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By Root 1402 0

art that was truly outrageous. It would feel good to upset them. You know what my best work has been so far, the one that gives me the greatest satisfaction when I look back? This is a great story … Last year on Christmas Eve, I was staying with my aunt Lisa, and that moronic apprentice—you know him— Auguste, was busy arranging the window display. He was driving me absolutely crazy with the way he was doing the window. I insisted that he step back and let me try to do it, like it was a painting. It had all the powerful colors—the red of stuffed tongues, the yellow of jambonneaux, blue paper shreds, pink where things had been cut into, green from sprigs of heather, and most especially the black of boudin, a spectacular black that I have never been able to capture again. And then the caul fat, the sausages, the andouille, the breaded pigs' feet, gave me a subtle range of grays.

“So I made a virtual work of art. I took the platters and the dishes, canning jars and crocks. I carefully placed the colors in an astonishing still life bursting with color, ingeniously running up and down the color scale. Hungry flames shot out of the red tongues, and the boudin mingled with the clear tones of sausage, hinting at a colossal bellyache. You see, I had painted the gluttony of Christmas Eve dinner,12 the midnight hour for overeating, the gorging of stomachs inspired by the singing of carols.

“Above, a giant turkey was showing its white breast, marbled under the skin by the dark splotches of truffles. It was both barbaric and very fine, like a vision of a belly but with a touch of cruelty, such an outburst of parody that a crowd gathered around the window, troubled by this brightly burning display of colors. When my aunt Lisa came out of the kitchen, she panicked, thinking for an instant that I had somehow set all the fat in the shop on fire. The turkey struck her as particularly obscene. She threw me out and had Auguste go back to arranging the window and displaying his stupidity. Those backward creatures will never grasp the power of a touch of red next to a touch of gray … Oh, well, that was my masterpiece. I've never done better.”

He fell silent, smiling and withdrawing into his reminisces. The wagon reached the Arc de Triomphe. Gusts of wind raced through the open expanse, blowing through all the streets that emptied into the enormous plaza. Florent sat up and inhaled the first scents of country grass. He turned his back on Paris and strained for a glimpse of country meadows. When they came up to rue de Longchamp, Madame François pointed out the spot where she had picked him up. That turned him introspective. He studied her pensively. She seemed so healthy and calm with her slightly outstretched arms working the reins. She was more beautiful than Beautiful Lisa, with a kerchief over her head, her ruddy complexion, and her look of plain, outspoken kindness. When she clicked her tongue softly, Balthazar perked up his ears and picked up his step.

When they got to Nanterre, the cart turned left down a narrow lane running between walls and stopped at a dead end. It was what she called the end of the world. First the cabbage leaves had to be unloaded. Claude and Florent did not want to bother the garden boy who was busy planting lettuce. They each took a pitchfork and started hurling the load onto the compost heap. It was fun. Claude particularly liked the compost. Vegetable peelings, Les Halles mud, the trash from that giant table, still alive and being returned to the place where new vegetables would grow to warm a new generation of turnips and cabbage. They grew into beautiful produce that was laid out on Paris pavements. Paris rotted everything and sent it back to the earth, which tirelessly revived life from the dead.

“Look,” said Claude, thrusting in his pitchfork one last time, “there's a stump of cabbage I recognize. This is at least the tenth time it's sprouted back in that corner by the apricot tree.”

That made Florent laugh, but he became serious again very soon, walking slowly around the garden while Claude sketched the