‘Obviously, I realise that we have all the hallmarks of thugs. The men in my employ, our brutal tactics, the fact that we offered you, with your charming innocent face like the baby Jesus, a job as an informant; none of these things augurs well, alas. .’
The trees and the kiosk in the square below are bathed in a reddish glow. ‘And the curious souls who are drawn to what I call our little ‘HQ’: con-artists, women of ill repute, disgraced police officers, morphine addicts, nightclub owners, indeed all these marquises, counts, barons, and princesses that you won’t find in any almanac of high society. .’
Below, along the curb, a line of cars. Their cars. Inkblots in the darkness.
‘I’m only too aware that all this might seem rather distasteful to a well-bred young man. But. .’ — his voice takes on a savage tone — ‘the fact that you find yourself among such disreputable souls tonight means that, despite that choirboy face of yours,’ (Very tenderly) ‘we belong to the same world, Monsieur.’
The glare from the chandeliers burns them, eating away at their faces like acid. Their cheeks become gaunt, their skin wizened, their heads will soon be as shrunken as those prized by the Jivaro Indians. A scent of flowers and withered flesh. Soon, all that will remain of this gathering will be tiny bubbles popping on the surface of a pond. Already they are wading through a pinkish mud that has risen to their knees. They do not have long to live.
‘This is getting tedious,’ declares Lionel de Zieff.
‘It’s time to go,’ says Monsieur Philibert. ‘First target: Place du Châtelet. The Lieutenant!’
‘Are you coming, mon petit?’ asks the Khedive. Outside, the black-out, as usual. They pile into the cars. ‘Place du Châtelet!’ ‘Place du Châtelet!’ Doors slam. They take off in a screech of tyres. ‘No overtaking, Eddy!’ orders the Khedive. ‘The sight of all these brave boys cheers me up.’
‘And to think that we are responsible for this low life scum!’ sighs Monsieur Philibert. ‘Be charitable, Pierre. We’re in business with these people. They are our partners. For better or worse.’
Avenue Kléber. They honk their horns, their arms hang out of the car windows, waving, flapping. They lurch and skid, bumpers pranging. Eager to see who will take the biggest risks, make the loudest noise in the blackout. Champs-Élysées. Concorde. Rue de Rivoli. ‘We’re headed for a district I know well,’ says the Khedive. ‘Les Halles — where I spent my youth unloading vegetable carts.’
The others have disappeared. The Khedive smiles and lights a cigarette with his solid gold lighter. Rue de Castiglione. On the left, the column on the Place Vendôme is faintly visible. Place des Pyramides. The car slows gradually, as if approaching a border. On the far side of the Rue du Louvre, the city suddenly seems to crumple.
‘We are now entering the “belly of Paris”,’ remarks the Khedive. The stench, at first unbearable, then gradually more bearable, catches in their throats despite the fact the car windows are closed. Les Halles seems to have been converted into a knacker’s yard.
‘The belly of Paris,’ repeats the Khedive.
The car glides along greasy pavements. Spatters fleck the bonnet. Mud? Blood? Whatever it is, it is warm.
We cross Boulevard de Sébastopol and emerge on to a vast patch of waste ground. The surrounding houses have all been razed; all that remain are fragments of walls and scraps of wallpaper. From what is left, it is possible to work out the location of the stairs, the fireplaces, the wardrobes. And the size of the rooms. The place where the bed stood. There was a boiler here, a sink there. Some favoured wallpapers with patterned flowers, others prints in the style of toiles de Jouy. I even thought I saw a coloured print still hanging on the wall.
Place du Châtelet. Zelly’s Café, where the Lieutenant and Saint-Georges are supposed to meet me at midnight. What expression should I affect when I see them striding towards me? The others are already seated at tables by the time we enter, the Khedive, Philibert, and I. They gather round, eager to be the first to shake our hands. They clasp us, hug us, shake us. Some smother our faces with kisses, some stroke our necks, others playfully tug at our lapels. I recognize Jean-Farouk de Méthode, Violette Morris, and Frau Sultana. ‘How are you?’ Costachesco asks me. We elbow our way through the assembled crowd. Baroness Lydia drags me to a table occupied by Rachid von Rosenheim, Pols de Helder, Count Baruzzi, and Lionel de Zieff. ‘Care for a little cognac?’ offers Pols de Helder. ‘It’s impossible to get the stuff these days in Paris, it sells for a hundred thousand francs a half-bottle. Drink up!’ He pushes the neck of the bottle between my teeth. Then von Rosenheim shoves a cigarette between my lips and takes out a platinum lighter set with emeralds. The light dims, their gestures and their voices fade into the soft half-light, then suddenly, with vivid clarity, I see the face of the Princesse de Lamballe, brought by a unit of the ‘Garde Nationale’ from La Force Prison: ‘Rise, Madam, it is time to go to the Abbey.’ I can see their pikes, their leering faces. Why didn’t she simply shout ‘VIVE LA NATION!’ as she was asked to do? If someone should prick my forehead with a pike-staff (Zieff? Hayakawa? Rosenheim? Philibert? the Khedive?), one drop of blood is all it would take to bring the sharks circling. Don’t move a muscle. ‘VIVE LA NATION!’ I would shout it as often as they want. Strip naked if I have to. Anything they ask! Just one more minute, Monsieur Executioner. No matter the price. Rosenheim shoves another cigarette into my mouth. The condemned man’s last? Apparently the execution is not set for tonight. Costachesco, Zieff, Helder, and Baruzzi are being extremely solicitous. They’re worried about my health. Do I have enough money? Of course I do. The act of giving up the Lieutenant and all the members of his network will earn me about a hundred thousand francs, which I will use to buy a few scarves at Charvet and a Vicuña coat for winter. Unless of course they kill me first. Cowards, apparently, always die a shameful death. The doctor used to tell me that when he is about to die, a man becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, his aspirations. For some, it’s a popular waltz; for others, a military march. Still another mews a gypsy air that trails off in a sob or a cry of panic. When your turn comes,
mon petit, it will be the clang of a can clattering in the darkness across a patch of waste ground. A while ago, as we crossed the patch of waste ground on the far side of the Boulevard de Sébastopol, I was thinking: ‘This is where your story will end.’ I remembered the slippery slope that brought me to the spot, one of the most desolate in Paris. It all began in the Bois de Boulogne. Remember? You were bowling your hoop on the lawn in the Pré Catelan. Years pass, you move along the Avenue Henri-Martin and find yourself on the Place du Trocadéro. Next comes the Place de l’Étoile. Before you is an avenue lined with glittering street lights. Like a vision of the future, you think: full of promise — as the saying goes. You’re breathless with exhilaration on the threshold of this vast thoroughfare, but it’s only the Champs-Élysées with its cosmopolitan bars, its call girls and Claridge, a caravanserai haunted by the spectre of Stavisky. The bleak sadness of the Lido. The tawdry stopovers at Le Fouquet and Le Colisée. From the beginning, everything was rigged. Place de la Concorde, you’re wearing alligator shoes, a polka-dot tie, and a gigolo’s smirk. After a brief detour through the Madeleine-Opera district, just as sleazy as the Champs-Élysées, you continue your tour and what the doctor calls your MOR-AL DIS-IN-TE-GRA-TION under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. Le Continental, Le Meurice, the Saint-James et d’Albany, where I work as a hotel thief. Occasionally wealthy female guests invite me to their rooms. Before dawn, I have rifled their handbags and lifted a few pieces of jewellery. Farther along. Rumpelmayer, with its stench of withered flesh. The mincing queers you beat up at night in the Tuileries gardens just to steal their braces and their wallets. But suddenly the vision becomes clearer: I’m here in the warm, in the belly of Paris. Where exactly is the border? You need only cross the Rue du Louvre or the Place du Palais Royal to find yourself in narrow, fetid streets of Les Halles. The belly of Paris is a jungle streaked with multi-coloured neon. All around, upturned vegetable carts and shadows hauling huge haunches of meat. A gaggle of pale, outrageously painted faces appear for an instant only to vanish into the darkness. From now on, anything is possible. You’ll be called upon to do the dirtiest jobs before they finally kill you off. And if, by some desperate ruse, some last-ditch act of cowardice, you manage to escape this horde of fishwives and butchers lurking in the shadows, you’ll die a little farther down the street, on the other side of the Boulevard Sébastopol, there on that patch of waste ground. That wasteland. The doctor said as much. You have come to the end of your journey, there’s no turning back. Too late. The trains are no longer running. Our Sunday walks along the Petite Ceinture, the disused railway line that took us in full circle around Paris. Porte de Clignancourt. Boulevard Pereire. Porte Dauphine. Farther out, Javel. . The stations along the track had been converted into warehouses or bars. Some had been left intact, and I could almost picture a train arriving any minute, but the hands of the station clock had not moved for fifty years. I’ve always had a special feeling for the Gare d’Orsay. Even now, I still wait there for the pale blue Pullmans that speed you to the Promised Land. And when they do not come, I cross the Pont Solférino whistling a little waltz. From my wallet, I take a photograph of Dr Marcel Petiot in the dock looking pensive and, behind him, the vast pile of suitcases filled with hopes and unrealised dreams, while, pointing to them, the judge asks me: ‘What have you done with your youth?’ and my lawyer (my mother, as it happened, since no one else would agree to defend me) attempts to persuade the judge and jury that I was ‘a promising young man’, ‘an ambitious boy’, destined for a ‘brilliant career’, so everyone said. ‘The proof, Your Honour, is that the suitcases piled behind him are in impeccable condition. Russian leather, Your Honour.’ ‘Why should I care about those suitcases, Madame, since they never went anywhere?’ And every voice condemns me to death. Tonight, you need to go to bed early. Tomorrow is a busy day at the brothel. Don’t forget your make-up and lipstick. Practise in front of the mirror: flutter your eyelashes with velvet softness. You’ll meet a lot of degenerates who’ll ask you to do incredible things. Those perverts frighten me. If I don’t please them, they’ll kill me. Why didn’t she shout: ‘VIVE LA NATION’? When my turns comes, I’ll shout it as often as they want. I’m a very obliging whore. ‘Come on, drink up,’ Zieff pleads with me. ‘A little music?’ suggests Violette Morris. The Khedive comes over to me, smiling: ‘The Lieutenant will be here in ten minutes. All you have to do is say hello to him as if nothing were up.’ ‘Something romantic,’ Frau Sultana requests. ‘RO-MAN-TIC,’ screeches Baroness Lydia. ‘Then try to persuade him to go outside.’ ‘“Negra Noche”, please,’ asks Frau Sultana. ‘So we can arrest him more easily. Then we’ll pick up the others at their homes.’ ‘“Five Feet Two”,’ simpers Frau Sultana. ‘That’s my favourite song.’ ‘Looks like it’s going to be a nice little haul. We’re very grateful for the information, mon petit.’ ‘No, no,’ says Violette Morris. ‘I want to hear “Swing Troubadour”!’ One of the Chapochnikoff brothers winds the Victrola. The record is scratched. The singer sounds as if his voice is about to crack. Violette Morris beats time, whispering the words: