Pearl of the Courtesans

By Faye Rossignol

“Nine months ago I found myself on sale in the slave market in this fabulous city of Constantinople. Since then I have been nothing but a slave and the sexual plaything of men. I confess that, because of these adventures, I have developed a passion for sexual encounters with men, different men, and lots of them. Why not? Why should a woman be ashamed of such passions?” So speaks Pearl Keefer, the beautiful young American coerced into a life of whoredom and destined to become the most infamous, accomplished and enthusiastic courtesan of her day!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Faye Rossignol
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310120466

Faye Rossignol

Faye Rossignol - who is (or was) she?Search for Faye Rossignol on Google and three attractive ladies bearing her name are listed (at the time of writing, which is 2014). None of them is "our" Faye Rossignol, which suggests that the name is, in any case, a nom-de-plume. "Rossignol" was French slang in the 19th Century for the female pudendum - and our Faye would most certainly have been aware of that! In fact, little or nothing is known of the life (or possible death) of this female (or was she male?) writer. Her seventeen manuscripts were discovered on Saturday, September 19th, 1988, just after dawn. They lay in a skip filled with builder's rubble in London's fabulously wealthy and upmarket Eaton Square. Despite that, it is clear that they were not simply thrown out at so much junk; they were intended to be discovered and, eventually, to achieve the publication they so richly deserve. How can we assume that? For a start, they were heavily wrapped in a waterproof oilcloth before being completely heat-sealed in two layers of heavy-duty polythene; and the outer layer was of the UV-resistant kind so that they would have survived exposure on a garbage tip, even in direct sunlight, without degradation. And they were carefully placed right on top of a full skip - in plain view of any passer-by of average height. Whoever dumped them was probably still in Eaton Square when they were spotted and rescued. Alas, the luck that any bibliographer might have enjoyed ended right there and then.They contained not a single handwritten word that might have helped trace them to the hand that wrote them. Each manuscript was neatly typed using a daisywheel printer, so we know that the writer had access to the primitive word-processors of the early-to-mid-eighties (and it would surely have taken that many years for "Faye" to have written all seventeen volumes). The paper was in standard A4 sheets of various brands, all widely sold throughout the country. In short, there is little hope of tracing "her" through either the paper or the method of printing.Various names have been suggested for the true author, including the satirist William Donaldson (1935-2005) and the politician the Right Honourable Enoch Powell (1912-98). Donaldson (most famous as the author of The Henry Root Letters) is suspected because he once lived in a brothel run by his girlfriend in the nearby Fulham Road and because of the prankish nature of the manuscripts' discovery. And Enoch Powell because anybody taking a late-afternoon stroll around that part of Belgravia in the 1980s and '90s was almost certain to see the British Warm overcoat and the black Homburg hat that both clad the man and trumpeted his sartorial fanfare; one saw them well before those large, limpid, ice-pale eyes loomed out of the circumambient fog of fashionable London, mesmerizing pedestrians to step off the kerb and lower their gaze until he had floated by. He was the very spirit of the place, and perhaps death itself has been unable to prevent his apparition even today? Of the two, we must lean toward Donaldson or some satirist poured into a similar mould. The addresses given by "Faye" in various Introductions in the books - Bushey Arches ... Bushey Park ... Much Hadham ... Crouch End ... Effingham (all genuine places in England) - point to that sort of humour, which is too playful for old Enoch.But perhaps Faye really is a woman after all. Many of her most ardent fans would dearly love to have it proved. A Scarlet Woman? Here one can paraphrase the doggerel about the Scarlet Pimpernel:They seek her here.They seek him there.Her fans they seek "Faye" everywhere.Has she a hole or has he a pole?That damned elusive Rossignol!When all's said and done, we are left (most fortunately) with the writing. Despite its subject matter, the literary merit of "Faye's" work was soon recognised by, it so happens, a beneficed clergyman in the Church of England. He, however, wishes to remain anonymous. Indeed, everyone connected with the rescue and publication of "her" works, is by choice anonymous. The media feeding-frenzy that would be unleashed were even one of them to be named in public would divert all attention away from the books, whose merits are great enough for them to speak for themselves. If "Faye" herself desired to remain unsung, how could lesser mortals muscle in openly by name and bask in the light that "she" had shunned? It would be unconscionable. In short: Shallow-minded seekers after any sort of "celebrity" link must learn to grow up and content themselves, instead, with these seventeen bright jewels of modern erotic fiction.(Shortly after www.Fayerossignol.org/asm went online an anonymous surfer submitted an image found among items left by his late father, who operated a photo booth on New York's Coney Island. Its attractions included a six-foot image of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, with a hole where the face would be. People would poke their heads through the hole and have their photograph taken. The name, place, and date were then added to the print. ["And," our surfer adds, "Dad made a fortune for supplying pictures with falsified dates to most of the adulterers in New York."] If this is, indeed "our" own dear Faye, it is the only known picture of her to have surfaced so far.)

Book preview

Introduction

Shortly after I published my editions of Pearl Keefer’s autobiography, Pearl of the Hareem and Pearl of the Desert – which I and all the world had assumed to be the complete works – a further manuscript was found in a curio shop in Istanbul. There can be no doubting its authenticity. Handwriting experts have identified it as being in her own atrocious hand. Moreover it was discovered in the stuffing of a chaise longue that indisputably belonged to her and was part of the furnishings of her Petit Palais on Capri; indeed, it was that same famous piece of furniture which she called her ‘Crébillon,’ after the seventeenth-century French dramatist Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, who wished to be reincarnated as a chaise longue on which an innocent young virgin was deflowered daily (a new one each day, of course).

Whether this newly discovered text should be called the third volume of her memoirs or an attempt at a completely new (and more truthful) account, is hard to say. It is the third of the series in the sense that it takes up where the others leave off – with Pearl herself about to become a highly paid fille de joie in the French Hareem, the most celebrated bordello in Istanbul, (or Constantinople as it was in 1905). But it is so different in character and purpose that it is much better thought of as a fresh autobiographical beginning.

In the first place the two earlier books, though undoubtedly written or dictated by Pearl herself, are in the third person. In this present volume the narrative is in Pearl’s own words and she frankly calls herself I and me. The third-person Pearl she depicts in the Sultan’s hareem and the desert is a delightful figment of a romantic young girl’s erotic imagination. The story was dashed off around Christmas, 1904, when Pearl already knew she was going to start work as a fille de joie at the French Hareem; they were a kind of advertisement for her ample sexual charms and her apparently boundless appetite for copulation with as many different males as possible. In effect, they called out to the lecherous rich men of Europe, I’m available at the French Hareem now. Come and have me!

And come they did, in every sense of the word – as this new text makes clear!

But the first-person Pearl of this present memoir is a more serious young lady than the flighty wanton of the previous books. She is still fresh and effervescent, still outgoing, still fond of a good rogering when the mood takes her; but the men are no longer a series of walking clichés with huge hardons and an unquenchable libido, distinguished only by their division into goodies and baddies. Here we meet men in all their natural richness and variety – weak, strong, vain, blustering, tonguetied, confident, aggressive, vicious, saintly, compulsive. She turns her own glorious body into a form of psychiatrist’s couch whereon her customers lie and pour out their souls – as well as pouring out the more traditional libation to the god Eros, for which privilege they have paid handsomely.

She is more honest about herself, too. Third-person Pearl was never less than ready for ten hours of unbroken copulation with a couple of dozen strangers, or a whole night with a single, tireless lover; it made no difference to her so long as some fellow’s hard gristle was whanging in and out of her gluttonous little hole. Pearl-as-herself is more down-to-earth about the business. On one occasion she dismisses a whole day’s business thus: At the end of work that Friday evening, after half a dozen long, voluptuous encounters with men I have never met before and shall probably never see again – all of whom have given me a frisson of some kind, great or small (mostly small I must confess) ... That is not the Pearl of the hareem nor the Pearl of the desert!

Yet when all’s said and done this last fragment of autobiography does have one important feature in common with the earlier two: It is (as you will realize at the end) a blatant piece of self-advertisement. To say precisely what Pearl is advertising this time would be to spoil the surprise at the climax of her tail. So – read and enjoy, for there are many climaxes in her tail before you get there!

Faye Rossignol

Bushey Park

Chapter 1

I sit here in my boudoir at the French Hareem, preparing my body for its first working day in the most luxurious house of pleasure in the Orient. And one thought hammers away in my mind – what a fool I am to have agreed to enter this life and what a miserable failure I shall prove! It was easy enough for me to be optimistic while I was lying in Petrosian’s arms in his sumptuous villa, half a mile from here. Oh, if I could be there now! Petrosian is a director of this establishment and often visits the place and enjoys the girls who work here. He’s a superb lover who can make any girl pop her champagne cork, as they say. Can I be blamed if in the luxury of his villa, enjoying limitless sexual pleasure in his arms, with the magic of Constantinople all about me, I became confused and allowed my mind to cast a certain rosy glow over this Maison de Plaisir and the things a girl is expected to do here? How different it all seems now, as the fateful moment draws closer and I must join the parade of female bodies for sale down in the salon! How could I have been so blind?

I do, after all, know what life here in the French Hareem is like; I have sat for hours in the Sultan’s private viewing galleries above our boudoirs here, watching everything that goes on. Perhaps I should explain that?

This building stands partly within the walls of the Sultan’s private hareem and when I was his concubine last year (one of more than a hundred concubines, I should add) he used to bring a dozen or so of us to his private viewing gallery and we would lie on silken couches, watching the filles de joie pleasuring their clients, while the Sultan took his pleasure of us. Those lovely girls (of whom I am now one) unwittingly taught me all the tricks of their trade – everything that is not instinctive in the hallowed act of copulation.

At that time I was foolish enough to imagine that they and I were in the same boat. Their whole existence, like mine, depended on the pleasuring of men; the only difference I could then see was that they were handsomely rewarded for their horizontal labours while I was paid nothing. Indeed, I was whipped and scourged if my efforts did not please my Sultan and his princely sons or any of his friends to whom he might lend my body. But now that I sit here – not on the Sultan’s silken couch but on the luxurious bed of a fille de joie – it begins to dawn on me that those similarities are all painfully superficial; beneath the surface the differences are profound. Ah me! I grow more nervous with every heartbeat. Why did I agree to Petrosian’s honeyed suggestion? Sheer bravado, that’s why – bravado and ignorance!

Nine months ago I was an untutored virgin – an empty-headed little schoolgirl from Cairo, part-American, part-French, part-Arab. Thanks to that swine Zarkos, I found myself on sale in the female-slave market in this fabulous city of Constantinople. Since then I have been nothing but a slave and the sexual plaything of men – first of the Sultan (now the late Sultan) and his sons and then, after my escape into the Arabian desert, of a number of Arabs of the Hadramaut. My only weapon against all these men was – I confess it – that dumb glutton between my thighs. My ever-ready sex was the only way in which I could control them – and sometimes defeat them, too. I confess also that, because of these adventures, I have developed a passion for sexual encounters with men, different men, and lots of them. Why not? Why should a woman be ashamed of such passions? Men are not – and it’s the way most men feel about us.

The conversation with Petrosian went something like this:

You’re fond of money, aren’t you, Pearl?

I don’t like being penniless, anyway. If I’d had money that time in Vienna, I could have turned my back on Zarkos and just walked away.

Also – you enjoy copulating with men, don’t you?

You know I do.

Lots of men?

I shrug. One or two a day, perhaps.

He grins accusingly. Or three or four?

Perhaps.

And you have the energy and stamina to keep it up indefinitely. That’s not a question, by the way – just something I throw in from exhausting personal experience! And these three or four men, or five or six ... they can be tall, short, fat, thin, well-built, white, black, brown ...

"Yes, yes – I enjoy variety. Why not? You do!"

"Quite! And Constantinople is one of the greatest crossroads in the world – and has been so for more than two thousand years. So where will a gorgeous-looking young girl who likes money and desires lots of copulation go? Where else but to a maison de plaisir! And if she seeks great variety in her companions-of-the-hour, where better than this ancient city, where every stray breeze whispers perfumed and spicy suggestions into the ears of men, filling them with wanton dreams – and where every commercial transaction puts loose money into their hands, money with which they can buy those dreams!"

And so on and so forth. He is the expert of the perfumed and spicy suggestion – and he knew precisely what wanton dreams he stirred in my bosom.

It would have been better if I had started work within five minutes of entering these doors, but Madame, in her wisdom, thought it best for me to settle in. I have now been here for the past five days, settling in – talking with the girls, watching them at work through various secret spy holes. And today Madame says I’m settled-in enough to start earning my keep.

So here I am at last, neatly folding away my chic Paris lingerie and putting on that strange costume every girl at the French Hareem must wear. We call them our Hareem Naughties, but they have little to do with the true costume of the Orient. They are a European fantasy about what ladies in Oriental hareems wear. They consist of only three items: a diaphanous silk peignoir that covers only the top half of our breasts, down to the nipples; silken slippers on our feet; and, for the bit in-between, a pair of skimpy gauze pantaloons that cover us from below the navel to just below the knee. Actually, cover is not quite the word. In the first place the gauze is so thin you can see every contour and shading of a girl’s thigh through it. Secondly, it is wide open from front to back, right through the fork – a nice big smile, as we say, to match the nice warm fleshly smile tucked inside it, the smile we girls have to keep sweet and clean, ready for all comers. In fact, only a delicate embroidery of flowers and gemlike motifs around the edge of this opening prevents a total revelation of our charms. Also, it’s a little misleading to say the peignoir covers only the top half of our breasts, for there is a two-inch fringe of tiny gold tassels all along its lower hem. On a girl like me, with large nipples – smooth, conical, and slightly shiny – these tassels fall apart, letting the pearly skin of my teats protrude. It makes me look as if I’m in a permanent state of wanton excitement. The gentlemen, Madame tells me, are going to find it very stimulating.

I look down at them now, my two pink nipples, shaped like the nose cones of artillery shells, and I make the tassels shiver a little. And I have to confess I find it very stimulating, too! But then I remember what Melissande said is the rule of the house among us girls – no orgasms! – and I rein myself in. It is not just the rule, she says, it is also a point of honour among us that we do not permit the patrons to give us orgasms – though every patron who enjoys us will leave our boudoir swearing that our pleasure in him was even greater!

That’s the main reason for my apprehension now, of course. I don’t know how I’m going to manage it. Sometimes I can start getting excited just at the sight of a man’s spermspouter, standing to attention in my honour. And, after all, the thought of endless sexual pleasure was one of my main reasons for coming here. But Melissande says it can drive a girl insane. I’ll suffer sleeplessness, neurasthenia, boils, and staring eyes; my hair and teeth will fall out; I’ll stammer and forget commonplace things; my conversation will be rubbish; and finally men in white coats will carry me off in a straitjacket, gibbering and drooling. And lots of other girls nodded gravely, assuring me it was true. So I intend to be very careful and avoid that extremity of pleasure. I’ll try to experience all the lesser thrills that lead up to it, but I’ll steer clear of the big eruption at the end.

Why do I risk the disgrace of a full-bodied orgasm on my very first encounter, by stimulating my nipples like this and getting myself all excited? Because I’m trying to keep at bay the awful realization of the life I am about to begin; it is just beginning to dawn on me – too late! The hour is fifteen minutes to two on the afternoon of Friday the third of February, 1905. In fifteen minutes one of the eunuchs will beat the big brass gong, once only, and then our working day will begin. In fifteen minutes from now, I will open my door and go out to the top of the huge circular staircase, just outside, where I will join eleven other filles de joie, all ready for our first encounters of the day. Then, giggling and chatting, we will descend to a salon full of randy, cant-wait-for-it men – or half-full, or quarter-full, or perhaps there will be only one or two. Madame will tell us soon how many there are under starter’s orders.

The men will be wearing nothing but white towelling dressing gowns and slippers – for such is the custom here. As soon as a man enters, Madame or one of the eunuchs inspects his tool for signs of sexual disease. If he passes scrutiny, he undresses, takes a steam bath and shower, and dons the uniform dressing gown and slippers. That’s one good thing, I suppose – we always get a clean man with a healthy tool to pleasure; and he’s clad in a freshly laundered gown, so there are no buttons and buckles and bows and studs to fiddle with.

I try to imagine these men now. Who are they? Where do they come from? What special lusts and desires have brought them here on this particular day?

These questions, which I cannot even begin to answer, force me to realize that nothing I did with men in the hareems I have known, or in the desert, has prepared me for what these men are about to do to me in this French Hareem, starting in ... ah me! In twelve minutes!

Twelve minutes from now I shall troop downstairs with eleven other young girls, all of us as good as naked, all of us intended for one purpose only – to spread our thighs wide and let men in. Down there in the salon we shall talk and laugh and cuddle with men we have probably never seen before and may possibly never see again. One of them will pull me onto his lap; rough or gentle, arrogant or shy, I shall smile my sweetest smile and encourage him to fondle me, to insinuate his fingers into my secret and intimate places, there to discover what his money will buy him. Then, if he likes what he feels and sees, I’ll bring him up here and surrender my body to his whim for an hour or more, trying to give him the lascivious adventure of his life.

In eleven minutes!

A man I’ve never met before, about whom I know nothing – and need to know nothing. That’s the most awful thing about it, I realize – the fact that I can do my work – which is the most intimate thing a man and a woman can do together – and can do it magnificently without knowing the first thing about him. I am not equipped. I am not trained. I have no experience. I am not settled-in, Madame – I shall never settle in!

I have pleasured hundreds of men since I lost my virginity last June. Once or twice I have pleasured a dozen at a time, one after the other – like the Sultan’s sons that night in July last year. But at least I knew who they were. I knew they were of the family and that the hareem was theirs. We were part of the same little society. Here I shall be at the mercy of the whole male world!

Ten minutes! Time is speeding up, surely.

Daphne sticks her head round my door. Seven patrons in so far, she tells me happily. Could be ten by the time we open. You’re in luck, Pearl.

What are they like? I ask.

She laughs. Does it matter? She enters my room fully. She is Mauresque, tall, with dark-brown skin and long, glossy black hair which she has woven into dozens of fine plaits. Her full round breasts thrust her peignoir out generously. Don’t tell me you’re nervous! she says.

A little. Why d’you say I’m in luck?

"We all are. There’s a German battle cruiser anchored in the Bosporus, showing the flag – paying a courtesy call on the Grand Sultan. These are the younger officers – the first wave. We’ll pleasure the entire officers’ wardroom before the week is out, I’m sure. Horny men after months at sea – grateful for whatever they get! Not like our jaded Turks and Armenians, who want everything ‘special.’ You’ve joined us at the start of a very busy and profitable week – that’s why I say you’re lucky. On my first day we did twenty patrons between all twelve of us. I did one! One miserable patron in twelve hours. Don’t tell me you’d prefer that?"

I grin and admit she’s right. She asks if I’d like her to stay until the gong. Please! I reply.

Cocoa butter’s the thing for a heavy day’s traffic, she goes on. Have you put some up inside you?

A little.

That’s right – not too much or it runs down your legs. You can always rub a little on their tools, too. Don’t forget Mademoiselle Lebrun, either – that’s what the Frenchies call your bumhole. A lot of Germans like a bit of fun round the back door. But remember – don’t let them return to your proper hole until you’ve washed their pricks clean again. If they visit Mademoiselle Lebrun, they either finish inside her or they let you wash them clean again. It doesn’t matter what fuss they make, put your foot down. Madame will back you. She smiles. Of course, I have been told all these things before, but it fills the minutes and stops me twitching.

She goes on encouraging me: "Don’t look so worried, love! I like German officers, young or old. The older ones are the best. They’ll come this evening. But the young ones aren’t bad either – except they poke so hard. I try and get them to have as much soixante-neuf as possible – or straight sucking if you’re a bit tender. Hold the base of their prick, so they can’t ram it down your throat. She rolls her eyes upward. What else can I tell you? Oh yes. You’ll have a lot of sticky shot up inside you today. If the salon gets too crowded, Madame cuts the allowance down to half an hour each patron – and God help you if you don’t make him feel like he got a full hour’s value, all squeezed inside that thirty minutes! If she decides to do that, we could each do fifteen ... even eighteen patrons today. But eighteen’s the most I’ve ever done in one day. Even so, that’s a wineglass full of sticky they’ll shoot up your hole – especially these young officers after all that time at sea! So if you keep wiping it off or dabbing it off, you could make your pussipus all red and sore. The best thing is to jam a sponge up against Madame Pussy and jump up and down before you return to the salon. It gets the blood going again, too."

And no orgasms, of course, I say.

Of course not. You’ll only go and exhaust yourself – why, you weren’t thinking of trying, were you? You can enjoy the work without enjoying the patrons!

So many girls have told me that; it could be our motto: Enjoy the work but not the patrons! I shrug uncomfortably. "You see – I’ve done hundreds of men before today but always for pleasure. Or almost always. I don’t really know any other way."

Don’t worry. You’ll soon learn!

"But my tra-la-la won’t moisten up unless I feel a little pleasure."

It will, she assures me. "You’ll be surprised. I can start juicing up as soon as I get back to my boudoir with a patron, but there’s no feeling behind it at all. Don’t worry – you’ll soon get the knack. We’ve all worried about that in our time, and quite needlessly. Anyway, that’s where the cocoa butter comes in handy, like I said. Oh – and another thing ..."

Madame pokes her head round the door and says, Ready, girls?

Daphne says Yes, Madame! at once. I forget myself in my panic and look at the clock, which says there are still five minutes to go.

Mademoiselle Pearl? Madame asks impatiently.

Yes, Madame! I assure her. Longing to get started.

She laughs. You won’t feel so sprightly at two o’clock tonight, my lass! We’ll begin now. It’s going to be mayhem.

Daphne and I hasten to the door as the gong rings out. There is a boisterous male cheering from below. I try to banish from my mind the image of the hundred and more stiff pricks we girls will soften between us – or between our thighs to be precise – this day. What was the other thing you were going to tell me? I ask Daphne as we join the rest of the girls, who are now assembling on the landing at the head of the stair.

"Oh yes. About these young officers and how hard they poke – twelve hours on your back with one man after another lying on top of you, poking as hard as they do – and some of these young ones poke very hard, believe you me – can leave you hardly able to walk. It gets you here. She touches my Venus Mound. That bone across the front there feels like it’s being torn apart."

Dolly and Naomi, beyond her, nod in vigorous confirmation.

Dolly says, Try and make them poke you in lots of different ways – standing, sitting, sideways-on ...

You on top, Naomi puts in.

I like lying across the bed, Daphne finishes. Legs wide, feet on the floor – or with my heels lifted up on his shoulders while he stands.

Yes! Lorelei says from behind me. That’s the best, especially if he’s fat.

Some of this advice I have heard before from other girls. Some is new. But by now I’m so nervous I can’t tell them apart. It all sounds new. And impossible. An actress who hasn’t learned her lines properly must feel like this when the curtain goes up.

Now we’re all assembled at the stair head – twelve nubile girls, rested, refreshed, bathed, perfumed ... our bodies all luscious and purged, ready for another day of male worship at the Old Fork. I find it a great comfort to be with my sister filles de joie, to look like them, to hide my individuality away among them. There’s Lorelei, from Berlin, a dark-haired twenty-three-year-old with a plump, luscious body and big soft breasts. Beyond her is little Virginie, a pretty nineteen-year-old brunette from Marseilles; her slim figure is graced by the most beautiful breasts, large and firm. The third member of that little group is Garence, another French girl but from Canada; she’s twenty-two, ash blonde, very petite and slender, with small, pert breasts and baby eyes. Nearer to me are Naomi and Tirania, our two kiddies of seventeen. (We have a third, in fact, a lovely little Chinese girl called Mlle Butterfly, but she’s off this week, along with Priscilla, Nancy, and Gisela – all happy to be entertaining the cardinal again.) Tirania is from St Petersburg, a solemn young thing with deep, soulful eyes, almost lost in a shock of dense black hair; she has a firm, wiry body with soft, wobbly breasts that don’t look as if they’ve finished growing yet. Naomi is a bubbly Austrian redhead with her hair all in glossy curls; she’s short and stocky, a strong little body with full breasts; she looks good for any amount of traffic, I think. Sophia, from Copenhagen, is only a year older – another ash blonde, but tall and slender, with high, firm breasts. To my left is Melissande from Belgium. She’s one of our oldest. Our patrons, who are mainly Turkish and Arab, of course, don’t mind more mature ladies in their own houses of pleasure, but when they come to a foreign house like the French Hareem, they want us young. Melissande, my chief mentor over the past few days, doesn’t look twenty-four, I must say. She’s an athletic brunette whose body promises all sorts of supple pleasures; her breasts are small but she has large nipples that almost cover them; yesterday she told me this intrigues her patrons. Fleur is our only English girl; she’s twenty and moves her slender body with a kind of aristocratic grace; she has long, straight, auburn hair, pale skin adorned with a million light freckles, and large, rounded breasts with very prominent nipples. She’s giggling with Dolly from Dublin who is nineteen and one of those flaming Irish redheads – golden red and curly; also very freckled, even on the lips of her tra-la-la, which our Orientals adore to study very closely! She has a stocky, country girl’s body and the biggest breasts among all of us girls. Lastly there’s Rachel, a shy, quiet Hungarian of twenty-two, with raven hair; very pretty, with eyes which promise that all sorts of naughtiness will be discovered in and on her plump little body; she’s quite hairy, too, with thick forests under her armpits and a dense bush that covers half her belly and makes a grand secret of both her tralala and Mlle Lebrun; her breasts remind me of two ripe melons.

The eunuch beats the big brass gong. He will beat it again, a single stroke, every hour on the hour eleven more times, before we close the front doors (and our thighs) at two o’clock tomorrow morning. I have heard it beating every working hour for the past four days, yet only now do I realize it has exactly the same pitch and resonance as the gong I used to hear each evening in the Sultan’s hareem – the gong that signalled the hour when bad slave girls and courtesans were punished with whips or scorpions. From now on my punishments will be measured by the hour! And how much punishment, I wonder, will those few square inches of exquisitely sensitive flesh between my legs and up into my belly have to endure before this day is out!

And yet all is not gloom. Hand in hand, arm in arm, arms round each other’s waists, we start the descent, giggling, eager to begin, for even those who do not enjoy the work at all are still not fond of lolling about. And we all enjoy the comradeship, the us-versus-them feeling, the admiration of rich and important men, the luxury … and the money, of course.

The stairs are a grand spiral of one and a half turns. After the first quarter turn we can see the men below. Men’s eyes. Eyes here. Eyes there. Eyes staring greedily up at us. Eyes fixed on the undersides of our breasts, jiggling provocatively beneath our peignoirs. Eyes mesmerized by the teasing glimpses we grant them of the secret delights between our thighs. I hear a collective sigh go up from them. I hear their hearts hammering – or it is mine? I cannot escape those greedy eyes.

In the twinkling of an eye, goes the saying. Oh, so many things can pass between us in the twinkling of these male eyes! Hunger for our sex. Lust for our bodies. Pride in advance of the coming