THE BLIND SINGERS
Two peasant women dressed in fairly recent vintage and heavy full-length fur coats sang out to the passing crowd that rarely stopped to listen, giving each of them a coin or a small bill into their tin cup. Coins made sounds, so that was the more popular donation. The women would at least hear the donation. They were half a block away from the blind accordion player outside Hotel George. Striking about both of them was the whiteness of their eyes that seemed to roll as they sang old peasant songs they had learned from childhood in the villages. Rumor had it that these particular beggars were working for a kind of sutenir, a pimp for beggars. He’d take a cut of their daily earnings for giving them protection and allowing them to sing at that spot. And they were there ever
