The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [47]
One afternoon, while Florent was sitting in the charcuterie, weary from the useless trek he had made all morning in search of work, Marjolin entered. This chunky youth, with his Flemish blend of heft and sweetness, was Lisa's protégé. She would say that he had a complete absence of malice and was a little stupid, but was as strong as a horse and a bit interesting in that no one seemed to know anything about his mother or father. It was she who had gotten Gavard to give him a job.
Lisa was at the counter, annoyed by the sight of Florent's dirty shoes, which were tracking mud onto the floor's pink and white tiles. She had already gotten up twice to toss handfuls of sawdust on the floor. She smiled at Marjolin.
“Monsieur Gavard,” said the young man, “has sent me to ask …” He stopped, looked around, and lowered his voice. “He told me to wait until you were alone and then repeat these words, which he made me learn by heart: ‘Ask them if there is any danger or if I can come talk to them about the matter they know about.’”
“Tell Monsieur Gavard that we're expecting him,” said Lisa, who was used to the mysterious ways of the poultry vendor.
But Marjolin did not turn to leave. Instead, he remained in his tracks in a state of ecstacy before the beautiful charcuterie mistress.
As though moved by silent adulation, she asked, “You are happy at Monsieur Gavard's? He's not a bad man, and you should try to please him.”
“Yes, Madame Lisa.”
“But you're not being sensible. Only yesterday I saw you on the roofs of Les Halles. And you were with a bunch of lowlifes. You're a man now, and you should be thinking of your future.”
“Yes, Madame Lisa.”
But then she had to tend to a customer, a woman wanting a pound of pork chops and cornichons. She got up from the counter and went to the chopping block at the far end of the shop. There, with a slender knife, she separated three chops from a side of pork. Lifting a cleaver with her bare, strong hand, she gave three sharp blows. At each blow her black merino dress rose slightly behind her and the stays of her corset showed under her tightly stretched bodice. With great seriousness, her lips tight, her eyes wide, she slowly gathered up the chops and weighed them.
When the lady had left, Lisa saw Marjolin, enraptured at the sight of her delivering those three blows of the cleaver, so clean and powerful. “What, you're still here!” she shouted at him.
He started to leave, but she held him up for a second. “If I see you again with that little tramp Cadine … don't deny it. This morning again you were together at the triperie, watching them splitting sheeps' heads. I don't understand how a handsome man like you can be interested in a slut like Cadine, the little grasshopper. Okay get going and tell Gavard that he should come now, while there's no one in the shop.”
Marjolin walked off in confusion and despair, without saying anything.
Beautiful Lisa stood at her counter, her head turned slightly toward Les Halles, while Florent studied her in silence, surprised to find her so beautiful. Until that moment, he had never really seen her. He didn't know how to look at women. She appeared to him over the meats displayed on the counter. In front of her, laid out on white plates, were dried sausages from Arles and Lyon, tongues and pieces of petit salé boiled in water, pigs' heads covered in jelly an uncovered crock of pork rillettes, a can of sardines whose torn-back lid showed a lack of oil inside, and then to the right and the left, set up on boards, were Italian pains de fromage and fromage de cochon,16 an ordinary pale pink ham, a York ham with deep red meat sealed in a layer of fat. There were round and oval dishes with stuffed tongues, a truffled galantine, and boar's head with pistachios, while closer to her, within her reach, stood yellow earthenware crocks with larded