The Girl on Paper Read online

  Slowly, she moved a little closer to me, gently placed her hand behind my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. Her mouth tasted fresh and sweet. I shivered, caught off guard, and stepped back slightly. I felt my heart start to pound in my chest, as feelings I had buried for so long came bubbling to the surface. If Billie had stolen the first kiss, I was eager to give the second away.

  22

  Aurore

  We were both lost in the forest of a cruel period of transition. Lost in our loneliness… lost in our love of the absolute… mystical pagans with no graves and no God.

  Victoria Ocampo, in a letter to Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

  Bourbon Street Bar

  Two hours later

  Flashes of lightning lit the sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance and rain beat relentlessly down on the hotel, shaking the palm trees, battering the thatched parasols and studding the open water with thousands of little drops. I had been sheltering for the last hour on the covered terrace of a wine bar in a colonial-style planter’s house, which reminded me of parts of New Orleans. Holding my cup of coffee, I watched the holidaymakers fleeing the storm for the comfort of their hotel rooms.

  I needed to be alone, to gather my thoughts. I was angry with myself, annoyed that I had been so thrown by Billie’s kiss, and that I had joined in her childish and degrading attempt to make Aurore jealous. We were not fifteen any more and this kind of petty game no longer worked.

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to get back to work. I watched the cursor in the top left-hand corner of my screen blink at me reproachfully. I had switched on the old Mac that Carole had brought for me in the vague hope that this ancient machine, which had once been everything to me, would somehow kick-start the creative process. In my glory days I had typed out hundreds of pages on this keyboard, but the computer wasn’t a magic wand.

  Unable to concentrate even for a few seconds, incapable of stringing two words together, I had lost my belief in myself, along with the thread of my story.

  The storm made the air heavy and oppressive. I felt the old nausea rising as I sat frozen in front of the screen. Everything started to swim before my eyes. My mind was wandering, distracted by other cares, and at that moment, writing even the beginnings of a chapter seemed as daunting as climbing Everest.

  I took one last sip of coffee and got up to order another. Inside, the room had the look of a British pub, with wood panelling and leather sofas adding to the warm and cosy feel. I went up to the counter, studying the impressive collection of bottles lined up behind the mahogany bar. I felt as though I ought to be sipping whisky or cognac, instead of coffee, and puffing on a Havana to the crackling sound of a Dean Martin record.

  And, sure enough, someone went over to the piano and picked out the opening notes of ‘As Time Goes By’. I turned around to have a look, half expecting to see Sam himself, the piano player in Casablanca.

  Aurore was sitting on a leather stool, dressed in a long cashmere jumper and lacy tights. Her seemingly endless legs were tucked under her and made even longer by a pair of ruby-red heels. She looked up at me as she played. Her nails were painted purple and on her left index finger she wore a cameo ring. I noticed the stone cross she often wore to perform hanging round her neck.

  Unlike mine, her fingers danced nimbly across the keys. She moved effortlessly from Casablanca to ‘La Complainte de la Butte’ before teasing out a little improvised variation on ‘My Funny Valentine’.

  The bar was almost empty but the few remaining drinkers watched her with total fascination, bewitched by the aura that surrounded her, a heady mix of Marlene Dietrich mystery, Anna Netrebko sex appeal and Melody Gardot sensuality.

  I was no different; neither cured nor immune to her charms, I fell under her spell. Seeing her again was painful. When she left me, she had taken all the vitality out of me: my hopes, my self-confidence, my faith in the future. She had bled me dry, banished laughter and colour from my life. But, most of all, she had numbed my heart, stifling any possibility of loving again. My insides were like scorched earth: nothing grew there; there were no trees and no birds; I was trapped in a never-ending winter. I lost any appetite or desire, save that of dulling all my senses by stuffing myself full of drugs to smother memories that were too raw to confront.

  *

  Falling in love with Aurore was like catching a fatal and virulent illness. I met her in the airport in Los Angeles, in the boarding line for a flight to Seoul. I was going to South Korea on a promotional tour; she was going to perform Prokofiev. I loved her from the moment I saw her, for the most insignificant reasons, or perhaps the most significant: a sad smile, eyes that sparkled as they caught the light, the way she pushed her hair off her face, turning her head almost in slow motion. Then I fell in love with the inflections in her voice, her intelligence, her wit, her practical attitude to her own beauty. Later, I loved her for her secret flaws, for her melancholy nature, the chinks in her armour. We spent a few precious months wrapped up in each other, consumed by a happiness that carried us far above everyday reality – moments that seemed to last for ever, spinning in a giddy, intoxicating whirl.

  Of course, I always knew there would be a price to pay. After all, I did teach literature, and I always bore in mind the warnings of my favourite authors: Stendhal and his ‘crystallisation’ theory; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina throwing herself under a train, having sacrificed everything for the man she loves; the sad decline of Ariane and Solal, the two lovers in Belle du Seigneur, numbed by an ether overdose, in the sordid solitude of a hotel room. But passion is like a drug: knowing its devastating effects has never stopped anyone destroying themselves once they’re hooked.

  Under the mistaken impression that she completed me, I told myself our love would last, that we’d succeed where others had failed. But the truth was that Aurore didn’t bring out the best in me. She revived the worst aspects of my character, habits I’d long fought to suppress: a tendency for possessiveness; for being fooled by a pretty face, falling for the illusion that beauty might be more than skin deep; and a feeling of smug self-satisfaction at having got one up on all the other males of my species by bagging such a gorgeous girl.

  Although Aurore had learned to take fame with a pinch of salt and claimed to have her feet firmly on the ground, celebrity rarely has a positive effect on those admitted to its club. Far from healing wounds to your self-esteem, it tends to cut them even deeper.

  I knew all that. I knew Aurore’s greatest fear was losing her looks or her artistic talent: the two magic powers bestowed on her from on high, marking her out from all others. I knew how her steady voice could falter, that behind the facade of a self-assured icon hid a woman lacking in confidence, struggling to find inner balance. A woman who dealt with her complexes by cramming her diary full, rushing between world capitals, booking concert dates three years ahead and having a string of affairs followed by meaningless break-ups.

  Yet right up to the end I still imagined I could be her anchor, and she mine. For it to work, we’d have had to put our trust in one another. As it was, she was so used to playing games and making people jealous to get what she wanted that the waters between us weren’t exactly calm. Ultimately, our ship had sailed, and sunk. We could probably have been happy stranded together on a desert island, but life is not a desert island. Her friends – wannabe intellectuals in Paris, New York and Berlin – sneered at my ‘trashy’ novels, while on my side, Milo and Carole found her snobbish, superior and self-obsessed.

  *

  The storm raged, veiling the windows with a thick curtain of rain. In the hushed, classy surroundings of the Bourbon Street Bar, Aurore was striking the last few chords of ‘A Case of You’, which she had just finished singing in a smooth, bluesy voice.

  While the crowd applauded, she took a sip from the glass of Bordeaux perched on the piano and thanked her audience with a nod. Then she closed up the instrument to make it clear that the show was over.

  ‘Pretty impressive,’ I said, walking toward
her. ‘Norah Jones had better watch out if you go down that road.’

  She held out her glass, challenging me.

  ‘Let’s see if you’ve still got it.’

  I placed my lips where hers had been and sampled the mysterious potion. She had encouraged me to share her passion for studying wines, but left me before I had a chance to learn the basics.

  ‘Um… Château-Latour 1982,’ I plucked at random.

  My uncertainty brought a faint smile to her lips, before she corrected me, ‘Château-Margaux 1990.’

  ‘I think I’ll stick to Diet Coke. Fewer vintages to remember.’

  She laughed the way she used to laugh before, back when we loved one another. She moved her head very slowly, as she did when she wanted to be admired, and a golden lock fell from the clip holding back her hair.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘You, on the other hand, look like you’ve just walked in from the Stone Age,’ she quipped, alluding to my beard. ‘Oh, and how’s your mouth doing? Did they manage to stitch you up?’

  I frowned, confused. ‘Stitch what up?’

  ‘The piece that blonde took out of your lip at the restaurant. New girlfriend, is she?’

  I dodged the question by turning to the counter to order ‘the same as the lady’.

  But she wouldn’t be put off.

  ‘She’s a pretty girl. Not exactly classy, but pretty all the same. Anyway, looks like things are pretty explosive between you.’

  I fought back. ‘So how’s it all going with Mr Sporty? OK, so he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s easy on the eye, I guess. You were made for each other. He’s the love of your life, or so I’ve read.’

  ‘So that’s the kind of paper you read these days? They wrote such a load of crap about me and you that I’d have thought you’d know better. And as for “the love of my life”? C’mon, Tom, you know perfectly well I’ve never gone in for all that.’

  ‘Even with me?’

  She took another sip of wine, got up from the stool and leaned on the window ledge.

  ‘Before you, I never had passionate love affairs. My relationships have always been fun, but I’ve never let myself get too carried away.’

  It was one of the things that had come between us. For me, love was like oxygen. It was what made life sparkle, gave it drama and intensity. For her, however magical it might be, at the end of the day it was all just illusion and deception. Staring into space, she explained.

  ‘You make ties and then they come undone – that’s life. Eventually you go your separate ways, without necessarily knowing why. I can’t give everything to another person, with a Sword of Damocles hanging above my head. I don’t want to build my life on feelings, because feelings change. They’re fragile and uncertain. You think they’re deep and solid and then they’re swept away by a passing bit of skirt or a smooth smile. I make music because there will always be music in my life. I like reading because there will always be books. Plus I can’t say I know any couples who’ve stayed together for life.’

  ‘That’s because you surround yourself with artists and celebrities who are constantly jumping in and out of bed with each other!’

  She was quiet for a moment, walking slowly out onto the terrace and placing her glass down on top of the rail.

  ‘Our problem was, we didn’t know where to go after the excitement of the early days had gone,’ she concluded. ‘We didn’t work hard enough—’

  ‘You didn’t work hard enough,’ I corrected her, feeling increasingly sure of myself. ‘You’re the one who gave up on us.’

  One last bolt of lightning ripped through the sky and the storm was over, vanishing as suddenly as it had arrived.

  I went on. ‘All I wanted was to share my life with you. I think that’s all love means, in the end: wanting to experience things together, learning from your differences.’

  The grey sky began to clear and a patch of blue appeared amongst the clouds.

  ‘All I wanted,’ I tried to drum home, ‘was to build a future with you. I was ready to take anything on, to go through anything with you by my side. I’m not saying it would have been easy – nothing ever is – but it’s all that mattered to me. We would have overcome everything life threw at us if we’d just stuck together.’

  In the main room, someone was playing the piano again. A few notes from a sultry variation on ‘India Song’ drifted through to us.

  I turned and in the distance saw Rafael Barros approaching, carrying a surfboard under his arm. I started toward the wooden staircase to avoid having to meet him, but Aurore held me back, clutching my wrist.

  ‘I know all that, Tom. I know you can’t take anything for granted; nothing’s ever guaranteed.’

  There was a fragile note in her voice. It was unsettling; the femme fatale’s varnish was cracking.

  ‘I know you only really deserve love if you give your whole body and soul to it, throwing yourself in and risking everything… but I just wasn’t ready to do that, and I’m still not now.’

  I broke free of her grip and walked down the steps. Behind me, she added, ‘I’m sorry if I made you believe otherwise.’

  23

  Solitude

  Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another

  Octavio Paz

  La Paz area

  Early afternoon

  With her rucksack on her back, Carole leapt between the rocks along the jagged coastline. She stopped to look up at the sky. The downpour had lasted less than ten minutes, just long enough to soak her from head to toe. Her clothes drenched, her face streaming with rain, she felt the warm water seeping under her T-shirt.

  I’m such a klutz! she thought to herself, wringing her hair out with her hands. She’d remembered to bring a first-aid kit and a snack, but no towel or change of clothes!

  A pleasant autumn sun had chased away the clouds, but it wasn’t warm enough to dry her off. She started running again at a swift, steady pace, drinking in the beauty of each little cove against a backdrop of cactus-covered mountains. At a bend in the steep track leading down to the shore, a man burst out from behind a bush. She tried to run round him, but caught her foot on a root. She let out a cry as she fell spectacularly into the arms of the stalker.

  ‘It’s me, Carole!’ Milo reassured her as he gently caught her.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she shouted, freeing herself from his grasp. ‘Did you follow me? What the hell is wrong with you!’

  ‘Jeez, will you calm down a minute?’

  ‘And you can stop gawping at me!’ she screamed, suddenly aware of her wet clothes clinging to the contours of her body.

  ‘I’ve got a towel,’ he offered, rummaging in his bag. ‘And some dry clothes.’

  She grabbed the bag out of his hands and went behind a tall umbrella-shaped pine tree to change.

  ‘Don’t even think about trying to get an eyeful, you creep. I’m not one of your Playmates, you know!’

  ‘I’d have my work cut out trying to see you behind that thing,’ he replied, catching the damp T-shirt and shorts she had just thrown off.

  ‘Why did you follow me?’

  ‘I wanted to spend some time with you. And I also wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Go on then, do your worst.’

  ‘Why did you say that the story of the Angel Trilogy saved your life?’

  She fell silent for a moment, before responding bitterly. ‘One day, when you’re a bit less of a jackass, maybe I’ll tell you about it.’

  He had rarely known her to be so vindictive, and was taken aback. Still, he tried to carry on the conversation.

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me to come with you?’

  ‘Because I wanted to be on my own, Milo. Is that so hard to understand?’ she asked, pulling on a cable-knit jumper.

  ‘But what good does it do to be lonely? Being alone is the worst thing i
n the world.’

  Carole came out from her shelter, dressed in men’s clothes that hung off her.

  ‘No, Milo. The worst thing in the world is being stuck with guys like you.’

  He felt as if he’d been punched.

  ‘What exactly are you so mad at me for?’

  ‘Drop it. We’ll be here all night if I have to list everything,’ she said, starting back down towards the beach.

  ‘No, no, go right ahead! I want to know,’ he admitted, falling into step with her.

  ‘You’re thirty-six years old, but you act like you’re eighteen,’ she began. ‘You’re irresponsible and immature. You’d like to think you’re a player, but you’re pathetic. All you live by is the ABC…’

  ‘Huh?’

  She spelled it out. ‘Ass, beer and cars.’

  ‘You done?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to him as they reached the sand. ‘You’re not the kind of guy a woman can rely on.’

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  She stood in front of him with her hands on her hips, looking him straight in the eye.

  ‘You’re one of the “good-time guys”, one of those cowboys women can have a bit of fun with when they’re feeling lonely. They might spend a night with you, but they’ll never think of you as the father of their kids.’

  ‘That’s not what they all think!’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, it is, Milo. Any woman with an ounce of sense would say exactly the same. How many nice girls have you ever introduced us to? None, that’s how many. There’ve been heaps of them and they’re always the same: strippers, half-hookers and poor little lost girls you pounce on in crappy clubs, picking off the weak ones!’

  ‘OK, and how many guys have you brought home? Oh no, that’s right, we’ve never seen you with a man! Kind of weird, don’t you think, honey? Past thirty and no love life to speak of?’

  ‘Maybe it’s just that I don’t send you a fax to let you know every time I’m seeing someone.’