The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [158]
Slowly he walked back with his head lowered. A cooing noise grabbed his attention. He realized that he was crossing the Tuileries Garden. A band of pigeons strutted on the lawn, puffing out their necks. He leaned for a moment against the stand of an orange tree and looked at the grass and the pigeons all bathed in sunlight. Across the way, chestnut trees were blackened by shadows. A warm silence reigned, disturbed only by the continual distant rumbling behind the railings of rue de Rivoli. The smell of the greenery affected him greatly because it reminded him of Madame François. The pigeons were scared away by a young girl chasing a hoop and flew to the marble arm of an ancient wrestler in the middle of the lawn, still cooing and puffed out but in a gentler way now.
As Florent returned to Les Halles by rue Vauvilliers, he heard the voice of Claude Lantier calling him. The painter was going into the basement below the poultry market.
“Hey, come with me,” he shouted. “I'm looking for that thug Marjolin.”
Florent followed him, to forget his work for a few more seconds, to delay his return to the fish market. Claude said that now his friend Marjolin no longer wanted anything—he had become nothing more than an animal—he was considering having him pose on all fours with his childlike grin. Whenever he was driven to tear up a sketch in a rage, he could spend hours in that imbecile's company, not speaking, trying to make him smile.
“He's probably feeding the pigeons,” Claude said. “The problem is that I don't know where Monsieur Gavard is.”
They searched everywhere in the cellar. In the pale shadows in the center, two water taps were running. The cages were reserved exclusively for pigeons. Along the chicken wire there was a constant plaintive hooting, the unassertive song of birds from under the leaves at dusk. It made Claude laugh to hear this music. “You would swear that every lover in Paris was snuggling under there,” he said.
Not one of the coops was open, and Claude was starting to think that Marjolin was not down there after all when the sound of kisses, real, loud kisses, stopped him in his tracks in front of a partly open door. He opened it and saw Marjolin, the animal, whom Cadine had made kneel on the straw-covered ground so that his face rose just to the level of her lips. She was kissing him gently, everywhere. She parted his long blond hair so that she could reach behind his ears, on the cheeks, behind the neck, coming back to his eyes, his mouth, slowly, devouring his face in tiny caresses, as though it were a scrumptious treat that she was consuming at her leisure. Contentedly he remained as she had placed him. He was no longer completely aware of things. He offered her his flesh, no longer even afraid of being tickled.
“Will you look at that,” said Claude. “Aren't you even embarrassed? You have no shame, you huge good-for-nothing. Teasing him like that in all this filth. He's up to his knees in dirt.”
“So what,” said Cadine brazenly. “He's not unhappy. He likes being kissed. Because he's afraid of the dark now. Aren't you? You're afraid.”
She had pulled him to his feet. He rubbed his hands across his face as though groping for the kisses she had placed there. He stammered that he was afraid. “Besides, I came here to help him. I was force-feeding the pigeons.”
Florent looked at the poor creatures. On the planks surrounding the coops were uncovered boxes. Pigeons were jammed into them with mottled feathers and stiff legs. From time to time a shudder ran through the feathers and the bodies huddled even more tightly together, a chaotic chatter rising out of the boxes. Cadine had a pot next to her full of water and seeds: she filled her mouth and, one by one, blew the seeds into the birds' beaks. They choked and squirmed, then fell backward white-eyed into the darkness of the box, knocked senseless by the forcibly swallowed food.
“The poor innocents,” said Claude.
“Too bad for them,” said Cadine when she finished. “They're a lot better off after they've been well stuffed. You'll see, in