Leper Tango (15 page)

“I'm part Cherokee. If you really want, I can put her in a grave. From a distance. Better than fucking arsenic, Franck. And no bad aftertaste or evidence.”

“I'll think about it.”

I was still sticking with my own system. I had discovered the
Café Byzantin
by way of an Atget photograph in a press agency near the old Figaro offices on Montmartre. The photo showed a whore plying her trade in the '20s in front of 143 rue St-Denis. Behind the photo, but still in the file
Brothels in Paris
, a 1944 transcript of a radio report claiming Glenn Miller had been found dead in the arms of a whore in a brothel at 143 St-Denis.

The whore in the photo was square-shouldered, very buxom, dressed in black. She looked happy enough, and eager to do business. Then, under an 1863 charcoal sketch of Victorine Meurent, modelling nude as the whore for Manet's
Olympia
. But, 143 was now the
Café Byzantin
at the corner of
Réaumur
, and like anything else on
rue St-Denis
, had fallen into disrepair and become another anonymous haunt of the strip, which exerted an organic gravity on all higher forms of life, pulling them down towards the gutter.

Pierre, the stocky, curly haired Breton bartender, slid a foamy Meteor down the brass counter towards me. Only one other patron, excluding an off shift waiter, six feet away, pouring tap water out of a flagon into a cylindrical glass with yellowish green Pastis in it. Behind the man, in the recesses of the café, three hookers drinking coffee. I turned around 180 degrees, propped my right elbow on the counter and gazed out the window. A perfect North view of St-Denis. I spotted her again. The same one. Every night without fail. Black hair waxed together, Mali-style, then coiled into an arced labyrinth of flat metallic sheets.

Another glass of Meteor appeared in front of me. The off-duty waiter nodded in my direction.

“On me. I'm getting married in the morning, can you believe it? Fourth time. Every time a disaster. This'll be no better.”

He was older than thirty and younger than fortyeight. His shiny bald scalp, aquiline features and rangy build made anything more precise impossible to estimate. Beside him, a shorter acquaintance, sheepdog hair hanging over a set of thick glasses, pasty complexion, making an attempt to intervene in the conversation.

“I know exactly,
précisément
, what I mean to say is ...” “Sure, go ahead, buy me a drink,” said the off-duty waiter. “But I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to
cemonsieur-là,”
his finger hanging like a crooked branch in my general direction. “
Ce que je veux dire par la
... ”

“Shut up! I told you, I'm talking to
ce-monsieur-là
!”

backhanding roughly in the direction of the short man.

I downed my beer and stepped out the door. Direction Magnetic North.

She wore a set of hotpants and suspenders, which stretched tautly over her breasts like airplane struts. Her lips smeared red, protruding vaginally. I thought I saw a cane leaning against the door, and wondered whether she wasn't blind. But, when she turned, her glazed eyes locked onto mine.

“
Je vous emmène?
”

I followed her down a corridor into a courtyard, watching the sands of her gravelly ass shift back and forth inside her turquoise, terrytowel hotpants. Forty per cent of the Zaire army has AIDS, and I want to get on line. I recalled Lola sitting inside that cheapo Montreal diner the week before her death, describing the design and engineering of her own set of silicon pontoons. As if genetics were trying to equip humans with survival equipment for the next great flood.

I noticed she was limping up the steps, and that her right leg was skinnier than the left, possibly a residual effect of polio, which her rigid Buck ingham Palace Guard posture had successfully camouf laged on the street. Halfway up the steps, she grabbed onto the rail to steady herself, gasped for breath.

“
Merde. T 'as pas une clope
?”

I passed her a cigarette. She took a few drags, butted it out beneath her pump. She pulled some tin foil from the pocket of her hot pants, rolled the stub inside, shoved it back down her pants.

I followed her past a black pimp sitting in a chair at the first level stairhead. Further down the hall, I could hear a female voice snarling “
allez , salaud, tu viens ou quoi, merrrde
?”, rolling the rrrs out sharply in a rough Basque
patois
. The slovenly middle-aged bald pimp could have been the upstairs tenant, except he was someone who didn't mind sitting around while women sucked other men's cocks for him. If you didn't get too hung up on product, he was basically running a franchise operation with all the usual headaches. Copyright, industrial property, confidentiality clauses, customer loyalty, quality control. Whether it was hamburgers, whores or muffler shops, the principles remained the same. Success depended on predictability. Remaining open twentyfour hours a day, and having a generic storefront at every street corner.

We hiked up to the next landing. The room itself was only accessible by an outside
passerelle
clinging precariously to the building, and which resembled a suspension bridge.

“
Ici
,” she said. “After you.”

She had a lumbering, worklike manner of removing her clothes, reminding me of a drydock crew I had witnessed pulling down rig and tackle from a trawler that had run aground in Oostende. Once she stripped down to her lingerie, I could see she was gelatinous. There were no definable contours, once freed of the moulds formed by bra cups, corsets and garter belts. Judging from the positioning of the scars on her body, someone had propped her onto an operating table and had inserted implants. Someone who either no longer or never had been engaged in what is loosely called a
medical practice
.

Prostrate now, her knees up as if ready to give birth. “
Tu viens, chérie
?” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Marlboros. Lit a smoke, and threw down an extra note.

“I have to make a phone call. When I signal, I want you to take the phone.”

I dialled the cell phone number. That voice at the other end, transforming two syllables into an aria.

“
Allo
?”

“Listen to this Sheba. My new girlfriend. From Mali.”

I waved the whore closer to the phone. Passed her two hundred more francs.

“Uhh, uhh, c'mon baby.”

I pushed the phone up to my own ear.

“You should see her tits, Sheba. No traces of silicone.

The creator's work left intact.”

The voice, was pleasant, measured, oozing over the phone.

“Franck.
Ça me dit que dalle
. You must have the wrong number.”

“You fucking cunt. You can't hide behind a cell phone forever, Sheba. C'mon, baby, tell me where you're hiding.”

Then a taunting laugh. Machiavelli and Marilyn Monroe.

“
Pitoyable. Pauvre mec.
”

I hung up the phone. Looked at the undulating mass gawking at me from the bed.

“
Alors, tu viens ou tu viens pas
?”

“Ever heard of Dr Cooper?”

“
Docteur qui
?”

“Best liposuction specialist in Vegas. You better have a little talk with your pimp, honey.”

“
Ça, alors
.”

While descending
rue Montorgueil
. I spotted Tranh inside
Aux tonneaux des Halles
, seated alone in front of a bottle of Médoc, three-quarters gone. He caught sight of me, waved me impatiently inside. “What a coincidence, Robinson! Come and join me, sir, I've not yet ordered!”

During the first ten minutes following my arrival, he continued drinking while haranguing the waiter about the cooking of his
rognons
during his previous visit.

“
Entrecôte
it is then
, monsieur Tranh. A point
?” “
Absolument pas. Saignant.
”

“
Saignant, alors
.
D'accord
.”

“But, first bring us some
Pâte de sanglier
. And the
céléri remoulade
. Not too acidic.”

I'd seen foreigners do this. Inanely specify things to show they hadn't just arrived in the city. In Tranh's case, it seemed to be his way of saying he also was stuck in the city and doomed to act out a secondary role for the remainder of his
ritualised existence
, but that, as the son of Nguyen Vo Giap, conqueror of the French at Dien Bien Phu, he deserved a minimum of respect. It was all about respect.

“I once fell in love with a whore, Egmond. She was from India. I still remember the day when she entered my studio. At the time I lived in the 16
th
. Things actually were going well for me then. I was having an exhibition.

She walked in off the street. Wearing one of those hounds tooth outfits. You know, one of those suits the royals like to wear. I can assure you, she had a real effect upon me. I had planned on proposing to her. It was a foolish idea, one which I luckily did not have the opportunity to execute. Her brother was sent from Bombay to retrieve her. On the very day I intended on springing my request, she was kidnapped. I never saw her again.”

He ran the tip of his finger around the inner rim of his wine glass.

“What do you think lies behind your attraction to whores, Robinson?”

“They don't require user manuals.” Tranh's laugh like mice scuttling through an attic.

“I don't believe you. When a man does this, an older man, he is wrestling with the idea of his own death.”

“I don't see the connection.”

“Of course you don't. You Westerners never speak of death. It is a taboo. That is why it is present everywhere around you. Its certainty and finality paralyses you, because you do not believe in reincarnation. But, things preceded us and things will follow us. The total energy will remain identical. This is a law. It is inescapable.”

The
entrecôte
had arrived. Blood seeping to the top of the cut. He examined it with satisfaction.

“Do you know why I do not fear death, Robinson?

Because I have had so many good meals since I was released from prison.”

“That's why you asked me if I'd done time.”

Tranh tested the Asian inscrutable smile on me, reached for the wine list, ordered another bottle of red.

“Have I told you my wife has multiple sclerosis?”

“It's possible.”

“There are those who think that a spouse with multiple sclerosis is a prison. They could not be more mistaken. I have no problem controlling my wife, Robinson.

We discuss her death every night. Her greater fear is that I will not kill her once she is helpless. She refers to it as a sadistic torture borne of compassion.”

He emptied his glass. Poured out more for both of us.

“I have been observing you in my own way, Robinson. You are a man on the run. You spend your life leaving jobs, friends, women. You never know where you are going. Then, you discover a woman. She epitomizes everything you have wasted — lost dreams, lack of direction, sloth — but in your initial illusion, you believe she is the remedy for everything that has ever ailed you. You are disappointed. You leave her. You drink. You whore. Still, nothing satisfies this insatiable thirst. So, you envisage suicide. But, you do not want to die. So, your emptiness becomes wider, more vacuous, like a Russian steppe. Nothing is left. Nothing. But you are stil l breathing, still alive. What can you do? Nothing. I can't go on, you say in your rare moments of lucidity, I can't go on. But you go on. Not even religion can save you. You believe in nothing. You have created your own hell, and nothing will satisfy you until you have deteriorated from disillusion into sheer misery. Then your thoughts turn back to this woman, even though you are insane now, and you know she is insane, you feel she has given you something. Something which you cannot obtain elsewhere.”

“So. What's your point?”

“You are missing an essential part, Robinson. But, your problem has no resolution. Whatever you must do, do it. Spend no time considering the consequences. That is weakness. An unforgivable trait in an amoral man.

Your life is not so important. Enjoy what is left of it.”

I imagined Tranh, or one of his uncles, torturing French paratroopers held captive in underwater bamboo cages.

“Tell me, Robinson. This woman has caused you immeasurable grief. Yet you insist on returning to her.

Why?”

“What are you talking about? She's a piece of tail, Tranh. End of story.”

“You are lying. You have already thrown away everything for her. You have lost your taste for everything else but her. And, forgive me, Robinson, but all she can do is fuck. It is pathetic.”

“If it's so pathetic, why the grin?” “You misunderstand me, Robinson. Please do not take this personally, but your own fate is a matter of complete indifference to me. On the other hand, your decline interests me tremendously on scientific grounds, as do the reasons behind your conduct. Please, I invite you to dine with me, as I must hear more.”

We wandered up St-Denis after the meal, and landed in
Le Byzantin
, where we lodged ourselves between a table of whores and three young
beurs
planning a Brink 's robber y. The table littered with Choucroute Garnie, bottles of Gewurtztraminer and Oude Kampen Sumatra Cum Laude cigars. Hoof and mouth hysteria had moved into a new phase. Government ministers now devising disinformation campaigns, spreading rumours that farmers were deliberately contaminating livestock in the hope of gaining government subsidies. Which suited me perfectly, for the price of meat was descending into dot.com territory. The Africans were a two hour plane trip away, no doubt wondering why a continent with food to spare was butchering everything alive to wipe out a disease that couldn't be transmitted to humans. But, things had never been better for Tranh and myself. For several weeks running, we had been engaged in a two-man carnivorous orgy. Tranh grinning at me, threads of
blanquette de veau
hanging from his teeth like the closing curtain at a bankrupt theatre production. He clutched at the neck of the
Côte de Bourg
, swallowed a long draught directly from the bottle, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.