The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [38]
Lisa sat at the counter, leaning back slightly, calmly knitting. Quenu sat on a big oak block, dangling his feet and tapping his heels against the oak. They reveled in each other's company, talking about everything from the most banal cooking discussions to Uncle Gradelle and life in the neighborhood. She told him stories the way you would to a child. She knew very pretty tales of miracles, full of lambs and little angels, which she told in a soft, high-pitched voice with an air of mock gravity. If a customer happened to come in, she asked Quenu to fetch the lard pot or the box of snails so that she did not have to disturb herself.
At eleven o'clock they slowly climbed the stairs as they did each night before. As they closed the doors they said in their peaceful voices:
“Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”
“Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”
One morning Uncle Gradelle dropped dead while making a galantine.10 He fell forward with his face on the chopping block. Lisa, without losing her composure, pointed out that the dead man could not very well be left sprawled in the middle of the kitchen and had the body dragged into the small back room where he had slept. Then she established the official story with the helpers. They all had to agree that he had died in his bed because otherwise the entire neighborhood would be repulsed and they would lose business. Quenu helped carry the dead man away, feeling amazed and very surprised at his inability to produce any tears. But later on, he and Lisa cried together. Quenu and his brother, Florent, were the sole heirs. The neighborhood gossips claimed that Gradelle had a considerable fortune. But the truth was that there was not one piece of silver to be found. Lisa grew uneasy, and Quenu noticed how pensive she had become, always looking around as though she had lost something. Finally she decided to undertake a massive shop cleaning, claiming that people were beginning to talk, that the story of the old man's death had gotten out and they had to have a spotless shop.
One afternoon, after having spent the past two hours in the basement washing the salting tubs, Lisa came up carrying something in her apron. Quenu was grinding up a pig's liver. She waited for him to finish, chatting with him in a nonchalant way. But her eyes had a special glow and she smiled her beautiful smile, while saying she wanted to talk to him about something. She climbed the stairs awkwardly, her legs impeded by whatever it was she was carrying that was almost bursting her apron open. At the third floor she had to stop and lean on the banister to catch her breath. Quenu, taken aback, said nothing and followed her into her bedroom. It was the first time she had ever invited him in. She closed the door and, releasing the corners of her apron, which her cramped fingers could no longer hold up, she let softly rain on her bed a shower of gold and silver coins. She had found Uncle Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of the salting tub. The pile of money made a deep depression in the young woman's delicate, fluffy bed.
Quenu and Lisa suppressed their joy as they sat on the bed, Lisa at the head, Quenu at the foot, on either side of the money pile, counting it out on the bedspread to muffle the sound of the coins. They had forty thousand francs in gold, three thousand francs in silver, and forty-two thousand francs in banknotes in a tin box. It took a good two hours to add it all up. Quenu's hands were shaking, and Lisa did most of the work. She stacked the gold on the pillow, leaving