Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler Read Free Book Online Page B

battle.) Soon
     the menace of
apachism
appeared to be the greatest threat to normal life in Paris.
    A typical apache crime could start with a thug asking a potential victim for a light and tipping his hat. If the victim put
     his hand in his pocket, the apache would throw the hat in his face and head-butt him. Sometimes the attacker pulled the victim’s
     jacket over his face to blind him. Some worked with a pretty female, a
gigolette,
serving as a foil. While she engaged the victim in conversation, the male would come up behind with a scarf and loop it around
     the victim’s neck. Newspapers printed detailed accounts of the apaches’ methods, increasing the public’s fears of being accosted.
    The apaches differed from ordinary street thugs by their lifestyle, which included distinctive clothing, argot, and even a
     dance. Similar to the tango and imitative of street fighting, the apache dance was sometimes dubbed the Dance of the Underworld.
     Because of its violent nature, in which the female partner is literally thrown around, it was popular as an exhibition dance.
     Upper-class Parisians enjoyed watching it performed in the cafés around Montparnasse and in dance halls called
musettes.
Adventurous tourists sometimes made a visit to a
musette
a part of their Paris experience. Bored upper-class women would pay an apache dance partner for a half hour’s whirl around
     the floor — usually a toned-down version of the real thing.
    Off the dance floor, entertainers sentimentalized the apaches’ fatalism about life and love. Yvette Guilbert, the star of
     the Moulin Rouge, performed a popular song, “My Head,” in which an apache defiantly contemplates his future, which must end
     on the guillotine in a perverse kind of triumph:
    I’ll have to wait, pale and dead beat,
    For the supreme moment of the guillotine,
    When one fine day they’ll say to me:
    It’s going to be this morning, ready yourself;
    I’ll go out and the crowd will cheer
    My head! 46
    Parisians’ appetite for entertainment that reflected their fascination with the underworld found its fullest satisfaction
     at the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Located at the end of Montmartre’s rue Chaptal, the tiny theater presented a series of short,
     gruesome plays each night, alternating comedy and horror. The fare was not for the squeamish, for the creators of the Grand-Guignol
     brought incredible realism to grotesque special effects, regaling audiences with stabbings, ax murders, gouged-out eyes, torture,
     acid throwing, amputations, mutilation, and rape. Indeed, there was no outrage that the Grand-Guignol shrank from attempting
     to depict. Because of the theater’s small size, the spectators were often sprayed with “blood” as well.
    Oscar Méténier, a former secretary to the police commissioner of Paris, was the theater’s founder and the author of some of
     its skits. Oscar knew what he was writing about because he often walked through the city’s red-light areas and criminal dens
     searching for material. The other star was the playwright André de Lourde, called the Prince of Terror, whose works generally
     broke any boundaries of taste and decency. The son of a doctor, de Lourde had from an early age listened to the sounds of
     suffering from his father’s patients. He had also developed a morbid fear of death, which his father tried unsuccessfully
     to cure by making him sit vigil over his dead grandmother’s body the night before she was buried.
    De Lourde used these childhood experiences to good effect by frightening others with his plays. His goal was to create something
     like a dream of Edgar Allan Poe, a man he admired, “to write a play so terrifying and unbearable that several minutes after
     the curtain rises, the entire audience would flee from the theatre en masse.” De Lourde called his works “slices of death.” 47
    The Grand-Guignol shared with the avant-garde artists a desire to break through barriers to express