The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [117]
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.
Beautiful Lisa remained cool and collected. Her lips were pursed, and her bosom was back to the mute round shape of a belly. The heavy sounds of Les Halles were rumbling overhead. The sounds of the street came through the grates on rue Rambuteau and cut through the thick basement silence.
She reflected on how it was only the sheer power of her arms that had saved her. She shook off a few feathers that were still stuck to her skirt. Then, afraid to be found there, she left without looking at Marjolin. She was relieved to be lit by sunlight from the grates as she climbed the stairs.
Perfectly calm and a little pale, she went back to the charcuterie.
“You were gone a long time,” Quenu said.
“I couldn't find Gavard. I looked everywhere,” she said calmly. “We'll have to have the leg of lamb without him.”
She refilled the crock of saindoux and cut off some chops for her friend Madame Taboureau, who had sent her maid to pick them up. The blows of the cleaver reminded her of Marjolin down in the basement. But she felt no guilt. She had behaved as a decent woman should. She wasn't going to upset herself for a ragamuffin like that. She had her husband and daughter to think of.
But when she looked at Quenu, she did notice the coarseness of the reddish skin on the back of his neck and his clean-shaven chin as rough and wrinkly as knotty wood. The neck and chin of the other one had seemed like pink velvet.
It was better not to think about such things. She was never going to touch him again. He imagined things that were not possible. It had been a little treat that she had allowed herself and now regretted—children grew up much too fast these days.
As the color came back to her cheeks, Quenu thought she was looking “pretty damn good.” He sat down next to her at the counter and said, “You ought to go out more often. It agrees with you. Maybe we should go to the theater some evening to the Gaîté,9 where Madame Taboureau saw that play she liked.”
Lisa smiled and said, “We'll see.” Then she disappeared again.
Quenu thought about how nice it had been of her to run after that fellow Gavard. He did not notice her go upstairs. She went to Florent's room with the key that hung on a nail in the kitchen. She couldn't count on the poultry man now, so she hoped to find some clue in Florent's room. She paced slowly, looking at the bed, the mantel, peering into every corner. The window that led to the narrow balcony was open, and the budding pomegranate plant was bathed in the golden dust of sunset. It occurred to her that it was as though the shopgirl had never left the room and had slept there the night before. There was no male scent to the room. This surprised her. She had expected to find some suspicious locked boxes or trunks. She fingered Augustine's summer dress, still hanging on the wall.