The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [133]
Mademoiselle Saget was forcing La Sarriette to run. At the butter market, a neighbor told them that Madame Lecœur was in the cellar. La Sarriette went down to get her while the older woman installed herself amid the cheeses.
The cellars below were very dark; along the passageways the storage bins were protected against fire with fine-meshed wire netting. The gas jets, placed far apart, made yellow splotches in the air but did little to illuminate that humid, murky atmosphere, which grew thicker and thicker beneath the crushing weight of the roof.
Madame Lecœur was working her butter on one of the tables under rue Berger. The gratings allowed some pale light to get in. The tables were continually being washed with water from the faucets so that they were as white as new. The butter merchant was kneading her mixture in an oak box at the far end with her back to the water pumps. She took samples of various kinds of butter that were beside her on the table and mixed them, adjusting the preparation with the addition of one or the other in much the same way as blends of wine are made. Bent over with her pointy shoulders, her thin, gnarled arms bare to the shoulders and looking like stakes, she was pounding her fist furiously into this mass of fat, which was now starting to get white and creamy. She was sweating, and she sighed with each stroke she took.
La Sarriette said, “Mademoiselle Saget wants to talk to you, Aunt.”
Madame Lecœur stopped and pulled her bonnet back over her hair with butter-covered fingers, not seeming to worry about grease spots.
“I'm done. Just ask her to wait a moment,” she answered.
“She's got something very interesting to tell you.”
“Just wait a second, dear.”
She stuck her arms in again, and the butter was up to her elbows. Softened first in warm water, her parchment skin was oiled, which made the thick purple veins stand out like varicose ropes. La Sarriette was repulsed by such ugly arms laboring in the depths of the melting paste. She remembered this work. At one time she too had kept her lovely little hands buried in butter for entire afternoons. It had served as a substitute for hand cream, a lotion that kept her skin white and her nails pink and from which her well-formed fingers had become soft. After a silence she added, “This will not be a good blend, Aunt. Your butters are too strong.”
“I know,” said Madame Lecœur with a grunt. “But what can I do? Everything's got to be used up. Some people want to buy cheap. So you have to make it cheap. It always ends up too good for the customers.”
La Sarriette was thinking that she wouldn't want to eat butter mixed with her aunt's arms. She looked at a little jar containing red dye. “Your raucourt7 is too light,” she said.
Raucourt is used to give butter a nice yellow color. Merchants are believed to keep its formula a closely guarded secret, but the truth is that it is simply made from the seeds of the raucou tree. It is also true that it is sometimes made from carrots and marigolds.
“Come on, let's go,” said the young woman, whose patience was running out. Also, she was no longer used to the foul smell of the cellar. “Mademoiselle Saget may have left already. She must have something serious to tell us about Uncle Gavard.”
Madame Lecœur stopped. She left the mixture and the raucourt. She did not even wipe her arms. She adjusted her bonnet again with a light tap and followed quickly on the heels of her niece, climbing the stairway, asking anxiously, “Do you think she didn't wait?”
But she was reassured when she saw Mademoiselle Saget seated among the cheeses. She was not going to leave. The three women took seats in the back of the narrow shop. They were almost on top of one another, talking nose to nose.
Mademoiselle Saget remained silent