FIRST THING IN the morning we were at Barajas airport. Hassan said goodbye in a quick, cold fashion – he doesn’t like public displays of emotion. That’s the way he is. I have no idea when I’ll see him again. I didn’t ask him, either. Then I caught the shuttle plane to Barcelona, where I had a heavy day in front of me. In the evening I had a date with a bank manager, to whom I had once given my personal telephone number on my business card. Now he was inviting me to dinner. I never expected him to call me, but he did. So I had to make sure I looked my best.
After work I began the ritual I go through whenever I have a date. I started with a shower, using my Crabtree and Evelyn sandalwood gel, perfect for this kind of occasion. I love the smell, because they say it’s an aphrodisiac. Its slightly woody perfume intoxicates me, and I want it to do the same to my skin. I poured it onto my hand, rubbed it all over my feet and legs, then my whole body. While the lotion was drying, I had a quick cigarette. Then I dried myself, and put on the same perfumed body lotion.
As I was putting on my evening clothes – an emerald green dress with see-through stockings and high-heeled shoes – I was thinking of moments like these before a new encounter, when you are so full of expectation and desire. They really are the best. That’s why tonight I had no intention of surrendering easily. I wanted the feeling to last. First, I thought, we’ll go out to eat. During the meal, I’ll arouse him: I’ll hand him my panties and stockings as a foretaste of what’s to come. I want him to imagine every inch of my body with nothing in the way. I want him to smell my desire. That’s what I’ll do: I’ll hand him my underwear. Then while he’s chewing on his peppered steak he can imagine what my sex smells like.
I put on a little make-up, but not too much. I don’t want eyeshadow running down my cheeks at our first contact. That’s enough to make anyone look like a cheap whore. A little gloss on my lips. Some rouge on my cheeks. A soft white line on the inside of my eyes. That’s enough.
The doorbell rang at the agreed time and when I went down I found myself facing a really attractive man. It’s strange, but he wasn’t how I remembered him. He was wearing a navy blue silk tie with subtle flecks of purple. His classic-cut suit was also navy blue, and his white shirt gave him an irresistibly elegant touch. The shine on his shoes told me he must have just cleaned them, and that he put a lot of effort into whatever he considered important.
Cristian had a smile like a 1950s movie star, with two tiny dimples at the corners of his mouth. The first time I met him I could tell he was a very sensitive sort. He was bound to be a good lover.
And yet last night, absolutely nothing happened between us. Despite the fact that we didn’t have much to say to each other, I didn’t dare carry out the plan I had dreamt up to fill the silence. There was no stealthy passing of stockings under the table, no titillation from me. But when he asked if he could see me again, I said yes, breaking one of my golden rules.
I’ve come to visit an Italian friend, Franco, and his family, in the countryside. I found it easy to fall asleep, partly because the pure country air exhausted me. I had a strange dream; what most stuck in my memory was the way my image changed. I had dark black hair like a Japanese woman, cut short just above my shoulders with a fringe almost down to my eyes. It was a wig. I was horrified to see myself like that, because it was an image I had been forced to adopt. But it was perfect for the kind of work I had to do. I remember I was in a sort of convent with lots of other girls. At night we would go up to the first floor to work, where there was a geisha house.
I woke up in a sweat, and lit a perfumed candle to help me relax. I breathed in the scent and lay on my back on the bed, with my arms stretched out. I felt as if I were flying through the air. It may sound strange, but I saw my soul rise from my body and fly. All of a sudden I felt someone (a man, I think) grabbing me by the arms and pulling, so that I would take him with me. I was trying to get him off, but I could not move properly. When he realized he could not hold me back, he fell on top of me. He was wearing a dark tunic, and to stop him penetrating me, I switched the light on and lit a cigarette. I had a feeling I was not alone in the room. I was terrified.
My friend Sonia gave me her interpretation of the dream. According to her, the man in the black tunic represented all my phobias and negative energies, and it was a good sign that I had managed to free myself from him.
‘It’s the announcement of a new stage in your life,’ she told me, proud to be a clairvoyant for a day.
At last I’ve come to France for a few days with my beloved granny. When she finally released me from all her hugs and sloppy kisses on both cheeks, I went up to the bedroom she had carefully prepared for me, to unpack. We had supper quietly together, then I went out for a stroll round the village. It had rained a lot the previous day, and now the air smelled really fresh. I decided to visit the cemetery. It’s a very special place for me, particularly when it is all dark and silent. I needed to think things over. As soon as I arrived, the smell of the earth started to tickle my nose, as though all the corpses had fled it with their flesh and bones and given it a unique character. I was immediately drawn to a huge, beautiful marble tombstone. I could not help going over to it and caressing the cold marble. It was a very strange feeling, but it brought me a sense of comfort and peace. And I suddenly thought how perfect it would be to defy death by bringing this place to life – in other words, by making love here among the tombs.
The sound of twigs snapping or of someone treading on leaves brought me out of my reverie. It might have been just my imagination playing one of its tricks, so I decided to stay quite still, until all at once I saw a light in the distance. I was frightened, but also extremely curious, so I walked towards the glow, as it grew bigger and bigger like a moon fallen from the sky. It seemed to be torchlight. Realizing I was not alone made me start to tremble, and I could feel the palms of my hands becoming moist, either through fear or excitement. Then I heard voices. I could see the outline of two men, and soon saw they were digging in the middle of the cemetery. One of them spotted me.
‘Is there someone there?’
I went closer and stood in the light from their torch.
‘I’m sorry, I heard noises and came to find out what they were.’
‘This is no time to be visiting a cemetery, miss,’ one of them said, waving the torch at me. ‘Aren’t you superstitious?’
‘Why should I be? I don’t believe in the living dead, if that’s what you mean.’
Both of them laughed.
‘We’re digging the hole this late because there’s a burial early tomorrow,’ the other man explained.
Even from where I was standing I could see the bulge in his trousers. He saw me staring at him and said, ‘Human nature can never stay still, even in places like this.’
He was looking me up and down, and as my eyes got used to the darkness I could see his expression change, though I couldn’t make out his face very clearly.
I was wearing a long black skirt with a tight-fitting short-sleeved top of the same colour, and a pair of sandals. All of this was quite thin material, and I could feel the cool night breeze on my body. My nipples began to harden, and I could sense my breathing accelerate more and more. It was so silent in the cemetery I was sure the two men could hear it too, and even see my taut breasts beneath my clothing.
Then one of the men came up to me and started stroking my hair. He ran his hand over my face, and pushed two fingers into my mouth.
‘Suck them!’ he whispered.
I did as I was told. The other man had moved behind me, and started fondling my backside, his hands muddy from the wet earth. He lifted up my skirt and pulled off my panties, raising them to his face to sniff them.
‘You smell of life all right, sweetheart!’ he said hoarsely.
He bent down to pick up a clod of earth they had been digging, and started rubbing it hard into my buttocks. I was still sucking his companion’s fingers, licking between them. His workman’s hands had a strange tang to them: rough and salty.
The other one took down his trousers, seized his prick in his right hand and started to masturbate, shining the light of the torch on my backside.
‘You’ve got an arse to die for, sweetheart!’
Even though I could not see his face, I could sense how frantically he was pleasuring himself, and felt all the more aroused. Then the two of them tied my hands with a piece of rope and one of them pushed me roughly to the ground, right next to the hole they had been digging for the next day’s burial. My head was hanging over the side and I was looking directly into the bottom of the grave. I knew one of them had finished when an enormous hot jet spread over my stomach. The other man shone the torch right in my face, as if they were interrogating me.
‘I bet you like it!’
All at once he seized my head and stuck his prick in my mouth. My wet, warm saliva made him come almost at once, spraying my palate and gums. I passed out.
I don’t know how many minutes or hours passed. When I got up, my whole body was aching. Was it all a dream? I was completely alone, covered in mud from head to toe. Apart from that, there were no traces of what had happened, and no sign of any rope. I decided to go home.
I spent the whole day thinking about what happened yesterday, while Granny sat knitting and occasionally glancing over at me, intrigued by how serious I looked, sitting there writing this diary. I was in a small armchair which is protected by a blanket because Bigudi the cat loves to get up on it and clean herself. Bigudi was in front of me, looking at me suspiciously because I had taken her favourite place. I picked her up, kissed her on the head and stroked her fur so that she would start purring: my favourite tune, so full of pleasure and satisfaction. I closed my diary to offer her room on my lap, but she preferred just to sit there stubbornly, watching me.
‘It’s going to rain again today,’ I said to Granny, watching the cat clean herself behind the ears.
‘That’s good for the garden,’ she replied, with a slight smile that hung around her lips.
Granny is always smiling. She’s a wonderful woman who’s almost six feet tall. During the Second World War she joined the French Resistance, walking through woods carrying secret messages in her baby’s pram. I admire her for that.
I watched her intently as she crossed the wool from side to side. I have never known Granny with any other expression on her face than the one she has now. It’s as if she had suffered from amnesia all her life, or as if I had lost my memory.
‘Granny, did you have any lovers before Granddad?’
My question did not seem to surprise her. She answered me calmly without raising her eyes from her knitting.
‘Your grandfather was the only man in my life. I married him because that was the thing to do in those days. But I learnt to love him. You have to bear in mind what they said in a film once: a woman without qualifications has only two options, either marriage or prostitution, and they come down to the same thing, don’t they? I’ve never made love with another man, if that’s what you mean, not even before I met your grandfather.’
‘And if you could start all over again, what would you do?’
‘Why, make love to as many men as I could, child,’ she replied with a laugh.
So now I know where my liberal-minded character comes from. I got up and kissed her on both cheeks to thank her for her sincerity and the trust she had shown me.
‘Ah! And you have my permission to write and tell me all the details about your lovemaking, sweetheart,’ she said.
‘I promise I will.’
Esperanza, Esperanza, sólo sabe bailar chachachá.
Esperanza, Esperanza, sólo sabe bailar chachachá.
The radio in the taxi I took at Barcelona airport was on at full blast. I even had to shout at the taxi-driver to get him to understand where I wanted to go. It never occurred to him to turn it down. The taxi was full of religious knick-knacks, and there was the photo of some saint or other on the rear-view mirror. Even the dog with the nodding head on the back shelf had a cross hanging round its neck.
‘So you’re from la France? I could tell at once, mademoiselle. So, are you on holiday here?’
Poor guy, it wasn’t his fault, but I didn’t have the slightest desire to talk to him, so all I did was nod in agreement. He didn’t seem to get my point, and went on chatting.
‘I speak un petit peu the French. And also speankin inglis.’
‘Speaking English,’ I corrected him.
‘Yes, that’s right, speankin inglis,’ he replied, proud of himself. ‘When I was young I went to England to work as a cook. That’s where I learned to speank the language. But that was many years ago, and I can’t remember much any more. I still do the cooking at home, though. My wife can’t complain. Every Sunday I make her a fideuá. It’s not easy to make a decent fideuá, let me tell you.’
After he had told me all about his wife’s favourite foods, what his children do, and what good children they are, let me tell you . . . and how well his daughters-in-law have been accepted in his village, I finally managed to say goodbye to the taxi-driver. I gave him a good tip.
It was late, but I thought I might still be able to catch up with my bank manager from the other night. I wanted to see him and make a start with what we never got around to at that dinner. When I gave him a call, I got his voicemail, so I immediately left him a message:
‘Call me at any time.’
At any time? He’s going to think either that something has happened to me, or that I’m crazy. Too bad. At least this way I’ll find out if he’s really interested in me.
At one in the morning – nothing. At two, still nothing. By three I couldn’t stay awake any longer, and went to bed. At half past four I was still tossing and turning, unable to sleep a wink. At a quarter to five I got up for a pee. Five o’clock, and still I couldn’t get to sleep! At a quarter past, I got out of bed and ate some chocolate mousse. Guess what? I still couldn’t sleep. I realized it was never going to happen, so I got up looking dreadful and wanting sex so badly nothing my hand could do would calm the urge.
Because of the lack of sleep, I had a terrible day. I was in a bad mood all morning, and on top of everything else, I had to start the preparations for my trip to Peru. My workmates did not dare ask me what was wrong, but I was so pale that Marta, the secretary, asked me if I didn’t need a shot of glucose from her bottle of Coca-Cola to give me a lift.
‘I hate the stuff!’ I told her, not lifting my eyes from my computer.
I was trying to write a fax to set up a meeting with a Peruvian company. ‘Anticipating your prompt Coca-Cola, I remain yours sincerely,’ I wrote. When I reread it, I was even more annoyed because I had to correct it.
‘Please Marta, don’t bother me any more, I just make mistakes,’ I snapped at the poor woman. She left my office with a sigh, shutting the door silently behind her.
I couldn’t send the fax. I checked the number to make sure I had got it right, and tried again. Finally it went through. I hope they reply soon. I’ve already set up several meetings, but I don’t want to leave Spain until I know exactly what I’ll be doing in Peru.
In the afternoon my boss, Andres, called me in to discuss how my plans were going.
‘Well then my girl, how do you feel about your trip?’
Why does he always call me ‘my girl’? Andres must be around sixty, and I’m thirty years younger, but we only work together. His attitude often makes me feel like a little girl. He’s still got a good head of hair, going white now, and I’d wager that a few years ago he was quite a woman-chaser. Now, though, I bet the snail is back in its shell. So all he can do is adopt this fatherly tone.
‘What’s wrong with you today?’ he asked, taking off his glasses and narrowing his eyes.
‘There’s nothing wrong, Andres. I had a bad night, that’s all. Why are you all going on at me so today?’
‘OK, let’s leave it there. But remember, my girl, that I need you to see everyone on the list in Peru.’
‘Of course. Don’t worry. I’ll sell my soul to the devil if need be. You know me.’ Even I didn’t believe what I was saying to try to reassure him.
‘If things get tough, I’ll send someone to give you a helping hand.’
I shot out of his office because it was getting late and I still had a lot to get through. I almost fell over a heap of files Marta had spread out on the floor, and collided with her desk. Just at that moment, my mobile sounded.
I was out of breath and even more annoyed than before – Marta noticed and kept her head down among her files – when I reached my office. But it was too late. ‘Call 123 . . . New voice message,’ the mobile told me. I was so nervous I made a mistake dialling my voicemail. My nerves play those kinds of tricks on me sometimes. Calm down, I told myself. Calm down, this isn’t going to help.
‘This is Cristian. You left me a message yesterday evening. I’m returning the call.’
My bank manager! I slid the door to my office shut and dialled him back at once.
‘Hi Cristian, it’s me.’
‘That was quick!’ he answered, surprised.
If you only knew how much I feel like fucking you, I thought.
‘Well, I got back from France yesterday and wanted to know what you were up to. How are things?’
‘I’ve got a lot of work, but fortunately I’m in a privileged position. I finish by mid-afternoon.’
‘Lucky you! So what do you do with yourself all afternoon? You must have a lot of free time.’
I wanted to know more about him, and especially if he could fit me in somewhere.
‘I work out. Go shopping. Sometimes I go for a drink with a beautiful woman friend . . . what are you doing later?’
Aha, that’s good, I thought. He wants to see me.
‘If you like, we can meet up. I don’t know what time I’ll be finished, but I could phone you as soon as I leave the office. How about it?’ I asked.
‘Fine. Bye.’
Just as I was leaving the office, the heavens opened. I hadn’t brought an umbrella because the weather had been fine all morning, but the moment I stepped out into the street I became a Noah without an ark. It’s always the same. Everybody started to run like crazy, jumping over the puddles of mud and water that had already begun to form on the pavements. I decided to go at my own pace. There was no point running: I had no umbrella and it was raining so hard I was bound to get drenched anyway. Besides, I like the feeling of wet hair when it’s hot, and the smell of damp asphalt. The rain takes me back to when I used to visit my grand-parents in the country as a little girl. And the summer holidays I used to spend with my friend Emma.
By the time I put the key in my front-door lock, I was soaked through. What I needed was a hot bath with lots of salts.
I threw all my clothes off in the corridor – even my bra was dripping. Then I went into the living room naked and put on a Loreena McKennitt CD: The Visit. I poured myself a glass of red wine and lit some perfumed candles in the bathroom. With a Shakespeare poem to a harp accompaniment playing in the background, I took a leisurely bath for about an hour. By the time I emerged, all my fingers and toes were wrinkled. It feels great! This is how I would like to die. I confess I’ve often imagined how it would be. I think it must be like a lengthy dream as we travel in towards our soul. The pain of death is what most frightens people. But death cannot be pain, because pain is physical and death is the definitive state when we have ‘shuffled off this mortal coil’.
I’ve got my own theory about what happens to us when we die. We are pure energy, and on our death our atoms mingle with the rest of the Universe. Our little bundle of energy becomes part of the energy of the Cosmos. There’s no heaven and no hell. And that’s how I feel when I’m making love. I can feel my energy flowing into that of the other person, and I’m taken on a journey until I fuse with the Cosmos. The energy of my orgasm is a tiny part of myself that mingles with the Universe. When I collapse exhausted after sex, I gradually return to my human state. My body cells go on a journey to the stars, where they are dispersed forever, caught up in a tumult of energy that I cannot control but which is constantly calling me.
I think that’s why we want to repeat the experience time and again. To try to understand it better. Not that I ever really understand anything. It’s a petite mort I am eternally trying to domesticate. That’s what we French poetically call our orgasm. Every act of lovemaking is my way of getting closer to this sense of ecstasy. But I can never grasp it properly, which is why I’m condemned to repeat the experience endlessly, to try to comprehend it. In other words, it’s a mountain with a huge abyss into which I never quite fall, with one foot on the ground and the other in mid-air. And my body swings like a pendulum between the human and the divine.
It was eleven at night. When I got out of my bath, I had a text message from Cristian.
‘Rain, champagne, your skin . . . why do I feel so aroused?’
Cristian sure knows how to arouse someone himself with a suggestive message like that.
‘When we meet, I’m determined to find out what those three dots mean,’ I texted him back.
‘Good night . . .’ he wrote, to show he had got the message.
No doubt about it, he’s a clever guy.
I went to bed, but had difficulty sleeping. His messages had set my hormones racing, and I didn’t know whether I would have the patience to wait until the next day.
I arranged to meet Cristian in a bar after work. I knew nothing was going to happen because I have my period. Shit. It came on this morning without warning. It was early, as though my body were telling me it was tired and needed to take things easy. I should have cancelled our date, but couldn’t. I was too keen to see him again.
After an interesting conversation over a few glasses of French red wine and some tapas, he invited me to the most fashionable disco in the city. When I see someone dance, I can tell straight away whether they are sensual or not. In Cristian’s case, there’s no doubt: he dances really well. And . . . rain, champagne, his skin . . . I’m gone.
Gone into a parallel world, a dreamless huis clos, in which my body melts eternally into a velvet robe, where pleasure goes beyond all limits and becomes tiny diamond drops in the corners of my eyes, where his fingers brush against me like butterfly wings, and the hands of the clock whirl round twenty-four hours with me caught up in them.
It all began with some hectic dancing, while we chatted and flirted with friends Cristian met up with in the disco. Our drinks of rum with Coke or lime were stronger even than the music blaring out from the loudspeakers. I was dancing on an endless thread of silk like a tiny tightrope walker, caught between feeling his swollen penis rubbing against me inside his tight Italian trousers, and the burning glances a stranger was throwing at me as I whirled seductively round. I could feel myself falling, losing control. I wanted to feel I was alive.
‘Tame me,’ I whispered to him with my eyes.
I am looking for someone special, a man who can express his feelings through sex. Back at Cristian’s place, after an exotic fruit punch, I lost all my senses and found myself spreadeagled beneath a penis that looked far too big for me, but which was impossible to resist. I took three hours to explore every part of this fleshy vibrator with my mouth. Underneath the sheets I looked like a comic-book ghost; I could hear him saying I was driving him crazy with pleasure, and sucked and chewed at him until I felt his prick had explored every single filling I had collected since I was a little girl.
I had two things blocking my suppressed sensuality. Embarrassed, I quickly removed one sitting on the bidet; he put the other one on me with an expert touch. I let myself go, like a puppet in the hands of a higher power, too aroused to do anything at all.
His unshaven cheeks did not bother me as in an act of generosity he ran his face down to the centre of gravity of female pleasure, forgetting that what is most intimate should be earned, not stolen by force. But he had extrasensory perception, and that made him dangerous: all I could do was approve with my eyes all that he did.
He wasn’t bothered either by my unkempt bush, a sign that not everything can always be planned, that everything comes together because that is the way it’s mean to be. The smell in the room was like no other.
‘Attar of roses,’ he said, reading my mind.
Everything faded into one. Rum from the night before at the disco, the fruit punch, now essence of roses at dawn, the black bottle of Armani each time I went to the bathroom, the bagnoschiuma from a Melia hotel in Italy on my skin when I took a quick shower, not wanting to miss a single moment of his presence. All these odours and tastes coursed through my veins, while at the same time my blood cells were reproducing at vertiginous speed.
He was crushing my mouth because that was the only way he knew how to kiss me, and I could feel I had a cut on the inside of my lip. He kissed me like a dog licking its returning master when it realizes it hasn’t been abandoned. He bit my neck like a cat on heat, which prepares for the reproductive act with a ritual of this kind. All this gave me goose flesh. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end for hour after hour.
In the morning I found myself, exhausted but satisfied, on a black rug that contrasted sharply with the pale white skin of my body.
He dropped me early outside my place. I walked up to my apartment like a zombie, suddenly finding I had been changed against my will into a kind of Marguerite Duras, obsessed forever with a lover who drove her mad at the age of fifteen, and condemned ever afterwards to write about a passion that imprisoned her in that moment of adolescence.