Wandering through the streets of Paris in the pouring rain. I am staying in a dingy little hovel in the Rue Pascal, next to the Boulevard Arago, very close to la Santé Prison. Good health to you! This is where they used to execute people, carry out public beheadings and everything. I’m sure you would have loved it dear
I am doing my best to avoid tourist attractions, one can never be too cautious. I have come here to fee, not to attract attention to myself. I still remember that strip club we went to not so long ago, the one that was full of Russian hostesses. We felt like demigods then. How times have changed! I wasn’t yet devoid of humanity. I felt compassion, real compassion for them. You said they were just making a packet but I hated the way you humiliated and degraded them. Now I feel remorse or is it just disgust? You would call it self pity.
Remember the Stranger by. Camus? He killed and didn’t feel remorse. But then again he killed more or less by accident, because of the sun, not for thrills, and he paid the high price for it.
I go to a shabby little bar still in Bd Arago, still under the same downpour. I order a brandy, then two, then three and then more wine. My lips are cracked and smeared with red.
” Do I look like an assassin?” I find myself asking one of my fellow drinkers.
” No, you just look like a drunk.”
” Are you American? Are you American? One guy keeps slurring. One Albanian pimp and two whores are sitting in a corner. One of them is staring at me. She has very blonde hair and icy blue eyes just like Ornella. Ornella… Tears come to my eyes. I start sobbing and hiccupping in my drink.
” Hey, don’t look so sad.” It´s another guy, an Arab called Saïd.
” Come to my place. We’ll have some whisky. That should cheer you up.”
We leave the bar. It’s still pissing down. Saïd and I kiss. Paris city of love.
His place is not very far and looks a bit like a shoe box but he has some pretty persian rugs. He tears up my bra, bites off my breasts. I tell him I want him to give it to me up the arse.
” Fuck me, fuck me hard.”
He thrusts deep inside me and for a moment I forget everything. Even the pain is delicious although not the exquiste pain that Dieter could inflict upon me. He slaps me around a bit but I can tell his heart is not really in it. When he’s finished, he holds me tight in his arms. We drink some whisky
He asks again when I am looking so sad.
” My boyfriend killed a girl and I helped him.”
” You’re joking, right? Is that why you want to be punished? Cause you’ve been a bad bad girl?”
” Hold me tight. Hold me very tight. Right now I don’t want to die.
Some cats are meawing outside.
” Hey, would you like to do some sightseeing tomorrow? It’s my day off. We could go to the Louvre or Versailles or the Conciergerie…
Kings and queens, Marie Antoinette and her severed head, all the headless victims of the Terror… She’s here, Ornella is here with her glassy eyes, her putrid smell, the dark blotches on her face… How I was holding her, half unconscious while Dieter was inflicting the blows. But she is triumphant now, she is defying me.
I stagger to the bathroom and vomit.
” Are you okay? ”
” I’m fine. Too much whisky.”
Soon it will be dawn. Soon I will get on with my life. And I am alive. Alive.
Annagaelle's Blog 