The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [104]
It was in the basement of the poultry pavilion that they were able to sleep together. It was their special tradition, and finding a way to sleep against each other, the old way they had lost, made them feel warm. There by the slaughtering table and the big baskets of feathers, they could stretch out. As soon as night fell, they slipped in and stayed there all evening, warming themselves, happy in the softness of their bed, with down up to their eyes. They dragged their basket away from the gaslight. They were alone with the strong smell of poultry, awakened by the sudden crowing of roosters in the darkness. And they laughed and kissed, filled with an affection that they were not sure how to express.
Marjolin was very stupid. Cadine beat him, overcome with anger toward him but not knowing why. But with her street-savvy instincts, she was awakening him. Slowly, there in the basket of feathers, they came to know everything. It was a game. The hens and roosters lying next to them did not have a sweeter innocence.
Even later, they filled Les Halles with their love like insouciant sparrows. They lived like happy young animals, ruled by their instincts, satisfying their appetites in the midst of mountains of food, where they had grown like plants made of flesh and blood. At sixteen Cadine was a girl set free, a dark gypsy of the streets, gluttonous and sensual. At eighteen Marjolin was already showing signs of the fat man he would become, devoid of intelligence and living by instinct. Often at night Cadine would leave her bed to join him in the poultry cellar. The next day she would laugh brazenly at Mère Chantemesse, who would chase her around the room, missing with her broom handle, while Cadine mocked her and claimed she had stayed out “to see if the moon grew horns.”
As for Marjolin, he lived like a vagabond. The nights that Cadine left him alone he spent in the pavilions with the night watchmen. He slept in sacks or in crates or in any quiet corner he came across. Neither of them ever left Les Halles for more than a few moments. It was their perch, their stable, the colossal manger where they slept, loved, and lived on a huge bed of meat, butter, and vegetables.
But they always had a special place in their hearts for the big baskets of feathers. They returned there for nights of love. The feathers were completely unsorted. There were long black turkey feathers and goose plumes, white and slick, which tickled their ears when they turned over. They sank into duck down as though it were cotton wool. There were light hen feathers, golden and speckled, which rose in a cloud with each breath they exhaled, looking like a jumble of flies in the sunlight. In the winter they also slept in the purple of pheasants, the ashen gray of larks, in the silky plumage of grouse, quail, and thrushes.
The feathers seemed to still be alive, warm with their scent, and they brushed the children's lips with the quiver of wings and the warmth of a nest. To them, the feathers felt like the great broad back of an enormous bird on which they rested, which swept them away as they swooned in each other's arms.
In the morning, Marjolin looked for Cadine, lost at the bottom of the basket, as though buried in new-fallen snow. Disheveled, she climbed up, shook herself, emerging from a cloud. A few feathers always stuck to her bun.
They found another place for their pleasures, in the wholesale market for butter, eggs, and cheese. Every morning a wall of empty baskets formed there. The two would find a way through this wall to carve out a hiding place. As soon as they had built their room inside, they pulled in a basket to close it off. Then they were at home. They had a house. They could kiss without fear. And their great joke at everyone's expense was that only a thin wall of wicker separated them from the crowds of Les Halles, whose loud voices they heard all around them.
Often they burst into laughter when they heard some unsuspecting person stop only