anything. But I know that my good friend Florent looked pretty worked up when Mama smiled and said he could kiss her if he wanted to.”

Pauline, afraid of being abandoned, had started crying again.

“Be quiet, just shut up, you little brat,” Mademoiselle Saget cursed, starting to shake the little girl. “I'm not going away. I'll buy you some barley sugar,
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hmm? A little barley sugar? … So you don't like your cousin Florent, do you?”

“No. Mama says that he's not respectable.”

“Aha! You see, your mama did say something.”

“I had Mouton in bed with me one night, I sleep with Mouton. And she told Papa, ‘Your brother only escaped from the penal colony to drag us all back there.’”

Mademoiselle Saget let out a slight squeal. She stood up shaking from head to foot. A light beam had at last shown through the shadows of her mind. She took Pauline's hand again and hustled her off to the charcuterie without saying a word, her lips squeezed into a secretive smile, her eyes shining with intense happiness. At the corner of rue Pirouette, Muche, who had been prancing alongside, enjoying the sight of the little girl running in her muddy stockings, wisely vanished.

Lisa was in a state of extreme anxiety. When she saw her daughter
coming, looking like a dishrag she was so perplexed that she spun her around to look at her from every side and didn't even want to hit her.

“It was that Muche,” said Mademoiselle Saget with a malevolent tone. “I've brought her back to you. I found them under a tree in the square. I don't know what they were up to. You'd better take her home and look her over. That slut's son is capable of anything.”

Lisa could find nothing to say. She could not decide where to grab her child, she was so disgusted by her muddy little boots, dirty stockings, torn skirts, and smudged face and hands. Blue velvet, little ear studs, crucifix, all were buried under a layer of dirt. But what really drove Lisa over the top was the pockets full of soil. She bent down and emptied them without regard for the pink-and-white tile floor. Still she was speechless and dragged Pauline away saying only, “Come on, you mess.”

Mademoiselle Saget, who was thrilled by the scene, crossed rue Rambuteau with a light step with her head hidden deep in her black hat. In fact, her little feet barely touched the ground. She was carried by her delight as though caressed by a breeze. At last she had found out. After almost a year of aching to find out the truth, here she was, all of a sudden, entirely in possession of Florent. It was more than she had hoped for, like a cure for a disease, because she felt that she could have slowly burned herself out because of this man and for a long time held off death only with the strength of her curiosity. Now the whole Les Halles neighborhood belonged to her. There was no longer a missing piece. She could tell the story, shop by shop, on every street in the area. She uttered little sighs of pleasure as she entered the fruit pavilion.

“Well, Mademoiselle Saget,” shouted La Sarriette from her fruit stand, “what's happened to you, laughing to yourself? Have you won the big pot in the lottery?”

“No, no. Oh, my child, if you only knew.”

La Sarriette looked irresistible, with the wildness of a beautiful woman amid all her fruit. The locks of her curly hair fell over her forehead like wild grass. Her bare arms and bare neck, every bare
and pink part of her that she was showing, had the freshness of cherries and peaches. Just for the fun of it, she had hung cherries from her ears, black cherries that bounced against her cheeks when she leaned forward with earthy laughter. What was amusing her was that she was eating red currants in a way that was covering her from nose to chin in red juice. Her mouth was lipstick red from the red currant juice, as though she had been painted and perfumed with some cosmetic. A smell of plums came from her skirts, and her loosely tied scarf had the scent of strawberries.

And mountains of fruit surrounded her in the narrow shop. Behind her were shelves of melons: cantaloupes, with warty little bumps; maraîchers, with their skin like gray lace; and culs de singe,
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with their smooth bare humps. The beautiful fruits were on display, delicately arranged with the roundness of their cheeks, half hidden in the baskets like faces of beautiful children, partly concealed by leaves. The peaches were especially beautiful, peaches from Montreuil with clear, soft skin like northern girls' and yellow sunburned peaches from the Midi, tanned like Provençal women. The apricots lying in moss had the amber glow of sunset shining on dark-haired girls. The cherries stacked in neat rows looked like the narrowed lips of smiling Chinese women; the Montmorency cherries like the chubby lips of fat women; the English cherries, longer and more serious; the heart cherries with dark flesh bruised by kisses; the bigarreaus with pink and white splotches and a smile both joyful and angry. The apples and pears were in piles as regular as architecture, tall pyramids with the flushed color of developing breasts, golden shoulders and hips—discreetly naked among the ferns. The apples all had different skins: the baby-soft pommes d'api, the shapeless rambourgs, the calville dressed in white, the ruddy Canadas, the blotchy-faced crab apples, and the freckly reinettes.

Then came the pears, the blanquettes, the anglais, the beurrés, the messire-Jeans, the duchesses, either stubby or elongated with swan necks, yellow- or green-bellied, flushed with a touch of red. Beside them lay the plums, transparent and anemic with virginal
softness. Greengage plums, a favorite of men, were as pale as the blush of innocence. The mirabelles, gathered like golden beads of a forgotten rosary, were stored in a box with sticks of vanilla beans.

The strawberries exhaled a scent of youth, especially the smaller ones, which are gathered in the woods, rather than the larger garden variety, which give off the dull scent of a watering can. The raspberries added their scent to this pure fragrance. The currants, both red and black, and the hazelnuts all smiled with an air of confidence, while the baskets of grapes in weighty bunches, heavy with drunkenness, swooned over the edge of the trellis, their colors deepening in spots where they were touched by the sun's voluptuous warmth.

This was where La Sarriette lived, in an orchard of intoxicating perfumes. The less expensive fruits—cherries, plums, strawberries— were piled in a flat, paper-lined basket in front of her. They bruised one another, staining the stand with juice, a strong juice that vaporized in the heat. On those sweltering July afternoons her head would spin with the powerful, musky odor of the melons. Then, slightly inebriated and showing some more flesh under her shawl, barely ripe and still fresh from springtime, her lips pouted: many had the urge to plunder those lips.

It was she, it was her arms and her neck, that breathed life into the fruit with her satin-finished womanliness. One stall over, an elderly market woman, a terrible drunk, filled her display with shriveled apples, pears that sagged like empty breasts, and cadaverous apricots a foul witchlike shade of yellow. La Sarriette, on the other hand, gave her display a naked sensuality. You could imagine that the cherries had been placed in the stall one by one with kisses from her lips, that the peaches had fallen from her bodice, the plums had come from her softest skin—her temples, under the chin, the corners of her mouth. She had let her own blood run into the veins of the red currants. The heat of this beautiful woman excited the fruit that came from the earth, and they made love on a bed of leaves in the moss-spread nooks of the baskets. Compared to the smell of life that rose from her open baskets and disheveled clothes, the flower market behind her smelled dull.

However, on this particular day, La Sarriette was in the throes of a shipment of mirabelles whose scent was overtaking the market. She could see that Mademoiselle Saget had some important news and she wanted to hear it, but the old woman was stamping around impatiently, shouting, “No, I don't have time. I'm on my way to see Madame Lecœur. But I have a good one. Come with me if you want.”

The truth was that the only reason she had cut through the fruit pavilion was to get La Sarriette. And La Sarriette could not resist. Monsieur Jules was there squirming on a chair that was turned backward. He was clean-shaven and as fresh as a cherub.

“Can you look after the shop?” she said to him. “I'll be back in a minute.”

But he jumped to his feet and, as she was turning down the alleyway, shouted after her, “Hey, no, Lisette. You know I'm just about to leave. I don't want to get stuck here for an extra hour like happened last time. Besides, your plums give me a headache.” He sauntered off calmly with his hands in his pockets, leaving the shop unwatched.

Mademoiselle Saget was forcing La Sarriette to run. At the butter market, a neighbor told them that Madame Lecœur was in the cellar. La Sarriette went down to get her while the older woman installed herself amid the cheeses.

The cellars below were very dark; along the passageways the storage bins were protected against fire with fine-meshed wire netting. The gas jets, placed far apart, made yellow splotches in the air but did little to illuminate that humid, murky atmosphere, which grew thicker and thicker beneath the crushing weight of the roof.

Madame Lecœur was working her butter on one of the tables under rue Berger. The gratings allowed some pale light to get in. The tables were continually being washed with water from the faucets so that they were as white as new. The butter merchant was kneading her mixture in an oak box at the far end with her back to the water pumps. She took samples of various kinds of butter that were beside her on the table and mixed them, adjusting the preparation with the addition of one or the other in much the same way
as blends of wine are made. Bent over with her pointy shoulders, her thin, gnarled arms bare to the shoulders and looking like stakes, she was pounding her fist furiously into this mass of fat, which was now starting to get white and creamy. She was sweating, and she sighed with each stroke she took.