Papillon by Henri Charrière

I can recall, as if it were yesterday, that first night of freedom in the English town. We went everywhere, drunk with the lights and the warmth in our hearts, feeling at one with the happy, laughing crowd. The bars were full of sailors and girls waiting to fleece them. But these weren't like the sordid women of the underworld in Paris, Le Havre, or Marseilles, with their crudely made-up faces, and eyes bright with greed and cunning. The girls of Trinidad were of every color: yellow Chinese, black African, light chocolate with glossy hair; there were Hindu and Javanese women whose parents had been imported to cultivate the cocoa and sugar cane-"coolies," who were a mixture of Chinese and Hindu and wore a gold shell in their noses. Then there were the Llapanes with their Roman profiles and bronzed faces illumined by enormous, brilliant black eyes, their breasts exposed as if to say: "See how perfect they are."

All these girls with flowers of different colors in their hair stimulated desire without making it dirty or commercial. They gave the impression that it wasn't work, that they really enjoyed it, and you felt that money was not the main thing in their lives.