The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola [80]
For almost eight months Florent lived in Les Halles, in a constant state of sleepiness. After seven years of suffering, he had fallen into such a state of calm, in a life so perfectly ordered, that he barely felt alive. He simply drifted mindlessly, each morning caught by surprise to find himself in the same armchair in his cramped office. He enjoyed the bare little room. Here he found a quiet refuge, far from the world, amid the ceaseless racket of the market that made him dream of a swelling sea surrounding him and isolating him. But little by little, an uneasiness began to eat at him. He became dissatisfied, accusing himself of all sorts of indefinable faults, and began to rebel against both a physical and a mental emptiness. And the putrid smells of the fish market started to nauseate him. Gradually he was disintegrating. His vague distress was turning into raging anxiety.
All his days were the same, passed among the same sounds and smells. In the morning the shouts of the auction rang in his ears like distant bells. Sometimes when some of the fish deliveries were delayed, the auction would continue until late. On such days he stayed in the pavilion until noon, disturbed at every interval by arguments and fights that he tried to resolve fairly. It could take hours to dispatch some petty crisis that consumed the entire market. He would pace up and down amid the pushing and shouting of the selling, slowly strolling the alleys, occasionally stopping at a fish stall along rue Rambuteau. There were a great pile of shrimp, red baskets of little cooked langoustines11 with their tails curled under, and live lobsters crawling on the marble as they died. He would watch affluent men in silk hats and black gloves bargaining with the fish women and eventually leaving with a cooked lobster wrapped in a newspaper stuffed in a coat pocket. Farther away he would recognize the neighborhood women, their heads bare, always shopping at that hour at the movable stalls, where the less deluxe fish were sold.
Sometimes his attention would be drawn to a well-dressed lady dragging her lacy petticoats over damp stones, a maid with a white apron following behind. He would follow her at a distance and watch how the fish women would shrug off her haughtiness. The bedlam of baskets, leather bags, and hampers, the frenzy of skirts swirling through damp alleys, held his interest until lunchtime. He was happy to be around running water and breezes that blew, as he passed the bitter odor of shellfish and the biting smell of salt fish. He always finished his inspection at the cured fish—cases of pickled herring, Nantes sardines on beds of leaves, rolled salt cod, which made him dream of distant voyages in need of these salted provisions—all displayed by fat, dull saleswomen.
Then, in the afternoon, Les Halles would calm down and get sleepy, and Florent would retire to his office, make out his reports, and enjoy the best hours of the day. If he went out and crossed the fish market, he would find it nearly deserted. The crushing, the pushing, the commotion of ten in the morning had vanished. The fish women sat behind their stalls, leaning back and knitting, while a few late housewives stalked around, casting sideways glances at the remaining fish, looking slowly, with thoughtful eyes and pursed lips, calculating the cost of dinner.
Finally twilight came, with the sound of boxes being moved. The fish was iced down for the night, and then, after