Babayaga

to tell you will sound preposterous. You will think I’m mad. Who knows, I might truly be mad. Maroc’s probably right, he says I’m going to kill myself if I keep drinking like a Belgian.”
    “You will be surprised what my friend and I find preposterous,” said Vidot.
    “Well…” The old detective looked down at his hands as he spoke. “First there is this, I saw her not long ago, I think maybe it was last week. She was walking on the street while I was at Chez Loup. I knew it was her immediately, though it seemed impossible. I had not seen her for years, many years, and yet I swear she had not aged a day. I told Maroc as much and of course he laughed at me.”
    Lecan shook his head, as if even he didn’t believe himself. “Then when I came in to work this morning, I saw her name in the log. I recognized it right away. I’m telling you, my heart almost stopped. I had to go see for myself. Sure enough, there she was, sitting alone in the cell. It was almost as if the angels from above had brought her out from the shadows of the past, to taunt me and show me how old I have become.”
    “You think too much of yourself,” said Vidot.
    “Yes, perhaps.” Lecan smiled. “Anyway, the officer on duty informed me that you had left instructions that she not be disturbed, but I needed to speak to her. I simply had to. So I pulled rank and had her brought up to one of the interrogation rooms.”
    Lecan shifted in his chair nervously as he went on. “I came in right away and introduced myself to her. It was only the pair of us, sitting there alone. She was so elegant, so good-looking, she excited me. I started talking at a fast, impulsive rate. She did not remember me at first, but I reminded her of where we had met, way up in Frankfurt so many years ago. I described the nights we had gone out and what she had worn, her feathered cap, her velvet coat, the ermine muff she always carried. Finally she smiled, she remembered, or pretended to. Yes, she agreed, she found it strange that she seemed still so young while I had grown—how did she put it?—‘as old as a turtle.’ I said the thought had been bothering me as well, for I had been so young then. She said she used a beauty trick that she had learned from an old friend. She asked if I believed in real tricks like that, not merely illusions or sleights of hand. I said I did not know what she meant. She asked if I believed that real magic could be found in magic tricks, and I said, emphatically, no, such things were only found in fables and children’s stories. Then she asked if I believed in curses. It was an odd question, but the whole conversation was getting quite hard to follow, she had started with beauty tricks and now she was onto curses. In any case, I answered again, no, curses were the same as magic, it was all silliness. Then she grew quite serious, her eyes grew wide, and I swear a shadow seemed to pass across her face. She said that I would discover I was wrong, because curses do in fact exist.
    “Then she said she would prove it to me right there, by placing a curse on me. I asked her not to and she laughed and said I should not be worried, after all, I had said only moments before that I did not even believe in such things. Besides, she said, it was a small and simple curse. She said it went like this: I would gradually disappear, experiencing the absolute gray solitude of death long before I ever expired. First, she said, my wife would stop responding to my voice. Then my children, who are grown but still visit me every Sunday, would stop coming by the house. Colleagues would no longer include me in their confidences. Old friends would forget my name. Letters I wrote would go unanswered, my telephone calls would ring in crowded rooms but no one would pick up. Waiters would ignore my order or always get it wrong. When I went to the cinema, they would refuse to sell me a ticket, not because they were being rude but because they did not see me unless I shouted and waved my hands. In the end, I would wind up destroyed by my own solitude, utterly lost, an empty and invisible shell, abandoned by all those I had ever adored and even the ones I merely passed by on the street, for no one would acknowledge me, I would be a living ghost in their midst.
    “I sat there stunned at her explanation, not saying a word. She said, ‘Shall we test it? Pick up that telephone and call a person you know, anyone, your wife or a friend, dial them up now and,