The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [32]
“You can wait until we have breakfast, can't you?” asked Quenu. “We eat early, about ten o'clock.”
The shop was filled with the smells of cooking. Florent thought back on the horrible night he had just passed, how he had arrived with the vegetables, his agony in the heart of Les Halles, drowning in the endless sea of food that he had just escaped. Then, in a low voice with a sweet smile, he said:
“No, I can't wait. You see, I'm really hungry.”
CHAPTER TWO
Florent had just begun studying law in Paris when his mother died. She lived in Le Vigan in the Gard.1 She had taken a second husband, someone named Quenu from Yvetot in Normandy. Some subprefect had sent Quenu to the Midi and then forgotten him. He continued working at the subprefect's office, finding the region charming, the wine good, the women pleasant. Indigestion took him away three years after his marriage. All he left his wife was a hefty boy who looked like him. The mother was already struggling to pay for the education of Florent, her first son from a previous marriage. He was her great joy sweet-natured and hardworking and always winning the school prizes. It was on him that she lavished her affections and pinned all her hopes. It might be that her favoritism for the pale, skinny boy came from her fondness for her first husband, a Provençal with warm country charm who had been devoted to her. Perhaps Quenu, whose good humor had at first touched her, had shown himself to be too self-satisfied and confident. She decided that her younger son—and in southern families the younger son is often sacrificed—would never amount to much. So she sent him to a school run by a neighbor, an old spinster, where the boy learned nothing but how to be footloose on the neighborhood streets. The two brothers grew up far apart from each other, like strangers.
By the time Florent got to Le Vigan, his mother had already been buried. She had insisted on concealing her illness from him until the last moment because she did not want to disturb his studies. He found the little Quenu, then twelve years old, sitting at a table, crying. A furniture dealer, a neighbor, had told him of his poor mother's suffering. She had run out of money and had worked herself to death so that her older son could finish studying law. To her little ribbon business, which never brought in very much money, she'd had to add other activities that kept her working late into the night. An obsession with this singular idea to see Florent become a lawyer, a man of substance in the town, had turned her hard and miserly and pitiless to herself and everyone else. Little Quenu ran around with holes in his pants and shirts with frayed sleeves. He never served himself at the table but waited for his mother to cut him his share of bread. And she cut thin slices. This was the way of life that had destroyed her, along with the great despair of having failed to accomplish her goal.
This story had a terrible impact on Florent's gentle character. He choked with tears. Taking his brother in his arms, he held him to his chest and kissed him as though trying to give him back the love of which he had deprived him. Then he looked at the boy's worn-out shoes, his torn sleeves and dirty hands, all the wretchedness of an abandoned child. Over and over again, he told him that he would take him away and they would be happy together.
The next day, when he reviewed the situation, he was afraid that he would not even have enough money to pay the fare back to Paris. At any cost, he did not want to stay in Le Vigan. Fortunately he was able to sell the ribbon business, which raised enough money to pay his mother's debts. Despite her frugality she had run up bills. Since there was nothing left for him, the neighbor, the furniture merchant, offered him five hundred francs for the furniture and linens of the deceased. It was a bargain for the dealer, but the young man nonetheless thanked him with tears in his eyes.