From the
heights of Montmartre to the observatory plateau they scoured the
whole town in the way we have been describing. They were out on rainy
evenings, when their boots got worn down, and on hot evenings, when
their linen clung to their skins. There were long periods of waiting and
endless periods of walking; there were jostlings and disputes and the
nameless, brutal caresses of the stray passer-by who was taken by them
to some miserable furnished room and came swearing down the greasy
stairs afterward.
The summer was drawing to a close, a stormy summer of burning nights.
The pair used to start out together after dinner, toward nine o'clock.
On the pavements of the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette two long files of
women scudded along with tucked-up skirts and bent heads, keeping close
to the shops but never once glancing at the displays in the shopwindows
as they hurried busily down toward the boulevards. This was the hungry
exodus from the Quartier Breda which took place nightly when the street
lamps had just been lit. Nana and Satin used to skirt the church and
then march off along the Rue le Peletier. When they were some hundred
yards from the Cafe Riche and had fairly reached their scene of
operations they would shake out the skirts of their dresses, which up
till that moment they had been holding carefully up, and begin sweeping
the pavements, regardless of dust.
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