The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [79]
At night the boy talked his mother's head off about his adventures with his good friend Florent. His good friend Florent had drawn him pictures of trees and of men in huts. His good friend Florent waved his hand like this when he said that people are better off if they know how to read. Eventually the Beautiful Norman came to feel almost an intimacy with this man she dreamed of strangling. She made Muche stay home one day so that he could not go see the inspector, but he cried so hard that the next day she gave in.
Despite her broad build and air of toughness, she did not have a strong will. When the boy came home and told her how warm and cozy the office had been and his clothes were dry, she felt a vague gratitude, a satisfaction in knowing that he was protected, his feet in front of a warm fire. Later, she was moved when the boy read her a passage from a torn piece of newspaper wrapped around a slice of eel. Slowly she began to realize, though never admitting it, that Florent was not such a bad man. She respected his education and had a growing curiosity to look at him more closely and see what he was about. Then, suddenly, she told herself that some pretext to get closer to Florent was part of her plan to exact revenge. Wouldn't it be fun to befriend Florent and turn him against that fat Lisa?
“Does your good friend Florent ever talk about me?” she asked Muche one morning while dressing him.
“No, he doesn't,” Muche answered. “We just have fun.”
“Well, you can tell him that I have no more bad feelings toward him and I very much appreciate his teaching you to read.”
From then on the child was sent each day to the inspector with a message and back to his mother with a friendly message from the inspector, answers and requests that the boy repeated without understanding. He could have been entrusted with the most sensitive communications. But not wishing to appear shy, one day the Beautiful Norman went to the inspector's office and sat herself down on the second chair while Florent was giving Muche his writing lesson. She was very sweet and complimentary, and Florent ended up more embarrassed than she was. When Florent said that he was afraid they might not be able to go on giving lessons in his office, she invited him to come to her house in the evening. She also mentioned payment, but he blushed and insisted that he wouldn't come over if there were any mention of that. So the Beautiful Norman resolved that she would give him fresh fish.
And so there was peace. The Beautiful Norman even took Florent under her protection. But even without this, the new inspector was becoming accepted in the market. The fish women decided that he was better than Monsieur Verlaque, despite his spooky-looking eyes. Mère Méhudin shrugged, keeping her grudge against “the big beanpole,” as she liked to refer to him unkindly.
One morning Florent stopped by Claire's freshwater tanks with a smile. Claire dropped the eel she was holding and turned her back, so angry her face was red. Florent was so surprised that he asked the Norman about this.
“Just forget it,” she said. “She's crazy. She always wants to do the opposite of everyone else. She just does it to make me mad.”
The Norman was triumphant. She strutted around her stall, more coquettish than ever, with elaborate hairstyles. Running into Beautiful Lisa one day, she returned her look of disdain. Then she burst into laughter right in her face. The certainty that she would drive the mistress of the charcuterie into despair by winning over her cousin gave her a happy, melodious laugh, a laugh from the diaphragm that rose up and jiggled her plump neck. On a whim she decided to dress Muche fancily with