“Just then a young girl stopped us and invited us to partake of her. My friend asked at once: ‘How much?’
She mentioned a sum. ‘That’s too much,’ he said. She came down. Still he shook his head.
‘Come,’ she said finally, with a weary expression on her sallow face. ‘I don’t want any money. I just want you.’
Whereupon he took his watch out and said: ‘It’s too late. Sorry, some other day, if you don’t mind.’ And taking me by the arm he started to move off. She caught and held me.
‘For nothing,’ she repeated with despair in her deep-sunk eyes. See, I’m rich.’ She opened her purse and pulled out a roll of bills. Rolls of bills mean nothing much in France, but indeed she might have been rich. She was well dressed, I noticed. Nothing extravagant, but certainly not poorly. Her whole body trembled as if in fever. And the tremors coursed through her hand and communicated themselves to me.
My friend tore me away. As we hastened on, I looked back and saw her standing where we had left her, her hands covering her face.
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked. The action of my new acquaintance had disgusted me. He had meant only to tease her.
‘I wanted to see how far down she would come. I’ve had them come down to two francs, but never to nothing. But her case can’t count because she wasn’t after money. She’s a pathological case.'”
–– Guy Endore, The Werewolf of Paris
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 
Leave a Reply