Obsession (Year of Fire) (6 page)

“Juana.”

Eliah turned back to look at Matilde. The name had been uttered in a barely audible gasp. Matilde was as pale as a cadaver and her lips had turned ashen. Her hands revealed how tense she was; one was clutching the spine of the book and the other was wrapped tight around an armrest. Her knuckles had started to turn white while her eyes were shut tight. He leaned toward her and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll get you through this.”

Although the
fasten seat belt
light was still on, Eliah unbuckled his own and took the vomit bag from the back of the seat in front of him. He shook it open, stretching out the corners, and placed it over Matilde’s mouth and nose, saying to her, “Hold the bag and breathe normally through your nose. Don’t be scared. Close your eyes and lie back.”

Without touching her he reached over and pressed the button to make her seat recline. He fanned her with something, a magazine, she supposed.

“Relax, Matilde. It will soon pass. It was that sharp drop. It’ll be over soon.”

She kept her eyes closed, not because he told her to, but because she couldn’t bear to face him. She was embarrassed. She must look ridiculous breathing into a bag. She was afraid of throwing up. She didn’t want to do it in front of him. She hated nausea; it brought back terrible memories. She tried to relax. The blood had rushed to her stomach, that was why she felt so light-headed.
It’ll be over soon
, she told herself,
it’s getting better already.
She trembled when she realized that he was drying the sweat on her forehead.

Eliah studied her attentively as he waved the magazine back and forth, amazed by the translucent quality of her skin; it had turned a pearly color around her eyelids, revealing a web of small, blue veins, which also showed at her temples.

“It’s getting better, isn’t it?”

He was speaking into her ear, and the sound of his voice sent a tremor through her. The sound wave, grave and deep, swept through her intensely, and rather than soothing her it felt almost disrespectful, as though he had
run his hand over her breasts and groin. Startled, she opened her eyes. To her side, leaning over her a little, he was looking at her. She held his gaze for the few seconds it took to figure out why the green of his eyes had surprised her, why they seemed so bright and piercing; it was because of their dark surroundings. His lower eyelids looked as though they had been penciled in black and the upper eyelids were a dark shade of brown; his eyebrows, thick and dark as coal, added drama to the whole effect. She couldn’t remember ever having seen such exotic eyes. She took the bag away from her face, suddenly conscious of how ridiculous she must have looked.

“Yes, thank you. I’m feeling better already.”

“The color is coming back to your cheeks.”

The
fasten seat belt
sign switched off. While Al-Saud called the flight attendant, Juana leaned over the back of the seat again. Her smile disappeared when she saw Matilde’s pallor.

“Mat! What’s going on?” Without waiting for an answer, she rushed to her side.

“The pilot descended too sharply and Matilde felt ill.”

“I feel better now, Juani.”

Juana’s professional behavior, taking hold of Matilde’s wrist to check her pulse, surprised him.

“Your pulse is normal, honey.”

“Are you a nurse?”

“No. I’m…actually,
we’re
pediatricians. Well, in fact I’m a pediatrician and Matilde is a pediatric surgeon. The best pediatric surgeon in the world.”

“That’s not true. Don’t listen to her,” Matilde protested with a weak smile.

Eliah didn’t answer. He stared at her, disconcerted.

Juana came back with a small, silver medical flashlight and studied the reactions of Matilde’s pupils.

“I have to admit that I’m surprised. I didn’t think Matilde was more than twenty.”

“When she braids her hair into pigtails, some people think she’s fifteen,” Juana replied, “but actually she’s almost twenty-seven. Her birthday’s in March. Can I speak to you informally, Eliah?” Juana asked, hoping to use the informal
tu
form generally spoken among young people, friends and family rather than the more formal
usted
.

“Of course.”

“How old do you think I am? No, don’t answer, you’ll say I’m thirty-seven, but I’ll have you know that I just turned
twenty-seven
. Were you feeling nauseous, Mat?” Matilde nodded and Juana explained to Eliah, “Matilde hates nausea.”

“I suppose we all do.”

“Matilde more than most.”

Eliah was distracted by the appearance of the flight attendant. He asked for a freshly squeezed orange juice with added sugar and a damp towel. Since they didn’t have oranges or a juicer in business class, she would have to ask her first-class colleagues. They had been ordered to treat the passenger in 7A like a king.

Al-Saud looked back and forth between Matilde’s hands and her childish face, unable to reconcile them with the knowledge that they belonged to a skilled surgeon. He was also young—he would turn thirty-one in a month—but he appeared much older and already had a lifetime’s worth of experiences.

“Honey,” Juana said, kissing Matilde on the forehead, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you felt bad.”

“The gentleman helped me, he was very kind.” She turned her face toward Eliah. “Thank you, sir. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

“Please, Matilde, don’t call me
sir
. I’m not an old man, you know.”

“Yes, Mat, he said we don’t have to be formal,” Juana interrupted.

The flight attendant waited for Eliah to take the table out of the left armrest before handing him the juice and the towel.

“I never would have guessed that the tray table was there,” Juana said. “The only other time I was on a plane, it was on the back of the seat in front, above the pocket.”

“In business class, the seat in front is too far away, so they put them here.” He handed the glass to Matilde. “Drink in little gulps, slowly.”

“I think you mean ‘sips’ rather than ‘gulps,’” Juana corrected him.

“I’ll try to remember.”

“Really though, Eliah, your Spanish is impeccable. Do you speak any other languages?”

“One or two,” he answered, watching Matilde sip her juice. “Is it sweet?” Matilde nodded. “The sugar will help you to feel better.”

“What other languages? English?”

“Yes, English. Who doesn’t know English these days?”

“What else?”

“Juana, don’t be rude. Stop prying.”

“So you’re trilingual,” she deduced, ignoring her friend.

In fact, Al-Saud was a polyglot. In addition to English, French and Spanish, he was fluent in Arabic, Italian, German and Japanese, and he could get by in Hebrew, Swahili, Russian, Bosnian and Serbian; he was also deeply interested in Greek and Latin. His facility for languages had been a useful trait in L’Agence, a commando group that few knew existed even in the world of espionage. For some reason he was reluctant to mention his linguistic talents. Perhaps, he thought, since she wasn’t interested in expensive perfumes or exclusive watches, Matilde wouldn’t appreciate vanity in people either.

“What languages do you know, Juana?” he inquired as he took the glass from Matilde; it was barely half-finished.

“I know English pretty well,” Juana answered, passing her friend the damp towel. “Mat and I went to a bilingual high school in Córdoba, where the English teaching was very good. It’s called Academia Argüello. We have great memories from there.”

Juana talked about herself freely. In a few seconds, she had provided enough information to fill several pages in a report.

“Except for that Gómez and his impertinent nicknames,” Eliah noted, smiling at Matilde. He saw her blush, with a little half smile. You didn’t often see an adult woman blushing. He was still having trouble associating Matilde’s adolescent appearance with a grown woman who confronted death with a scalpel in her hand. As time passed, what had begun as attraction was becoming an obsession, he could feel it. By now he knew the symptoms that indicated that the Horse of Fire inside him was about to bolt. In the Chinese zodiac it was said that those born under the sign of the Horse of Fire had a heart that was doubly on fire: because fire was the essence of the horse and because, every seventy years, fire became its element. According to his teacher and mentor, Takumi Kaito,
people in China sought to prevent births under the sign. “Why?” the young Eliah had asked.

“Because they fear what they don’t understand. A Horse of Fire lives in a state of permanent defiance. It is his driving force, the only thing that gives meaning to life. The more risks he takes, the better. To give up the challenge is to die. And that scares everyone else. Really, it just emphasizes their own limitations, their cowardice. And that bothers them.”

“Gómez was great, but he pestered Mat a little. He was in love with her all through high school.”

I don’t blame him.

“Do you speak French?” he asked, to change the subject from Gómez and his infatuation with Matilde.

“Only a tiny bit. We studied it at school, but Mat and I chose English as our main language, so we only know a little French.”

The flight attendants appeared with their trolleys to serve lunch.

“Juana,” Matilde said, “the smell of the food is making me feel sick again. Hand me my Upa la-lá perfume.”

Juana took the shika from the overhead locker and handed it to her. This time she didn’t squat next to Matilde, but went back to her seat and took out the tray table. Though he liked Juana’s company, Eliah was grateful to her for leaving them alone.

He studied her freely from the cover of his seat while Matilde sprinkled her arms and neck with the baby perfume. How could he avoid staring at a creature whose simplicity fascinated him?
Matilde
, he repeated to himself. He had enjoyed pronouncing the name during their conversation. She, however, hadn’t called him
Eliah
, and had spoken to him like a stranger.

Matilde refused all the meals the flight attendant offered her.

“You have to eat something, Matilde,” Eliah urged.

“I couldn’t keep anything down.”

“Not even tea?”

“A tea, yes.”

Eliah ordered one from the flight attendant in French.

“A tea for the young lady with some water crackers. No, no,” he said, waving away a lobster salad with his hand. “Bring me a coffee and some crackers as well.”

“You’re not going to eat?” Matilde asked worriedly.

“The sight and smell of the food will bring back your nausea. I ordered a coffee.”

“That’s not fair, sir. You…”

“Please, don’t call me
sir
.”

“Fine.”

The position he had placed her in made her feel uncomfortable, but she also appreciated his gesture. It was strange, but she was enjoying this man’s attention. Usually she would have been much colder.

“It’s not fair for you to go hungry just for me.”

“It’s a pleasure.”

Their eyes met for a couple of seconds, after which Matilde sought refuge in her book. The letters swam across the page, replaced by the man’s face. Every one of his features exuded a rough virility, from the wide forehead to the dimple on his chin. He had a thick neck, which gave him the look of a troublemaker, and a prominent Adam’s apple; she had noticed it while he chatted with Juana. She wasn’t used to fixating on the characteristics of a man’s neck or Adam’s apple, or the cut of his jaw or any of the other bones in his face. Usually she took note of a person’s personality, smile and mannerisms, but in this case she’d been unable to resist the sheer magnetism of his body.

Al-Saud got up from his seat and walked down the aisle toward the bathroom. Matilde watched him go in spite of herself. She was thrilled by the grace of his gait and the strength of his limbs; though long and slender, his legs looked strong and sinewy under the blue silk pants, as did his arms under his white shirt; they belonged to a flexible sportsman’s body.

Juana stuck her head out into the aisle and whistled. “Great ass!”

“Yes.”

“Do my ears deceive me, Matilde Martínez?”

“Well, Juana Folicuré, I’m not going to deny that he has a good body.”

“So you’ll admit that he has the best ass we’ve seen in the last…let’s say…twenty-six years? Girl, you can’t tell me that he’s not an Adonis. And I think he likes you. What is it about him that made you notice him? You never look twice at a guy, especially if he’s good-looking.”

“He helped me when I felt ill and now he’s refusing food so that I won’t feel sick again.”

“God gives bread to those with no teeth! If I were in your place, I’d be planning the wedding. Listen, tarantula, if the stud invites you out…”

“Juana, you know me better than anybody. Nobody knows what I’ve been through as well as you. You can’t ask any more of me.”

“I can ask and I will. Didn’t your psychologist tell you that you have to try to get over your fears?”

“Shh. Here he comes.”

“Mat, he’s more than good-looking. He’s perfect. Plus, he’s a gentleman, and judging by the clothes he wears and the watch he has—which, I’m telling you is worth about ten thousand dollars—he’s rich.”

Matilde saw that Eliah was returning in the company of a flight attendant, who was carrying the tea and coffee. Why did it bother her that the flight attendant smiled at him like an idiot? She intentionally brushed against Eliah with her hips. He happily received her adulation.
He’s just like all the rest
, Matilde thought, deflated.

She noticed that, over his white shirt, Eliah was wearing a fitted jacket made from the same fabric as his pants that showed off his solid shoulders. She quickly opened
Rendezvous in Paris
after her eyes had strayed to the bulge behind his fly.

Matilde’s silence bothered Eliah. He could also be reading right now; he had the report on Blahetter. But he couldn’t concentrate, and it bothered him that she could focus on the pages of
Rendezvous in Paris
when he was sitting right next to her. It was an enthralling novel, he had to admit, but he didn’t find it any more enthralling than him. He wanted to be the center of this woman with the face of a teenager’s world.