That was how Maud spoke, inconsolably. But Tito had never believed in human discouragement. Basically we are all optimists. There are people who actually look for love in the advertisement columns of a newspaper. With the passing of time we develop a capacity for compensation, like the blind, who develop their senses of touch and hearing. As we grow old we adapt ourselves. Artists who believe they are finished when their first gray hair appears still feel young when they have white beards. Women who genuinely resign themselves to spinsterhood at the age of thirty discover at the age of thirty-five that their hopes of finding a husband have revived. When the first wrinkle appears they say I’m ugly and no man will ever look at me again, but ten years later they know they are still capable of kindling incendiary passions.
You can’t be a woman’s last lover because, however old or ugly she may be, she still believes she will be able to find another one.
But Cocaine went on: “I asked you to come and meet me at Dakar so that we could do the last lap of the journey home together. The letter you wrote to me about your life in Turin was so sad and so lonely that I felt terribly sorry for you. You talked about dying. I too feel ready to die.”
Cocaine spoke these words in quiet, subdued tones, with one of her arms in Tito’s heated hand. They walked without heeding where they were going; the immensity of the desert is more difficult than the most complicated labyrinth.
A patrol of soldiers emerged from the darkness and stopped.
“Be careful,” the corporal in charge said, “because very soon the Great West African Express will be coming, and you’re near the line. It’s a very treacherous train, because you don’t hear it, as there are no walls in this solitude to echo and transmit the noise.”
“Thank you,” said Tito.
“Pas du tout, mon prince. Bonne nuit à la dame.”
And the patrol disappeared.
To Tito Cocaine had looked more beautiful and more desirable than ever before. But her renewed beauty gave him pain, not pleasure, for he felt that if he was to be her last lover there would be a long time to wait until its destruction was complete. Cocaine saw herself as ugly and felt old, but she was not yet old or ugly enough to be unable to please. Tito could not yet hope for the pleasure of being the last.
There was to be another reception for her next day at the home of the head of the custom house, she had accepted an invitation to the British consulate on Thursday, and on Saturday she was expected at the villa of a rich native merchant. In that colony of Europeans tired of odorous, wild black female flesh Maud’s Nordic perfume would still rouse some interests. Tito was sure that the renunciatory intentions she had just expressed would vanish at the first smile of some European libertine.
That was what Tito felt. But Cocaine, her will broken and in a state of nervous exhaustion, was like an inert mass that could be molded by any strong will.
“You said you’d be ready to die,” Tito murmured. “You said you felt finished, that you no longer had anything to look forward to. I too am a walking corpse. I too have nothing to look forward to but death. If I asked you to die with me tonight, would you agree?”
Cocaine stopped for a moment. A star flashed across the horizon. The woman suddenly turned as if she had been touched by something; Tito’s eyes were shining as they did when he was under the influence of the white drug that the one-legged peddler sold him in that café in Montmartre.
“Would you be willing to die?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Yes.”
“Straight away?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I offer you the most beautiful, the most exciting death in the world. Very soon the fastest train in West Africa will be passing on this track. It has been traveling for days and days and will be traveling for many more, and it travels blindly, without seeing where it’s going or what it crushes or sweeps out of its path. The crew go to sleep over the brakes and they go on and on in a straight line day and night.”
“Do you want it to run you over?”
“Yes.”
“But Tito, don’t you see that you’re not talking like an inhabitant of this world, that you’re talking like a character in a novel? You’re beside yourself.”
“Yes. Being carried away, being beside oneself, is a hand held out to us by destiny, a shove that it gives us when our will is insufficient. The African night, your voice, your perspiration, all that carries me away; and your discouragement, your disillusionment with life encourages me to die. Think how exciting it will be to lie down on this endless track with our cheeks against the cold steel, to feel for the last time our bodies clinging to each other, trembling with fear. Every light we think we see in the distance, every noise we think we hear will give us a tremor as long as eternity. And in our last embrace, which will be the most exciting in our lives, we shall hear the clatter of the train and see its shadow approaching, we shall shrink like beaten dogs, but the black monster will be on us, crushing us and mixing our blood for ever. Remember that neither you nor I have anything more to hope for from life. We’re tired. We’re as good as dead already. Come, let me kiss you for the last time.”
And Tito, passionately uttering these words, put his arms round Maud, who had nearly fainted, and forced her to kneel, then sit, then lie on the ground. The sky was a perfect concave; you could see its completely circular edge as you can out at sea. Cocaine was pale; her brow was wet with perspiration and her eyes marvelously dilated as if she could see above her the face of death.
It was the face of Tito who was lying on top of her, frenziedly kissing her mouth, her throat, her eyes. Under her back the endless rail extended like a blade. It hurt, because all her weight was on it, as well as Tito’s weight on top of her.
“Cocaine,” Tito groaned without ceasing to kiss her cheeks and bite her lips. “Cocaine, these are the last minutes. Tell me again you love me.”
“I love you,” she moaned with the voice of one who is dying.
“I want you,” Tito hoarsely exclaimed, stifling her with the pressure of his mouth on hers and holding her in his arms as if to crush her to death, “I want you. I want to die taking you for the last time. I want to be your last lover.”
“Yes,” she cried. “Take me.”
With trembling hands Tito tore off her light clothing, and when she was completely naked he started frantically kissing her whole body, her breast, her eyes, her armpits, tearing out hairs with his teeth and sucking the perspiring flesh that bled as a result of his bites.
“Take me,” she cried again.
For a moment the two bodies were one. She saw Tito’s bloodshot, panting face on her own face, framed by stars and the blue sky; she felt herself being crushed between the hard steel rail and the weight of the panting man who was putting the ardor of a whole lifetime and the frenzy of all his passion into this last experience.
The man who was about to die suffered as he had never suffered before, because this was the last time.
She was vibrant as she had never been before, because she had never experienced this sensation more wonderful than death.
His face was a single contraction of muscles and was covered with foam, his eyes shone like enamel and his rhythm was as violent as if he were transfixing her with a knife.