The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [12]
On September 28, 1902, Zola died in his home outside Paris of carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning chimney. In 1927, a stove fitter made a deathbed confession that he and other anti-Dreyfusards, while repairing a neighbor's roof, had deliberately blocked Zola's chimney to kill him. The story which did not surface until 1953, has never been confirmed but is most certainly the version of his death that Zola would have preferred. The few real writers, the ones who stand up and use their voices for what they believe, understand that being a writer is not without risks.
THE BELLY OF PARIS
CHAPTER ONE
In the silence of a deserted avenue, wagons stuffed with produce made their way toward Paris, their thudding wheels rhythmically echoing off the houses sleeping behind the rows of elm trees meandering on either side of the road. At the pont de Neuilly a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas met up with eight carts of turnips and carrots coming in from Nanterre. The horses, their heads bent low, led themselves with their lazy, steady pace, a bit slowed by the slight uphill climb. Up on the carts, lying on their stomachs in the vegetables, wrapped in their black-and-gray-striped wool coats, the drivers slept with the reins in their fists. Occasionally the light from a gas lamp would grope its way through the shadows and brighten the hobnail of a boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the tip of a hat poking from the bright bloom of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white bouquets of turnips, or the bursting greenery of peas and cabbages.
All along the road and all the nearby routes, up ahead and farther back, the distant rumbling of carts told of other huge wagons, all pushing on through the darkness and slumber of two in the morning, the sound of passing food lulling the darkened town to stay asleep.
Madame François's horse, Balthazar, an overweight beast, led the column. He dawdled on, half asleep, flicking his ears until, at rue de Longchamp, his legs were suddenly frozen by fear. The other animals bumped their heads into the stalled carts in front of them, and the column halted with the clanking of metal and the cursing of drivers who had been yanked from their sleep. Seated up top, Madame François, with her back against a plank that held the vegetables in place, peered out but saw nothing by the faint light of the little square lantern to her left, which barely lit one of Balthazar's glistening flanks.
“Come on, lady, let's keep moving,” shouted one of the men who was kneeling in turnips. “It's just some drunken idiot.”
But as she leaned over she thought she made out a dark patch of something blocking the road, about to be stepped on by the horse.
“You can't just run people over,” she said, jumping down from her wagon.
It was a man sprawled across the road, his arms stretched out, facedown in the dust. He seemed extraordinarily long and as thin as a dry branch. It was a miracle that Balthazar had not stepped on him and snapped him in two. Madame François thought he was dead, but when she crouched over him and took his hand, she found it was still warm.
“Hey, mister,” she called softly.
But the drivers were growing impatient. The one kneeling in the vegetables shouted in a gruff voice, “Give it up, lady. The son of a bitch is plastered. Shove him in the gutter.”
In the meantime, the man had opened his eyes. He stared, motionless, at Madame François, with a look of bewilderment. She too thought that he must be drunk.
“You can't stay there, you're going to get yourself run over,” she told him. “Where were you going?”
“I don't know,” the man replied in a feeble voice. Then, with great effort