Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles Page B

her wait in this hotel. Two to three weeks, he’d said, perhaps a bit longer, but it would all be done by the end of the month. She might as well go and have something to eat, it would take her mind off things. Having failed to find any clean underwear in her suitcase, with sigh of exasperation she put on a skirt and T-shirt over her bare skin.
    When she appeared on the veranda, emerging from the gloom, Alfredo broke off. “There she is,” he whispered. “I’ll be back in a minute …”
    Eléazard watched him dash over to the Italian woman who had had such an effect on him. She must be about thirty-five or forty, to go by certain signs that stopped him putting her age at less, but without showing the beginnings of biological decline one would expect at that age. Eléazard’s experienced eye noted her firm breasts, unconfined under her T-shirt, long, slender legs and a slim, elegant figure. Having said that, she was far from being as beautiful as that rogue Alfredo had suggested. As far as Eléazard could tell, her almond-shaped eyes and her mouth were a little too big for her emaciated face; and her excessively long and pointed nose added to the lack of proportion.
    When, led by Alfredo to a nearby table, she passed him, he gave her a smile of welcome; her sole response was a slight nod of the head. Ignoring that, he added a delightfully rounded pair of buttocks to her assets. “An intelligent piece of ass,” he told himself, slightly annoyed at her indifference, “a
very
intelligent piece of ass.”
    In fact Loredana had not been as uninterested in him as he assumed. Of course, it was impossible for her not to notice the presence of a person in the otherwise deserted restaurant. Even before he had become aware of her, she had observed him for several seconds and judged him attractive, that is to say dangerous, which explained her wariness toward him and her reserve when he greeted her with a smile. Not that he was physically especially attractive—in that respect Alfredo came out an easy winner—but she had seen in him, in his look and his way of moving, an unusual “depth of field,” an expression that to her mind defined the sum total of criteria that made a human being more or less worthy of interest. Even though she was still susceptible to the physical charm of a person, be it a man or a woman, it came a long way behind a quality of being, or at least its probability, that she believed she was capable of perceiving at first glance.
    Sitting two tables away from Eléazard and placed so that she was looking at him in profile, she examined him at leisure: the self-confidence of a forty-year-old, black hair, just a touch of silver at the temples but high on his forehead in a way that promised some nasty surprises in the future; what was most striking was his nose: a hook nose, not really ugly, but one she had never seen before except in Verrocchio’s
condottiere
in Venice. Without being exactly delicate, the stranger showed no other of the statue’s warlike aspects. He simply seemed sure of himself and cursed with rigorous and redoubtable intelligence. Dante seen by Doré, if she had to choose another artistic resemblance. Moreover, he could even be Italian; Loredana didn’t speak Portuguese very well, but well enough to have noticed a strong foreign accent when she heard him talking to Alfredo.
    Suddenly sensing the persistent look directed at him, Eléazard turned toward her. He silently raised his glass to her beforeputting it to his lips. This time Loredana could not repress a smile, but it was to excuse her unrelenting stare.
    Alfredo had just served the food when the light went out. After having lit several candles, he came to sit with Eléazard again to open a second bottle. It was the moment the mosquitos chose to emerge. As if there were a link between their appearance and the power-cut, they invaded the veranda in invisible clouds and attacked the diners, irritating Eléazard, who was very