The sewers of Paris stewed behind a row of worn buildings lining one side of the Rue des Italiens. The waste-ways churned, bubbled and sloshed like wretched ponds, filthy pools and rancid brooks of the nature found in Dante's version of hell.

The cobbled street of the Rue des Italiens itself fared little better than the murky passages behind the brick and timber structures abutting the slim roadway. Prostitutes, war deserters and dope peddlers flourished like wet stale blue moss in a dank cellar.

Almost a full year after the Arch Duke was shot in Sarajavo, when the world cracked into a state of unbridled war; Chareen de Seine anchored port at the Rue des Italiens. Arriving in the spring of 1915 from points north of the French Capital, Chareen de Seine celebrated, or at least achieved, a dozen plus seven birthdays.

Chareen had cinder black hair, loosely worn in shoulder length ringlets of the kind favored by showgirls on The Continent. Her eyes, a distilled blue, were bright and lively, belying the fact that Chareen was a naïve country girl with farm field dust barely shaken from her shoes.

Chareen fled her hometown, most particularly her cruel Papa, in quickly dashed hope of making better in Paris. Barely more than a day in the City of Love, Chareen succumbed to the reality that her's would need to be sold street-side in order to eat, to merely survive. Bracing herself, she concluded trading favors on the street promised a better life for her than the boorish existence her Papa subjected her to in the county and the bleak drill she imagined she would find in a stoic nunnery.

Chareen found the Rue de Italiens with little difficulty, the streets and alleyways on which a young woman could profit in Paris being bountiful during the days of war and nights of blackened desire.

Arriving that first evening on the Rue de Italiens, the name of the thoroughfare struck Chareen initially as odd for Paris. It was the name of a grand boulevard in Rome, certainly, but out of place for a dim road in France. Not long after reaching the Rue des Italiens, while Chareen began staking out her new haunts, she ambled onto the more aptly named tavern, the Hole in the Wall.

After noticing the weather-beaten sign over the door to the pub, Chareen did a double take thinking she misread the faded letters on first glance. Sure enough, her second look confirmed the ragged tavern's name: Hole in the Wall.

Still unsure how to fully embark on her new avocation, and curious about the inner sanctums of a Paris pub, Chareen went to the door and tugged it open with some effort, the door sticking in the warped frame.

The Hole in the Wall was very narrow, more like a walkway, with a barstand running on one side of the room and a row of small, distressed wooden tables and rickety stools lining the other. Not knowing what to expect, Chareen was not taken aback by the physical essence of The Hole in the Wall.

The smell of the tavern, however, did snare Chareen somewhat off guard. The very moment she stepped inside the tavern, the smell of urine, stale beer, stogie smoke and burnt fish assaulted her senses, dashing into her nose while making her eyes water.

She considered turning around to exit, but caught sight of two women, older than her, seated at opposite ends of the bar, each with a man at her side. She imagined that each of these women was working the tavern in the manner she intended to proceed. Appreciating the commonality, Chareen decided to remain in the pub to observe, quietly and cautiously, the machinations of the others involved in her newly chosen course. She assumed she would become accustomed to the terrific odors after a while.

She took a few additional, hesitant steps inside the Hole in the Wall, realizing at once, she in fact had no idea what to do, how to act, where to sit or even stand. Fortuitously, but hardly fortunately, a German national living in Paris to avoid his homeland's conscription caught sight of the young Chareen hovering near the entryway.

The German, Gunther Goering, was in his early twenties. He spent the bulk of his time, when not inebriated at the Hole in the Wall and not recovering from being blasted at the tavern, in a spartan gymnasium on the Rue des Italiens, not far from the pub. Gunther fancied himself an able boxer and a dashing lady's man. He sired several children, believing he was propagating worthy offspring in his self image, not recognizing that quantity bore no relationship to quality.

Gunther's eyes looked to be snatched from an arctic sleighing dog, frosty blue and stone cold. His head was oddly flat on top, his nostrils bearing an unnatural flare. Gunther's lips were feminine and unwholesome, like those painted on a characture of a demonic bride.

Above his puffy lips, Gunther wore a thin mustache that only seemed to serve to underline the warped portals of his nose and accentuate his fleshy mouth.

Gunther kept his hair closely cropped, like his fighting brethren, despite his own course of desertion.

Gunther was brash, always speaking loudly to draw whatever attention might be had onto him. In the Hole in the Wall, using volume to engage attention was often futile because most patrons were well in their cups and unable to focus visually past their fingertips and audibly beyond their earlobes.

Gunther was seated at a table along the wall opposite the barstand, sipping on an aperitif which even the slurry end bar served. The Hole in the Wall often hosted men of a more gentlemanly class who paid visit to the pub to solicit the services of the neighborhood womenfolk. Merely because these frilly chaps departed their stations for a nocturnal debauch did not mean they forswore their taste for certain liquors, whiskeys and liqueurs.

Keeping his eyes pinned on the hapless Chareen, who Gunther immediately picked for a fresh to the city country girl, Gunther tried to get her attention by waving his hand about in a far from gingerly manner. With her cotton cloth dress and clean hair, as well as her field sturdy shoes, Gunther knew without a doubt that the girl entered the tavern on her first evening whoring. No matter how harsh, Gunther liked the word “whore” in the same way he relished what he believed to be his spellbinding command over women and girls.

Unspoiled girls were rare commodities along the Rue de Italiens and Gunther Goering would not let one slip his grasp any more than he would allow a precious pearl to leave his clutches even if it meant a challenge to fisticuffs. Indeed, a new girl often required a call to sparring between the men of the tavern, a task to which Gunther deemed himself always ready.

Failing to succeed at garnering the new girl's attention, Gunther rose from his place and strode with forced confidence over to Chareen, walking like a cocky midshipman seemingly surveying a quarterdeck.

“Good evening”, Gunther greeted, styling airs to make appearances of being one of a jauntier breed who slunk through the district from time to time in search of flesh, opium or morphine peddlers before returning to fine homes and a noteworthy, rather than notorious existence.

Casting her eyes downward to the soiled planks of the floor, Chareen shyly returned the greeting with a meek “Hello, sir” and a meager nod.

Gunther looked the girl over from curly black hair to her substantial, country footwear. He took the posture of a man scanning over a heifer at market and looked pleased like the man who happens upon a worthy, firm beast. Indeed, Gunther found Chareen appealing, appetizing, with her innocent face, youthful body and retiring mannerisms. He concluded she was a conquest worth the evening's time and a few banknotes.

“Come, drink with me.” Gunther's statement was less an invitation than a directive to Chareen. Before she moved, said or did anything in response, she looked off and over to the two women at the bar to see if she might obtain directions, or perhaps encouragement, from one or the other. Neither of the older women was looking at her and seemed well enough ensconced with their respective, prospective johns.

“Come on then,” Gunther said, speaking even more firmly than the way he initially addressed Chareen. He took her by the arm and led her back towards his meager table, an easy task because Chareen remained ill adjusted to her surroundings.

Reaching the table and taking a stool that Gunther had pushed close to his own, Chareen realized that she had grown essentially accustomed to the foul air in the tavern. She noticed nothing at all any further save for the burnt fish. Chareen was hungry, not having eaten even a heel of bread in over two days.

Once he felt he had Chareen well settled and that she would not drift away, he scrambled off to the barstand to retrieve two whiskey sours, one for each of them. He wanted to loosen the new girl up and he felt dashing down whiskey would be the surest course.

“Tonight, we celebrate!” he exclaimed, returning to the table with the drinks as if carrying trophies heralding great victories.

Chareen said nothing, wondering when she was to ask the man for money and, indeed, how much she should claim. After that she ventured a thought that perhaps the man was not actually interested in her for the use of her body, but rather was simply being cordial and entertaining.

She suddenly well appreciated how very little she knew and understood about her new course in life. She thought at least in the nunnery the Prioress would have told her what to and what not to do under all circumstances.

“I am back from the sea!” Gunther lied, trying to mask his German accent under his practiced French. He forced the whiskey drink onto Chareen who watched and followed his manner of quickly drinking the beverage in one swallow.

The soured and fiery pack of the drink rendered Chareen gagging, and then, gasping for a decent breath. Watching the new girl reel and thrash brought a smile over Gunther's plump, fleshy lips.

After Chareen mostly regained her composure, Gunther placed a hand on her thigh and, squeezing, told her: “Tonight we celebrate until dawn”.

Chareen thought Gunther's accent queer, but knew well she had only ever heard countryside French spoken, the rural sputtering of farmers and of the owners of tiny shops in the hamlet of her birth.

In short order, Gunther retrieved another pair of whiskeys, determined to light the new girl as quickly as possible. While away to the barstand, the door to the tavern opened and Chareen watched a slow moving man enter. Walking delicately over to the empty table just next to where Gunther seated Chareen, the fellow stepped so lightly that he appeared to take lame so that the very bones of his legs did not break or shatter.

Taking a seat well in Chareen's line of vision, she easily saw that the man looked most ill. His breathing, clearly labored, was shallow and swift, a dog-like panting. His face was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes encircled in puffs of charcoal gray. His hands shook as if taken by palsy.

Even still, and despite his outward symptoms, the man did not look to be any older than forty years. He behaved and twitched like a man nearing the grave, but his skin was unwrinkled and his hair was thick and surely colored brown.

Making his path from the barstand, Gunther noted at once that Chareen had cast her glance upon the sickly chap, a man he knew to be the poet named Derwin “Digs” Dunning. Digs Dunning was a fairly regular at the Hole in the Wall. However, Gunther never saw Digs take a woman or girl and often watched him joined at table for nothing more than a shot by one of two different characters that Gunther knew to be opium peddlers from the bricks.

Picking up his pace to prevent any interaction between his new girl and the haggard poet, Gunther nearly dropped the whiskey glasses to the boards.

“Let us celebrate” he exclaimed upon his return. Chareen slowly moved her gaze from the withered man a table over back to Gunther. She spoke for the first time since joining Gunther at table.

“That poor man”, she sighed.

Knowing perfectly well to whom Chareen referred, Gunther nonetheless replied:

“I am not poor! I am celebrating! To my success!” He handed Chareen one of the glasses and raised his own to toast. She looked quizzically at Gunther, having no mind as to what he was doing with his glass.

Exasperated and groaning to let her know, Gunther ran his glass into Chareen's with a “clink”. She furrowed her brow and straightened her spine, puzzled. Nevertheless, she downed the second round of whiskey and sour mash, feeling the same hot and tangy sensation as before.

After little time, Chareen found herself slightly more emboldened. Consequently, she engaged with Gunther somewhat further.

“I was speaking of the man at the next place,” she said, determined to clarify her remark about “that poor man”.

Gunther shook his head, looking much more like a disappointed father than a roguish cad. “Oh, him,” he replied. “He is a poet.”

Gunther spit out “poet” as if the word indicated the nature of the disease that caused the chap such physical decline and decay.

“He takes opium as well,” Gunther added, the use of the Oriental intoxicant being far less problematic than the man's selected profession. “His name is Dunning.” With disdain, Gunther added that Digs Dunning was British on top of all else.

Chareen understood what it meant to be a Brit, but was unsure what Gunther meant by taking opium. Chareen well knew poetry, having managed to garner a ratty copy of selected works some years earlier, and a book she carried with her to Paris.

“Why is he so ill?” she asked Gunther, finding herself starring at the tattered soul at the neighboring perch.

“The opium,” Gunther retorted in a tone that smacked of a scolding.

Assuming that opium was something or another that she should know of or understand, Chareen kept her mouth shut, not asking Gunther anything further for a while.

At the time Gunther went back to the barkeep to gain a third round, another man, thin and narrow quite like the tavern itself, entered through the door and joined the poet. The newly arrived fellow sat with the jittery man for a moment and then went to the bar to get drinks for them both.

“See?” Gunther asked Chareen when he returned to their table. “The poet is now joined by the man who peddles the opium.”

When the third set of whiskeys were polished, Gunther pressed for a deal with Chareen. Operating blindly, she looked a few times in the direction of the older women thinking one or another could offer useful advice. Gunther did not relent and steamed ahead like the evening train to Lyon. He pressed a small wad of damp Francs into Chareen's hand and grabbed her secure by the arm as he had done when she arrived at The Hole.

Rather than lead her back towards the front of the tavern and the door outside to the Rue des Italiens, he hurried in the opposite direction to another exitway at the rear. The back door looked more like the hatch to an animal coop and opened directly onto the sewers.

With deliberate speed he pressed Chareen against the building's crumbling stone wall so that she looked out over the city's sewers. He wasted no time in undertaking the bargained-for deed, his wicked lips writhing in all directions at once in front of Chareen's watery eyes. He grunted in such a manner that Chareen, holding back a full flood of tears, thought of the old boar penned up at her Papa's farm.

As if nothing discernable occurred, Gunther did up his breeches, reentered the tavern, leaving Chareen outside with the wad of Francs at her feet and burning tears dripping down her crimson cheeks.

Chareen stumbled down the alley trying to find her bearings and make her way back to the Rue des Italiens as quickly as possible. Eventually reaching the roadway, she ran furiously to the Avenue de l'Opera, a better boulevard on which the small rooming house where she was to tenant stood. Upon arriving that afternoon in Paris, she had handed over what money she was able to steal and sneak from her Papa's house in the country to Madame Collier, the proprietress. With the small amount of Francs she collected from Gunther Goering, Chareen believed she had enough cash to finish off her first payment to Madame Collier and probably had enough left over for bread and perhaps a cutting of cheese for the next morning.

The knowledge that she would soon crawl into a dry, warm bed at Madame Collier's and that in the morning she would eat bread and possibly even cheese sweetened the bitterness Chareen felt envelope her all the while Gunther pawed at her by the sewer.

Reaching the rooming house after what seemed like an infinite journey, Chareen went to the small room which she would share with two other young women about her own age, whom she had yet to meet directly. She and her roommates each had a small bed and a drawer in an armoire set in the room.

Chareen, returning to the shared room before the others, quickly undid her dress, washed down using a ceramic basin and cold water and then crawled under the linens on her bed, promptly falling off to sleep.

Chareen did not return to the Hole in the Wall for a full three weeks, even though she found herself often on the Rue des Italiens many a night tending to her business. In that time, she became better used to the tawdry task at hand when with a man. She rarely found herself with damp eyes unless a john was especially unkempt.

She had not laid eyes on Gunther Goering since her first night in Paris. However, she had occasion to twice wake from a horrid dream in which the man chased her down near the sewer with his dog-like eyes, raging nostrils and twisted, womanly lips. She was pleased not to have seen the man in person and felt certain the nightmares would pass away all together in short speed.

More than a few times, Chareen did catch sight of the sickly poet making his course down the Rue des Italiens and off to the Hole. On a couple of instances, she found herself squarely in the slow moving fellow's direct path. In the same way she easily recognized the poet, she wondered if he recalled seeing her seated near him in the pub.

On the eve of the anniversary of being in Paris for three weeks, the poet crossed Chareen's path on the street at the hour when the sun began to set, ending the day. Having had a good week on the street, and with enough money tucked away to pay the board at Madame Collier's with a decent amount left over for food, Chareen decided to give leave to her spot on the street and follow the tired man into the Hole.

Upon entering the tavern, she quickly scanned the room to see if Gunther was on hand. She did not see her first john, but rather watched as the poet took up the same table he had occupied on Chareen's first night in Paris.

Realizing that the poet had not presented himself in the languishing district to procure the services of her lot, Chareen nonetheless moved in the direction of his table, debating whether she should approach the man directly or take a stool nearby. At the moment, she wished she had her well-thumbed book of poems with her. She thought, if she had the volume, she could sit at table next to the man and he might catch sight of her reading selection and engage her in conversation.

Chareen ended up sitting at the table directly next to the poet. She racked her brain trying to pull out the man's name, but came up short.

The poet seemed to pay no nevermind to Chareen, which led her finally to feign a coughing attack in hopes of garnering his attention.

With some difficulty, as if operating in pain, the poet twisted on his stool to take in Chareen. He looked as if mastering energy to speak, to ask Chareen if she needed assistance, but lacked the native vitality to utter a word.

Chareen, seeing she captured the man's attention, spoke after she calmed her theatrical whooping.

“I'm fine, really,” she said.

The poet peered at her intently, curiously. He pulled a watch from a pocket in his vest, checking the time. Chareen assumed, if Gunther's story about the poet was true, that an opium peddler was to soon appear.

Not wanting to lose her tentative cast out to the man, Chareen said: “You're the poet.”

He nodded, returning his glance from the golden pocket watch on matching chain to the innocent looking child-woman who knew him or at least a tad about his existence.

“And you're not well,” she added, the words slipping from her lips. She clenched her teeth, regretting the remark on the poet's condition, the commentary on his health.

The poet, Digs Dunning, realized to some extent how miserable he appeared. He definitely knew how extraordinarily poorly he felt except when actually taking the opium, the smoking of the opiate providing his only relief. After a time, Digs slightly nodded his head once more, acknowledging that she was quite correct in her direct assessment.

Chareen wanted to move over to the poet's table, to talk more intimately with him. She wanted to tell him about the book of poetry she carried with her to Paris, the only possession she brought along save for some clothing and a well rubbed rosary given to her by a kindly priest on the occasion of her First Holy Communion.

Before Chareen could move, or speak any further, the same spindly man who came to the Hole and sat with the poet on the prior night three weeks earlier entered and joined the wordsmith at table. Digs turned away from Chareen and focused his attention fully on the skinny fellow. The ritual of the last meeting between the men that Chareen witnessed repeated. The thin man went to the bar and returned with two servings. Unlike on the first night Chareen was in the pub, she was able to quietly watch the rest of the exchange between the men.

The poet slipped a number of bank notes across the small table and the other man, in turn, slid a small container over to Digs. Chareen thought back on Gunther Goering's words: “The poet is now joined by the man who peddles the opium.”

Since her encounter with Gunther, Chareen had learned more about opium. She came to know that many people were captured under the potion's spell, apparently including the most ill-looking poet.

The man at the poet's table quickly drank his glass and then left the tavern. The poet did not touch his serving, but rather tucked the tin container away in a coat pocket and labored to get on his legs. He picked the drink off the table and turned to face Chareen. She quickly looked away not wanting the man to know she had sat taking him in.

Digs shuffled over to where Chareen sat, placing the drink in front of her.

“For you,” he said, attempting but failing a polite bow. Chareen blushed, wanting to ask the poet to join her but not finding the words.

“Good evening,” he then said, turning away from Chareen after which he stepped most unsteadily out of the Hole.

Keeping her eyes on the door, half hoping the man would return inside, she moved her hand slowly over her table until she brushed against the glass. She picked up the beverage and gingerly took a sip, testing cautiously, well recalling the same, burning concoction given to her by Gunther. The drink left behind by the poet was smooth to taste, even sweet. She realized she could have easily tipped back the shot the poet shared with her, but she enjoyed its flavor and wanted to savor the same. All the while she kept looking to the door in case the poet returned.

Before too much more time passed, Chareen left the Hole and walked back to Madame Collier's on the Avenue de l'Opera. She curled up on her bed with her poetry book, wondering if one or another of the poems was written by the ill man at the pub who took the opium.

Chareen attended to her work dutifully and steadily for the next three nights. On the fourth evening, Chareen decided to go to the Hole in the Wall, perhaps to even have the fish she smelt burnt or burning on each of her prior couple of visits to the tavern.

She arrived at nearly the same time as on her previous visitations. She took up at the same table after ordering the fish from the keeper tending bar. She wanted to order the same nice drink the poet shared with her, but had no idea what the delight was named. Instead, she took a watery white wine and slowly dined on the blackened piece of fish.

Chareen paid no mind to the others congregating in the bar, a couple of slovenly fellows deep in their cups visually latching on to her, considering her closely. One man in particular, wearing dirty, patchy breeches and with but one useful eye, seemed well intent on Chareen.

The only instances in which Chareen parted attention from her fish and wine were when she looked towards the door to see if the poet might happen to be walking into the pub. Nearing the end of her meal, she grew pessimistic that the poet would appear that night. Thinking about how ragged and sickly the poet looked, Chareen flushed, worrying suddenly that the man might be dead. Perhaps, she thought, the poet took the opium and died.

She waited in the Hole well after she finished her meal and well past the time that the poet seemed to appear at the tavern. She thought of asking the barkeeper whether he knew of the poet and how the man fared. The barstand had become crowded, however, and she ended up leaving shortly.

Chareen did not notice that the dingy man with the one useful eye rose with her and followed her in the direction of the front door. He waited for a few moments inside the pub after Chareen exited so that she would not take note of his immediate presence. The slovenly fellow had no problem in quickly taking sight of Chareen on the street because she walked slowly, seeming to be in no good hurry. The roadway immediately around her was deserted for the time.

The man stayed behind her, not increasing his pace, until Chareen reached a cross alley off the Rue des Italiens where the gas street lamp stood cold, leaving a dark area invaded by the moonless night.

All at once, the man charged for Chareen, pouncing on her like a starving puma snaring prey. Cupping one hand over her mouth and wrapping his other arm around Chareen's throat, he hauled her down the darkened alleyway in a fluid movement. So sudden and wholly unexpected was the stranger's assault that Chareen did not react at all and fell limp like a straw-stuffed doll. She was not even immediately, particularly conscious of where the offending striker had hold of her. Rather, after the first instance of the assault, her only sense fully engaged and processed was that of smell. The attacker gave off a cross odor reminding Chareen of the putrid rise coming from a dead pigeon she once came upon in her Papa's barn.

Chareen gagged from the vile scent. The man loosened his grip about her throat wrongly believing her gasping resulted from him clutching her too tightly. He kept his other hand firmly gripped over her mouth for fear she would call out for help. He muttered something to Chareen in a threatening way, like a wolf growling at weaker prey.

The rank man with the one unworkable eye proved to be unusually clumsy. Although his initial pounce onto and grasp of Chareen occurred essentially well executed, he shortly became a fumble-about as he attempted procession to the next step of his most illicit crime.

Indeed, had Chareen even been a slight more in clearer wits, when he let loose of her throat to undo his breeches, she very well may have escaped his unwholesome clutch. But despite the man's stilted movements and uncoordination, Chareen remained entrapped, enslaved.

In due course, the fouled, fowl-smelling man completed his act, tossing a few Francs at Chareen as she stooped over to vomit on the damp cobblestone of the darkened alleyway. “Surely,” the man thought, “I have paid for this whore like the other men I have seen.” And he departed, returning to the tavern.

Chareen stood bent over in the alley for a full quarter hour, losing the meal of blackened fish and wine that she purchased for herself not long before. Her eyes washed with tears, more from her wretching gut then from the fierce violation. The assault, the battery, of the man seemed then to Chareen to be a misty, mad night dream and not a lived experience.

A full three months passed before Chareen returned to the Rue des Italiens. Even though she longed to encounter the poet once more, if he lived, she greatly feared again meeting up with Gunther Goering or the man with the dead eye. Finally, late one afternoon well into the summer, Chareen ventured to the Rue des Italiens, wearing a new dress of a finer fabric and styling than she had ever owned.

She believed the dress itself compelled her to return to the district, with hopes the poet would see her so smartly attired and be pleased.

Upon first arriving at the Rue des Italiens, she paced up and down the block on which the Hole in the Wall stood in its sagging structure. All the while she continued her walk to and fro, her pace quickened, like a penned-in lamb at her Papa's farm.

Compared to the women standing about the roadway, Chareen stood out precisely because she did not stand still like the others waiting for men. Additionally, although some of the women seeking a john wore dresses of finer cloth than that selected by Chareen that day, Chareen's was modestly tailored and in muted tones. She selected the smock not with an eye to busy business, but for her own sake, for an occasion when she might once more meet up with the poet.

In time, Chareen finally came to a stand still in front of the door to the Hole. Taking a bracing breath, she reached for the handle, stopping before her hand clasped the brass. Still rigid, she pulled her arm and hand away from the door like a retreating post. She thought first of Gunther and then of the dead eyed rapist, wondering if one or another or, worse still, both were seated and drinking beyond the door.

Closing her eyes, and in a shudder, she once again reached out and pulled at the door, moving swiftly like a morning swimmer diving into a chilly pond. As in the past, the door stuck to its warped frame before opening wide. Eyes still shut; she took a blind step through the door, recognizing the familiar foul odors attendant to the pub.

In this instance holding her breath, Chareen spirited her eyes open and made haste to examine the tavern. No where in sight were either of the men she dreaded, but the poet as well was no where to be seen.

Chareen knew the time was still early for the poet's seemingly appointed, somewhat routine appearance. His normal table stood vacant and she ventured taking one of the stools surrounding that post. In a moment, she went to the barstand and ordered the same fish and wine she ate on her last visit to the Hole some 90 days ago.

Once served and returned to the table, Chareen ate and drank slowly, in the way a tortoise enjoyed a ripe, green stem. She found herself still working on the meal after the fish was well cooled and the poet had not appeared.

After an hour, the door opened and the man who peddled the opium entered, but still the poet was no where around. The opium trader gained a drink from the barkeeper and then took a place at a table and stool a couple of spaces down from where Chareen sat holding on to her near emptied wine glass.

She thought that certainly the man who deals in the opium would know what had become of the poet, if the frail writer remained still alive.

Thinking the young woman, Chareen, was about on her business, he replied: “No, not for me.”

She flushed scarlet and, embarrassed, explained that she had not approached him on the spot seeking to engage in her trade and practice.

“No, sir,” she continued. “I came to ask if you have had word from the poet, from the man I have seen you here at table with on occasion.”

“Dunning,” the opium peddler snorted.

“Yes, yes! That's his name!” Chareen exclaimed, grateful and gratified to hear the name she had forgotten spoken once more. “Dunning, the poet.”

“He's taken most ill,” the man replied. “Most severely ill, indeed.”

“He lives, though?” Chareen asked.

With a wave of his hand, a most dismissive gesture, the trader confirmed Digs Dunning lived.

“But where is he?” she asked, imagining the poet to be held fast in asylum or sanitarium for the infirm.

“He stays to his flat,” the peddler explained. “Day and night, no strength to leave.”

Chareen wanted to ask where the poet lived, but caught herself. The peddler, giving Chareen a look over complete, and previously guessing her occupation, assumed Dunning was a client of the young woman's. Thus, he volunteered the poet's address in the same instant Chareen held her tongue, the trader believing a visit from the whore might do the sick fellow some good.

As it happened, the poet's flat was located on the Rue des Italiens, merely a short walk from the front of the tavern. She excused herself from the table of the peddler and returned to her own.

Finishing off her last smidgen of wine and a tiny half-bite of fish, she determined she would call on the poet at his flat the following morning. She imagined she could conjure up some sort of believable purpose to rap on the man's door. Perhaps she would feign being lost, thereby knocking on the poet's door wholly by accident.

She got up from her stool and walked off from the Hole, her very step lighter than earlier with the plan taking shape in her head of visiting the poet the next day.

When she returned to Madame Collier's, she raced to her room, immediately picking up her worn book of collected poetry. She gazed at the index of authors with the same rush as she exerted upon entering the rooming house, looking to see if the poet from the Rue des Italiens was included. Nearly at the bottom of the index, she reached the name she sought: “Derwin Dunning”

Breaking into a grand smile, she flipped through her book to find Derwin Dunning's piece, which happened to be a poem she read often and well enjoyed.

On Stream's Bank
A sonnet by
Derwin Dunning
Cambridge, England – 1901

Long slants of sunlight signal day's soon end,
Glancing off the stream's flow, just near the bend.
I sit, I ponder and try best to recall,
How many days left ‘til it become Fall.

Long slants of sunlight signal day's soon end,
Must soon head back to home, some chores to tend.
For now I listen, the stream's placid swell,
Touching me, touching me, all will be well.

Into the water my hands do I dip,
Then a small stone ‘cross the surface I skip.
To stay down at the stream is my own wish,
To wait and to watch for a lone little fish.

Long slants of sunlight signal day's soon end,
Reflections of peace the small stream doth send.

After reading the poem a couple of times, she decided she would commit the piece to memory, like she did with patriotic anthems in the primary grades. She managed the first stanza of Dunning's work before drifting off to sleep.

During the night, Chareen enjoyed a strange and magical dream, quite unlike any slumbering visitation she yet experienced in her days. In the dream, Chareen herself was resplendently dressed in a gown of finest silk, like the kind she had seen worn by an actress on the posters of the theatre district. Around her throat was a jeweled necklace, heavy with diamonds and sapphires and tremendous ivory-colored pearls, a choker like she imagined possessed by a great queen or imperial empress.

In the dream, Chareen was at a grand ball in a palace, she thought, like the fairy princesses in tale books she read as a young girl. She waltzed in a magnificent ballroom, well adorned with golden and crystal chandeliers, her dance partner being the poet, Digs Dunning. In the dream, the poet was the picture of perfect health, strong, virile, dashing. He looked nothing like the bowed, stooped and desperately fragile fellow from the Rue des Italiens.

Chareen woke up at the dawn, a soft pink glow of light streaming through the old, ripped curtain covering the solitary window in the room. She slowly eased herself out of her bed and quietly went about washing and dressing for the day, moving slowly so as not to wake her sleeping chamber mates.

Never in her life had Chareen ever called on anyone, yet alone a man she did not know beyond a solitary conversation in a wayward tavern in a tattered, ratty Parisian district. The closest experiences to paying a social call were the occasional Sunday after church trips to a neighboring family down the road from her Papa's farm and even rarer excursions to her aunt's house in a neighboring village.

Chareen wore the same new dress from the night before, the one she wanted the poet to see, the one she selected specially for the writer she did not in truth even know.

Scrubbed and dressed, Chareen believed the hour too early to call on the poet Dunning, particularly with the man taken so terribly ill as the peddler of the opium had explained the prior eve. Knowing that she had enough money to pay what was due for board to Madame Collier with more still for food and effects, Chareen decided to leave the rooming house at the early hour and make off for a small café at the corner where the Avenue de l'Opera intersected with the Rue des Italiens. She had walked passed the café many a day, looking longingly at the fancy people eating beautiful meals while sipping fine teas and rich liqueurs.

With her new dress, Chareen designed to take her morning meal at the lovely café.

In a jaunty stride, she left Madame Collier's and walked down the Avenue, tilting her head pleasantly at the irregular passerby, the hour being before seven. Shortly, she came upon her destination, a diminutive sign slightly displaying the eatery's name: “Café Raphael.”

Arriving just as the doors opened for business, Chareen was promptly seated by a nattily dressed waiter. Presently, she ordered a café au lait and a generous iced pastry, recommended by the obliging waiter.

While Chareen primly sat at the nicely appointed table, topped with an eggshell white colored linen cloth, a sparkling crystal goblet and well buffed silver, other patrons who happened in her path smiled in her direction. She felt nearly grand, imaging herself to be a country girl making it splendidly in the capital city.

She idled about in Café Raphael for over an hour, doing her best to mimic the posture and pretense of those other women in her view. Eventually, her eagerness to finish her trip to the poet's flat outweighed her enjoyment of the café and she took back to the streets.

Returning to her walk to the Rue des Italiens, she found at least triple the number of folk out and about as opposed to the earlier time before she made off to breakfast. She spotted merchants dressed in trim black suits heading to open their shops, conservative bankers scuttling to commence their exchanges, and many plump women, mothers mostly, bustling to market to obtain choice bread, cheese and fruit of the kind let out in the morning.

She smiled at all the commotion, taking in the hem and haw of another flush day in Paris. Moreover, on that morning, Chareen felt fully a part of the pulsing life of the cosmopolitan venue. For the moment, she was not merely a poor girl shanking about curbs and corners. Rather, she was young lady off to make a proper morning call,

The walk the remainder of the way to the poet's building took little more time. She happily mounted the stairs to the third landing, the level of the poet's flat itself. Her merry state gave way to a fit of nerves the moment she edged down the third floor hallway towards the specific flat occupied by the poet. Wanting, finally, desperately, to cease her steps, she nevertheless continued to carry onward to the poet's door. She felt compelled, like a marionette on twine pulled ever forward.

Reaching the poet's abode, she raised a cupped hand and sounded her presence with a solid rap-rap-rap to the wood. Immediately she heard a solitary grunt emit from inside, certainly the product of a man although sounding quite like a beast. She eased her head against the door, ringlets of black hair falling about her cheek.

In that position, she heard the slight sound of feet slowly shuffling across the floor. She thought she heard labored breathing, but in that regard she was primarily uncertain. She righted herself as the door slowly drew open, the poet Digs Dunning standing beyond the threshold.

She had imagined being at the man's doorstep many times.

“Good heavens,” she exclaimed, sounding more convincing in her feigned dismay at being allegedly lost than she thought she could muster. “This isn't the flat of Madame Collier?”

The poet, gray in the face and with what looked to be dried blood at the side of his lips, shook his head. Chareen looked at the tottering man closely to see if she could discern a glint of recollection in his red rimmed eyes.

Not certain what she saw in the poet's drawn and worn face, she proceeded.

“My goodness… You are the poet… Derwin Dunning.”

Digs furrowed his brows, unsure what to make of the slight, pleasant looking woman at his door. She did, for some reason, look vaguely familiar to the man. Perhaps a woman, who lived around the neighborhood, he thought.

“I am,” he affirmed, after clearing his throat. The mere act of uttering two words seemed to drain the poet all the more. Chareen felt near convinced he might tip over in a dead faint, her face immediately registering her brewing trepidation.

She did not know whether to reach out and support him or back off to allow him wider berth to breathe. In the end, she verbally volunteered that she very much enjoyed his sonnet “On Stream's Bank”.

Extraordinarily, a twinkle seemed to cut through the fellow's filmed over eyes.

“You know my work?” he incredulously inquired.

“Oh, indeed,” she said, parroting the style of speech she overheard at the Café Raphael not an hour before.

“Long slants of sunlight signal day's end, glancing off the stream's flow, just near the bend,” he said, beginning the poem Chareen knew. She picked up and continued:

“I sit, I ponder and try best to recall, how many days left ‘til it become Fall.”

He shook is head, sadly, repeating:

“…How many days left ‘til it become Fall…”

As he spoke the refrain, the poet's eyes seemed to cloud once again; he appeared to slump further though standing in the doorway.

“Sir, are you quite all right?” Chareen asked, noticing the patent dip.

Digs shrugged, the simple movement of his shoulders seemingly sapping whatever strength he held. He grasped onto the doorframe with each hand to maintain standing balance.

“Sir, you should take a chair,” Chareen stated, bluntly and directly.

A puzzled look dashed across the man's face, not knowing what to make of the young woman at his door. He thought, for the moment, that perhaps she was a practicing nurse sent around by the hospital. He faintly remembered being taken to the hospital one night after losing consciousness on the walkway bordering the street in front of his building. Perhaps that was why the woman calling at his door looked familiar.

But then he recalled what the young lady indicated when she arrived at his door. She made some sort of statement making clear that she intended to call upon someone else and arrived at his flat purely accidentally. His mind, so jumbled, left him wondering if anything real was occurring at all or if instead he was swept up into a vision induced by the opium.

“Sir,” Chareen spoke again. “You are not well. Please, allow me to help you to a chair. You need to take a chair.”

The poet shuffled a bit, turning himself sideways, seemingly as if to allow Chareen access inside perhaps to assist him in making it to a seat. Not entirely certain what the man's movement meant, Chareen nevertheless volunteered to help him to a chair. He seemed to nod, although Chareen also wondered if his head bobbed involuntarily because the poet was so weak, so ill.

She put an arm around the poet's shoulder, easing him back into the flat, moving slowly and cautiously. With her arm about Dig's back, with a palm resting on his far shoulder, she felt his boney arm readily through his threadbare shirt.

Entering the flat, Chareen noticed at once that the place was dark as night, save for a flickering wick burning on a nearly spent candle. All of the curtains, made of thick ruby velvet, were drawn tightly closed.

The flat was cluttered with books of all titles, piled about the walls. Likewise, newspapers were scattered around the sitting room fronting the flat, some so old that they had turned from white to yellow to brown, almost as if scorched by flame.

The whole place smelled stale, musty, as if the dank air had set still for many weeks. Had Chareen not known this was the home of the poet she would have taken swift flight imagining she touched a level of the Inferno by alighting in the flat. Indeed, she concluded in the simple yet sure manner of a country girl that some evil snared the ragged poet.

After settling Digs in a rickety chair that she feared may collapse if the man shifted too much, she asked to be pointed towards the kitchen where she could prepare the fellow a brew of tea. With effort, he raised his arm, not able to completely extend his index finger to direct her.

She found the kitchen to be in far worse condition than if a banshee ransacked and polluted it. No where was any tea to be found. Moreover, she found no staples, not even a stale digestive biscuit or a rock hardened heal of bread.

She hurried to the parlor where Digs sat.

“You have no tea,” she said. “You have nothing at all in there, sir.”

Whispering his reply, because that was the full of his strength that he could muster, he said:

“Milk. I only have been able to take milk.”

“Milk?” she asked.

“Yes, I only have been able to take milk. Perhaps a glass in the morning. Perhaps another, again, during the day.

Chareen shuddered, appreciating how very ill the poet had become, but not coming close to understanding what sort of malady could so rack a man and not swallow his life entirely.

“That is all?” she asked.

Despite his stripped condition and his best effort to sit motionless after her query, Digs winced ever so slightly. No matter how delicate his shudder, Chareen, who watched him intently, caught the minute shake. Suddenly, as if bolted by a streak of spring lightening, Chareen better comprehended and then expounded:

“The opium!”

He shut his eyes, as if closed lids would banish him from sight and not the other way around.

“You are so very ill… from taking the opium,” she gasped.

Finally, Digs asked: “Who are you?”

She pulled to his side, kneeling next to his chair.

“I am Chareen de Seine,” she said, not directly appreciating that her name itself had no meaning to the man.

He cocked his head in her direction and pursed his lips as if to say “Well…so!”

“We met… once, really,” she added, hoping to clarify. “We met at the Hole in the Wall.”

Instantly, he recalled the incident at the slovenly pub in which this very same girl came to his table, sat on a stool, spoke with him for a time. He nodded.

Struggling to get the words forced out, Digs asked Chareen why she came to his flat.

Embarrassed and blushing, she explained she had heard he had taken terribly ill. She said she decided to call on him to see what, if anything, she could do to lend aid.

Digs wanted to ask her “Why?” but felt to worn to pursue any further conversation. She thought to herself “Why?” but could muster no obvious answer, no simply scored solitary reason for calling on the sickly scribe.

Hesitating and stuttering, Chareen asked Digs if he cared for some milk. “And perhaps soup, clear soup?”

He softly said soup sounded beyond his capacity to take, but would she mind going to the market square and retrieving him some fresh milk. He directed her to a desk set to the side of the room, a fixture she at once knew was the place where the poet created his work, constructed his art. She rose and approached the desk with the same reverence she drew near the altar rail on the occasion of her first Holy Communion some dozen years ago. On the desk rested a few Francs, cash to be used to buy the milk and, he said, something for her to eat if she so desired.

She stared at the old, wooden desk, with its worn, blue felt mat center set. She thought she should no more touch this artist's station than she should lay hands on the altar of the Lord in a church. Chareen easily saw, lying on the desktop, the tools of the poet's craft – thick paper and ink pens. She no more believed it appropriate to touch the paper or the pens than to brush against the holy relics enshrined in all altar places of Roman Catholic churches. For Chareen, at that moment, the poet's papers and the poet's pens were as sacred as the bits of bone, the saintly relics, sealed tightly below an altar's top.

She looked back in the direction of the dilapidated man, whose eyes were now closed. She quickly snatched the Franc notes off the desk, believing she should kneel or at least bow following her fleeting contact with the poet's desk. She ended up doing neither, feeling the poet's state to be wholly fragile and the man in immediate need of substance, even if it only be milk.

Chareen hurried to and from the market square not far from the flat, purchasing milk, bread, cheese and fresh fruit, hoping she could interest the poet in taking something more than a cow's offering.

She was uncertain if she returned to the flat earlier than the poet expected or if Digs Dunning forgot about her all together. When she returned, the man was well disconnected, inhaling deeply the smoking opium. Not knowing what else to do or quite how to react, Chareen ignored the poet all the while he inhaled himself into an utterly disconnected fog.

She went to the kitchen and sliced up an over ripe apple and cubed tiny pieces of cheese. She also poured out a stout glass of milk and broke off a generous hunk of still warm bread, carrying all of the food back into the parlor on a small and surprisingly clean serving tray she happened upon in the kitchen.

Chareen set all she prepared in front of the poet. He had finished with the opium for the time being and cast his glance onto the service tray. Chareen watched him closely, not knowing what to expect. He gazed from the apple slices to the cheese cubes to the broken bread, skirting from one to another with an expression suggesting he had no idea what he was looking at on the tray.

The glass of milk, however, seemed familiar to the poet and he greedily snatched it off the service, swilling the liquid in no time, swilling quickly like a sucking infant.

Finished drinking, the poet slumped in his chair. His eyes were trained on Chareen, not so much looking at her or through her as merely alighting upon her by happenstance. His breathing became deep, heavy like in slumber. Had his eyes not been opened she would have thought the man asleep. Even so, she doubted he was particularly conscious of his surroundings at the time.

She sat, very still and not wanting to disturb or disrupt the poet in his state, no matter what it might be considered.

After a long time passed, the poet shot forth to the edge of his chair almost as if a hidden plunger behind his back sprung to life, kicking him ahead.

“You know my poetry?” he asked, turning his head slightly to the right looking every bit like a small lad eyeing the pastel colors in a free floating soap bubble. Before she could respond, his body shifted back to its prior position, drooping down as if a hidden puppeteer let loose invisible strings. His eyes and glance fell back into the vague state once more.

“I do,” Chareen replied, feeling she spoke solely to herself as the poet either mentally absented himself from his surroundings or was otherwise compelled to a distant place, harboring elsewhere in a dark corner of his mind. Indeed, he said nothing more.

Chareen stayed with the poet until well in the afternoon, saying nothing to him until she rose to take her leave.

“Sir, I suspect I should go,” she said, her speech not causing the slightest change in the poet's expression. She determined during her long spell sitting silently in the flat, that Digs Dunning took in air regularly, though deeply as if not awake. He did not fall victim to seizure or any miserable palsy. Although he looked terribly ill, she concluded, as best she could, that death would not snatch the poet away immediately.

As she rose and spoke, Digs said nothing. However, when she reached the door and managed the latch, the poet asked: “Shall you return tomorrow?”

With haste, Chareen made to the poet's side, fervently assuring him she would indeed return the next day if that was his desire. In reply, he nodded slightly and asked her name, forgetting what she told him earlier.

“Chareen…” she replied, softly.

Once more the poet nodded his head, just barely, and then closed his eyes.

Chareen returned to Madame Collier's not going back out on the street the remainder of the day. Rather, she curled up on her bed with her worn book of poetry and finished committing Derwin Dunning's sonnet to heart.

The next morning Chareen returned to the poet's flat. She found him looking much like she left him the day before, sitting in the chair with his eyes closed. However, on that morning, the poet held in his hands an opened copy of his own collected works, on which he inscribed:

Chareen –
You have many days left ‘til it become Fall…
Use them wisely, use them well – most of all.
Derwin Dunning

Walking near to the seated man, Chareen realized he no longer took deep breaths as he did the day before. Indeed, Derwin Dunning drew air no more. The poet expired. On that day, the poet died for the opium. But, on that day, the young lady lived for the poetry and never again walked the Rue des Italiens.

The End.

Author's Note:

The Rue des Italiens was a true roadway in Paris. The Hole in the Wall was indeed a less than reputable tavern on the Rue des Italiens during and after the First World War. The narrow pub was described by Ernest Hemingway as being “little more than a passageway” running from the street in the front to the sewers of Paris in the rear. The tavern was known for being a watering hole for a wide variety of persons with a cavalcade of vices.

My little tale about Chareen de Seine and Digs Dunning is, however, wholly fanciful.

Finally, this piece is dedicated to the memory of Ernest Hemingway who brought Paris of the 1910's and 1920's alive for me in his work “A Moveable Feast.”

M.B.

© Mike Broemmel 2009