In time I began to make grandiose speeches after we made love. I talked to her about myself, about how my life had been and how I would have liked it to be. I told her my opinion on all kinds of things. If there was something after death, if I believed in God or extraterrestrials. Ideas. She seemed to listen because from time to time she nodded. But the truth is that deep down it wasn’t so important whether she really listened. Otherwise I wouldn’t have spoken in Italian. What the fuck, the only words I had heard her say were “Me not care. Me like you.” There was a serious probability that she understood nothing.
One day I felt in a particularly romantic vein and told her the dream. I don’t know why, but it came to mind. Suddenly, I realized that after that absurd dream my life had changed. I had begun to win and I had met her. Maybe dreams had a meaning after all. She nodded yes without saying anything. She didn’t seem at all moved by the fact that the girl in the dream was dead. A detail that I noted only later.
Some more weeks passed during which everything seemed to keep running smooth as glass. I was becoming richer and richer, if only in Yichang’s notebook. Sex with Yin was fantastic and every day I was more in love with her. I was convinced that she felt the same, because from the beginning she had never asked me to pay her. In my screwed-up brain I had conceived the idea that her “Me like you” was worth more than “Me know you many money Yinchang.”
Until one night, after months had gone by, she decided to open her mouth, and she did it to ask for money. In her broken English she said that, between one fuck and another, I owed her something like fifty thousand euros. If I considered the request in purely virtual terms there was nothing to worry about. According to Yichang’s notebook I was nearly a millionaire. But in my pocket I had barely a hundred euros and my bank account wasn’t much better off.
Yin told me I don’t know what nonsense about her family in Cambodia; in other words, she really needed money. She wanted actual money, not numbers written in a stupid notebook, and she wanted it right away. Suddenly I saw her for what she was, a whore from the Forbidden City. Maybe she loved me, in the animal-like way that binds those girls to their source of income. Nonetheless, she was a scorpion, as Yichang put it.
I began to fear for my lower regions and I explained the problem to Yichang. I said that if it had been for myself I would never have asked. And, in fact, for myself I asked nothing. Only a couple of thousand euros for Yin. A laughable sum compared with what he owed me.
“Laughable, you say. Once I asked you for only half that, you remember?”
“I know, I behaved very badly. But so much time has passed. Let’s not dig it up again, please. Now it’s different.”
“You’re right, it’s different. Now I’m the one who finds myself a little short. Actually, I’m very short.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not at all.”
“You mean you won’t give me the two thousand euros?”
“I can’t even give you a cent.”
“But what do I tell Yin?”
“Tell her you love her.”
“Do you take me for a fool? What’s a whore going to do with my love?”
“Until today I never heard you speak of Yin in those terms.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know. Anyway, I’m afraid there is no other possibility.” With that, Yichang said goodbye, leaving me alone with my problems.
Overnight I had become broke again. There were a lot of Chinese people I owed money to, who had given me credit because Yichang guaranteed me. I understood that from now on everything would be different.
But the more immediate problem was represented by Yin. At least, so I saw it at the moment. Maybe I was getting too paranoid, but that girl’s long silences suddenly seemed to me threatening.
I explained that Yichang was a little short.
“You not have money you?”
I tightened my lips and shook my head. I told her I was sorry.
It was a bad moment but things settled down. I told her that I loved her and that I would stay with her.
“Me big problem now.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You take care me?”
“Of course, Yin.”
She peered at me without saying anything. I knew the meaning of that look. I stuck a hand in my pocket and gave her everything I had.
“Only this? You not take care me if you only this.”
I said again that I was sorry and that I loved her.
She stared into space for a very long time. I saw that her lips were trembling.
“You not good with me. You very bad,” she said finally, her eyes bright. Then she got up and left. I didn’t try to stop her.
I wish this ugly story had ended there. For a while I thought it had. Yin didn’t appear. I stopped going to the Forbidden City and had lost sight of Yichang. I no longer drank, I no longer smoked marijuana. I had even found a job. Not much, but little by little I was able to pay my debts and get back on my feet. I had put the pin with the bills on the night table so that I could look at it before going to sleep and meditate on my past errors. I would become a new person, this was my intention.
Maybe I would even have succeeded if Yin hadn’t knocked at my door one day. She said she wanted to talk to me. I let her in. She came straight into the bedroom, sat down on the bed, and, with her head bent, waited for me to join her.
I sat down beside her. “A lot of time has passed,” I said.
She nodded in her usual way. It wasn’t so long, really. Only a couple of months. But my style of life was so changed that to see Yin again was like diving into a distant past.
“You’re well?”
She nodded again.
“I’ve thought about you a lot.” I don’t know why I said it. Yes, the memory of her occasionally surfaced but only as one of the many things that had happened, one of my many mistakes. It wasn’t true that I had thought of her a lot. Not in that sense, at least.
She said nothing.
I felt embarrassed at having lied to her, and since the silence that fell after my words was unbearable, I asked what she had come to talk about.
She let some more moments pass, as if she had to gather her thoughts, then she raised her head and, looking me in the eyes, said, “Me like you. Think only this very long time.”
We made love as in the old days. The next day neither of us said anything, but to me it was clear that we were together again. Yin moved in with me. Or, rather, that day she stayed in my suite at the Hotel Excelsior and never left.
At sunset I headed off to work and when I came back at dawn I found her where I had left her, lying on the bed. She got up only to take a shower or get something to eat from the refrigerator. She never opened her mouth, just as in the old days.
I didn’t think of asking her what had impelled her to return to me, nor did I ask if she had resolved her problems or how. It was enough to find her there, ready and available only for me. Of course, I wondered what was the sense of a relationship like that. Because the fact is that I no longer loved her as I believed I once had. Yin was now like a bed dog. A kind of domestic animal, something comfortable to have in the house. Maybe my feelings were not very uplifting, but I decided not to beat my brains out. If it was all right for her, why should I have to make a lot of trouble for myself?