Prostitutes at the bar of Le Sphinx, a "maison close" or brothel. Paris, boulevard Edgar Quinet (XIVth district), about 1935.

Source:
Paris en Images, copyright Roger-Viollet (RV-335725):
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Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 36

Prostitutes

Every night I rubbed shoulders with prostitutes and their clients, but I couldn’t get used to it. It was too much for me, although I understood that my ideas about these women differed considerably from those that their clients could have had.

I knew them as they were: they took me for one of their own and liked to compare our occupations. “We do the same thing,” was their favourite comment.

In the morning, while returning to the garage, I often took them home after their work. Every time I did this they would offer to pay me in trade.

I always made them sit in the back seat, and not beside me, because they used cheap, strong perfume – something like an acrid solution of bad soap – and their proximity left a sickly taste in my mouth. [86]