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Yes, it was quite the gesture.
After that, we saw each other every day. Sometimes I'd buy him di
When I went back to Paris, he stayed in Luanda and was pla
But it wasn't as simple as that. He needed medicine, that was a fact. Not just Ursochol, but also mesalazine, and omeprazole, and the first two had to be taken daily, four mesalazine for his colitis and six Ursochol for his sclerosis. He could do without the omeprazole, I'm not sure whether he took it for a duodenal ulcer or a gastric ulcer or acid reflux or what, but he didn't take it every day. The fu
When I got back to Paris, I told Simone about it-that's my wife's name, she's French-and she asked me what Belano was like, asked me to describe him physically, in full detail, and then she said she understood him. How can you understand him? I didn't understand him. It was my second night back, we were in bed with the lights out, and that was when I told her everything. So what about the medicine, have you bought it? said Simone. No, not yet. Well, buy it first thing tomorrow and send it right away. I will, I said, but I kept thinking that there was something wrong with the story. In Africa you're always coming across strange stories. Do you think it's possible that someone could travel to such a faraway place in search of death? I asked my wife. It's perfectly possible, she said. Even a forty-year-old man? I said. If he has a spirit of adventure, it's perfectly possible, said my wife. Unlike most Parisian women, who tend to be practical and thrifty, she's always had a romantic streak. So I bought him the medicine, sent it to Luanda, and soon afterward received a postcard thanking me. I calculated that what I'd sent would last him twenty days. What would he do after that? I supposed he would return to Europe or die in Angola. And that was the last thought I gave it.
Months later I ran into him at the Grand Hotel in Kigali, where I was staying and where he came every once in a while to use the fax. We greeted each other effusively. I asked whether he was still working for the same paper in Madrid and he said he was, plus a couple of South American magazines, which brought in a little more money. He'd stopped wanting to die, but he was too broke to get back to Catalonia. That night we had di
I asked about his health. He said he'd come down with diarrhea in Angola, but now he was all right. I told him that my photographs were selling better and better. If he wanted, I said, and this time I think I meant it, I could lend him money, but he wouldn't hear of it. Then, despite myself, I asked him about the great death quest and he told me it made him laugh now to think about it and that I'd see real death, the beall and end-all, up close the next day. He was, what's the word, changed. He could go for days at a time without taking his pills. He seemed calmer. Happy too, when I saw him, because he'd just received medicine from Barcelona. Who sent it to you? I asked him, a woman? No, he said, a friend. His name is Iñaki Echevarne, we had a duel. A fight? I said. No, a duel. And who won? I don't know which of us killed the other, said Belano. Fantastic! I said. Yes, he said.
Meanwhile, he'd clearly taken charge of his surroundings, or begun to, which is something I could never do. Nobody can, really, except the big media correspondents who have plenty of backup, and the rare freelancer who does without by making lots of friends and by simply getting it, how to maneuver in the African environment.
Physically, he was thi