“This way,” Aldo said, showing him the stairway that led to the hatch. “Mr. Al-Muzara, I understand you are the brother of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.”
Aldo almost fell backward off the steep staircase when the head of the terrorist group swiveled to glare at him with eyes so black they looked like giant pupils.
“That traitor is not my brother! Winning that prize from the Western heretics only demonstrates the perversity of his ideas.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“A man who rubs shoulders with Zionists and the Arab snakes could never be my brother.”
Aldo didn’t know whom he was referring to as “Arab snakes.” Later, Rauf explained to him that he thought of Arabs aligned with the West as snakes, especially the royal families from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
On Friday morning, Matilde woke up refreshed after having slept most of the day before. The jet lag had made her sleep deeper than she ever had in her life. Juana woke up with a low fever, though Matilde blamed it less on the jet lag and more on the call from Jorge, a married but childless doctor at the Hospital Garrahan with whom Juana had gotten involved. Months before, the man had sworn that he would divorce his wife, for whom he claimed to feel nothing. Then the wife had gotten pregnant and Jorge had put an end to the affair with Juana. Matilde thought that her friend’s decision to embark on the Healing Hands trip had more to do with putting distance between her and Jorge than a compassionate heart.
“That’s what happens when you have a cell phone,” Matilde declared. “Why don’t you change the number so Jorge can’t bother you anymore?”
“I answered it because I wanted to, Mat,” Juana admitted, stretched out on the armchair in the living room. “Perhaps you don’t know that you can see who’s calling on a cell phone if you have the number saved?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oof, Matilde Martínez! You’re living in a cave, my dear.”
“So it’s even easier, then. You don’t need to change your number to ignore Jorge. Just don’t answer and there you go. What does he have to say to you? That now he’s not finished with you or what?”
Matilde ran over to Juana when she saw her dark eyes brimming with tears. She hugged her.
“It sometimes seems as though the only reason we’re friends is so we can console each other,” Juana sobbed, and though she was trying to sound upbeat, Matilde knew her friend better than that and was aware that this was just a front she put up to disguise her pain.
“Juani, in this lifetime you’ve consoled me much more than I’ve consoled you.”
“That’s because your life, my dear friend, has been a soap opera!”
“What did Jorge say?”
“That he loves me, that he misses me, that he can’t live without me, that I should come back, that he’s going to leave her…”
“Now that she’s pregnant?”
“He’ll wait until the baby’s born.”
“Juani, you know I’ll support whatever decision you make, but if you want my opinion, I say you can’t take Jorge back. Give the baby a chance to have a family.”
“Oh, Matilde!” the other moaned, and started crying again.
“Your parents are still together and they’ve always loved each other, but I suffered through my parents’ divorce and I swear it was the most difficult thing that’s ever happened in my life. Much more difficult than the other thing, and you know how hard that was.”
“Yes,” Juana mumbled, her head buried in her friend’s lap.
“You’re like a drug for Jorge. If you stay away for a little while, he might be able to get over his addiction to you.”
“I don’t want him to get over his addiction to me.”
Matilde whispered in Juana’s ear as she stroked her temple and smoothed back her black hair.
“Do it for the baby, Juani. For him.”
Juana let out a scream that expressed a mixture of frustration, impotence and emotion. After a while she went back to her room, lay down and went to sleep after drinking some tea and taking a couple of aspirin.
At around two in the afternoon, Matilde got ready to go out. It was freezing outside, so she wrapped herself in wool pants, thick socks and shoes.
“Where are you going?” Juana asked as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
“I’m going to take a walk around the neighborhood and buy supplies.”
“You look great, Mat. So you’ve finally decided to use the outfit I gave you! It fits you perfectly. To what do I owe the compliment of you wearing my humble gift?”
“I don’t know. I saw it in the suitcase and thought that I’d premiere it today. At least you can’t allege that I dress like an Amish woman.”
“No, but I can say that using the word allege is pretty Amish.”
Matilde put on her long wool coat and her gloves and pulled on a hat with a pom-pom. She said good-bye to Juana and left the apartment. The cold air felt like a slap in the face. Still, her determination to get to know her surroundings and familiarize herself with the Quartier Latin drove her on to the corner. The Soufflot Café was open and bustling with activity, which reminded her what Ezequiel had told her, that Parisians loved cafés and bars even more than people in Buenos Aires did. She continued onward. It had been a long time since she had felt this happy. She was in Paris, on the cusp of starting a new life. She thanked God for the blessings she had received and asked him—she always ended up asking him for something—that he give her freedom, of mind, spirit and heart, because she knew that, shackled as she was, she would never be able to achieve fulfillment or happiness.
The Luxembourg Gardens, just three blocks from Rue Toullier, took her breath away, as did the cold, because the wind was whipping mercilessly around the immense park. She returned to the relative shelter of the streets, wandering around aimlessly, appreciating the architecture and the novelty of wandering around the ancient, famous city of Paris. She keenly studied the people, their clothes and their habits; everything was new to her. She had gone pretty far over the past hour and the cold, which got into every orifice, had frozen her to the bone. She made a mental note: I have to buy some wool tights. She went into a bookstore more in search of warmth than books. The heating had her cheeks glowing in a matter of minutes. She took off her gloves to rummage through the boxes overflowing with books. An old one with an embossed title on its blue leather cover caught her eye: The Perfumed Garden. It was in English, a language she spoke as well as she did Spanish. She started to leaf through it, and the illustration on the first page made her pulse race: a couple, both naked except for the turban around his head and the veil that barely covered her face, lying on cushions, making love. The man’s hand rested on the young girl’s breast; her hand was wrapped around his penis. “God, who has placed man’s greatest pleasure in the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest enjoyment to the woman.” She flipped through the pages as if in a trance. The scandalous drawings continued: diagrams of unimaginable positions for coitus. Phrases like “his member grows and strengthens” or “then, wrapping her in your thighs, you introduce your member” leaped out at her. She looked around her. No one was watching. A woman was at the register. Did she dare to buy it? It wasn’t very expensive, twenty francs—a little over three dollars—and, though she couldn’t waste her money on trifles, something compelled her to buy the book. She sensed that the secrets it contained weren’t trifles. Luckily, the girl at the cash register was listening to music through her headphones and seemed completely indifferent to the purchase.
She went out onto the street with her heart pounding, excited by the prospect of reading The Perfumed Garden. She stopped in front of a perfume shop, attracted by the antiquity of the architecture, which appeared to be fin de siècle. The shop window, with a dark wood frame and beautiful moldings, featured a display of modern bottles on a bed of red velvet, mixed with some older ones, similar to those in her grandmother Celia’s
collection. One of the new ones caught her eye: an opaque black bottle with a blue crystal sapphire-like star in the center. The name thrilled her: A*Men. Eliah’s aftershave, she said to herself, remembering their familiarity and the smell of it on his skin. Suddenly, as though out of the blue, she became aware of the book she had just bought.
It was difficult to get the employee to understand. Since she had been warned not to speak English to Parisians—it apparently put them in a terrible mood—she explained with gestures that she want to try A*Men, by Thierry Mugler. “C’est pour un homme,” the woman had insisted, offering her other feminine fragrances, until she finally gave up and sprayed Matilde on the wrist. The glove will be impregnated and the smell will last a long time, like it did on his handkerchief. She wandered away. Every few yards she would stop to smell her wrist and Eliah’s handkerchief and trying to decipher the exotic, intoxicating essences that made up the perfume. It smelled of vanilla, sometimes of orange, and then she got the aroma of coffee.
She decided to buy supplies and woolen tights on Rue Toullier. Since she was tired of walking around on foot, she decided to take the subway, which Parisians called le métro, and which her aunt Enriqueta described as an underground replica of the city.
Eliah excused himself from his associates and left the room to answer the call.
“It’s me, boss. Medes.”
“Where is she now?” Al-Saud asked quickly.
“Walking down Boulevard Saint-Germain, toward Boulevard Raspail.”
“Is she still alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
The answer relieved Al-Saud of the doubts that had seized him as soon as Medes informed him that Matilde was leaving the apartment on Rue Toullier alone. Was Juana not accompanying her because she was planning on meeting this René Sampler? But since she had spent over an hour wandering around the Quartier Latin, he deduced that the purpose of the trip was to get to know the area and not for an amorous encounter.
“I’m on my way. Keep me informed of her movements.”
He returned to the meeting room and took a last sip of Perrier from his glass.
“I have to leave,” he announced, collecting his Ray-Ban Wayfarers and leather jacket. “Tonight we’ll have dinner at my house with Shiloah. At seven. We’ll discuss the strategy for Eritrea there.”
“Is Leila going to make us her delicious borscht?” Peter Ramsay asked.
“Call and ask her,” Al-Saud suggested.
Once more, the cold pushed her into the mouth of the nearest subway station. Inside, sheltered from the wind, she consulted the map. She discovered she was at the Rue du Bac station on the number-twelve line; its architecture was the same as that in the subways in Buenos Aires. According to the map, she could transfer at the next station, the Sèvres Babylone, onto line number ten, which would then take her to Cluny–La Sorbonne, near Rue Toullier.
Immersed in these calculations, she looked up when she heard a train stopping at the opposite platform. She stared at it, studying the cars and the people, until the doors closed and train set off again. The passengers who had disembarked quickly cleared away, leaving it empty but for a tall, dark-haired man. It took her a second to recognize Eliah, her traveling companion, who was staring right at her without blinking. The intensity of his look made her realize it had been a while since she had been submitted to this kind of scrutiny, which continued through the cars even when another train stopped between them. His dark countenance was an unreadable mask. The energy that coursed through her at the visual contact seized control of her body and, for some reason, Matilde held her breath, still staring at him. This man’s gaze was powerful, she perceived, and it scared her, which was why she was relieved to hear the clatter of the approaching train. The doors would close behind her and she would be safe. She wouldn’t see him again, and the coincidence would fade into nothing.
Al-Saud thought, Juana’s right. When she wears her hair in pigtails she looks fifteen years old. The woolen hat with the pom-pom exacerbated her childishness. Matilde’s surprise was clear and enhanced her charm with her reddened cheeks and shining silver eyes. He turned to his right and saw that the train was still approaching quickly. He made a quick calculation and jumped onto the tracks.
The roar of the engine and the horn drowned out Matilde’s shriek and the guard’s whistle. Her heart pounded painfully in her throat, and her pulse echoed in her ears like a religious drumbeat; she couldn’t hear anything; the strident color of the station’s bright tiles glared in her eyeline, blinding her to everything but him, whom she could still see clearly, as though in slow motion, as he crossed the tracks toward her. It all happened in a second. It all happened in an eternity. Matilde couldn’t explain it. As though in a waking dream, she felt herself in his arms, his lips tickling her ear as he whispered, “Let’s get out of here.” The potbellied guard shouted: “Arrêtez! Eh, vous, madame, monsieur, arrêtez!” and trotted after them. She realized that her feet barely touched the steps as she climbed the stairs. Then he grabbed her by the waist and carried her as though she were a sack of potatoes. In the middle of this Kafkaesque scene, she started to laugh. When they got up to the surface, she kept on laughing, as Eliah insisted on getting them away from the station and the guard, which meant crossing the road, zigzagging to avoid passersby and the heavy traffic. He decided to blend in with a group of tourists turning onto Rue du Bac, in the direction of the Musée d’Orsay.
“I think we lost him,” he said on the corner of Rue l’Université. Rather than looking at her, he peered toward Boulevard Saint-Germain. Matilde, on the other hand, was staring at him in shock. Doubts and questions bubbled up in her mind; she couldn’t make sense of anything except that he wasn’t panting at all, as if the acrobatics and chase had never happened. She, on the other hand, was gasping like an elderly dog.
Eliah’s green eyes found hers.
“Hello, Matilde.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked in a tiny voice. “You could have been killed.”
“Are you angry?”
Surprise had left Matilde lost for words; she wasn’t even nervous, just shocked. Generally, she felt clumsy around the opposite sex, but this man’s nerve had simply paralyzed her.
He lightly took hold of her coat and tilted his head downward.
“Say, Hello, Eliah.”
“Hello, Eliah,” she obeyed robotically, just as she had on the plane.
He smiled, the same smile he had bestowed on her during the journey, the one she liked to think was something he rarely shared with other people, that was something secret they had between them.
“I love how you say my name,” he proclaimed, “but it would appear that I must beg for the privilege.” He smiled again, showing his teeth.
Matilde, who couldn’t figure out whether the situation they were in was becoming rude, embarrassing or funny, insisted, “Why did you do that in the station? It really scared me.”
“I regret that, I do, but I was afraid I would lose you if I let you get on the train.”
She looked down to hide her emotions. She didn’t know how to proceed.
“I’m still shaking,” she murmured.
“You were laughing a minute ago.”
“Out of nervousness,” she replied quickly, embarrassed.
“Now you’re shivering from the cold,” he noted. “Let me buy you a hot drink.”
“No, no,” she said quickly, avoiding his powerful eyes. “I have to go. Good-bye.”
She turned to walk toward Boulevard Saint-Germain. Eliah overtook her and planted himself in front of her. He bent his knees until he was at eye level. His movement stirred up the air around them, and Matilde was struck by the aroma of his cologne, the same one she wore on her wrist and the elastic of her glove.
“I’m sorry, Matilde.” He spoke in a serious, intimate tone. “I know I scared you. I’m asking you to forgive me. It’s just that I’ve thought about you a lot since we left each other at the airport yesterday. When I sa
w you on the platform, I was so happy and I didn’t want to let you get away.” After a silence, he added, “I always knew you wouldn’t call me. I wonder if you even have the card anymore?”
Matilde raised her eyes and was amazed to feel herself instantly falling under the spell of his gaze. It was as though he were a drug she’d been trying to keep away from. She reflected that plenty of women, Juana included, would be very happy if Eliah invited them out for coffee. Other, more sensible girls would try to get away from a stranger who could be a slave trafficker, for all she knew. She, on the other hand, could only think about herself, her limitations and her embarrassment.
“Yes, I still have it,” she assured him, and put her hand in her shika.
“Do you forgive me, Matilde?”
Matilde nodded, smiling slightly, and Al-Saud felt the girl’s goodness waft warmly over him. He had acted like a lout dragging her out of the station and onto the street. Another woman would have slapped him; she, on the other hand, was reproaching him for having put his life in danger.
“Thank you. Will you have a coffee with me? I want to make up for my earlier roughness.”
“I really have to go,” she said, looking at her gray rubber watch. “What time is it? My watch stopped.”
“Twenty past four.”
“It’s so dark already.” Matilde was surprised.
“Yes, but it’s still early. We’ll just go get a cup of coffee. Then I’ll walk you to your hotel.” The fear that showed in Matilde’s reaction led him to ask, “You don’t trust me, do you?”
“I barely know you.”
“Are you treating me like a stranger to punish me?”