Chapter 11
Life on the left bank of Paris was for the great unwashed society, I soon discovered, and not for me. One night, seeking a different type of restaurant, I wandered off the beginnings of the Boulevard St Michel into that labryinth of narrow, little twisting streets starting with the Rue du Chat qui Peche Wo the Rue de la Huchette to the claustrophobic Rue St Severin filled now with tourists from all of Europe trying to look like hippies or Sorbonne students, as well as Arabs, Persians, Turks and Africans. They shuffled slowly over the cobblestones, moving like snails past the tiny cinemas, cafes, bookshops. Music wailed, melodies of the Middle East as well as the beat sound of England from jukeboxes, transistor radios and tape recorders. There was the ping-ping of pinball machines, the squeal of girls and the rapid flow of conversation.
Thievery was the rule here, with pickpockets looking especially for unsuspecting Americans and shifty-eyed waiters charging double for a drink and failing to return with the change. There were freaks too, strung out on LSD, as well as homos garbed like women with their faces rouged and false hair hanging to the shoulders. The stink of hash was strong in the air and cars had a perilous time carving a path through the mob flooding the area.
Then-it happened!
The whining pim-pom of the salad wagon and suddenly the streets were blocked off, all ends filled with hard-faced flics some of whom carried sub-machine guns. The Arabs without official papers squeaked like rats and tried to ram themselves through the crowd into the protection of doorways. Students known as revolutionaries raced into the cafes to hide in toilets. But the crowd was too thick, escape was impossible and the flics formed a wedge to drive into us, brandishing their white clubs.
I was grabbed by the front of my jacket and slammed against a wall. They usually, I know, don't ask for your papers in a case like this. It was sensible to produce them rapidly.-
"American?"
"Oui."
The lousy bull flicked the pages of my passport, checking the entry stamp. He rattled off a number to a colleague nearby who consulted a list. The list, running to quite a few pages, had all trouble-makers grouped under nationality. Fortunately, I was not one of the Americans listed.
"Etudiant?" the pig wanted to know. "No. Tourist."
He was skeptical because I appeared younger than my years. So what? My hair wasn't long and my clothes were damned expensive.
"Show me your money."
His eyes bulged when I brought out the wallet that was filled with dollars and franc notes. He whistled and turned to the others. Suddenly, three of them surrounded me, shooting questions.
"Why is a wealthy American here, among the filth?"
"Why do you not remain with the proper tourists on the right bank, near the Champs Elysees area?"
The name of my hotel produced a worse reaction. "Your money? And you reside in such a hole?"
I shrugged. "It's one way to see Paris."
People were being pushed into the salad wagons, entire groups of them, girls as well as boys, French as well as Arabs. No discrimination here. The three flics worked me out of the mob toward the streets near a parked police car. I noticed that many automobiles were being stopped but-only the wrecks, the beat-up Renaults and Simcas and tinny Deux Cheveaux. No Mercedes or Chryslers or Jaguars cruising by were halted.
Other flics were called over but none knew me. My name, passport number and general description were copied down. I stood there patiently, unresisting. In one second they could have beaten me bloody with their white clubs.
"Right!" a flic snarled. "Get lost!"
I did not get lost, I got back to my hotel and checked out, then grabbed a taxi to take me across the Seine and up into the overly expensive sixteenth arrondissement. There, I signed into a four-star hotel on the Avenue Victor Hugo. If living Like a wealthy tourist would keep me out of trouble then by God, I was going to live like a wealthy tourist. But what fucking shits Parisian cops were!
Making mistakes seemed my way, for a few days later I stupidly found myself strolling past the Avenue de I'Opera up past the Cafe de la Paix toward the Rue Scribe where the American Express was. No one knew I was in Paris, but I figured I should check out the mail. I went through the swinging doors, past groups of tourists waiting to be taken on guided tours down the winding steps to the mail counter.
"Frankie Hil!" I said to one of the mail clerks and handed in my passport.
To my surprise she looked in the cubicles and handed me three letters. Puzzled, I paid the one franc fifty for the charge and went out into the Rue Scribe to read the letters. They were all from Barbara.
Oh God!
Apparently I had left a trail an amateur could follow. My moves were traced, not only the run to New Hampshire but my renewal of my passport. Checking the airlines was easy. Thus, Barbara, her parents and some New York detectives who wished to question me about my connection with two thieves named Jack and Alan knew I was in Paris.
Her letters were venomous, stating she was getting a divorce on grounds of desertion and the lawyer's fees would be charged to me. In addition, since she was not employed I would have to support her.
I skimmed the letters, not doing too thorough a reading. Then I went down the Rue Scribe to park at a cafe, order a beer and ponder my moves. Some young girl selling the Herald Tribune forced a copy on me. I sat there, sipping at the beer, looking through the newspaper but thinking of the stretch in jail that awaited me back in the States.
I had to get out of Paris but where could I go? A glimpse at the various news stories in the papers showed trouble down on the French Riviera. The waters of the Italian Riviera were polluted. There was a general strike in Rome. Hotels in Majorca were overcrowded, an epidemic had broken out in Portugal. Shit! Rumania, Hungary-No! Czechoslovakia also no, all iron-curtain territory. Greece?
I squinted up at the sky thinking of a hot sun, blue waters, brown girls flashing their naked thighs. What the hell, hadn't I read the book, Zorba the Greek? Why not? Paying for the beer, I trudged back to the American Express and bought a ticket for a flight leaving for Vienna. From there I'd fly down to Turkey and then cross over by boat to Greece. No sense in making things easier for Barbara or any detectives from New York. The shits!
I made it. Things worked out smoothly, and after eating the marvelous food in Vienna and screwing a blonde English tourist, a giant of a Viennese whore and the young girl who swept my hotel room, I took off for Istanbul.
That city was filthy! The dregs of humanity resided there, primitive types still acting as they had three or four hundred years before, yowling, wailing in that strange language, begging, trying to sell everything from worry beads to stolen watches that might run one hour if that, rings with false stones...Oohhh! I hit the section called the old city, visited the Grand Bazaar and got hustled by merchants peddling junk.
Surprisingly, a lot of them spoke some English. "Mister, mister," they would call out, offering Meerschaum pipes, winter coats made of thick suede and sheepskin, gold bracelets, copper trays, silk sultan pants that ballooned out and rugs. Rugs, rugs, rugs!
Some slit-eyed character straight out of old Asia carried a huge canister filled with coffee on his back. He poured some into a cup that thousands must have drunk out of, offering me a sip at a cheap price.
I brushed him off only to encounter a greasy-headed urchin of about twelve who would take me to a whore who was an ex-belly dancer. His English was good and he was persistent, following me from stall to stall. When I started to buy some almonds he warned me.
"No, mister, here they are stale."
He directed me further along the market to a cleaner-looking stall. At length, I agreed to go to see his dancer. "But she better not be diseased," I told the little bastard.
We marched through the pushing, shoving mob down an unpaved street to a series of houses that seemed about to topple into the river. Ragged rugs covered the doorway in lieu of a door. We went up squeaking stairs past a toilet where I heard someone evacuating his bowels and then entered a large room.
"There!" The gutter-snipe pointed at a woman relaxing on a couch. Above her were pictures of Hollywood stars and a map of Finland of all things. The room was filled with a weird assortment of cheap furniture, leather cushions, lamps, mirrors and of course, rugs. The rugs were on the wall, over the window, on the tiled floor and spread across a bed.
The woman was leafing through a magazine and munching away on thick slabs of halvah. She barely looked up as a kid rattled off several sentences. Finally, she replied, mumbling her gibberish but continuing to chew up the halvah and read the journal.
"She has said," the boy told me, "that she is not in the mood to dance."
"In that case tell her to go to hell."
"It is clear that she shall fuck for the grand sir, however."
"Oh, she will eh?"
The woman swallowed the last of the halvah and got up, licking the tips of her fingers. "Thirty dollar!"
Ahh, they can never speak English except when it comes to cash. I looked about, knowing that no man who wandered into a dump like this would expect to pay thirty dollars.
"See! Will the grand sir look at Fatima and understand that her body has all things." The boy pointed, selling the whore. "Breasts! Hips! And..." here he shouted in Turkish and with a lazy sigh the woman turned, displaying her rear end. "Buttocks!"
She wore a silken kimono of a violent red buttoned at the neck and reaching down to her naked ankles. Her breasts were obvious but she had to pull the garment tight for me to judge the contours of her buttocks.
A fool is born every minute I considered as I counted out twenty-five dollars. "Here! Not one penny more."
"Thirty!" The word came through her teeth like a whisper.
The boy looked foolishly at the money. "The grand sir should know that a dancer of Fatima's talents must have thirty."
"Yeah. Well the grand little pimp should tell the grand belly dancer who is too lazy to dance that thirty is a lot of money."
Fatima displayed her wares. Off came the silken wrapper and this boy found himself coughing up thirty dollars. The little pimp snatched up five dollars and fled wishing the grand sir a pleasant fuck.
She was big, and she was sort of fat with the kind of a belly that bastards from the Middle East would prize above diamonds, but she was dynamically curved, her body a series of balls. How old? Well, who could say with these Oriental women. And as for her face...it should have been covered with a veil. But that body!
I made certain the door of her room was locked and to prevent anyone breaking in while I mounted her I pushed the wooden chest of drawers against the door. Then I stripped, resting my clothing on a leather camel saddle not far from the bed.
She walked about in a hip-flinging way to put a disc on a cheap record player. When she plugged the cord into a wall socket I was shocked for I didn't think electricity was available.
"Halvah?"
"No, no!" I pointed at my erected penis, thinking that was the best way of indicating I wished to get down to business.
Fatima broke off some halvah, popped it between her greasy lips, licked the remains from her fingers and tugged the rug from the bed. The sheets were purple with a square like a baby's rubber diaper located in the spot where our privates would rest. Fatima, apparently, did not wish her sheets soiled with come.
The music played on and on, whining bazookas, moaning Turks and soft drum-beats. Fatima frowning, examined my penis for signs of disease. Then she poked her finger into my bush looking for crawling crabs.
"No lice, sweetheart. Now come on, give me my thirty dollars worth."
She applied a match to some incense and its fragrance filled the room. Then her hands worked me over, tickling every inch of my body, hardening my penis until it was pliable steel. There were no kisses but a lot of foreplay with our fingers. Her breasts, two tremendous globes hung down, too soft, not at all firm but nevertheless still powerful enough to whet my passion.
The thick pile of hair carpeting her privates was the same texture as on her head, jet black, coarse. Her waist had a "roll of flesh around it, put there by wine and greasy food and sweets, but her mammoth thighs were round and hard with the brown skin softer than silk.
She got into position on the bed, staring dreamily up at the ceiling while my hands did some traveling. Her body, filled with heat, caused my desire to steam. I caressed her strong leg muscles, petted her thighs, fondled the mound under the black silk rug and this produced a smile from the former belly dancer.
Her eyes, bright black, shone, and there was a trace of brazenness in her face that I found lust-provoking. It was difficult to judge her age. The sag of her belly and breasts might cause me to pick thirty-five or even forty as her age. Somehow we communicated and she stated that she had lived on this earth for twenty-eight years.
These Moslem types aged quickly, I knew. Twenty-eight and she looked ten years more than that. I thought of sweet, silky Jean back in New Hampshire, of Jeannette Cosmo, who was forty-five but fantastic. Then I wondered what in hell I was doing here, in the room of a run-down whore.
But my thirty dollars was gone so I ought to get full value. I jabbed my hands under her great buttocks, raised her and penetrated, delving into a hot, cream-filled hole.
Here my ex-dancer showed her skill and started to buck under me and thrash her ass around and spur me on to rise and fall swiftly, jerkingly. Her inner muscles would relax then tighten, milking my manhood. She bit down on her lower lip, bent her broad back and embraced me passionately with her arms and legs.
Now and then she would stop the action and with a wild twist of her ass expel my penis from her slit Then she would feel it with her fingers while a questioning look came into her eyes.
She expected me to come. Hell, what did she think I was anyway? I was a man who took his time, kept a tight grip on his control. As she tucked my thing back into her large case I made up my mind to make her climax.
We fucked. And the music came to an end with the needle scraping the still-spinning disc but we made other music-the bed groaned on its springs and the four wooden legs creaked.
After examining my penis for the third time Fatima knew that she was dealing with the champion and started to labor under me moaning out the words of her language. Her big, bulbous buttocks wriggled while her fat stomach oscillated.
She shuddered, sucked in breath and twisted and turned in an incessant rhythm. But I was lunging in and out, battling Fatima, offering no quarter, sweltering between her hard thighs.
My hands tried to hold the large breasts but they were too big, wet from sweat, rolling about on her chest. Swiftly, I clutched the hard ass again and used a tempo that was teasing, bringing my cock out slowly until her vaginal lips ringed the balled tip almost lovingly-and then speedily I'd ram it in.
That took care of my lady friend, that carried her up the hill of lust, past all passion to the high tip of ecstasy. She let out some yells and gripped me with a brutal force. My lunges quickened as her rotund hips twisted in rapid circles.
Waves of passion flung her up and I had to really capture her pumping ass or fall over her soft body. Her golden-brown skin became red and her breathing got louder. Fatima released a curse, swallowed in an attempt to catch her breath, failed and then...her lusts boiled over.
She was not in a bed fucking for a living but in a harem, dancing before the Sultan, twirling her ass, revolving her stomach, swinging her shoulders, sending her breasts flying, whirling and spinning and-coming!
"Eeeee...gaaaaa...gaggggg!" she shouted, and then I was holding a dead woman.
It was time to let go and I did, paying her further with several last, brutal thrusts, my hands clinging more avidly to her stilled ass. Then, the faucets were opened and cream spurted out of me.
"Ahhhhh...oooohhhh!"
I remained in her until my tool got soft and started to retreat, pulling up and up till it was small and flopped out of the scum-filled hole.
She was happy, lying there and smiling, showing me gold teeth and greasy lips. It was time to get out before the sight of her became disgusting. As I got off the stench floated up out of her privates, not at all pleasant.
Farewell to Istanbul, I thought and reached for my clothes. She indicated that I could linger longer, have another one, on the house. No, no, I pointed to my watch, hoping she would get the idea that I had a train to catch.
As I left, staggering past the toilet where some poor soul continued a battle with diarrhea, I hoped that the girls in Greece who hustled for thirty dollars would offer not only a slim body but a fresh-smelling one.
The rest of my tale is soon told. I landed in Cyprus, rented a house, got involved with slender redhead Olivia and her shitty husband. And-war came!