Authors: Pablo De Santis
The Paris Enigma (14 page)
T
HE
F
IRE
S
IGN
C
ome on, Salvatrio! Get up! There's a message for you!”
I staggered over to open the door. The first thing I saw was Madame Nécart without her makeup; it was not a good omen for the rest of the day. I snatched the message from her hands and read:
“Come to the Galerie des Machines as soon as possible.”
The yellow paper was dirty with soot, and stamped with Arzaky's big black fingerprints.
The machines were grouped according to function inside the palace of glass and iron. But often a machine belonging to one sector was sent to another, since the boundaries of man's disciplines have always been unclear. The operators moved them around, trying to place them according to blueprints that were constantly being produced, and then continuously modified by other blueprints brought by messengers sent from the organizing committee. The messengers were very young and wore blue uniforms and leather caps, and they sometimes had to consult the blueprints they were carrying to keep from getting lost amid all the pavilions and corridors. One wrong turn and they would be walking in circles for quite a while, and because of this, it was common for a messenger who had left first to arrive after a later one, so an already established decision could be taken
as a last minute change. The dockyard workers, made up largely of foreigners, complained about the excessive work, and threatened to halt operations. In order to resolve the conflict it was decided that the machines that hadn't been correctly placed when they arrived would be sent to a special area. There they joined others, no longer united by their function, but by the circumstances of delays and confusion. So a digger used for mining was positioned next to an electric piano and Graham Bell's metal detector. This area was the most popular with visitors to the World's Fair because of its variety. That variety represents the world, filled with too many different things for them ever to be able to see them all. There must be a point in which strict classification finally crumbles and confesses that everything is just a dream. All alphabets are letters that don't have a proper place, or that are hardly ever used, and could easily be overlooked. Their function isn't so much to represent a sound as to unshackle the alphabet from the constraints of perfection. (In Spanish we have the
x
, which we use to name what isn't there and to cross things out.) Loose bricks and twisted beams are the foundation of every building.
At the entrance to the Galerie des Machines I had presented my safe-conductâa sheet of paper with the official seal of the organizing committee, but also the round seal, always in red ink, of The Twelve Detectives. The guards stared at the seal, unsure whether or not to believe it was real. Everyone had heard of the group but no one knew for sure that it actually existed; the red seal was like a postmark from Atlantis. Since I was in a rush to meet with Arzaky I couldn't stop to look at the machines, but caught a glance at them while I walked past.
The more esoteric the object's utility, the more brilliant and successful it seemed; it was magnificent to see the bronze chimneys, and the oiled gears, and the watches with blue hands that measured god knows what pressure, speed, or temperature, and the levers and little control switches. There was a strange effect created in the palace: as in so many other glass monuments, the sun that filtered in showed the myriad dust particles floating in the air. The machines, while at odds
with each other, seemed to be united by the dust that floated above them, confusing the connections and controls, the clocks and pistons, the cords and spark plugs into one common realm, as if the entire palace was inhabited by one single, sleeping machine.
I walked through the corridors admiring the infinite fields of knowledge that I would never master. At the back of the pavilion a group of policemen were waiting, and Arzaky was with them. At that end, in an almost hidden area, were the latest, and, to my mind, bizarre innovations in the funereal industry: the corpse cannon, which sent the dead to the bottom of the sea; the excavating coffin, which dug its own grave with the cadaver inside and disappeared below ground; and various cremation ovens.
Arzaky shook hands with a man who had just arrived; he was as tall as the detective, with a big nose and professionally dressed in a black suit.
“Monsieur Arzaky? My name is Arnesto Samboni; I'm a representative from the Farbus Company. They got me out of bed at dawn to tell me that someone had turned the oven on.”
The oven was built of firebricks and iron, and looked very much like a house. The controls and the emblem with the company's name were on the front. On one side was a tray and on it lay a blackened body. The features were burned away. It reminded me of a stone idol, a god exhumed in the farthest corner of Asia by some archaeological expedition. The head seemed to be separated from the body, and it was hard to believe it had ever been human.
“It's a campaign oven,” explained Samboni, with the same tone he used when making a sales pitch. “It reaches extremely high temperatures very quickly. It can run on gas, or with wood or liquid fuel. One of our ovens, I'm proud to say, was used to cremate the body of the poet Percy B. Shelley, after he was shipwrecked on the Ligurian coast.”
“It's supposed to reduce the body to ashes, and this corpse is merely blackened. Did something go wrong?”
“It was turned off too soon. Otherwise, Monsieur Arzaky, there would be nothing left but dust, and you wouldn't have a single clue to start your investigation.”
“Don't be so sure, Monsieur Samboni. Even ashes can hold clues.”
Arzaky took out a pencil and scraped at the skin of the body around the abdomen. The surface gave way and I could see something that looked like scorched wool.
“Who else knows how to use this oven, Monsieur Samboni?”
“It's very easy, anyone who has read the instructions could do it. But it was already set up, because we were planning to do a demonstration on opening day.”
We didn't get to find out what type of demonstration one would do for a crematorium, because a commotion interrupted Samboni. Alarmed, the policemen who had been engrossed in watching Arzaky moved away from us, as if they didn't want to be associated with the Polish detective or his dark assistant. The newcomer was wearing an oversize plaid overcoat, and sported a gigantic mustache that seemed to precede him, as if to say, “Watch out for the guy behind me.” He looked at the body, took a momentary pleasure in the effect his appearance had caused, and then pulled out a notebook.
“Step aside, Arzaky, from now on I'll ask the questions.”
For a few seconds it looked as if the two men were going to fight a duel with their pencils. The newcomer was Bazeldin, Paris's chief of police. I recognized him from his picture in the newspapers. Since Darbon's death, he had appeared in
The Truth
saying that there were no legitimate detectives outside the official police force, and that The Twelve Detectives would be wise in disbanding.
Arzaky stepped back a few paces, distancing himself from the body and Samboni.
“Before interrogating this man”âBazeldin pointed to Samboniâ“I'd like you, Arzaky, to tell me how you found out about this murder.”
“What murder?”
“The body right here.”
“I'm investigating Darbon's death. I was returning from one of my evening walks when I saw a commotion at the door to the Galerie des Machines. We still don't know if someone killed this man.”
“Do you think he's still alive?”
The policemen laughed at their boss's joke, and they briefly shook, as if with spasms.
“You'll have plenty of time to laugh when we've found the guilty party. Now go through the pavilions, see if anyone is missing.” Then Bazeldin addressed a plainclothes policeman who never left his side. It was no secret that Bazeldin wanted to be like the detectives in every way, he even had an acolyte. “Rotignac, you guard the body until someone from the morgue comes to pick it up.”
“I want to point something out, Captain,” Arzaky interrupted. “The head seems to be almost detached from the body.”
“You are always giving me false clues, detective. You want to send me off on a wild goose chase. But I am going to conduct this investigation my way, and we'll see who solves the case first. The fact that Darbon is dead doesn't automatically make you the Detective of Paris. It's a responsibility one must earn. In the meantime, consider yourself the Detective of Warsaw, assuming they don't already have a better one.”
Arzaky moved away from Bazeldin, feigning indignation, and took me aside. While the chief of police continued giving orders, the detective said to me, “I'll stay here. If I go anywhere, Bazeldin will have me followed and I don't want to tip him off about my suspicions. You to go the Taxidermists' Pavilion and ask if they are missing a body.”
“You mean this wasn't a murder? That the dead manâ¦was already dead?”
“That burned smell is too caustic for an ordinary cremation. You come from a country where they raise sheep, so you should know
that in the spinning process they separate a very coarse type of wool called unbonded wool, which is used to stuff cushions and dolls. It's also used by taxidermists for embalming bodies. I think someone stole an embalmed body and burned it.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“How should I know? If my job were that easy, anybody would be able to solve crimes, even Paris's police chief. Right now the only thing that concerns me is that Bazeldin sees me here. I'll ask some more questions to keep him occupied.”
As I left the Galerie des Machines I found one of the messengers who worked for the organizing committee. He gave me directions to the Taxidermists' Pavilion. As I walked there I spied several of The Twelve Detectives who were headed over to see if the news had any relationship to Darbon's death. I saw Hatter, with Linker by his side. I also saw the two Japanese men, who pretended to be distracted by the machines, but I could tell that they were completely focused as they moved forward with a determined stride. Baldone, almost breathless, followed Magrelli, the Eye of Rome.
At the entrance, Novarius tried to get the Sioux Indian in, but the guards insisted that he had escaped from a tribe of South American Indians who were set up on a piece of land on the other side of the fair, and they wanted him to return. To avoid being followed, I entered other pavilions and exited through side doors. I stopped to see the globe they had just finished putting together, and then I sidetracked toward the Palace of Fine Arts. When I was fairly sure no one had followed me to that point, I continued on to the Taxidermists' Pavilion. Before I went in I saw a young woman waving to me from a distance. It was Greta, looking at me through binoculars. I waved back, embarrassed at being exposed, and casually entered the pavilion, which was built to look like an Egyptian temple.
A
t the entrance to the temple I was greeted by a stuffed bear, whose open jaws welcomed me to his world of simulated immortality. On glass shelves and large black wood tables nested birds as small as insects and insects as large as birds. A giraffe from Paris's zoo, whose death had been announced in the newspaper six months earlier, was still in the wooden box that had been used to transport it, sticking its neck out into the world at last and forever.
A short, stout man passed by me, dressed in a gray coverall. I asked him for the taxidermists and he muttered, between his teeth, the name Dr. Nazar and pointed to a closed door.
I knocked, and without waiting for an answer, opened the door. A doctor in a white coat was writing a letter, with his back to me. Next to him there was an empty gurney.
“Rufus, wait a second, I'll give you this letter, it's for the organizing committeeâ¦.”
I stepped forward.
“I'm not Rufus, doctor. My name is Sigmundo Salvatrio, and⦔
He put the pen down and turned to look at me. Nazar had a long beard and eyes reddened by long nights of work.
“I'm busy right nowâ¦. Perhaps in the future I'll be taking on apprenticesâ¦.”
“I don't want to be an apprentice. I was sent by Detective Arzaky.”
I assumed he would throw me out, but he stood up enthusiastically, as if I had uttered a magic word.
“That's exactly what I need, a detective! A body has just disappeared. It was our best work and someone took it in the middle of the night.”
“That's why I'm here,” I said with a smug smile.
Nazar stared at me.
“But how could you know that, when I haven't reported its disappearance yet?”
“We are aware of everything that goes on at the World's Fair,” I replied, happy that someone, in the midst of so much confusion, deemed me useful.
“Your accent and your arrogance are familiar to me,” said Dr. Nazar in perfect Spanish. “Are you Argentine? Me too.”
Dr. Nazar came closer as if he were going to hug me, his lab coat stained with chemical products, blood, and other substances I was not interested in coming into close contact with. Frightened, I backed up with the agility of a fencer and extended a tentative hand. The deferred embrace evaporated. Anyone who saw Nazar's exuberance would have thought that it was extremely rare to find another Argentine in Paris, when really the city was full of us.
“So you're working in Paris?” I couldn't avoid Dr. Nazar's presumptuously giving me a pat on the back.
“Just for a short while. I was sent by Detective Craig, for the first meeting of The Twelve Detectives.”
“I met Craig at a meeting of the Progress Club five years ago. He gave a masterful lecture on the difference between deduction and induction.”
“One of his favorite topics.”
“It was brilliant. I didn't understand a thing, but I could tell he was a cut above. I understand that, in recent years, he has given up detective work.”
“Because of his health problems.”
“And because of the Case of the Magician. Well, you should know better than me.”
I was speechless. I often forgot that I wasn't the only person who knew about the Kalidán case and Alarcón's death. When that old business came to light I felt horribly ashamed, as if I had squandered that opportunity. Guilt, in many cases, has no relation to actual events. We feel responsible for things that have nothing to do with us, and don't give a thought to our real sins. I abruptly returned to the matter at hand.
“I came because a body was found, and we believe it is the same one that was stolen from you.”
Nazar's face lit up.
“I knew it couldn't have gone far. Is it in good condition?”
I shook my head.
“Did they take the head off?” he asked. “It's going to take a lot of work to get that head back where it belongs.”
“I'm afraid, doctor, that won't be necessary.”
Nazar breathed a sigh of relief.
“They burned it.”
Crestfallen, Nazar sank back into a chair.
“What day is it?”
“Thursday.”
“The Grand Opening is in a week. A week. And I've had to do everything myself, this whole pavilion, getting the permitsâ¦The authorities from the Argentine Pavilion didn't want to give me any space. The only thing they care about is showing their horses, their sheep, their wheat, and especially their cowsâ¦. They have an unhealthy obsession with cowsâ¦but they don't want my art displayed there. Life, life, they told me. Life, they kept repeating, rolling their eyes. But do they even know what life is?”
He shook his head slowly and stared at his fingertips.
“I'm the one who knows what life is. I'm the one who knows the
decomposition process. I am the one who can stop it. Oh well. I'll have to go see the disaster. Show me the way.”
“It won't do any good. Besides, if you go now, they'll keep you there with questions. Captain Bazeldin will call you into the police headquarters and you'll have to spend a whole afternoon waiting for them to question you. You're lucky that Arzaky still hasn't told the police that the body is one of yours. Don't you have other things you can show at the opening?”
“I suppose I do. Come with me.”
Nazar led me into a back room filled with the animals that hadn't yet been classified. There was a lion with its jaws open, a stork, a large crocodile, and an ostrich. In the corners, there were many minor pieces: foxes, otters, pheasants, snakes. Some had no eyes, others had come unstitched. They each had a yellow card attached with a thread, showing their origin, a date, and the taxidermist's name.
In the middle of the room were four gurneys, holding three bodies. The first was a mummy; the second, a stone statue; the third, a woman who seemed to be made of dust and about to vanish into thin air. The last gurney was empty.
“We were thinking about showing four bodies in different states of embalming. Now we'll have to make do with three. This one, as you can see, is an Egyptian mummy, which we reproduced strictly following the traditional procedures. We even recited the ancient incantations. If you are interested, the jars with the entrails are around here somewhereâ¦.”
He got up to look for the jars in a closet, but I assured him it was unnecessary.
“This other body was embalmed using an ancient Chinese method that uses volcano lava to convert the body into stone. The method is interesting but the results are highly debatable. It looks just like stone, you see? There are taxidermists who don't believe me when I tell them that it's a human body, they think it's a sculpture.”
“How'd you get the lava?”
“We made it artificially, heating mud, limestone, and sand to high temperatures. It was an absurd amount of work. There wasn't a single day that I didn't burn my hands. Guimard, my closest collaborator, is still in the hospital. I hope they discharge him soon so he can come to the opening.”
Nazar approached the third gurney and delicately touched the woman's skin. She wore a white dress and still held the ribbon that had tied some flowers, long since disintegrated. Her hair, streaked with gray, looked exactly like that of a living woman. Nazar gestured to me, inviting me to touch her leathery skin, but I recoiled.
“This isn't my work; it was executed by time, weather conditions, and chance. The third method, which often keeps the bodies that are stored in churches intact, is the reduction of humidity inside the coffin. We bought this woman from a dealer in relics. She died half a century ago, but looks as if it were only yesterday.”
Last, Dr. Nazar pointed to the empty gurney.
“But Mr. X, preserved in the traditional, Western method, was our most exquisite model. He had been executed by guillotine and we were able to reattach his head and almost perfectly restore him.”
I pulled a black notebook I had recently bought out of my pocket. Its pages had a grid, like graph paper, just like the one that Arzaky used. And without realizing it, I was imitating the way he wrote, with the notebook half shut as if I were afraid someone would peek at my notes.
“How could they have gotten the body out of here?”
“They forced the lock and took the body in a wheelbarrow. At the fair people work all night long, especially now that opening day is so close. No one would have looked twice at someone transporting a bulky load, in the midst of hundreds of carts and wheelbarrows filled with construction materials, machines, statues, animalsâ¦.”
“Where do you get the bodies you work on?”
“From the city morgue. This pavilion depends on the Ministry of Public Health.”
“And that's where Mr. X's corpse came from?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why do you call him that? Mr. X? It would be helpful to know his real name.”
“Is that important to the investigation?”
“Of course. The person who incinerated him may have had a personal grudgeâ¦.”
“We don't know his name. We never know any of their names. It's easier to work on anonymous bodies, you understand? That way one can forget they once walked the earth, that someone gave birth to them, that someone misses them at the dinner table, or in bed. Anyway, it's a waste of time to search in that direction. This was an attack directed at me by rival taxidermists! It was my job to accept the pieces you see here and reject the ones you don't. We are a vindictive lot: one of them sends a poorly sewn rabbit, with buttons instead of eyes, and when it's rejected, a hatred that lasts a lifetime is born. In our business, what's best preserved is resentment.”