by Denis Pitts
There were frequent attempts, particularly by matronly ladies, to adopt him and to take him back to their cruise ships. He considered this possibility with care. And realized that he was still a wanted criminal on the run from Nasser himself.
So, by the time he had reached the age of eight, Jean-Paul Becker was shrewd, good at making his living from the street, and growing, rapidly, into a very handsome child.
ELBA, 1440
It was a superb lunch. The surprise dish was quail, freshly shot in the mountains of the island that morning, served à la souvarov, bubbling in a sauce of truffles, fois gras and Madeira. All three wines were a perfect choice. Over such a meal there could be no more rancor; and as the great board of cheeses from all parts of the Continent was removed from the table, a decanter of port was passed around. They were contented now. The atmosphere had eased completely.
The President of France raised the glass of port to his nose and sniffed discreetly. He sipped it and allowed it to pass around his palate.
“No need to guess,” he said. “Taylor’s, 1927, eh, Becker?”
“Actually, and I do hate to correct you, Monsieur le President, it is Cockburn’s.”
The President acknowledged the error and twisted the glass in his hand as he stood up.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I give you a toast. To a most gracious friend, Jean-Paul Becker. Perhaps he, by this very lunch, has succeeded more than the four of us in uniting Europe.”
The other three stood. They, too, raised their glasses to Becker, who smiled shyly.
He sat very still and listened to their remarks thoughtfully, and then rose to his feet.
“Please stay seated, gentlemen,” he said. “It has been a singular honor for me and my staff to have such distinguished visitors here in my house. I am delighted that the lunch was to your satisfaction, gentlemen, because I was eager to put you in a frame of mind in which you would be receptive to the announcement I am about to make.
“It is my duty to tell you that I am not a good host. Indeed, I have broken certain fundamental rules, and I must tell you that you have been invited here under false pretenses.
“Moreover, I must admit to a lapse of manners of considerable enormity. I have listened to every word of what you thought was a completely confidential discussion.”
The effects of the wine and the food and the heat of the sun were sufficient to dull the immediate reactions of the four men. Indeed, the President of Italy was almost on the point of dozing off.
The Prime Minister was the first to react. He had drunk less than the others, being anxious to stay completely aware in any later discussions, especially with the French President, an experienced wine-drinker.
“What are you saying?”
“To put it crudely, your discussion was bugged. Please allow me to continue.”
All four were wide-awake now.
“I invited you to hold your summit meeting in my house, gentlemen, because I thought it would create the best possible atmosphere for sober, reasoned argument that would lead to truly positive attempts on all your parts to unify this Continent.
“I heard nothing this morning except the cockpit crowings of men imbued with the worst possible national vanity.”
The President of France started to rise.
“Becker, I am prepared to forgive this outrage if you admit at once that you are drunk,” he said. “I take it that you are.”
“On the contrary, Monsieur le President,” he said. “I have never been more single-mindedly sober in all my life. I would be grateful if you sat while I finish what I have to say.”
The four looked at him with disbelief. He was not smiling now. His face might have been hewn out of the mountain rock that lay behind them. He spoke slowly, deliberately, precisely, in order that all should understand.
“It is abundantly clear that your discussions are doomed to failure,” he said. “And that the disintegration of Europe is about to begin. I am, as you know, the chairman of the Becker Group of companies, which is the most powerful industrial complex in the world.
“My companies employ over one-and-a-half million men and women, upon whom depend, possibly, a further four million wives and children. It would not be unreasonable to estimate that another ten million people are dependent, one way or another, in related industries, upon the Becker Group.
“I do not exaggerate when I say that the breakup of Europe would represent untold hardship among many Becker employees, because my group depends very largely on the political stability of the Continent. Unfortunately, such stability is threatened by the politicians themselves, and thus the Becker Group is threatened.
“I have always put the employees of my group first. There is little doubt that such a paternalistic interest in the welfare of the employees has been a major contributory factor to the group’s success. But there are also hundreds of thousands of stockholders who depend upon my group of companies and who have put their trust in my operation.
“They, together with the major banking interests all over the world, have a direct stake in the future of Europe.”
Becker watched the reactions of the four men. The Prime Minister was red in the face. The President of Italy adjusted his hearing aid continually; there was a look of complete bewilderment on his expressive old face. The Chancellor folded and unfolded his napkin. He did not look at Becker at all.
“I must tell you, gentlemen, that following the completely undignified brawl that took place among you this morning in my drawing room, at twelve noon, Greenwich mean time, I put into effect a chain of events that will make it quite unnecessary for you to return to your respective countries for some time to come.
“You will remain my house guests. So will your various advisers and security men, all of whom have been placed under armed guard while we have been sitting at this table.
“Now you will excuse me. I have much to do.”
He smiled. “Please help yourself to more port. My staff will do their utmost to ensure your absolute comfort during your stay in my house.”
The expression on the face of the French President had remained unchanged throughout the whole of this. Now it assumed a sardonic sneer.
“A most interesting little speech, Becker,” he said “Fascinating, indeed. Tell us about this chain of events.”
Becker walked around the table, pausing behind each of them in turn.
“Very briefly, you are all aware that during the past fifteen years, the Becker Group has succeeded in taking over a large number of industries and making them function and pay. I own, through my various companies, the Italian, German and British motor industries. I have a substantial financial interest in the motor industry of France. Equally, I own much of the European oil and petrochemical industry as well as by far the biggest ship-building and aircraft-manufacturing companies in Europe.
“Do I need to go on? You, after all, are very much aware of the size and scope of the Becker Group. It is through the very large and heavy taxation paid to your governments by that group that you have managed to survive these past fifteen years. Indeed, it is the case, is it not, that even your nationalized industries have drawn largely upon my group’s experts for advice?
“I have achieved this by a series of takeover bids which many regarded as daring and, in some cases, quite foolhardy.
“But by the use of ruthless methods, by cutting out deadwood in management and by rigid financial control and the introduction of bright, intelligent management techniques, the Becker Group has succeeded in making each of these industries work most effectively.”
“So?” sneered the President of France.
“So, gentlemen, the Becker Group of companies is now indulging in the final and most logical takeover of all. We are taking over Europe.”
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom reached forward and grabbed the glass of port in front of him. He drank it in one gulp.
“Bugger me,” he said in little more than a whisper.
; 5
It was easy for him to merge into that town, and to become as anonymous as any of the ubiquitous cats that slid their way through the ill-lit streets by night. Port Said is a town of transients, whoring sailors and brawling soldiers, wheedling traders and refugees whose flights from the armies of Italy, Germany and Israel had ended at the mouth of the Suez Canal.
For thousands of tourists and emigrants to the East, it was the beginning of Asia, a place where they expected to be pestered by small boys and cheated by tradesmen.
Jean-Paul watched the wharfside fishing families who screamed their wares from the docks of the exquisitely carved dhows that glided into the harbor at dawn from Lake Manzala and the sea; and the Tuaregs, gaunt, proud men in black, who flowed in from the west, high on their camels, their eyes cruel and contemptuous of the chattering, scrounging fellahin of the town.
And the Bedouins, who appeared by night to trade at sunrise, then load their camels with supplies before riding off into the distant wastelands of the Sinai. Jean-Paul even tried to join a Bedouin caravan to get away from the town; but the chief looked down from his camel at the blue eyes of the boy and gave him no more than a withering glance before riding away.
And so he became part of the town. He knew it well now, its alleyways and hiding places. He knew the sounds of the town; of the copper beaters, the basketmakers, the silk weavers; the choking of the motor boats and the curious wail of the ferrymen; and, at night, in his tiny byre, he knew the sorrowful moan of the harbor foghorns.
He knew the smells of the town, too, the spices and herbs in the bazaar, the smell of freshly killed meat, the smells of seaweed and varnish and ship’s paint and the smoky, garlic-heavy scent of kebabs turning on spits on every streetcorner.
He became part of the curious demi-monde of the town; some of them permanent residents, most of them, like himself, chance visitors, anxious to move on.
There was a wizened Englishman named Lester, a remittance man, who gave Jean-Paul fifty piasters each Friday for helping with the elaborate preparation of his weekend opium pipe. And there was Yumanian, a pompous Armenian pederast, who sent love letters to the boy via grinning couriers. They came in heavily scented violet envelopes.
And there were the Misses McDougall and McCrae, Scottish ladies of noble birth, imperious, regal indeed in their nature, former British army hospital matrons, who sent him daily to the meat market to buy offal at inflated prices which they would cook in a vast, foul-smelling cast-iron pot for feeding late at night to the stray cats of the town.
He also knew the belly dancers from the Exotica Cabaret, the magicians from the Chanteclair night club, the girls from the chorus line at the Trixie Bar, the pimps from the Nouveau Folies and the line of regular boyfriends who queued in battered, flashily painted American cars outside the garish stage door of Le Pyramid Club de Danse.
He was everywhere, moving quickly through the town, eager, always helpful, ever discreet.
Some nights he would negotiate fees between Greek-speaking cabaret girls and their English-speaking clients. Other nights he would take sizable bribes from taxi drivers to steer merchant seamen of all nationalities in their direction.
He learned more languages; and he learned the ability to survive and even prosper in that predatory, grasping town that was, indeed, the mouth of Asia.
He knew that money was made, quite easily it seemed, from vice; and yet he knew nothing of the pleasure of vice itself. He had seen fat women trying to do impossible things with thin, half-starved donkeys; he had seen all the sexual gyrations of a troupe of performing dwarfs for which French sailors had paid him well to arrange. He had seen exhibitions between fleshy and flabby putains des rue which he himself had organized, and he had laughed, a small boy’s laughter, at the antics of the women, knowing only that he would receive a handsome tip when it was all finished.
There was no logic or sense to it all; except, possibly, in the case of Fatima, the grossest of all, who danced through a haze of hashish in the Café Suid, bending obscenely over the plastic topped tables and filling her vagina with foreign coins placed there by jovial, drunken servicemen.
Jean-Paul’s job was to stand near at hand, toward the end of her dance, and await the climax — when she would release the night’s takings and spill them onto the dance floor. The money would rattle down in a noisy shower to rounds of applause and laughter.
On the following morning, the boy would take the money to the Port Said office of a British bank, where a serious-faced young man would sort out the coins into piles of pennies, drachmas, francs, lire, piasters and other currencies from all parts of the world. The young man could guess only vaguely at the money’s previous place of deposit. He would hand the boy a certificate of deposit, and Jean-Paul would collect a one-percent fee from Fatima. She paid him from a china jug which she kept under her bed.
She was, she explained to him, saving hard for a retirement villa near the beach at Alexandria.
His special friend and benefactor was a fat, and sweating Greek named Alexander Kokkinos, a man totally bald except for a geometrically placed line of perhaps twenty hairs which sliced along his white pate almost as if he had drawn them on each morning.
Kokkinos was a printer and pornographer and lived under the illusion that he was putatively a great writer and philosopher. He suffered badly from asthma and nearsightedness, and he had a stomach that grumbled continuously.
In a small shopfront behind the main street, Kokkinos operated a flatbed printing machine of great antiquity; pieces of metal flew off it at frequent intervals and lay in a growing pile on the floor without any particular detriment to the efficiency of the machine itself.
Upon this he would print advertisements for church bazaars, the sales of houses and other property, invitations to fêtes given by the British community and other notices of lawful activities. He would do this by day.
By night, however, he would manage to turn out essays in filth written by himself in appalling English. Street boys would queue every morning for the first editions of “L’edition Kokkinos,” books which bore such titles as “The Duchess is Dooly punished” or “Eleven girls won saylor” or “Norty Nicole gets trooly spacked.”
For the wage of sweetened tea and sugary cakes plus an occasional fifty-piaster note, Jean-Paul would read the proofs of these books — which, fortunately, were rarely more than twenty pages long. But he could seldom persuade the fat, wheezing Greek to change a word.
Had he understood the meanings of many of the words which he read, the industry might have produced a higher quality of literature; but in his genuine innocence, Jean-Paul learned only such obscenities as CNUT, ASA, NIPLE and STIT; and gathered that there were such things as PUBLIC HAIRS, FLASHY TIGHS and HONING BOSOOMS.
Kokkinos would lecture the boy as he thumbed with fat fingers for minute pieces of type which he would inspect by holding them close to his thick glasses.
“Read this, boy.”
“She raised her sliken pettycoat and ropped her kickers, explosing her precious plice,” said Jean-Paul. “But is it properly spelled?” asked the boy.
“Spell? Spell? Who cares, boy? Is good, eh?”’
He chucked the boy on the cheek.
“Lock the form and we’ll print it. Two pages of my autobiography, I wrote last night.”
Kokkinos turned to the machine.
“Now, boy. What was Sir Jasper doing when we left him?”
“Taking out his great rogan, sir.”
“Ah yes,” said Kokkinos. “Now for the great ravishingment.”
Kokkinos placed the huge bulk of his body against the oily machine.
“Before the war, boy, I was big publisher in Mother Greece. Now look at me, eh, just look at me. How do you spell ‘vuvla,’ eh? With a V or with an F?”
Jean-Paul left the printing shop one midnight and made his way along the Rue de Lesseps to collect Fatima’s takings at the Café Suid. It was a brilliant, moonlit night and the evening was heavy with
the scent of summer. His walk was jaunty and he was at ease with the world.
He had friends, he even had money, almost enough hidden away to buy a false passport and the freedom to leave this country.
He passed a late-night kebab stall and waved to the old man whose face blazed red in the reflection of the glowing charcoal. He heard the distant sirens of a convoy of ships on the canal. There was a knot of drunken English sailors on the sidewalk in front of him; and he wondered whether to offer help. But he saw they were already being led by two small boys.
He entered the Café Suid by the back door and peered through a gap in the curtains at the back of the stage. The smoke was thicker than usual tonight and he had difficulty in seeing more than the fat bulk of the dancer, her huge buttocks clenched tightly together as she retreated toward the stage.
The music was strident, the fiddler playing at full blast, the regular tapping of the drum getting faster and faster. From this vantage point he could see her great pendulous breasts swinging out from side to side.
She stopped at one more table where an American had placed a silver half-dollar on the corner. It was too much to resist. She lowered herself very slowly, anxious not to lose a single piaster of her takings, and picked the coin up, shaking her body all the while. She then retreated from the audience toward the small dance stage.
Jean-Paul pushed open the curtain and ran out to pick up the money. He moved with feverish speed to beat the customers, who were usually anxious for souvenirs. The fat woman continued to dance over him.
There was one large coin lying at the foot of an Egyptian soldier in the audience. The man was beginning to lean toward it when Jean-Paul ran forward to pick it up.
As he leaned down, he felt a hand grab at his neck. Another hand grabbed at his ear. He felt his face being pulled up.
