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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)

PART I

CITY OF LIGHTS, CITY OF DARKNESS

THE CHAUFFEUR

BY MARC VILLARD

Les Halles

Translated by Nicole Ball

Vania

Iwasn’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