Obsession (Year of Fire) (14 page)

He was also thinking that he hadn’t mentioned the issue of Roy’s centrifuge to Rauf Al-Abiyia. “I should do it,” he urged himself, feeling as though the omission was a betrayal. After all, it was Rauf who had the network of connections that would provide him with access to the people with the power, money and audacity to buy Roy’s damn contraption. Eventually, he decided to tell Rauf once the meeting with the man from the Ezzedin al-Qassam was finished.

The next day, when the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, Anuar Al-Muzara and his personal bodyguards boarded the
Matilde
. They pulled up on the starboard side in a boat with an outboard motor. The terrorist’s appearance surprised Aldo. For some reason he had imagined that he would be dealing with a short, potbellied man. On the contrary, the head of the Ezzedin al-Qassam was dressed elegantly but simply. It was hard to reconcile his appearance with a man who organized suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. He wasn’t armed; his guards, however, brandished the AK-47s, Kalashnikovs, across their chests.

Anuar Al-Muzara detested arms dealers, who wallowed in cash and didn’t comply with the third pillar of Islam,
zakat
, or giving alms. He yearned for the golden age of communist Russia, when the Cold War showed no signs of ending and the Soviet Union provided arms at bargain prices or even free to Marxist and Leninist liberation movements. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, revolutionary groups had been obligated to turn to black-market arms dealers such as Adnan Khashoggi, Rauf Al-Abiyia and this Mohamed Abu Yihad, a man who didn’t inspire much confidence. Still, as much as he disliked them, he needed them. For the strike he was planning, the riskiest of his career, he would need to restock, especially with explosives. So he greeted them politely, wishing that the peace of Allah be with them.

“
As-salaam-alaikun
.”

“
Alaikun salaam
,” Aldo and Rauf chorused back.

Some of the guards stayed on deck, scanning the sea as well as the sky; two of them accompanied their boss down into the boat. There was sugary tea, as the Arabs liked, and an excellent Sanani Mocha coffee.
The dialogue continued on good terms, but Aldo sensed an underlying tension that prevented him from enjoying the successful conclusion of the million-dollar deal. When the meeting was finished, the prices were agreed, the handover locations for the weapons were fixed and the fifty-million-dollar down payment collected, machine-counted and checked for forgeries, Anuar Al-Muzara stood up and saluted them in the traditional manner, touching his lips and forehead with the tips of his fingers before extending his hand and bowing.

“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.