Flashman and the Tiger: And Other Extracts from the Flashman Papers. George Fraser MacDonald

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ fruits soaked in kirsch, and coffee Arabi style – black as night, sweet as love, hot as hell. Listening to her cheery prattle and bubbling laughter across the table, I found myself warming to Mamselle Caprice, and not only ’cos she was a little stunner and rode like a starving succubus and cooked rather well. I liked her style: no humbug, just Jezebel with a sassy twinkle and a fifth-form fringe, lightly touched by the crazy gods – as many politicals are; Georgie Broadfoot was daft as a brush. In her case it might have been a mask, a brass front over inner hurt; she was in a dirty business, and no doubt her male colleagues, being proper little Christian crooks, would make it plain that they regarded her as no better than a whore – I did myself, but I wasn’t fool enough to damp her amorous ardour by showing it. But no, ’twasn’t a mask; as we talked, I recognised her as one of these fortunate critters who (like yours truly) are simply without shame, and wouldn’t know Conscience if they tripped over it in broad day. She was fairly gloating at the prospect of wringing Shuvalov dry for the sheer fun of it – and the handsome fee Blowitz had promised her.

      ‘A hundred golden pounds!’ cries she gleefully. ‘You see, it is not a secret department matter, but personal to Stefan and his paper. And since he has friends in high places … behold, I am in Berlin!’

      ‘And that’s all that matters to me, my little Punch-fancier,’ says I, nuzzling her neck as we repaired to the couch. ‘As an Asian princess once said to me: “Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions”.’

      ‘An Asian princess!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Ah, but I must hear of this! Was she beautiful? Did you carry her off? Were you her slave?’ and so on, so I told her all about Ko Dali’s dreadful daughter, and how she’d rescued me from a Russian dungeon, and filled me with hasheesh unawares, and dam’ near had me blown to bits, and was surpassingly beautiful (at which Caprice pouted ‘Pouf!’) but bald as an egg (which sent her into peals of delight). Whether she believed me, God knows, but she demanded particulars of a most intimate nature, inviting comparison between the Silk One and herself, and that inevitably led to another glorious thrashing-match which restored her amour-propre and left me in what I once heard a French naval officer describe as a condition of swoon.

      Only when I was taking my leave did we return to the subject of Shuvalov. His assignation with her was for eight the following evening, after the first day of the Congress, and she expected to have him off the premises by midnight, whereafter I would roll up to see that all was well, she would write her report, and we would enjoy a late supper and whatever else came to mind before I left with her despatch in my hat for transfer to Blowitz later in the day.

      She hadn’t counted on Shovel-off’s appetite for jollity, though. The clocks were chiming twelve when I sauntered up the Jager Strasse in the warm dark of the next night, and turned into her court only to see that her curtain was still closed – the signal we’d agreed if the Russian buffoon was still infesting her quarters. I took a turn up and down, thankful that it wasn’t winter; Berlin in June evidently went home with the milk, and there were open carriages carrying merry-makers up the Mauer Strasse to the Linden, sounds of gaiety and music came from the Prinz Carl Palace across the way, and beyond it I could see lights burning in the great ministries on the Wilhelmstrasse: understrappers of the Congress still hard at it while their betters waltzed and junketed – aye, and rogered away the diplomatic night, if Shuvalov was anything to go by. It was close on two, and I was in a fine fume, when a cloaked and tile-hatted figure emerged at last from Caprice’s court, taking the width of the pavement, damn him, and a moment later I was being admitted to her apartment by a furious harem houri clad only in a gold turban with a slave-fetter on one ankle, fairly spitting blood while she filled an antique bath-tub with hot water; the air was thick with steam and Gallic oaths which I hadn’t heard outside a Legion barrack-room.

      Count Shuvalov, she informed me, was a sacred perverted beast, a savage and a mackerel and a swine of tastes indescribable. He professed to have been so enraptured by her photograph that he had brought the turban and shackles for her to wear, describing himself as Haroun al-Raschid and demanding from her an Arabian Nights performance which I doubt even Dick Burton had ever heard of. He had also insisted that they smear each other all over with quince jam, to which he was partial, and while much of it had been removed in the ensuing frolic, I noticed that she still had a tendency to attract fluff and other light debris as she raged to and from the kitchen with hot kettles for her bath.

      ‘And for a hundred pounds I endure this!’ cries she, kicking her fettered foot and fetching herself a crack on the shin with the chain. ‘Ah, merde, it will not come off – and I shall never be clean again! Oh, but it is not only this disgusting confiture, this … this ordure collant, but his loathsome touch, his foul body and vile breath, his hideous tongue upon me … ugh! Muscovite ape! Oh, do not look at me – I cannot bear to be seen!’ In fact she looked adorable, if you can imagine an Alma Tadema beauty striking passionate poses while picking feathers off her bottom.

      I soothed her by undoing the ankle-chain, lifting her into the bath, and lovingly soaping her from head to foot while murmuring endearments. I’m a dab hand at this, having trained under Queen Ranavalona, so to speak, and after a while her plaintive cursing gave way to little sighs and whimpers, her eyes closed and her mouth trembled, and when I suggested I could do with a sluicing myself she responded with an enthusiasm that would have done credit to those poor little Kashmiri sluts who bathed me so devotedly at Lahore, the night the ceiling fell in.^fn5 Aye, I’ve wallowed in some odd spots in my time, but nowhere more happily than Berlin, with that delightful mermaid performing as though Shovel-off had never existed, and the floor ankle-deep in suds. Heaven knows what the charwoman had to say in the morning.

      It cheered Caprice up no end, and by the time we’d dried off and drowsed a little and made an early breakfast of coffee and rolls, she was her vivacious self again, even making fun of Shovel-off’s amorous peculiarities. Her first report for Blowitz was a brief one, the Galloping Cossack having been too intent on his muttons for much conversation, but having taken his measure she was sure she could make him sing in due course. ‘A shallow fool, mais pompeux, and his brain is in his –’ was her charming verdict. ‘Also he is jealous of his leader, the Prince Gorchakov.’ She lowered an eyelid. ‘Let me touch that key, and he will boast everything he knows!’

      And I guess he did. Having sampled her myself, and marked her A1 at Flashy’s, I’d still wondered if she could keep Shuvalov in thrall for the whole Congress – it lasted a month, you know – but damme if she didn’t. Not that he saddled her up every night, you understand, but more often than not, and whether she was ringing the changes, Pride o’ the Harem one night, Gretchen the Governess the next, or was tempting him with different flavours of jam, I didn’t inquire. She kept him happy, I had my ration of her, and for the rest, Blowitz’s arrangements went like clockwork: there he was every day, browsing at the Kaiserhof while I lunched at t’other side of the room, never a glance between us, and each picking up the other’s tile when we left.

      We had one scare, when an idiot diner by mistake went off with my hat containing Caprice’s report. My first thought was, oh lor’, we’re rumbled, and I was ready to make for the long grass till I saw that Blowitz was on the q.v., but instead of leaping up with screams of ‘Ah, voleur! Rendez le chapeau!’ as you’d expect from a Bohemian Frog, he quietly despatched a waiter in pursuit, the apologetic diner replaced my roof on its peg – and no attention had been drawn to Blowitz or to me. My opinion of little fat Stefan went up another rung; he was a cool hand – and even, it seemed to me, sometimes a reckless one.

      It was about half way through the Congress, when the other correspondents were all in a frenzy at the absolute lack of news from the secret sessions, that he broke cover with an item that was plainly from the horse’s mouth. Gorchakov had made some speech in camera, and there was the gist of it in The Times two days later. Diplomatic Berlin was in uproar at once; who could have leaked the news? It was after this that Bismarck, who took the breach as a personal affront, looked under the table to see СКАЧАТЬ