by Emile Zola
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.”
She walked into the stall. Gavard rented two compartments, which he had made into a little chicken range by removing the partition. The larger birds—geese, turkeys, and ducks—were waddling around in bird droppings. The three shelves above had flat open boxes full of hens and rabbits. The chicken wire was thick with dust and festooned with cobwebs, so that the stall appeared to be furnished with gray blinds. Rabbit urine had corroded the lower panels, and white splashes of bird droppings spotted the board.
But Lisa did not want to hurt Marjolin by showing any more disgust. She stuck her fingers into the little cages and expressed sympathy for the wretched hens cooped up in a space too small for them even to stand up in. She petted a duck that was cowering in a corner with a broken leg. Marjolin told her that they were planning to kill it tonight in case it died during the night.
“But what,” she asked, “do they do for food?”
He explained that poultry won't eat in the dark. The merchants have to light a candle and wait there until they are finished.
“It's fun,” he continued. “I stand there holding a light for hours. You should see the way they peck at each other. Then, when I cover the candle with my hand, they're all left with their necks sticking out, as though the sun had set. But you can't simply leave them a light and go away. One woman, Mère Palette—you know her— nearly burned the whole place down the other day. A hen must have knocked a candle onto some straw.”
“Oh well,” said Lisa, “that's not too bad, if they have to have their chandeliers lit for each meal.”
That made him laugh. She had stepped out of the stall, wiping her feet and lifting her skirt slightly to keep it out of the filth. Marjolin blew out the candle and shut the door. She was afraid to walk in the dark with this large boy at her side and went ahead of him so that she wouldn't end up with him in her skirts again. When he caught up to her, she said, “I'm glad I saw it. You'd never guess some of the things that are under Les Halles. Thank you for showing me. I have to go now—quickly. They'll wonder what happened to me at the shop. If you see Monsieur Gavard, tell him that I'd like to talk to him as soon as possible.”
“But he's probably at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “We could go see, if you want.”
She did not answer, overcome by the warm air that hit her face. It was turning her pink, and her stretched bodice, usually lifeless, was starting to heave. It worried her for some reason, made her feel anxious, to hear Marjolin's quickening footsteps behind her. He was panting. She stood aside to let him pass her. The village with its darkened rows was still asleep. Lisa noticed that her companion was taking the long way around. When they came out, opposite the railway line, he said that he wanted to show her the tracks, and they stood there a moment looking at the wide planks of fencing. He offered to lead her along the track, but she declined, saying that it was not worth the trouble. And she had a good idea of what it looked like from where they were.
On the way back they ran into Mère Palette in front of her storage. A frenzy of wings and paws could be heard inside. After she untied the last knot the long necks of the geese acted like springs and flipped open the cover. The frightened geese made their escape, their heads plunged forward with a whistling and a quacking that filled the darkness of the cellar with cacophonous music. Lisa could not help laughing, despite the exclamations of the old poultry seller, who in her despair was cursing like a wagoneer while dragging by the neck two geese she had managed to recapture. Marjolin had run off to catch a third goose. He could be heard scrambling through the rows, outwitted by the bird but enjoying the chase. Then there was the sound of a scuffle at the far end, and he returned carrying the goose. Mère Palette, an old, yellowing woman, clutched the bird in her arms and held it against her stomach in the classical pose of Leda.8
“I'll tell you,” she said, “you should have been there … the other day I got into it with one of them. I had my knife on me, and I slit its throat.”
Marjolin was winded. When they got to the stone blocks where the slaughtering was done, the light was better and Lisa noticed that he was soaking with sweat and his eyes had a glow she had never seen before. Usually he lowered his eyes in her presence like a girl. She found him particularly handsome the way he was, with his broad shoulders and large pink face framed by his mop of light-colored curls. She looked at him pleasantly, with that look of appreciation that can be offered risk-free to boys who are too young. He was starting to feel shy again.
“As you can see, Monsieur Gavard is not here and you are wasting my time,” she said.
He explained to her, in rapid words, the process of slaughter, the five enormous stone slabs, that went down the side of rue Rambuteau under the yellow lights of the gas burners. At one end a woman was bleeding chickens, which led Marjolin to comment that she was plucking the poultry while it still had some life in it, which made it easier to pluck. Then he wanted her to take handfuls of feathers from the stone slabs. There were piles of feathers everywhere. He explained that they were sorted and sold for as much as nine sous a pound depending on the quality. He also told her to sink her arms into the large baskets of down. Then he turned on the water faucets installed in every pillar.
His deluge of facts was relentless. The blood ran along the benches and made puddles on the flagstones. Every two hours cleaners came and scrubbed away the blood stains with thick brushes. When Lisa leaned over the opening of the drain, there was another lengthy explanation, this time of how the water flooded the cellar through this hole on rainy days. One time it had actually risen a foot and they'd had to move all the poultry to the other end of the cellar, where it sloped upward. Recalling the outcry of the panicking animals made him laugh all over again.
But after that he ran dry unable to think of another point of interest. Then he remembered the ventilator. He led her down to the end, and when she looked up, as instructed, she saw inside one of the corner turrets a ventilation pipe by which the foul air escaped. Then Marjolin fell speechless in this pestilent stinking corner with the alkaline crudeness of guano. But he seemed alert, even invigorated. His nostrils quivered and his breathing grew heavy, as though he were regaining his nerve. For the past quarter hour he had been in the basement with Beautiful Lisa, intoxicated by the warmth and scent of live animals. He was no longer the shy young thing; the scent of chickens had put him in heat under the vaulting of the black, shadowy ceiling.
“You know,” she said, “you're a nice boy to have shown me all this. When you come to the charcuterie, I'll give you something.”
She held his chin in her hand, the way she often did, and did not notice that he was no longer a little boy. Actually, she was a little affected, stirred by this stroll through the basement, and she was savoring a gentle emotion—nothing inappropriate and of no real sign
ificance. Maybe she inadvertently left her hand just a little longer than usual under his young chin that was so supple to the touch.
For whatever reason, responding to this caress, his instincts took over, and, shooting a glance out of the corners of his eyes to make sure that no one was watching, he summoned his strength and threw himself on Beautiful Lisa with the force of a bull. He grabbed her by the shoulders, and he pushed her backward into a basket of feathers, where she tumbled in a heap, her skirts up to her knees.
He was going to take her, the same way he had taken Cadine, with the brutality of an animal sating himself, when without making a sound but pale from the suddenness of the assault, Beautiful Lisa sprang out of the basket in a single bound. Raising her arm the way she had seen them do in the slaughterhouse, with her fine female fist she knocked Marjolin unconscious with one blow between the eyes. He fell over backward and cracked his head against the corner of a stone slab. At that very moment a rooster let fly in the darkness a long raucous crow.