If she’d been amazed by the scale of the halls, she was even more surprised by the crowds milling between and around the market buildings. There was scarcely any room to move, for the lanes and streets were a surging mass of people, carts, horses, lorries, piles of boxes, and empty crates. In the space that remained, there were the vegetables.
She’d assumed the produce for sale would be inside, arranged on barrows in the market buildings, but for some reason many of the carts were unloading their contents directly onto the street. She saw ruffled heads of green-bronze Savoy cabbages, stacked in neat pyramids, and beside them baskets of leeks, onions, turnips, and swede, and the furled spears of winter chicory. There were carrots and parsnips by the hundredweight, fat bunches of radishes, knobbly fists of celery root, and huge burlap sacks of potatoes.
It was all rather overwhelming. She looked to Sam, not certain of what to do or where to begin, and once again he understood. “Let’s find you a quiet place to stand,” he said, his voice raised so she might hear him above the din. “It’s hard to find your bearings in the middle of this.”
He still held her hand, but now he drew her close and guided her through the crowds, until they were standing in front of a wine shop on the south side of the rue Berger. Several empty crates stood by its door, and, after testing them to ensure their sturdiness, he made a sort of stage for her to stand upon, just high enough that she might see over the heads of passersby.
There, protected from the bustle of the market, she worked for more than an hour, making sketch after sketch of anything and anyone that caught her fancy. First there was a farmer’s wife, presiding proudly over a heap of celadon-green cabbages; though the set of the woman’s shoulders told Helena she was weary to the bone, she was good-humored in spite of it, laughing and joking as if she liked nothing better than standing out in the cold for hours on end. Farther along, a porter crouched low as the deep wicker basket strapped to his back was filled with sack after sack of potatoes. As he straightened, he staggered a little under its weight, but then, balance regained, he set off as though the load he carried were no heavier than a pair of down pillows.
She sketched a pair of nuns in pristine habits and starched white veils who haggled over every sou they spent but smiled beatifically at passersby; a ginger tabby cat, perched on a stack of empty fruit crates, delicately washing its face as it ignored the hubbub around it; and the arching tracery, only faintly visible in the gloom, of the iron roof supports of the nearest market hall.
She nearly sketched a mutilé de guerre, hobbling by on too-short crutches, his face drawn into a rictus of suffering, but compassion stilled her hand. It was one thing to draw people who were busy at their work, and quite another to capture the pain and desperation of a fellow human being brought low. She was about to dig in her satchel for some francs when Sam approached the man, who had halted only a few yards away. After engaging him in conversation, they walked together to a nearby soup vendor, at which point Sam paid for a serving of cabbage soup, handed it to the veteran, shook his hand, and returned to Helena’s side.
“I offered him some money, but he said he didn’t feel right in taking it. So I asked if I might buy him something to eat instead.”
“That was very kind of you,” she said.
“No more than any decent person would have done.”
Apart from his conversation with the veteran, Sam stayed close by her side, never commenting on her sketches, though he was tall enough to look over her shoulder. From time to time he scribbled in a small notebook, but that was all. He didn’t stamp his feet or blow on his hands to keep warm, though she was nearly frozen to the marrow after more than an hour of standing still.
“I’m worried you’re cold. Shall we find you a café express?” she asked.
“No, I’m fine. Are you ready to move on?”
“May we walk through the market halls? I won’t take long.”
“Take as much time as you like,” he said, and helped her down from her perch.
They began at one of the halls given over to fish. Here she concentrated on quick, almost impressionistic sketches of the wares on display, adding notes in the margins to remind her of the colors she saw. There was an iridescent amethyst glimmer to the mussels, she noted, in beautiful contrast to the beds of moistened moss on which they were piled; nearby, delicate pink langoustines were arranged side by side, as neatly as soldiers on parade. There were barrels overflowing with the shimmering silver of herring and sardines, deep buckets full of squirming, ink-dark eels, heaps of carp and pike, fierce-looking swordfish, and even, at one stall, a bluefin tuna as big as a man.