The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [21]
Florent had stopped at rue de Mondétour, in front of the next to last house on the left. All three stories, each with two shutterless windows neatly covered by white curtains, appeared to be asleep. On the top floor, a faint light could be seen through the curtain moving back and forth.
The shop beneath the overhang seemed to have a tremendous effect on Florent. It was starting to open, a shop with prepared greens. At the far end, shiny bowls could be seen, while on the display shelf in front, round domes and conical towers of spinach and chicory were placed in bowls, each notched in the back to leave space for flat serving spatulas, showing only their white metal handles.
Florent felt as though he had been struck motionless, riveted to the pavement by this sight. He did not recognize the shop. Reading the merchant's name on a red sign, Godebœuf, he felt even more dismayed. With his arms hanging limp at his sides, he studied the cooked spinach with the air of a cursed man.
From the opened window above, a little old woman leaned out and looked up at the sky and then at the market in the distance.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Saget is an early bird,” said Claude, looking up. And he added, turning to Florent, “I once had an aunt living in that house. That place is a nest of gossip. Ah, now the Méhudins are starting to stir. There's a light on the second floor.”
Florent was about to ask Claude a question, but there was something unnerving about him in his baggy, faded overcoat. Florent followed him without saying a word while Claude went on about the Méhudins. They were fishmongers; the elder woman was superb. The younger one, who sold freshwater fish, resembled a virgin in a Murillo painting, this blonde among all the carp and eels. Then he started asserting, with growing anger, that Murillo was a third-rate painter. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of the street and asked, “So where are you going?”
“At the moment, I'm not going anywhere,” Florent said wearily. “We can go wherever you like.”
As they were leaving rue Pirouette, a voice called out to Claude from the wine shop on the corner. Claude entered, with Florent behind him. They had still taken off the shutters on only one side. The gas burned in the shop's still-sleepy air. A forgotten dish towel and cards from a game the night before were scattered on the table, while a breeze from the wide-open door blew freshness into the stale warm smell of wine. The owner, Monsieur Lebigre, was serving a customer in his long-sleeved waistcoat, with his sloppy beard and fat, even features still pale with sleep. Men with deepset eyes were standing in groups drinking at the counter, coughing, spitting, and trying to wake themselves up with white wine and eau-de-vie.5 Florent recognized Lacaille, whose sack was now bursting with vegetables. He was on his third round with a friend, who was telling a story at great length about the acquisition of a basket of potatoes. Then, after emptying his glass, he went to chat with Monsieur Lebigre in a small glassed-in office in the back where the gas had not yet been lit.
“What'll you have?” Claude asked Florent.
When they had entered, Claude had shaken hands with the man who had called out to him. He was a fort,6 a handsome young man of no more than twenty-two, clean-shaven except for a trim mustache, with a hearty demeanor, wearing a broad-brimmed chalk-covered hat and a wool scarf with floppy laces for tightening his blue work shirt. Claude called him Alexandre, clapped him on the arm, and demanded to know when they were going back to Charentonneau. Then they reminisced about the great boat trip they had made together on the Marne. That evening they had eaten rabbit.