E
NTER THE
D
REAM
G
ood to finally hear from you but don’t forget to send me an introduction
.
This e-mail from Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple has been blinking on my computer screen for the last two days. But when I chose to work in book publishing, it was precisely to avoid having to write anything; I want to stay in the background, the way a bass player stands in the dark and smiles as he watches the guitarist launch into a wild solo.
I kept going around and around without a clue, like a mouse on its wheel, until I finally decided to visit Momo, the old guy who sells used books in my neighborhood. If Paris is still and always will be a “noir” city, it’s in part because of Momo and his toiling colleagues, the dozens of small, independent bookstore owners who sell old pulp fiction from the ’50s through the ’70s. Amateurs meet every weekend and swap their own finds for new treasures. Momo’s the one who trained me as a kid by handing me Goodis, Thompson, Chandler. So you can just see him going soft all over at the idea of the Série Noire making it to the American scene. We, the French, are good at importing things … but exporting is another story.
We’re having a smoke outside the well-lit café, Momo and me. It’s been eight months now that smokers walk around the sidewalks in circles like penitents. My first time in New York, I got a kick out of watching the ballet of smoked-out people moving in and out of bars.
Never in France,
I said to myself. But we French end up doing everything exactly as the Americans do, a few years later at best. So the time is right to include Paris in the Akashic Books Noir Series. Momo thinks, and rightly so, that I’m short of brilliant ideas, so there he goes drawing a historical picture of Paris, the city of crime. He tells me about the working classes, exceptionally dangerous, who peopled the belly of Paris in the nineteenth century, until the bourgeoisie kicked them out with big avenues and urban renewal under the reign of the late, unlamented Baron Haussmann.
Two beers later, Momo is on the Butte Montmartre with the gangsters of the ’30s and ’50s, the early days of junk deals, streetwise Parisian kids, and loud, foul-mouthed prostitutes whose slang could frighten even the bigwigs. The problem with Momo is that he loves beer and the more he’s in love, the less clear his ideas are. He’s now on to the filmmaker Melville, the actor Alain Delon (he’s one of our specialties like unpasteurized Camembert), and sepia photographs.
But all of a sudden it dawns on me that practically nothing of this improvised lecture has registered, and I get all tense. No wonder you learn things in classrooms, not sitting on hard stools in cafés where the atmosphere is too bright (as in the famous “
Atmosphère, atmosphère, estce que j’ai unegueule d’atmosphère, moi?”
—Arletty’s indignant response to Louis Jouvet in the film
Hôtel du Nord
).
Back in front of my insomniac computer, this is what I tell myself: The key thing to say is that Paris is a city that lives, and thus dies, every day. No point hiding behind history or war memories. What is a threat to Paris, to its noir dimension even, is potential “museumification,” the possibility of the city turning into a big theme park. In Paris, after all, everything is still there. All you have to do is look around with eyes wide open. In the shadows of his big car, the chauffeur in Marc Villard’s story dreams about saving the love of his life, a prostitute stranded on the asphalt like a bird caught in an oil spill. Further up north, around the train station, Jérôme Leroy follows in the footsteps of a guy on the run with the feds at his heels, and the men in black aren’t simply agents of the FBI. Concurrently, Salim Bachi lets us examine two young men of Arab descent who have a hard time fitting into a closed society; unfortunately, whether in Paris, New York, or Karachi, it’s hard to resist the temptation of violence, always present, insidious, and sneaky.
And what about that Chinese guy, delightfully depicted by Chantal Pelletier? He thought he’d have a taste of the famous French cuisine … until he realizes that the choice dish will be himself.
Far from cliché postcard photos, we witness the revenge of the waiters along with Jean-Bernard Pouy: They go to a lot of trouble to locate an unknown jogger who has mysteriously stopped taking his daily run through the Place des Vosges and disappeared.
Everything takes place in cafés, not just Momo’s beer-soaked history lessons. That’s where the doomed lovers in this volume meet to secretly celebrate Christmas
.
Didier Daeninckx’s reporter, an expert in tracking rumors on the Internet, was also seen for the last time in a café, before getting stabbed to death on rue des Degrés. But who knows, maybe those weren’t actually rumors after all. And speaking of rumors, don’t tell DOA that the violence of the Russians is only a rumor. Let him tell you about his precious girlfriend, a Russian model who loved diamonds too much to go unnoticed. Behind the fake jewelry and the glamour, the fashion world hides serious predators. Ask Layla, Dominique Mainard’s heroine in “La Vie en Rose,” if she really sees life in rosy tints. To her, life is nothing like a reality-TV show; the budding young singer who dreamed of having top billing will end up very low on this earth. No Grammy for the young dreamer, only a body bag. Under its polished stones, Paris remains the place of daily tragedy; under the Parisian pavement, there’s the Peloponnese. Like that son of Laurent Martin’s coming back home after a long exile to find that you can’t escape from your ghosts or from the love you have lost.
Beyond the lights, beyond the cafés and bars, Paris is sometimes like a grave. It’s a city you run away from, or at least dream of running from. But on every street corner, the past jumps at your throat like a grimacing hyena. Patrick Pécherot will take you for a walk into the heart of the 17th arrondissement; in fact, the Gestapo were based in that area in the early ’40s. Some would give all the money in the world to have a dead memory, but when your mind starts playing tricks on you, life quickly turns into a nightmare. Or into madness … Watch Hervé Prudon walk around the 14th arrondissement; if you ask him for directions, don’t talk to him in English: You’ll run the risk of having him answer, “No comprendo
TheStranger.”
My advice to you is to follow him without a word; take side streets, stroll with him along rue de la Santé, where you’ll find a jail, a psychiatric hospital, and Samuel Beckett’s last place of residence. Discover his magical Paris which exists only inside his head.
You don’t inhabit your city, you dream it. All I can do now is invite you to enter the dream.
Aurélien Masson
Paris, France
August 2008
(Introduction translated by Nicole Ball)
Translated by Nicole Ball
Vania
I
wasn’t too far from Les Halles, that’s my fate.
Above the parking garage.
Right next to the Sunside with its tenor sax crazies. I’d pace the streets at noon along with the type of people who never work, but also Krauts smashed on beer and sluts from the Midwest.
Leather and lobotomy.
I’d walk on my shitty heels. The sexy black whore from Martinique. We worked our asses off, the pimps circled around, sold and resold the girls to each other; Alicia had even said to me, “Vania, give up the street, you deserve better.”
Yeah, right.
In Fort-de-France, my mother didn’t have a job so I’d send over piles of money to feed my two brothers. Incognito: She thought I was a nurse at the Hôtel Dieu hospital. I’d open my legs, I’d go, “Oh, honey, yes, yes,” and the bread left for Martinique.
One fine evening, I was crying over my cup of coffee in a café on rue Montmartre when Mister K, the Halles dealer, planted himself across from me.
“You’re depressed, Vania.”
“I’m fucked. All my bread goes to my family.”
“You’re not a social worker, let ’em fend for themselves.”
“I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’ll go back to the islands.”
“I can help you.”
“I can’t deal anything except my ass.”
“No. You’ll be a mule. We load you with coke, you walk the street, my dealers come and get their stuff from your handbag.”
“Ain’t right for me.”
“The guys don’t risk a thing and the neighborhood cops know you: You’re clean. Perfect for dealing.”
I said yes.
The red lung of bars.
The crazy bums.
The buzzing junk.
Nothing had changed but everything was different for me. I was Mata Hari, the spy in mortal danger. The impatient street, the sweating butcher, everything was a problem. I had eyes in the back of my head.
And all the time I was at work with a john, while the guy crazy for ass grunted away between my thighs, my purse got hypnotized I’d stare at it so hard.
Mister K loaded me up at 7.
His three dealers would pick up their dose at 11, noon, and 5. Just like that, I’d double my month, buy clothes, white underwear for Sundays. The pimps knew I was on Mister K’s team and left me alone.
I began heading down into the bowels of the metro to do K a favor. And once there I dove deep into the end of the night of drugs and sex.
Staggering corpses.
Crackheads.
Doberman fuckers.
The dregs of the earth were surviving in passageways abandoned by those who lived the real life. In that underworld, nothing was the way it had been before. The cops, for example. That’s how I met Nico.
I had my own way of doing things under the C line.
Caches for deals.
Grungy mattresses out in the open for Peeping Toms.
The temperature could climb up to ninety-five so I’d work half naked. Then one morning this guy showed up. Curly dark hair, wrinkled suit, Hawaiian shirt. Very supple, with a springy, silent way of walking.
“Hi, Vania. I need twenty grams.”
“You new here? Never saw you before.”
“I’m Mister K’s new little star. I show up and the market skyrockets. Come on, gimme the shit.”
I hesitated. We were between two shifts and this guy turns up, all cool, like. Okay. I opened my purse, laser-beaming the place.
“Come closer and take two bags.”
He clung to me, slipped his hand into my purse, and planted a Sig Sauer into my cunt.
“Don’t move. You’re busted, baby. Stone cold.”
“You … you’re not even a cop!”
He took his hand out of my bag and waved his card in my face.
Shit. Fuck.
Legs like cotton.
I thought of mom.
Of the smell of the slammer.
Of Mister K, of course.
Then Nico made me step back into a boiler room, confiscated my Prada purse, and threw me a mega-slap right on the cheekbone.
His body on mine.
His hands all over me.
His macaroni in a fury.
Our breath enraged.
I was pounding on him with my fists, he was ramming his gun into me. He managed to get off, but he had to suffer for it. We were looking at each other like two wild beasts in a den. I hated him.
“You raped me, you fucking son of a bitch.”
“Whores can’t be raped. I forgot to pay, that’s all.”
He took the shit out of my purse. Fifty grams in small bags. A smile like a worm.
“You busting me?”
“Don’t know. I have to think.”
“Hurry up, I have to change.”
“Here. I got two solutions. I cuff you, you take a vacation at the Fleury-Mérogis big house and do some time there. Or I haven’t seen a thing but you have to be real nice to me.”
“You want to fuck me for free.”
“No. I want my cut.”
“On the shit?”
“Coke’s over for you. Besides, it wouldn’t look good for a narc-squad cop in the Saint-Denis sector to get his cut on shit. No, I want my share on the tricks.”
“I have to support my family and I don’t make much.”
“Forget your family. I’m your family now, baby. Also, no more cheap whoring for you. Your black ass deserves better. It’s your choice.”
“Anything but jail.”
He threw my purse back to me. I got up, my face all bloody.
“What do we do now?” I said.
“Nothing for the moment. My name’s Nico Diamantis, I’ll be in touch.”
“Great.”
I went back up to daylight. I was walking through the shady streets, heart in pieces, face smashed up. As I passed by the girls, they’d go like, “Jeez, Vania, you got beat up real bad.” Right.
Mister K met me on rue des Lombards. I was so fed up I told him everything from behind my latte: the coke gone, Diamantis breathing up my ass, and the deal down the drain.
He stayed calm; he’s a guy from Lagos who shook hands with Fela Kuti when the Black President didn’t have a clue about AIDS.
“You told me the truth, Vania. Relax, fifty grams isn’t much. Do like this dirty cop says but watch your ass. I got a feeling it’s not doing too well.”
He slipped out into the night and I stayed there like an idiot whining over my future as a cocksucker.
Nico called me on my cell three days later.
“How’d you get my number?”
“I’m a cop, that’s my job. Meet me in twenty minutes at Ciné Cité. First row of
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
; move it.”
He started to stroke my thighs when Tommy Lee Jones gets shot. Then he explained to me how I was to live from tomorrow on.
“I’ve figured the whole thing out. I’m gonna post your contact info up on the Internet. Contacts by e-mail only. After that I’ll drop a card like,
Vania, all positions. Leave a messageat
… to all the rich ones. I’ll get you a second cell just for tricks; I have a pal at Orange. You give up the street, you buy yourself new clothes and wait for the john. You’re like a star, see. You’ll do home delivery but you’ll limit pussy delivery to Paris. Not bad, eh?”
“Yeah. How much do you take?”
“I take everything and I leave you enough to live nicely.”
“What? You’re out of your fucking mind!”
“I had the coke bags analyzed, your fingerprints are all over them. What’s that you were saying?”
Shit, shit, shit.
After that, I worked and shut up.
I bought my panties at Chantal Thomas: fifteen grams of muslin and tons of fantasies.
Sometimes I took the subway across Paris, other times when the dough came in big, I’d take a cab. Three weeks later, as I was leaving the duplex of a producer on rue de Ponthieu, I got beat up by two scumbags. The dough and my youth disappeared in five minutes.
Nico didn’t like the fact that the bread had evaporated.
He got me a chauffeur.
Keller.
The six-foot, two-hundred-pound type. He looks like the killer with the pipe in
Charley Varrick
.
Keller picks me up at home, rue des Lombards, and drops me off at my client’s place. While I’m performing, he waits in the car, smoking stinky cigarillos and catching neo-bop jazz on the radio. One day, before I got out of the car, I leaned over him behind his wheel.
“Hey, Keller, don’t you get ideas, sitting in your Italian coach while I get screwed front and back by all these guys?”
“I try not to think about it.”
I looked at his eyes. They were red and took great care to avoid turning toward me. I was such a jerk! The only guy ready to die for me. I put my hand on his forearm and pressed it for a while. Talking would have killed me.
This is all coming back to me tonight. Keller just saved me from the clutches of two Brazilian crackheads behind Beau-bourg and we’re catching our breath in the car.
“Don’t take me back right away, Keller. Drive along the Seine for a bit.”
Two a.m. We’re gliding along near the Pont des Arts. The granola crowd: guitars and goat cheese. The Louvre, lopsided barges. I tap his shoulder when we hit rue du Bac.
“Stop here, I’m gonna have a smoke.”
I get rid of my high heels and proceed barefoot on the bridge, sucking on a Camel. Keller, who’s walking a little behind me, hasn’t pulled his Davidoff pack out. The last tourist boat lights up the embankments.
Jolly Brits.
Autofocus Japs.
Nauseated broads.
Without turning toward him, I ask: “How long we been working together, Keller?”
“Six months.”
“How does Nico control you?”
“I could leave.”
“Why don’t you then?”
He looked down at the water wriggling under our feet, black as a bad dream.
“I like the job.”
We stare at each other for a whole century. I go on.
“I ride in a car, I get laid on gorgeous rugs, but I don’t have much money at the end of the month. I can hardly support my family in Martinique with the money that bastard leaves me. I gotta get out of this mess, Keller.”
“Turning tricks or Nico?”
“Nico first.”
Finally, he lights up a cigar. I wonder what kind of first name he has.
“I know an honest cop. Well … I think he is.”
“It’ll go too far. The word of a whore against the word of a police captain, there’s no way. I don’t want this to be official, I don’t feel up to it. I’m gonna think it over, I’ll find something.”
“If you need me, just say so.”
“I know, Keller.”
May 30 in this crazy city. Nico, flanked by his slave (Lhostis, two hundred pounds of rotten meat), honks at me on rue du Louvre. The central post office is closing, the regular folks are heading home. A couple of steps toward the black Picasso.
“Hi, Nico.”
“Here’s your share. You didn’t work too hard this month.”
“My period has been really bad.”
“Right. I found you a mad scientist who wants to fuck while he watches Bambi on TV.”
“Beats the Belgian guy and his snake.”
“True. Hustle, Vania, I need money.” Upon which, he makes a U-turn on the asphalt and disappears toward rue Montmartre.
I look inside the envelope and right there I feel like shooting that louse. Then I think of Noémie. His nice little wife.
Two kids, their hair nicely parted to the right.
Gerber baby jars.
Outings to the zoo.
The pleasant smell of cauliflower.
Sundays at Grandma’s, after church.
I’m going to splatter his white paradise.
Next day. 10 a.m. Nico showed up at 2, blind drunk. He dragged me out of bed, put me naked on a chair, ass up. While he’s fucking me in the ass, he yells filthy words in my ear, lacerates my back, switch languages, jabbers in Greek, shoots his come all over the place, and asks for a beer.
Okay. He just left. On duty at the precinct. So I run to the bathroom, take a shower. Black linen outfit, black shades, and a cab pronto to the Diamantis home in Neuilly, rue des Sablons.
Noémie opens the door. Nico showed me pictures: She’s the freaking double of the ex-prez’s wife. Anémone Giscard d’Estaing. Yuck.
“Noémie Diamantis?”
“Yes. Nico’s not home.”
“I know. I’m here for you.”
“Can I ask who you are?’
“I’m a ho.”
And I shove her back into her hallway decorated with Delft plates to die for.
“You have a really nice place, Noémie.”
“But what—”
“Go take a piss, you’re all red.”
I sit down and take out a Camel. I love the smoke.
“I’m gonna give you the short version. Nico, your honey, improves his monthly paychecks and supports his family in Neuilly thanks to me. I fuck and suck, he gets the dough. As a bonus, he screws me in the middle of the night because you can’t seem to get his Johnny up anymore, darling. I’m sick of the whole game, I need money, so tell your Nico that his wife is you, not me, and he should get off my ass. Am I making myself clear?”
A mask on Noémie’s face. Chalk-white.
“Leave immediately.”
One of the twins appears unexpectedly, in his Mickey Mouse pajamas and holding a broken Fisher-Price toy.
“Who is that, Mommy?”
“Nobody.”
“I’m your daddy’s breadwinner ho, sweetie. Okay, Noé-mie, I’m counting on you.”
And I split, rather pleased.
Haven’t heard from Nico for a whole week. Keller has a new car; we ride in a used Mercedes now. Cigar lighter and leather seats. I go visit lost souls on the Place des Victoires and rue Beaubourg. I have two clients working in advertising who survive in lofts near the Bastille. I drink Bordeaux, I eat Poilâne bread, and my butt is five pounds fatter.
Right now, we’re on boulevard Sébastopol, driving toward Saint Georges. The john lives cheap in some building on rue Clauzel, fourth floor. Keller parks the car. 10 p.m.
“See you later, Keller.”
“You know this guy?”
“No. Coleman, does that ring a bell?”