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 About two hundred pounds were missing, a sum I had withdrawn to pay back a debt in London to my friend L. but we had not gotten to meet up, and I had not exchanged the currency.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!’