A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

with Prince Jamil and a gorgeous staff. The Bulgars, when they came,
had massacred the Turks; as they retired, the Bulgar peasants went too.
So the Turks found hardly anyone to kill. A greybeard was led on
board for the Commander-in-Chief to bait. At last Enver tired of this.
He signed to two of his bravo aides, and throwing open the furnace
door, said, ‘Push him in.’ The old man screamed, but the officers were
stronger and the door was slammed-to on his jerking body. We turned,
feeling sick, to go away, but Enver, his head on one side, listening,
halted us. So we listened till there came a crash within the furnace. He
smiled and nodded, saying: ‘Their heads always pop like that.’
That night, after a quick round of buggery with Saint-Fond, I withdrew
to my apartment. But I couldn’t sleep: so stirred up was I by Clairwil’s
violent words and actions, I had to commit a crime of my own.
My heart beating wildly at the evil thoughts racing through my brain, I
leapt out of bed and dashed to the servants’ quarters. There I stole a
butler’s clothes and a guard’s pistol. Then, looking very much like a
gentleman of fashion [the narrator is a woman], I slipped into the
night.
At the first street corner to which I came, I stationed myself inside a
doorway and waited for someone to pass. The prospect of the crime
which I was about to commit thrilled me like nothing I had ever
experienced. My body glistened with sweat. My insides churned with
the turmoil which precedes sexual congress - a fundamental
excitement which honed all my senses to a fine cutting edge. I was
aflame, ablaze now, for a victim.
Suddenly, in response to my devil’s prayer, I heard groans - a
woman’s voice, soft, low-pitched and mournful. Racing in the
direction from which the sounds came, I found a tattered, feeblelooking
creature huddled upon a doorstep.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, drawing closer.
‘One cursed by fate,’ she replied; ‘if you are the harbinger of death, I
will embrace you gladly.’
‘What are your difficulties?’ I asked, noticing that, in spite of her grief,
she was rather a comely creature.
‘My husband has been put in jail, my babies are starving; now this
house on whose steps I sit, this house which once was mine, has been
taken away from me.’
‘By fuck!’ I cheered. The sexual heat welling up inside my body had
become almost unbearable. ‘Come now, let me put your talents to the
test.’