Auguste opened the door and ushered her through. They went out, and as they were exchanging a few final words, Matilde spotted Eliah. The first thing she felt was her mouth and throat going dry, then a pain in her neck, where her pulse had gone strangely wild. He was resting his forearms on the roof of his sports car, on the street side, with the door open, watching them. She saw him take off his sunglasses, Ray-Ban Clippers, and waited breathlessly to meet his gaze. She smiled at him; timid at first, the smile grew as she gained in confidence, stretching widely, showing her teeth. Her happiness was uncontrollable after so many days without seeing him. She waved at him in greeting.
For Al-Saud, Matilde’s smile became the invitation he needed to move forward. He watched her say good-bye to the dimwit who had been mooning over her with an idiotic face, and was happy that Matilde pointed at him to justify her abrupt departure. The dimwit looked at him and nodded his head slightly by way of a greeting, which Eliah didn’t bother to return; he simply looked him in the eyes until the dimwit went away.
Matilde came over to him, unsure of herself. She ran her tongue over her teeth to lubricate her lips for speech, and cleared her throat to get rid of the lump. Now she couldn’t look at him, she feared him as much as she yearned for him. She had dreamed of this moment so many times in his absence. Is this happiness? This crazy urge to live, to jump, to sing and dance right here, on the sidewalk, in front of the HH headquarters, as if I’d lost my mind, just because he’s standing here in front of me? So much had changed in so little time!
“Hello.”
“Hello,” she answered, and she had to tilt her head back quite far to look him in the eyes. He was more beautiful and imposing than she remembered. His olive skin had darkened, as if he had been in the sun, and this accentuated his other colors: his dark eyelashes, like brushes, Juana had said; the emerald green of his eyes; the white of his teeth, which she saw when he smiled. She thought he was laughing at her, at her clumsiness, her inexperience, her red cheeks and sparkling eyes. “Mat, you’re so transparent,” Ezequiel would always reproach her.
When she saw him lean toward her, Matilde closed her eyes because she had learned that if she took away her sense of sight, the other senses became much sharper, and she wanted to perceive the notes in his cologne and the feel of his lips. Eliah kissed her just as he had that morning on the plane, very close to the left corner of her mouth. She stayed there, trying to summon up the courage to turn her face and meet his lips, but in vain because, although she had changed during those days in Paris, her fears, tied to the demons from her past, remained.
“When did you get back?”
“This morning,” he answered, without removing his lips, which wandered around her cheek, cold on some parts, warm on others.
Matilde had the strange sensation that, although he was only touching her with his lips, she felt sheltered by his chest, supported by his arms. This man’s strength projected out from his body and enveloped her.
“Juana told you where to find me, didn’t she?” She saw him confirm this with a nod. “You get along very well with Juana.”
“How about you?”
Her cheeks burned crimson, and Eliah couldn’t help laughing.
“Me too. You know that.”
“No, the truth is I don’t know. You stood me up last time. It was the worst blow-off of my life.” She laughed, hiding behind her notebooks, and the sight filled him with tender feelings. “If you want me to forgive you, you’ll have to have lunch with me. Now. I’m starving.” Matilde suddenly looked genuinely upset. “What’s wrong? You can’t?”
“French class starts at two thirty. And I can’t miss it because we have the mini-exam of the week. Look,” she said, holding up a plastic bag, “I brought lunch because I knew I wouldn’t have time to go home.”
Al-Saud took the bag and nosed around in it. A Danone strawberry yogurt and a Brie sandwich the size of a canapé.
“What a lunch,” he murmured to himself, in French.
“Do you have time to take me to the institute?”
“Of course. Let’s go. Get in,” Eliah ordered, and opened the door for her.
He put on her seat belt for her—obviously they didn’t use them in Argentina—and started the Aston Martin. Nothing could have prepared him for the confusion of feelings the reunion with Matilde had provoked within him. Jubilation, tenderness, desire, anxiety, unease, passion. Love. Was this the true love about which the great poets had written the odes that he had thought ridiculous? How could he love her if they barely knew each other, if they had shared so little? Did he love her, or did she just present a challenge that inflamed his Horse of Fire nature? Matilde was a great mystery, mostly because she seemed so simple. His Matilde. Yes, his. He couldn’t deny it, that’s how he felt about her as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was telling him in that delicate voice, which she never raised, about the classes she was taking to prepare her for the first destination and the projects in the Congo, and the French classes, and how hard it was to pronounce this damn language, telling him not to ask her to speak French because she wouldn’t, because she was embarrassed by her accent. He stopped the Aston Martin in front of the Lycée des Langues Vivantes, on Rue Vitruve; he didn’t like the area.
“Thank you for bringing me.”
“I’d like to take you out for dinner tonight, but I have a business meeting.”
He cursed Tony Hill and his secretary who had committed him to a dinner with an Israeli computer businessman. From what his partner had said to him, it could be the million-dollar contract Mercure Inc. needed. After the purchase of two helicopters, a Dauphin 365 and a Mil Mi-25, and a large amount of weapons, the business’s books were in the red.
“Shall we have lunch together tomorrow?” Matilde nodded, smiling. “If I’m going to forgive you for standing me up now and on Sunday, you’re going to have to do something for me: come by my office tomorrow at noon to pick me up.”
“Fine,” Matilde accepted. “Give me the address.”
Al-Saud took out a Mont Blanc and a Mercure Inc. card from the inside pocket of his jacket and leaned against the steering wheel.
“You have pretty handwriting,” she praised him, putting the card away in her shika.
“You are pretty, Matilde. Very pretty.”
He leaned toward her and pressed his mouth against her half-open lips. The contact stunned both of them. They had both imagined and yearned for this moment in the fifteen days they had been separated; still, the reality was even better than they had imagined. Eliah undid his seat belt and reached out to cradle her neck, taking possession of her with the confidence of someone who knew he was the lord and master of his domain. She was waiting for him, submitting to his will, with her eyes closed. He kissed her in a way that he had never kissed a woman before, not because his technique had changed, but because he wasn’t the same person as before; something sublime and powerful instilled both happiness and a devastating desire within him. This was new to him; in fact, he had never suspected that such a disconcerting mixture could possibly exist. And when he felt her fingers wrapped around his head, his eyes burned under his eyelids.
Matilde was allowing him to do anything he wanted. Happiness had made her strong and she was able to keep a tight rein on her panic. Pressed up against her, his eyes still closed, Eliah flicked a switch, and the seat reclined almost flat. She was trapped under the weight of his body. He held her by the waist with one arm and pulled her close to his body, while his insatiable tongue plunged so deep that she could hardly breathe. But then her own bravely sallied forth to meet his, twisting around it, urging him on, making him moan, loving to make him moan. Let him moan, please. She slipped her hands under his jacket and stroked the sides of his torso and he jumped back suddenly with a grunt, as if Matilde had grazed a wound. He rested his forehead on the leather seat, and she looked at his pulsing, closed eyes, his large nostrils and damp, red, half-open lips. A second later, he pounced on her again.
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“Do you like it?” he asked her after a while, panting. “Do you like kissing me?”
“Yes,” whispered Matilde, and, in a fit of sincerity and insanity, grabbed his neck with her hands and stuck her lips to his ear to add, “Very much. So much, Eliah, so much.”
Happiness rose up in his throat, but before it could escape as a joyful peal of laughter, he kissed her again, with the voracity she inspired in him, a voracity summoned just because this was who she was, just because she was Matilde.
Matilde, suddenly aware that an audience was starting to grow by the doors of the institute, realized that she didn’t give a hoot if half of Paris surrounded Eliah’s car to peer at them. She didn’t recognize herself. She imagined the look of horror on her grandmother Celia’s face and it made her laugh. Am I really feeling like this?
“I want us always to kiss like this, to feel like this.” He spoke into her lips. “I want to have you, Matilde. Now.”
“There are so many things you don’t know about me.”
“I want to know everything, everything.”
“And I want to tell you, but I need time. Be patient with me, Eliah, please.”
Patience wasn’t one of the Horse of Fire’s qualities. An irritable streak made them less than empathetic at the troubles and needs of others; some called them heartless, and insensitive. But if Matilde asked for patience, and called him by name in the tiny voice that made his insides quiver, he would silence the clamoring of his nature and she would have what she wanted, even if it meant that he would need every minute of his fifteen-year devotion to Shorinji Kempo philosophy.
“All the patience you need, my love.”
The “my love” came out so spontaneously that it surprised them both equally. Matilde hugged his neck and thanked him in a fervent whisper.
They separated, and Al-Saud moved the seat back to its original position. He stroked back the locks of hair that had fallen over her face, brushing against her swollen lips, and regretted his zeal. Now those cherry-red lips would be for her classmates.
“What time are you done with class?”
“Around six thirty.”
“As I said, I can’t pick you up, but I’ll send my chauffeur. No, Matilde, don’t argue. This isn’t the best area. I don’t want you walking around at night by yourself. And so you don’t get angry, I have a present for you.”
“I have a present for you too. At home,” she explained.
“For me?” Eliah was incapable of hiding his happiness, surprise and anxiety. “What is it?”
“A jar of dulce de leche. I made it for you myself. To show you that dulce de leche is nicer than Nutella.” She misinterpreted his look. “You’re disappointed.”
By way of an answer, he undid her seat belt, grabbed her roughly and kissed her again.
“Thank you, my love,” he whispered in her ear, as he realized that if Matilde had made the dulce de leche in his absence, it meant she had thought about him; Juana hadn’t been exaggerating.
“Now I want my gift,” he heard her ask.
Al-Saud handed her a bag he had hidden in the backseat. It read Emporio Armani. He had sent his secretary to get something, and thought that she had chosen well.
“Oh!” Matilde took out a lustrous, butter-colored silk coat, lined with goose feathers. The cuffs and collar were made from white rabbit fur. “This is for me?”
“Of course it’s for you. So you don’t have to wear a coat that doesn’t protect you from the cold. So you don’t get sick again,” he said deliberately.
Matilde leaned over and kissed him on the lips, the first time she had done so on her own initiative. With a shudder, she suddenly realized it was the first time she had done so in her life.
“It’s the most beautiful gift I’ve ever received. I don’t think I’ve ever owned anything so fine and beautiful. It’s so soft and delicate. Thank you, Eliah.”
Al-Saud reached over and brushed away her tear with his finger. Her excitement over such a trivial gift had moved him to silence.
He had had a hectic morning. It was almost noon and he was still stuck in a meeting with Mike Thorton, Peter Ramsay and Tony Hill, who noticed his restlessness and also that he was in an unusually good mood; he had been smiling and joking all morning. Al-Saud’s partners glanced at each other when they saw him checking his watch every five minutes and looking up at the monitor connected to the security camera that tracked movement in the reception area of the George V offices. They were trying to draw up the budget that they would present to Shaul Zeevi, the Israeli computer businessman. If they managed to close the deal with Zeevi, Mercure Inc.’s income would increase by fifty million dollars a year. The businessman would be shocked by the figure, but they knew how to explain the risks of a mission like this. Zeevi, who was in partnership with a Chinese manufacturer of batteries and computer chips, had obtained a license from the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, to mine one of the most sought-after minerals in the country: coltan.
The night before, while they were dining at Maxim’s, Zeevi had explained to them that coltan, or gray gold as it was known, was not an element but that in certain regions natural factors had conspired to make two elements, columbium and tantalum—hence the name col-tan—combine into a new solid alloy with very useful qualities, such as excellent electrical conductivity, the capacity to withstand extreme temperatures and, above all, the ability to store a temporary electronic charge and release it when needed. The latter quality made it ideal for the manufacture of batteries for cell phones, computers and all kinds of electronic technology. The Pentagon had recently classified it as a “strategic mineral.” The largest electronics corporations were desperate to build up large deposits of the unusual mineral, meaning that its price had skyrocketed.
“Eighty percent of the global reserves of coltan are located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Zeevi had assured them, “in what’s known as the Great Lakes region, in the east of the country, in the provinces of North and South Kivu, which are currently under rebel control. My engineers and employees haven’t been able to access the region because the rebels won’t let them. Even worse, one of the workers was shot. He survived, thank God.”
“And the government can’t provide an army escort,” Michael Thorton summed up the situation.
“Kabila can’t do anything, from what I’ve heard. It was his son, General Joseph Kabila, who mentioned Mercure Inc. as a possible solution to my problem. The general assured me”—he turned to Al-Saud—“that you and he are great friends.”
“Yes, we are.”
Al-Saud looked at his watch again—quarter to one—and wondered when Matilde would arrive. He smiled. She was probably one of the few people who knew the truth about coltan and the problems its extraction caused for the Congolese. Our Mat doesn’t have a cell phone. 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.
“What are you laughing at?” Peter inquired. “I don’t see what’s so funny about battling a pack of crazy, fanatical Africans.”
“The problem here isn’t the rebels,” Al-Saud replied, “but the economic power behind them, the Great Lakes Mining Society, or Somigl, a partnership made up of Africom in Belgium, Promeco in Rwanda and Cogecom in South Africa. They’re the ones that mine and distribute the mineral and arm the rebels under Laurent Nkunda’s control.”
“Which is to say,” Michael added, “that your dear Madame Gulemale is behind all this.”
“Without a doubt,” Al-Saud confirmed, getting up to walk to the door of the meeting room, attracted by the sound of voices in the vestibule. He was extremely excited to see Matilde there. He stood quietly behind the door, watching her approach in the company of Juana. Dressed like that in the midday sun, in her new butter-colored coat and tight white pants, her blonde hair hanging loosely and white, ma
keup-free skin—with just a little cocoa butter on her lips—Matilde seemed to glow, as if she had been dusted with a bright-white iridescent powder.
The secretary had offered them a seat; neither of them sat down. Juana buzzed around like a hummingbird, admiring the extremely ornate decor typical of the George V, with Louis XV armchairs and desks, Kazan carpets, giant Chinese porcelain vases and gauzy silk taffeta curtains. Matilde, serene, immune to the room’s luxury, as if she was used to this kind of expensive decoration, fingered the peonies and then stopped in front of a vase of spikenards, sniffing them with her eyes closed. Then she wandered over to the bookshelf; most of the books belonged to him.
“She looks like a fairy,” he heard Michael Thorton say behind him. “Who is she?”
“She’s mine,” Al-Saud warned.
Matilde tilted her head to read the spines of the books; they were in several different languages—Italian, German, English and Russian. There weren’t any novels, but plenty of essays on history, economics and war and biographies of famous soldiers. There was a complete collection of an English magazine, World Air Power Journal. She picked one up and leafed through it. It was a publication that specialized in warplanes. Was this one of Eliah’s hobbies?
“Stud!”
Matilde turned around and saw Eliah enter the reception area. He paced toward her in silence, the left corner of his mouth just slightly raised. He stopped in front of her, put his arm around her waist and lifted her up on her tiptoes so he could reach her mouth and kiss her openly in front of his partners, secretaries and the bellboy.
“Hello,” he said, turning to receive Juana’s hug.