Chapter 5

I soon learned that beatings were as common at Canard’s tavern as fucking. There was no routine or reason for them the way they had been when Fabienne was in charge of my mother. If business was slow, then Canard or his friends fucked the whores. If business was VERY slow and Canard became bored, then he beat them.

Canard was usually drunk, horny, and bored when he initiated the beatings, and it was usually out of frustration with the women’s glances or condescending comments. He promised Esmeralda and Carmen riches, but they had been living in squalor for months before we arrived. They were extraordinarily judgmental and often whispered and mocked him behind his back.

There was no regimented discipline like when Fabienne was in charge of my mother. My grandmother had outlined discipline rituals and routines designed to humble and humiliate my mother in her Devoirs Des Femmes notebook. There was a method and an order to all of the discipline. There seemed to be an internal logic to the lessons Fabienne was teaching.

None of the women wore panties or bras, or if they did, they were loose and exposed in a sultry manner. The women were experts at revealing just enough of their bodies to be provocative. Fabienne had made my mother remain nude or dressed in humiliating clothes to put her in the right mindset to serve.

These whores exposed themselves and wore cheap makeup because they were whores. They cared about profit and were too lazy to take the time to dress appropriately between sexual encounters. Their nudity was casual, and frequently they bathed with buckets of water in front of the tavern without any inhibition. The beggars and street urchins paid little mind to it. If they had money, the women would coquettishly try to entice them to come to play with them in the tavern. If they did not, then, they would mock and ridicule them for staring while they bathed.

They also squatted over the chamber pot without any clothes at all simply because they did not care whether anyone saw them or not.

Women without morals were difficult, if not impossible, to humiliate.

These beatings were just short, often brutal preludes to rough sex with little more than an exchange of vulgarities between both parties. The women almost always submitted but frequently fought back and were reluctant.

Jacques sometimes helped with the beatings, although he never beat his mother. He was merciless to my mother, though, and Madeleine seemed to enjoy it.

The day came that my mother was supposed to report to the Magistrate for her trial. She got drunk and refused to fuck anyone. She kept looking at the door when it opened, expecting a uniformed French guardsman to walk in with papers demanding her arrest. We never told anyone that it was her day in court. Canard gave her that day off because even he could tell my mother’s mood was foul, and she was like a tempest in a bottle. If anyone uncorked her, they might have unleashed her full fury.

I wondered what happened to Fabienne. I contemplated whether I had made the right decision to live here. Jacques let me wear some of his ratty clothes so that I would not stand out like a school-boy. They didn’t fit well and smelled of oats and Merde. I was thankful at least not to have lice or fleas infesting my clothes.

Every day after that, though, my mother fucked her brains out for money. She owed Canard money, and she told me to be thankful that he gave us room and board. All the women owed Canard money eventually. He extended them credit and gave them a pittance of their earnings. In exchange, he provided a place to practice their trade, food, and kept other pimps from beating them. The Ale he sold at the tavern was less for customers than it was to keep the women just inebriated enough to be flirtatious and not revolt against their exploitation.

They realized Canard had the upper hand, but all the whores were convinced that this was just the order of things for women, such as them in the Victorian era.

The cheese was moldy, and the bread was stale. The soup was watered down, and the ale was downright nasty. My mother reminded me that her month living as a dog had prepared her well, and this food was as fine as is served at the tables of La Tour d’Argent (a legendary Parisian restaurant). In some ways, I envied her ability to thrive in these conditions while I languished and regretted my decision daily.

Jacques was a bully, Sabine was stuck up and aloof, Canard was a drunken penny-pincher, Esmeralda and Carmen were surly and bitchy whores. The roof leaked, the mice were so large the cats were afraid of them. The tavern smelled of pussy and dried semen. The straw heaps that served as our beds were uncomfortable enough without the odor of piss and sex.

Over the next week, I watched Canard tie my mother upside down through the rungs of a ladder so that her wrists and ankles were tied to the rungs. Then he stuck a funnel in her ass and pissed in it.

Esmeralda once talked back to Canard and made a fool of him in front of a customer. She spent the night forced to sit on a wooden pole stuck up her ass and tied with her hands behind her back. Canard gagged her with a horse’s bit and placed a lit a candle on top of it. The wax slowly stung her face and tits, and Esmeralda whimpered her muffled cries of agony all night long. Milk dribbled out of her nipples all night like a leaky roof. The next day she thanked him for untying her and then continued her duties as a whore as if nothing had happened.

“Stop your niggling glances at me,” Jacques told his Aunt Carmen, and he told me to help him tie her up. He was awful to me, but we also did the more onerous physical chores around the tavern together. Anything too heavy for Sabine was delegated to us.

He stripped Carmen naked and tied a rope tightly around her neck. She squawked and protested his rough handling of her, but Jacques was a stout boy.

“Hah, her neck looks like a stretched goose,” Canard encouraged us to slap her ass and treat her roughly. It was daytime, and we had no customers.

We suspended her over the door frame like we were going to give her a water cure then tied her feet wide on either side. Carmen was stoic like my mother and struggled but didn’t fight us very hard. She knew it was inevitable she would be tied up and beaten. Jacques told me to gather some kindling planks we use to stoke the fire and hand them to him. He shoved three such boards into his Aunt’s pussy and then three more in her mouth and left her gagged and sputtering like that for an hour.

Esmeralda and Sabine did not even look up from what they were doing or appear sympathetic to her, and my mother was busy masturbating her asshole with a carved penis-shaped dildo on one of the straw beds.

The use of the whip and flogger were so common that all four women were quite used to daily beatings and ass-slappings. I wasn’t told I could beat them, and I didn’t think they would let me. It was not very frequent, they asked for my help, but If Canard or Jacques invited me to help tie up the women or beat them, I would.

Canard rarely beat or whipped Sabine. She was well behaved and went about her duties efficiently. She mostly cleaned up after the others. He focused more on the sour dispositions of the other three whores. My mother, Esmeralda, and Carmen were sturdy whores who could take extensive beatings.

Jacques, on the other hand, fucked Sabine at least twice a day. She clearly hated it.

I remember once when Canard was out of the tavern. “Sabine, lift your skirt and bend over the table,” he demanded.

“Non, I have chores to do, and Canard will beat me if they are not done when he returns,” she answered him rudely while washing up dirty mugs.

“If you don’t let me have your cunt, then I’ll beat you before he returns and take it!” Jacques said. He was looking right at me when he told his cousin to obey him. I think he wanted to flaunt his control over her. He had no idea I once controlled my mother and grandmother. He thought I was a naïve skinny little French runt.

“Fine, just a blowjob? I must finish the chores,” Sabine squatted and began to unbuckle Jacques breeches.

“Non!” Jacques picked her up and flipped her around. He slammed her head into the table and lifted her skirt. He stuck his stumpy cock into her pussy and began to hump her. Sabine gripped the table and endured the fucking. She looked right at me.

“Look, Elle mouille,” Jacques showed me Sabine’s wet little cunt. He wanted me to see that Sabine was getting off on this rough sex. Sabine shook her head that she wasn’t enjoying it even if she was soaking wet. Jacques insisted I look more closely, and he pulled out so that I could see.

“Fuck her from the front,” he pointed to Sabine’s mouth. She looked at me as if she expected better from me. I felt guilty about it, but I also wanted to fuck her face. I unbuckled my pants and came around to the table. Her cousin lifted her onto the table so that she could stretch across the width and began to fuck her from behind while I fucked her face from the front.

I could not look Sabine in the eyes. Her mouth was a tremendous pleasure to use, and she did not bite or resist me. She could have easily done so, but she let me fuck her face without resistance.

“Good, I was beginning to think you prefer boys,” Jacques said to me while he focused on pumping Sabine from behind. My mother and the other women observed us casually. They were hungover and half-asleep from a night of rough fucking. They played with themselves or napped most of the morning.

I was about to answer when Canard burst through the door angrily.

“While you two Orphelines were in here playing around someone stole a barrel of ale from the front of the tavern!” he sounded drunk and angry. He kicked Jacques to the ground with his muddy boot. Then he turned on me.

“It was Encule! He was supposed to be watching for the delivery! I told him to do it!” Jacques blamed me. I knew nothing of any delivery.

“You should have made sure he did it! Encule could not defend himself from a wet fart in a rough wind! How could he have stopped the robbers from stealing my ale!” Canard beat Jacques. “You two are in here sampling my women for free when you are supposed to be working for me! What do I pay you for?”

“You do not pay us!” Jacques said as he defended himself from Canard. He didn’t fight back, but he held his hands in front of his face and tried to avoid Canard’s clumsy punches and kicks.

“I feed you and clothe you! Now you want money?” Canard was definitely drunk and angry. He insisted we get his ale back.

Carmen was masturbating with a dildo in the corner and said that the ale was so sour and disgusting that perhaps the garbage collector mistook it for a bucket of piss.

Canard turned his attention to tormenting and fucking her because of her smart mouth and dismissed us.

Jacques and I went outside to look around for the missing barrel of ale. “I didn’t know about a delivery,” I said.

“Since you have arrived, you have made things worse for me! I try to share with you, and this is how you repay me?” Jacques kicked me into the mud in front of the tavern. I had not tried to do anything other than avoid him and help where I could around the tavern. I did not understand why he was so angry with me. It seemed like Jacques was simply taking out his frustrations that he could not beat Canard on me.

He held me down in the dirty alley and punched my face several times. I hated being unable to fight back. I had lost much of the confidence I had when I was in charge of my mother, and I felt powerless.

The only reason Jacques stopped beating me in that encounter was a shifty-looking rat-faced man approached us with a large bruiser of a bodyguard. “Tell Canard that he must pay what he owes us, or we will make sure he receives no shipments of ale,” they said. They were the ones who took it, and it was because of a gambling debt.

Jacques launched himself at the rat-faced man to defy him. He stepped out of the way, and the Bruiser kicked him in the head. I ran inside to tell Canard that they were outside.

“Ah, a debt, you say?” Canard looked up. His head was buried in Carmen’s wet pussy, and the two of them were laughing and fucking. Esmeralda had joined the pair, and she was licking his cock lewdly. “It must be Le Maquereau! Tell him that I will pay him in credit at my establishment,” he insisted I return and give that message to the wicked men outside.

“Monsieur le Maquereau,” I addressed the ratty faced man. The bruiser was holding Jacques by his arms while the rat-faced man beat him with a cane.

“That is not my name,” he scoffed at me dismissively as I tried to deliver Canard’s message to him. When he would not listen to me, I grabbed a broken spoke to a wooden carriage wheel. I walked behind the big man and hit him in the back of the knees, and when he went down, I hit him hard across the base of his skull.

The weasel was so shocked that his ruffian friend went down that he panicked. Jacques lunged forward and pushed him into the mud and began to beat him. I held the man down. Jacques meant to rob him and possibly kill him.

“Mercy! Mercy!” he begged.

“Bring back the barrel of ale!” Jacques demanded.

“Canard owes a gambling debt,” Le Maquereau insisted the money was duly owed. I confirmed what Canard had told me inside the tavern.

Jacques seethed with rage. He wanted to kill this man. Le Maquereau could tell his life was forfeit if Jacques wanted to continue beating him. He pointed out that his Associates would come to collect the debt and seek vengeance if he killed him.

“Then we won’t kill you. We will just beat you until you forget about the debt,” I said with a ruthless tone in my voice and spit on his face.

I was surprised that the terms were acceptable to Le Maquereau. He collected his friend and left. He didn’t return the ale, but he never returned to collect upon the debt.

When we returned to the tavern, Canard hailed us both as heroes. He was delighted that the debt was forgiven, and after that, he treated me much more kindly. He stilled called me Encule as that had become my nickname. He called the two of us his Orphelines (balls), but he meant it endearingly.

After that, Jacques stopped bullying me, and we became fast friends. I told him about Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and their adventures in the American wilderness. “Which am I?” he asked me.

“You are Tom Sawyer,” I said.

“I want to be Huck Finn!” he insisted. He was convinced I had taken the better character for myself. He expected everyone to be greedy and self-absorbed because most everyone in this part of town really was.

When I told him the story of how Tom had to whitewash his Aunt Polly’s fence as a punishment for a prior mischief, he changed his mind. I told him how, at first, his friends ridiculed him, and he wanted to play instead. Tom Sawyer not only turned the situation around, but he also spun it like a top on his palm. At the end of that day, a dozen boys painted the fence for him while he played to his heart’s desire. He even convinced them to pay for the privilege.

Jacques idolized Tom Sawyer after that and asked me to tell him more stories about Tom. I had to make some up because Jacques thirst for stories became so great. I told him stories about Injun Joe’s treasure, but I also told him how Tom fucked so many women that his giant penis was cast in bronze and displayed in a museum.

That evening it was slow in the tavern. “Carmen, bend over the table! I want to use you!” I summoned my courage to demand sex.

“Hah, the rabbit has become a lion? How about you suckle on my sister’s teats instead,” she laughed at me and ignored my request.

“Face down on the table and spread your ass cheeks so that I can decide what hole I want to fuck!” I insisted angrily.

Esmeralda and my mother laughed too. Sabine watched with interest, but Jacques and Canard were drinking and ignoring our petty squabble.

“You helped my nephew beat up a man today, and now you think you are a pimp? What will you do if I don’t let you? Throw a tantrum?” she giggled.

I grabbed her hair and stuck two fingers up her nostrils. She resisted and scratched my face with her nails. I slapped her hand hard and told her never to resist me again. I bent her over the table and ripped her corset off. I kicked her legs apart and held her down.

Canard and Jacques could not help but notice the woman struggling. Carmen easily outweighed me by 9 or 10 kilograms and had a height advantage. It took all of my muscle to hold her down.

“Tom, throw me a lasso!” I shouted to Jacques for help. He didn’t know what a lasso was, so I had to explain it was a rope with a noose at one end. He quickly tossed me a rope, and I bound his Aunt and forced her to submit to me.

I had read the adventures of Huckleberry Finn enough times that I knew it almost by memory. I paraphrased a quote from a chapter when Huck goes to the circus.

“And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking his whip and shouting “Hi!—hi!” and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did lean over and hump themselves! And so one after the other, they all skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever did see, and then scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about wild.”

Then I forced Carmen up to imitate the steps of a horse while I called after her “Hi!-Hi!”. It was hilarious to the others who were only used to rough-born fucking. I had made my mother high step and trot like a circus show-pony for amusement. My mother was obedient and followed my instructions then.

It was altogether difficult to make Carmen whinny and behave like a horse. She bucked and tried to kick me even when I had her buckled in an old leather harness. I applied a leather strap to her ass until she complied with my wishes.

A customer entered the tavern while I was trying to bend Carmen to my will and was fascinated with the spectacle. He told Canard he wanted to have a turn when I was finished grooming the wild pony.

At first, Canard thought he was joking, but when the customer handed him real coins for the privilege, Canard barked some orders, and Carmen stopped resisting. She glared at me angrily but obliged the man his fun.

He trotted her around the tavern and even out in front in the nude when he got the hang out of it. We laughed and chuckled while he did. It was quite entertaining, and he asked me for tips on handling her. I told him it was no different handling a beast like her and a plow horse. “The whip or the carrot,” I said, and I showed him my whip and my penis.

Carmen and Esmeralda did not resist me when I wanted to fuck her after that. My mother frequently offered to let me fuck her. Just as Madeleine predicted, there were men who liked to watch me have sex with her. I look like my mother in the face, and they knew I was her son. It was more humiliating to me to call her mamma than it was to her to answer to it while they grinned at our sinful behavior and laughed. Incest was a tremendous taboo at the time, and yet it was prevalent in smutty books and many Victorian Households.

Jacques didn’t bear as much resemblance to his mother or Aunt to pique the interest of those who enjoyed the taboo of incest. He was never paid to fuck them in front of other men, but he fucked them both when the mood struck him.