The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [65]
But Monsieur Verlaque had brought Florent back to the saltwater fish, where he walked him around and explained intricate details to him. Along three sides of the pavilion, where there were desks for nine salesmen, the crowd surged with swaying heads, and clerks appeared above them, perched in high chairs from which they marked entries in their ledgers.
“Are all these clerks working for the same salesmen?” Florent asked. In reply, Monsieur Verlaque took a detour along the sidewalk outside, which led him to one of the enclosures used for auctioning. He explained to him how the large office made of yellow wood, stained in splotches and stinking of fish, was staffed. At the top of the glassed-off room, the municipal fee collector took notes on the sale prices of the different lots of fish. A little lower down, seated on raised chairs with their wrists resting on high little desks, were two women clerks who monitored the transactions on behalf of the salesmen. At each end of a stone table in the front of the office was an auctioneer who brought out the straw trays and stated prices per lot or per fish, while above him the women clerks, pen in hand, waited to hear the final prices. Monsieur Verlaque showed Florent the cashier, a fat old woman outside the enclosure, shut up in another yellow wooden office, arranging piles of coins.
“You see,” said Monsieur Verlaque, “there's a double control, the Prefecture of the Seine and the Prefecture of Police. The latter licenses the salesmen and maintains the right of supervision over them, while the local prefecture has an interest in the transactions since they are taxable.”
He continued in his cold, feeble voice, explaining the competing interests of the two prefectures. But Florent was barely listening; his attention had been drawn to one of the female clerks in front of him on a high chair. She was a tall, brown-haired woman of about thirty with big black eyes and a great deal of composure. She wrote with outstretched fingers, like a young woman who had been carefully instructed.
But his attention was again diverted by the bellowing of the auctioneer holding a magnificent turbot.
“I hear thirty francs! That's thirty francs! Thirty francs … at thirty francs!”
He repeated these words in various voices, up and down a strange scale of notes with abrupt changes. Hunchbacked, with a crooked face and disheveled hair, he wore a huge blue apron with a bib. With eyes aflame and arms outstretched he shouted, “Thirty one! Thirty-two! Thirty-three! Thirty-three fifty! Thirty-three fifty!”
Then he paused to catch his breath and, turning the tray, shoved it farther over on the table. The women fish sellers bent forward and gently touched the turbot with their fingertips. Then the auctioneer began again, hurling figures at the buyers with a thrust of his hand and responding to the most subtle sign of a bid—a finger raised, an eyebrow arched, lips beginning to purse, an eye winking—and this with such a jumble of words and such speed that Florent, completely incapable of following it, felt uneasy when the hunchback, in a singsong voice like that of a priest chanting a psalm, said, “Forty-two! Forty-two! The turbot is sold at forty-two francs!”
It was the Beautiful Norman who made the final bid. Florent recognized her in the line of women selling fish pressed against the iron rail around the auction space. It was a cool morning. There was a row of fur stoles above the assortment of large white aprons, covering the plentiful stomachs and bosoms and formidable shoulders. With her bun twisted high on her head, adorned with curls, and her white, delicate flesh, the Beautiful Norman showed off her lacy bow amid the tangle of locks covered with dirty kerchiefs, the red noses of heavy drinkers, the scornful mouths and faces