A few weeks later, I had actually forgotten being sick. In Barcelona I ran into Michel. I suddenly found him in front of me, sitting at a table at the Criolla. Lazare had told him I was going to die. Michel’s words were a painful reminder of the past.
I ordered a bottle of brandy. I started drinking, and I kept Michel’s glass filled. It didn’t take me long to get drunk. I’d known for a long time about the Criolla’s main attraction; it held little charm for me. A boy in girl’s clothing was performing a number on the dance floor. The dress he was wearing left his back bare to the buttocks. The heel-drum of Spanish dancing resounded on the boards …
I felt deeply ill at ease. I looked at Michel. He wasn’t accustomed to perversion. As he himself got drunk, Michel’s awkwardness increased. He was fidgeting in his chair.
I was exasperated. I said to him, ‘I wish Lazare could see you – in a dive!’
In his surprise he cut me short: ‘But Lazare often comes to the Criolla.’
I turned towards Michel with an innocent air of bewilderment. ‘It’s true. Lazare stayed in Barcelona last year, and she often spent her nights at the Criolla. Is that so extraordinary?’
The Criolla is, of course, one of the better-known curiosities of Barcelona. I nevertheless thought that Michel was joking. I told him so; the joke was silly. The mere thought of Lazare made me sick. As I resisted my anger, I felt it welling up inside me.
I shouted. I was insane. I’d picked up the bottle in one hand. ‘Michel, if Lazare was here in front of me, I’d kill her.’
Another dancer – another boy-as-girl – made his entrance accompanied by shouting and outbursts of laughter. He had a blonde wig. He was gorgeous, hideous, and ludicrous.
‘I’d like to beat her and hit her –’
It was so preposterous that Michel stood up. He took me by the arm. He was frightened – I was losing all control, and he himself was drunk. As he slumped back into his chair, he looked forlorn.
I composed myself and started looking at the dancer with the sunlike tresses.
‘But Lazare isn’t the one who behaved badly,’ Michel exclaimed. ‘She told me that you, on the other hand, had severely mistreated her – verbally –’
‘She told you that?’
‘But she doesn’t hold it against you.’
‘Just don’t keep telling me that she’s been to the Criolla. Lazare at the Criolla …!’
‘She’s come here with me several times. She found it highly interesting. I couldn’t get her out. She must have been astonished. She never once mentioned the silly things you said to her.’
I was pretty much calmed down. ‘I’ll tell you about it some other time. She came to see me when I was at death’s door. So she doesn’t hold it against me? Well, I’ll never forgive her. Never, do you understand? Anyway, would you be good enough to tell me what brought her to the Criolla? Lazare?’
I was incapable of imagining Lazare seated where I was, watching a disreputable show. I was in a daze. I had the feeling that I’d forgotten something – I’d known what it was a second earlier, and I absolutely had to recall it. I felt like speaking with greater thoroughness. I felt like speaking louder. I was aware of my utter helplessness. I was getting completely drunk.
In his concern, Michel became more and more awkward. He was sweating and miserable. The more he pondered, the more beyond him everything seemed.
‘I tried to twist her wrist,’ he said.
‘….’
‘Once. Right here.’
I was undergoing heavy stress. I felt on the point of exploding.
In the midst of the tumult, Michel guffawed, ‘You don’t know what she’s like. She wanted me to stick pins into her skin. You don’t know what she’s like. She’s unbearable!’
‘Why pins?’
‘She wanted to be prepared.’
‘For what?’ I shouted. ‘Prepared?’
Michel laughed louder than ever. ‘For withstanding torture …’
Once again he turned serious, as well as he could – abruptly and awkwardly. He looked hurried; he looked idiotic. He lost no time speaking. He was in a fury, ‘There’s something else you absolutely have to know. Lazare, you know, casts a spell on anyone who listens to her. She seems like someone from another world. There are people here, workers, who felt ill at ease with her. They admired her, then they ran into her at the Criolla. Here at the Criolla she looked like a spook. Her friends – they were sitting at the same table – were appalled. They couldn’t understand her being here. One day, one of them started drinking, in exasperation. He lost his head. He ordered a bottle, just the way you did. He emptied glass after glass. I thought he’d end up in bed with her. He certainly could have killed her – he would have preferred getting killed for her, but he never would have asked her to go to bed with him. He found her captivating. He’d never have understood if I’d talked about her ugliness. But in his eyes Lazare was a saint – and a saint, moreover, she would remain. He was a very young mechanic; his name was Antonio.’
I did as the young worker had done and emptied my glass. Michel, who rarely drank, was keeping up with me. He fell into a state of violent excitement. I, for my part, was gazing through the blinding light into vacancy, into an exorbitance beyond our grasp.
Michel wiped the sweat from his forehead. He went on, ‘Lazare was irritated to see him drinking. She looked him in the eye and told him, “I gave you a paper to sign this morning, and you signed without reading it.” She spoke without a trace of irony. Antonio replied, “What’s the difference?” Lazare retorted, “What if I’d given you a declaration of Fascist beliefs to sign?” Antonio in turn looked at Lazare and stared into her eyes. He was fascinated but out of control. He replied in deliberate tones, “I’d kill you.” Lazare asked him, “Are you carrying a revolver?” He answered, “Yes.” Lazare said, “Let’s go outside.” We went outside. They wanted a witness.’
By now I was having a hard time breathing. I asked Michel, who was slowing down, to proceed without delay. Once again he wiped the sweat from his brow, ‘We went over to the waterfront, at the point where there are steps leading down. Day was breaking. We walked without saying a word. I was bewildered, Antonio was in a cold fury and stupefied with drink, Lazare was as calm and far away as someone dead …!’
‘But was it a joke?’
‘It was no joke. I didn’t intervene. I don’t know why I felt such anxiety. At the waterfront, Lazare and Antonio climbed down to the lowermost steps. Lazare asked Antonio to take out the revolver and hold the barrel against her chest.’
‘Did Antonio do it?’
‘He seemed far away himself. He took a Browning out of his pocket, cocked it, and held the barrel against Lazare’s chest.’
‘And then?’
‘Lazare asked him, “Aren’t you going to shoot?” He didn’t answer. For two minutes he didn’t budge. Finally he said “No” and lowered the revolver.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Antonio looked worn-out. He was pale. Since it was chilly, he started shivering. Lazare took the revolver and extracted the first cartridge. This cartridge had been in the barrel when it was resting against her chest. Then she spoke to Antonio. She said to him, “Let me have it.” She wanted to keep it as a souvenir.’
‘Did Antonio let her keep it?’
‘Antonio said to her, “Whatever you like.” She put the cartridge in her handbag.’
Michel fell silent. He seemed less at ease than ever. I thought of the fly in milk. He no longer knew whether to laugh or break down. He truly reminded me of a fly in milk, or perhaps a bad swimmer swallowing water. He couldn’t hold his liquor. By the end he was on the verge of tears. He was gesticulating strangely in the midst of the music, as though he had to get rid of some insect.
‘Have you ever heard a sillier story?’ he added.
It was the sweat running off his forehead that had prompted his gesticulations.
The story had left me stunned.
I managed to ask Michel, as though we weren’t drunk but obliged to remain desperately alert (in spite of everything, our heads were clear), ‘Can you tell me what Antonio was like?’
Michel pointed to a young boy at a nearby table and said that he looked like him.
‘Antonio? He had a quick-tempered way about him. Two weeks ago they arrested him. He was an agitator.’
I went on questioning him as gravely as I could. ‘Can you describe the political situation in Barcelona to me? I don’t know a thing.’
‘It’ll all blow sky-high …’
‘Why hasn’t Lazare come?’
‘We’re expecting her any day.’
So Lazare was coming to Barcelona to take part in the agitation. My state of helplessness had become so intolerable that without Michel the night might have come to a bad end.
Michel’s own head may have been screwed on backwards, but he managed to make me sit down again. I was trying – not without difficulty – to recall Lazare’s tone of voice. A year ago she had been sitting in one of these chairs.
Lazare always used to speak imperturbably and slowly, in an innermost tone of voice. It made me laugh whenever I thought of any of the slow-spoken sentences I had heard. I wished I’d been Antonio. I would have killed her. The thought that perhaps I loved Lazare drew a shout from me that was lost in the hubbub. I felt capable of biting myself. I was obsessed by the revolver, by the need to shoot, to empty the chamber – into her belly, into her … As though I were tumbling through space and making silly gestures, the way we fire ineffectual shots in dreams.
I had had enough. To compose myself, I had to make a great effort. I told Michel, ‘Lazare revolts me so much that it scares me.’
Across the table, Michel looked sick. He too was making a superhuman effort to hold onto himself. He rested his forehead in his hands, unable to stifle a weak laugh, ‘Yes, according to her, you seemed to hate her so violently … Even she was afraid. I hate her myself.’
‘You hate her! Two months ago she came to see me in bed, when she thought I was going to die. She was shown in, and she started towards my bed on tiptoe. When I spied her in the middle of the room, she stopped, still on tiptoe, motionless. She looked like a scarecrow standing motionless in the middle of a field …
‘Three steps away from me, she was as pale as if she were looking at a corpse. There was sunlight in the room, but Lazare was dark. Dark the way prisons are dark. She was attracted by death, can you understand that? When I suddenly laid eyes on her, I was so frightened I screamed.’
‘But what about her?’
‘She didn’t say a word. She didn’t budge. I shouted abuse at her. I told her she was a filthy asshole. I said she had the mind of a priest. I even managed to tell her that I was calm and composed. But I was shaking in every limb. I told her that dying was painful enough, but that having to behold such an abject creature while dying was too much. I was sorry my bedpan wasn’t full – I would have chucked the shit in her face.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She told my mother-in-law, without raising her voice, that it would be best if she left.’
I kept laughing and laughing. I was seeing double. I was losing my head.
It was Michel’s turn to guffaw, ‘She left?’
‘She left. My sheets were drenched with sweat. I thought I was going to die then and there. But by the end of the day I was better, I felt that I was out of danger. Get this straight: I certainly frightened her. Otherwise, don’t you agree, I’d be dead!’
Michel, who had slumped down, sat up again. He was feeling awful, but he also had the look of one who has just quenched his thirst for revenge. He was raving. ‘Lazare loves little birds. So she says. But she’s lying. Lying, do you hear? She reeks of the grave. I know – I took her in my arms one day …’
Michel stood up. He was dead white. With an expression of profound stupidity he said, ‘I’d better go to the bathroom.’
I too stood up. Michel went away to vomit. I stood there, with all the cries of the Criolla inside my head, lost in the crush. I no longer understood. Had I shouted, no one would have heard, not even had I shouted my head off. I had nothing to say. I was still doomed to go astray. I kept laughing. I would have liked to spit in the other people’s faces.