“The ring does not please you, oh golden-voiced one?” Sheikh Abdullah asked, a look of concern (and perhaps of about-to-be-injured pride) on his face.
“Oh, sure, Sheikh,” Boris said, slipping back into Arabic. “Thanks a lot. Just what I’ve always wanted.”
“You must come with me to my home,” the Sheikh said, “and sing for my grandson.”
“Well, I’ll see how the schedule looks, Sheikh,” Boris said.
“Boris, here they come,” Hassan said in alarm. He gestured toward the lobby door, opening onto Avenue George V. A thin line of hotel employees and gendarmes was about to fall beneath a crowd of about two hundred middle-aged, amply built Parisian women who had needed only the ninety seconds of Verdi that Boris had sung to know that he was somewhere in the neighborhood; to find where; to throw modesty, decorum and everything else aside to satisfy their deep hunger to see him; and, if the Gods were smiling on them, perhaps even to touch him.
A look of genuine concern crossed Boris’s face.
“What did you let me sing for?” he demanded angrily. “You know what always happens! The last time this happened, by the time I got away I was wearing nothing but one garter and a jockstrap.”
He took off at a dead run for the rear of the hotel.
“You go with him, Your Excellency,” Hassan said, suddenly making up his mind. “I’ll stay here and fight a rear-guard action.”
“Ahmed will stay with you,” the Sheikh said. “Sell your life dearly,” he ordered. Allah will reward you for it in heaven!” He drew his own dagger and, with surprising agility for a man of sixty-eight (or sixty-nine), ran after Boris, vowing in his mind that before the Infidel Women got the Golden-Voiced One, they would know they had been in a fight with a man.
It was not the first time that his fans had pursued Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov into the George V, so the hotel management was prepared for this invasion, even though it was unexpected.
Boris boarded an elevator, holding the door open with his hand long enough for Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug to get in with him, and then rode the elevator down to the subbasement. Tucking the Sheikh’s arm into his, he made his way through a maze of steampipes, water drains and the like, around the electrical generating system to a heavy, bolted steel door. A hotel employee unlocked it, and Boris and Sheikh Abdullah went through it. A panel truck, lettered HOTEL GEORGE V GARBAGE DESPOSEMENT, sat there, engine running. Boris and Abdullah got into the back, which had been outfitted with two armchairs and a bottle of Dom Perignon ’54 in a silver cooler. The door closed.
The truck drove up the ramp and onto Avenue George V, tooting its horn and making its way slowly but surely through the frantic mass of women and the gendarmerie attempting to bring them under control. The panel truck drove up Avenue George V to the Place de General Charles de Gaulle (formerly Place de l’Étoile), circled the Arc de Triomphe, then drove the quarter of a mile down Rue de la Grande Armée, where it turned off and finally drove into the courtyard of one of the elegant apartment houses that line both sides of the street.
It stopped. The driver jumped from behind the wheel, ran to the rear of the truck and opened the door.
“All is well, Maestro,” he said, bowing as he opened the door.
“It went very smoothly this time,” Boris Alexandrovich said. “My compliments to the management.”
“Our pleasure, Maestro,” the driver said.
“Where are we?”
“We’re at my pad,” Boris said. “Come on in. Hassan will be along in a little while. You and me’ll have a little belt until he shows up.”
“A little belt?” Sheikh Abdullah asked, somewhat confused.
“Something to keep the pipes greased,” Boris said. He tossed the now-drained bottle of Dom Perignon ’54 into a garbage can. “You never can fly on one wing, as I always say.”
Sheikh Abdullah was disturbed to the point that he didn’t notice that the elevator which they now boarded took them to the top floor of the building. He allowed himself to be shown to a large, tastefully furnished living room and installed on a couch.
“What’s your pleasure, Sheikh?” Boris asked. “Some more of the bubbly?”
“My friend,” the Sheikh said, “I do not wish to insult your magnificent hospitality, but I follow the teachings of the Prophet.…”
“Which prophet is that?” Boris asked, politely.
“Mohammed,” the Sheikh explained. “And the Prophet teaches that his followers should not partake of the fermented grape.”
“He certainly has a point,” Boris said. “Not to worry, Sheikh.” Boris turned to a large bar, poured three ounces of a clear liquid into a glass and handed it to the Sheikh.
“And what is this?”
“It’s a health drink I have sent from Yugoslavia,” Boris said. “It’s sort of plum juice. They call it slivovitz.”
The Sheikh took a healthy swallow and winced, his eyes closing, as the slivovitz hit tongue, mouth and throat accustomed to nothing stronger than orange juice and tea.
“It has a strange flavor,” he said, looking with something close to envy at Boris Alexandrovich, who tossed his glass down neat, gave off with a pleasureful belch and patted his stomach in appreciation. He then poured another glassful.
“It grows on you,” Boris said. “It does wonders for the appetite and settling the stomach.”
The Sheikh was fully aware that medicines and tonics often had an unpleasant taste. Possibly this foul-tasting, burning liquid was the elixir which gave this angel-voiced lion of a man his strength. And not only the strength to sing, the Sheikh realized, after a moment, but to have all those females clamoring for his services. If that was the case, certainly a moment’s unpleasant taste and a burning sensation was a cheap enough price to pay.
Sheikh Abdullah raised the glass of slivovitz to his lips and, in the manner of a man taking medicine, downed it with a grimace and squinting eyes. Oddly enough, it didn’t taste as bad or burn as painfully now as it had with the first swallow. And its medicinal, tonic qualities were now quite evident: a warm, entirely pleasant glow began to spread from Sheikh Abdullah’s throat and stomach all over his body.
“Forgive my bad manners,” Sheikh Abdullah said, “but could you possibly find it in your heart to spare an old man another draught of your marvelous elixir?”
“My pleasure, Sheikh,” Boris said, refilling both their glasses. He raised his glass to his lips and, in his own tongue, offered the dedicatory incantation of his infidel faith. The least that good manners dictated that he do, Sheikh Abdullah realized, would be to offer the dedicatory incantation himself. It was the first English phrase that had ever passed his lips: “Mud in your eye,” he repeated, solemnly.
“You’re all right, Sheikh,” Boris said to him in Arabic, patting him warmly on the back. “What was it you said brought you to Paris?”
“It was an invitation I could not refuse,” Sheikh Abdullah said, “from the son of an old friend. He wishes me to go into the oil business.” He took another swallow of the slivovitz. The elixir now seemed to have an entirely new, wholly pleasant taste.
“Well, you’d better watch out,” Boris said. “Unless you know what you’re doing, you can lose your shirt in the oil business.”
“You are not suggesting that Hassan ad Kayam is less than honest?”
“Hassan is as honest as the day is long,” Boris said.
“I am pleased to hear you say that,” the Sheikh said.
“Not too bright, but honest,” Boris said.
“I had the same feeling myself,” the Sheikh said. “You know others in the oil business?”
“As a matter of fact,” Boris said, pausing to freshen the Sheikh’s glass, “one of my dearest friends happens to be in the oil business: Horsey de la Chevaux.”
“That sounds French,” the Sheikh said, deeply suspicious.
“No,” Boris said, “he’s an American—like me.”
“You are an American? From your name, my fri
end, I thought perhaps you were Russian.”
“Way back, I suppose,” Boris said, “on my father’s side. But I am an American.”
“Mud in your eye,” the Sheikh said solemnly, hoping he had the pronunciation correct. He tossed down the slivovitz.
“Mud in your eye,” Boris replied, smiling and tossing down his slivovitz.
The Sheikh was pleased. This giant of a man liked him. The elixir made him feel twenty, even thirty, years younger. There seemed to be only one problem.
“My dear friend,” the Sheikh said, “I grovel at your feet in my shame.”
“What seems to be the problem?” Boris asked.
“We have drunk all of the elixir,” the Sheikh said, nodding at the empty bottle. “Now you have none for yourself!”
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Boris said, grandly. “But what do you say we get out of here and find some action?”
“Action?” the Sheikh said. “I regret I do not understand.”
“I, too, have a prophet,” Boris said, getting somewhat unsteadily to his feet. “Dr. T. Yancey Mullins, of Manhattan, Kansas.”
“Allah has many names and many faces,” the Sheikh intoned. “Mud in your eye.”
“Precisely,” Boris said. “Dr. T. Yancey Mullins teaches that man must exercise regularly, even religiously.”
“Forgive me, my friend,” the Sheikh said, as they staggered toward the door, “but is that such an original idea?”
“There is exercise, and then there is exercise,” Boris said, as they entered the elevator. “In what will certainly rank with the discovery of penicillin and the X-ray as major breakthroughs in medical science, the Sage of Manhattan, Kansas, has discovered the best and most beneficial exercise of all.”
“And what might that be?” the Sheikh asked, as they emerged in the lobby of the apartment house, lurched through it and out onto the Rue de la Grande Armée, where they entered a taxicab.
As they rode up the hill to the Arc de Triomphe, and down the hill to la rue de Pierre Charron, Boris told him of Dr. T. Yancey Mullins’s theories.*3 Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug could not have been more delighted.
“And we are going to exercise here?” he asked. “What is this place?”
“This is the Crazy Horse Saloon,” Boris explained, as he led him across the sidewalk. “I always like to start out here, and then see what happens.”
“I am completely in your hands, my friend,” the Sheikh said.
(*3 For further reading, see: Sexual Intercourse: Man’s Most Beneficial Exercise (499 pp., New York, 1974; 59.95) and Strength and Health Through Constant Coitus (405 pp., illus., New York, 1975; $10.95); both by Theosophilis Yancey Mullins, M.D., Ph.D., D.V.M., D.D.)
Chapter Three
Within two hours of the disappearance from his Rue de la Grande Armée apartment of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, who was last seen in the company of His Highness, Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, the matter came to the official attention of the Deuxième Bureau of the French Government.
The Deuxième Bureau is for the French what the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the D.A.R. and the Ralph Nader Organization, all rolled together, are for the Americans. Whenever the peace, security, national prestige or financial stability of the French Republic is in any manner affected, the Deuxième Bureau is ordered into action.
The disappearance of two foreigners would have been enough in itself to trigger Deuxième Bureau action, but the case at hand went much further than that. These were not two ordinary, run-of-the-mill foreigners. Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug was traveling, as a sovereign head of state, on a special diplomatic passport. More important, he had been in the company of His Royal Highness, Prince Hassan ad Kayam, heir-apparent to the Throne of Hussid, from which Sheikhdom the French Republic obtained thirty-eight percent of its petroleum needs.
The pressure from the French Foreign Ministry and the French Ministry of Petroleum Procurement upon the Deuxième Bureau was, understandably, enormous. However, it was nothing like the pressure brought to bear by L’Académie française and the French National Opera Association in terms of intensity or completely unveiled threats. Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov who, for two years, had been classified as an Official National Artistic Treasure of France, was scheduled to sing the title role in Jacques Offenbach’s opera, The Tales of Hoffmann, at Paris’s French National Opera House in two days.
It was to be a gala, charity performance, for the benefit of St. Imogene’s School for Girls. St. Imogene’s, a small school in the Maritime Province, had enjoyed 260 years of peaceful obscurity until just recently, when Mademoiselle Bernadette St. Croix, a recent graduate who had found postgraduation employment as a chamber maid at Le Grand Hotel St. Bernard, had caught the eye of a visiting politician and shortly thereafter had become Madame le President of the Fourth Republic.
The word had come down from the Elysée Palace that if Madame le President wanted to stage a benefit opera for the benefit of her old school, Monsieur le President felt that nothing should be allowed to stand in her way. Any government servant who felt otherwise would probably be happier serving his country in the Senegalese desert.
The major problem in staging the performance had been Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, star of the Paris Opera and Official National Artistic Treasure of La Belle France. It was generally agreed that unless Cher Boris Alexandrovich, as he was fondly known, was on stage to sing the role of Hoffmann, ticket sales would not be as satisfactory as they could be. Cher Boris Alexandrovich’s appeal to French womanhood was well-known. When he sang a role in which he could bare his chest, it was possible to add a fifty percent surtax. The surtax was allegedly to pay for the erection of the Korsky-Rimsakov protective curtain, a heavy wire mesh arrangement needed to protect the singer and the rest of the cast from the shower of hotel-room keys and other items which sailed stageward from the audience in tribute to both his manhood and art during the performance.
Actually, almost all of the surtax could be applied to profits. Furthermore, when Cher Boris Alexandrovich was to sing with his chest in sight, it was possible to charge performance spectaculaire prices for tickets (twice the normal price) without a murmur of disapproval from his fans.
The effect of all this was that, presuming Korsky-Rimsakov sang Hoffmann, St. Imogene’s School would receive as their share as much money as if the opera had simply been turned over to them, and the opera (because of the twice-the-normal-price tickets) would have a full house at standard rates. Everybody would be happy, especially Madame et Monsieur who occupied the Elysée Palace.
The problem was that Maestro Korsky-Rimsakov was in New York City. The Metropolitan Opera’s most generous offer to him to sing Otello had coincided with a deep yearning on the part of the singer to return to the land of his birth, whose uniform he had worn in Korea, at least long enough to partake of a native delicacy of his youth—bagels and lox, which was not available in Paris at the level of gustatory excellence common along New York’s Third Avenue.
And so he had agreed to sing, one performance only at Lincoln Center, presuming the Metropolitan was willing to meet his simple needs during his stay. A floor in the Waldorf Towers was set aside for his use; round-the-clock Carey limousine service was arranged for; the Tactical Riot Squad of the New York Police Department was assigned to protect him from his fans; and the color-television sets in both the limousines and the hotel suite were specially rigged so that he would not, even while changing channels, ever be forced to look at Walter Cronkite.
(All of this was in addition, of course, to the standard contractual provisions for a Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov performance, which included his choice of orchestra conductor, stage designer, chorus manager, fellow performers, and the right of approval of the guest list for the Spontaneous Appreciation Party which followed the performance.)
It was recognized by the Paris Opera that their problem of getting him back from New York to sing Hoffmann was far greater than it would have been if it h
ad simply been a matter of keeping him in Paris. Keeping him in Paris required only that the director of the Opera have a little man-to-man chat with him, to impress on him his obligation to his art, the necessity of exercise to maintain his art and then to provide him with suitable exercise companions.
Extraordinary, even desperate, measures were going to be necessary to get him back from New York. Under the circumstances (Hell hath no fury like that of a sixty-two-year-old French husband of a twenty-year-old bride scorned), they were quickly provided. Air France made available a Concorde supersonic jet. It was outfitted with the little things Cher Boris Alexandrovich was known to like: Iranian caviar, Dom Perignon ’54, Camembert cheese, a tape player, a supply of his own recordings and, of course, the Baroness d’Iberville and Esmerelda Hoffenburg, the ballerina.
Esmerelda Hoffenburg distracted the Tactical Riot Squad guarding Cher Boris Alexandrovich by performing Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils” on the steps of St. Bartholomew’s Church, which is across the street from the Waldorf Towers. (Their distraction was complete. Esmerelda’s choice of Salome was spur-of-the-moment; and she was nearly through before she realized that she had been wearing but three layers of clothing, rather than the requisite eight, when she began.)
With the eyes of New York’s Finest locked in rapt fascination on Esmerelda, as she, in the cant of the trade, “winged” removing the last four (now wholly imaginary) veils, it was a simple matter for the Baroness to entice Cher Boris Alexandrovich into the limousine of the French Ambassador to the United Nations. She knew from long experience that it would be best to attract Cher Boris’s attention by holding a bottle of Dom Perignon ’54 in one hand and a caviar cracker in the other. There were far more women in his life who attempted to gain his affection by stripping off their clothes than there were women who offered caviar.
Once Cher Boris Alexandrovich was inside the limousine, Esmerelda quickly scooped up her garments (except her underpants, which Unfortunately had become snagged on the church bulletin board), trotted gaily across the street and got into the limousine. They were far up Park Avenue before the Police Riot Squad closed their mouths.
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