The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [15]
After Florent handed her a huge bouquet of parsley that he had found on the wagon floor, she asked him one more favor: “I would really appreciate it if you could keep an eye on my goods while I park the wagon. It's very close, at the Compas d'Or on rue Montorgueil.”3
He told her not to worry. In truth, he was happy to sit there because moving around had started to revive his hunger. He sat down, leaning against a mound of cabbages by Madame François's stand. He told himself that he would be just fine sitting there, waiting and not moving. His mind was a void, and he could not even say exactly where he was. In the beginning of September the early morning was already remaining dark. The lanterns around him flickered in the dusky shadows. He was sitting by the side of a major street, which he did not recognize. It vanished into the night's blackness. He could see hardly anything except the produce he had been entrusted to watch. Down the market lanes he could make out only the outline of other heaps like a flock of sheep. In the middle of the route, blocking the street, he could see the outline of carts. From one end to the other, he could smell what he could not exactly see, a line of horses breathing in the dark. Shouts, a piece of wood or an iron chain hitting the pavement, the thumping of vegetables unloaded from wagons, and wheels scraping as carts were backed against the curb—these sounds loaded the still air with the exciting promise of dawn awakening.
Turning his head, Florent noticed, on the other side of the cabbage, a snoring man wrapped like a package in his overcoat, his head resting on a basket of plums. A little closer on the left side, he could see a ten-year-old child with an angel's smile fast asleep between two stacks of endive. Looking down the pavement, he could see nothing that seemed awake except maybe the lanterns hanging from invisible arms, their light bouncing over all the sleeping vegetables and people spread out in piles, awaiting daybreak.
What was surprising was the glimpse of two enormous pavilions on either side of the street, with grand roofs that seemed to rise out of sight amid a flurry of lights. In his weariness he imagined he was seeing an array of palaces, huge and orderly and light as crystal with streaks of light filtering through endless rows of venetian blinds. Between slender pillars, ladders of light rose into the shadow of the lower roof and then soared above it to a higher roof, giving the outline of large square halls where gray, slumbering heaps gathered under the glare of brilliant gaslight.
Florent turned away, enraged that he could not grasp where he was, disturbed by this fragile but gigantic specter, and as he looked up he glimpsed the luminous clock dial of the massive gray Church of Saint Eustache. He was suddenly jolted by the realization that he was near Saint Eustache—he was at pointe Saint-Eustache!
Just then Madame François came back, vehemently arguing with a man who was carrying a sack on his shoulders and offering only a sou per bunch for the carrots.
“Come on, Lacaille, you're not being fair. You're going to sell them to the Parisians for four or five sous. I'll sell them to you for two.”
As he left she said, “I swear, they act as though these things grow on their own. Let him go look for carrots at a sou a bunch. He'll be back, the drunk.”
She was saying this to Florent as she sat down next to him. “So, if you haven't been