The ambulances’ ominous horns wailed in the black tunnels of the streets, like a lonesome scream for help. The dancing stopped here and there and the unsettled crowd quickly dispersed to their homes. In Montparnasse, the Latin Quarter, and in a few other districts inhabited by foreigners, the dancing continued.
The horns howled relentlessly, mournful and terror-stricken.
The next day, Paris awoke in fright at the wet ink of the morning gazette. On the front page, in big black letters, ran the spine-chilling announcement: PLAGUE IN PARIS!
The news was alarming. Over the night of July 14, eight thousand cases of plague were reported, almost all fatal.
The day rose pale from emaciation, dry and sweltering. Feverish crowds had been roaming the streets since morning, snatching shreds of special newspaper editions from one another’s hands. The hollow, piercing horns of the hospital vehicles wailed incessantly and simultaneously on all sides of town. People began dropping in the streets by the dozens.
When evening fell, attempts were made to dance in Upper Montmartre and Montparnasse, in spite of it all. The dancers were few.
In denial over the loss of their traditional holiday profits, the café owners managed to slap together new bands, and hearing the bouncy beats of the Charleston, excited crowds of pedestrians swooped from the dusky streets to flood the abandoned terraces. The musicians going wild in front of La Rotonde blew the last shreds of their lungs out through their saxophones, vainly trying to drown out the cheerless jazz of the ambulances.
In the blink of an eye, the tight rectangle formed by La Rotonde, Le Dôme, and La Coupole was populated with swarms of dancing couples.
The frenzy erupted unexpectedly, and relatively late. It began as it had everywhere else. In the middle of a dance, a girl suddenly toppled to the ground, dragging her partner with her. Nobody noticed them at first. Trapped by the crowd, the other dancers were still undulating to the music. Another couple stumbled over the fallen pair. In the space of a minute, a mound of bodies was thrashing about in the center of the square. A commotion erupted. The music broke. The crowd gushed onto the sidewalks. The dancers struggled to their feet, running after the rest of the crowd. The square emptied.
Only a slender girl was left on the asphalt, writhing in zigzags of inconceivable pain. Her short pleated skirt was hiked up, revealing a small, almost childlike pair of knees wreathed in luxurious garters, and the shy white of boyish thighs, peeking out like supple, frenzied snakes from a thicket of cream-colored lace. The pointed heads of her slippers quivered unabated.
The dancers pressed themselves against the wall in panic.
Cutting through the crowd and clearing a path with his fists, a lanky, red-haired man in workman’s clothing emerged from the mass, heading for the other side of the street, probing the eyes of the throng as he went. He walked up to the girl stretched out on the pavement, stopped, bent over, and looked carefully. Another painful convulsion jerked the girl’s face upward. The red-haired man let out a strange shriek, a rooster’s crow, and sat abruptly on the ground. Grasping the girl by her slender arm, he made a futile attempt to lift her. The girl flailed in violent paroxysms. The red-haired man took her in his arms and got up, but with another thrust of her body he staggered and fell with her to the ground. Leaning over her on all fours, muttering inarticulate sounds, he covered the twitching body of the girl with hot kisses.
This extraordinary spectacle lured some onlookers down from the terraces of the cafés to the edges of the sidewalks, forming a tight circle around the odd pair. The despair of the red-haired man was so palpable, so unbridled, he immediately won the sympathy of the ladies observing the scene in their décolleté dresses.
The man, vainly trying to still the girl’s twitching body in his arms, was hoarsely repeating the same word between his kisses. The audience edged closer. The first one to hear hurried to share the news with those beside him:
“He’s calling out her name. I think it’s Jeannette.”
“His girlfriend, no doubt.”
“So young!”
“And so elegant! While he’s… a simple worker…”
“Her brother, maybe?”
“Hardly! Have you ever seen a man kiss his sister like that?”
All these speculations were to remain unresolved. The girl suddenly shot up in the air with her whole body, struck her head on the asphalt with superhuman force, and fell silent. The crowd shuddered. A hush reigned. Even the excited ladies went silent, without having finished their stimulating exchange. The filigreed legs, wrapped in an imperceptible cobweb of stockings, froze stiff, the aghast heads of her slippers protruding upward.
Bent over the girl in silent despair, the red-haired man had also fallen silent. When he lifted his head a few minutes later, his face was disfigured from fighting back the tears. The crowd was expecting him to sob and groan, to hammer his head against the asphalt. A policeman had been drawn by the crowd, and was discreetly squeezing his way in from the back.
The red-haired man took in the crowd with a glassy stare. A jealous motion of his hand pulled down the girl’s skirt, covering the exposed legs and lace dessous. His angry, canine gaze scanned the faces of the men surrounding him, and rested on the policeman’s, and the polished number pinned to his collar.
“I’m the one who killed her!” he said in an indifferent, raspy voice, his eyes fixed on the policeman.
The crowd rippled with excitement. The policeman bristled.
The red-haired man pressed his face once more to the motionless girl’s and stayed for a long while in this position. Vaguely sensing the solemnity of the moment, the policeman decided to hold back. Finally, finding the mute scene to be dragging on a bit too long, his hand delicately touched the man’s arm.
When the red-haired man turned to face him, everyone felt a wave of unease. His tangled, disheveled hair hung in his eyes in clumps. Two black veins pulsed on his forehead, like cords binding his bursting skull. The blood rushing to his face turned it crimson.
The crowd retreated in panic. Even the fearless policeman preferred to take a few cautionary steps back.
The red-haired man raised his fist and shook it at the retreating crowd.
“You’ll all croak, you bastards!” he screamed in a hoarse, shrill voice, waving his fist in the air. “There was nothing to punish you! I am your punishment! I’m the one who’s poisoned you like rats! I stole the test tubes of plague from Pasteur! I poisoned the water supply! Run! Save yourselves! There’s nowhere to hide!”
The crowd inched backward in panic and terror.
“You’ll never escape! This is the end!” roared the red-haired man, shaking his fist at Boulevard Arago. “If you don't croak from the plague… THEY will come out from behind the walls! Thousands of them! Tens of thousands! For me! For my wrongs! For everything! Not a pile of stones will remain! Bastards! Swine! Scum!”
His face flushed scarlet, the red-haired man made straight for the well-lit veranda.
The guests knocked over chairs in panic, rushing to the back. Glass shattered. Women squealed and took cover under tables. Someone gave a long holler:
“Help! Marauders!” and suddenly fell silent.
“The police! Where are the police? Are there really no police?” came the voice of a hysterical woman.
Then, amid the general confusion, a well-built gentleman rose up from behind a corner table, an athlete to judge by his broad shoulders, and aimed a heavy champagne bottle like a tennis racket and flung it at the red-haired man. Glass flew. Blood mingled with wine and gushed onto the terrace in a sparkling, foamy stream.