Below, some excerpted paragraphs from the book interspersed with some of Tom Palumbo's images of Les Halles:
Isabel laughs. The evening has only begun.
At three in the morning - Christina never goes to bed when she's drinking - we are wandering through the disorder of Les Halles. The air is chilly at this hour, noises seem to ring in it. The workmen glance up from their crates at the unmistakeable sound of high heels. Isabel is talking. Christina. They are pointing everything out. We trail foolishly between great barricades of fruit and produce, past empty bars, through the carts and trucks. Finally we emerge at the roaring, iron galleries where meat is handled. ..........
"We're really going to sleep sometime?" Billy asks.
"Let's go to the pig place," Isabel says.
"Sweetheart, where is it? Isn't it right around here?"
"It's just down the street," Billy says.
It takes us ten minutes to find it. Of course, there's an enormous crowd, there always is this time of night. Taxis are waiting with their lights on dim. Cars are parked everywhere. The restaurant is filled. There are tourists, wedding parties, people who've been to cabarets, others who've stayed up in order to visit the famous market. It's said they are planning to move it to a location outside the city, it will soon be gone.
 |
| Au Pied de Cochon - the pig place! |
The crowd is thick. The waiters struggle to get through. They seem to hear nothing, or it has no effect. The patrons are multiplying as if in a dream. Incredible faces on every side, Algerian, bony as feet, cardboard American, the pink of French. Isabel is laughing, laughing. ..........
"Don't ever marry a Frenchman," she says. Then she laughs. She is hugging Coco, her poodle, and laughing.
{Excerpted passages from A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter, photographs by Tom Palumbo, Les Halles, 1962.}
