by Mingmei Yip
The next morning I went to visit Sabrina and was ushered in by the maid, who whispered to me that I should try to cheer up her mistress, who had been very sad lately.
Sabrina seemed glad to see me as I sat down in the comfortable living room.
“Eileen, I didn’t expect you to come back to see a lonely old woman.”
I looked at her with silent sympathy.
She sighed heavily. “These days I have only my memories, and unfortunately they are all sad.”
“Sabrina, you are not hopeless. And not so old. When things seem bad, life can surprise us.”
“You really believe that?”
I nodded.
“All right, then, let me tell you. The surprise in my life now is that my lover, Diego, has decided to leave me.”
It was pretty obvious that this would happen sooner rather than later, but I still felt sorry for her.
“What happened?”
“He knows that I’m almost out of money, plus I’m getting older and uglier by the day.”
I felt compelled to say something comforting. “Sabrina, you look great.”
“You think so? Then do you want to see me dance?”
I didn’t know what to make of this unexpected offer, but I could not very well say no. “Of course!” I replied.
Looking more animated than I was used to seeing her, Sabrina swiftly disappeared into her bedroom. When she reappeared, she’d changed from her plain black dress into a revealing, red lace one. One of her black lace gloved hands held a castanet, its polished surface sparkling. In her other hand was clasped a black lace fan painted with fiery red roses. In an instant, she’d transformed from a half-alive woman with dead-fish eyes into a vivacious one exuding romance and passion.
“You look beautiful! Am I about to hear Carmen?” I asked.
“Just wait.”
The castanet began to emit crisp, animated sounds like the clacking of ducks. Her legs, shod in black high-heeled boots, gleefully chased and teased each other like a pair of mischievous twins. I imagined I was seeing the sort of sensuous, decadent woman painted by Toulouse-Lautrec. Like those long-gone French ladies of the night, Sabrina lived at the mercy of heartless men. This normally morose woman of a certain age was transformed before my eyes into one filled with sexual energy. In a smoky voice like Juliette Gréco’s, she began to sing through her red-painted lips.
Sabrina’s eyes were watery and dreamy, her lips parted sensuously, as if waiting for passionate kisses. As her body swayed, her soft breasts jiggled like tofu. I was but a stand-in for a past lover—perhaps the Alfredo of his younger years. Though her voice and body were those of a mature woman who’d experienced life, I could sense in her the young woman longing for romance.
She finished by swinging her leg onto a chair and lifting her arm in a graceful arc.
I clapped enthusiastically and praised her performance. She smiled proudly, wiping her forehead with a white lace handkerchief.
“Gracias! Thanks for giving me this chance! I haven’t done this for years. I feel I’m young again.” Then her tone turned sad. “At least for a few minutes.”
“We should enjoy our moments to the full.”
“You’re damn right!” My friend clapped her hands and the maid appeared with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a plate of tapas.
Seeing that Sabrina was ready to start drinking even though it was not even lunchtime, I couldn’t help but frown. She ignored my expression and filled the glasses. I took a tiny sip just so she would not feel embarrassed. Then I wondered, would I do much better if I were on the far side of fifty and bereft of daughter and lovers?
Sabrina of course noticed that I was not really drinking, but this did not slow her down, and the level of the wine in the bottle fell quickly.
“You know, I worked as a dancer and cabaret singer before I married,” she said.
“I should have guessed. You’re so good!”
“Once I was very young and very beautiful, and my life was filled with passion. In those days, men pursued me relentlessly. But none of them stayed around. A few were already married, actually. They just wanted some on the side. I was better than what they got at home. But it ended up that I did the fucking and the wife got the money. Unfair, ha!”
She took another sip of her drink. “That was why when I was older, I decided to marry someone safe, a boring but responsible man who would truly love me. So I married a notary. I quit my decadent life, settled down, and had my daughter, expecting a quiet life. Unfortunately, I soon realized that I was not the housewife type. I needed excitement, parties, and fun with exciting men. Pretty soon I began to fuck around. Of course he caught on. That’s when I learned that he truly loved me—he killed himself. I was shocked. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“Sabrina, how terrible for you!”
She shrugged. “It’s been a long time.”
She went on, and now both her expression and her tone softened. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me, Eileen. I made my choices and ended up burying the only man who ever truly loved me. And all he left me was my daughter, Isabelle. For a while I had lovers, and now I have alcohol. I’m a sinner, after all. A priest might grant me absolution, but I don’t grant it to myself.”
She paused to take another big gulp of her wine. “I’m still alive due to the mercy of God—or is it His punishment?”
There was a pause; then she went on. “You’ve been away. I know because I called your hotel. Were you at the lake? Did you find out how my daughter died?”
I hesitated. My vision had seemed real, but I did not know how I could put it into words that would make any sense. Yet one reason I’d gone to visit the lake was in the hope of finding solace for Sabrina. I had to tell this desolate mother something.
“I did have a vision when I visited the lake. But it was so strange that I haven’t wanted to tell anyone about it. But I have to tell you, don’t I?”
“Did you see her?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes, well, she looked like the picture you showed me. . . . I don’t think I imagined it.”
“Please, tell me.”
Just remembering what had happened caused an eerie feeling to arise in me. I felt my voice shake as I began to speak again. “All right. I was by the Past Life Lake in the pitch-dark. Someone from the village brought me there, an old man. He got scared and left me alone. Then I saw a woman—I mean the spirit of a woman. I thought she was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear. Then I thought I saw someone go to comfort her. . . .”
“Who was it?”
I didn’t answer right away. Laolao had taught me that seeing a living person with ghosts means that he or she is about to die. It was a superstition, but I didn’t want to add to Sabrina’s miseries so I made up an answer.
“You know I have powers of perception. I know the dead have consolation—those they miss will join them someday.”
I was a little surprised that Sabrina seemed relieved to hear this.
“Yes, I will be joining her quite soon.”
“No, many years from now!”
“Before I die I must tell someone my secrets. And it looks like you’re the one.”
I like to hear secrets as much as anyone, but hers all seemed too sad to bear. But she needed someone to listen, so I took another tiny taste of the wine and looked toward her expectantly.
“Someone murdered my daughter—but no one will listen to me. Now I know for sure. That’s what Isabelle was trying to tell you by the lake!”
She stood up and nervously rearranged the flowers on the table, then sipped more wine and continued. “My husband, the one who killed himself, worked for a Spanish company on the other side of the Sahara Desert. He came home only once a month. Anyway, that’s why I began to have affairs. I was pretty mad at him for leaving me alone all the time.”
“Why did he work away from home?”
“Because he made a lot more money working in the desert. He loved me more t
han anything. That’s why he killed himself—he found out about all these men I had. He didn’t have the guts to kill me, that’s why, ha!
“So he left me alone, this time for good. And that’s how I ended up being a prostitute.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this revelation, but I tried not to look judgmental.
To reassure her, I said, “Well, you had to support yourself.”
“My husband left me nothing! Turns out he’d been embezzling from the company. Maybe it was his guilt, and not love, that made him kill himself. He was in debt up to his ears. All the gifts were bought with stolen money.
“Though I never loved him, after he killed himself I regretted being so selfish and spending so much of his money on clothes and everything else. Anyway, I didn’t become a prostitute right away. I tried to find work as a cabaret singer again, but I’d lost my voice from smoking. The best I could do was be hired as an exotic dancer. But one day I tripped onstage and ended up on crutches and had to skip work. The club owner, a heartless and money-crazy monster, fired me right away despite my pleadings—and I’d slept with the bastard too!”
She studied me with her blue-shadowed eyes. “Eileen, you despise me now, don’t you?”
“The Chinese say ‘every family has its own difficult sutra to recite. ’ Yours has been a lot harder to recite than mine. We all have to survive.”
She went on. “I started hanging around hotel lobbies. The best was the Sahara—a fancy place filled with lonely executives with money to burn. Of course I had to tip everyone in sight, but I still made good money. Maybe my clients had stolen it like my late husband, but then it was their problem, not mine. Or their wives’ problem, hahaha!” She laughed cheerily. Her two brightly painted red lips looked like two bloody lizards ready for mischief.
She leaned toward me as if about to divulge a confidence. “A few were even my late husband’s colleagues who’d been curious about me for a long time. Then I met Alfredo.”
“So he was also one of your . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“Not only that, he was my richest and most generous customer.”
“So he was rich already?”
“Of course! But because of his wife, Penelope. Her father hired him to work in his oil company. Alfredo was actually very good at business. Not just oil, he sold weapons, too, to whomever had the cash.”
What she was telling me clashed with my impressions of the man. But of course I barely knew him. Maybe now that he was in his fifties he’d mended his ways.
“But wasn’t he married then?”
She gave me an incredulous look. “You think anyone would turn down pudín diplomático just because he’s had a full meal of steak and lobster?”
I lowered my head, feeling foolishly naïve.
“He told me his wife, a cultured, talented, and beautiful opera singer, wouldn’t satisfy him in bed. Merely a year into their marriage, they’d stopped having sex. He told me this was because she was completely pure. He still worshipped her as a saint. The fact is, the man only likes whores. But just in case that was not enough, there is something else—not just the sex, but what I did before.”
“You mean making out?”
She laughed out loud, shaking her head. “No, I mean witchcraft.”
“You—or that witch who stole Alfredo from you?”
“Yes, it was Nathalia who taught me the spells. Later it turned out she cast them better than I did. But before her treachery, Alfredo was obsessed with me. He liked my curvy body and mind-blowing sex. A lot better than his saintly wife’s non-sex, hahahaha!”
I was more interested in the witchcraft than whether Sabrina or the saintly wife was better in bed. “Tell me, what did you do to Alfredo?”
“There are special herbs grown only in a secret place on the island. I paid a high price for them, then mixed them in our wine to boost his sexual desire and my sexual stamina. I also secretly put my hair and nail clippings under his pillow and my photo, scented with my perfume, into a slot in his briefcase—these were to ensure that I was always on his mind and he’d always want more of me than he could get.”
“You really believe these things work?”
“Yes, but it’s complicated. Are you sweet on someone who’s not so sweet on you?”
Actually, with Ivan it was the other way around. My interest in love spells was purely academic—but who would believe that?
“You’re too innocent, Eileen. Hiring a witch is like picking a doctor. You need one who really knows her stuff. Most are fakes. Or evil and cast spells that have the opposite effect—making you repulsive to the man you fancy.”
I was thinking that this was great stuff for my future book. And it would make me think twice before paying for a love spell—if I ever found someone I really fancied.
“Hmmm . . . then how come Alfredo still left you?”
Sabrina laughed again. “Ha, because that bitch witch’s spells overpowered mine, that’s why! She was my teacher, so of course she held back her best secrets. So eventually she got Alfredo and I got my heart broken again.”
She downed more wine, a bitter expression on her face. “But of course when he was crazy about me, he kept giving me cash and expensive jewelry. The cash is long gone, but I still have some of the jewelry to survive on.”
In my few years on earth I’d already learned that if you didn’t take your future into account, you will come to heartbreak. It’s great to live for the moment, but then the moment is over. Sabrina had given herself too freely, but at least she had gotten something in return.
Sabrina called out to her maid, who brought tea, snacks—and a bottle of brandy.
Staring at Sabrina’s swollen face, I put my hand over her glass. “You really should stop drinking.”
She lifted my hand off gently. “Please indulge a dying woman. You have your life ahead of you. I just have my memories—and brandy.”
As soon as I let her remove my hand she filled her glass and took a big gulp. “I have another secret to reveal. Alfredo made me pregnant with my son,” she said.
I vaguely remembered hearing that she had a son. Before I could stop myself I blurted out, “Alfredo had a son with you? What happened? Where is he?”
I had the feeling that I was about to learn of yet another tragedy, since Sabrina had never said much about having a son. I feared he had ended up with his half sister Isabelle, surrounded by ghosts in the yin world.
“One evening I’d had a little more brandy than usual and dozed off. Then he was gone. Maybe stolen by witches.”
“Stolen? Did Alfredo know about this?”
“Yes and no. When he saw that I was pregnant, Alfredo became cold to me. He rarely visited me; then I found out that he’d fallen for Nathalia the witch. A few days after Oscar was born I wrapped him up and took him for Alfredo to see.
“He took one look at our son, and said, ‘You’re a fucked-by-a-hundred-men whore, so how do I know he’s mine?’”
“Do you have any idea who took him?” I asked Sabrina.
“That witch, who else? She was consumed by jealousy because she was barren. So she stole my Oscar and told Alfredo the baby was his.”
“But wouldn’t Alfredo know she wasn’t pregnant?”
“Maybe, maybe not. She’s a witch; she could have faked it. Or cast a spell on him so he imagined she was pregnant. But even Nathalia couldn’t fake a baby, so she stole mine. This way if her spells stopped working she could hold on to Alfredo.”
“But she didn’t. . . .”
She nodded.
“You never found them?”
“No, all I know is that Alfredo eventually kicked both Nathalia and the baby out of his house for some reason. The rumor was that as soon as the little boy could stand up in his crib, Alfredo took a dislike to him. He was ashamed that his son didn’t look like him at all and so forced both of them out.”
“But he was your baby! Nathalia should have given him back to you.”
“Sabrina, better that you don’t mess with these people anymore. They’ve brought you nothing but misery.”
“But I deserve to get something back for what I suffered. And you can help me.”
“I don’t think I can find your son. Or find out what happened to Isabelle. This all happened so long ago.”
“Not that—I mean something else.”
I liked Sabrina, but being with her was draining and I dreaded hearing what more she wanted from me.
But I asked anyway. “What is it?”
“One evening after sex, Alfredo told me that he had a big stash of cash and gold in his castle.”
“So?”
“So I want you to find it for me.”
“So you want me to steal from Alfredo for you? No way!” I exclaimed angrily. I was beginning to regret my friendship with this aging, self-pitying alcoholic.
“Wait, calm down, Eileen. Let me finish. Oscar is Alfredo’s son and only heir. If I can find my boy, he’ll inherit Alfredo’s fortune. Then I’ll be rich too.”
“Sabrina, if you’re dying, as you keep telling me, why do you care about money?”
“Everybody loves money, dying or not. That’s why I crashed Alfredo’s party—to snoop around after the money.”
“Did you find it?”
“Of course not. Otherwise I’d be drinking cognac instead of brandy, hahaha!”
I studied her eyes, still flirtatious despite her sagging face. In a way I admired her spirit. Even with her health failing she was still greedy and scheming.
Sabrina smiled, looking at me as if I’d already agreed to be part of her plot. “If you find the money and gold, I’ll give you a share.”