‘You’re not from here,’ said the patron, bald-headed, cruel and swift, about fifty and no taller than herself but muscular. A displaced Savoyard with a full and bushy grey moustache he must spend hours preening. An accent that would break glass.
‘Me? Ah! I’m looking for work but cannot seem to find the house. My feet are killing me. I’m more than half-frozen.’
‘The house of Madame Morelle?’ asked the patron, wiping his runny nose with the back of a hand. Everyone had colds these days. Everyone.
‘Yes. I’ve two kids and a dead husband. Someone has to support them.’
They looked her over, these sharks and barracudas in their pin-striped suits with big lapels and loud ties with gold studs. They sniffed the air of her, measuring the number of tricks she could handle. They even stripped her naked with their eyes. They were not young, most of these men who controlled the girls of the rue Chabanais. Some were middle-aged, some even older, so their assessment was not kind but harsh, and several found her wanting.
Ignoring her, those types turned their greasy, slicked-back heads away and continued on with their arguments, their bragging and their schemes.
‘Look, I have to see Madame Morelle, but she sees no one until she needs another. I just want to get my name on the list.’
‘Have you a licence?’ asked the patron.
The yellow card all prostitutes must carry. ‘Of course.’
Impatiently he snapped his fingers and reluctantly she dragged it out, knowing he would see that it had lapsed. ‘I … I had to stop for a while, but I’m clean now.’ She’d been lucky and had never had a venereal disease, but …
‘Then let’s see your health card.’
‘He screens them for her,’ confided the pockmarked one. ‘He’s married to her, though you wouldn’t know it for all she cares about him.’
‘Yvon, that is once too much!’ shrieked the patron, getting red in the face and lunging across the zinc. ‘Bite your tongue or I will bite it off for you. SHOW me the blood this instant or I will banish you forever!’
Ah merde … ‘The … the health card is at home.’
‘At home?’ Snap! ‘Then let’s have the photos of your kids. Two, was it?’
Blood was smeared across the four fingers of the mackerel Yvon’s left hand. The patron nodded curtly at him, the argument settled.
With a sinking feeling, Giselle wondered if they would ever let her go. ‘I haven’t got any snapshots of them.’
She’s a good-looking kid,’ said someone, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.
‘Hey, Henri, undo her coat and let’s have a look in the cupboard. She might do for the schoolroom, eh?’
There was laughter. ‘Does she know the Mass?’ asked another.
‘The Angelus, eh, Henri? Get her down on her knees and we’ll examine the bakery. Let’s hear how she says the Our Father in Latin.’
The patron slid her coffee and the pousse-café across the zinc and, when she dumped the liqueur into her cup, stopped her hand and said, ‘You really didn’t come looking for work. You’d have had your coat off long ago-ah! we’ve a stove that fills the place with so much heat you’re sweating. You’d have asked for a light, my fine mademoiselle, and would have made yourself right at home on the nest. So, why are you here?’
She could throw the coffee in his face and try to make a run for it but would never reach the door. Hermann, she wanted to cry out. Hermann, why have you asked me to do this?
‘I … I really do have to see your wife, Monsieur Morelle. I … I may be able to help her. A little confidence, you understand. A little something I heard the other day.’
‘From her astrologer or her fortune-teller?’
‘Is the fortune-teller the same one Violette Belanger uses?’ she asked curiously.
His eyelids narrowed. ‘Who says Violette uses a fortune-teller?’
‘Most girls do. I just wondered, since Violentte’s was the name that came up-well, actually, the confidence referred to her maquereau. He’d do just as well, I suppose.’
The patron did not give her that name-another mistake for her. Instead, he said, ‘Then maybe if you can find my wife’s fortune-teller over in Saint-Germain, my little pigeon, she will tell you when my wife will pay her a visit and that way you’ll be able to give Berthe your little confidence.’
He wasn’t buying a thing. She went to take up her cup, only to realize that he had somehow signalled to the others, who now closed in behind and to the sides of her. As anger rushed into her cheeks and eyes, the buttons of her coat were undone, and when it was pulled down behind her back so that her arms were pinned behind her, the patron explored her breasts and, satisfied, ran a hand under her chin to feel the softness of her throat. ‘Just what’s your game?’ he asked.
‘LET ME GO! COCHONS-PIGS! HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME?’
‘Henri, please. Enough is enough.’
‘Ah! Father, forgive me. I didn’t see you come in. It’s just a little game of our own. A new prospect for my wife to consider, but the engine of this one doesn’t look as though it can take the hills. She doesn’t even swear like a whore. Tender, yes, and succulent-a breeder perhaps or a schoolgirl but-’
‘Henri, I thought I said enough?’
‘Forgive me, Father. You’re always welcome, but the tongue …’
Morelle shrugged and, seemingly gruff in embarrassment, turned away to serve the silent others.
‘My child, please allow me,’ said the priest.
She felt her coat being lifted back over her shoulders. She turned and in that instant felt relief flooding through her as she looked into sincere and compassionate blue eyes. Grave, yes, and watery from the cold outside. A man of nearly sixty, she thought. Somewhat taller than herself and not unhandsome, though grey and ravaged by time. A real priest of the quartiers, a no-nonsense man, humble and kind.
‘Father Eugène Debauve at your service, Mademoiselle …?’
‘Le Roy. Giselle.’
‘Giselle, I like that. Come and I’ll get you something decent to drink. This place is not for girls like yourself, but you must find it in your heart to forgive them. We’re all God’s sinners, only some more so than others.’
The house on the rue Chabanais stank to high heaven.
‘Monsieur, what is it you want? Be truthful.’
‘Me?’ snorted Kohler, indoors at last but just. ‘Ah, I’m looking for something a little special.’
‘Yes, but all who come here seek the same,’ said Madame Berthe Morelle, throwing him a sideways glance from behind her cage.
‘Something young-about twenty-three perhaps, but looking much younger.’
The black curls shook. The large and deep brown, heavily-kohled eyes widened. ‘Ah! that’s just not possible. Experience is always an asset. Increase the years to sip the wine of success.’
Bravo! madame, he wanted to cry out, but business was business, and behind all that lace-clad ample flesh lay a heart of utter ice. ‘Then try Violette Belanger. She’ll do.’
The apple cheeks tightened, the thick ruby lips were impatiently compressed. ‘Violette?’ she shrilled. ‘But … but it’s her little holiday, mon pauvre garçon. Ah, I know how disappointed you and many others are. You all ask for her and me, I am left to convey the sad truth.’
What a catastrophe, thought Kohler, pleased again. Both of her pudgy, capable hands had been tossing the words about.
‘Violette is in Marseille visiting her sister,’ she said briskly. ‘A week, or was it ten days …?’ she asked herself, and began to search for the schedule if such existed. Perhaps it was among the freshly laundered stacks of hand towels, perhaps among the boxes of condoms …