So you won’t misconstrue the fact that I asked for that aid, so you’ll believe that on that Sunday when I left my office, I hadn’t even thought of it, so you’ll know that what was burning up my eyes was that dossier of Oriana’s and nothing else. It was not fear that drove me to turn to the one person who was not on the list that Tristan Pareja had slipped into your hands, the one person you couldn’t use against me, the last secret contact that I never mentioned to anybody: former Inspector Federico Jarvik. That’s not what he’s called, of course—but most of the names that I mention here are not the real ones, except for the name you inherited from the fornicators who produced you, Mavarello, and I keep confusing that one.
Why should I make your task easy? Haven’t you declared in interviews that names are no more than “a muddled and precarious mixture of syllables,” whereas the face is eternal? Haven’t you said that? Haven’t you said that even the face of someone who was born with the most undistinguished features in the world, that even that face you could transform into something wonderful? If what you say is true, then you should be able, as I am, to identify every person immediately without needing to know what sad, fragile sounds their parents gave to them—like branding cattle, Doctor—at birth.
Because it was that talent which brought to me one day precisely the stone-faced man with the impenetrable eyes whom I have baptized with the name of Federico Jarvik. He didn’t come to talk to you, Doctor. He came to talk to me.
He strode directly into the small office I had next to Pompeyo Garssos’s vast chambers and sat down in front of me. He remained there for a couple of seconds without saying a word, looking at me parsimoniously, as if he were trying to fix me in his memory and it were costing him no end of trouble.
“Jarvik,” he stated finally. “Bureau of Investigations.” And then, almost at once, “Why should I show you my I.D.? You have ways of knowing that I’m telling the truth. I’ll meet you at the corner coffee shop. I don’t want to talk here.”
I wondered whether to accept his invitation. Not because I was afraid that the police might be onto my photographic adventures, although I’ll admit to the faintest hint of disquiet about that. All human beings feel revulsion when they watch their enemies eating, isn’t that so, Doctor? But I don’t know one who had to look on, as I did, while members of his family devoured the food in front of his hungry eyes. Naturally I could steal from one plate or another and concoct a supper of odds and ends. It’s only that those mouths hypnotized me: it was as if they were chewing me, transferring energy from my body so they could grow more and eat more each day. At times hatred stuns you, Doctor. I would awaken from my daze and all the plates would be empty already, and my parents and brothers and sisters would be getting up from the table and there was not a scrap left to purloin. Their faces like those dirty plates. The tongues licking the lips as sweepers wash from a city street the hairs of a dog which has just been squashed by a drunken truck. Have you never seen the way in which people salivate before a meal, have you never forced yourself to imagine the descent into the secret cesspools of the body, where neither you nor anyone else has ever gone? How can you, after that, break bread in somebody’s company? For me it was much better not to sit down at the table. Not that one. Not any other one. Ever again. From the moment I decided to pick among the dregs of their food, pass the mire that they left behind through the sieve of my eyes, I never again sat down at my enemies’ table. I can assure you they did not miss me.
Fortunately the impassive and prim lips of the inspector were sipping only a cup of coffee. When I approached the table, without taking a seat, he hesitated, as if he thought I might be the waiter bringing him a glass of water. But I realized that he had, after all, managed to recognize me.
“It’s taken me years to find you,” he said, after I rejected his offer of refreshment. “I am now able to comprehend why it was so complicated.”
I answered that I did not know what he was referring to and that if he wished to speak to the director, today was not the best day to—
“I came to meet you,” he interrupted. “You’re responsible for all the cases that have been solved, the ones that take care of the false I.D.s, aren’t you? And don’t make me lose valuable time telling me it’s Pompeyo, because my observations and statistics prove that he never fingered a false license before you arrived, and that if you leave, he’ll never finger another one.”
A more vulnerable person would have felt alarmed at what seemed like the end of anonymity. But it would not be necessary to change employment, alter my name again, surreptitiously build another network. My gaze had already infiltrated the defenses that surrounded that young inspector’s face. His implacability was no more than a façade. My zoom could, any evening, discover the buttons that had to be undone in order to domesticate him.
It turned out, however, that the definitive photo, which I snapped of him a couple of weeks later, was never required. The inspector treated me with no hostility. As if he respected me. He had no intention, he said, of disturbing the privacy that I quite evidently cherished to such a degree. If I did not wish to use my rather uncommon skills to their fullest in some superior position, he was not one to dispute my choice. And if there was anything that he could do in order to facilitate the sort of inquiries in which, or so it seemed, I was immersed … But he had, if I did not mind, some favors to ask me. It was confidential work, so much so that he preferred not to make the request through official channels. He did not think that the Director of the Archives should be involved. Moreover, I should tell no one that I had been contacted. That was why, from now on, we would always meet outside the office: at this coffee shop, at his house, or at mine if I authorized such an invasion of my own space.
The services the inspector demanded of me were of two sorts. The first was not so different from what I had already been doing: he would give me certain photos, I would discover their real identity in my files. The second service posed a more challenging task: if he were to describe a face to me, rich in detail, would I be able to pinpoint, among the millions of photos in the archives, the corresponding person?
And if I did not cooperate?
“You’ll cooperate,” Jarvik said. “It’s easier than running.”
He was right. Now that he had hunted me down, he wouldn’t leave me alone—not a detective as tenacious as he had proved to be. He had figured out my skill for remembering faces, though he did not seem to suspect what I did with my camera. If I just disappeared and resurfaced at another, similar post, he would trace me to my new hideaway after a couple of years, maybe months, and then he wouldn’t be as easygoing with me as he now was. It was better to have him as an ally. I didn’t care, after all, what he did with the faces and data I’d bestow upon him. I even said to myself—so you can see, Doctor, that something in the desultory ice of my eyes already anticipated Pareja’s betrayal—that it might be good to establish some independent contact to whom I could turn in case my network broke down. It was only years later that I realized that it was also to Jarvik’s advantage to keep our collaboration in the shadows. When the government changed and they kicked him out of the bureau or he resigned or something of the sort—I have never been interested in politics, Doctor—he let me know that he intended to continue as a private investigator and that he saw no reason to end a relationship that had been so fruitful. If I wanted to continue assisting him, he still had excellent contacts inside the police and everywhere else, and he hoped that someday he would find a way of compensating me for my services.
I had never needed any such compensation. Up until now. At last, after years of granting him favors, it was my turn to ask him for one. Unless you, Doctor, or Pareja or another of your cronies had gotten in touch with him before I had.
But Jarvik had escaped you, Doctor. I knew it as soon as he opened the door to his apartment and he was able, with the usual strenuous effort, his eyes wrinkling up, his face frozen into its habitual mask, to identify me. And what is more, he still
needed me. Not only had you not poisoned him against me, Doctor; it was obvious that he did not even know that I had lost access to my files.
“What luck,” Jarvik said. “I was going to give you a call at your office. I’ve a little piece of work for you. Come in, come in.”
I asked him if we could take a walk around the block. I could imagine the Sunday lunch about to be served in there, the inspector’s kids making a hullabaloo, his wife in her wheelchair, her relatives hovering nearby, all of them preparing to sit down at the table and devour each other. I promised him that my problem would not take up much time.
“I almost called you today,” Jarvik said, shutting the door and starting off with me. “It’s an urgent case. There are too many other people trying to solve it.”
“If I can be of assistance.” Although I had no intention of helping him. ‘Who is it this time?”
“Here’s the photo,” Jarvik said, taking an envelope from his pocket and passing it to me.
I put the envelope away without looking at it. “I’ll have an answer by Thursday,” I answered, selecting the day when I was sure to be far from this former inspector and just as far from this country.
“Don’t you want to take a look?” those scissored, mathematical, exact lips of his demanded.
I opened the envelope to cut the conversation short.
It was a photo of Oriana. Her photo at four and a half years old.
Just my bad luck. No image taken by someone else could capture her as I would have; but if the snapshot had been at least a recent one, no matter how ungraceful the photographer, I might have had some clue to understanding that adult Oriana, that perverse woman from whom my childlike Oriana had fled. It was of no use to have a pale, indistinct, ineffective photo of the very same warmblooded girl that my body had been conquering and exploring in my own bed less than two hours ago. And whom I hoped was still there. Because if Jarvik was looking for her, then it was true that she was really in danger; if he, and who knows what other men, were on the trail, it was going to be more complicated than I had presumed to cross the border with her. Not only that: how could I possibly take your photograph, Marvorelli? How to enter your most private chambers with Oriana by my side, now that I could never again leave her alone at home? Two days after having made fun of Patricia’s despair, I was reduced to her selfsame defenselessness. Or perhaps even worse: if Jarvik began to apply to me those exceptional observational powers that had made him the most famous detective in the country, if he began to suspect that I was hiding the very woman he was seeking … He was already surprised by the time I was taking with the damned photograph.
“So you’ll crack the case by Thursday?” Jarvik asked, but his thin lips exhaled sarcasm. As if they were tasting my hesitancy.
I tried to make my voice stay calm. “And this girl. What did she do?”
“I’m looking for the adult, not for the girl.”
Since it was no longer possible to get the dossier from him, as had been my original intention, I used the occasion to attempt to squeeze whatever additional information about Oriana he might have. “You haven’t got a more recent shot?” I asked.
“That’s the only one.” A slit of mistrust began to form in the former inspector’s eyes. I had never before shown any interest in any of the cases he had brought me. They must have done something, I supposed, those men, those women, if the police were after them. I never asked about them. And now, only because it was so unprecedented that he should have passed me the photograph of a child, was it possible to add yet one more comment without, or so I hoped, awakening his misgivings.
“She doesn’t seem very threatening,” I said.
“Appearances,” Jarvik answered. “If you knew what she …
“What she …”
“If you trace her, I’ll tell you the whole story. As far as I know it. And that’s a promise.” And with this, Jarvik stopped in front of his apartment building. We had walked around the block. “But maybe you’d like to tell me what’s eating you up?”
While we strolled along, I had been debating with myself how to get into your hospital, Doctor, now that I would be burdened by Oriana’s presence. It was a situation I had never had to live: the girl I loved and protected was gradually turning me into a visible man. I felt, of a sudden, as if a sign or a scar had started to grow in the absence that I call my face, something that would identify me, something that would stop me from passing through all doors as I always had. To take that photo I was going to need help and that help at this point could come only from Jarvik. There was no one else. Risky? Not if you know people’s secret faces, not if you have discovered the threads with which to pull them.
And I had Jarvik trapped. Jarvik was going to swallow the absurd story I would concoct for him because he was, in the final analysis, a sentimental bastard. I had surmised it since our first encounter in the coffee shop, and I had confirmed it later when I took the precise snapshot of his face pulverized by weakness. Discreet, that snapshot. From a distance, that snapshot. I didn’t want him realizing what I was doing. Because I had caught him in a tedious coupling with his invalid wife—and it was so clear that he did not love her and so clear that she bored him and so clear that he remained with her out of pity. Afterward, I studied those features from close up, carefully inspecting that face which was melting in the fatigue of a sexual act that afforded him no pleasure, that face which became flabby just before his genitals became tame and flaccid themselves. Mashed potatoes, I thought, with satisfaction. In spite of the severity that his visage announced, in spite of the propaganda that his steel-like lips trumpeted, he was a softy, a tender heart, a man who cries with the soaps and jumps into fights on the side of the underdogs. In other words, on the side of the losers. Under so much supposed firmness, mushy emotionalism. Unable to hurt someone who is downcast. In order to fool him, to get him to suspend that mind of his which analyzed and penetrated everything, it would be enough to feed him some romantic nonsense.
“Inspector, I’m … well, you’ve noticed, no doubt, that I don’t speak much about myself. But the truth, Inspector, is that there is a woman who … well, I like her. I would rather, for obvious reasons, not reveal her name. I am trying to convince her that she should not undergo an operation with … do you know a surgeon called Miravelli?”
“Mavirelli?” The former inspector corrected me, letting a skim of curiosity run down his face like paint. “Has she got some sort of sickness in her face?”
“She thinks she’s … ugly, Inspector.”
In order to build a solid lie, Doctor—you know this better than I do, you who make a new deception out of each old face you operate—one must always start out with a nucleus of truth. So I allowed myself to evoke Alicia while I talked to Jarvik—Alicia and not Oriana. I knew that the passion, and the pain, that would seep into my eyes would shake him. “She’s a fool. She compares herself to the TV stars who sell panty hose and convertibles and tropical vacations. She wants a new face.”
“Tell her,” Jarvik erupted, “that to be beautiful all you need is the love of one person.”
Those were the words I was expecting from him. Those were the words I had once dared timidly to murmur to Alicia.
I went on. “I’ve gone to visit her every day this week,” my deceiving throat said to Jarvik, “and she won’t listen to me. But this morning, I went to see her this morning, and the poor thing had her face all bandaged up. Already. The operation’s going to be on Tuesday and she’s already … I couldn’t stand it.”
“Go and talk to her again,” insisted Jarvik, moved as if he were speaking to somebody he had once loved. “Tell her that beauty comes from inside. Tell her that doctors do not have magical solutions.”
“That’s what I told her.” And it was true. That was what I had told Alicia. “And I must have been convincing, because she gave me one last chance.” Although Alicia had not given me that last chance. “And that is why, sir, I need your help.”
“I
t has never been said of me,” Jarvik separated each word as if it were a watermelon seed that had to be spat out, “that I was not ready to help someone in love.”
He was about to fall into my trap. So I sweetened the story up some more: “The problem is that she demands proof of my love.”
“Like a fairy tale!”
“Like a fairy tale, Inspector. She will consider canceling the operation. If I …”
“If you …”
“If I can take a snapshot of the doctor in the midst of one of his disgusting operations. It would have to be tomorrow. I have no problem, as you can well imagine, entering the hospital by myself. What is more difficult is getting her inside. And I insist on her accompanying me. Only up to the operating room. She can wait outside. I can take care of the rest. That’s what I need you for.”
I could read the mistrust written in Jarvik’s steady, immutable eyes. His reasoning had not been totally eclipsed: it still flashed warnings to him. And I knew that a man as methodical as he would not believe my sincerity—I who had up to that moment always been so silent, arrogant, reserved—if I did not entice him into the whirlpool of my new persona as victim, as surprising to him as it was to me. To allay his suspicions, he had to see me as essentially debased, as debased as his own wife.
It was not as easy as I had planned it years before, when I had taken that photo, when I whispered to myself that this would be the way to entangle him if some day in the future it became necessary.