Joie de vivre is the overused phrase that sums up the French capital. You inhale it with the flower-scented air in the vicinity of the Tuileries. It spills over with the fresh vegetables and cheeses in the food stalls of the Latin Quarter. It rises up from the Seine and settles over both banks and the Ile de la Cité.
Look! There’s Quasimodo hanging from the bell tower at Notre Damel! “Which gargoyle is he?” you ask. “All of them, m’sieur! All of them!”
Look! That quaint little sidewalk café on the side street off the Champs Elysées. Yes, you can see the Arc de Triomphe from it! And yes, yes! Oui! That is calvados they’re drinking, that shabby-looking refugee from another land and his slight French working girl.
And look! There on the Left Bank! Look! Those gendarmes! Is that Sartre they’re arresting? De Beauvoir31 ? On the Avenue Victor Hugo? A demonstration? On the Boulevard des Invalides, under the very cannon mouths of the Hotel des Invalides itself? And that cloud over the Left Bank! That cloud smiling! That cloud face of Voltaire smiling, smiling. . . .
Paris!
I was filled with it as I started down the series of long, outdoor staircases from Sacre Coeur. Halfway to the bottom, I stopped. I leaned against a railing and looked around me. The steps had become a favorite gathering place for young people -- students, hippies, folk singers, expatriates. It was the French version of Greenwich Village’s Washington Square. Yet at the same time it was pure Paris—which regardless of law and offficial attitude remains in its soul the most permissive city in the world.
I looked for a blonde fille in her twenties wearing a black raincoat and a black beret. Throw a pebble. In any direction. I could have hit any one of a dozen of them. Black berets and black raincoats were all the fashion in Paris this season. Blonde filles in their twenties, of course, were all the rage every season.
I picked one at random and smiled at her. She smiled back. I approached her. She met me halfway. I waited for her to say something. She waited for me to say something. I waited. . . . She waited. . . . I waited. . . . She waited. . . . I waited. She got bored, gave me a rather derogatory shrug, and walked away. A moment later she was deep in an animated conversation with a bearded Algerian type who looked like he was still a trifle wet behind the ears.
So I went back to leaning on the railing of the staircase and waiting for one of the blondes in black raincoat and beret to come up to me. Finally one did.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“All right then!” She handed me her black beret. Her hands went to the loosely tied black belt holding her raincoat together. With a promising smile, she freed the belt and opened the raincoat. She was completely nude under it!
While I was still trying to gather my wits, she took off the raincoat and handed it to me. “Hold this,” she instructed.
Confused, I accepted the coat and held it.
“STREAK!” the blonde bellowed at the top of her substantial lungs and took off up the staircase, streetlights and starlight bouncing off the naked curves of her body as she ran.
I had met, it seemed, my first Parisian streaker. When she got to the top, she ran around in circles in the large courtyard in front of Sacre Coeur and yelled “STREAK! STREAK!” repeatedly. When a funicular car started down the hillside, she yelled again and started down the stairs, obviously racing it.
Behind her a French folk singer dropped his guitar, pulled off his clothes, yelled “STREAK!” and chased after her. A German boy with a very plump rear end followed in their wake. Soon the streakers racing the cable car down the hillside included a Scotch lad wearing a tam and nothing else; an American hippie type with a penis so long that he actually seemed in danger of tripping over it as it swung from side to side; two French teen-age girls; a mature Irish colleen with very large, loosely hung breasts which swung so violently as she ran that they seemed in imminent danger of tearing loose from her body and flying off into the night; and half a dozen or so naked tagalongs of both sexes.
The blonde who had started it all passed me running hard, but made no sign of recognition. Her attention was on her race with the descending cable car. Behind her, many moons passed in support of her streaking undertaking.
It was a dead heat. She and the cable car reached the bottom together. Then, without pausing, she started back up the steps, still streaking at full speed. The other streakers strung out behind her.
She braked to a halt in front of me. The others continued on to the top of the hill where their clothes were strewn around in small, separate piles. She faced me, panting hard.
Her large breasts rose and fell as she gasped for air. They were shiny with perspiration. Two drops of sweat, glittering like tiny diamond pendants, dangled, one from each nipple.
I felt a stab of desire. Sue me. Can I help it if sweaty breasts turn me on?
The naked blonde held out her arms for her raincoat. I handed it to her. She put it on, pulling the belt snugly around her middle. I handed her the beret. She tilted it rakishly over one eye.
“Your turn,” she said.
It took me a minute to realize that she meant it was my turn to streak. “I’ll pass,” I told her.
“You said you were ready,” she reminded me.
“I misunderstood what you were asking me,” I confessed.
“You’re not the man I took you for,” she told me sadly.
“And you’re not the girl I thought you were,” I summed up accurately.
“Well, I streaked!” Very haughty. She turned on her heel. She’d had the last word. She stalked off into the night, faded, no longer streaking.
Again I leaned against the railing of the staircase. Again I waited for one of the blondes in black raincoat and beret to make noises like they were looking for me. Finally one did. And this one was a standout even in that young, nubile, well-formed international company of filles.
She was trim and Anglo-Saxon looking. Her face was heart-shaped and her blonde hair was worn in an extreme, frizzy Afro. No makeup marred her apple-cheeked features. The black beret set off her deep blue eyes pertly.
Her legs, in black net stockings, were alluring. The black raincoat reached only halfway to the knee. The expanse of visible thigh was very shapely indeed. The belted raincoat hugged an ample bosom-high, round, and firm—a snug waist, and teasing hips. The overall impression was of a slender girl with voluptuous fixtures.
“You’re a laddie who’s interested in orgies.” She identified me boldly, speaking in English with a Scottish lilt to her voice.
So that was it! The kidnappers did know who I really was. They did have me tagged as Steve Victor, the Man from O.R.G.Y.
“I’m the man you’re looking for,” I assured her.
“My name is Peggy,” she told me.
“Karl.” I figured she knew the Steve Victor label, but probably wanted to know the name I was going under in Paris. On the other hand, she hadn’t told me her last name, so I didn’t mention that the one I was using was Powers.
“Karl.” She repeated it. “German.” She gave me a sudden, unexpected, very hard shot in the ribs. “I ken that. I ha’ great admiration for the German. Also French.” Her wide mouth formed itself into an O.
“And Lilliputian?” I figured it was time to get down to business.
She smiled knowingly. I seemed to have struck the right chord. “Come wi’ me.” She was suddenly all business.
“All right.” Her arm was linked through mine.