Another anecdote for Eric or even, in modified form, for The Meridian: the night before, in the jazzy twilit Orchid Lounge of the hotel, several delegates in Marya’s company had fallen into a confused but heated discussion of Jews. Of their ideas of Jews. One was a Peruvian novelist who now lived in Paris, another was the secretary of the Moscow Writers’ Union, the third was the fierce black Nigerian playwright. Marya was asked courteously if she was Jewish (she had that “look,” did she?) and when she said no the men began to speak freely. Both the Russian and the Nigerian claimed that Jews were always a “separate and distinct nation within a nation,” and that their literature was “Jewish literature,” religious and political. The Peruvian, drunk on martinis, claimed that all Jews were Zionists overtly or secretly and that Zionism was the fascism of the second half of the twentieth century. Marya laughed as she challenged these remarks, she felt rather fierce herself, combative, until suddenly the strength drained from her. And she fell silent. And didn’t care.

Also she’d begun to realize that the men interpreted her willingness to debate with them as a provocative and very American species of coquetry. As chic as Marya’s stylishly cut hair, her white linen blazer and trousers. . . .

A second anecdote for Eric, though this would be calculated to upset rather than amuse: 2:05 A.M. in Marya’s sumptuous eleventh-floor hotel room and there was Marya naked and shivering (Marya always slept naked even in unfamiliar beds between sheets that were slightly abrasive against her skin: that too was chic) talking rapidly through her partly opened chain-locked door to a man whose name she didn’t know from—was it Costa Rica? Honduras?—claiming at first she’d promised to have a nightcap with him downstairs then berating her for having teased him, then drunkenly pleading, “Tengo la información que puede interesarti mucho—no puede esperar hasta mas tarde—” and Marya said, “Gracias, hablamos mañana, no, gracias,” over and over like an incantation. With the door judiciously chained as it was, the young man (he did sound young, insulted, and in pain) could not see Marya, nor could she see him, for which, she thought, God be praised. He pleaded, threatened, whispered words she couldn’t understand, then suddenly began pounding on the door as if he meant to force the chain off. But Marya was too strong for him, too desperate: she got the door shut and locked it.

(Though the faceless young suitor had his revenge that night. In Marya’s troubled fleeting dreams. Blurred and fleeting and persistent he was, No puede esperar hasta mas tarde, naked as Marya herself, eel-like, brutal. He smelled of a mixture of cocoa, mint, liqueur. He called her señorita and promised not to hurt her any more than she deserved, his voice shading into Eric’s as the dream died.)