Taxi, place Vendôme. Paris, about 1930

Source:
Paris en Images, copyright Maurice Branger / Roger-Viollet (BRA-116712):
Click here to view source.

Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 4

The hospital trip

I remember one day at the beginning of my career when my attention was caught by the wailing of a refined-looking woman, about thirty-five years old, her face puffy.

As she leaned against a bollard on the sidewalk she flagged me down, groaning. When I stopped she asked me amid sobs to take her to the hospital; she had broken her leg.

I brought her there in the car; when we arrived at her destination she refused to pay me and told the man in white who came out to meet us that my car had knocked her down and that she had broken her leg in the fall. Not only was I not going to be paid, I ran the risk of being charged with manslaughter.

Luckily the man in white was skeptical of her story and I quickly disappeared.

Ever afterward when I was hailed by people bent over a body stretched out on the ground I floored the accelerator and sped by without stopping. [23]