“No, no, this is just how I talk.”
“Come on, Matilde. One coffee in a public place where you’ll be safe from my macabre intentions. If necessary, you can throw hot coffee in my face while you scream for help. I’m sure that plenty of gentleman will appear to save you.”
Dusk was gathering on the streets, and the lights were starting to come on, so Eliah couldn’t see how intensely Matilde was blushing. I’m an imbecile, a prude, a little girl, stupid, frightened, repressed. Juana would give me an hour-long sermon. Not to mention my psychologist.
Matilde just nodded in reply and Eliah refrained from putting his arm around her shoulder. He had noticed the purplish color of her lips and her reddened nose. As they walked down Rue du Bac toward the Seine, the temperature was dropping.
“The river!” Matilde was delighted as they neared Quai Voltaire.
“First, let’s have something warm to drink here, in Café La Frégate. You’re freezing cold.”
Matilde didn’t say how much she enjoyed hearing him speak French. “La Frégate,” she repeated to herself, unsuccessfully imitating Eliah’s accent.
“How do you pronounce that?” she asked, pointing at the street sign.
“Kay Volt-air. Quai means platform if you’re in a train station, or dock if you’re on a riverbank, as we are now.”
“And La Frégate? Sorry, my accent is terrible.”
“No, no, it’s not. La Frégate means ‘the Frigate.’”
Though there were tables on the sidewalk warmed by gas heaters, Eliah wanted to go inside the café. The warm air swaddled Matilde in its embrace, comforting her. A change had come over her and, more relaxed now, she allowed Eliah to guide her through the tables. The weight of his hand on her shoulder gave her a novel feeling of well-being.
Matilde couldn’t know that he chose their table based on a rapid study of the café’s interior. They sat at the last table next to the window looking out onto the Quai Voltaire, so that Matilde could take a last look at the Seine before it was hidden by the night, while Al-Saud’s back was covered by the wall.
“I was very cold,” she admitted, taking off her gloves. “Weather like this is unusual in Córdoba and Buenos Aires. You, on the other hand, don’t even seem to feel the cold. That leather jacket doesn’t look very warm.”
Suddenly he felt uncomfortable opposite her, unworthy, perhaps, as if he were about to profane something sacred. She, innocent in her pigtails, bare face and sparkling, excited eyes, had no idea of the cynicism of the man she was dealing with. A second later, Al-Saud’s perspective changed and suddenly the little girl had disappeared. He kept his face impassive as Matilde struggled out of her coat. Arching her spine and pressing her torso against the table, she pressed her chest against the place mat. Al-Saud decided that there was something disproportionate about the girl’s figure. The size of her breasts wasn’t in accordance with the width of her back, which he judged to be about ten inches. He bit his lip and stared into the menu as he remembered what pechochura meant.
“I’d like to wash my hands,” Matilde announced, shrugging as she explained, “I think it’s a neurosis that comes from being a surgeon.”
A man sitting at a table at the foot of the stairs leading to the bathroom looked up from his newspaper and fixed his gaze on Matilde’s behind. Unlike the day before on the plane, when the baggy dungarees had concealed her body, that afternoon Matilde was wearing an outstanding outfit. Her brown-and-pink tartan pants had stirrups that disappeared inside her flats and clung to her small but perky bottom, like a duck’s tail. Like a tarantula, he remembered. The tight pink turtleneck sweater was unable to tame the jiggling of her breasts. The man’s eyes bounced up and down with them. It wouldn’t have bothered Eliah with any other woman; he never even noticed the looks Céline got from men, nor had it bothered him when they appreciated Natasha. Samara, with her modesty and shyness typical of Muslim women, had known how to keep away prying eyes. Matilde was easy prey, like Little Red Riding Hood in the story. Maybe it was the sensation of her innocence that seemed to enrage him. He breathed deeply and warned himself not to lose sight of the objective, to keep a cool head; he needed her to get to Blahetter, not to get caught up in a love affair.
Matilde returned with clean hands and picked up her menu. She struggled with her meager store of French, trying to understand it. In her strange mood, she laughed at her attempts to pronounce the names of the food. She was no longer embarrassed, she thought, leaving her fear behind. She was in a good mood, and that mood kept her bright and relaxed.
“I’m going to order a hot chocolate. It’s the best way to beat the cold.”
“And to eat?” As she hesitated, Al-Saud suggested, “Paris’s pastries are world famous. Garçon!” He summoned the waiter and Matilde listened to their conversation. How she loved the sound of him speaking French! She was hypnotized by his lips; on the plane she had noticed the way they moved, as if they barely touched when he spoke, and this characteristic calmed her. She also liked the way his thick stubble darkened his dimpled chin and strong jaw. She quickly looked down when Eliah turned back to her.
“So, Matilde, tell me, what are you doing in Paris? Just traveling?”
“No. Next week Juana and I are starting a French course. We need to learn to speak French as fluently as possible.”
“Why? English is the most widely used language in medicine.”
“Yes, it is. The publications, classes and seminars are all in English. But we need to learn French because we’re going to the Congo in a few months.”
Eliah’s thick, dark eyebrows drew together and a serious expression came over his face.
“To the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the Republic of the Congo?”
“The Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Silence fell over the table.
“That place is a hellhole, Matilde. Why would a girl like you want to venture into a powder keg that’s about to explode?”
“About to explode?”
“Matilde, the Congo is constantly suffering from civil wars. Then you have to add the conflicts in Rwanda resulting from the 1994 genocide, when Hutus assassinated almost a million Tutsis.”
“I remember that genocide well. There were unbelievable images on TV. They affected me deeply.”
Al-Saud didn’t tell her that the televised images barely gave a hint of the atrocities suffered by “moderate” Hutus and Tutsis at the hands of the extremist Hutu militia, known as the interahamwe, which meant “we strike together.” At that time, he had been captain of a small commando group in L’Agence, along with his current partners Peter Ramsay and Tony Hill. When the massacre was claiming hundreds or thousands of lives per hour, they had carried out a rescue mission for three Belgian advisers entrenched in a hotel in Kigali. Hardened to war, accustomed to bloodshed and brutality, they nonetheless would never forget the grisly memories. Children cut up into pieces by machetes, women raped and mutilated, old men torn apart, torsos and limbs everywhere. Not even Hieronymus Bosch had come up with anything close to the horror that he and his men had witnessed. And Matilde had just brightly told him that she wanted to venture into the Congo. His good mood was going to hell.
“The situation in the region hasn’t changed much since ’94, and the conflict between the Tutsis and Hutus has crossed the Rwandan borders and overflowed into the Congo. Violence is currency. And when I say violence, I mean a level of violence that you can’t possibly imagine.” She could feel his condescension. “Why would you want to go to the Congo?” he concluded, unable to master his aggressive tone.
The waiter returned with their order: two cups, one of hot chocolate, the other of coffee, and a selection of Parisian pastries, éclairs, three types of cake, warm brioches filled with pastry cream and butter cookies with hazelnuts. The sight of the feast assuaged their moods, Al-Saud’s anger and Matilde’s uncertainty.
“Everything looks delicious,” she murmured, intimidated by the brusque and inexplicab
le change in her companion’s demeanor.
“These look really good,” he said, pointing at the cream puffs. “I want to see you eat one,” he added, in an attempt to make up for his earlier surliness.
“I will.”
For a while they savored the delicacies and sipped at their hot drinks, talking about inconsequential subjects. Eliah watched her eat and speak openly; he was distracted by her rosy cheeks, the two braids that fell under the table, her small nose, her big eyes, each a little distance away from her septum, giving her an exotic look. He also noted her small bony shoulders against the light wool of her sweater and asked himself once more what the hell he was doing with this woman. In an interlude, he asked her again, “Matilde, why do you want to go to the Congo?”
“Because it’s the reason I studied medicine, Eliah.”
It was one of the rare times she used his name. The effect was devastating. If he had to choose a word to describe it, he would have to say melt. Yes, he melted before her.
“I studied medicine so that I could cure the poor, the helpless, the people who no one sees or even wants to see. That’s why I chose pediatrics as my specialty. While I was studying, I felt as though I was wasting my time. The urge I felt to heal people made me impatient. Juana and I studied as hard as we could to graduate as soon as possible. We took extra courses to qualify. We graduated very young and left for Buenos Aires right away, because my greatest wish was to perform my specialty at the Hospital Garrahan, one of the best pediatric hospitals in South America. I still remember how hard we studied for the admission exam. Those were good times.”
“How did you decide on the Congo?”
“I didn’t really decide, the humanitarian organization Healing Hands did. A colleague of mine at the Garrahan, who worked with them in Somalia, told me about her amazing experience living in Marka, near Mogadishu. Juana and I sent our resumes to the HH headquarters along with letters explaining our desire to go to a country in sub-Saharan Africa. They called us within a couple of weeks and, after a few interviews and all kinds of tests, they told us that we were accepted and invited us to Paris to do what they called preparation course for the first destination. A few days later, they informed us that in a few months there would be openings in a pediatrics project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the Kivus area.”
When he heard the name of the area, Al-Saud’s heart jumped; the provinces of North and South Kivu, in eastern Congo, were among the most violent regions in the world. “We accepted immediately. Then HH asked us to take a French course during the intervening period.”
“You’re lucky that they’re sending both you and Juana together.”
“Yes, that’s true. They could have sent us to different places, but at the headquarters in Buenos Aires, they saw how well we complemented each other, as I’m a pediatric surgeon and she’s a clinical pediatrician. Also, we had expressed our desire to go to Africa together and they indulged us.”
“Who funds you during these months in Paris?”
“HH covers the French course. We cover everything else—house, food, transport.”
“Rent in Paris is pretty high. Are you a little rich girl?”
“Rich? Not at all. I’m squandering all my meager savings.”
“Are you staying with a friend while you’re here?”
“No. We’re living in my aunt’s apartment. She uses it during the summer. The rest of the year she lives in Córdoba, my hometown.”
“Do you have friends in Paris?”
“My sister lives here, but we don’t get along, so I’m guessing that I won’t see her that much. Anyway, she’s pretty busy with her work.”
“And friends?”
“Yes, Ezequiel, our childhood friend. He, Juana and I were always together in high school.”
Why the hell didn’t she mention René Sampler? And who was this Ezequiel, her childhood friend? He remembered that she and Juana had mentioned him on the plane.
“You didn’t eat much,” he noticed.
“It’s all lovely, but I’m stuffed.” Seeing his surprised and disappointed face, Matilde explained, “Sometimes I think that my stomach is as small as my fist.” She held out her fist with a smile.
Softly, as though he was catching a butterfly, Eliah covered Matilde’s fist with his hands and kissed her index finger a few times, with his gaze fixed on her. Matilde allowed herself to enjoy this unexpected moment. She was tethered to his eyes and the fleshiness of his lips; their dampness, a softness that gave her goose bumps, tickled her stomach and ended in painful tingling between her legs. The truth was that she had never experienced anything like it.
“Oh, Matilde, Matilde,” he murmured into her skin, and closed his eyes, as if he was suddenly overcome by exhaustion.
Matilde pulled her hand back gently. Al-Saud didn’t move his, keeping them at mouth level, as though her hand were still there. He lifted his eyes and looked at her. There was sincerity in that tired face.
“I’m happy to have found you on the métro. Are you, Matilde?” She just nodded. With something of the brightness from before, Al-Saud asked her, “Will you accept me as your new friend in Paris? I’ll be an excellent guide. Nobody knows this city like me.”
Eliah got his way and she allowed him to accompany her back to the apartment where she was staying on Rue Toullier. But first he escorted her to a supermarket two blocks away, on Rue Malebranche, and helped her with the bags. She wouldn’t let him pay for the groceries.
“Hi, Juani! I brought a visitor,” Matilde called from the door as a greeting.
“Eze?” The other guessed, and came out of the kitchen. “Oh, the stud from the plane!”
Al-Saud laughed and Matilde felt the sound vibrating in her chest. He and Juana chatted as though they were old friends. With her hat and coat still on, Matilde looked at his profile: his straight nose, big nostrils; the bags under his eyes, the dark color of his eyelids. She felt an urge to wipe a finger along his bottom eyelid to make sure that he wasn’t wearing eyeliner. Finally she decided that it was his dark eyelashes that created the effect. She looked at the finely drawn cheekbones on his straight, square face, and also the protuberance formed by his Adam’s apple, which bobbed in his thickly bearded neck as he spoke. She also looked at the nape of his neck and how his muscles tensed when he laughed, his evenly cut, military-style black hair, and she imagined messing it up with her hand. Why was she thinking about the book in her bag? Why was she imagining scandalous scenes? Why was she getting excited at features she would previously have considered unimportant?
Before he left, Al-Saud asked Matilde for her cell phone number.
“No way, Eliah!” Juana interrupted. “Our Mat doesn’t have a cell phone. At first she said that the radiation they gave off was dangerous. Now since she found out that the batteries are made from coltan, a mineral stolen from the Congo, she won’t use them for ethical reasons.”
Eliah turned his head and looked at her with the same expression he had worn in Café La Frégate: he gave off a patina of exhaustion that she interpreted as sincere. He, meanwhile, was wondering, What kind of woman are you, Matilde?
After Eliah left, Juana appeared in the doorway of her friend’s room, leaning on the frame to chat. Matilde, who was reading Rendezvous in Paris, put the book down.
“I’ve already said all there is to say. Now let me sleep.”
“It’s just that I’ve been thinking and thinking, Mat, and I can’t believe that you met him on the subway. It can’t be a coincidence! Your destinies are linked.”
“Don’t get hysterical.”
“Scooch over.” Juana got under the covers next to her. “Oh, girl,” she sighed, “you’ve landed a hunk.”
Matilde put the book on her bedside table and lay on her side so she was facing Juana. She took out Eliah’s handkerchief and the glove she had under her pillow.
“Juani, was it bad that I brought him to the apartment? Was it wise? He insisted so much. And you know me, I d
on’t know how to say no.”
“It was perfect! Perfect! He’s a decent man, I can feel it.”
“I felt so clumsy the whole time with him. You know that I don’t have your skill with men.”
“Well, your clumsiness, my dear friend, has captivated him. He’s crazy about you.”
“Do you think he’s married?”
“He wasn’t wearing a ring.”
Matilde smiled and hid her face in the handkerchief. Still veiled, she confessed, “Juani, I never get tired of looking at him. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Yippee!” Juana kicked under the covers. “Mat is in love! For the first time in her life!” Juana smacked her forehead. “I forgot! Your aunt Sofía called.”
“My aunt Sofía? What did she say?” Matilde sat up in bed.
“She wanted to invite us to her house. She wants to meet you. Tomorrow she’ll call again.” She kissed Matilde on the forehead. “Good night, babe. You cheered me up with the stud.”
Alone again, Matilde opened the drawer on her bedside table where she had hidden The Perfumed Garden. She opened it at random. The Position of the Blacksmith. The woman lies on her back with a cushion under her buttocks and with her knees raised as far as possible toward her chest, so that her vulva stands out as a target; she then guides his member in. The man executes the usual act of coitus for some time, then draws his tool out of the vulva and glides it for a moment between the thighs of the woman, just as the blacksmith withdraws the glowing iron from the furnace in order to plunge it into cold water.
* * *
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CHAPTER 5
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* * *
The car’s body pulsed with the chords of Équinoxe, by Jean-Michel Jarre. He wasn’t listening to it because he liked electronic music, but because he knew Eliah Al-Saud considered it to be one of the best works of French music. He waited inside the car to catch a glimpse of him and so feel the wave of energy that emanated from his magnificent, healthy body. After so much time, he had to work up the courage to confront him, and when he did he had to keep up a pretense. This way, sneaking in and out, he could fully bask in the pleasure, without having to repress himself.