The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [149]
Lisa was deeply moved. She urged Gavard to take him and look after him. It was when he sang his song of simple tenderness that she would stroke him under the chin and tell him that he was a good boy. Her hand would linger there for an instant, warmed by a discreet pleasure, a sign of friendship, accepted by the giant with a child's trusting eyes. He would bend his neck a bit and close his contented eyes like an animal being petted. In order to convince herself of the respectability of this pleasure she indulged in with him, Lisa told herself that she was making it up to him for the blow she had dealt him in the poultry cellar.
But the charcuterie remained a sorrowful place. Florent occasionally ventured in to shake his brother's hand, in the face of Lisa's icy silence. Sometimes, not very often, he would even dine there on a Sunday. Quenu would make a tremendous effort to be jolly but he never managed to bring any warmth to the meal. He ate badly and ended up angry. One evening after one of these frigid family reunions, almost in tears, he said to his wife, “What in the world is wrong with me? Are you telling the truth when you say I'm not sick? You don't think I've changed? It's as though there is a weight pressing on me somewhere. And I'm feeling very sad, and I don't even know why. I swear I don't. You don't know, do you?”
“It's probably just a bad mood,” Lisa answered.
“No, no, it's lasted too long to be just a bad mood. It's choking me. Our business is not going badly. I've got nothing to be sad about. Everything is chugging along in its usual way. And you too, dear, you're not well. You seem overtaken with melancholy. If this keeps on like this, I'm going to see a doctor.”
The beautiful charcutière looked at him very soberly.
“There's no need for a doctor,” she said. “It'll pass. You'll see. There's an ill wind blowing at the moment. Everyone in the neighborhood is sick.” Then, as though suddenly overtaken by motherly love, she said, “Don't worry, my darling. I don't want you to get sick. That would be too much.”
Usually she sent him back to the kitchen, knowing that the sound of cleavers, the sizzling of fat, the clanking of pans, made him feel more cheerful. Also, she now avoided the indiscretions of Mademoiselle Saget, who had gotten into the habit of spending whole mornings in the charcuterie. The old woman had made it her job to shock Lisa, to push her to extreme measures.
First she tried to win her confidence. “Oh my, what evil people there are,” she said. People who should really just mind their own business. “If you only knew, my dear Madame Quenu … But I wouldn't dream of repeating this to you.”
Lisa insisted that she was not at all interested, that she was above listening to malicious tongues. Then the old mademoiselle leaned over the meat counter and murmured in her ear, “Well, they say that Monsieur Florent isn't your cousin.”
Then, little by little, she showed that she knew the whole story. All of this was simply a way to put Lisa at her mercy. When Lisa confessed the truth, also for tactical reasons, to have someone at her disposal who could keep her up to date on the neighborhood gossip, the aged mademoiselle swore that she would be mute as a fish about it and would deny everything, even if they put her head on a block. She then took profound pleasure in the drama. Every day she delivered troubling news that she further enlarged upon.
“You should be careful,” she murmured. “At the tripe shop I heard two women talking about you-know-what. I can't tell people that they're lying, you see. It would look odd … But it spreads, it spreads. No one can stop it. The truth will come out.”
A few days later the real attack was launched. She arrived in a panic and made impatient gestures, waiting for everyone else to leave the shop. Then she hissed, “You know what they're saying? The men who meet at Monsieur Lebigre's, they all have rifles and they want to start up again just like in the uprising of '48. What a shame to see