Borderless Deceit by Adrian de Hoog Page A

calls…
    This is Eduardo. Please excuse me. I hope I am not interrupting
.
    Eduardo! No. Not at all. How are you?
    I am well, thank you. Well, I wanted to call to say I enjoyed our
conversation last night
.
    I did too
.
    One does one’s duty attending the social functions, but, I must say, I am glad now I performed mine yesterday
.
    Duty? I don’t mind receptions. There are always interesting people to meet
.
    Ah…thank you…and for me also…you are a most interesting person. I would like to continue our conversation if you agree. I would be honoured if you lunched with me. Would that be possible? This week, or perhaps next?
    Why not? A lovely idea. Thursday is open. Or next week, any day
.
    Thursday would be fine for me too. Do you know a restaurant on the Schottengasse called Kupferdachl?
    I’ll have no problem finding it
.
    Excellent. At 1:00 pm?
    Yes…
    I knew they quickly became lovers because three weeks later they went to Rome for an extended weekend. (They stayed in a small hotel near the Spanish Steps; he bought Rachel a gift, a fine silk scarf; and, judging from Eduardo’s credit card record, they dined excellently well.) When I acquired this information, I recall, I dearly hoped one day Rachel would describe to me the first moments she had with Eduardo. Of course, it was easy to think Rachel was swept off her feet by the smooth, well-bred Señor de Castro Santiago. But I doubted that’s how it was. I knew how she radiated charisma, how she used her vitality to enchant and disarm, and so I believed Rachel, not Eduardo, created the atmosphere. She determined the pace of the affair. After all, it was no different after him, with Pekka Svedlund, an athletic Finn. And then Iain Bruce came along, a Scot, a somewhat older man (and who for that reason brought a touching solicitousness to the relationship, combining sex with fatherly concern). I was sure Rachel, being in charge, kept much of herself in reserve. Alone with the man she liked, she would have played her role with directness and ease, for she possessed the gift of leading by not quite leading. But whenever the lovers looked for more, for another Rachel, for the woman behind the smile, behind the barrage of expressed interest and the other formsof sorcery she practised that caused them to bare their psyches, they found themselves staring into a void. She gave them nothing to take hold of. And when they ventured the final step, when they said they wanted to transit that void to arrive at her deeper self, Rachel refused them that longer journey. It was also a sign that the relationship would soon end.
    And here, I admit, I was at a loss. I could not fathom how her affairs stopped as suddenly, as sublimely, with as much grace and dignity, as they began. How did Rachel manage so effortlessly to take back all she gave? I hoped one day to ask.
    But that was about endings. As for beginnings, with Eduardo in his apartment, seduction was in the air…
    Rachel, in a long tight skirt, rolling cognac in a glass with absentminded slowness, stands before some shelves, studying books. The Thursday lunch was a success. Thirty hours have passed. Anticipation has built. Calmly, in a precise, reassuring voice, the one he uses at the embassy when addressing groups visiting from Brazil, Eduardo talks about his books. Yet, each word adds to the self-inflicted torment. He sees how every few minutes Rachel leans her head back a little, turning it to look at him before lazily shifting her gaze back to the books. When Eduardo comes to a few volumes written by his grandfather, a lawyer who became a judge and in retirement wrote contemporary histories, he innocently moves an arm around Rachel and lays his hand on her hip. The movement is as natural as if he were placing it on a friend’s shoulder. Rachel now puts her hand on his, Eduardo’s monologue on the books continuing. At last he can no longer stand it; his voice cracks. Rachel