The Japanese Lover (2 page)

Irina knew from newspaper reports about the progressive spirit of the Lark House residents. There was a waiting list of several years for admission, which would have been much longer if many of the candidates had not passed away before it was their turn. The old folks in the home were conclusive proof that age, despite all its limitations, does not stop one from having fun and taking part in the hubbub of life. Several of the residents who were active members of Seniors for Peace spent their Friday mornings in street protests at the aberrations and injustices in the world, especially those committed by the American empire, for which they felt responsible. These activists, among whom was an old lady aged a hundred and one, met up in the northern corner of the square opposite the police station with their canes, walkers, and wheelchairs. They held up banners against war or global warming, while the public showed their support by honking their car horns or signing petitions that these furious elders stuck under their noses. The protesters had appeared on television on more than one occasion, while the police were made to look ridiculous as they tried to disperse them with threats of tear gas that never materialized. Clearly moved, Voigt had shown Irina a plaque in the park in honor of a ninety-six-year-old musician, who had died of a seizure with his boots on in broad daylight during a 2006 protest against the war in Iraq.

Irina had grown up in a Moldovan village that was inhabited only by old people and children. She thought of her own grandparents and, as so often in recent years, regretted having abandoned them. Lark House gave her the opportunity to give to others what she hadn't been able to give them, and she kept this in mind as she began looking after those in her care. She soon won the residents over, including several on the first level, the independent ones.

From the start, Alma Belasco had caught her attention. She stood out from the other women thanks not only to her aristocratic bearing but to the magnetic force field that seemed to separate her from the rest of humanity. Lupita insisted that the Belasco woman did not fit in at Lark House and would not last long: any day now the same chauffeur who had brought her in a Mercedes-Benz would come and take her away again. And yet the months went by and this didn't happen. Irina did no more than observe Alma Belasco from a distance, because Hans Voigt had instructed her to focus on people from the second and third levels, and not to get distracted by the independents. Besides, Irina had more than enough to do in looking after her own clients—they were not to be called patients—and learning the ins and outs of her new job. As part of her training, she had to study the videos of recent funerals: a Buddhist Jewish woman and a repentant agnostic. For her part, Alma Belasco would not have paid any attention to Irina if circumstances had not briefly turned the young woman into the most noteworthy member of the community.

I
n Lark House, where there was a depressing majority of women, Jacques Devine was considered the star attraction, the only heartthrob among the twenty-eight male residents. He was known as Frenchie, not because he had been born in France, but because of his exquisite manners—he held the door open for the ladies, pulled their chairs back for them, and never went around with his fly unzipped—and because he could dance, despite his fossilized spine. At the age of ninety he walked with a straight back thanks to the rods and screws that had been surgically attached to it. He still sported some of his curly head of hair and knew how to play cards, at which he cheated shamelessly. He was sound in body, apart from the usual arthritis, high blood pressure, and deafness inevitable in the winter of life, and quite lucid, although not sufficiently to recall whether he had had lunch or not. That was why he was on the second level, where he received all the help he needed. He had arrived in Lark House with his third wife, but she had only survived for a few weeks before being run over in the street by an absentminded cyclist.

Frenchie's day began early. He took a shower, shaved, and got dressed with the help of Jean Daniel, his Haitian aide. He would make his way across the parking lot leaning on his cane, keeping an eye out for cyclists, and continue to the corner Starbucks for the first of his five daily cups of coffee. Divorced once and twice a widower, he had never lacked lady admirers, whom he seduced with his magical charms. On one recent occasion he had calculated he had fallen in love sixty-seven times. He wrote the number down in his notebook so that he wouldn't forget it, as the faces and names of these lucky ladies were fading fast in his memory. He had several legitimate children, as well as one from a clandestine romance with someone whose name he couldn't remember, and any number of nephews and nieces, all of them ungrateful wretches who were only counting the days for him to depart this world so that they could inherit. There was talk of a small fortune amassed boldly and with few scruples. He himself admitted without the slightest hint of remorse that he had spent time in prison, where he had obtained the pirate tattoos adorning his arms, although flabby muscles, age spots, and wrinkles had blurred the images. He had also won considerable amounts speculating with the guards' savings.

Although the attentions of several Lark House ladies left him little room for any amorous adventures, Jacques was fascinated by Irina from the first moment he saw her going around with her clipboard and pert behind. She had not a drop of Caribbean blood, which made her voluptuous backside even more of a feat of nature, he would tell everyone after his first martini of the evening, astonished that no one else had noticed it. He had spent his prime doing business between Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and it was then that he had become so keen on appreciating women from the rear. The epic buttocks of those distant days had become fixed forever in his mind's eye. He dreamed of them, and saw them every­where, even in such an unlikely spot as Lark House and in someone as skinny as Irina. His aimless final days were suddenly filled with this belated, all-encompassing love that wreaked havoc with his tranquil routines. Soon after they met, he showed how besotted he was with the gift of a topaz and diamond scarab, one of the few of his dead wives' jewels that had escaped his descendants' clutches. Irina refused to accept it, but her refusal sent his blood pressure shooting sky-high, so that she was forced to spend the whole night with him in the emergency ward. Hooked up to an IV drip, Jacques declared his undemanding, platonic love for her. Sighing and lamenting, he said he only wanted her company so that he could regale his eyes with her youth and beauty, hear her enchanting voice, and imagine that she loved him too, even if it was only like a father. Or even a great-grandfather.

The following evening, back at Lark House, while Jacques was enjoying his ritual martini, Irina, her eyes red rimmed and with dark circles beneath them from lack of sleep, went to find Lupita to confide the mess she was in.

“There's nothing new about that, child. We're always discovering the residents in someone else's bed. And not just the grandpas; the old women too. With so few men around, they have to make do with whatever they can find. Everybody needs company.”

“With Mr. Devine it's platonic love, Lupita.”

“I have no idea what that is, but if it's what I think, then don't you believe it. Frenchie has a penis implant, a plastic sausage that inflates with a pump hidden between his balls.”

“What on earth are you saying, Lupita?” said Irina, laughing out loud.

“You heard me. I swear it's true. I haven't seen it, but Frenchie demonstrated how it works to Jean Daniel. It's amazing.”

The good woman told Irina what she had observed during the many years she had worked at Lark House: that in itself age doesn't make anyone better or wiser, but only accentuates what they have always been.

“A person who is tightfisted won't become generous with age, Irina; they only become more miserly. I'm sure Devine was a rake, and that's why he's a dirty old man now.”

Since she could not return the scarab brooch to her suitor, Irina took it to Hans Voigt. The director told her it was strictly forbidden to accept tips and gifts. This rule did not apply to the possessions Lark House received from dying residents, or to the donations accepted under the counter so as to allow a family member to jump the queue, but these matters were not discussed. The director took the hideous topaz insect, promising to return it to its rightful owner. In the meantime he would keep it in a drawer in his office.

A week later, Jacques presented Irina with a hundred and sixty dollars in twenty-dollar bills. This time she went straight to Lupita, who was in favor of simple solutions: she restored it to the cigar box where the beau kept his cash, certain he wouldn't remember having taken the money out or how much was in there. This allowed Irina to solve the problem of his tips, but she could not prevent Jacques sending her passionate love letters, inviting her to dine in expensive restaurants, or using a string of pretexts to summon her to his room, where he boasted about conquests that had never happened, and finally proposed marriage. Normally so skilled in the arts of seduction, Frenchie had lapsed back into a painful adolescent bashfulness, so that instead of making his declaration in person, he gave her a perfectly comprehensible letter, written on his computer. The envelope contained two pages full of circumlocutions, metaphors, and repetitions, which all amounted to: Irina had restored his energy and his will to live; he could offer her a wonderful lifestyle, in Florida for example, where the sun was always warm; and that when she became a widow she would have no money problems. Whichever way she looked at it, he wrote, it would be to her advantage, especially since the difference in their ages was so much in her favor. His signature looked like a scrawl made by mosquitoes. Fearing she would be sacked, Irina did not tell Voigt. Nor did she reply to the letter, hoping that it would soon slip her suitor's mind, but for once Jacques's short-term memory did not fail him. Rejuvenated by passion, he kept sending her increasingly urgent missives, while she did her best to avoid him, and prayed to Saint Parascheva for the old man to turn his attention to the dozen or so octogenarian women chasing him.

The situation grew so tense it would have been impossible to hide, had an unexpected event not put an end both to Jacques and with him to Irina's dilemma. That week Frenchie had left Lark House twice in a taxi. This was very unusual for him, as he used to become very confused out in the street. One of Irina's duties was to accompany him, but on these occasions he sneaked out without saying a word about what he was doing. The second trip must have exhausted him, because when he returned to the home he was so lost and frail that the taxi driver almost had to carry him out and hand him over to the receptionist like a package.

“Whatever happened to Mr. Devine?” she asked.

“I don't know, I wasn't there,” came the reply.

After checking him and finding that his blood pressure was within normal limits, the duty doctor advised there was no point sending him back to the hospital, but recommended bed rest for a couple of days. However, he also told Hans Voigt that Jacques Devine was no longer in a fit mental state to remain on the second level. The time had come to transfer him to the third, where he would receive twenty-four-hour care. The next day, the director was gearing himself up to tell the old man of the change, something that always left a bitter taste in his mouth, as everyone knew that the third level was the waiting room for Paradise, from which there was no return. He was interrupted by a grief-stricken Jean Daniel, who informed him that when he went to help him get dressed he had found Jacques's body stiff and cold on the floor. The doctor suggested an autopsy, because when he had examined him the previous day there had been nothing to suggest such a dramatic outcome, but Voigt was against the idea. Why arouse suspicions over something as natural as the death of a ninety-year-old man? An autopsy could sully Lark House's impeccable reputation. When she heard the news, Irina could not help weeping, because in spite of herself she had come to feel affection for her pathetic Romeo. At the same time, she felt both a sense of relief that she was free of him, and shame at feeling so relieved.

Frenchie's death united the club of his admirers in an outpouring of widows' mourning, but they were robbed of the comfort of planning a memorial service, because his family members opted for a quick cremation. He would have soon been forgotten, even by his admirers, had his family not raised a storm. Shortly after his ashes were scattered without any great show of emotion, the would-be heirs learned that all the old man's possessions had been bequeathed to a certain Irina Bazili. According to the brief codicil attached to the will, Irina had brought tenderness to the final days of his long life, and therefore deserved the inheritance. Jacques's lawyer explained that his client had dictated the changes by telephone, and then had come to his office on two occasions, the first to check the documents, the second to sign them and have them notarized. He had seemed quite clear about what he was doing. His descendants accused the Lark House administration of negligence regarding the old man's state of mind, and Irina Bazili, whoever she was, of willfully stealing from him. They announced their intention to contest the will, to sue the lawyer for incompetence and Lark House for damages and compensation. Hans Voigt received the horde of frustrated relatives with the outward calm and courtesy he had acquired over many years of being in charge of the institution, yet inside he was fuming. He had not expected such treachery from Irina Bazili, whom he had thought incapable of hurting a fly, but you never learn, you can never trust anyone. He took the lawyer aside and asked how much money was involved: it turned out to be a few parcels of desert in New Mexico, as well as some stocks and shares whose value had yet to be assessed. The amount of available cash was insignificant.

The director asked for twenty-four hours to find a less costly solution than going to court and summoned Irina to his office at once. He had intended to treat the matter with kid gloves, as there was no point making an enemy of this vixen, but as soon as she came in, he lost control.