The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [157]
The markets were always there. He couldn't open his window or lean on the balcony rail without seeing them there, filling the horizon. He would leave the market in the evening only to find when he went to bed, once again, the endless expanse of rooftops. They cut him off from the rest of Paris, imposed their massive presence on every hour of his life. That night his nightmare returned, brought on by the anxieties that plagued him. The afternoon rain had filled Les Halles with an infectious dampness. It blew a foul breath into his face, a breath that had rolled around the city like a drunk under a table with his last bottle. It seemed to him that each pavilion exhaled its own thick vapor. From a distance the meat market and the tripe market discharged steam with the dull scent of blood. The vegetable and fruit markets exhaled the smell of sour cabbage, rotten apples, and greens chucked into the street. The butter stank, the fish market had a peppery freshness. And at his feet he could see the poultry market pushing a blast of hot air through its ventilation turret, a stench that poured out like soot from a factory. The cloud of all these breaths gathered over the rooftops, drifted to the neighboring houses, and spread into a heavy cloud over all of Paris. It was Les Halles bursting out of its steel belt and warming the sleep of the overfed city, belching with indigestion.
Below, on the sidewalk, he heard the sound of voices, the laughter of happy people. The alley door was shut noisily. Quenu and Lisa had returned from the theater. Then Florent, dizzy, as though drunk from the air he had been breathing and with an uneasy fear of the storm he could feel brewing over his head, went inside. Below him lay his misery, in Les Halles, still hot from the day. He shut the window violently, abandoning the roofs, leaving them sprawling in the shadows, naked, sweating, and uncovered, exposing their bloated bellies and stretched out under the stars.
CHAPTER SIX
A week later, Florent thought he was finally ready for action. The government had made a move unpopular enough to send groups of rebels into the streets of Paris. The Corps Législatif, divided on a pension law, were now in the process of debating an extremely unpopular tax,1 and all over the city people were muttering against it. Fearing defeat, the government was fighting with all its might. It might be a long time before a better pretext came along.
Early one morning Florent explored the Palais Bourbon. He forgot about his responsibilities as inspector and stayed there studying the area until eight o'clock, without a moment's thought as to how his absence from the fish market might be causing a revolution. He visited every street: rue de Lille, rue de l'Université, rue de Bourgogne, rue Saint-Dominique; he went as far as the parade ground in front of the Invalides, stopping at certain selected intersections, measuring distances by taking huge steps. Then, sitting on the wall back at the quai d'Orsay he decided that the attack should come from all sides at once: the Gros-Caillou group would arrive along the Champ de Mars, the group from northern Paris would come in by the Madeleine, and the groups from the west and south would come along the quais or fight their way along the streets of the Saint Germain suburb.
But he was worried by the Champs-Elysées on the other bank, with its wide-open avenue. He could see how they would place cannons there and fire at the quais. So he modified some details of the plan and marked combat positions for the various groups in a notebook he carried in his hand. The primary assault would definitely occur along rue de Bourgogne and rue de l'Université, while a diversion was created along the Seine. The sun at eight o'clock could be felt, warm on the back of the neck, lighting the pavement and gilding the columns of the large buildings across the way. Already he could envision the battle, groups of men clinging to those columns, the gates bursting open, the invasion penetrating past the columns, and then suddenly a glimpse of thin arms