The Haj - Leon Uris [207]
The whores of Munich were drawn magnetically to the Arabs. Not only did Islam’s high and mighty potentates require servicing, but the Arabs generally traveled with enormous entourages, so there was enough business to filter down to the most lowly servant. Cash up front, no bargaining. The whores and their pimps earned their fees, for they were often treated crudely and always with an undertone of savagery.
Ursula convinced Kabir that if he was to partake of such sights, it was the one place he could not guard his pocketbook. Couples, food, transportation, lodging, drink, costumes, drugs, repair of the room, individual performers, gifts could run a party to upward of a hundred thousand dollars.
On this night the players were heading into a third straight dawn and the Effendi had reached the point of collapse. Before he spun into a gasping glob, he had gone on a binge, pelting faces and bodies with bunches of juicy purple grapes, urinating down from the throne, overturning gallon cans of body paint until he collapsed with a ripsaw battle between sleeping pills and cocaine raging in his body and head.
Ursula climbed up to his couch, where he now lay moaning incoherently, and broke a capsule under his nose. He twitched and blabbered to some sort of consciousness, lifted himself to all fours, his belly nearly touching the floor ... and vomited.
‘Wake up, Fawzi!’ she demanded over thunder bursts of storm music and dizzying flashes of light.
He mumbled an unintelligible complaint and vomited again. She put another ammonia capsule under his nose, then doused him with icy water.
He looked up at her, dripping perspiration, his eyes rolled like ball bearings on polished floor, and he tipped flat on his face. She whacked his buttocks hard. ‘Wake up!’
A few of the revelers, in Mardi Gras masks, howled in delight at the foot of the steps.
‘You dirty bitch, leave me alone!’
Kabir groped for the emperor’s couch, but he slipped on the oil and wetness beneath his body and skidded down to the mat and lay on his back bleating to be left alone. The revelers pelted him with a tattoo of grapes, ripe plums, and kirschwasser until Ursula beat them off.
He breathed in short gasps.
‘Prince Ali Rahman has phoned,’ she said. ‘I put him off for a half hour.’
The prince! Oh God!’ Kabir groaned. He tried to swim to his feet but skidded down again. ‘I can’t ... I can’t ... oh God ... what ... what ... time is it?’
‘It is four in the morning.’
‘Oh God! The prince. No! No more to sniff. My head is splitting.’
‘Throw up again,’ she commanded, signaling a pair of servants to bring cold water and sponges and to clean him up. As he was attended, Ursula dimmed the music to a soothing, drifting theme and set the lights at a pleasant shade of pastel. The partygoers then either collapsed and slept entwined in twos, threes, and fours, or crawled off to clean up.
He was set upright but toppled over again and lay still. Ursula reached across his blubbery back.
‘It was a good party,’ he said.
‘Yes, Fawzi, a wonderful party.’ She stroked him with the tips of her meticulously sharpened and painted claws. ‘A wonderful party.’
‘Get the doctor, I am sick. I need a shot.’
‘He is on his way from the main house.’
Within the hour the Effendi was sobered enough to return Prince Ali Rahman’s call. The voice on the other end of Kabir’s line screamed a string of Saudi obscenities, commonplace when Ali Rahman was angry, which was a good part of the time. Kabir waited patiently for the royal wrath to wane with a calming repetition of ‘Yes, my prince,’ and ‘No, my prince.’
‘Have you seen the morning papers!’ Rahman demanded.
‘No, my prince. I do not usually get out of bed and read the papers at