The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [132]
Then came the pears, the blanquettes, the anglais, the beurrés, the messire-Jeans, the duchesses, either stubby or elongated with swan necks, yellow- or green-bellied, flushed with a touch of red. Beside them lay the plums, transparent and anemic with virginal softness. Greengage plums, a favorite of men, were as pale as the blush of innocence. The mirabelles, gathered like golden beads of a forgotten rosary, were stored in a box with sticks of vanilla beans.
The strawberries exhaled a scent of youth, especially the smaller ones, which are gathered in the woods, rather than the larger garden variety, which give off the dull scent of a watering can. The raspberries added their scent to this pure fragrance. The currants, both red and black, and the hazelnuts all smiled with an air of confidence, while the baskets of grapes in weighty bunches, heavy with drunkenness, swooned over the edge of the trellis, their colors deepening in spots where they were touched by the sun's voluptuous warmth.
This was where La Sarriette lived, in an orchard of intoxicating perfumes. The less expensive fruits—cherries, plums, strawberries— were piled in a flat, paper-lined basket in front of her. They bruised one another, staining the stand with juice, a strong juice that vaporized in the heat. On those sweltering July afternoons her head would spin with the powerful, musky odor of the melons. Then, slightly inebriated and showing some more flesh under her shawl, barely ripe and still fresh from springtime, her lips pouted: many had the urge to plunder those lips.
It was she, it was her arms and her neck, that breathed life into the fruit with her satin-finished womanliness. One stall over, an elderly market woman, a terrible drunk, filled her display with shriveled apples, pears that sagged like empty breasts, and cadaverous apricots a foul witchlike shade of yellow. La Sarriette, on the other hand, gave her display a naked sensuality. You could imagine that the cherries had been placed in the stall one by one with kisses from her lips, that the peaches had fallen from her bodice, the plums had come from her softest skin—her temples, under the chin, the corners of her mouth. She had let her own blood run into the veins of the red currants. The heat of this beautiful woman excited the fruit that came from the earth, and they made love on a bed of leaves in the moss-spread nooks of the baskets. Compared to the smell of life that rose from her open baskets and disheveled clothes, the flower market behind her smelled dull.
However, on this particular day, La Sarriette was in the throes of a shipment of mirabelles whose scent was overtaking the market. She could see that Mademoiselle Saget had some important news and she wanted to hear it, but the old woman was stamping around impatiently, shouting, “No, I don't have time. I'm on my way to see Madame Lecœur. But I have a good one. Come with me if you want.”
The truth was that the only reason she had cut through the fruit pavilion was to get La Sarriette. And La Sarriette could not resist. Monsieur Jules was there squirming on a chair that was turned backward. He was clean-shaven and as fresh as a cherub.
“Can you look after the shop?” she said to him. “I'll be back in a minute.”
But he jumped to his feet and,