So when I walked on and down the grand stairs and met the Three Thieves, I was in a good mood. They were sitting on the steps rolling a joint and drinking beer and watching someone juggle down the way. I’m not sure how we got to talking, but they offered me the joint and I declined as I was already feeling better than fine…. But I was lonely as I always was in Paris and so we got to talking. Two of them were white and one was muslim: probably Moroccon or Algerian. I’d noticed that there was very little integration in Paris. The Muslims and white French seemed to occupy the same city, but live entirely separate lives…only interacting on a very formal level, like buying bread, or selling hash. It was very weird coming from New York where, as separate as things are, you just end up knowing all sorts of people. Paris felt very tribal. I started asking them about this and then the red head said, “It is weirder still. I am a Jew, he is a Catholic, and he is a Muslim.”
I thought, gee these guys are like a U.N. stamp, or something. How beautiful is that!
The Three Thieves made a great first impression. I found them again a few days later in the gathering evening walk that had become my habit. After the drawings were done and before the Hub, I would make a point to climb up the hill and get some exercise and look out over Paris so as not to forget exactly where I was. They were behind the cathedral and down the side stairs in a little park with a box of cheap, warm beer. They recognized me and offered me a beer and we drank and talked in the little park for a while. When the beer was all done, we climbed down into the town and they started asking me if I could pitch in for some more beer. I told them I had no cash, but maybe we could find a store that took a credit card. By that time, however, that neighborhood was a ghost town, so instead we stopped into a little café and I agreed to buy them one round of beer. We drank and all was good. When the check came, the problems arrived. As happened frequently, the card was declined (I never used my credit cards back in the States, so Everytime I used it in Paris, the security feature would kick in and they would freeze it and I would have to call and explain that I was traveling… A hassle). I explained the situation to them. They started to act very offended. Like I was trying to rip them off. They had given me their beer and I had promised to buy them a round. So what is the problem? One of them pulled out a wad of francs and told the waiter they could pay for theirs and they did and then I told the waiter to run the card again for less money. He did and it worked finally.
The boys walked out of the cafe waited out front and I stayed back to sign the bill. The waiter said to me in confidence, “Those boys you are with are no good. They are bad. I know them. You should not be with such people.”
At the time I took it as an example of French Prejudice. They weren’t bad, they were misunderstood. They were a U.N. stamp. They were a walking trio of peace.
Now I started to walk home, buzzed and tired, and annoyed by the damn card and they followed me and started saying that I owed them money for their beers. I said I was sorry. They said it was okay. I told them they were a trio of peace and they seemed to like that. I went on my swiss rant and explained my manic ideas about the cross and the four corners of the earth and how the Swiss were the watch and the sword and I showed them my fake swiss army watch and my real swiss army knife and I told them the story of the five soldiers formed into the shape of a Pentagon defeating the Roman Legion and how you could hijack a plane with swiss knife, but they still let you fly with it (this was in 1998). They got very chummy. They asked if I liked Hashish. I said sometimes. They said, tomorrow we get good Hashsish. I said tomorrow is tomorrow now I’m tired. One of them pulled out a cigarette and started to smoke. I got one of mine and he gave me his lighter. It was a zippo. I held his zippo and he asked to see my watch. The other asked to see my knife and since I’d been talking about the shapes of shields I gladly obliged and lit my cigarette and then the third took out his cigarette and naturally I passed the lighter along and suddenly they backed up and I realized I was without knife or watch, or zippo… (the watch was a twenty dollar Chinatown fake, but they didn’t know that). I said, give me my things back.
You owe us for the beer, one said.
Yes, we ended up having to pay for ourselves and the beer we gave you on the hill.
Yes. You should give us something.
Give me my things back.
All you have to do is give us your passport… then we give you back your things.
Now I saw the shape of the Con. American passports are a great prize, but an expensive hassle to replace while traveling. Plus, who knew who would get into the my country with my passport.? Suddenly this weird trio of peace looked like a conspiracy of organized crime, or terrorists and I became very patriotic and refused on principle to part with the documents I wore around my neck from a purse like a talisman.
No way fellas, I said. Over my dead body.
It is not hard for you to get a new one… you just go to the embassy.
Then out of the night came a flick and then two and then they walked into a building and I realized that this scene was unfolding right in front of the police station. How dumb were these kids…. How dumb was I?
D’accord I said and walked over to the police station and began to try to explain in my tattered French that these three kids had just stolen my watch and knife and were trying to steal my passport.
The French cops just looked at me…dumb. And Laughed. I got Irate. Les Voleurs Les Volerus La Bas! Vite.
They couldn’t have gotten far and I ran out and sure enough two of them were just up the hill and one was hiding under a car right in front of the police station. Something out of Silent movie ensued. I went under the car and he popped out, I popped out and he went back under.
The flicks were standing there laughing. I understood at once why the world hates French People and Cops… French Cops are in a league of their own.
I’m yelling for the flicks to shoot him already. Tue les Voleurs!
They did nothing and he ran out the back and I went after him and he caught up with the other two and…. I ran and ran and then realized that it would be three against one and they had my knife….and I stopped and stood in the cobble street for minute catching my breath.
I knew where they lived anyway. I went home furious and stewed about it. Drinking the warm beer I had in my room and wishing I’d stayed there and drank alone, or gone to Hub, or done anything, but meet up with these Three Thieves who had looked so Biblical there by the Trinity of Sacre Coeur.
And that’s where I found them two days later… Just sitting there about 100 meters below. I skipped down the white stairs and placed my index finger on the right temple of the central sitter… I think it was the Jew who had been the one under the car. I did this because it is the most vulnerable part of the human body and if you can get close enough to touch it, you are close enough to kill the man you are touching… if I had a knife, or even a chop stick, I could insert it there directly into his brain. I then recited the crazy Ezekial speech from Pulp Fiction, because I didn’t know what else to say and I figured it was some scary shit to yell at someone sitting in front of a Cathedral and I always liked Ezekial anyway …. A wheel within a wheel turning.
Having, in my own manic mind, proved my point I continued down the stairs towards Montmartre. Behind they yelled for me to come back.
We have your stuff
We were kidding.
Come on. We’ll smoke some Hash. It’s all good.
But they were dead to me already. They were the trinity without Christ…Just Three Thieves and I walked down the hill like it was Golgotha. I saw them many times, but never spoke with them again. I bought a plastic watch and a new Swiss Knife from two beautiful girls at a little store in Pigalle. One was Jewish and the other Muslim. I told them I didn’t know if I wanted to live or die any more. I was so disappointed with the world.
They said Vivre. Vivre.
It’s amazing how two pretty girls telling you to Live can make you feel like doing exactly that.
