The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [76]
In the evening, after dinner, Lisa would often say, “Well, I'd bring them to their senses pretty quickly if it were me. They're a bunch of women I wouldn't touch with a pole, the sluts. That Norman is the lowest of the low. I'd give her my boot. You need to show them who's in charge, Florent. You deal with it completely wrong Take charge, Florent, and they'll get in line fast.”
The latest crisis was particularly bad. In the morning the maid of Madame Taboureau, the baker, went to the fish market to find a brill. After watching her wandering around for a few minutes, the Beautiful Norman sidled up to her.
“Come over and see me, I'll take care of you. Do you want a pair of soles? Maybe a beautiful turbot?”
When she finally did come over and started to examine a brill, wearing the sour face customers use when they are trying to lower the price, the Beautiful Norman went on, “Feel the heft of this,” and she put the brill, wrapped in a thick sheet of yellow paper, into the woman's hand.
The maid, a meek little woman from the Auvergne, felt the weight in her hand, opened the gills, still wore the sour face, and said nothing. Then, in a reluctant tone, she asked, “How much is this?”
“Fifteen francs,” the Beautiful Norman answered.
The other woman quickly put the fish back on the slab. She seemed anxious to escape, but the Beautiful Norman detained her. “What's your price?”
“No, it's too expensive.”
“Make an offer anyway.”
“If you want. How about eight francs?”
This seemed to wake up Mère Méhudin, who gave a menacing chuckle. What did people think, that they stole the fish? “Eight francs for a brill of that size? We'll give you one, sweetie, just to keep your skin soft at night.” The Beautiful Norman turned away as though offended. The servant twice offered nine francs and then went up to ten.
After that it seemed the maid was really going to walk away, so the Beautiful Norman said, “All right, give me the money.”
The maid stood in front of the stall, chatting amicably with Mère Méhudin. Madame Taboureau was so difficult. She was having a lot of people to dinner tonight, cousins from Blois, a notary and his wife. Madame Taboureau's family was very respectable. Even she herself, the wife of a baker, had a good education.
“Can you clean it for me?” she asked, interrupting her own story.
With the thrust of a finger the Beautiful Norman gutted the brill and tossed the entrails into a bucket. She slid a corner of her apron into a gill to remove a few grains of sand. Then she placed the fish in the maid's basket herself.
“There it is, honey, to be presented with my compliments.”
But after a quarter of an hour the maid ran back, red in the face. She had been crying, and her little body shook with anger. She threw the brill on the slab and showed a long gash across the belly that cut the flesh to the bone. A flood of disjointed words poured from her throat, which was still constricted from crying.
“Madame Taboureau doesn't want it. She said she couldn't serve it. And she said I was an idiot who let everyone rob me. Look at it! It's ruined! I didn't turn it over. I trusted you … Give me back my ten francs.”
“You can look at the merchandise before you buy it,” the Beautiful Norman answered calmly.
Then, since the maid was about to raise her voice again, Mère Méhudin got up and said, “Why don't you shut your mouth? We don't take back fish from people's homes. Who's to say you didn't drop it and damage it yourself?”
“Me! Me!” She was choking on her words. Then she started crying. “You're a couple of thieves,