"Michael Moorcock - The Affair of the Bassin Les Hivers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

also administered by the Carmelites, it formed a secure sanctuary for all but
habitual murderers.

The bargees not continuing under the city to the coast, and even to
Britain, concluded their voyages here, having brought their cargoes from
Nantes, Lyon or Marseille. Others came from the Low Countries,
Scandinavia and Prussia, while those barge-folk regarded as the cream of
their race had sailed waterways connecting the French capital with Moscow,
Istanbul or the Italian Republics. The English bargees, with their heavy,
red-sailed, ocean-going boats, came to sell their own goods, mostly
Sheffield steel and pottery, and buy French wine and cheese for which
there was always a healthy market in their chilly nation, chronically starved of
food and drink fit for human consumption. It was common for altercations
and fights to break out between the various nationalities and more than one
would end with a mortal knife wound.

And so, for centuries, few respectable Parisians ever ventured into
Les Hivers and those who did so rarely returned in their original condition.
Even the Police patrolled the serpentine streets by wagon or, armed with
carbines, in threes and fours. They dared not venture far into the system of
underground waterways known collectively as the Styx. Taxi drivers, unless
offered a substantial commission, would not go into Les Hivers at all, but
would drop passengers off in the Boulevard du Temple, close to the
permanent hippodrome, always covered in vivid posters, in summer or
winter. The drivers claimed that their automobileтАЩs batteries could not be
recharged in that primitive place.

Only as the barge trade slowly gave way to more rapid commercial
traffic, such as the electric railways and mighty aerial freighters, which
began to cross the whole of Europe and even as far as America, Africa and
the Orient, did the area become settled by the sons and daughters of the
middle classes, by writers and artists, by well-to-do North Africans,
Vietnamese, homosexuals and others who found the rest of Paris either too
expensive or too unwelcoming. And, as these things will go, the friends of
the pioneering bohemians came quickly to realise that the district was no
longer as dangerous as its reputation suggested. They could sell their
apartments in more expensive districts and buy something much cheaper in
Les Hivers. Warehouses were converted into homes and shops and the
quays and jetties began to house quaint restaurants and coffee houses.
Some of the least stable buildings were torn down to admit a certain
amount of sunlight.

By the 1990s, the transformation was complete and few of the
original inhabitants could afford to live there any longer. The district became
positively fashionable until it is the place we know today, full of bookshops,
little cinemas, art-suppliers, expensive bistros, cafes and exclusive hotels.
The animals are now housed where they will not disturb the residents and
customers.

By the time Michel Houllebecq moved there in 1996, the