The Belly of Paris Read Online Free PDF Page B

French-Jewish army officer from the German-speaking part of Alsace that had been taken by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, was falsely accused of passing secrets to the German command. A wave of anti-Semitism was unleashed in France. Zola did not so much befriend Jews as loathe anti-Semitism. He regarded it as a backward affliction of the mind that, if left unchecked, would eventually destroy France. Dreyfus was convicted and sent to Devil's Island, and Zola became one of his most conspicuous defenders.
    Zola's January 13, 1898, open letter in
L'Aurore
, “J'Accuse!” is considered one of the great masterpieces of journalism and is possibly Zola's most famous piece of writing. It explained how Dreyfus had been framed by a fellow officer and accused the army command of covering it up. It began to change public opinion and put Zola at the center of a historic conflict. He was forced to leave the country to avoid being prosecuted for writing “J'Accuse!” and became a highly controversial figure.
    He refused to take payment for any of the articles he wrote on the Dreyfus case, and when in exile in England he turned down sizable sums because he considered the case a purely French affair and would not write about it abroad. Although he had long embraced the working class, it had always shown great misgivings about him. Only with the Dreyfus case was he finally embraced by workers and trade unions. But he lost many readers over Dreyfus and never regained his popularity.
    On September 28, 1902, Zola died in his home outside Paris of carbon monoxide poisoning from a malfunctioning chimney. In 1927, a stove fitter made a deathbed confession that he and otheranti-Dreyfusards, while repairing a neighbor's roof, had deliberately blocked Zola's chimney to kill him. The story which did not surface until 1953, has never been confirmed but is most certainly the version of his death that Zola would have preferred. The few real writers, the ones who stand up and use their voices for what they believe, understand that being a writer is not without risks.



T HE B ELLY OF P ARIS

C HAPTER O NE
    In the silence of a deserted avenue, wagons stuffed with produce made their way toward Paris, their thudding wheels rhythmically echoing off the houses sleeping behind the rows of elm trees meandering on either side of the road. At the pont de Neuilly a cart full of cabbages and another full of peas met up with eight carts of turnips and carrots coming in from Nanterre. The horses, their heads bent low, led themselves with their lazy, steady pace, a bit slowed by the slight uphill climb. Up on the carts, lying on their stomachs in the vegetables, wrapped in their black-and-gray-striped wool coats, the drivers slept with the reins in their fists. Occasionally the light from a gas lamp would grope its way through the shadows and brighten the hobnail of a boot, the blue sleeve of a blouse, or the tip of a hat poking from the bright bloom of vegetables—red bouquets of carrots, white bouquets of turnips, or the bursting greenery of peas and cabbages.
    All along the road and all the nearby routes, up ahead and farther back, the distant rumbling of carts told of other huge wagons, all pushing on through the darkness and slumber of two in themorning, the sound of passing food lulling the darkened town to stay asleep.
    Madame François's horse, Balthazar, an overweight beast, led the column. He dawdled on, half asleep, flicking his ears until, at rue de Longchamp, his legs were suddenly frozen by fear. The other animals bumped their heads into the stalled carts in front of them, and the column halted with the clanking of metal and the cursing of drivers who had been yanked from their sleep. Seated up top, Madame François, with her back against a plank that held the vegetables in place, peered out but saw nothing by the faint light of the little square lantern to her left, which barely lit one of Balthazar's glistening flanks.
    “Come on, lady, let's