Rue Bonaparte

bonaparte

The Reprieve, p.298
He relaxed his grip and let it all go: all this happened deep in his inmost self, in a region where words have no meaning. He let go, and nothing remained but a look, a mere transparency. 'I have lost my soul,' he thought with satisfaction. A woman crossed that transparency. She clattered along in a hurry, glided into that motionless look, a harassed mortal denizen of time, devoured by a thousand little schemes. Her life is my life: beneath that look, under the indifferent sky, all lives are equivalent. The darkness swallowed her up, as she pattered into the Rue Bonaparte; human lives melted into the shadows, clacking heels were silent.

42

* 42 Rue Bonaparte. Sartre lived here.

 Rue Bonaparte - the Sumatra Night Club

sumatra

The Age Of Reason, p.163
Mathieu had the impression that he had just been allowed any indulgence he fancied, like a sick man who cannot recover. 'All I need is to go on living,' he thought. he read the word 'Sumatra' in letters of fire, and the negro hurried towards him, touching his cap. On the threshold, Mathieu hesitated : he could hear confused sounds, a tango : his heart was still filled with lethargy and darkness. And then - it happened in an instant, just as a sleeper suddenly finds himself on his feet in the morning, without knowing how he got there : he had pulled the green curtain aside, walked down the seventeen steps, and emerged into a scarlet, echoing cellar, picked out with patches of unwholesome white - the table-cloths. At the far end of the cellar, silkshirted gauchos were playing dance-music on a platform. Before him stood a throng of people, motionless, decorous, and apparently expectant: they were dancers: they looked like gloomy victims of an interminable destiny.


The Age Of Reason, p.167
Mathieu suddenly felt a kinship with all these creatures who would have done so much better to go home, but no longer had the power, and sat there smoking slender cigarettes, drinking steely-tasting compounds, smiling, as their ears oozed music, and dismally contemplating the wreckage of their destiny .. Ivich remained peering rather dubiously at the transparent liquid remaining in her glass. 'You must drink it in one go.'
"Don't do that,' said Mathieu: 'you'll scorch your throat.'
'Vodka ought to be drunk straight off.'
Ivich picked up her glass: "I would sooner drink it off, I shall have finished it quicker.'

vodka