Where Tigers Are at Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

through the girl’s thick hair.
    “Have you done it?” Thaïs asked, opening her eyes.
    “Yes, that’s it. I’m sure he’ll send me the dosh. After all, he never refuses me anything.”
    “I’m speeding a bit, you know.”
    “Me too, but I’ll sort it out.”
    Moéma turned to the bedside table and took out the little ebony box containing the coke. With a strip of cardboard she took out a pinch of powder and poured it into a soup spoon;
the
spoon with the twisted handle that kept it perfectly horizontal. Deciding the quantity was too great, she put some of it back in the box before mixing the rest with a little water from a dropper.
    “You’ll be careful, yes?” Thaïs whispered, watching her.
    “Don’t worry, I’ve no desire to die, even less to kill you,” Moéma replied, heating the contents of the spoon over a lighter. “I’m not as crazy as I seem.”
    After having drawn up the mixture, Moéma gave several taps to the fine syringe they had used four hours ago, gently pressedthe plunger, checking that there were no air bubbles left, then picked up the delicate dressing-gown belt lying on the floor.
    “Off we go, sweetheart.”
    Thaïs sat up and held out her chubby arm. Moéma wrapped the belt twice around her biceps, then pulled it tight until a vein swelled up in the crook of her arm.
    “Clench your fist,” she said, leaving Thaïs herself to keep the tourniquet tight. She soaked a piece of cotton wool in perfume then rubbed it over her arm. Holding her breath in an attempt to curb her trembling, she cautiously brought the needle up to the chosen vein.
    “How lucky you are to have such large veins; with me it’s always a big production …”
    Thaïs closed her eyes. She couldn’t stand the sight of the last part of these preparations, the moment when Moéma drew out the plunger a little: a tiny jet of black blood spurted into the syringe, as if life itself, escaping from her body, were spreading out in there in thin, deadly curls. The first time, two months ago, she had almost fainted.
    “Now, unclench your fist slowly,” said Moéma, starting the injection. When she’d half emptied the syringe, she pulled the needle out and bent Thaïs’ arm over on a wad of cotton wool.
    “Oh my God! Oh, the shit, my God, the white shit!” the girl repeated, slumping down on her back.
    “Are you OK, Thaïs? Say something! Thaïs?!”
    “It’s OK … Don’t worry … Come and join me, quick,” she said, articulating with difficulty.
    Reassured, Moéma put the belt around her left arm, holding it in place with her teeth. Now her hand was trembling uncontrollably. Clenching her fist as tight as she could, she pricked herself several times without managing to find a vein in the bluish network scarcely visible under her skin. In desperation, she ended up sticking the needle in a blood-filled bulge in her wrist.
    Even before injecting the rest of the syringe, she had a strong taste of ether and perfume in her mouth; and as the aperture on the world gradually closed, she felt herself cut off from the living, cast back into the darkness of her own being. A metallic rumbling swelled up abruptly inside her head, a kind of continuing echo, muffled, such as you hear during a dive when your cylinder hits the rusty metal of an old ship. And along with this shipwreck’s wail came fear. A terrible fear of dying, of not being able to turn back. But right at the bottom of this panic was a couldn’t-care-less attitude to death, a sort of defiance that was almost clear-headed, despairing.
    Sensing that she was coming close to the very mystery of existence, she followed the progressive disappearance of everything that was not of the body, of her body and her own will to merge with another body eager for sensual pleasure, with all the bodies present in the world.
    Moéma felt Thaïs’ hand on her chest, pulling her down. She stretched out, immediately concentrating on the exquisitely voluptuous enjoyment the