THE COMPLETE ROUGON-MACQUART SERIES (All 20 Books in One Edition). Эмиль Золя

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ black-backed carp ever on the move, and mazy tangles of eels, incessantly knotting and unknotting themselves. Again was Monsieur Verlaque attacked by an obstinate fit of coughing. The moisture of the atmosphere was more insipid here than amongst the sea water fish: there was a riverside scent, as of sun-warmed water slumbering on a bed of sand.

      A great number of crawfishes had arrived from Germany that morning in cases and hampers, and the market was also crowded with river fish from Holland and England. Several men were unpacking shiny carp from the Rhine, lustrous with ruddy metallic hues, their scales resembling bronzed cloisonne enamel; and others were busy with huge pike, the cruel iron-grey brigands of the waters, who ravenously protruded their savage jaws; or with magnificent dark-hued with verdigris. And amidst these suggestions of copper, iron, and bronze, the gudgeon and perch, the trout, the bleak, and the flat-fish taken in sweep-nets showed brightly white, the steel-blue tints of their backs gradually toning down to the soft transparency of their bellies. However, it was the fat snowy-white barbel that supplied the liveliest brightness in this gigantic collection of still life.

      Bags of young carp were being gently emptied into the basins. The fish spun round, then remained motionless for a moment, and at last shot away and disappeared. Little eels were turned out of their hampers in a mass, and fell to the bottom of the compartments like tangled knots of snakes; while the larger ones — those whose bodies were about as thick as a child’s arm — raised their heads and slipped of their own accord into the water with the supple motion of serpents gliding into the concealment of a thicket. And meantime the other fish, whose death agony had been lasting all the morning as they lay on the soiled osiers of the basket-trays, slowly expired amidst all the uproar of the auctions, opening their mouths as though to inhale the moisture of the air, with great silent gasps, renewed every few seconds.

      However, Monsieur Verlaque brought Florent back to the salt water fish. He took him all over the place and gave him the minutest particulars about everything. Round the nine salesmen’s desks ranged along three sides of the pavilion there was now a dense crowd of surging, swaying heads, above which appeared the clerks, perched upon high chairs and making entries in their ledgers.

      “Are all these clerks employed by the salesmen?” asked Florent.

      By way of reply Monsieur Verlaque made a detour along the outside footway, led him into the enclosure of one of the auctions, and then explained the working of the various departments of the big yellow office, which smelt strongly of fish and was stained all over by drippings and splashings from the hampers. In a little glazed compartment up above, the collector of the municipal dues took note of the prices realised by the different lots of fish. Lower down, seated upon high chairs and with their wrists resting upon little desks, were two female clerks, who kept account of the business on behalf of the salesmen. At each end of the stone table in front of the office was a crier who brought the basket-trays forward in turn, and in a bawling voice announced what each lot consisted of; while above him the female clerk, pen in hand, waited to register the price at which the lots were knocked down. And outside the enclosure, shut up in another little office of yellow wood, Monsieur Verlaque showed Florent the cashier, a fat old woman, who was ranging coppers and five-franc pierces in piles.

      “There is a double control, you see,” said Monsieur Verlaque; “the control of the Prefecture of the Seine and that of the Prefecture of Police. The latter, which licenses the salesmen, claims to have the right of supervision over them; and the municipality asserts its right to be represented at the transactions as they are subject to taxation.”

      He went on expatiating at length in his faint cold voice respecting the rival claims of the two Prefectures. Florent, however, was paying but little heed, his attention being concentrated on a female clerk sitting on one of the high chairs just in front of him. She was a tall, dark woman of thirty, with big black eyes and an easy calmness of manner, and she wrote with outstretched fingers like a girl who had been taught the regulation method of the art.

      However, Florent’s attention was diverted by the yelping of the crier, who was just offering a magnificent turbot for sale.

      “I’ve a bid of thirty francs! Thirty francs, now; thirty francs!”

      He repeated these words in all sorts of keys, running up and down a strange scale of notes full of sudden changes. Humpbacked and with his face twisted askew, and his hair rough and disorderly, he wore a great blue apron with a bib; and with flaming eyes and outstretched arms he cried vociferously: “Thirty-one! thirty-two! thirty-three! Thirty-three francs fifty centimes! thirty-three fifty!”

      Then he paused to take breath, turning the basket-tray and pushing it farther upon the table. The fishwives bent forward and gently touched the turbot with their fingertips. Then the crier began again with renewed energy, hurling his figures towards the buyers with a wave of the hand and catching the slightest indication of a fresh bid — the raising of a finger, a twist of the eyebrows, a pouting of the lips, a wink, and all with such rapidity and such a ceaseless jumble of words that Florent, utterly unable to follow him, felt quite disconcerted when, in a singsong voice like that of a priest intoning the final words of a versicle, he chanted: “Forty-two! forty-two! The turbot goes for forty-two francs.”

      It was the beautiful Norman who had made the last bid. Florent recognised her as she stood in the line of fishwives crowding against the iron rails which surrounded the enclosure. The morning was fresh and sharp, and there was a row of tippets above the display of big white aprons, covering the prominent bosoms and stomachs and sturdy shoulders. With high-set chignon set off with curls, and white and dainty skin, the beautiful Norman flaunted her lace bow amidst tangled shocks of hair covered with dirty kerchiefs, red noses eloquent of drink, sneering mouths, and battered faces suggestive of old pots. And she also recognised Madame Quenu’s cousin, and was so surprised to see him there that she began gossiping to her neighbours about him.

      The uproar of voices had become so great that Monsieur Verlaque renounced all further attempt to explain matters to Florent. On the footway close by, men were calling out the larger fish with prolonged shouts, which sounded as though they came from gigantic speaking-trumpets; and there was one individual who roared “Mussels! Mussels!” in such a hoarse, cracked, clamorous voice that the very roofs of the market shook. Some sacks of mussels were turned upside down, and their contents poured into hampers, while others were emptied with shovels. And there was a ceaseless procession of basket-trays containing skate, soles, mackerel, conger-eels, and salmon, carried backwards and forwards amidst the ever-increasing cackle and pushing of the fishwomen as they crowded against the iron rails which creaked with their pressure. The humpbacked crier, now fairly on the job, waved his skinny arms in the air and protruded his jaws. Presently, seemingly lashed into a state of frenzy by the flood of figures that spurted from his lips, he sprang upon a stool, where, with his mouth twisted spasmodically and his hair streaming behind him, he could force nothing more than unintelligible hisses from his parched throat. And in the meantime, up above, the collector of municipal dues, a little old man, muffled in a collar of imitation astrachan, remained with nothing but his nose showing under his black velvet skullcap. And the tall, dark-complexioned female clerk, with eyes shining calmly in her face, which had been slightly reddened by the cold, sat on her high wooden chair, quietly writing, apparently unruffled by the continuous rattle which came from the hunchback below her.

      “That fellow Logre is wonderful,” muttered Monsieur Verlaque with a smile. “He is the best crier in the markets. I believe he could make people buy boot soles in the belief they were fish!”

      Then he and Florent went back into the pavilion. As they again passed the spot where the fresh water fish was being sold by auction, and where the bidding seemed much quieter, Monsieur Verlaque explained that French river fishing was in a bad way.[*] The crier here, a fair, sorry-looking fellow, who scarcely moved his arms, was disposing of some lots of eels and crawfish in a monotonous voice, while the assistants fished fresh supplies out of the stone basins with their short-handled nets.

      [*] СКАЧАТЬ