We used to talk about books and philosophy and music and art and food. He was a wonderful, gentle guy."
"And something happened to him," I prompted.
"Yeah," she replied, with a little laugh. "He met Christina.
That's what happened to him. She was working for Madame Zhou. She was an Italian girl-very dark and beautiful. I even introduced him to her, one night, when she came into Leopold's with Ulla.
They were both working at the Palace."
"Ulla worked at the Palace?"
"Ulla was one of the most popular girls Madame Zhou ever had.
Then she left the Palace. Maurizio had a contact at the German Consulate. He wanted to oil the wheels on some deal that he was working on with the German, and he discovered that the German was crazy about Ulla. With some heavy persuasion from the consulate officer, and all his own savings, Maurizio managed to buy Ulla free from the Palace. Maurizio got Ulla to twist the consulate guy until he did... whatever it was Maurizio wanted him to do.
Then he dumped him. The guy lost it, I heard. He put a bullet in his head. By then, Maurizio had put Ulla to work, to pay the debt she owed him."
"You know, I've been working up a healthy dislike for Maurizio."
"It was a shitty deal, true enough. But at least she was free from Madame Zhou and the Palace. I have to give Maurizio his due there-he proved it could be done. Before that, nobody ever got away-not without getting acid thrown in her face. When Ulla broke away from Madame Zhou, Christina wanted to break out as well. Madame Zhou was forced to let Ulla go, but she was damned if she was going to part with Christina as well. Ahmed was crazy in love with her, and he went to the Palace, late one night, to have it out with Madame Zhou. I was supposed to go with him. I did business with Madame Zhou-I brought businessmen there for my boss, and they spent a lot of money-you know that. I thought she'd listen to me. But then I got called away. I had a job... a job... it was... an important contact... I couldn't refuse. Ahmed went to the Palace alone. They found his body, and Christina's, the next day, in a car, a few blocks from the Palace. The cops... said that they both took poison, like Romeo and Juliet."
"You think she did it to them, Madame Zhou, and you blame yourself, is that it?"
"Something like that."
"Is that what she was talking about, that day, through the metal grille, when we got Lisa Carter out of there? Is that why you were crying?"
"If you must know," she said softly, her voice emptied of all its music and emotion, "she was telling me what she did to them, before she had them killed. She was telling me how she played with them, before they died."
I clamped my jaw shut, listening to the ruffle of air breathing in and out through my nose, until our two patterns of breath matched one another in rhythmic rise and fall.
"And what about you?" she asked, at last, her eyes closing more slowly and opening less often. "We've got my story. When are you going to tell me your story?"
I let the raining silence close her eyes for the last time. She slept. I knew we didn't have her story. Not the whole of it. I knew the small daubs of colour she'd excluded from her summary were at least as important as the broad strokes she'd included.
The devil, they say, is in the details, and I knew well the devils that lurked and skulked in the details of my own story.
But she had given me a hoard of new treasures. I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.
Somewhere out there in the night, Jeetendra wept for his wife.
Prabaker mopped at Parvati's sweating face with his red scarf.
Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever.
