The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [114]
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