The jury is still out on women police. On whether they can take it. Or for how long. On the other hand, maybe it's me: Maybe I'm just another fuckoff. New York PD, for instance, is now fifteen percent female. And all over the country women detectives continue to do outstanding work, celebrated work. But I'm thinking that these must be some very, very exceptional ladies. Many times, when I was in Homicide, I said to myself, Walk away girl. Ain't nobody stopping you. Just walk away. Murders are men's work. Men commit them, men clean up after them. Because men like violence. Women really don't figure that much, except as victims, and among the bereaved, of course, and as witnesses. Ten or twelve years back, during the arms buildup toward the end of Reagan's first term, when the nuclear thing was on everyone's mind, it seemed to me that the ultimate homicide was coming and one day I'd get the dispatcher's call alerting me to five billion dead: "All of them, except you and me." In full consciousness and broad daylight men sat at desks drawing up contingency plans to murder everybody. I kept saying out loud: " Where are the women?" Where were the women? I'll tell you: They were witnesses. Those straggly chicks on their tents on Greenham Common, England, making the military crazy with their presence and their stares — they were witnesses. Naturally, the nuclear arrangement, the nuclear machine, was strictly men only. Murder is a man thing.
Martin Amis, Night Train
Allow me to apologize in advance for the bad language, the diseased sarcasm, and the bigotry. All police are racist. It's part of our job. New York police hate Puerto Ricans, Miami police hate Cubans, Houston police hate Mexicans, San Diego police hate Amerindians, and Portland police hate Eskimos. Here we hate pretty well everybody who's non-Irish. Or non-police. Anyone can become a police — Jews, blacks, Asians, women — and once you're there you're a member of a race called police, which is obliged to hate every other race.
Martin Amis, Night Train
O Café des Amateurs era a cloaca da Rue Mouffetard, essa maravilhosa rua estreita, sempre coalhada de gente, por via do seu mercado, que desembocava na Place Contrescarpe. As retretes de agachar das velhas casa de apartamentos — havia uma em cada andar, ao princípio das escadas — com os seus relevos de cimento estriado em forma de sapato de cada lado da abertura, para evitar que algum locataire escorregasse — davam para as fossas que à noite eram esvaziadas por meio de uma bomba, para o interior de carros-tanques puxados por cavalos. No verão, o barulho da bomba entrava pelas janelas abertas, acompanhado de fortes emanações. Os carros-tanques eram pintados de amarelo e de cor de açafrão, e quando, à luz da Lua, eles trabalhavam na Rue Cardinal Lemoire, os cilindros puxados pelos cavalos faziam pensar em quadros de Braque.
Mas a cloaca do Café des Amateurs é que ninguém esvaziava, e o seu cartaz amarelecido, onde se liam os termos e as penalidades impostas pela lei contra a embriaguez pública, era tão desprezado e estava tão sujo das moscas como os clientes eram assíduos e mal cheirosos.
Ernest Hemingway, Paris é uma Festa
tradução de Virgínia Motta
Edição Livros do Brasil