PAPILLON MORDANT
A WHORE'S SCENT, of absinthe and cheap perfume, sweat and overripe fruit, of
Gitane cigarettes and face-powder, and under it all, lurking, brooding,
winding itself like a chahuteuse through the air, the smell of fever. A
whore's clothes as well, tattered silks and brocades, purchased from the
dingy little shop in the Place des Vosges, a cluttered hole where the odour
of dust and age reigns supreme and overpowers everything. Time passes
slowly up here on the Hill; the rest of Paris doesn't care enough to brave
the staircases and bring us into Progress. Everything about me, every
outward aspect of my life, reeks of the whore. This is my life; to sleep in
a drunken haze from dawn until the sun disappears behind the domes of
Sacre-Coeur; to awaken at the first faltering notes of the organ-grinders
disjointed melodies; then and only then to emerge from my threadbare
chrysalis of ancient Havana shawls, to reluctantly raise my head from the
satin pillow, worn dull with use and the grease of my hair. It once was a
deep, brilliant yellow, but is now a dingy, greenish colour - it seems that
everyone and everything that ends up on the hill ends up the same way. We
are born young, full of hope, full of fervour for the bohemian ideals of
Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love - we die in bitter disappointment. Freedom
is a prison from which there is no escape and no hope of release. Beauty is
a flock of aging prostitutes, the pits on their cheeks covered over with
white paste and rouge, their hair dyed an outrageous shade of red or yellow,
who bat their sooty eyelashes from dimly lit doorways and exhale fetid
breath, heavily tinged with smoke and bad teeth and more oft than not with
the consumption. Truth - the only truth of the Hill is that of misery,
poverty, and death. We are born, we suffer immensely for a few brief
glimmers of happiness, and we die. Our souls may rot in Hell or Purgatory -
not one has faith enough to hope for heaven, with the possible exception of
the priests who serve our Basilica. The Montmartre graveyard claims our
bones, though none may be certain where dear friends lie - only a very few
are well-enough off to afford a headstone. And Love - others may believe
that the bohemians of the Hill are free to love whomever they shall choose,
but it is not so. I cannot love any man - there is no point in it. They
come to me, I lie with them, they pay me, they leave. I hardly see their
faces, more rarely so learn their names. None spend even a night with me -
an hour at most, just long enough for what one might call a "business
transaction". This is my life - to sleep, to wake, to go out on the streets
every night and bring back at least five men, one at a time, to this same
rusty, dusty, rumpled little iron bed where I sleep during the day. Five
francs from each one makes twenty-five - that's enough to live upon. Six
times during the week I do this -
one hundred fifty francs a week - fifty two weeks in a year makes seven
thousand eight hundred francs. I can no longer recall when first I began
work - all the endless days, weeks, months and years have run together, one
endless and brutal carnival of sex and drunkenness and sickness. The
"sparrows" of the Hill work every day except Sunday - and those days when we
must visit old Rienne at the Moulin. Her name might mean Nothing, but to us
she is certainly Something - most of us, myself included, have lain on her
table and felt the sharp end of her crowbar in a delicate place often enough
to no longer need her services. To us it is a boon and a blessing. If any
of us were to bear a child, it would mean the end of our working years and
the start of slow, painful starvation. I think every so often on what
became of Adele Buissonet, four or five years ago. Poor creature - she
refused the offers of help that old Rienne and the rest of us made, and bore
a tiny girl, a pitiful creature with the blue eyes and weak constitution of
her mother. I see Adele once in a great while - she is a laundress now,
married to a hulking brute of a drunkard who beats her - anybody with half
an eye could see the bruises on her arms, obscured though they are with
soap-suds and lye-rash. Her child clings like a skinny, frightened doll to
the skirts of her mother, forever whimpering with hunger. It breaks my
heart to see it - if little Celeste survives her childhood, she will turn
fifteen and choose the same course as endless generations before her have
done - Celeste will lift up her skirts for five francs a man, for as long as
her beauty lasts, simply to stave off starvation. She will become intimate
with old Rienne, and all the ways of the Hill. This is our life. For us,
there is no way of escape. We are born, we age beneath a coat of disguising
paint, we decline faster than the trains come into the Gare St Lazare, and
we die.
Dusk. Through the dingy, bubbled glass of the one small window my
room affords, I can see the sun expiring in one last blaze of glory over
Sacre-Coeur. I can pick out its colours in my room - the red of my best
dress, bought for three francs in the Place des Vosge, its splendour marred
only by a missing button; the brilliant deep gold of my pillow when it was
new; last of all, and palest, an acidic green, the green of my solace,
absinthe. The last green light of the day signals the sparrows of the Mount
to emerge from hiding. I am still in my ratty and grimy deshabille... I
have smeared paint over my face so many times that I know its contours by
heart. There is my brow-bone; white goes there; my lips, scarlet; my
eyelids, dark violet; my cheeks receive the same scarlet paste as my mouth.
It is a ghoulish and garish mask, though without it my sickness shows -
without it no man would want me. I am only rising twenty-one; I look
thirty. When I am thirty I will be too old to work anymore. I don't
believe that I shall see that age anyhow. The consumption will take me long
before. There; I have finished; I hook the last button at the point of my
bodice. The jet rosette makes a nice contrast against the deep red of the
velvet, I think - the missing button is neatly hidden by an enameled brooch.
A last glance in the dirty and speckled mirror; I pin a dingy and somewhat
crushed paper rose into my hair and, feeling myself ready for the night,
slip out the door and into the crush of the street below.
A WHORE'S SCENT, of absinthe and cheap perfume, sweat and overripe fruit, of
Gitane cigarettes and face-powder, and under it all, lurking, brooding,
winding itself like a chahuteuse through the air, the smell of fever. A
whore's clothes as well, tattered silks and brocades, purchased from the
dingy little shop in the Place des Vosges, a cluttered hole where the odour
of dust and age reigns supreme and overpowers everything. Time passes
slowly up here on the Hill; the rest of Paris doesn't care enough to brave
the staircases and bring us into Progress. Everything about me, every
outward aspect of my life, reeks of the whore. This is my life; to sleep in
a drunken haze from dawn until the sun disappears behind the domes of
Sacre-Coeur; to awaken at the first faltering notes of the organ-grinders
disjointed melodies; then and only then to emerge from my threadbare
chrysalis of ancient Havana shawls, to reluctantly raise my head from the
satin pillow, worn dull with use and the grease of my hair. It once was a
deep, brilliant yellow, but is now a dingy, greenish colour - it seems that
everyone and everything that ends up on the hill ends up the same way. We
are born young, full of hope, full of fervour for the bohemian ideals of
Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love - we die in bitter disappointment. Freedom
is a prison from which there is no escape and no hope of release. Beauty is
a flock of aging prostitutes, the pits on their cheeks covered over with
white paste and rouge, their hair dyed an outrageous shade of red or yellow,
who bat their sooty eyelashes from dimly lit doorways and exhale fetid
breath, heavily tinged with smoke and bad teeth and more oft than not with
the consumption. Truth - the only truth of the Hill is that of misery,
poverty, and death. We are born, we suffer immensely for a few brief
glimmers of happiness, and we die. Our souls may rot in Hell or Purgatory -
not one has faith enough to hope for heaven, with the possible exception of
the priests who serve our Basilica. The Montmartre graveyard claims our
bones, though none may be certain where dear friends lie - only a very few
are well-enough off to afford a headstone. And Love - others may believe
that the bohemians of the Hill are free to love whomever they shall choose,
but it is not so. I cannot love any man - there is no point in it. They
come to me, I lie with them, they pay me, they leave. I hardly see their
faces, more rarely so learn their names. None spend even a night with me -
an hour at most, just long enough for what one might call a "business
transaction". This is my life - to sleep, to wake, to go out on the streets
every night and bring back at least five men, one at a time, to this same
rusty, dusty, rumpled little iron bed where I sleep during the day. Five
francs from each one makes twenty-five - that's enough to live upon. Six
times during the week I do this -
one hundred fifty francs a week - fifty two weeks in a year makes seven
thousand eight hundred francs. I can no longer recall when first I began
work - all the endless days, weeks, months and years have run together, one
endless and brutal carnival of sex and drunkenness and sickness. The
"sparrows" of the Hill work every day except Sunday - and those days when we
must visit old Rienne at the Moulin. Her name might mean Nothing, but to us
she is certainly Something - most of us, myself included, have lain on her
table and felt the sharp end of her crowbar in a delicate place often enough
to no longer need her services. To us it is a boon and a blessing. If any
of us were to bear a child, it would mean the end of our working years and
the start of slow, painful starvation. I think every so often on what
became of Adele Buissonet, four or five years ago. Poor creature - she
refused the offers of help that old Rienne and the rest of us made, and bore
a tiny girl, a pitiful creature with the blue eyes and weak constitution of
her mother. I see Adele once in a great while - she is a laundress now,
married to a hulking brute of a drunkard who beats her - anybody with half
an eye could see the bruises on her arms, obscured though they are with
soap-suds and lye-rash. Her child clings like a skinny, frightened doll to
the skirts of her mother, forever whimpering with hunger. It breaks my
heart to see it - if little Celeste survives her childhood, she will turn
fifteen and choose the same course as endless generations before her have
done - Celeste will lift up her skirts for five francs a man, for as long as
her beauty lasts, simply to stave off starvation. She will become intimate
with old Rienne, and all the ways of the Hill. This is our life. For us,
there is no way of escape. We are born, we age beneath a coat of disguising
paint, we decline faster than the trains come into the Gare St Lazare, and
we die.
Dusk. Through the dingy, bubbled glass of the one small window my
room affords, I can see the sun expiring in one last blaze of glory over
Sacre-Coeur. I can pick out its colours in my room - the red of my best
dress, bought for three francs in the Place des Vosge, its splendour marred
only by a missing button; the brilliant deep gold of my pillow when it was
new; last of all, and palest, an acidic green, the green of my solace,
absinthe. The last green light of the day signals the sparrows of the Mount
to emerge from hiding. I am still in my ratty and grimy deshabille... I
have smeared paint over my face so many times that I know its contours by
heart. There is my brow-bone; white goes there; my lips, scarlet; my
eyelids, dark violet; my cheeks receive the same scarlet paste as my mouth.
It is a ghoulish and garish mask, though without it my sickness shows -
without it no man would want me. I am only rising twenty-one; I look
thirty. When I am thirty I will be too old to work anymore. I don't
believe that I shall see that age anyhow. The consumption will take me long
before. There; I have finished; I hook the last button at the point of my
bodice. The jet rosette makes a nice contrast against the deep red of the
velvet, I think - the missing button is neatly hidden by an enameled brooch.
A last glance in the dirty and speckled mirror; I pin a dingy and somewhat
crushed paper rose into my hair and, feeling myself ready for the night,
slip out the door and into the crush of the street below.