Island of Point Nemo - Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

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though she advised her to cheat on her photo. Twelve meet-ups at restaurants, twelve checks before dessert; eight of them asked to split the bill, two ran off so quickly that the bill was left to her, and the remaining two picked up the check but never called again. She amended her criteria, raised the age and weight of her desired man, but nothing worked. Fat guys wanted skinny women; in fact, the more old and misshapen they were, the less they would compromise on the beauty of the women they were meeting. She got to the point where she just wanted to sleep with a man, no longer cared about falling in love or building a relationship with him.

      Poking around in the darkest reaches of the Internet, Louise was surprised to discover advertising slogans that plunged her into the depths of embarrassment: “Ugly girls still need cock: these chicks will fuck the first guy to send them a text. See their photos.”

      A site for virgins, she said to herself, perverts and ugly mugs, but still she had clicked, bitten by curiosity at the idea of comparing herself. What exactly did they consider an ugly girl? The results left her dumbfounded: these were young girls, so young, some of them barely sixteen, but still not a single one whose charms did not make her jealous! If these women were considered unattractive, where did she fall on the scale? Outside the curve, certainly. She was so upset to find herself left out of even the rejects—in spite of her job in human resources and her efforts to conform to canonical kinds of sex appeal—that she stopped looking for anything online. Others would have tried similar channels, ballroom dancing, aerial yoga, truck stops, but Louise found refuge in the rituals that, to her, reflected femininity: delicate lingerie, beauty creams—each more expensive than the last—and guilty alternation between dieting and gluttony. She was bursting with fat and bitterness.

      So, when Monsieur Wang showed interest, she was even less choosy than before, and his status beguiled her.

      The first time, it was the end of a long day of work, and they found themselves alone at the office. She was bringing him the cup of green tea and the crackers that he usually had at that hour. He checked that the biscuits did not contain any trace of peanuts, since he had a severe allergy, then settled himself deeper into his chair.

      “I am exhausted, Madame Le Galle,” he said, with an air of despondency. “The stress . . . I can’t seem to relax, would you let me touch your breasts?”

      Louise was still in her trial period at the factory. After a moment of surprise, she unfastened her blouse, then her bra, without taking either off. Wang slid his fingers under the structure in order to free her breasts, bent over the larger one, put his mouth on it, kneading the other with his hand. She did not feel compelled by some underlying blackmail, or even nervous. The full truth was that, in spite of its shocking nature, this request flattered her. Yes, flattered. This is what she was thinking as she clutched the back of Monsieur Wang’s head.

      He never goes any further. It isn’t that she refuses to, quite the contrary, but he is content to simply continue this sporadic exercise with her. She is not even sure if he ejaculates anywhere besides on his iPad while watching porn. One thing is certain: Wang cannot stop himself from farting while he sucks on her breasts; it even seems like it increases his enjoyment, because he does it with his eyes closed, gravely, as if all his pleasure is released by the sonorous wind that he contrives to prolong, to replicate in detonations that grow shorter and shorter until they become silent.

      And yet all this suits Louise. It’s not as if she imagines that these are the actions of a man and his lover, but what does it matter. She admires him, his strength of will, his way of advancing in life, encased in principles and moral rectitude. Who cares if he farts, as long as he bites her nipples? She doesn’t feel much, to tell the truth. It’s the implants’ fault; the surgeon had warned her, it takes several months for erogenous sensitivity to return; in some cases, very rarely, it is lost for good. In any case, he doesn’t see the scars, or, if he has noticed them, he doesn’t say a word, and she is grateful that she gets to feel desirable under his lips.

      There, he’s finished with his little routine. He says thank you, bowing stiffly and allowing her to go home. No smile, no kind word. Just a bit of fog on the lenses of his glasses.

       XI

       By the Virgin’s Holy Robe

      Contrary to what their departure from London might have indicated, the next part of their voyage unfolded smoothly. Unrest shook the French capital around the still-smoking ruins of the Department of Finance, but despite this the Nord-Express left Paris on time and took them non-stop to St. Petersburg, and they managed to catch the Transsiberian on February 15th as planned. We return to them on this day, two hours after the train rattled out of the Yaroslavsky Vokzal, the station in Moscow from which most trains departed for Siberia and the Far East.

      The convoy was made up of seventeen cars and two wagons. On the outside, the coaches were made of teak darkened with bands of gold. All of the first-class compartments were decorated with mahogany and rosewood paneling and copper sconces. The beds, which could be converted into crimson velvet benches, were oriented in the direction of travel. Furnished with great care, the lavatories included small showers lined with Izmir tiles. In the marvelously tasteful central wagon was a restaurant whose walls, hung with red damask, rose to a ceiling painted with singeries. The adjoining car housed a smokers’ lounge illuminated by ten beveled glass windows; a grand piano stood among club chairs and low tables of varnished satinwood.

      It was here that Martial Canterel, Holmes, and Grimod had chosen to sit and wait for lunchtime.

      “Let’s go over it again,” said Holmes, enveloped in smoke from his cigar. “There is no doubt that the diamond is traveling with us on this train. The person charged with delivering it to Peking cannot know that we have deciphered the message, or even that we are looking for him. This leaves us with two possibilities: either we sit quietly for him to deliver it to the recipient, risking that it might melt away once again, or we try to intercept it during the journey, which would be preferable.”

      “With the catch,” responded Canterel, “that we are not the only ones on the chase.”

      “Yes,” said Grimod, “but the others don’t have the address that you managed to decipher. Even if they’ve followed us this far, we’re one step ahead of them. It’s up to us to make the most of it, and to remain vigilant.”

      He fell silent, having noticed another passenger approaching them with the obvious intention of making their acquaintance.

      “Hello, Messieurs. Allow me to introduce myself: Dr. Charles-Joseph Mardrus, en route to the Orient.”

      He was a frail man whose long white hair—still quite thick for the seventy years of age that he later claimed, not without some pride—fell almost to his shoulders. A dapper old Liszt in need of conversation. Ten minutes later, they knew almost everything about his background and the reasons behind his journey on the Transsiberian. Born a Muslim into an illustrious Armenian family in Alexandria, he had converted to Coptic Christianity at a young age before dedicating his life first to Byzantine paleography, and later to medicine.

      “But not just that,” he clarified, “because no one can hope to heal the body without first taking care of the soul.”

      He had spent twenty years working on a Compendium Philosophycum Essentialis, a kind of abstract on clear vision and potions concocted to preserve it, as he himself explained it, promising to read them some excerpts once the monotony of the steppes had begun to infect the mood of the passengers, as he did not for a second doubt it would, even those who believed themselves to be well fortified against ill humors. He was on his way to Irkutsk, to the Znamensky monastery, where he was summoned by an appraisal of the greatest importance, since they had just found the Holy Robe of Mary, a relic that would relegate the Shroud of Turin to the rank of a common dishcloth. “Perhaps I exaggerate a little, of course . . .” He smiled at them all, displaying a set of teeth so white that they looked like an advertisement for a prosthetisist. The fact was that people were speaking about this linen

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