Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

To get back to the “rockets,” Alfredo didn’t know whether they were talking about strategic missiles or a civilian base for launching satellites. Not that it mattered much for in either case the forest would be destroyed, the inhabitants expelled from their homes, the ecosystem endangered; this vague project had provided a focus for all his disapproval, as if it were an imminent threat to the world, and that, in its very excessiveness, was admirable.

The veranda bulb suddenly started to flicker and crackle. “The storm won’t be long coming,” Alfredo said. “I’d better go and find some candles.”

STRETCHED OUT ON her bed in bra and panties, Loredana watched the unsettling fluctuations of the electric light on the ceiling medallion. She found its slow and constantly postponed death fascinating. In the humid, stifling atmosphere of the room, her hair was releasing the water of her body drop by drop. She wondered how long it would take before she liquefied completely, leaving nothing below the death rattle of the bulb but a large dark patch on the sheets.

Tormented by an increasing irritation in her crotch, she got off the bed and undressed. As they fell to the floor, her underclothes almost captured a large, honey-colored cockroach, which scuttled behind the skirting board. The folds in her groin were smarting in a very unpleasant way. One foot on the washbasin, she rinsed herself down with her facecloth, taking great care and grimacing with pain, before smearing cream over her raw skin. Standing in front of the mirror, she spent a long time fondling her breasts while she waited for the burning sensation, which was forcing her to maintain that uncomfortable posture, to subside. God knows how long she would have to spend moldering away here … Moldering, that was the word, she thought, brooding over the fungal infection that was starting. And could she trust her go-between? Nothing was less certain. The guy had seemed odd to her, those sidelong glances he’d been giving her all the time she’d been negotiating with him. That he’d wanted to be paid in advance was understandable, but what she found difficult to accept was the fact that he’d revealed so little of the process that was under way, simply making her wait in this hotel. Two to three weeks, he’d said, perhaps a bit longer, but it would all be done by the end of the month. She might as well go and have something to eat, it would take her mind off things. Having failed to find any clean underwear in her suitcase, with sigh of exasperation she put on a skirt and T-shirt over her bare skin.

When she appeared on the veranda, emerging from the gloom, Alfredo broke off. “There she is,” he whispered. “I’ll be back in a minute …”

Eléazard watched him dash over to the Italian woman who had had such an effect on him. She must be about thirty-five or forty, to go by certain signs that stopped him putting her age at less, but without showing the beginnings of biological decline one would expect at that age. Eléazard’s experienced eye noted her firm breasts, unconfined under her T-shirt, long, slender legs and a slim, elegant figure. Having said that, she was far from being as beautiful as that rogue Alfredo had suggested. As far as Eléazard could tell, her almond-shaped eyes and her mouth were a little too big for her emaciated face; and her excessively long and pointed nose added to the lack of proportion.

When, led by Alfredo to a nearby table, she passed him, he gave her a smile of welcome; her sole response was a slight nod of the head. Ignoring that, he added a delightfully rounded pair of buttocks to her assets. “An intelligent piece of ass,” he told himself, slightly annoyed at her indifference, “a very intelligent piece of ass.”

In fact Loredana had not been as uninterested in him as he assumed. Of course, it was impossible for her not to notice the presence of a person in the otherwise deserted restaurant. Even before he had become aware of her, she had observed him for several seconds and judged him attractive, that is to say dangerous, which explained her wariness toward him and her reserve when he greeted her with a smile. Not that he was physically especially attractive — in that respect Alfredo came out an easy winner — but she had seen in him, in his look and his way of moving, an unusual “depth of field,” an expression that to her mind defined the sum total of criteria that made a human being more or less worthy of interest. Even though she was still susceptible to the physical charm of a person, be it a man or a woman, it came a long way behind a quality of being, or at least its probability, that she believed she was capable of perceiving at first glance.

Sitting two tables away from Eléazard and placed so that she was looking at him in profile, she examined him at leisure: the self-confidence of a forty-year-old, black hair, just a touch of silver at the temples but high on his forehead in a way that promised some nasty surprises in the future; what was most striking was his nose: a hook nose, not really ugly, but one she had never seen before except in Verrocchio’s condottiere in Venice. Without being exactly delicate, the stranger showed no other of the statue’s warlike aspects. He simply seemed sure of himself and cursed with rigorous and redoubtable intelligence. Dante seen by Doré, if she had to choose another artistic resemblance. Moreover, he could even be Italian; Loredana didn’t speak Portuguese very well, but well enough to have noticed a strong foreign accent when she heard him talking to Alfredo.

Suddenly sensing the persistent look directed at him, Eléazard turned toward her. He silently raised his glass to her before putting it to his lips. This time Loredana could not repress a smile, but it was to excuse her unrelenting stare.

Alfredo had just served the food when the light went out. After having lit several candles, he came to sit with Eléazard again to open a second bottle. It was the moment the mosquitos chose to emerge. As if there were a link between their appearance and the power-cut, they invaded the veranda in invisible clouds and attacked the diners, irritating Eléazard, who was very sensitive to their bites.

“ Pernilongos ,” said Alfredo as he saw him squash one of the insects on his neck. “They don’t worry me but I’ll go and get an incense coil. They’re supposed to drive them away.”

Eléazard thanked him. As Alfredo disappeared into the interior of the hotel he glanced at the other table. Better prepared than he, Loredana had taken out a little bottle of insect repellent from somewhere or other and was rubbing it over her arms and ankles. Seeing Eléazard watching her, she offered him the repellent and came over to hand it to him.

“I bought it in Italy,” she said, “it’s very effective but it smells awful, really awful.”

“You can speak Italian,” Eléazard said, putting on his best accent, “I’m better at that than at Portuguese. And thanks again, I was being eaten alive.”

“You speak Italian?” the woman said in surprised tones. “I never expected that. And then, you’re French …”

“How do you know that?”

“When a foreigner speaks Italian, even as well as you, I can generally tell. Where did you learn it?”

“In Rome. I lived there for a while. But please sit down,” he said, getting up to bring over a chair. “We can chat more easily like that.”

“Why not,” she replied after the briefest hesitation. “Just a moment while I go and get my glass and plate.”

Loredano had not sat down when Alfredo returned with his incense coil. He put it in a small dish and lit it, then quickly sat down with them. Eléazard noted his pleasure at finding the Italian woman sitting at his table. She, on the other hand, seemed annoyed at seeing him joining in the preliminaries of their encounter. For a moment he shared her unexpected vexation: Alfredo had become a nuisance. How human, he thought, to repudiate him in this way; a few words with an unknown woman were enough and a man, for whose company he had expressly come, was suddenly de trop . Feeling guilty toward Alfredo, he decided to accept the unfortunate situation.