By Jean-Paul Clébert (1926–2011), from a story written in 1952 and published in the Winter 2015 issue of The Literary Review. Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin. New York Review Books will publish Paris Vagabond, Clébert’s book about underground Paris, next March.

Before the war there was, I think, in the Saint-Paul neighborhood, on Rue de Fourcy, a most astonishing public space, a whorehouse for hoboes. This bedlam — now vanished from the earth if not its clients’ memories — whose sorely missed atmosphere can be readily imagined, consisted of two rooms: the Senate, where the rate was ten francs,…