The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [18]
Seeing that Florent was not talking, she asked, “Do you have relatives in Paris?”
He seemed not to hear her. His old mistrust returned. His mind was swirling with old tales of police, their undercover agents on every street corner, and women selling the secrets they had pried loose from sad souls they took in. As he sat beside Madame François, she looked honest enough with her full, calm face and the black-and-yellow scarf around her head. She seemed about thirty-five, sturdy, with handsome good looks from her outdoor life. Her masculine bearing was softened by kind, soft dark eyes. She was a bit nosy, but it was a good-natured curiosity.
“I have a nephew in Paris,” she said, continuing the one-sided conversation, not the least offended by Florent's silence. “He hasn't turned out to be any good. Now he's enlisted … It's always good to have somewhere to go. I suppose your parents will be surprised to see you. It feels good to get home, doesn't it?”
All the while she talked, she never took her eyes off Florent, probably feeling sorry for him because he was so skinny. Then too, she guessed that there was a gentleman somewhere inside that tattered black overcoat, which was why she did not dare press a silver coin into his palm. But finally she did say, “You know, if you ever need anything—”
But Florent cut her off with clumsy pride, saying that he had everything he needed and knew exactly where he was going. This seemed to please her, and she repeated several times, as though to reassure herself, “Oh good, then you just have to wait for daybreak.”
A huge bell at the corner of the fruit market, right above Florent's head, started ringing. Its slow, regular notes seemed to awaken the market little by little. The carts kept coming with the growing ruckus of shouting wagoneers, the cracks of their whips, the iron wheel bands and horseshoes grinding into the stone pavement. The wagons, unable to move forward except in sudden jolts, lined up and slowly faded into the distant gray. All along rue du Pont-Neuf the carts unloaded, pulled close to the sidewalk, where the horses stood motionless in a line as though at a horse fair.
Florent examined a cart filled with magnificent cabbages. It had been backed up to the sidewalk with great care and effort, and its leafy pile rose above a gas lamp whose light fell on the large leaves, making them look like crimped pieces of green velvet. A young farm girl of about sixteen, wearing a blue linen coat and cap, climbed up on the cart and was up to her shoulders in cabbages. She began tossing them one by one to someone hidden in shadow below. Every now and then the girl would slip and disappear in a cabbage avalanche. Then her pink nose would be seen sticking out of the green and she would be heard laughing as the cabbages were tossed between Florent and the gaslight. He counted them automatically until the cart was empty, which left him feeling somehow disappointed.
The piles of vegetables were now spilling into the road, with narrow paths between them so that people could pass. The sidewalk was covered end to end with the dark vegetable mounds. But in the flicker of lantern light, you could barely make out the lush fullness of a bouquet of artichokes, the delicate green of the lettuce, the flush coral of carrots, the soft ivory finish of turnips. Flashes of the bright colors skipped across the mounds with the flickering of the light.
A crowd had awakened, and people were starting to fill up the sidewalk, scrambling among the vegetables, sometimes stopping, at times chattering, occasionally shouting. A loud voice could be heard in the distance screaming, “Chicory!”
The gates of the vegetable pavilion had just been opened, and the retailers who had stalls there, white caps on their heads, shawls knotted over their black coats, and skirts pinned up to protect them from getting dirty, began gathering their day's provisions in roomy baskets that stood on the floor. These baskets were seen darting in and out between the road and the pavilion, bumping into the heads of