The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [156]
Now, this death was a problem. It called into question his job as inspector. It unsettled his position. Now he would be considered for the position of permanent inspector. And there were annoying complications that might draw the attention of the police. He wished the uprising could take place the next day and he could fling his gold-braided hat into the street. With his head full of these worries, he went out onto the balcony with his forehead burning up, longing for fresh air from the warm night. The showers had made the wind die. The dark blue, cloudless sky was still filled with stormy heat. Washed clean by the rain, Les Halles below him stretched out its massive body, the same color as the sky, and, also like the sky, it twinkled with yellow stars—the gas lamps.
Leaning his elbows on the iron balustrade, Florent was thinking that sooner or later he would be punished for having taken the job of inspector. It was a blemish on his life story. He was in the accounts of the prefecture. He had betrayed himself by serving the empire, despite all the vows he had made when in exile. His desire to please Lisa, the charitable use of the money he earned, the honest way he had tried to carry out his duties—none of these seemed a strong enough argument to excuse his weakness. If he suffered in this fat and overfed setting, he deserved it. He thought back on the terrible year he had just endured, the persecution of the fish vendors, the illness of damp days, the indigestion of his thin man's stomach, the silent hostility he had felt building all around him— all this he accepted as his just deserts. The weighty grumbling of ill will from some cause he could never discover was the harbinger of some unknown catastrophe that had already bowed his shoulders with the shame of a sin he had to expiate. Then, just thinking of the popular movement he was organizing, he flew into a rage against himself. He no longer had the purity to succeed.
How many dreams had he dreamed up there, his eyes wandering the sprawling market roofs? Most of the time he saw them as gray oceans that suggested distant places. On moonless nights they were darker, becoming dead lakes, polluted waters, stagnant and foul. Moonlit nights converted them into fountains of light, the moon drifting across the two roof levels, running down the great expanses of metal, and overflowing the edges of the huge basins. In cold weather the roofs were still and frozen, like Norwegian fjords where skaters glided, whereas warm June days overtook them with drowsiness.
Once in December, he had opened his window and found the rooftops all white with snow, with a virgin whiteness that brightened the rusty sky. They were spread before him without the blemish of a single footprint, like arctic plains too vast for sleds. They had a lovely silence, the sweetness of an innocent giant. And Florent, with every new quality of his changing horizon, would give in to his thoughts—either tender or harsh. The snow calmed his soul, the broad sheet of white seemed to him a covering of purity over the filth of Les Halles. On moonlit nights, the moonbeams transported him to a fairyland. He suffered only on dark nights, the broiling nights of June, with the foul-smelling marshes spread beneath him, the sleeping waters of some cursed sea. And always the same nightmare returned.