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your salvation, perhaps you would like him to know it. Perhaps you wish his forgiveness.”
    “Father,” she closed her eyes, ” I ordered the death of his partner.”
    ‘The corrupt detective? The one who was stealing from you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And yet, in avenging the partner, Lesko spared you. He must have seen something in you, Elena.”
    “He saw a small frightened woman who traffics in cocaine. If I were a man I would have been dead.”
    “And what did you see?”
    “In Lesko?”
    “Yes.”
    “An honorable man.”
    “To whom you told the truth. Even if you would die for it”
    “Yes.”
    “Then perhaps he saw honor in you as well.”
    “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “Father?”
    “Yes?”
    “If I ask this, you will not laugh?”
    ”I will not laugh, Elena.”
    “Is it possible to love such a man?”
    “It is clearly possible to become obsessed with such a man. Elena.” The priest took her hand in his. “By your own account you saw this Lesko once in your life for no more than five minutes. And afterward, you sent out word among your former associates that, on the lives of their own women and children, neither Lesko nor any member of his family was to be harmed. For that reason alone you might feel a certain bonding with him. But love? I do not think so.”
    ”I suppose not,” she said. Her cheeks were buming.
    “May I now ask you a question?”
    “Of course.”
    “If he, or a member of his family had been harmed, would you have made good your threat?”
    “Immediately.”
    “But not now. You have renounced all violence just as you have renounced your past.”
    “It has been two years, Father. The question no longer arises.”
    “But if it did,” he pressed.
    ”I have not attained sainthood, Father. I owe the man a debt. I will pay it if I can.”
    Then, perhaps, he could forgive. Even if God and her priest would not. At least, then, she could be free of him.
    The two years in Zurich were a cleansing time in a place of peace and beauty. It was one of the few cities in the world that had no slums, no stink of poverty. She made new friends, first those of her cousins and then her own. She began to entertain, as often as before, but now it was for the pleasure of good company. No more strutting Bolivian generals and fawning politicians. No more swinish Colombians with gold crosses on their chests and knives in their pockets who came for the coca leaf with trunks full of American dollars. No more Americans in their suits and ties with the struggle against Marxism on their lips and the rape of her country in their hearts.
    In all the ways that she could think of, she remade herself. She allowed herself to gain two kilos of weight. Her cousins said that it became her. She had long been too thin. But she kept her body firm through long solitary hikes in summer and ski lessons in winter. She lightened her hair, to look all the more European, and she cut it short. She wondered if Lesko would like it. She knew that was foolish, the conceit that he would care enough to comment, that he would even remember her face. But she wondered nonetheless.
    She remembered him. She'd even painted him. Or tried. It was near the end of the first year. The horror of that day in Brooklyn had begun to fade. Even the lines of Lesko's face, which she saw now and again in dreams, began to soften. It was a massive face, more square than oval. Hair combed straight back, thinning just a bit on top, the color of steel at the sides. It was also a hard face. The eyes were menacing, the mouth was cruel. And yet, she felt, it was not life that made them so, because Lesko's face could be frightening even in repose. His teeth were white, even, and cosmetically perfect and yet, when she tried painting a smile, the result was as intimidating as a Lesko scowl. Unfortunate. An accident of physiognomy. And the eyes, quick, intelligent, cunning, must certainly have been capable of expressing tenderness at some time in Lesko's