Read The Night Watch for Free Online Page A

to find yourself in narrow, fetid streets of Les Halles. The belly of Paris is a jungle streaked with multi-coloured neon. All around, upturned vegetable carts and shadows hauling huge haunches of meat. A gaggle of pale, outrageously painted faces appear for an instant only to vanish into the darkness. From now on, anything is possible. You’ll be called upon to do the dirtiest jobs before they finally kill you off. And if, by some desperate ruse, some last-ditch act of cowardice, you manage to escape this horde of fishwives and butchers lurking in the shadows, you’ll die a little farther down the street, on the other side of the Boulevard Sébastopol, there on that patch of waste ground. That wasteland. The doctor said as much. You have come to the end of your journey, there’s no turning back. Too late. The trains are no longer running. Our Sunday walks along the Petite Ceinture, the disused railway line that took us in full circle around Paris. Porte de Clignancourt. Boulevard Pereire. Porte Dauphine. Farther out, Javel . . . The stations along the track had been converted into warehouses or bars. Some had been left intact, and I could almost picture a train arriving any minute, but the hands of the station clock had not moved for fifty years. I’ve always had a special feeling for the Gare d’Orsay. Even now, I still wait there for the pale blue Pullmans that speed you to the Promised Land. And when they do not come, I cross the Pont Solférino whistling a little waltz. From my wallet, I take a photograph of Dr Marcel Petiot in the dock looking pensive and, behind him, the vast pile of suitcases filled with hopes and unrealised dreams, while, pointing to them, the judge asks me: ‘What have you done with your youth?’ and my lawyer (my mother, as it happened, since no one else would agree to defend me) attempts to persuade the judge and jury that I was ‘a promising young man’, ‘an ambitious boy’, destined for a ‘brilliant career’, so everyone said. ‘The proof, Your Honour, is that the suitcases piled behind him are in impeccable condition. Russian leather, Your Honour.’ ‘Why should I care about those suitcases, Madame, since they never went anywhere?’ And every voice condemns me to death. Tonight, you need to go to bed early. Tomorrow is a busy day at the brothel. Don’t forget your make-up and lipstick. Practise in front of the mirror: flutter your eyelashes with velvet softness. You’ll meet a lot of degenerates who’ll ask you to do incredible things. Those perverts frighten me. If I don’t please them, they’ll kill me. Why didn’t she shout: ‘ VIVE LA NATION’? When my turns comes, I’ll shout it as often as they want. I’m a very obliging whore. ‘Come on, drink up,’ Zieff pleads with me. ‘A little music?’ suggests Violette Morris. The Khedive comes over to me, smiling: ‘The Lieutenant will be here in ten minutes. All you have to do is say hello to him as if nothing were up.’ ‘Something romantic,’ Frau Sultana requests. ‘ RO-MAN-TIC,’ screeches Baroness Lydia. ‘Then try to persuade him to go outside.’ ‘“Negra Noche”, please,’ asks Frau Sultana. ‘So we can arrest him more easily. Then we’ll pick up the others at their homes.’ ‘“Five Feet Two”,’ simpers Frau Sultana. ‘That’s my favourite song.’ ‘Looks like it’s going to be a nice little haul. We’re very grateful for the information,
mon petit
.’ ‘No, no,’ says Violette Morris. ‘I want to hear “Swing Troubadour”!’ One of the Chapochnikoff brothers winds the Victrola. The record is scratched. The singer sounds as if his voice is about to crack. Violette Morris beats time, whispering the words:
    Mais ton amie est en voyage
    Pauvre Swing Troubadour . . .
    The Lieutenant. Was it a hallucination brought on by exhaustion? There were days when I could remember him calling me by my first name, talking to me like a close friend. His arrogance had disappeared, his face