The pretender: A story of the Latin Quarter

by Robert W. Service

Then that night, as I was preparing to ascend the stairs, I heard terrible shrieks coming from the great, gloomy building as if some woman within were being painfully murdered. For a moment I paused, stricken with horror. There was a cab drawn up close by, and the cocher was pacing beside it. He was the typical Parisian cab-driver, corpulent and rubicund, the product of open air, no brain worry, and generous living. He indicated the direction of the appalling cries: “The world’s not coming to an end just yet,” he observed with a great rosy grin.

Nor was the view from our window conducive of more cheerful thoughts. I could look right down into one of the wards, a great, barn-like place, mathematically monotonous, painfully clean. There were the white enamelled beds, each with its face of pain on the pillow, its tumbled bedding, agony-twisted or still in apathy. Then in the night I suddenly started, for once again I heard those awful sounds. They began as long, half-stifled moans ... then screams, each piercing, sharp-edged with agony, holding a strange note of terror ... then shriek upon shriek till the ultimate expression of human agony seemed to be reached ... then sudden silence.

At least twice during the night this would happen, and often in the morning there would be a dismal little funeral cortége standing outside the gates: a man dabbing red eyes with a handkerchief would herd some blubbering children into a carriage, and drive after a hearse in which lay a coffin. It was all very melancholy, and preyed on my spirits. I wondered how people could live here always; but no doubt they got hardened. No doubt this was why we got our room so cheaply.

Then at last the day came when Little Thing held me very tightly, gave me a long, hard kiss and left me, to pass through that portal of pain. Back I went to the room again. How empty it seemed now! I was miserable beyond all words. I had dinner at the Lilas, and for two hours sat moodily brooding over my coffee. What amazed me was that other men could go through this trial time after time and take it with such calmness. The long-haired poets, the garçons with their tight, white aprons—were they fathers too? A girl came and sat by me, a girl with high cheek-bones, snake-like eyes, and a mouth like a red scar. I rose with dignity, sought my room and my bed.

There I fell into a troubled doze in which I dreamed of Dorothy. She had grown up and had made her début as an operatic star with overwhelming success. How proud I was of her! Then suddenly as I gazed, she changed to the young woman of the café, who had looked at me so meaningly. I awoke with a crushing sense of distress.

Hark! Was that a scream? It seemed to cleave my very heart. But then it might be some one else. There was no distinguishing quality in these screams. Trull or princess they were all alike, just plain mothers crying in their agony. No, I could not tell ... but it was too terrible. I dressed hurriedly and went out into the streets.

At three in the morning Paris is a city of weird fascination. It turns to us a new side, sinister, dark, mysterious. Even as the rats gather in its gutters, so do the human rats take possession of its pavements. Every one you meet seems on evil bent, and in the dim half-light you speculate on their pursuits. Here come two sauntering demireps with complexions of vivid certainty; there a rake-hell reels homeward from the night dens of Montmartre; now it is a wretched gatherer of cigarette stubs, peering hawk-eyed as he shambles along; then two dark, sallow youths, with narrow faces, glinting eyes, and unlit cigarettes in their cynical mouths—the sinister Apache.

Coming up the Boul’ Mich’ were a stream of tumbrels from the Halles, and following their trail I came on a scene bewildering in its movement and clamour. The carts that had been arriving since the previous night had gorged the ten pavilions that form the great Paris Market till they overflowed far into the outlying streets. The pavements were blocked with heaps of cabbages and cauliflowers, carrots and turnips, celery and asparagus, while a dozen different kinds of salad gleamed under the arc-lights with a strange unnatural viridity. In other parts of the market crates of chickens and rabbits were being dumped on the pavements; fresh fish from the coast were being unloaded in dripping, salty boxes; and a regiment of butchers in white smocks were staggering under enough sides of beef to feed an army.

What an orgy of colour it was! You might pass from the corals and ivorys of the vegetable market to the fierce crimsons of the meat pavilion; from the silver greys of the section devoted to fish, to the golden yellows of the hall dedicated to butter, and cheese. There were a dozen shades of green alone—from the light, glossy green of the lettuce to the dull green of the cress; a dozen shades of red—from the pale pink of the radish to the dark crimson of the beet.

Through this tumult of confusion I pushed my way. Hurrying porters in red night-caps, with great racks of osier strapped on their backs, rushed to and fro, panting, and dripping with sweat. Strapping red-faced women with the manner of men ordered them about. A self-reliant race, these women of the Halles, accustomed to hold their own in the fierce struggle of competition, to eat and drink enormously, to be exposed to the weather in all seasons. Their voices are raucous, their eyes sharp, their substantial frames swathed in many layers of clothes. Their world is the market; they were born in its atmosphere, they will die with its clamour in their ears.