Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [16]
Before going to the drugstore, I ran into the kitchen and swallo ed the last pill. The guy sure had done a great job.
BIG BROTHER
BY SALIM BACHI
Quartier Latin
Translated by David Ball
Man, it stinks in here.”
The commuter station at Saint-Michel did stink. Sour smells slithered along the corridors looking for their prey.
“Let’s get outta here.”
They were ugly, dressed ugly, but they didn’t give a shit, or at least that’s what they wanted you to think. Had to pass unnoticed, melt into the gray mass of the buildings in the projects. They didn’t change when they went to Paris. They were dressed in war clothes, psychiatric ER style. Watch out, high-voltage box! White Nikes, Sergio Tacchini tracksuits, international class. They were untouchable!
“Your ID!”
Not so untouchable. The cops lined them up against the tile wall of the corridor and began going through their pockets. Then they opened their backpacks. New shoes inside.
“You stole them!”
“No, officer. They’re ours.”
The younger guy even took out a receipt. One of the cops sniffed the paper as if he’d wiped his ass with it that morning.
“Yeah, sure. Buncha thieves, fuckin’ Ayrabs.”
The Ayrabs didn’t bat an eyelid. Nothing. So little reaction the cops wondered how to stir them up more, let’s have some fun. Too bad, really too bad we’re not in the middle of the Algerian War anymore when you could pitch the sand niggers into the Seine, not far away, right next door. For these policemen, no doubt October 17, 1961 was a happy day: four hundred towel-heads in the Seine, outta sight! Okay, times change and so do certain methods. But you can still get in their face, make it psychological. But here, nothing doing. You could feel them up, no problem, they were like sheep, the sweat-heads.
“Leave the women alone, Robert. Can’t you see they’re shy?”
The cops laughed and walked away, waddling on their big feet like belly dancers.
“Actually, theyare the women,” said Big Brother.
The two guys closed their bags and walked to the exit on the Seine side. It was raining out. They walked along Quai Montebello for a bit, across from Notre-Dame cathedral. The elder spoke to the younger in this way:
“You see, Rachid, never, ever play those assholes’ game.”
“The po-lice?”
“You got it. Guys like us turn them on. Gandhi understood all that.”
“Gandhi?”
“What school did you go to?”
“Yours.”
“Gandhi thought force couldn’t accomplish a thing. All it did was legitimize the violence of the occupiers. The cops— they’re our English, get it? And we’re the Hindus.”
Rachid did not understand. In any case he obeyed Big Brother, did like he told him. It had always paid off and it was a lot simpler than getting your head twisted with stories of Indians and English. This guy was an enigma. Sometimes he’d go on for hours about stuff way over your head. To Big Brother’s credit, it had always paid off, you gotta admit.
“Do you know, Rachid, that we’re in the old student quarter—the Quartier Latin, if you prefer?”
“I don’t prefer shit. I don’t like nothin’.”
“Don’t be negative. And you know why it’s called the Quartier Latin?”
He had no idea.
“Because in the Middle Ages they talked Latin here and only Latin. All the literate men in Christendom spoke to each other in Latin. Do you know who lived across the river, behind Notre-Dame?”
“…”
“The monk Abelard lived near the Quai aux Fleurs. You heard of Heloïse and Abelard, Rachid?”
“Never.”
“Abelard was the son of a Breton aristocrat who gave up his birthright to learn to philosophize. Since the Notre-Dame cloister was getting too small for him, Abelard broke away from his masters and founded a school on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. His scholars followed him. He was young, handsome, and very eloquent. At night he would walk down the Montagne to the Seine and return to the house of Canon Ful-bert, where he rented a room. The canon had a very beautiful niece, Heloïse. She