Obsession (Year of Fire) (15 page)

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 saw 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?”

“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 inexplicable 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.