Vango (43 page)

“Treasure!” exclaimed Ethel.

“Why did Cafarello kill his friend? It makes me think perhaps there was something to share.”

Vango also told her about the message signed by Ethel, containing the words “Who are you?,” which had proved such a wake-up call for him. And the shadows always there behind him that would inevitably find his trail, making him chase after zeppelins and trains and jump into rivers.

Together, they began trying to piece together some answers to this string of mysteries.

Toward mid-March, when Paul had just announced his imminent return from India, the occasional silence was allowed to occur between them. These silences spoke volumes. Sometimes they led the two of them all the way to the other side of Loch Ness.

What now? That’s what those silences were saying. What now? They would look at each other, then avert their gaze.

Ethel wasn’t wearing her heart on her sleeve. She hadn’t said “I love you” again since that Christmas Eve. They were waiting.

One morning, sitting on a flat stone down by the loch, Ethel said to Vango, “What was the name of that donkey again?”

“What donkey?”

“Mazzetta’s donkey.”

He didn’t even need to reply. He clenched his fists. Vango had just understood.

They set off the following day.

Salina, Aeolian Islands, first day of spring, 1936

Dr. Basilio saw the little airplane landing on the sea by the pebble beach. A girl and a boy got out and waded to shore. From the old harbor, they headed for the cliffs and climbed as far as the crater of Pollara. The plane had already set off again after being waved off by the boy and the girl. They passed in front of the house with the olive tree and the barricaded shutters. In the setting sun, the doctor couldn’t make out their faces with the light behind them. He just saw them take the path between the broom and the wild fennel. Then they disappeared from sight.

Dr. Basilio sat in the little driftwood armchair. He shut himself in this house every morning and every evening. He was waiting for Mademoiselle.

Paris, first day of spring, 1936

The bell in the clock tower of Saint-Germain struck eight in the evening. Superintendent Boulard blew on the bubbles in his bath to create little islands.

Two pigeons were watching him through the window.

Someone knocked at the bathroom door.

“What is it, Mother?”

Superintendent Boulard hadn’t been able to take a bath in peace since he had turned twelve, back in 1878. At the age of seventy, he was starting to feel rather fed up.

“There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

“I’m having my bath, Mother.”

“It’s rather urgent. The gentleman is in the sitting room. He doesn’t look happy.”

“Who is it?”

“Would you mind saying your name again for me?” Madame Boulard asked breezily. Boulard heard four letters being uttered by a voice that came from the steppes.

“VLAD.”

Behind the door, with a metal bar in his hand, was Vlad the Vulture.

New York, first night of spring, 1936

Zefiro looked up.

He was at the foot of the Empire State Building.

The tallest skyscraper in the world stood at three hundred and eighty meters.

The top had been completed in 1931 with the intention of mooring airships there, but then the financial crisis had hit and the project had been put on hold. That said, despite everything, an embarkation lounge did exist on the one hundred and second floor, with customs and the abandoned air terminal lower down.

The rest of the tower was occupied by offices and a luxury hotel.

Zefiro walked into the lobby of the Plaza Hotel with his suitcase. He had refused to entrust it to the porter. He made his way over to reception and asked for Madame Victoria’s room. The receptionist smiled at him in a knowing kind of a way.

“Who should I say is here?”

“Mr. Dorgeles,” Zefiro replied.

“I believe Madame Victoria already has company.”

The receptionist unhooked the receiver, mumbled a few words, and waited.

Above the counter, five clocks told the time in the major cities of the world. Los Angeles, Rome, London, Paris, and Tokyo. It seemed a very long wait to Zefiro. A young beggar had stopped in the street on the other side of the glass. He was staring straight at the padre, flattening both hands against the window. From one hand to the other, three words were written:
God bless you.

A doorman in a purple tailcoat promptly shooed the beggar away.

“Filthy kid,” commented the receptionist, who had been following the scene with the telephone glued to his ear.

It was clear that he was appealing to Zefiro for approval.

But the visitor didn’t respond. The wait was becoming worrying. Zefiro was thinking of the real Dorgeles, whom he’d bound hand and foot and put in the trunk of his car, two streets away from Central Park.

Suddenly, the receptionist hung up the receiver. He looked at Zefiro.

“She’s expecting you, Mr. Dorgeles. Nineteenth floor.”

Father Zefiro glided inside the elevator and pressed the button for his floor before the attendants had even noticed. The door slid shut. He was alone.

The elevator started to rise. Zefiro opened his suitcase and took out a hook, which he poked through the elevator’s wire caging. The elevator came to an abrupt halt. He unwrapped two objects from a piece of cloth. They were automatic pistols. He pushed the suitcase under the velvet banquette, checked his weapons, added a round to each of them, and put two more rounds in his pockets. He held his watch in his hand and waited.

As Zefiro took the time to catch his breath, he pictured the clearing at Falbas, near Verdun, and Werner Mann’s plane that had crashed in the tree, as well as the green oak trees of La Blanche, his fellow monks, Vango, and the bees at his monastery. Finally, his mind turned to Voloy Viktor, a few dozen meters above him. The end was so close. When the second hand of his watch returned to the vertical position, he pulled out the metal hook. The elevator continued on its way.

In forty seconds, the doors would open in the middle of Voloy Viktor’s reception room.

Salina, Aeolian Islands, first day of spring, 1936

The swallows were flying in arabesques around Vango. They swooped in close to him. He had to shield his eyes with his hand.

Ethel had gone to perch on the cliff top. The sun was setting behind the islands. Vango had started digging up the earth.

The swallows, which had arrived at the same time as these two young people on the island, had come from the Sahara and were overjoyed to be rediscovering warmth.

Ethel, Vango, and Paul had made several stopovers to reach the island, filling up three times on fuel at Orléans, Salon-de-Provence, and Cagliari in Sardinia: the opposite direction from that which the swallows would take the next day, to reach Notre Dame.

The plane had disappeared on the horizon now. Paul couldn’t stay with them. He was expected in Spain, where his Republican friends, only recently elected, were beginning to fear a coup d’état.

The scrubland was covered in flowers. Ethel was breathing in the smells that had been such a part of Vango’s childhood. She was thinking about Salina, and Everland, and all the different lost paradises where people live and grow up.

Vango didn’t have a shovel. His nails had broken on a very hard object. Right away, he spotted the steel rivets on the donkey’s collar. The animal had decomposed, leaving a skeleton that was almost clean. Vango had just managed to release the enormous collar.

Mazzetta’s last words had been for his donkey.

Vango dragged the collar over to a small rock.

The circle of swallows was bunching up. Higher still, the falcons had also recognized Vango. They let themselves drop like stones and then set off again, hovering by the cliff tops.

With all the strength he could muster, Vango raised the harness above his head. He hurled it against the rock. The leather casing split open, and diamonds poured out in the middle of all the flowers.

“Ethel! Come and see!”

She ran over.

Together they stared at the ground, now studded with precious stones.

Mazzetta had named his donkey Tesoro. The value of this treasure was unimaginable.

In their light-filled boat, a man and a woman had lain murdered. And the man guilty of this crime possessed twice as much treasure again somewhere.

Twice this for a murderer.

Vango turned to face the great drop below him. Where was that man?

Who were his parents, who had traveled the seas with such a fortune on board?

Who was it that wanted Vango dead?

For the first time, he sensed that the origins of his mad urge always to be on the run lay in the beginnings of the century, and in history.

Vango was no ordinary orphan. He was heir to a world that had been engulfed.

He moved closer to Ethel.

A swallow swooped down toward them before rising up again.

If it had wanted to fly between them, it wouldn’t have found any space between their two bodies.