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Taxi and driver seen from the rear, 1927. Photo by Séeberger (frères).

Source:
Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque de l'architecture
et du patrimoine (archives photographiques)
diffusion RMN (photo no. FSK24-07 ):
Click here to view source.

Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 19

The back seat

At night Paris swarmed with people possessed by a sexual frenzy. They often behaved in the taxi as though they were in a hotel bedroom.

One day, I brought a tall young woman back from a ball; she wore a sumptuous fur mantle and was accompanied by a gentleman about 70 years old.

He ordered me to stop in front of a building on boulevard Haussmann; since they didn’t get out of the car and weren’t talking, and since I couldn’t imagine that this candidate for Père Lachaise cemetery was capable of any indecent act, I turned round to see what was going on.

She was stretched out on the back seat, her dress pulled up to her waist, while the old man’s bluish hand, with its distended veins and arthritic joints, slowly stroked the brilliant white skin of her thigh. [194]