Our Friend, the Assassin
No taste of the night life of Paris is regarded as complete without
a visit to an Apache resort at the fag-end of it. For orderly and
law-abiding people the disorderly and lawbreaking people always have an
immense fascination anyhow. The average person, though inclined to blink
at whatever prevalence of the criminal classes may exist in his own
community, desires above all things to know at firsthand about the
criminals of other communities. In these matters charity begins at home.
Every New Yorker who journeys to the West wants to see a few roadagents;
conversely the Westerner sojourning in New York pesters his New
York friends to lead him to the haunts of the gangsters. It makes no
difference that in a Western town the prize hold-up man is more apt
than not to be a real-estate dealer; that in New York the average run
of citizens know no more of the gangs than they know of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art--which is to say, nothing at all. Human nature comes to
the surface just the same.
In Paris they order this thing differently; they exhibit the same spirit
of enterprise that in a lesser degree characterized certain promoters of
rubberneck tours who some years ago fitted up make-believe opium dens in
New York's Chinatown for the awed delectation of out-of-town spectators.
Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris
will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of
Apaching round, the canny Parisians have provided a line of up-to-date
Apache dens within easy walking distance of Montmartre; and thither
the guides lead the round-eyed tourist and there introduce him to
well-drilled, carefully made-up Apaches and Apachesses engaged in their
customary sports and pastimes for as long as he is willing to pay out
money for the privilege.
Being forewarned of this I naturally desired to see the genuine article.
I took steps to achieve that end. Suitably chaperoned by a trio of
transplanted Americans who knew a good bit about the Paris underworld I
rode over miles of bumpy cobblestones until, along about four o'clock in
the morning, our taxicab turned into a dim back street opening off one
of the big public markets and drew up in front of a grimy establishment
rejoicing in the happy and well-chosen name of the Cave of the
Innocents.
Alighting we passed through a small boozing ken, where a frowzy woman
presided over a bar, serving drinks to smocked marketmen, and at the
rear descended a steep flight of stone steps. At the foot of the stairs
we came on two gendarmes who sat side by side on a wooden bench, having
apparently nothing else to do except to caress their goatees and finger
their swords. Whether the gendarmes were stationed here to keep the
Apaches from preying on the marketmen or the marketmen from preying on
the Apaches I know not; but having subsequently purchased some fresh
fruit in that selfsame market I should say now that if anybody about the
premises needed police protection it was the Apaches. My money would be
on the marketmen every time.
Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut
out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally
been a winevault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the
building. The ceiling was so low that a tall man must stoop to avoid
knocking his head off. The place was full of smells that had crawled in
a couple of hundred years before and had died without benefit of clergy,
and had remained there ever since. For its chief item of furniture
the cavern had a wicked old piano, with its lid missing, so that its
yellowed teeth showed in a perpetual snarl. I judged some of its most
important vital organs were missing too--after I heard it played. On
the walls were inscribed such words as naughty little boys write on
schoolhouse fences in this country, and more examples of this pleasing
brand of literature were carved on the whittled oak benches and the
rickety wooden stools. So much for the physical furbishings.
By rights--by all the hallowed rules and precedents of the American
vaudeville stage!--the denizens of this cozy retreat in the bowels of
the earth should have been wearing high-waisted baggy velvet trousers
and drinking absinthe out of large flagons, and stabbing one another
between the shoulder blades, and ever and anon, in the mystic mazes
of the dance, playing crack-the-whip with the necks and heels of their
adoring lady friends; but such was not found to be the case. In all
these essential and traditional regards the assembled Innocents were as
poignantly disappointing as the costers of London had proved themselves.
According to all the printed information on the subject the London
coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time
swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah. The costers I saw
were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably
they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly these gentlemen habitues
of the Cave of the Innocents wore few or no velvet pants, and guzzled
little or none of the absinthe. Their favorite tipple appeared to be
beer; and their female companions snuggled closely beside them.
We stayed among them fully twenty minutes, but not a single person
was stabbed while we were there. It must have been an off-night for
stabbings.
Still, I judged them to have been genuine exhibits because here, for
the first, last and only time in Paris, I found a shop where a
stranger ready to spend a little money was not welcomed with vociferous
enthusiasm. The paired-off cave-dwellers merely scowled on us as we
scrouged past them to a vacant bench in a far corner. The waiter,
though, bowed before us--a shockheaded personage in the ruins of a dress
suit--at the same time saying words which I took to be complimentary
until one of my friends explained that he had called us something
that might be freely translated as a certain kind of female lobster.
Circumscribed by our own inflexible and unyielding language we in
America must content ourselves with calling a man a plain lobster; but
the limber-tongued Gaul goes further than that--he calls you a female
lobster, which seems somehow or other to make it more binding.
However, I do not really think the waiter meant to be deliberately
offensive; for presently, having first served us with beer which for
obvious reasons we did not drink, he stationed himself alongside the
infirm piano and rendered a little ballad to the effect that all men
were spiders and all women were snakes, and all the World was a green
poison; so, right off, I knew what his trouble was, for I had seen many
persons just as morbidly affected as himself down in the malaria belt
of the United States, where everybody has liver for breakfast every
morning. The waiter was bilious--that was what ailed him.
For the sake of the conventions I tried to feel apprehensive of
grave peril. It was no use. I felt safe--not exactly comfortable, but
perfectly safe. I could not even muster up a spasm of the spine when a
member of our party leaned over and whispered in my ear that any one
of these gentry roundabout us would cheerfully cut a man's throat for
twenty-five cents. I was surprised, though, at the moderation of the
cost; this was the only cheap thing I had struck in Paris. It was
cheaper even than the same job is supposed to be in the district round
Chatham Square, on the East Side of New York, where the credulous
stranger so frequently is told that he can have a plain murder done
for five dollars--or a fancy murder, with trimmings, for ten; rate card
covering other jobs on application. In America, however, it has been my
misfortune that I did not have the right amount handy; and here in Paris
I was handicapped by my inability to make change correctly. By now I
would not have trusted anyone in Paris to make change for me--not even
an Apache. I was sorry for this, for at a quarter a head I should
have been very glad to engage a troupe of Apaches to kill me about two
dollars' worth of cabdrivers and waiters. For one of the waiters at our
hotel I would have been willing to pay as much as fifty cents, provided
they killed him very slowly. Because of the reasons named, however, I
had to come away without making any deal, and I have always regretted
it.
At the outset of the chapter immediately preceding this one I said
the English had no night life. This was a slight but a pardonable
misstatement of the actual facts. The Englishman has not so much night
life as the Parisian, the Berliner, the Viennese or the Budapest; but he
has more night life in his town of London than the Roman has in his town
of Rome. In Rome night life for the foreigner consists of going indoors
at eventide and until bedtime figuring up how much money he has been
skinned out of during the course of the day just done--and for the
native in going indoors and counting up how much money he has skinned
the foreigner out of during the day aforesaid. London has its night
life, but it ends early--in the very shank of the evening, so to speak.
This is due in a measure to the operation of the early-closing law,
which, however, does not apply if you are a bona-fide traveler stopping
at your own inn. There the ancient tavern law protects you. You may sit
at ease and, if so minded, may drink and eat until daylight doth appear
or doth not appear, as is generally the case in the foggy season. There
is another law, of newer origin, to prohibit the taking of children
under a certain age into a public house. On the passage of this act
there at once sprang up a congenial and lucrative employment for those
horrible old-women drunkards who are so distressingly numerous in the
poorer quarters of the town. Regardless of the weather one of these
bedrabbled creatures stations herself just outside the door of a
pub. Along comes a mother with a thirst and a child. Surrendering her
offspring to the temporary care of the hag the mother goes within and
has her refreshment at the bar. When, wiping her mouth on the back of
her hand, she comes forth to reclaim the youngster she gives the
other woman a ha'penny for her trouble, and eventually the other woman
harvests enough ha'penny bits to buy a dram of gin for herself. On a
rainy day I have seen a draggled, Sairey-Gamp-looking female caring for
as many as four damp infants under the drippy portico of an East End
groggery.
It is to the cafes that the early-closing law chiefly applies. The cafes
are due to close for business within half an hour after midnight.
When the time for shutting up draws nigh the managers do not put their
lingering patrons out physically. The individual's body is a sacred
thing, personal liberty being most dear to an Englishman. It will be
made most dear to you too--in the law courts--if you infringe on it by
violence or otherwise. No; they have a gentler system than that, one
that is free from noise, excitement and all mussy work. Along toward
twelve-thirty o'clock the waiters begin going about, turning out the
lights. The average London restaurant is none too brightly illuminated
to start with, being a dim and dingy ill-kept place compared with the
glary, shiny lobster palace that we know; so instantly you are made
aware of a thickening of the prevalent gloom. The waiters start in at
the far end of the room and turn out a few lights. Drawing nearer
and nearer to you they turn out more lights; and finally, by way of
strengthening the hint, they turn out the lights immediately above your
head, which leaves you in the stilly dark with no means of seeing your
food even; unless you have taken the precaution to spread phosphorus
on your sandwich instead of mustard--which, however, is seldom done.
A better method is to order a portion of one of the more luminous
varieties of imported cheese.
The best thing of all, however, is to take your hat and stick and go
away from there. And then, unless you belong to a regular club or carry
a card of admission to one of the chartered all-night clubs that have
sprung up so abundantly in London, and which are uniformly stuffy,
stupid places where the members take their roistering seriously--or as
a last resort, unless you care to sit for a tiresome hour or two in the
grill of your hotel--you might as well be toddling away to bed; that is
to say, you might as well go to bed unless you find the scenes in the
street as worth while as I found them.
At this hour London's droning voice has abated to a deep, hoarse snore;
London has become a great, broody giant taking rest that is troubled by
snatches of wakefulness; London's grimy, lined face shows new wrinkles
of shadow; and new and unexpected clumping of colors in monotone and
halftone appear. From the massed-up bulk of things small detached bits
stand vividly out: a flower girl whose flowers and whose girlhood are
alike in the sere and yellow leaf; a soldier swaggering by, his red coat
lighting up the grayish mass about him like a livecoal in an ashheap;
a policeman escorting a drunk to quarters for the night--not, mind you,
escorting him in a clanging, rushing patrol wagon, which would serve to
attract public attention to the distressing state of the overcome one,
but conveying him quietly, unostentatiously, surreptitiously almost,
in a small-wheeled vehicle partaking somewhat of the nature of a baby
carriage and somewhat of the nature of a pushcart.
The policeman shoves this along the road jailward and the drunk lies
at rest in it, stretched out full length, with a neat rubber bedspread
drawn up over his prostrate form to screen him from drafts and save
his face from the gaze of the vulgar. Drunkards are treated with the
tenderest consideration in London; for, as you know, Britons never will
be slaves--though some of them in the presence of a title give such
imitations of being slaves as might fool even so experienced a judge
as the late Simon Legree; and--as perchance you may also have heard--an
Englishman's souse is his castle. So in due state they ride him and his
turreted souse to the station house in a perambulator.
From midnight to daylight the taxicabs by the countless swarm will be
charging about in every direction--charging, moreover, at the rate of
eight pence a mile. Think that over, ye taxitaxed wretches of New York,
and rend your garments, with lamentations loud! There is this also to
be said of the London taxi service--and to an American it is one of the
abiding marvels of the place--that, no matter where you go, no matter
how late the hour or how outlying and obscure the district, there
is always a trim taxicab just round the next corner waiting to come
instantly at your whistle, and with it a beggar with a bleak, hopeless
face, to open the cab door for you and stand, hat in hand, for the penny
you toss him.
In the main centers, such as Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus and
Charing Cross, and along the Embankment, the Strand and Pall Mall, they
are as thick as fleas on the Missouri houn' dawg famous in song and
story--the taxis, I mean, though the beggars are reasonably thick
also--and they hop like fleas, bearing you swiftly and surely and
cheaply on your way. The meters are honest, openfaced meters; and the
drivers ask no more than their legal fares and are satisfied with tips
within reason. Here in America we have the kindred arts of taxidermy and
taxicabbery; one of these is the art of skinning animals and the other
is the art of skinning people. The ruthless taxirobber of New York would
not last half an hour in London; for him the jail doors would yawn.
Oldtime Londoners deplored the coming of the taxicab and the motorbus,
for their coming meant the entire extinction of the driver of the
horse-drawn bus, who was an institution, and the practical extinction of
the hansom cabby, who was a type and very frequently a humorist too.
But an American finds no fault with the present arrangement; he is amply
satisfied with it.
Personally I can think of no more exciting phase of the night life of
the two greatest cities of Europe than the stunt of dodging taxicabs. In
London the peril that lurks for you at every turning is not the result
of carelessness on the part of the drivers; it is due to the rules of
the road. Afoot, an Englishman meeting you on the sidewalk turns, as
we do, to the right hand; but mounted he turns to the left. The foot
passenger's prerogative of turning to the right was one of the priceless
heritages wrested from King John by the barons at Runnymede; but
when William the Conqueror rode into the Battle of Hastings he rode a
left-handed horse--and so, very naturally and very properly, everything
on hoof or wheel in England has consistently turned to the left ever
since. I took some pains to look up the original precedents for these
facts and to establish them historically.
The system suits the English mind, but it is highly confusing to an
American who gets into the swirl of traffic at a crossing--and every
London crossing is a swirl of traffic most of the time--and looks left
when he should look right, and looks right when he should be looking
left until the very best he can expect, if he survive at all, is
cross-eyes and nervous prostration.
I lost count of the number of close calls from utter and mussy
destruction I had while in London. Sometimes a policeman took pity on me
and saved me, and again, by quick and frenzied leaping, I saved myself;
but then the London cabmen were poor marksmen at best. In front of the
Savoy one night the same cabman in rapid succession had two beautiful
shots at me and each time missed the bull's-eye by a disqualifying
margin of inches. A New York chauffeur who had failed to splatter me all
over the vicinage at the first chance would have been ashamed to go home
afterward and look his innocent little ones in the face.
Even now I cannot decide in my own mind which is the more fearsome and
perilous thing--to be afoot in Paris at the mercy of all the maniacs who
drive French motor cars or to be in one of the motor cars at the mercy
of one of the maniacs. Motoring in Paris is the most dangerous sport
known--just as dueling is the safest. There are some arguments to
be advanced in favor of dueling. It provides copy for the papers and
harmless excitement for the participants--and it certainly gives them a
chance to get a little fresh air occasionally, but with motoring it is
different. In Paris there are no rules of the road except just these
two--the pedestrian who gets run over is liable to prosecution, and all
motor cars must travel at top speed.
If I live to be a million I shall never get over shuddering as I think
back to a taxicab ride I had in the rush hour one afternoon over a route
that extended from away down near the site of the Bastille to a hotel
away up near the Place Vendome. The driver was a congenital madman, the
same as all Parisian taxicab drivers are; and in addition he was on
this occasion acquiring special merit by being quite drunk. This last,
however, was a detail that did not dawn on my perceptions until too late
to cancel the contract. Once he had got me safely fastened inside his
rickety, creaky devil-wagon he pulled all the stops all the way out and
went tearing up the crowded boulevard like a comet with a can tied to
its tail.
I hammered on the glass and begged him to slow down--that is, I
hammered on the glass and tried to beg him to slow down. For just
such emergencies I had previously stocked up with two French
words--"Doucement!" and "Vite!" I knew that one of those words meant
speed and the other meant less speed, but in the turmoil of the moment
I may have confused them slightly. Anyhow, to be on the safe side,
I yelled "Vite!" a while and then "Doucement" a while; and then
"Doucement" and "Vite!" alternately, and mixed in a few short, simple
Anglo-Saxon cusswords and prayers for dressing. But nothing I said
seemed to have the least effect on that demoniac scoundrel. Without
turning his head he merely shouted back something unintelligible and
threw on more juice.
On and on we tore, slicing against the sidewalk, curving and jibbing,
clattering and careening--now going on two wheels and now on four--while
the lunatic shrieked curses of disappointment at the pedestrians who
scuttled away to safety from our charging onslaughts; and I held both
hands over my mouth to keep my heart from jumping out into my lap.
I saw, with instantaneous but photographic distinctness, a lady, with a
dog tucked under her arm, who hesitated a moment in our very path. She
was one of the largest ladies I ever saw and the dog under her arm
was certainly the smallest dog I ever saw. You might say the lady was
practically out of dog. I thought we had her and probably her dog too;
but she fell back and was saved by a matter of half an inch or so. I
think, though, we got some of the buttons off her shirtwaist and the
back trimming of her hat.
Then there was a rending, tearing crash as we took a fender off a
machine just emerging from a cross street, but my lunatic never checked
up at all. He just flung a curling ribbon of profanity over his shoulder
at the other driver and bounded onward like a bat out of the Bad Place.
That was the hour when my hair began to turn perceptibly grayer.
And yet, when by a succession of miracles we had landed intact at my
destination, the fiend seemed to think he had done a praiseworthy and
creditable thing. I only wish he had been able to understand the things
I called him--that is all I wish!
It is by a succession of miracles that the members of his maniacal craft
usually do dodge death and destruction. The providence that watches
over the mentally deficient has them in its care, I guess; and the same
beneficent influence frequently avails to save those who ride behind
them and, to a lesser extent, those who walk ahead. Once in a while a
Paris cabman does have a lucky stroke and garner in a foot traveler.
In an instant a vast and surging crowd convenes. In another instant
the road is impassably blocked. Up rushes a gendarme and worms his way
through the press to the center. He has a notebook in his hand. In this
book he enters the gloating cabman's name, his age, his address, and his
wife's maiden name, if any; and gets his views on the Dreyfus case; and
finds out what he thinks about the separation of church and state; and
tells him that if he keeps on the way he is headed he will be getting
the cross of the Legion of Honor pretty soon. They shake hands and
embrace, and the cabman cuts another notch in his mudguard, and gets
back on the seat and drives on. Then if, by any chance, the victim of
the accident still breathes, the gendarme arrests him for interfering
with the traffic. It is a lovely system and sweetly typical.
Under the general classification of thrilling moments in the night life
of Europe I should like to list a carriage trip through the outskirts of
Naples after dark. In the first place the carriage driver is an Italian
driver--which is a shorter way of saying he is the worst driver living.
His idea of getting service out of a horse is, first to snatch him to a
standstill by yanking on the bit and then to force the poor brute into
a gallop by lashing at him with a whip having a particularly loud and
vixenish cracker on it; and at every occasion to whoop at the top of his
voice. In the second place the street is as narrow as a narrow alley,
feebly lighted, and has no sidewalks. And the rutty paving stones which
stretch from housefront to housefront are crawling with people and goats
and dogs and children. Finally, to add zest to the affair, there are lots
of loose cows mooning about--for at this hour the cowherd brings his
stock to the doors of his patrons. In an Italian city the people get
their milk from a cow, instead of from a milkman as with us. The milk is
delivered on the hoof, so to speak.
The grown-ups refuse to make way for you to pass and the swarming young
ones repay you for not killing them by pelting pebbles and less pleasant
things into your face. Beggars in all degrees of filth and deformity
and repulsiveness run alongside the carriage in imminent danger from the
wheels, begging for alms. If you give them something they curse you for
not giving them more, and if you give them nothing they spit at you for
a base dog of a heretic.
But then, what could you naturally expect from a population that thinks
a fried cuttlefish is edible and a beefsteak is not?