Leper Tango

by David MacKinnon

  “It’s a woman. Only a woman can do this. You have been ruined by a Cunt, capital C, and you are ashamed before the world, and think it a tragedy. You know, I met a Welshman once. He said, cheer up, you bastahd! I suppose you want to kill yourself now.”

  The man named Tranh turned back to the counter, ordered two more Leffe beers, and quaffed both down in front of me. When he turned back, his eyes had reddened. In the alcohol tolerance zone, I was a racial profiler, and I’d rarely met a chinaman who could make it past four or five drinks in an evening.

  “ When I am attempting to seduce a woman, Mr Robinson, I always ask her whether she has ever tasted dog meat.”

  Tranh had crossed from over-the-top courteous effeteness to slobbering dog meat marketer within seconds.

  My theory was intact.

  “If a woman stays with you after you have confessed to eating dog meat, you can do anything with her. I recall an evening at the Opera Garnier. Giselle was playing, danced by Nureyev. The performance was exquisite, and I took advantage of the moment to invite my escort to the Café de la Paix for Veuve Cliquot. While she sipped contentedly, I leaned over and whispered ‘cocker spaniel ’, then sat back and watched. She was a very spoiled woman, obsessed with herself, and a selfdescribed animal activist. Her smile, even a priori, was a sentimental, kitsch shield to mask her utter lack of taste.

  ‘Pourquoi dites-vous cocker, Egmond,’ she hummed. She insisted on calling me Egmond. ‘Because I eat them.’ When did Western women embark on this dog saving crusade, Egmond?”

  All that to say we decided, or not so much decided, as ended up drinking a good portion of the night away in each others’ company, while we addressed each other as Egmond. And, for a little Viet, it turned out that he could toss back more than a few Meteor beer. He seemed to have a dozen zones of imbibing, plunging first into temporar y inebriation marked by a comment on dog meat, fol lowed by a retreat into clearly articulated thoughts on the state of the world, another drink, and a plunge into the next phase of his drunkenness. He’d developed some kind of sui generis style. Later, at a hole in the wall in the 9th, there was a legionnaire, old guy, and he knew Tranh. There was no love lost bet ween them, so he could have been telling the truth. The legionnaire looked like he would know the answers to certain questions. As for the rest of the night, it was pretty vague. At one point, he mentioned something about his wife having MS. Those things are traded off with casual disinterest in certain establishments of the second arrondissement of the city of Paris. We agreed to meet a week later in a café called Le Tambour, which Tranh referred to as a “temple of absurdity”.

  Tranh had grown up in Cambodia and Laos in the seventies, and I had run a few scams Wanchai way after the Tiananmen fiasco, which was more than enough to keep us going, and we both wanted to kill time. Later in the evening, the owner of Le Tambour, a moustachioed hulk named Maurice, joined in on the conversation. Just prior to daybreak, he locked up the bistro, and ordered his chef to cook food for the three of us.

  There’s a point in the night in Paris, where if you’re with the right people and mix the right drinks, you start waking up again. Nothing really happened that evening, other than the fact that I decided to tell these rogue gentlemen my story. A David Byrne song, “I Love America,” playing over the speakers. Maurice had opened up another bottle of Gigondas Seigneurie de Fontanges, a few years old, and his cook had prepared a Navarin lamb stew, and Maurice was relating a few tales about his time in Algeria in the late fifties, and how sometimes you have to leave a man in a cell for three weeks without sleep, before you even began interrogating him.

  It turned out that all three of us had had contracts put out on us at various times, although mine was the only one still outstanding. We were discussing basically, when is the person serious and when are they not, that type of thing. There was no doubt that, sooner or later, if you wrote your own rule book, some people wouldn’t like it, and among those people, one or two might utter a few threats, and then there was the case of the person who had nothing better to do, and more or less set about making killing you a high priority item. So, of course, you had to deal with these people.

  And, the conclusion was, you’re never a hundred per cent sure, but there’s an equation, more or less, the less experience with firearms, the more the person had to be desperate. So somebody who killed people for a living, if there wasn’t money involved they wouldn’t do you in, unless there was a really good reason.

  “In Algeria, we were not perfect. We broke rules. But, we knew what the rules were. We had codes of our own. Look, see this tattoo? 1er régiment de chasseurs paras. And, the other night, a couple of kids, sauvageons, tried to rob me at gunpoint. I put them both in the hospital.”

  He shook his head. “No respect.”

  That word, respect, obviously meant something to these people. It was a word with consequences.

  Tranh’s skin flushed red. He gained in exuberance as he drank. One of those alcoholics who have the gift of uttering truths during states of intoxication, then erasing it from their memories.

  “Gentlemen, I am going to articulate the content of our agreement. Maurice, you only know me as a client. This Egmond comes from America, so his truths are not ours. But, I put to you the following tripartite proposition. Point One. Virtually all men cannot see what is right in front of their eyes. Point Two. What is right there to be seen is not very pleasant. Point Three. If you can see it, you are best to keep your silence anyways.”

  We nodded agreement. It was the drink, but it also sounded true, and perhaps the loss of the world is that perfect strangers cannot meet anymore and say what is in front of their eyes. That the world is an absurd, hypocritical lie, and that the thing they call love is the biggest lie of all.

  The soup arrived in wide, brown soupe à l ’oignon ceramic bowls, emitting a thick stench of parsley, sage, thyme, garlic, tomatoes. Tranh sucked its vapours into his nostrils.

  “This soup, gentlemen, was created in honour of the Franco-English victory over the Turkish-Egyptian fleet in 1827, during the Greek war of Independence. There are evenings like this which must be seized upon, evenings like this when I feel that our tales must be told, that we must get to the bottom of things! And, just the three of us, burrowed into the sewers of Paris, with nothing to do but tell our tales. I am telling you, Egmond, this is fate.”

  Tranh poured out the wine.

  “At the age of six, I was caught in a rocket attack launched by the Americans in Vietnam. The attack killed my mother. I lost my memory for a week, and the blast deafened me for four years. For that period, I was in a state similar to autism, but my condition had not affected one ability, that of playing chess. It also gave me an intensity which unsettled all of my opponents.

  My mere glance was enough to defeat many. At the 1966 Leiden invitational, at the age of 16, I came up against the rising star of the Asian chess world, Ivan Sakharov.

  A Russian, of course. It was a game held in the AULA in Amsterdam, a 15th century auditorium constructed during the golden era.

  “Sakharov was my only true rival. Being my father’s son, I set out not only to beat Sakharov, but to destroy him. He was pumped up with pride, came from a bourgeois family of St-Petersburg. He was intelligent, but he lacked imagination. His openings were considered to be novel, but invariably, he fell back into a classical midgame, played out from the Queen’s side, almost without fail. After allowing him to win the first game in order to test my theory, I responded to an opening: an East Indian gambit as I recall, and then announced that I would write down his next eight moves. Impossible, he responded. Nevertheless, I shall do it, I said. What will you wager on it. Anything you like. Then it shall be your life against mine...

  “This boy pronounced me insane after my proposition, but his vanity and greed were elements I knew I could count on. I laid it out for him. If I am wrong, I shall end my life, and no one will stand between you and ultimate glory. And, if I lose, he responded, showing his fear.
And, if you lose, I stated, deliberately off hand, you shall know me the superior player, and your life will no longer have any meaning.”

  It was a good story, and it might even have been true. Also, I felt free to tell my little tale and, for the first time I could remember, I started thinking back on where I came from, and how I had ended up in a Paris bar with murder on my mind, a price on my head, and still some things to be played out. It was a form of luck, in a way. It would end badly, but, within it all, there was luck, to be here with two other men who understood the way things really are.

  The marquee attraction the following evening at Le Tambour — “Rhanya and Gaston sing Piaf and Montand” — was announced on a chalkboard on the sidewalk outside the café. Upon entry, we spotted a robust Arab woman, stumbling around in a paisley smock on a makeshift stage near the rear of the bistro. She cursed loudly at a microphone, eventually tossed it to the floor and stamped on it once or twice. A liver-lipped, beet-eyed man — who wore his hair in a tightly tressed Chinaman ponytail, and was stuffed inside an undersized Sergeant Pepper admiral uniform — joined her onstage and on cue, they kicked into an off-key version of Les Feuilles Mortes.

  The act was macabre and burlesque, proving the Parisians hadn’t lost their taste for low-level music-hall. Rhanya, the star of the evening, had a head like a rhomboid stump, adorned with a shrub of follicles that looked to have been culled from a subterranean garden. Her face thickly painted with an oily film, smeared unevenly over her pulpy features. A makeshift bandage, wrapped around her head from skull to chin, completed her hybrid lizard lounge/emergency ward look. She was heavily intoxicated, but once she got into her number, she sang an honest, industrial version of the Piaf song La Vie en Rose.

  An old woman sat at a table nearby the stage, clapping listlessly. Three men stood together at the bar, drinking Pastis. If they lived in America, they would be assistant golf pros or real estate salesmen, or franchise operators. But, this was Paris, so they were just drunk. Two men seated alone at neighbouring tables, their backs to the wall, seemingly unaware of each other. One of the two bore a striking resemblance to Elvis Presley. Thick, pitch-black sideburns bordering a face buried in melancholy. Wearing a black leather vest, no shirt. His forearms covered in tattoos. Elvis II was seated in front of three empty bottles of St Emilion and was busy working his way through the fourth. Behind the King, an oversized map of the Paris Metro, and a message woodburned into the wall:

  No British, No Amerloques

  As Rhanya stepped off the stage, she noticed Tranh, who waved her to join us at the bar.

  “Je vais crever, Tranh. This time I am sure I am done for.” One of the three pastis drinkers caught wind of this. “Allez, Rhanya, vous étiez merveilleuse!”

  The second of the three pastis drinkers, a broadshouldered working stiff, lumbered up and put his arm around her.

  “Apollinaire!”

  Rhanya burst into tears.“Je ne dors plus! Before, at least, I could sleep. And now, terminé. If only I could sleep!”

  “Come home with me, Rhanya. I will make love to you. Like a Cossack!”

  “Thank you for joining me this evening, Robinson. I

  am very pleased.”

  Rhanya sidled up to Tranh.

  “If you buy me a Kir, I will suck your Asian cock,

  Tranh.”

  Tranh observed her momentarily, amused.

  “Mr Robinson, there is nothing new in the human genome project. We have developed our own laboratory of mutant strains, right here in le Tambour.”

  He turned his attention back to Rhanya.

  “Have you not heard, Rhanya? The mayor has launched a vast campaign to flush Paris of anything and anyone offending the hygiene and anti-loitering laws.

  There is a chance you will be flushed out of the city if you are not careful.”

  “I cannot be stamped out. My stench is Parisian stench, and the mayor is a Corsican enculé !”

  As Rhanya said this, a trap door opened, and a lift came up, an oversized dumbwaiter, common to Parisian restaurants, used to bring up merchandise.

  “Get on the lift, Robinson. Maurice has a special room downstairs. I want to hear more of your tale.”

  We rode the lift downstairs, into a cellar vault, stacked to the ceiling with wine, beer, Campari, and foodstocks.

  At the far end of the room, two olive-green doors, barricaded shut. Tranh pushed hard against the doors, forcing them open.

  We entered a large room, with half a dozen rickety tables set up for board games. Pairs of men were intently focussed on games of speed chess or Chinese Go. An oval doorway led out of that room into a narrow, damp corridor.

  “We are walking over the remains of the old cimetière des innocents. Molière is buried beneath us. And, at the exact same spot, La Fontaine. Here we are.”

  We entered a room at the end of the corridor. Burgundy-red curtains covered the walls and ceiling. Four sets of electric bulbs hung loosely in clusters. There was only one rectangular pine table in the room, dead centre with a bench on either side. Tranh sat down, invited me to join him, clapped his hands. A gruff looking man appeared with a straggly beard, trailing the remains of food and mustard, wearing an open-necked Greek blouse.

  “Raki, Dmitri. Rib-eye steaks. Os à moelle. A la Bordelaise. Some cool Touraine wine.”

  Tranh turned towards me.

  “You recall our conversation the night we met. About this Sheba, this boa, this killer woman who is looking for you. Or, is it you looking for her?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “You asked me for some assistance. Something about ridding yourself of her presence.”

  “Just talk.”

  “You told me you loved this woman too much to let her live. I can help you, but you must tell me the rest of your tale. There are certain things which escape me. Any woman deserves a man’s attention for an evening or two.

  But, why for so long? I want to hear more about this obsession. I have an idea about this woman. I presume you don’t have any scheduled appointments, Robinson.

  Bear with me, Robinson, I have my own reasons for listening to stories such as these.”

  III

  A few stints doing factory work and waiting tables as a young man taught me quickly enough that you had to find an angle if you wanted to escape a life of drudgery. This meant learning to stand on your own t wo feet, and selling yourself to the world. My ticket to a palatable life was a law degree, once I realized the lucrative possibilities of being vested with a public trust. After a few years representing the scum and dregs of the city of Montreal, I tilled more fertile soil.

  At one time or another, I have sold junk bonds, raised funds for First Nations tribes, run immigration scams out of Wanchai during the post-Tiananmen fiasco, acted as front man for venture capital schemes and served as an intermediary between the First World and the Third for rebuilding projects in Beirut and Algiers until the Hezbollah and the Armed Islamic Group brought beheading back into fashion. At one point, I hung out my shingle as a facilitator, and spent my time organizing golf dates and bordello visits in the Wanchai for Taiwanese defence ministry types and French arms salesmen with a taste for retro-commissions. With a law degree, you could pretty well do whatever you wanted during the eighties and early nineties. People were selling everything from plutonium to countries. The whole planet was open for business.

  I never did business to make a fortune. Getting by was plenty for me, and I was happy enough on the margins. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that everything would collapse sooner or later. The markets were like a global casino. The conditions were created by a war, and a war or some act of terrorism would bring it to a halt.

  Oddly enough, it was during a brief return stint to the practice of law that I hit the jackpot. A colleague, or rather crony, Hervé Bourque, had asked me to take on some of his case load during one of his own sordid sex tours of Bangkok before the politically correct cut out that as a viable option. One of his cases
involved a girl named Kimberley Sutherland. She had been honeymooning in the South-West with a man named Spike. Spike suggested they rent an ATV. What’s an ATV? asked Kimberley. They’re made by Honda, Spike responded, omitting to mention that ATVs run on three wheels, which makes them notoriously easy to f lip. When Spike hit the first dune in the Mojave Desert, Kimberley screamed. As he hit the second, Kimberley’s butt bounced off the seat. On the third, the ATV flipped, bringing the honeymoon and life, as she had previously known it, to a full stop.

  Spike couldn’t have known it at the time, but his lunatic driving would also turn my life around a hundred and eighty degrees. Sentimentality aside, a quadraplegic is of no use to anyone, except for a personal injury law yer. When the victim is on a car manufactured by Honda, and insured by a notoriously solvent insurance company with pockets deeper than the Grand Canyon, everything moves quick ly from the courtroom to the corridors. The day after my motion for a jury trial was granted, I settled for 2 million, which left me half a million as a contingency.

  If you are planning a long life, half a million really isn’t that much. It might buy you a house, where you can set up shop until it’s your turn up on the chopping block. On the other hand, if plan A is to overtip a few waiters and spoil a whore or t wo, it’s plenty. I picked up and relocated to Paris with nothing more on my mind than cunt and blanquette de veau ...

  It was around 2:30 in the morning. Thirty-six hours after my arrival in the city, when I stumbled out of a taxi on boulevard St-Germain and weaved into the Café de Flore. She was sitting alone, writing notes at the second table to the right as I entered, her eyes cast sky ward in reflection, and a mechanical pencil jammed in her mouth right at the point where my cock would be moored three hours later. Another budding genius. Paris is full of them. Always has been. Some of the budding geniuses are well into their mid-sixties, still waiting for the big break, still raving about their genius. But genius is still very marketable currency as a posture in the city of light, and being able to posture is crucial for survival.