The Fat and the Thin Part 11

Florent's hollow voice had brought Pauline's interest and delight to the highest pitch, and she fidgeted with pleasure on his knee.

"But the man?" she exclaimed. "Go on about the man!"

Florent looked at her, and then appeared to remember, and smiled his sad smile again.

"The man," he continued, "was weary of remaining on the island, and had but one thought--that of making his escape by crossing the sea and reaching the mainland, whose white coast line could be seen on the horizon in clear weather. But it was no easy matter to escape. It was necessary that a raft should be built, and as several of the prisoners had already made their escape, all the trees on the island had been felled to prevent the others from obtaining timber. The island was, indeed, so bare and naked, so scorched by the blazing sun, that life in it had become yet more perilous and terrible. However, it occurred to the man and two of his companions to employ the timbers of which their huts were built; and one evening they put out to sea on some rotten beams, which they had fastened together with dry branches. The wind carried them towards the coast. Just as daylight was about to appear, the raft struck on a sandbank with such violence that the beams were severed from their lashings and carried out to sea. The three poor fellows were almost engulfed in the sand. Two of them sank in it to their waists, while the third disappeared up to his chin, and his companions were obliged to pull him out. At last they reached a rock, so small that there was scarcely room for them to sit down upon it. When the sun rose they could see the coast in front of them, a bar of grey cliffs stretching all along the horizon. Two, who knew how to swim, determined to reach those cliffs. They preferred to run the risk of being drowned at once to that of slowly starving on the rock. But they promised their companion that they would return for him when they had reached land and had been able to procure a boat."

"Ah, I know now!" cried little Pauline, clapping her hands with glee.

"It's the story of the gentleman who was eaten by the crabs!"

"They succeeded in reaching the coast," continued Florent, "but it was quite deserted; and it was only at the end of four days that they were able to get a boat. When they returned to the rock, they found their companion lying on his back, dead, and half-eaten by crabs, which were still swarming over what remained of his body."[*]

[*] In deference to the easily shocked feelings of the average English reader I have somewhat modified this pa.s.sage. In the original M. Zola fully describes the awful appearance of the body.--Translator.

A murmur of disgust escaped Lisa and Augustine, and a horrified grimace pa.s.sed over the face of Leon, who was preparing the skins for the black-puddings. Quenu stopped in the midst of his work and looked at Auguste, who seemed to have turned faint. Only little Pauline was smiling. In imagination the others could picture those swarming, ravenous crabs crawling all over the kitchen, and mingling gruesome odours with the aroma of the bacon-fat and onions.

"Give me the blood," cried Quenu, who had not been following the story.

Auguste came up to him with the two cans, from which he slowly poured the blood, while Quenu, as it fell, vigorously stirred the now thickening contents of the pot. When the cans were emptied, Quenu reached up to one of the drawers above the range, and took out some pinches of spice. Then he added a plentiful seasoning of pepper.

"They left him there, didn't they," Lisa now asked of Florent, "and returned themselves in safety?"

"As they were going back," continued Florent, "the wind changed, and they were driven out into the open sea. A wave carried away one of their oars, and the water swept so furiously into the boat that their whole time was taken up in baling it out with their hands. They tossed about in this way in sight of the coast, carried away by squalls and then brought back again by the tide, without a mouthful of bread to eat, for their scanty stock of provisions had been consumed. This went on for three days."

"Three days!" cried Lisa in stupefaction; "three days without food!"

"Yes, three days without food. When the east wind at last brought them to sh.o.r.e, one of them was so weak that he lay on the beach the whole day. In the evening he died. His companion had vainly attempted to get him to chew some leaves which he gathered from the trees."

At this point Augustine broke into a slight laugh. Then, ashamed at having done so and not wishing to be considered heartless, she stammered out in confusion: "Oh! I wasn't laughing at that. It was Mouton. Do just look at Mouton, madame."

Then Lisa in her turn began to smile. Mouton, who had been lying all this time with his nose close to the dish of sausage-meat, had probably begun to feel distressed and disgusted by the presence of all this food, for he had risen and was rapidly scratching the table with his paws as though he wanted to bury the dish and its contents. At last, however, turning his back to it and lying down on his side, he stretched himself out, half closing his eyes and rubbing his head against the table with languid pleasure. Then they all began to compliment Mouton. He never stole anything, they said, and could be safely left with the meat.

Pauline related that he licked her fingers and washed her face after dinner without trying to bite her.

However, Lisa now came back to the question as to whether it were possible to live for three days without food. In her opinion it was not.

"No," she said, "I can't believe it. No one ever goes three days without food. When people talk of a person dying of hunger, it is a mere expression. They always get something to eat, more or less. It is only the most abandoned wretches, people who are utterly lost----"

She was doubtless going to add, "vagrant rogues," but she stopped short and looked at Florent. The scornful pout of her lips and the expression of her bright eyes plainly signified that in her belief only villains made such prolonged fasts. It seemed to her that a man able to remain without food for three days must necessarily be a very dangerous character. For, indeed, honest folks never placed themselves in such a position.

Florent was now almost stifling. In front of him the stove, into which Leon had just thrown several shovelfuls of coal, was snoring like a lay clerk asleep in the sun; and the heat was very great. Auguste, who had taken charge of the lard melting in the pots, was watching over it in a state of perspiration, and Quenu wiped his brow with his sleeve whilst waiting for the blood to mix. A drowsiness such as follows gross feeding, an atmosphere heavy with indigestion, pervaded the kitchen.

"When the man had buried his comrade in the sand," Florent continued slowly, "he walked off alone straight in front of him. Dutch Guiana, in which country he now was, is a land of forests intermingled with rivers and swamps. The man walked on for more than a week without coming across a single human dwelling-place. All around, death seemed to be lurking and lying in wait for him. Though his stomach was racked by hunger, he often did not dare to eat the bright-coloured fruits which hung from the trees; he was afraid to touch the glittering berries, fearing lest they should be poisonous. For whole days he did not see a patch of sky, but tramped on beneath a canopy of branches, amidst a greenish gloom that swarmed with horrible living creatures. Great birds flew over his head with a terrible flapping of wings and sudden strange calls resembling death groans; apes sprang, wild animals rushed through the thickets around him, bending the saplings and bringing down a rain of leaves, as though a gale were pa.s.sing. But it was particularly the serpents that turned his blood cold when, stepping upon a matting of moving, withered leaves, he caught sight of their slim heads gliding amidst a horrid maze of roots. In certain nooks, nooks of dank shadow, swarming colonies of reptiles--some black, some yellow, some purple, some striped, some spotted, and some resembling withered reeds--suddenly awakened into life and wriggled away. At such times the man would stop and look about for a stone on which he might take refuge from the soft yielding ground into which his feet sank; and there he would remain for hours, terror-stricken on espying in some open s.p.a.ce near by a boa, who, with tail coiled and head erect, swayed like the trunk of a big tree splotched with gold.

"At night he used to sleep in the trees, alarmed by the slightest rustling of the branches, and fancying that he could hear endless swarms of serpents gliding through the gloom. He almost stifled beneath the interminable expanse of foliage. The gloomy shade reeked with close, oppressive heat, a clammy dankness and pestilential sweat, impregnated with the coa.r.s.e aroma of scented wood and malodorous flowers.

"And when at last, after a long weary tramp, the man made his way out of the forest and beheld the sky again, he found himself confronted by wide rivers which barred his way. He skirted their banks, keeping a watchful eye on the grey backs of the alligators and the ma.s.ses of drifting vegetation, and then, when he came to a less suspicious-looking spot, he swam across. And beyond the rivers the forests began again. At other times there were vast prairie lands, leagues of thick vegetation, in which, at distant intervals, small lakes gleamed bluely. The man then made a wide detour, and sounded the ground beneath him before advancing, having but narrowly escaped from being swallowed up and buried beneath one of those smiling plains which he could hear cracking at each step he took. The giant gra.s.s, nourished by all the collected humus, concealed pestiferous marshes, depths of liquid mud; and amongst the expanses of verdure spread over the glaucous immensity to the very horizon there were only narrow stretches of firm ground with which the traveller must be acquainted if he would avoid disappearing for ever. One night the man sank down as far as his waist. At each effort he made to extricate himself the mud threatened to rise to his mouth. Then he remained quite still for nearly a couple of hours; and when the moon rose he was fortunately able to catch hold of a branch of a tree above his head. By the time he reached a human dwelling his hands and feet were bruised and bleeding, swollen with poisonous stings. He presented such a pitiable, famished appearance that those who saw him were afraid of him. They tossed him some food fifty yards away from the house, and the master of it kept guard over his door with a loaded gun."

Florent stopped, his voice choked by emotion, and his eyes gazing blankly before him. For some minutes he had seemed to be speaking to himself alone. Little Pauline, who had grown drowsy, was lying in his arms with her head thrown back, though striving to keep her wondering eyes open. And Quenu, for his part, appeared to be getting impatient.

"Why, you stupid!" he shouted to Leon, "don't you know how to hold a skin yet? What do you stand staring at me for? It's the skin you should look at, not me! There, hold it like that, and don't move again!"

With his right hand Leon was raising a long string of sausage-skin, at one end of which a very wide funnel was inserted; while with his left hand he coiled the black-pudding round a metal bowl as fast as Quenu filled the funnel with big spoonfuls of the meat. The latter, black and steaming, flowed through the funnel, gradually inflating the skin, which fell down again, gorged to repletion and curving languidly. As Quenu had removed the pot from the range both he and Leon stood out prominently, he broad visaged, and the lad slender of profile, in the burning glow which cast over their pale faces and white garments a flood of rosy light.

Lisa and Augustine watched the filling of the skin with great interest, Lisa especially; and she in her turn found fault with Leon because he nipped the skin too tightly with his fingers, which caused knots to form, she said. When the skin was quite full, Quenu let it slip gently into a pot of boiling water; and seemed quite easy in his mind again, for now nothing remained but to leave it to boil.

"And the man--go on about the man!" murmured Pauline, opening her eyes, and surprised at no longer hearing the narrative.

Florent rocked her on his knee, and resumed his story in a slow, murmuring voice, suggestive of that of a nurse singing an infant to sleep.

"The man," he said, "arrived at a large town. There he was at first taken for an escaped convict, and was kept in prison for several months.

Then he was released, and turned his hand to all sorts of work. He kept accounts and taught children to read, and at one time he was even employed as a navvy in making an embankment. He was continually hoping to return to his own country. He had saved the necessary amount of money when he was attacked by yellow fever. Then, believing him to be dead, those about him divided his clothes amongst themselves; so that when he at last recovered he had not even a shirt left. He had to begin all over again. The man was very weak, and was afraid he might have to remain where he was. But at last he was able to get away, and he returned."

His voice had sunk lower and lower, and now died away altogether in a final quivering of his lips. The close of the story had lulled little Pauline to sleep, and she was now slumbering with her head on Florent's shoulder. He held her with one arm, and still gently rocked her on his knee. No one seemed to pay any further attention to him, so he remained still and quiet where he was, holding the sleeping child.

Now came the tug of war, as Quenu said. He had to remove the black-puddings from the pot. In order to avoid breaking them or getting them entangled, he coiled them round a thick wooden pin as he drew them out, and then carried them into the yard and hung them on screens, where they quickly dried. Leon helped him, holding up the drooping ends. And as these reeking festoons of black-pudding crossed the kitchen they left behind them a trail of odorous steam, which still further thickened the dense atmosphere.

Auguste, on his side, after giving a hasty glance at the lard moulds, now took the covers off the two pots in which the fat was simmering, and each bursting bubble discharged an acrid vapour into the kitchen. The greasy haze had been gradually rising ever since the beginning of the evening, and now it shrouded the gas and pervaded the whole room, streaming everywhere, and veiling the ruddy whiteness of Quenu and his two a.s.sistants. Lisa and Augustine had risen from their seats; and all were panting as though they had eaten too much.

Augustine carried the sleeping Pauline upstairs; and Quenu, who liked to fasten up the kitchen himself, gave Auguste and Leon leave to go to bed, saying that he would fetch the black-pudding himself. The younger apprentice stole off with a very red face, having managed to secrete under his shirt nearly a yard of the pudding, which must have almost scalded him. Then the Quenus and Florent remained alone, in silence.

Lisa stood nibbling a little piece of the hot pudding, keeping her pretty lips well apart all the while, for fear of burning them, and gradually the black compound vanished in her rosy mouth.

"Well," said she, "La Normande was foolish in behaving so rudely; the black-pudding's excellent to-day."

However, there was a knock at the pa.s.sage door, and Gavard, who stayed at Monsieur Lebigre's every evening until midnight, came in. He had called for a definite answer about the fish inspectorship.

"You must understand," he said, "that Monsieur Verlaque cannot wait any longer; he is too ill. So Florent must make up his mind. I have promised to give a positive answer early to-morrow."

"Well, Florent accepts," Lisa quietly remarked, taking another nibble at some black-pudding.

Florent, who had remained in his chair, overcome by a strange feeling of prostration, vainly endeavoured to rise and protest.

"No, no, say nothing," continued Lisa; "the matter is quite settled. You have suffered quite enough already, my dear Florent. What you have just been telling us is enough to make one shudder. It is time now for you to settle down. You belong to a respectable family, you received a good education, and it is really not fitting that you should go wandering about the highways like a vagrant. At your age childishness is no longer excusable. You have been foolish; well, all that will be forgotten and forgiven. You will take your place again among those of your own cla.s.s--the cla.s.s of respectable folks--and live in future like other people."

Florent listened in astonishment, quite unable to say a word. Lisa was, doubtless, right. She looked so healthy, so serene, that it was impossible to imagine that she desired anything but what was proper. It was he, with his fleshless body and dark, equivocal-looking countenance, who must be in the wrong, and indulging in unrighteous dreams. He could, indeed, no longer understand why he had hitherto resisted.

Lisa, however, continued to talk to him with an abundant flow of words, as though he were a little boy found in fault and threatened with the police. She a.s.sumed, indeed, a most maternal manner, and plied him with the most convincing reasons. And at last, as a final argument, she said:

"Do it for us, Florent. We occupy a fair position in the neighbourhood which obliges us to use a certain amount of circ.u.mspection; and, to tell you the truth, between ourselves, I'm afraid that people will begin to talk. This inspectorship will set everything right; you will be somebody; you will even be an honour to us."

Her manner had become caressingly persuasive, and Florent was penetrated by all the surrounding plenteousness, all the aroma filling the kitchen, where he fed, as it were, on the nourishment floating in the atmosphere.

He sank into blissful meanness, born of all the copious feeding that went on in the sphere of plenty in which he had been living during the last fortnight. He felt, as it were, the t.i.tillation of forming fat which spread slowly all over his body. He experienced the languid beat.i.tude of shopkeepers, whose chief concern is to fill their bellies.

At this late hour of night, in the warm atmosphere of the kitchen, all his acerbity and determination melted away. That peaceable evening, with the odour of the black-pudding and the lard, and the sight of plump little Pauline slumbering on his knee, had so enervated him that he found himself wishing for a succession of such evenings--endless ones which would make him fat.

However, it was the sight of Mouton that chiefly decided him. Mouton was sound asleep, with his stomach turned upwards, one of his paws resting on his nose, and his tail twisted over this side, as though to keep him warm; and he was slumbering with such an expression of feline happiness that Florent, as he gazed at him, murmured: "No, it would be too foolish! I accept the berth. Say that I accept it, Gavard."

Then Lisa finished eating her black-pudding, and wiped her fingers on the edge of her ap.r.o.n. And next she got her brother-in-law's candle ready for him, while Gavard and Quenu congratulated him on his decision.

It was always necessary for a man to settle down, said they; the breakneck freaks of politics did not provide one with food. And, meantime, Lisa, standing there with the lighted candle in her hand, looked at him with an expression of satisfaction resting on her handsome face, placid like that of some sacred cow.

CHAPTER III