"You are forgiven," he sniffed, downing one glass of whisky as the waiter brought the next. "You know," I admonished him, "Karla says that depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad."
"Well she is wrong!" he declared. "I am an expert in the tristesse. It is the perfect, definitive human performance. There are many animals that can express their happiness, but only the human animal has the genius to express a magnificent sadness. And for me it is something special; a daily meditation. Sadness is my one and my only art."
He pouted for a few moments, too peeved to proceed, but then raised his eyes to meet mine and laughed out loud.
"Have you heard from her?" he asked.
"No."
"But you know where she is?"
"No."
"She has left Goa?"
"I asked a guy I know down there, Dashrant-he owns a restaurant on the beach where she was staying-I asked him to keep an eye on her, and make sure she was okay. I called him last week, and he told me she left. He tried to talk her into staying, but she... well, you know."
Didier pursed his lips in a reflective frown. We both watched the shuffling, idling, bustling, scurrying street only two metres away, beyond the wide entrance to Leopold's.
"Et bien, don't worry yourself about Karla," Didier said at last.
"At the least, she is well protected."
I assumed that Didier meant she could take care of herself and, perhaps, that she lived under a good and lucky sign. I was wrong.
There was more to the remark than that. I should've asked him what he meant, of course. In the long years since that conversation I've asked myself a thousand times how different my life might've been if only I'd asked him what he meant by that remark. Instead, my head full of assumptions and my heart full of pride, I changed the subject.
"So... what happened?"
"Happened?" he asked, bewildered.
"What happened to you and Rinaldo in Genova?"
"Ah, yes. He loved me, and I loved him, it was true, but he made an error of the judgment. He gave my love a test. He allowed me to discover the secret place where he kept a large sum of cash. I could not resist the temptation that he offered to me. I took the money and ran away. I loved him, but I took his money, and I ran away. For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested, and loyalty. But there is no test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die."
"Did you ever see him again?"
"Yes. Yes, I did. Another loop of fortune brought me back to Genova, almost fifteen years later. I walked on the same boulevard of sand where he had taught me to read Rimbaud and Verlaine. And then I saw him. He was sitting with a group of men of his own age-he was more than sixty then-and they were watching two elderly men play chess. He wore a grey cardigan and a black velvet scarf, although the day was not cold. His hair was almost gone. That silver crown of hair, it was... gone. His face was all hollow spaces, and his skin was a bad mix of bad colours, as if he was recovering from a serious illness. Perhaps he was succumbing to it. I do not know. I walked on past him, averting my gaze, so that he should not recognise me. I even pretended a strange, stooping walk to disguise myself. At the last moment I glanced back at him, watching as he coughed violently into a white handkerchief. There was blood, I think, staining that white handkerchief. I walked faster and faster until I ran with the haste of a man in terror."
Once again we sat in silence and allowed our eyes to rove the passing crowds, following a man in a blue turban in one instant, and a woman in a black mask, veil, and chador the next.
"You know, Lin, I have lived what many-or most-would call a wicked life. I have done things that could put me in prison, and things that, in some nations, could see me executed. There are many things I have done that I can say, I am not proud. But there is only one act in my whole life that I can say, I am truly ashamed of it. I hurried past that great man, and I had money enough and time enough and good health enough to help him. I hurried past him, not because I felt guilty about the theft of his money. And not because I was afraid of his sickness, or the commitment it might cost me. I hurried past that good and brilliant man who loved me, and taught me how to love, simply because he was old-because he was not beautiful any more."
He drained his glass, examined its emptiness for a moment, and then placed it on the table as gently and attentively as if it was about to explode. "Merde! Let's drink, my friend!" he cried at last, but my hand stayed his, preventing him from summoning the waiter.
"I can't, Didier. I have to meet Lisa at the Sea Rock. She asked me to ride out there and meet her. I'll have to leave now, if I'm going to make it."
He clenched his jaws on something-a request, perhaps, or another confession. My hand still rested on his.
