and reminded me of Salomon Toledano and his ill-fated Japanese
love. I went in and bought Yilal a small case with six horsemen of
the Imperial Russian Guard.
What else could be true in the bad girl's story? Probably that
Fukuda had dumped her in a cruel way and that she had been—and
perhaps still was—sick. It was obvious, it was enough to see her
prominent bones, her pallor, the dark circles under her eyes. And the
story about Lagos? Perhaps it was true that she'd had problems with
the police. It was a risk she ran in the dirty business her Japanese
lover had involved her in. Didn't she tell me that herself,
enthusiastically, in Tokyo? She was ingenuous enough to believe
that adventures as a smuggler and trafficker, and gambling her
freedom on trips to Africa, added spice to her life, made it more
succulent and entertaining. I remembered her words: "By doing
these things, I live more intensely." Well, whoever plays with fire
sooner or later gets burned. If she really had been arrested, it was
possible the police had raped her. Nigeria had a reputation as the
paradise of corruption; a military satrapy, its police force must be
rotted through. Raped by God knows how many men, brutalized for
hours and hours in a filthy hole, infected with a venereal disease and
crabs, and then treated by quacks who used unsterilized
instruments. I was assailed by a feeling of shame and anger. If all
that happened to her, even only some of it, and she had been on the
verge of death, my cold, incredulous response had been meanspirited,
the response of a rancorous man who wanted only to
assuage his pride, wounded by that ugly time in Tokyo. I should
have said something affectionate to her, pretended I believed her.
Because even if the story about the rape and prison was a lie, in fact
she was a physical ruin now. And, no doubt, half dead from hunger.
You behaved badly, Ricardito. Very badly, if it was true she turned to
me because she felt alone and uncertain and I was the only person
in the world she trusted. This last must be correct. She had never
loved me but did feel confidence in me, the affection awakened by a
loyal servant. Among her lovers and passing pals, I was the most
disinterested, the most devoted. The asshole, self-sacrificing and
docile. That's why she chose you to cremate her body. And will you
toss her ashes into the Seine or keep them in a small Sevres
porcelain vase on your night table?
I reached Rue Joseph Granier soaked from head to toe and dying
of the cold. I took a hot shower, put on dry clothes, and prepared a
ham and cheese sandwich that I ate with fruit yogurt. With the case
of toy soldiers under my arm, I knocked on the Gravoskis' door. Yilal
was already in bed, and they had just finished eating a supper of
spaghetti with basil. They offered me some, but all I accepted was a
cup of coffee. While Simon examined the toy soldiers and joked that
with gifts like these I wanted to turn Yilal into a militarist, Elena
noticed something strange in my reticence.
"Something's happened, Ricardo," she said, scrutinizing my eyes.
"Did the bad girl call you?"
Simon looked up from the toy soldiers and stared at me.
"I've just spent an hour with her in a bistrot. She's living in Paris.
She's a wreck and has no money, she's dressed like a beggar. She
says the Japanese dumped her after the police in Lagos arrested her
on one of those trips she made to Africa to help him in his
trafficking. And raped her. And infected her with crabs and chancre.
And then, in some foul hospital, they almost finished the job. It may
be true. It may be false. I don't know. She says Fukuda dropped her
because he was afraid Interpol had her on file and the blacks had
infected her with AIDS. The truth or an invention? I have no way of
knowing."
"The saga becomes more interesting every day," Simon exclaimed
in stupefaction. "True or not, it's a terrific story."
He and Elena looked at each other and looked at me, and I knew
very* well what they were thinking. I agreed.
"She remembers very clearly the call she made to my house. A
thin, high-pitched voice answered, in French, and she thought it
belonged to an Asian woman. He had her repeat 'bad girl' several
times in Spanish. She can't have invented that."
I saw Elena become agitated. She was blinking very rapidly.
"I always thought it was true," murmured Simon. His voice was
excited and he became flushed, as if he were suffocating from the
heat. He kept scratching at his red beard. "I turned it around and
around and reached the conclusion it had to be true. How could Yilal
invent anything like 'bad girl'? How happy you've made us with this
news, mon vieux"
Elena agreed, holding my arm. She was smiling and crying at the
same time.
"I always knew it too, knew that Yilal had talked to her," she said,
sounding out each word. "But please, we mustn't do anything. Or say
anything to the boy. It will all come on its own. If we try to force
him, things may get worse. He has to do it, break that barrier by his
own effort. He will, at the right time, he'll do it soon, you'll see."
"This is the moment to bring out the cognac," said Simon,
winking at me. "You see, mon vieux, I took precautions. Now we're
prepared for the surprises you give us periodically. An excellent
Napoleon, you'll see!"
We each had a cognac, almost without speaking, deep in our own
thoughts. The drink did me good, for the walk in the rain had chilled
me. When I said good night, Elena walked out to the landing with
me.
"I don't know, it just occurred to me," she said. "Maybe your
friend needs a medical exam. Ask her. If she wants, I can arrange it
at the Hopital Cochin, with my copains. At no charge to her, I mean.
I imagine she has no insurance or anything like that."
I thanked her. I'd ask the next time we spoke.
"If it's true, it must have been awful for the poor woman," she
murmured. "A thing like that leaves dreadful scars in one's mind."
The next day, I hurried home from UNESCO so I would see Yilal.
He was watching a cartoon on television, and beside him were the
six horsemen of the Russian Imperial Guard lined up in a row. He
showed me his slate: "Thank you for the nice gift, Uncle Ricardo."
He shook my hand, smiling. I began to read Le Monde while he, his
attention hypnotized, was involved in his program. Afterward,
instead of reading to him, I told him about Salomon Toledano. I
talked about his collection of toy soldiers that I had seen invading
every inch of his house, and his incredible ability to learn languages.
He had been the best interpreter in the world. When he asked on his
slate if I could take him to Salomon's house to see his Napoleonic
battles, and I said he had died very far from Paris, in Japan, Yilal
became sad. I showed him the hussar I kept on my night table, the
one Salomon had given me the day he left for Tokyo. A little while
later, Elena came to take him home.
In order not to think too much about the bad girl, I went to a
movie in the Latin Quarter. In the dark, warm theater filled with
students, on Rue Champollion, as I distractedly followed the
adventures in Stagecoach, John Ford's classic Western, the
deteriorated, wretched image of the Chilean girl appeared and
reappeared in my head. That day, and all the rest of the week, her
figure was always on my mind, along with the question to which I
never found a reply: Had she told me the truth? Was the story about
Lagos and Fukuda true? I was tormented by the conviction that I
would never know with any certainty.
She called me a week later, at home, again very early in the
morning. After asking how she was—"Fine, I'm fine now, I told you
that"—I proposed having supper that night. She agreed, and we
arranged to meet at the old Procope, on Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie,
at eight. I arrived before she did and waited for her at a table beside
the window that overlooked the Rohan passage. She arrived right
after me. Better dressed than the last time, but still shabby: under
the ugly, asexual jacket she wore a dark blue dress, without a collar
or sleeves, and her medium-heeled shoes were cracked but recently
polished. It was very strange to see her without rings, bracelets,
earrings, or makeup. At least she had filed her nails. How could she
have gotten so thin? It looked as if she would shatter with a single
misstep.
She ordered consomme and grilled fish and barely sipped at the
wine during the meal. She chewed very* slowly and reluctantly and
had difficulty swallowing. Did she really feel all right?
"My stomach has shrunk and I can hardly tolerate food," she
explained. "After two or three bites I feel full. But this fish is
delicious."
In the end I drank the bottle of Cotes du Rhone by myself. When
the waiter brought coffee for me and verbena tea for her, I said,
holding her hand, "I beg you, by what you love most, swear that
everything you told me the other day in La Rhumerie is true."
"You'll never believe anything I tell you again, I know that." She
had an air of fatigue, of weariness, and didn't seem to care in the
least if I believed her or not. "Let's not talk about it anymore. I told
you so you would let me see you from time to time. Because even if
you don't believe this either, talking to you does me good."
I felt like kissing her hand but controlled myself. I told her
Elena's proposal. She sat looking at me, disconcerted.
"But, she knows about me, about us?"
I nodded. Elena and Simon knew* everything. In an outburst I
had told them "our" entire story. They were very good friends, she
had nothing to fear from them. They wouldn't denounce her to the
police as a trafficker in aphrodisiacs.
"I don't know why I confided in them. Perhaps because, like
everybody, occasionally I need to share with someone the things
that distress me or make me happy. Do you accept Elena's
proposal?"
She didn't seem very enthusiastic. She looked at me uneasily, as
if fearing a trap. That light, the color of dark honey, had disappeared
from her eyes. Along with the mischief, the mockery.
"Let me think about it," she said at last. "We'll see how I feel. I'm
feeling fine, now. The only thing I need is quiet, and rest."
"It's not true that you're fine," I insisted. "You're a ghost. You're
so thin a simple grippe could send you to the grave. And I don't feel
like attending to that sinister little chore of incinerating you, and so
forth. Don't you want to be attractive again?"
She burst into laughter.
"Ah, so now you think I'm ugly. Thanks for your honesty." She
pressed the hand I was still holding hers with, and for a second her
eyes came alive. "But you're still in love with me, aren't you,
Ricardito?"
"No, not anymore. And I'll never be in love with you again. But I
don't want you to die."
"It must be true you don't love me anymore if you haven't said a
single cheap, sentimental thing to me this time," she acknowledged,
making a half-comic face. "What do I have to do to conquer you
again?"
She laughed with the flirtatiousness of the old days, and her eyes
filled with mischievous light, but suddenly, with no transition, I felt
the pressure of her hand on mine weaken. Her eyes went blank, she
turned livid and opened her mouth, as if she needed air. If I hadn't
been beside her, holding her, she would have fallen to the floor. I
rubbed her temples with a dampened napkin, had her drink some
water. She recovered a little but was still very pale, almost white.
And now there was an animal panic in her eyes.
"I'm going to die," she stammered, digging her nails into my arm.
"You're not going to die. I've allowed you every despicable thing
in the world since we were children, but not dying. I forbid it."
She smiled weakly.
"It was time you said something nice to me." Her voice was
barely audible. "I needed it, even if you don't believe that, either."
When, after a while, I tried to have her stand, her legs were
trembling and she dropped, exhausted, onto the chair. I had a waiter
at Le Procope bring a taxi from the stand on the corner of Saint-
Germain to the door of the restaurant, and then help me walk her to
the street. The two of us carried her, lifting her at the waist. When
she heard me tell the driver to take us to the nearest hospital—"The
Hotel-Dieu on the Cite, all right?"—she grabbed me in despair. "No,
no, not to a hospital, under no circumstances, no." I found myself
obliged to rectify that and ask the driver to take us instead to Rue
Joseph Granier. On the way to my house—I had her leaning on my
shoulder—she lost consciousness again for a few seconds. Her body
went slack and slipped in the seat. When I straightened her, I could
feel all the bones in her back. At the door to the art deco building, I
called Simon and Elena on the intercom and asked them to come