I didn’t know what to say. I opted for the truth.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“We will form, then, two committees,” Atwell ordered. “We have to carry weapons in case the fugitives resist. Commissioner Aubry, with an officer, will advance toward the northwest and will then turn in a fan motion toward the south. Doctor Huberman and I will first go in the direction of southeast, then we will turn toward the west. It’s now 10:20. Let’s try to be back in the hotel before 5 p.m. Those who have glasses, please take them.”
The Commissioner himself must have felt Atwell’s unassailable superiority. The plan was accepted without protest.
I went down to my room. I put on my beret, my specs, the scarf that Aunt Carlota knitted for me, my peacoat. I remembered our bivouac in Martinez, my years as a boy scout; the canteen bulged in one of my pockets; in the other, a packet of crackers.
28
WE WENT OUT INTO A MURKY BRIGHTNESS, devoid of both background and sky, amid gusts and spirals of sand, an empty and abstract world where all objects had disintegrated, where the air was almost thick, harsh, burning, painful. I walked stooped over as if seeking an invisible tunnel through which to ford the windstorm, groping, squinting, trying not to lose my companion.
I thought—alas, too late!—that it would have been wise to cross those shifting and raised heaps of sand joined by a rope, like mountain climbers.
By means of rapid-fire synthesis—any form of analysis was, at that moment, not feasible—I gleaned that I was in an unknown and hostile environment, facing problems and dangers I had not been brought up to handle, and that I should, without vacillating, place myself blindly in the hands of my companion. My only concern was to follow him—to where, I didn’t even ask myself. I applied myself to overcoming my immediate resistance, forgetting all notion of goal or purpose. My destiny, as I thought of it at that moment, was to wander in an uncertain world. I wasn’t even afraid that we would get lost; I was only afraid of losing Atwell.
“Wait here. I’ll be back in a second,” Atwell shouted.
I stood up straight. I was next to a solid white wall. Atwell had vanished.
My obscured vision and a perplexity influenced by recollections of L’Atlantide and of having dreamed of similar experiences elevated those white plains into a disproportionate and labyrinthine architecture. I looked more circumspectly. There were a few stone steps, a green door. I recognized the New East End Hotel.
Why had Atwell not wanted me to go with him? Asking me to wait for him inside would not have constituted an excessive show of courtesy. I had an uncontrollable impulse: to go up the steps two at a time, and knock on the door. I didn’t move. I had taken on the dangerous attitude of someone who has forsworn all responsibility, who has given himself over to the will of another. I didn’t dare to disobey Atwell’s orders.
Until then I had been aware only of peripheral sensations: the sand against my skin, my clothes whipped by the wind. Now from deep down in my chest radiated a slow intense burn of humiliation and resentment.
I continued waiting. Finally Atwell returned.
“Why did you leave me outside?” I asked abrasively.
“What did you say?”
Since nothing would now spare me the suffering I had endured, repeating the question was exasperating.
“I went to get my gun,” replied Atwell.
This was not the explanation I sought. Did the wind force him to answer me in this manner? Or some secret worry …?
I must have walked some fifty meters following Atwell before I understood what his words implied: the possibility—the only possibility I could then imagine—of getting entangled in a shooting match with Manning, which was not a pleasant thought.
We continued dragging ourselves through the sand, fighting the wind, until we reached an area where there were dark patches of esparto grass, where the consistency of the ground had changed—it now felt like muddy soil—where the storm was less murky, less severe. We paused. Gusts of two distinct smells were blowing: the more immediate one smelled damp and muddy; another, airier, seemed to come from something huge that was rotting. Atwell put one foot forward, tapping the ground to see if it was solid.
“We’ll have to go around the esparto bushes,” he said.
He moved ahead cautiously. I followed him. I remembered the story of the pharmacist’s horse that Esteban had told us.
I didn’t think that I could lose Atwell, or that Manning, a stranger and a criminal, could leap out from behind a bush. Sinking into the mud was the danger with which I was obsessed. We continued walking. At no moment did I wonder in which direction we were going, nor where the hotel was; all this was incumbent upon my companion.
I thought I saw a spider in the mud. Then another, and then many. They were crabs. I thought that if I fell, I would fall face down, in a swimming position. But then my face would sink into the mud and the crabs would be moving at the level of my eyes. It might be better to fall over backwards. Then I imagined the terror of knowing I was being assaulted by the timid, obstinate, multiple legs of invisible crustaceans.
We went around the last esparto bushes; we heard, mixed in with the screaming wind, a furious and distant sea, and before us opened the most horrendous and desperate vision: a black, slimy, endless beach quivering with crabs. “The bad part of seeing a spectacle like this,” I thought, “is that later one will surely find it again in hell.”
I tried to make out the sea along the horizon. I saw a promontory in the crab bed, something that looked like a boat dragged in by the current.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A whale,” he shouted.
I smelled the putrefaction, and imagined the enormous carcass of the whale, being swarmed and devoured by crabs.
“Let’s go back. We’ve got to continue searching.”
We went into the dark labyrinth of bushes. Atwell was walking too swiftly. Two or three times I had to ask him to wait for me. I was stopping continually, to test the ground. I didn’t want to die in that desolate place.
With suppressed joy I saw that Atwell was waiting for me. I came up to him.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
Something in the tone of his voice startled me.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I answered sincerely.
“He must be somewhere around here.” He took a black revolver out of his pocket. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
A mysterious numbness invaded my arms and legs. Atwell went around a bush and disappeared. I tried to shout. Then I thought that if I shouted I’d put Manning on his guard. Or had I simply lost my voice? Then I shouted. I realized immediately that no one would answer me. No one answered me. I ran without remembering the spongy danger I was skirting. I went around that esparto bush. I reached the place where I should have found Atwell. He wasn’t there.
There was a dead calm. I didn’t know when it had begun. I wondered if this was the end of the storm or just a break. The light was greenish and at times mauve. It didn’t correspond to any particular time of the day.
I shouted again. Nobody answered. I tried to retrace my steps, to return to the place where Atwell left me. I wasn’t sure if I was in the same spot. All the bushes looked alike. I sat on the ground.
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but Atwell’s disappearance had been too sudden. I wondered if he was hiding.
Then I asked myself a more important question: Why had I, having adopted as a fundamental rule of conduct never to expose myself to danger, never having signed any protest against any government, having favored the appearance of order over order itself, if in order to impose it violence would be required, having allowed people to step all over my ideals, in order not to defend them; why had I, having aspired only to be a private citizen and, in the lap of luxury of my private life, find the “hidden path” and refuge against dangers both external and within; why had I—I again exclaimed—involved myself in this prepo
sterous story and followed Atwell’s senseless orders? To bribe fate, I swore that if I got back alive to the hotel I would benefit from the lesson and never again allow vanity, sycophancy or pride to induce me to act without premeditation.
If I wanted Atwell to find me, I shouldn’t move. But would it be a good thing for Atwell to find me? Why had he disappeared? Why had he hidden? This esparto bush was doubtlessly the one I had wanted to find. This was the set place, the place where my enemies knew they could find me, where, without any risk, they could kill me.
I wanted to run away. I stayed there. Any movement was dangerous. Right now I wasn’t too far from the sand of the hotel. Going from one bush to another might move me irremissibly further into that labyrinth of vegetation and mud.
Controlling my fear, I faced the possibility of spending the night in the crab bog. I thought of the animals who prowled around there: cats, agile and perverse; herds of wild boar; and—when the wind ceased—birds of prey that would peck at me, confusing me with carrion. I imagined my body lying in the mud, asleep, on a moonless night. That mud was a moving weave of crab legs.
I had to protect myself from the whimsical combinations of my imagination. I had to wait, calmly. But how long had I already waited? I felt too impatient to look at my watch. I walked in any direction, almost without taking care to sidestep the bushes, stooping because the windstorm was getting worse. Suddenly, I thought I could again feel the sand on my face. I started to run, lost my footing, fell in the mud. When I stood up, wet and trembling, the wind whipping my face carried no trace of sand.
I felt that I was about to lose control over my nerves. I’m a doctor. I’m not unaware of symptoms. I resorted to my flask of rum.
The next thing I remember of that horrible afternoon, I was walking without knowing where, tired, continually falling down, now used to the touch of the crabs, guided by a minimum of consciousness. I thought I saw in the distance, through an opening in the esparto bushes, the broad expanse of sand. When, finally, I reached the last bush, I found I was again on the crab beach, with the sound of the sea in the distance and the carcass of the whale. I was in the place where Atwell and I had started out. I had followed the fatal circle that disoriented men follow to the left and animals to the right (or the other way around: I don’t remember).
I think I cried. I think there was a suspension of my consciousness, as if beyond despair I had found sleep or stupefaction. Afterwards I felt a slight sensation of warmth. I opened my eyes. My hand seemed to radiate a purplish halo. I looked at the sky. My indifferent eyes contemplated a feeble and remote sun.
Impulsively I consulted my watch. It was 4:35 p.m. I looked at the sun, and at the sea. With renewed hope, I turned north.
29
EXHAUSTED, BRUISED, COVERED WITH DRY mud and sand, my eyes burning, my head aching and congested, I made it to the hotel. I had managed to overcome the hardships of the walk, heartened by a single goal: I would not let anything or anybody postpone my hot bath, a witch-hazel massage, the tray of stew with eggs, salads, fruits, and mineral water that Andrea would bring to my bed.
How I had longed for the moment I would find myself beside the entrance to the hotel! To enter, I didn’t even have to knock on the door. It opened magically, though the Commissioner was there, with his hand on the doorknob, as well as Montes, welcoming and drunk. With what undeniable and serene conviction that interior and those objects formed part of the magic of which the poet never speaks: the magic of the domestic, of the everyday! I arrived at that hotel like a man who’s been shipwrecked boards his rescuing ship, or better yet, like Ulysses, “to his beloved island, to his hearth in Ithaca.”
“We’d already decided that you’d run away,” asserted Montes.
Again the sand, the crabs, the mud: now in my fellow man’s soul. “The winter wind is not as inclement as your brother’s heart.”
“Atwell didn’t come back with you?” Aubry asked.
“No,” I said, “we lost sight of each other. And the boy?”
They hadn’t found him. I asked about Manning.
“Here I am,” the latter replied.
He waved his pipe in greeting and smiled good-naturedly, amid a rain of ashes.
I hurried to answer: “I never suspected you.”
These words, brilliant and opportune in my conversation with Montes, were surprising to Manning. Barely concealing his reaction, he raised his eyebrow and looked at me glumly.
“The storm will pass,” affirmed the doctor, going over to the window. “I see a seagull.”
Manning intervened:
“What are your plans?”
I thought he was speaking to me. I was ready to declare “a bath, a massage,” etc., when the Commissioner responded:
“To recover the jewelry.”
While the others argued—carrying on in their perplexity, ignorance, poverty of imagination—I was receiving an inspiration. A dilemma presented itself to me: pleasures or duty. I didn’t hesitate.
“I know where the jewelry is,” I said, stressing each syllable. “I know who the criminal is.”
The effect of this declaration exceeded my most optimistic expectations. The Commissioner lost his composure, Manning, his impenetrability, Montes, his drunkenness. The three of them looked at my mouth as if they were waiting for the judgment of God to be pronounced.
“The criminal is the boy,” I finally announced. “He felt an unhealthy passion for Mary, and resentment, and fear of being exposed …”
“Do you have any proof?” asked the Commissioner.
“I know where the jewels are,” I replied, triumphantly. “Follow me.”
I walked ahead of them resolutely, and somewhat pompously. Now preceded, now followed by our shadows, we went down the stairs. We went along the dark hallway. We reached the room where the trunks were kept.
“A match,” I demanded.
We lit the candle. I pointed resolutely ahead with my index finger.
“There are the jewels.”
The Commissioner lifted up the bird.
“Too light,” he pronounced, shaking his head. “Straw and feathers.”
Before I could recover, an indisputable pocketknife opened the bird’s chest. The Commissioner was right.
I will always register my defeats and my victories with equanimity. May nobody call me an unreliable narrator.
My error—if this can be called an error—does not offend me. An ignorant person wouldn’t have committed it. I am a literato, a reader, and as often occurs with men of my class, I confused reality with a book. If a book speaks to us about an embalmed bird, and then the disappearance of certain jewels, what other hiding place would the author resort to without appearing ridiculous?
30
I DON’T THINK THAT MY INTERVENTION CAN be called a failure; I did not feel annoyance or shame, or resentment. I felt, only, an urgent need to brush the mud off myself and sink into a hot tub of water, to nourish myself with salads and fruits, on a soft mattress, horsehair pillows and clean sheets.
Astutely I said:
“Gentlemen, let’s go into the dining room.”
With this semblance of an invitation I walked them over toward Andrea’s habitat. My veiled purpose was to order my cousin to make dinner.
When my companions had taken their seats around the narrow dining table, Aubry looked at us somberly and stated:
“I am pleased to see us all gathered in the aperitif section.”
As for me, I gave in to an unforgiveable weakness: I sat down. I thought that after that utterance I couldn’t withdraw. (I thought: “I’ll stand up in a few minutes.”) Immediately the typist came in with the bottles and wine glasses, and Manning began to speak.
Some people are immune to the experiences of others. Manning was one of them. With irritation I heard him assert that he knew the truth about Mary’s death.
Nevertheless, I must admit that his explanation didn’t begin, as might have been expected, with more or less sarcastic all
usions to a companion-in-arms who had been led astray by literary imagination … Urbanity or prudence?
“I already explained to these gentlemen,” began Manning, indicating the Commissioner and Montes, “that I went over to the New East End Hotel to look for a book. Here it is.”
He took out of his pocket a book with an angular design of green, purple, black and white on the cover. Puzzled, we passed it around, silently. I think I remember that the author was English, Phillpotts.
“Read on page twenty the marked paragraph,” Manning continued.
The Commissioner put on his tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and, moving his finger faster than his eye, he read Mary’s letter in a loud and hesitant voice, her interrupted farewell. But now it was a long letter, with details that didn’t correspond to Mary, Atwell, and Emilia, which ended on page twenty-one with the words “your grateful friend” signed by someone named BEN.
“What does this mean?” asked Aubry.
“It means,” replied Manning, “that Inspector Atwell took home one of the novels translated by Miss Mary.”
Then he was silent, as if waiting for his words to obliterate us.
“Let us recapitulate,” he then said. “On the eve of the murder two incidents occur that doubtlessly convince the criminal that the moment to act has come. On the beach Atwell becomes angry because Mary insists upon taking a swim despite the fact that the ocean is rough. For the detectives this argument would be an indication that Atwell did not want Mary to die. Let’s look now at the rescue. Emilia saves Mary. So then Emilia doesn’t want Mary to die. Another deduction the judicious detective expects: Cornejo (who had given Mary his consent for her to go swimming) is a possible, though not yet credible, suspect. But even with all these arguments one can still contend that we don’t have any proof that Mary was in danger. She herself denied it. Cornejo, an expert in winds and tides, judged that it wasn’t dangerous to take a swim. The possibility that Emilia and Atwell were accomplices has been insinuated. I, however, do not believe that Emilia is involved in the crime. In that nautical episode she was, perhaps, Atwell’s unintentional instrument. The movements of a person fighting waves so as to avoid death by drowning can appear, even to someone watching from nearby, playful displays of happiness, and the opposite is also true. Atwell had created a general state of apprehension with regards to Mary’s swim. Afterwards, when he shouted, as the girl was swimming out to sea, ‘She can’t get back in,’ nobody doubted him. Nostalgia for melodrama; the feeling that life, even when adventurous, doesn’t fully satisfy; a desire for cooperation that proclaims, beyond differences and antagonisms, the secret brotherhood of man, prevent us from easily rejecting any message about a fellow human being in danger. Doctor Huberman himself, whom it doesn’t seem wise to exclude from the list of suspects and to consider as an impartial witness, thought that Mary was drowning.”