and kissed her hand, happy to be able to try out his best manners on this naïve young girl, before addressing himself to the niece of the Comtesse. Blushing, Denise stayed rooted to the spot long after the young man had departed.
He rushed down the stairs imagining himself in an embrace with Valentine. As he left, he gave a friendly greeting to a young man hanging about on the pavement clutching a bouquet of flowers.
Notes
1. Japanese artist, famous for his paintings, illustrations and etchings (1752–1815); celebrated for his works depicting the theatrical world and for his portraits of women.
2. Japanese painter and printmaker (1797–1858); celebrated especially for his landscape prints, which transmuted everyday settings into intimate, lyrical scenes.
3. Joseph Fouché (1759–1820) served as Minister of Police under Napoleon and was instrumental in the return of Louis XVIII to the throne in 1815.
4. This is a play on words, Père Moscou is spelling out the sound of the name Josephine de Beauharnais, later Josephine Bonaparte, as if speaking in code.
DENISE was roused from her slumber by a regular tapping noise. She got out of bed in her undershirt and petticoat. Tiny drops were trickling from the flaking ceiling and splattering into the three pails placed under the main beam. Balancing on a rickety stool, she opened the skylight. On the edge of the gutter two magpies were busily pecking at the zinc, but she took little notice of them. What caught her attention was the sea of slate roofs that stretched out as far as the eye could see, punctuated by the red or grey stalks of the chimneys. The cold forced her to retreat.
Once she had dressed and made her bed, she breakfasted on a glass of water and the apple Joseph had given her the night before. The juicy acidity of the fruit reminded her of that September afternoon when Ronan and she had gorged themselves on mulberries in the Forêt de Nevet, while dreaming of their future. She had promised herself that if she ever became rich, she would never again go near a kitchen stove.
She took the time to brush her hair thoroughly in front of the mirror above the sink and with a moistened finger fixed a lock of hair in place on her forehead. Would the hunchbacked boy who had promised to come later in the morning approve? He wasn’t very handsome, but he was so kind! Would he think she was pretty? When she was a little girl, her mother had loved to stroke her hair, calling her ‘my pet’. But Madame had treated her like a slattern, and old Hyacinthe had said she was skinny as a rake. As for pretty, was she? No man had ever told her so.
She returned to the bedroom to tidy the things on the table. A little bookcase built into a recess in a wall aroused her curiosity. She read out the gilded lettering adorning the spines of some of the beautiful bound books that were on the shelves along with some tattered paperbacks: Bel-Ami, Treasure Island, An Island Fisherman. Leaning against the books were two sepiatinted photographs, one of Tasha, the young redhead whose room it was, the other of Victor Legris. She opened her bundle of belongings, took out her silver crucifix, and placed it next to the chromolithograph of The Madonna in Blue on an easel bearing a large painting of a male nude. Standing back to judge the effect, she felt pleased at having managed to add a personal touch to the room. But, almost immediately, her fear came rushing back. She hurriedly thrust the crucifix under her bodice and then hid The Madonna in Blue between the frame and the canvas of the nude.
Sitting on the bed, she tried to concentrate on the numerous pairs of lace gloves scattered around the garret. But she couldn’t help it: her gaze was continually drawn back to the repository of her secret, the nude, a three-quarter study of a slightly round-shouldered man, his arm raised to reach for an open book on a chest. Although the picture shocked her, she couldn’t take her eyes off the buttocks, round as pearls. She closed her eyes and let herself fall backwards, giggling. Was it a picture of the bookseller? Who would ever think of looking for The Madonna in Blue behind his naked figure?
The chiming of bells in the distance told her that it was ten o’clock. For the first time in years, her time was her own. Surely this was happiness? A room of one’s own, the prospect of a stroll with a young man and no mistress to give her orders. To accentuate the enjoyment she felt at lounging on the bed, she took pleasure in running through the things she would have had to do that morning, had she still been in Madame’s service. At this moment she would have been hurrying through the streets, burdened with a shopping basket, scouring the stalls for vegetables and cakes that would please her mistress. With half-closed eyes, she drowsily repeated to herself: ‘If Madame returns, what will she eat? Sticks and stones …’
‘Two rabbit heads, surely you can spare them? Come on, Goglu, do a good deed and God will reward you a hundredfold!’
‘What would I want with a hundred rabbit heads, Père Moscou?’ asked the butcher mockingly, fixing a side of beef on to a hook. ‘I know your type, you old fraudster, you’d pass catmeat off as rabbit!’
‘And so what! When it’s well cooked, meat is meat!’
‘Catch!’ cried the butcher, throwing him the two bloody heads. ‘And don’t come back, Moscou. I’ve got more important things to worry about than dishing out ingredients for your soup – they don’t come cheap!’
‘My heart bleeds for you, Goglu. You make me want to blub!’ cried Old Moscou furiously.
He narrowly missed one of the market porters of Les Halles bearing down on him, a carcass on his shoulders, yelling: ‘Watch out, watch out in front of you!’
He crossed the Pavillon de Baltard, where all the meat was displayed. The tortured flesh, destined to satisfy insatiable appetites, was spread out in a symphony of red. Meat cleavers were crushing skulls, carving knives slicing haunches. Men in vermilion-stained aprons barked out orders while wagons piled with carcasses just missed crashing into each other. The sweetish odour pervading this slaughterhouse was making Père Moscou feel ill and he swayed, incapable of moving, a rabbit head clutched in each hand. He was haunted by the image of the woman’s body in his cart; it was suffocating him. What had he done with the body? He could picture himself digging a hole under the trees of his courtyard, but had that really happened or was it a nightmare?
‘Josephine, you filthy traitress, you’re making me see things! Or maybe it’s you, Emmanuel!’
‘Oi, tosspot, go and sleep it off somewhere else! The rest of us is doin’ an honest day’s work ’ere,’ a butcher’s boy shouted at him.
Père Moscou jerked back to life like a mechanical toy and started walking, muttering: ‘And I’m not? I may work for the King of Prussia and collect bugger all, but it’s better than nothing.’
He glanced at the rabbit heads before shoving them into his pockets. He could now go to Marcelin’s or to Cabirol’s but first he would have to take the cats back to the Cour des Comptes. While he was there he would check if he really had buried a Josephine on his turf.
He walked past a stall of eels. There were about a dozen of them, soft and slimy, intertwined on a wicker trug. He spotted his friend Barnabé.
‘Well, well! What you are you doing here?’
‘As you can see, I’m stocking up, the missus likes matelote.’
‘Ugh! It’s rotten, that filthy mess.’
‘Yes,’ laughed Barnabé, ‘but it’s cheap. With a good sauce on top, it slips down nicely. A drop of wine?’
‘No time!’