The Belly of Paris

by Emile Zola

  “Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

  “Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

  As Quenu undressed, he would listen to Lisa getting ready for bed. The partition between them was so thin that they could hear each other's every move. He would think, “Ah, now she's closing the curtains. I wonder what she's doing in front of the dresser. There, now she's sitting down and taking her shoes off. Well, good night, she's blown out the candle. Let's sleep.” When he heard the bed creak, he would chuckle to himself, “Damn, she's no feather, that Lisa.” This thought amused him and made him laugh, but then he would fall asleep dreaming of hams and strips of petit salé7 that he had to prepare the next day.

  It went on like this for a year without a blush from Lisa or any embarrassment from Quenu. In the morning, the busiest time of day, when the young girl came down to the kitchen, their hands would meet amid the ground meat. Sometimes she helped him, holding the sausage skins with her chubby fingers while he stuffed them with meats and lardoons.8 Sometimes they tasted the raw sausage meat on the tips of their tongues, to make sure it was well seasoned. She helped him with her knowledge of recipes from the Midi, with which he experimented with great success. Often he could feel her over his shoulder, looking into his pots, leaning so close he felt her neck in his back. She would pass him a spoon or a plate. The heat of the fire made their skin flush. Still, nothing in the world would have made this young man stop stirring his fatty bouillies9 that he was thickening on the stove, as she pronounced with gravity on the proper cooking time. In the afternoon, when the shop was quiet, they would chat together for hours.

  Lisa sat at the counter, leaning back slightly, calmly knitting. Quenu sat on a big oak block, dangling his feet and tapping his heels against the oak. They reveled in each other's company, talking about everything from the most banal cooking discussions to Uncle Gradelle and life in the neighborhood. She told him stories the way you would to a child. She knew very pretty tales of miracles, full of lambs and little angels, which she told in a soft, high-pitched voice with an air of mock gravity. If a customer happened to come in, she asked Quenu to fetch the lard pot or the box of snails so that she did not have to disturb herself.

  At eleven o'clock they slowly climbed the stairs as they did each night before. As they closed the doors they said in their peaceful voices:

  “Good night, Mademoiselle Lisa.”

  “Good night, Monsieur Quenu.”

  One morning Uncle Gradelle dropped dead while making a galantine.10 He fell forward with his face on the chopping block. Lisa, without losing her composure, pointed out that the dead man could not very well be left sprawled in the middle of the kitchen and had the body dragged into the small back room where he had slept. Then she established the official story with the helpers. They all had to agree that he had died in his bed because otherwise the entire neighborhood would be repulsed and they would lose business. Quenu helped carry the dead man away, feeling amazed and very surprised at his inability to produce any tears. But later on, he and Lisa cried together. Quenu and his brother, Florent, were the sole heirs. The neighborhood gossips claimed that Gradelle had a considerable fortune. But the truth was that there was not one piece of silver to be found. Lisa grew uneasy, and Quenu noticed how pensive she had become, always looking around as though she had lost something. Finally she decided to undertake a massive shop cleaning, claiming that people were beginning to talk, that the story of the old man's death had gotten out and they had to have a spotless shop.

  One afternoon, after having spent the past two hours in the basement washing the salting tubs, Lisa came up carrying something in her apron. Quenu was grinding up a pig's liver. She waited for him to finish, chatting with him in a nonchalant way. But her eyes had a special glow and she smiled her beautiful smile, while saying she wanted to talk to him about something. She climbed the stairs awkwardly, her legs impeded by whatever it was she was carrying that was almost bursting her apron open. At the third floor she had to stop and lean on the banister to catch her breath. Quenu, taken aback, said nothing and followed her into her bedroom. It was the first time she had ever invited him in. She closed the door and, releasing the corners of her apron, which her cramped fingers could no longer hold up, she let softly rain on her bed a shower of gold and silver coins. She had found Uncle Gradelle's treasure at the bottom of the salting tub. The pile of money made a deep depression in the young woman's delicate, fluffy bed.

  Quenu and Lisa suppressed their joy as they sat on the bed, Lisa at the head, Quenu at the foot, on either side of the money pile, counting it out on the bedspread to muffle the sound of the coins. They had forty thousand francs in gold, three thousand francs in silver, and forty-two thousand francs in banknotes in a tin box. It took a good two hours to add it all up. Quenu's hands were shaking, and Lisa did most of the work. She stacked the gold on the pillow, leaving the silver in the hollow of the bed. When they had reached the total, eighty-five thousand francs, an enormous sum for them, they began to discuss their future, their marriage, without having ever talked about love. The money seemed to loosen their tongues. They gradually slid themselves farther back on the bed so that they were leaning against the wall under the white muslin curtains with their legs stretched out. As they chattered on, their hands, caressing the silver coins between them, met and stayed together against a pile of one-hundred-sou coins.

  They were surprised by twilight. Lisa suddenly blushed at finding herself lying next to a man. They had messed up the bed, the sheets were hanging off, and the gold made dents in the pillow between them, looking like the imprints of two heads that had rolled there in hot passion.

  They got up awkwardly with the confused look of two lovers who had just committed their first transgression. The unmade bed covered in money stood like an accusation of forbidden pleasure behind a closed door. That was the moment of their fall. Lisa, who straightened out her clothes as though covering up her guilt, started looking for her ten thousand francs. Quenu wanted her to add them to his uncle's eighty-five thousand. Laughing, he mixed the two sums, saying that the money too should marry, and it was agreed that Lisa should keep “the stash” in her dressing table. When she had locked it up and remade the bed, they went calmly downstairs. They were man and wife.

  The wedding took place the following month. The neighborhood considered it a completely suitable match. They heard vague stories of a treasure, and Lisa's honesty was a subject of endless eulogies. After all, she could have said nothing to Quenu and kept it all for herself. The fact that she had said something was testimony to her impeccable honesty. She was certainly a worthy mate for Quenu. This Quenu was a lucky man. He was not very good-looking, and he had found himself a pretty woman who had dug up a fortune. Admiration for her went so far that people ended up saying that Lisa was stupid to have done it. Lisa smiled when people hinted at this. She and her husband lived as they had before, in a close and contented friendship. She helped him, touched his hand over the ground meat, leaned over his shoulder to examine the pots. And still it was only the enormous fire in the kitchen that could bring heat to their blood.

  But Lisa was an intelligent woman who quickly understood the folly of leaving ninety-five thousand francs in a dressing table drawer. Quenu would have gladly returned the money to the bottom of the salting tub until he had earned an equal amount and they would have enough to retire to Suresnes, an outlying area they both loved. But she had other ambitions. Rue Pirouette wounded her sense of cleanliness, did not fulfill her need for fresh air, light, and a healthy environment. The shop where Uncle Gradelle had amassed his fortune, penny by penny, was a sort of black pit, one of those questionable charcuteries that old neighborhoods have, where the worn stones of the floor, despite frequent washing, retained the strong smell of meat. The young woman dreamed of a light, modern shop, luxurious as a drawing room and with a sparkling window bordering the sidewalk of some broad street. This was not a latent desire to play the grande dame behind the counter. She had a very clear
concept of the prerequisite niceties of a modern business. Quenu was frightened the first time she spoke of moving and spending part of their money on decorating the new shop. Softly shrugging her shoulders, she smiled.

  One day, as nightfall was blackening the charcuterie, the couple heard a woman by the shop door say to another woman, “Well, I wouldn't buy there anymore, not so much as a piece of boudin. You see, dear, they had a corpse in the kitchen.”

  Quenu wept. The story of the death in the kitchen had gotten around. Now he blushed in front of his customers anytime he saw them bend down and sniff his foods. So he went to his wife and brought up her idea about moving. She had been working on it without saying anything and had found some possibilities in a prime location, a few steps away on rue Rambuteau. The new central market was being opened across the street, which would triple their business and make their shop known all over Paris.

  Quenu let himself be talked into lavish expenditures—more than thirty thousand francs in marble, glass, and gilding. Lisa spent her time with the workers, giving her opinions on the most minute details. When at last she was installed behind the counter, customers lined up just to see the shop. The interior walls were lined in white marble from top to bottom. The ceiling was covered with an immense square mirror in an ornate gilded frame, while from the center hung a crystal chandelier with four arms. And behind the counter, on the left hand at the far end of the shop, were more mirrors, fitted between the marble panels and looking like doors that opened into an infinite series of brightly lit halls where meats were on display. To the right was a huge counter that was considered a particularly fine piece of work. At intervals along the front were diamond-shaped medallions of pink marble. The floor was covered in alternating pink and white tiles with a dark red pattern for a border. The neighborhood was proud of the charcuterie and no longer even mentioned the old one on rue Pirouette, where there had been a death. For a month, neighborhood women gathered on the sidewalk to look at Lisa across the cervelas and the caul fat11 sausages displayed in the window. They admired her white-and-pink flesh, which matched the marble. She seemed to be the soul, the living glow, the healthy, sturdy goddess of charcuteries. And from then on she was known as “Beautiful Lisa.”

  To the right of the shop was a dining room, a spotless room with a buffet, a table, and light oak chairs with cane seats. The mat that covered the floor, the soft yellow wallpaper, the imitation oak oilcloth, all gave a coolness to the room, slightly softened by the shine of a brass lamp that hung from the ceiling and sprawled above the table with its large transparent porcelain shade. A door from the dining room led to the huge square kitchen. Beyond this was a small tile-floored courtyard used to store lumber, tubs, barrels, pans, and all sorts of tools that were not being used. To the left of a water faucet, by the side of a gutter that drained off greasy water, were pots of withered flowers, removed from the window display and at their last gasp.

  Business was thriving. Quenu, who at first had been panicked, now had great respect for his wife, who, according to him, “had a great head on her shoulders.” At the end of five years they had almost eighty thousand francs in solid investments. Lisa would say that they were not overly ambitious and she had no desire to accumulate money too quickly otherwise she would have encouraged her husband to get into the wholesale pig trade. They were still young and still had time ahead of them, they didn't want to be in some seedy business. They would work at their own pace, without wearing themselves out, and live a good life.

  “You know,” Lisa would add in her more expansive moments, “I have a cousin in Paris. I don't see him, because the two families aren't speaking to each other. He has changed his name to Saccard12 to let some things be forgotten. Well, they say this cousin has made millions. But he doesn't live well, he's always in a state of anxiety, always rushing here and there, doing business with the Devil. A man like that can't even eat his dinner in peace, can he? The rest of us, at least, can enjoy what we eat. You love money because you need it to live. It's natural to look after your own well-being. But to make money just for the sake of making money and giving yourself anxiety and more trouble than the pleasure it could bring, I tell you, I'd rather just sit here with my arms crossed. And I would just like to see my cousin's millions. I don't believe in millions like that. I happened to see him the other day in his carriage. His face looked yellow and kind of sly. A man who's making a lot of money doesn't look like that. Anyway, that's his problem. We would rather have a hundred sous and have a good time earning it.”

  Things went well at home. In the first year of their marriage they had a daughter. The three of them were a beautiful sight. The business prospered without their overworking, just the way Lisa wanted. She had carefully sidestepped any possible cause of trouble, allowing the days to flow on in the luxurious air of this lumbering prosperity. It was a little corner of stable contentment, a cozy manger where mother, father, and little girl could grow fat.

  Quenu alone was occasionally sad when he thought of poor Florent. Until 1856, he received letters from him, though rarely. Then there were no more letters. Quenu learned from a newspaper that three convicts had attempted to escape from Devil's Island and drowned before they were able to reach the mainland. The police had no definite information, but it was likely that his brother was dead. Quenu still hoped, but the months passed. Meanwhile, Florent was wandering in Dutch Guiana but refrained from writing because he hoped to get back to France. Finally Quenu started to mourn for his brother the way people mourn for someone with whom there was no chance for a farewell. Lisa had never known Florent. When Quenu mourned his loss in front of her, she always found kind words to say, and she showed no impatience when, for about the hundredth time, he began to tell some story of the old days in the big room on rue Royer-Collard, the thirty-six trades he had taken up one after the other, and the little delicacies he had cooked at the stove all dressed in white, while Florent was all dressed in black. She listened peacefully to such talk, with infinite acceptance.

  It was into the middle of all this well-planned, mature domestic bliss that one morning in September Florent dropped in, just at the time when Lisa took her morning sun bath and Quenu, his eyelids still heavy from sleep, was absentmindedly fingering the congealed fat left in the pans from the day before. The shop was completely thrown by the event. Gavard advised them to hide “the outlaw,” as he somewhat pompously called him, puffing out his cheeks. Lisa, paler and more serious than usual, led him to the fifth floor, where she gave him the room used by the girl who worked in the shop. Quenu sliced him some bread and ham. But Florent could hardly eat anything. He was nearly overcome with light-headedness and nausea. He went to bed for five days in a state of delirium, the onslaught of brain fever, which, fortunately, he vigorously fought off. When he regained consciousness, he saw Lisa seated by his bed, silently stirring something in a cup with a spoon. When he tried to thank her, she told him that he must remain completely still and that they could talk later. In another three days, Florent was on his feet. Then one morning Quenu came up to tell him that Lisa was waiting for them in her room on the first floor.

  Quenu and Lisa lived there in a little apartment, three rooms and a dressing room. The brothers passed through an empty room that contained only chairs, then a little sitting room in which the furniture was covered with white dustcovers in the half-light of closed venetian blinds to keep the soft blue of the covers from fading, and finally arrived in the bedroom, the only room that was used and was comfortably furnished in mahogany. The bed was particularly striking with its four mattresses, four pillows, a thick bundle of blankets, and an eiderdown. This was a bed made for sleeping in. A mirrored wardrobe, a washstand with drawers, a lace-covered table, and several chairs with lace-covered seats expressed solid middle-class comfort. Against the left-hand wall, on either side of the fireplace mantle—which was decorated with vases painted with landscapes and mounted on bronze stands, along with a gilded clock on which a statuette of a pensive Gutenberg,
also gilded, pressed his fingers into a book—were hanging oil portraits of Lisa and Quenu in ornate oval frames. Quenu was smiling, Lisa had an air of propriety, and both were dressed in black with pinkish smooth skin and idealized features— all very flattering. The floor was covered by a rug with stars and rosettes. In front of the bed was a fluffy rug with long strands of curly wool, knit by the charcuterie mistress in long, patient hours at the counter. But the object that stood out amid all the new furniture was a heavy, square secretary, which had been refinished in vain, for the cracks and pockmarks in the marble top, the scratches in the mahogany, blackened with age, still showed. Lisa wanted to keep this piece, which Uncle Gradelle had used for more than forty years. She insisted that it would bring them good luck. In truth it had heavy metal hardware, a lock like one would find on a prison gate, and was so heavy that it could not be moved.

  When Florent and Quenu entered, Lisa, seated in front of the writing flap of the secretary, was working on rows of numbers in a large, round, and very readable hand. She gestured not to interrupt her, and the two men sat down. Florent, with some amazement, took in the room: the two portraits, the clock, the bed.

  “Here we are,” said Lisa after calmly checking an entire page of figures. “Listen … we have some accounts to settle with you, my dear Florent.”

  It was the first time she had addressed him in this way. She held the sheet of paper with the figures and continued, “Your uncle Gradelle died without leaving a will; you are, you and your brother, the two sole heirs. Today we owe you your share.”