"Flashman, Harry - Flashman and the Tiger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flashman Harry)

F: Gad, that's sweet! . . . Ah, well, I guess that the joke is that he's blaming her, don't you know, when in fact he's been selling the stuff after it's started to stink.
M (bewildered, nestling chin on F's shoulder): So le poissonier is a thief. That amuses, does it?
F: See here, I don't write the damned jokes ... (Attempts to fondle her starboard tit)

M (parrying deftly): Good as gold, mщchant! Now, this page here, the lady in harlequin costume ... ah, tres chic, her hat and veil trop fripon, and her figure exquisite, mais voluptueuse! (sits bolt upright, inspired to imitation)
F: God love us!
M (swaying out of reach) ... but her expression is severe, and she carries a baton - to chastise? She is perhaps a flagellatrice? Formidable! But this also is humorous?
F: Certainly not. This picture is intended to be ogled by lewd men. Speaking as one myself .. .
M: No, no, be still, you promised! What is ogled?
F: What people did at your Folies photograph, as well you know! Enjoyed posing for it, didn't you? - dammit, you're enjoying this!
M (wickedly): Mais certainement! (nestles again, nibbling F's ear) Et vous aussi? No-no-no-wait! One last question ... ah, but only one ... these words, above this article ... what do they mean?
F (reading): "Hankey Pankey" . . . (as she bursts out laughing) I knew it, bigod! You understand Punch's beastly jokes as well as I do, don't you? Well, just for that, young woman, I shan't tell you what Hankey-Pankey means . . . I'll show you! (Demonstrates, avec щlan et espieglerie and lustful roarings, to delighted squeals and sobs from Mamselle. Ecstatic collapse of both parties)6
Afterwards, as I lay blissfully tuckered, with that splendid young body astride of me, moist and golden in the fading sunlight, her eyes closed in a satisfied smirk, I found myself wondering idly if the French secret service ran an Ecole de Galop to train their female agents in the gentle art of houghmagandie, as Elspeth calls it - and if so, were there any vacancies for visiting professors? Anyway, Mamselle Caprice must have been the Messalina Prizewoman of her year; no demi-mondaine perhaps, according to Blowitz, but as expert an amateur as I'd ever struck, with the priceless gift of fairly revelling in her sex, and using it with joyous abandon ... and considerable calculation, as I was about to learn.
She stretched across to the nearby table for a gilt-tipped cigarette, lighting it from a tiny spirit lamp, and I couldn't resist another

clutch at those firm pointed poonts overhead. She squirmed her bottom in polite response, trickling smoke down her shapely nostrils as she studied me, head on one side; then she leaned down, murmuring in my ear.
"If you were Count Shuvalov ... would you be ready to confide in me now?" She gave a little chuckle, and nibbled.
"I'll be damned! Been using me for net practice, have you?" I couldn't help laughing. "Experimenting on me, you little trollop - of all the sauce!"
"Why not?" says the shameless baggage, sitting up again and drawing on her scented weed. "If I am to learn his secrets, it is well I should know what ... beguiles men of his age. After all, you and he are no longer boys, but mature, possibly of similar tastes ..."
"A couple of ageing libertines, you mean? Well, thank'ee, my dear, I'm obliged to you - as I'm sure Count Shovel-off will be, and if you pay him the kind of loving attention you've just shown me, I dare say he'll be sufficiently captivated to gas his fat head off - "
"Oh, he is captivate' already," says she airily. "He has admired the notorious photograph ... and we have met, and he has begged an assignation for tomorrow night."'
"Has he, now? That's brisk work." Highly professional, too .. . by Blowitz? ... by the French secret department? Certainly by the brazen little bitch sitting cool as a trout athwart my hawse, sporting her boobies and blowing smoke-rings while she mused cheerfully on how best to squeeze the juice out of her Russian prey.
"You see," says she, "to captivate, to seduce, is nothing . . . he is only a man." She gave the little shrug that is the Frenchwoman's way of spitting on the pavement. "But afterwards ... to make him tell what I wish to know . . . ah, that is another thing. Which is why I ask you, who are experienced in secret affairs, Blowitz says. You know well these Russians, you have made the intrigues, you have made love to many, many women, and I am sure they have - how do you say? - practised their nets on you." She smiled sleepy seductive-like, and leaned down again to flicker the tip of her tongue against my lips. "So, tell me ... which of them most

appealed, to win your confidence? The fool? The task-mistress? The slave? L'ingщnue? Or perhaps la petite farceuse who teases you with foolish jokes, and then ..." She wriggled, stroking her bouncers across my chest. "To which would you tell your secrets?"
"My, you've studied your subject, haven't you?" I eased her gently upright. "Well, the answer, my artful little seductress, is ... to none of 'em - unless I wanted to. But I ain't Shovel-off, remember. From what I hear he's the kind of vain ass who can't resist showing off to every pretty woman he meets, so it don't matter a rap whether you play the innocent or Delilah or Gretchen the Governess. Get him half-tipsy, pleasure him blind, and listen to him blather ... but don't try to come round him with jokes from Punch, 'cos they'd be lost on him. Tease him with a few funny bits from Tolstoy, if you like, or the latest wheezes from Ivan the Terrible's Guffawgraph -"
"Oh, idiot!" She slapped me smartly on the midriff, giggling. "You are not serious, you! I ask advice, and you make game of me!"
"Advice, my eye - mocking a poor old man, more like." "Old? Ha!" exclaims she, rolling her eyes - she could pay a neat compliment, the minx.
"As if there was anything I could teach you about bewitching a man!" I can pay a compliment, too. She gave a complacent toss of the head, arms akimbo.
"Oh, one can always learn, from a wise teacher ... I think," says she, assuming the depraved sneer she had worn in her photo-graph, "that since I do not like M. Shuvalov, I should prefer to be Gretchen the Governess, trшs implacable, sans remords!" She made growling noises, flourishing an imaginary whip. "Ah, well, we shall see! And now," she hopped nimbly down, "I make supper!"
Which she did, very tasty: an omelette that was like a souffle for lightness, with toast and a cold Moselle, 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 Lin-den, 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 hareem 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.* 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 Al 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,
* See Flashman and the Mountain of Light

you understand, but more often than not, and whether she was ringing the changes, Pride o' the Hareem 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.