ON BEING MUGGED
ON BEING MUGGED
Robbing season on the French Riviera
PIRAEUS—My assailant (I think of him as ‘Marcel’, thought we never got each other’s names) approached me from behind and I felt him touch me. I said: ‘Don’t fucking touch me! What the fuck?’ I said. I was wandering around the port of Marseille in the early morning after putting my evening companion in a cab. We’d had a great night. I wondered if there was an open kiosk somewhere, in vain. And now here was Marcel. I felt my back right pocket and my wallet was not there. ‘You took my wallet, you piece of shit. Give it back!’ I said. He was shorter than I am, fatter than I am, and, it seemed, older than I am. I was not having this. I brought chase, not that either of us were moving at a fast clip. He yelled back at me in French I did not understand. ‘Gimme my fucking wallet right now!’ I said. Then came his hand, his right, for my left cheek. A glancing blow, open handed but hard to call it a slap, unbruising. It emboldened me. I saw my wallet in his right hand. I took it. A moment’s pause, somehow. I looked in. A twenty-pound note and a twenty-euro note left. About two hundred pounds were missing, a sum I had withdrawn to pay back a debt in London to my friend L. but we had not gotten to meet up, and I had not exchanged the currency. Now we were in France. ‘Gimme my money, asshole!’ I should have said, ‘Touchez pas au grisbi!’