Jackdaws

The Louvre was a fifteen-minute saunter from my blessed hotel--just across the river and through the Tuileries. But first I had to pass the beggars on the bridge. They're nowhere near as brazen as the Villonesque rogues in Aix-- negothick will remember that pair--but they're cheeky as crows. A mort confronted me. Now anything really valuable was in the safe in my room; my money for the day and my museum pass were in an inside zipped pocket of my bag that even I find inaccessible, with the outside flap snapped over that and turned inward at my side, with my left hand clamped firmly on the top. Broad daylight. Passers by. I thought I'd hear her patter, for research. She was good. Decently dressed in a working-class way, like a shop assistant, her face all sorrow and amazement and concern. She'd just found a wedding ring! Some woman must have lost it. What heartbreak! Oh, la pauvre! Is it gold? I hefted it. (Right hand.) Trash, I said. You must have it, she said, for luck--and tried to slip it on my finger like a bridegroom. She was after that left hand. Nuh-uh. She slid it on and off the fingers of my right hand, still with the patter, trying to distract me. Nope. So she said, but you must have it. No one ever will marry me, I am forlorn in this world. I was afraid she'd fall on my neck weeping, and grope. So I said, Good luck finding the owner, and handed her a small coin from my pocket. Then she got abusive, but a large gruff man on a bicycle told her to piss off. And she vanished.

Oh, and that hunchbacked witch? There's a platoon of her, all over Paris. I ran across three of her in three days, on and around the bridges, all in slightly different skirts and shawls and kerchiefs. Her face is always overshadowed, but some of her are quite young--you'd want to be, having to hobble and stoop like that all day.

Nine