IN THE SMALL HOURS

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 15 February 1930, Page 11

IN THE SMALL HOURS

TYHIiSritS are seen in Paris stre'ets, some of them phenomena of daily occurrence, which eould not be (conceived of in; any other cityi, writes G A. Martelli in the “Morning' Post” (London). Where else in the world, for instance, is there anything comparable to those mysterious nocturnal activities, between the small hours and t'he dawn, which seem not to belong to any real world, 'but to be the grotesque and fantastic invention' of an erotic imagination? ‘Who that has gone home late enough to be early, has not been met by those incredible apparitions—ghoulish processions of scavengers, weird •municipal .vehicles, uncanny looking apparatus—and thought himself already with the nightmare, resulting ■from his unwise revelling? One is sitting in a cafe, the last one open, alone with an innocent book, when a piercing shriek, the screech and grind and rumble of wheels, and the clatter of buffers, suddenly insults the night. .Startled by the fiendish noise one looks up in alarm. A train, a real train, with locomotive;, goods trucks, guard’s van, and steam whistle, is advancing down the middle of the ‘street. The engine, of archaic design, might have come from the museum in Exhibition roacli. Its bell-shaped funnel belches volumes of dirty yellow smoke amidst which tongues of dull red flame confirm the diabolical character announced by the sounds of its approach. It drags a row of covered vans, immensely tall, on tiny wheels, reminiscent of Victorian bathing machines. On top of the last, enthroned •on a sort of coachman’s box, sits the guard. By means of a long piece of string—or rather of several pieces knotted together—he is able to communicate with his confrere on the footplate. He is also equipped with a little trumpet, which he sounds at every corner as one would the horn of a motor-car, though the utmost blast produced is quite inaudible above the roar of the juggernaut’s progress. You gaze and rub your eyes, as one might at meeting some prehistoric monster, a dinosaur or a sabre-toothed tiger,, in one of the avenues of the Luxembourg gardens. wiiiiiiimmiiHimiiiiimiiiHMiiiiiiiiumiaiiiiiiMiiiHmitHniiii oiiiiiiiammiiiiiiiiitiiiiiaiiiaasitiiiiiHiHi'MiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiMiii

Night Workers of Paris

, What is it? Whence, and Why, and 7 whither? Nobody knows. Then there are the road sweeps. i They have motors of an obsolete pat- ’ tern. The driver, sitting high above his , whirling brush, reminds one of a man ; on a penny-farthing bicycle. The - sweeps hunt in couples, and always , seem to be bursting with energy. I [ once watched a. pair of them scouring 1 a road-point. Like a pair of coquettish love, birds they chased each other ! round and round, making a smaller circle each time. 'When every square inch of road had been ‘polished, the 1 leader of the two, after feinting twice ; at an opening, suddenly dived down a • side street. The other was after like r a knife, and they had vanished in a moment; but for long after, their giddy • gyrations could be heard fussily cliurn- , ing up the silence. i ; Strangest of all are the suibterranI I can operations. I think they must' ; have something to do with the sewers.' i Everything at all sinister in Paris has something to do with its sewers. It is j ; a. tradition, like crime in Limehouse. , The bands employed on this Augean I labour are heavily booted and wear ( leather jerkins girt with great brass 1 buckled belts. _ I To come -upon them at work is like j stumbling on some plot to undermine j Paris or deflect the course of the Seine. A icomplev portable plant, of | boilers, steam pumps, water tanks,, and what not, completely .blocks the street, . across which great pipes lie in serpen- ( tine coils. ‘Prom below the (ground comes an awful gurgling, as though I the dTegs of the earth itself were be-' ing sucked. Further down the road enormous four-or-five horse wagons, I carrying cylindrical cisterns, are driven | up as if for the start of a. marathon, j When the gurgle has become an agonised sob, the engines are all stopped more of the conspirators emerge from holes and evil-looking passages, the' pipes are disconnected and packed on their tumbrils, and every trace of the deed effaced. Then the whole cortege sets out for another quarter, leaving the wagons to trundle off in the direction of the quays.