He pulled his hand away, shook the woman off and voluptuously sniffed the remainder. Then she took his head between her hands (those bloodless fingers curved like claws over his black hair), applied her wet, tremulous, palpitating lips to his mouth and greedily licked his upper lip and put her tongue into his nostrils to gather the last few remnants.
“You’re stifling me,” the man moaned. His head was flung back, and he supported himself with his hands against the back of the chair. The veins of his throat were swollen, and his hyoid bone kept moving up and down as a result of his intermittent swallowing movements.
The woman was like a small wild animal savoring the odor of still undamaged flesh before sinking its teeth in it. She was like a little vampire; her lips adhered firmly to the man’s face with her forceful sucking.
When she let go, her eyes were veiled like those of a cat whose lids are carefully opened while it is asleep, and the teeth in her open mouth (her lips stayed open as if they were paralyzed) laughed like those of a skull.
She tottered away and sat on the piano stool; she dropped her head on to her forearm, and her forearm dropped on to the keyboard, which responded with a sonorous thump.
The young man who had offered cocaine to Tito got off his chair as if dismounting from a bicycle and paced up and down the room. The black jacket on his fleshless shoulders looked as if it were on a clothes-hanger, and his bow legs were like a couple of twin cherry stalks. His friend, a pallid and unhealthy-looking youth, took his place on the chair and spoke to Tito.
“So those creatures didn’t give you a chance to taste the stuff,” he said. “They’re like wild animals. I’m sorry I haven’t any to offer you, but the man with the wooden leg will be here soon.”
“The man with the wooden leg?”
“Don’t you know him?”
“Yes, you do,” Tito’s waiter friend interrupted. “He lives at your hotel.”
“He always turns up here at about this time. He never goes out before five or half-past. In some calendars, the more instructive kind, it says that the sun rises at 5:45 and 27 seconds, or sets at 6:09 and 12 seconds, and so on. Well, the man with the wooden leg seems to consult the calendar before going out. As soon as the sun has set he’s to be seen strolling through the streets of Montmartre, looking as if he has nowhere to go and nothing urgent to do, and he hugs the walls as if afraid of being run over by a bus. Sometimes he meets strange-looking people and goes into a bar or a bistro with them, or simply into a doorway, and then they leave separately and go their several ways as if they were complete strangers to one another.”
“But he was at the bar in the next room when I came in just now,” Tito said.
“Yes, I know. But he didn’t have the stuff then. He must have been with a student of pharmacy. He won’t be long now.”
“Here he is,” the man with cherry-stalk legs announced.
The four women dashed at the newcomer as if they were about to assault him.
“Get back, you jackals,” the man said threateningly. “Take it easy, or I shan’t have anything for you.”
“Five grams for me,” one of the women hissed.
“I want eight,” said another.
“It’s dreadful, dreadful, dreadful,” moaned a third in steadily rising tones. “I paid you in advance yesterday, so I come first.”
Before producing his merchandise the man with the wooden leg looked at Tito and said by way of greeting: “Oh, you’re 71.”
“Did you meet in prison?” Tito’s friend asked.
“No, that’s my room number.”
One of the four women put her hand on the shoulder of the skeleton-like individual. “T’as du pèze?” she said to him.
“Not a sou,” her boyfriend replied with conviction.
“So much the worse,” she replied. “I’ll swap my bracelet.”
“Terms strictly cash,” said the man with the wooden leg, jestingly but firmly. “Cash first, paradise later.”
The woman who had asked for five grams produced a fifty-franc note from her purse.
“Give me twenty-five francs change,” she said.
“I haven’t got any change.”
“Then keep the fifty and give me ten grams,” she said.
The man took the note, put one hand in his trouser pocket and produced a small round box. The upper part of his wooden leg, the part that accommodated the stump, also provided amply stocked and very unsuspicious storage space.
“It’s as if he had his leg cut off specially for the purpose,” Tito remarked.
“What will you give me for this gold bracelet?” the woman said, whirling it on her extended forefinger under the man’s nose.
“C’est du toc,” he replied. “It’s Naples gold.”
“You’re from Naples yourself, you crook,” the woman exclaimed angrily. “I’ll give you the cash tomorrow if you won’t take the bracelet.”
The man cut the argument short. “In advance, always. In arrears, never,” he said. Then, offering Tito a box, he said: “Four grams — twenty francs.”
Tito took the box, handed him twenty francs, and read on the box the words L’Universelle idole.
Then he turned to the woman who had wanted to sacrifice her bracelet. “Will you permit me?” he said, offering it to her.
“Is that for me?” she exclaimed.
“Yes. I’m giving it to you.”
She didn’t hesitate; with her white, fleshless hands she seized Tito’s hand and the box and, holding them firmly, greedily kissed both.
“Oh, the lovely, heavenly powder; love and light of my life,” she moaned, and raised it to the level of her brow as one raises a relic or a symbol in a sacred rite. Then she used a hairpin to tear the strip of paper round the box and carefully raised the lid.
She went to a table at the other end of the room, knelt on the ground, put the exciting packet on the marble table top, and took from her bag a small tortoise-shell box and a tiny white spatula of the kind used by chemists to put powders into packets. Then, holding her breath and with infinite care, she transferred the drug from the crude cardboard box to the more worthy tortoise-shell one. When the cardboard box was empty she held it upside down over the palm of her hand, tapped the back of it with her hard fingernails and then raised the palm of her hand to her nostrils and inhaled; and, still with the same care, she shook the tortoise-shell box horizontally to level the powder, looking round every now and again with feline suspiciousness.
Then, as if she were dealing with radium, she took a pinch of the powder and raised it to her nostrils. As she inhaled, her breast swelled and her eyes closed voluptuously. She took another pinch and put it to her nostril, forcing it in with her thumb, and she scraped the little that remained behind her fingernail into her mouth with her teeth.
Tito had boasted to the skinny man of his love of the drug. Among those with a vice, not sharing it is something to be ashamed of. In prison those who have committed only a minor offence exaggerate its gravity in order not to seem inferior to the others. Tito, who had never sniffed cocaine in his life, swore he could not do without it.
And when the woman invited him to help himself, he did so.
The white powder up his nose gave him a feeling of aromatic freshness, as if essential oils of thyme and lemon verbena were evaporating in his throat. Traces of it passing from his nostrils to his pharynx gave him a slight sensation of burning at the back of his throat and a bitter taste on his tongue.
“A little more?”
Tito took another pinch. Then he fell silent. He withdrew into a kind of meditation. Then it happened. There was a cold feeling in his nose, a paralysis in the middle of his face. He could no longer feel his nose; it no longer existed.