18
“I KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING WHO THE guilty party was,” the Commissioner asserted, leaning forward in a gesture of confidentiality and squinting at us as though looking into the horizon. “The subsequent investigation and interrogations only confirmed my suspicion.”
I felt inclined to believe him. Complicated crimes were the province of literature; reality was more banal (I was reminded of Petronius and his pirates, standing in chains on the beach). Furthermore, presumably Aubry possessed some experience in the subject matter. In novels (to return, for a moment, to literature) police officials are infallibly mistaken. In reality, they are something far worse, yet they tend not to fail, because crime, like madness, is a product of simplification and deficiency.
“Gentlemen,” said Doctor Montes, mystifyingly. “Will you allow me to make a toast?”
“In honor of what?” asked the Commissioner.
“Of the marvelous truths we are about to hear.”
I was secretly pleased by his response. What could one really hope for from an investigator who paid heed to the blathering of a drunk?
The Commissioner continued:
“We’ll begin with the motives. To our knowledge, there are two people with enduring motives to commit the crime.”
“In saying ‘to our knowledge,’ ” interrupted the drunk, with more logic than tact, “you acknowledge that there are things we do not know, and, as such, your explanation falls apart.”
“As I was saying, in terms of motive, there are two people who merit our particular attention,” continued the Commissioner, as if he had not even registered Montes’s impertinence. “The victim’s sister and Mr. Atuel.”
I was dismayed. I must confess, from that moment on, I had to struggle to follow Aubry’s explanations. My imagination wandered through a sort of cinematic spectacle; the scenes occurred in reverse order—first, my last conversations with Emilia; finally, the episode on the beach—and my interpretation of the events had changed as well; now, upon reviewing the arguments between the sisters, Emilia was the good girl. I thought of Mary and I told myself that a person’s actions have a trajectory, with changes and fluctuations, that extends beyond death. I thought of Emilia and I asked myself if, perhaps, I had begun to love her.
Aubry’s “explanation” had a touch of technical braggadocio about it; I will try to repeat it, in his words.
“Let us say that motives are classified as either enduring or fleeting,” he said, his expression stern. “In the present case, the primary motives involve questions of economics and of passion. This death benefits Miss Emilia Gutiérrez and Mr. Atuel. Miss Emilia is her sister’s heir. She will receive some pieces of jewelry that are, and I do not believe I exaggerate, quite valuable. And, as I learned through the interrogations, the fiancés had postponed their wedding because of economic difficulties. As for Mr. Atuel, he, too, will benefit from the death, through marriage. The motive of passion points to the same two people. It seems to be a well-known fact that the deceased was romantically involved with Miss Emilia’s fiancé. And so, we have jealousy, the catalyst for the tragedy. Unfortunately for Emilia, this is a purely feminine feature. But the entanglement between the fiancé and the victim must be considered a hotbed of violent passions, which also points to the first of the suspects. Moving on to the fleeting motives. The last quarrels occurred between the sisters, and largely excluded the fiancé—also unfortunate for Miss Emilia! Finally, let us move from the motives to the occasion. This is the point in our investigation where Atuel is ruled out: he was not in the hotel at the time of the death. He is residing in the New East End Hotel. The two sisters were staying in adjoining rooms. As you will all remember, on the night of the tragedy, Miss Emilia went down to their rooms alone. There she put the strychnine in the hot chocolate; waited for the poison to work; made the cup disappear (perhaps she threw it out a window; when the storm passes we will sift through the sand). Conclusion: unless the devil steps in to help her, is there any way out for the young lady?”
I suspected that there were imperfections in the logical structure of those arguments, but I was too confused and heavy-hearted to ferret them out. I managed to protest:
“Your explanation is psychologically impossible. You remind me of one of those novelists who focuses entirely on action but neglects the characters. Do not forget that, without the human element, no work of literature would ever endure. Have you thought closely about Emilia? I refuse to accept that such a healthy girl (albeit, a bit redheaded) could have committed this crime.”
I had gone a bit too far in trying to replace a logical argument with a mere emotional improvisation. The Commissioner said:
“I shall allow Victor Hugo to respond to you: ‘Agony makes a vice of a woman’s fingers. A girl in her fright can almost bury her rose-colored fingers in a piece of iron.’ ”
Doctor Montes appeared to awake from his lethargy.
“If I were not so drunk, I would tell you that your entire case is based upon presumptions,” he explained affectionately to the Commissioner. “You do not have a single shred of evidence.”
“That does not bother me,” replied Aubry. “I will have all the proof you want when we make her talk down at the station.”
I looked uncomprehendingly at that man who reasoned crudely but efficiently, who was ardently fond of literature, who was moved by Hugo, and who, without hesitation, was prepared to torture a young girl and to condemn her, perhaps unjustly.
I was surprised to find myself looking sympathetically at Montes. There had been much to forgive in him, but perhaps, as two doctors, together, we would make one good attorney.
And what was I to make of Emilia’s mysterious power? I, an essentially vindictive sort, felt inclined, on her behalf, to fraternize with a colleague who had earlier insulted me. At that very moment, I hit upon the answer to a question I had posed to myself a short while before. It was not love I was feeling: it was an ambiguous feeling of guilt. I was, in that limited world of Bosque del Mar, the dominant intellect, and my statements had guided the investigation. To reassure myself that I had only carried out my duty was insufficient, even as a consolation.
“An obvious tactic,” offered Montes, “would be to link the poison to someone; to verify, for example, who has bought strychnine at the pharmacy …”
“I have not overlooked that measure,” responded Aubry authoritatively. “I sent one of my officers with precise instructions: ask the pharmacist to whom he has sold strychnine in the last few months. The answer was categorical: to no one.”
With feigned casualness, I asked: “What is your plan, Commissioner?”
“My plan? To say not a word to the girl until the storm has passed. Then I’ll arrest her and take her in. I ask you all to remain calm. She will not be able to flee. Nor will she be able to destroy the evidence since, as you know, it is contained in the interrogations. Our mission, for the time being, is to remain quiet; wait for the storm to pass.”
I got up impatiently. I looked out the window. A drab, sandy dawn was filtering through the gale. The world outside looked like the ruins of a yellow fire. Spirals of sand, like frenzied smoke, whipped up from the dark shapes of fallen posts. Nevertheless, I asked myself whether, in fact, the storm was continuing with the same intensity, and with fear in my heart I searched for signs of impending calm.
I rested one hand, then the other, then my forehead, upon the glass. It felt cool to the touch, as though I had a fever.
19
DREAMS ARE OUR DAILY PRACTICE OF MADNESS. At the moment we go truly insane we say to ourselves: “This world is familiar to me. I have visited it nearly every night of my life.” Thus, when we believe that we are dreaming but are, in fact, awake, our sense of reason tilts into vertigo.
I heard Liszt’s Forgotten Waltz issuing from a piano, the same waltz Emilia had played the night before. Were we still locked up in that hotel, in the middle of a sandstorm, with the dead girl in her room? Or, inexplicably, had I lost mysel
f and begun retracing my steps backwards in time? I awoke that morning with the blind, choking, anguished need to escape that some patients experience in the fog of anesthesia. I could not open the window, but in a fit of hope I decided to leave the room. I opened the door: no relief, the same heaviness and inescapable sound of the Forgotten Waltz.
I climbed the stairs slowly. Now, as if waking from a dream, I was startled by reality, yet the music persisted like a relic of insanity. I went to seek its source, wary of its disappearance, already feeling nostalgic for the miracle of it.
I entered the dining room. Manning was playing solitaire next to the radio, from which issued the Forgotten Waltz.
“Do you not find this music inappropriate under the circumstances?” I asked him.
He looked at me as if he were just waking up.
“Music?… Forgive me … I wasn’t listening to it. I turned on the radio to hear the news. Then I started playing and forgot all about it.”
I switched the radio off.
“You are the king of solitaire,” I told him.
“Don’t believe it,” he replied. “A friend once told me that out of every thousand hands one will win seventy-five. I thought he was exaggerating.”
“And so, you are testing the theory?”
I realized that, with Manning, I was employing an uncharacteristically protective tone. He was so unusually small.
While he attempted to explain something about the calculation of probabilities, I moved closer to the window. It seemed impossible that there were sunny skies somewhere out there beyond our opaque one. I felt disgusted by those interminable sandy winds.
A spider sat in a corner of the window.
“They are bad luck at this hour of the day,” I declared. I seized a newspaper with which to squash it.
“Don’t kill it,” begged Manning. “It came out of the radio because of the music. I put it in that corner two or three days ago and just look at the web it has made.”
I looked. I saw a tangle of filthy threads and a dried-up fly.
“Huberman,” a voice boomed. “We need you.”
It was Cornejo. He was dressed in white flannel pants and a sport shirt. Something in his voice reminded me of a ship’s captain, issuing his final orders as the ship went down.
“Come to the office,” he continued. “They are going to seal the coffin. You should accompany Emilia.”
It is always a comfort to encounter individuals capable of valuing my qualities as a spiritual guide.
In the office, Atuel, Montes, and the Commissioner were with Emilia.
“I’m going downstairs,” declared Cornejo, and he departed, with perfect composure.
With a warm feeling of responsibility, I tried to approach Emilia. Atuel and Montes were talking with her. While I debated with the Commissioner about our prospects with the weather, I observed them; the men, at ease, indistinct; Emilia, uncomfortable in her chair, rigid, with that air of an actor on stage often displayed by those in pain. Suddenly, I wondered if Cornejo had brought me to the office because Emilia needed me, or because he needed me not to be elsewhere.
A nearby clanging of dishes and silverware announced the proximity of breakfast. I had no choice but to discard these disagreeable thoughts. Indeed, in the daily ceremony of the first meal, I see the characteristics of emotional poetry that are reborn through repetition, inviolable and pristine. I took the vial of arsenic from my pocket and deposited the requisite ten drops into the palm of my left hand. As I raised them to my mouth, I glimpsed a flash of surprise in Commissioner Aubry’s honest eyes. I blushed like a child.
Cornejo appeared in the doorway. He was pale, terrifyingly pale, as though a sudden old age had overcome him. He leaned heavily on the table.
“I must speak with you, Commissioner,” he said in a tired voice.
The Commissioner and I went over to him. Atuel appeared engrossed in the impenetrable view through the window. Emilia left, followed imprudently by Montes.
20
IN THE PAINTING BY ALONSO CANO, DEATH places a frozen kiss on the lips of a sleeping boy.
After leaving the office, Cornejo had gone in the direction of Mary’s room. He wanted someone, aside from the undertaker and some predictable policeman, to bid farewell to the dead girl at the moment of sealing her coffin. On his way, he met up with the undertaker who told him that he was going downstairs to look for some tools. Going along the hallway, Cornejo tore three pages off the “Lobster” espadrilles calendar to bring it up to date (I carefully list these details as if they were important to the story, or perhaps to the narrator, or simply to keep him from getting distracted, as in the case of the plans he had traced the other night on the tablecloth). Then he went into Mary’s room. At this point Cornejo fell suddenly silent, shuddered, and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. We thought he was going to faint. What he had witnessed was atrocious: a rush of intensity comes over us when we first recount the experiences we have by ourselves. What Cornejo saw (he assured us) was so horrible that ever since that moment, the mere image of the door to that room, in his memories and his dreams, would be utterly terrifying. In the lonely center of that room, in the heart of the silence and utter stillness of that house buried in the sand, he saw—in the wavering candlelight that seemed to project the shadows of some invisible foliage—Miguel, a mere child, kiss the lips of the dead girl.
“When he saw you, what did the boy do?”
“He ran away,” Cornejo replied, after a pause.
“Who remained in the room with the dead girl?”
“When I left, the typist entered. That boy has to be questioned immediately.”
“Doesn’t seem wise to me,” Aubry observed. “We’ll get into trouble with his aunt.”
I agreed.
“Children are very impressionable,” I said. “He might be traumatized by us, scarred for life.”
Doctor Cornejo looked at me as if he didn’t understand Spanish.
“If we speak to him so soon after the event,” the Police Chief remarked, “we’d be forcing him to lie. And you know very well that one fib leads to another …”
I was about to say something, but the Commissioner stopped me.
“Don’t say a word,” he begged me. “Don’t add anything to what you’ve said. What you’ve already said is perfect. It reminds me of Hugo’s words about harsh experiences when they happen too early in life, that they construct in the souls of children a formidable sort of scale upon which they weigh God.”
21
DOUBTLESSLY, IN THE COMMISSIONER’S mind, Emilia was still a key suspect. The others were thinking only of Miguel, or perhaps of Miguel and Cornejo. It seemed that the rest of us were excluded from the drama.
I felt an urgency to talk, to communicate what Aubry had confided in me. I knew that Emilia was in danger of being detained and even of being tortured. I believed in her innocence. I was convinced that a tactical defensive move was required. If we didn’t take immediate advantage of what I knew, later on it would be too late to defend her. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility.
I was held back by a grave uncertainty. At first I had thought of speaking with Emilia. In general I get along better with women than with men (of course Emilia was a young woman and the company I prefer is that of mature women). On the other hand, my news could frighten her. I took into consideration that it wasn’t prudent to tell secrets that could harm me to a person agitated by fear. I decided to speak to Atuel—a conversation that would be less pleasant, but favored by such merits as security and sanity, so reassuring to those of us whose lives are buttressed by an austere sense of balance. I concluded that Atuel’s links with Emilia would preclude any future risk for me.
I looked for him in Mary’s room, then in Emilia’s, in the dining room, the office, the basement. I methodically checked every room in the hotel. Aubry told me he hadn’t seen him; Andrea looked at me suspiciously; Montes threw me out of his room and threatened me with a lawsuit for trespassing;
the typist, as if distracted and in a rush, answered:
“He’s in Doctor Manning’s room.”
I found them lounging in armchairs, unforgivably submerged in the most inconceivable frivolity. Manning was reading the English novel that Atuel had stolen from Mary’s room. Atuel was reading one of those novels with a ridiculous harlequin cover, which Mary had translated. On a table placed between the readers were papers scribbled with notes, and pencils. They were taking notes on detective novels!
If Atuel was stooping to such childish activities, he must have been unaware of the Commissioner’s intentions. I was convinced that I had to warn him immediately. I thought, not without satisfaction, of the regret the poor man would feel when he found out about the danger his fiancée was in.
I must admit that surprising deceptions still awaited me, whose traces—now erased, of course—would not form scar tissue as quickly as I desired. When I declared: “I have something important to tell you,” Atuel’s interest in hearing what I had to say seemed less evident than his annoyance at the interruption of his unseemly reading. Without omitting any detail I reported the news to him. He listened to me with visible deference, thanked me, and, incredibly, returned immediately to his novel.
22
COMMISSIONER AUBRY GRABBED THE enormous embalmed albatross.
Tied to the neck of the bird with a green ribbon hung a little boy’s photograph, with the inscription, To My Dear Parents, a souvenir from Miguel. In the whiteness of its breast I saw all the nostalgia of the days in which the light, “shadow of the gods,” illuminates with limpid clarity the world beside the sea, days that, for us, seemed definitively buried under the sandstorm.