Read Online The Fata Morgana Books by Jonathan Littell, Charlotte Mandell - Free Book Online

sentence, leaving me with her two friends or else my friend. I tried to talk with him, but he was completely incoherent, I couldn’t understand anything. His brother, who was seven years younger than he but whose birthday we were also celebrating—one was born before midnight, the other after, and we had thus moved seamlessly from one birthday to the other—was nodding and chuckling knowingly; from time to time, he would take a little packet out of his pocket and pour some cocaine onto the table, inviting the guests to help themselves with a sweeping gesture. When I could, I resumed my conversation with the Russian girl. Her mother had disappeared, the woman who had wanted to kiss me was slumped next to the table, staring at me with mean and greedy eyes, I responded with a smile and kept talking with the girl. She was looking for more to drink. All the bottles were empty, now she was grabbing the glasses left on the table and without hesitating poured their contents into her own, laughingly mixing the different wines and drinking without respite. Finally, I managed to convince her to leave. In the street, the sky was turning pale, she immediately dragged me into a bar where I bought her several drinks; she had moved on to beer, while I was still drinking shots of vodka. When she looked at me, curiously, her pupils reflected not just my face, puffy and sagging from drink, but also seemed framed by the reflection of the window behind me, two little black marbles set in two luminous squares. I was trying to convince her to come back to my place, but she gently yet firmly refused my offers; she was filled with alcohol and cocaine, they made her thin body vibrate with a wicked joy; yet she remained completely in control of herself: “That’s not how it’s done,” she said with a clear, slightly broken laugh. I laughed along with her, we understood each other very well. Outside, it was daylight. As I got into the taxi, I offered at least to drop her off on the way, but she refused this too and finally pushed me somewhat abruptly into the car. As it was starting up she walked off with long strides, waving a last goodbye with a broad, brittle smile, fragile and happy. I rapidly developed a vivid passion for this girl. I would call her on the phone, and we would chat about trivial, inconsequential things; she always kept the same friendly distance. I invited her to the pool: she refused, citing an allergy to chlorine, and nothing could convince her to go to the sea. At night, we would get drunk together. She was learning Persian: happy at this incongruous pretext, I held forth on the evolution of the Indo-European languages, a subject I actually knew not much about, but enjoyed a lot. Sometimes, in her confident, precise way, she would interrupt me and abruptly go on to a different, completely unrelated subject; an hour later, just as abruptly, she would come back to it, only quickly to drop it again. While she spoke, I would look at her. She was not, strictly speaking, pretty; but the ease and confidence with which she inhabited her body and face delighted me. Her laughter pealed, the glasses and the ice clinked, the lighters scraped and clacked, the coins jingled on the zinc of the round tables, oh, sweet idyll. At the end of the night, she would always leave me in the same way, cordial, laughing, firm and cheerful.
* * *
To tell the truth, it wasn’t really this girl I loved, but another one. I had dreamed of her one night, alone in the my high room, a long, tender, profound dream that swelled me with so much happiness that my awakening was like a sword-blow to the neck, inflicted with precision by the pitiless day. She was dark-haired, this I am pretty sure of, dark-haired and full of friendship and joy and madness; I didn’t know who she was, I had never seen her before, nonetheless I knew her, I was certain of this, and she too knew me and was waiting for me, in the meantime whiling away her days however she could,