The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  The coast is clear. Standing between the laundry to shield himself from prying eyes, and having already checked that the tube carrying the message is tied with silk thread to the bird’s tail, Fumagal releases the pigeon, which flutters for a moment, gaining height, then flies off between the towers of the city heading for the bay. In a few short minutes, the message detailing the points of impact of the last five bombs will be in French hands. The very same points are marked on his map of Cádiz, the fretwork of penciled lines growing every day into a fan that spreads out across the city from the eastern walls. On the map, the maximum range of the bombs has extended a whole inch westwards—there is one on the edge of the Murga and another on the corner of the Calle San Francisco and Calle Aduana Vieja—all this without following winds, which increase the trajectories. Things may improve further when the east winds pick up. Perhaps.

  Gregorio Fumagal feeds the pigeons, pours water into their drinking trough and closes the dovecote. Then he goes back inside, leaving the glass door to the terrace open, and descends the short staircase to his workshop. There on the marble slab, among the glassy stores of the stuffed animals on perches and in display cases, his newest creation is beginning to take shape: the macaque monkey from the East Indies looks splendid. The taxidermist is pleased. Having skinned the animal, removed and cleaned the bones, he left the hide to soak for several days in a solution of alum, sea salt and cream of tartar bought at Frasquito Sanlúcar’s shop—where he also acquired some new hair dye which does not run when he sweats—before creating the internal framework using thick wire, cork and stuffing made from oakum inside the reconstructed skeleton, then slowly fitting it inside the carefully prepared pelt.

  It is a hot morning. The light streaming through the terrace door and spilling down the steps grows brighter as the sun reaches its height, illuminating the workshop and making the glass eyes of the stuffed animals glitter. The steeple bell at the nearby Iglesia de Santiago rings out—the midday Angelus—and is answered by the clock on the dresser chiming twelve. Then once again there is silence, broken only by the sound of Fumagal’s instruments. He works skillfully using needles, awls and string, filling and securing the cavities, checking against the drawings lying next to the table. Preliminary sketches of the pose he has decided on for the monkey: standing upright on a dried, varnished branch, the tail loose and carefully curled, the face looking slightly over the left shoulder, staring at the future viewer. In choosing the right pose for the macaque, the taxidermist consulted natural history books, engravings from his collection and drawings he himself has made. Not a single detail is overlooked. This is the most delicate part of the process: finding a lifelike posture that will complement the body, taking great care over the eyelids, the ears, the mouth, the texture of the fur. To a large extent this determines the final preparations, the finishing touches that will make—or fail to make—the piece lifelike, accentuating or marring its perfection. Gregorio Fumagal is aware that to overlook any imperfection—the slightest graze on the skin, a careless stitch, a tiny insect left inside the stuffing—will disfigure the piece and, over the years, may ruin it. After almost thirty years in this profession, he knows that every stuffed animal is still, in some sense, alive, and each ages differently under the effects of light, dust, the passage of time and the subtle physical and chemical processes taking place inside. Dangers the taxidermist must guard against using all his skill and every technique of his art.

  A tremor in the air that makes the glass panes in the terrace door quiver is followed, a moment later, by a muffled explosion, the sound dampened by the distance and by the houses in between. Interrupted just as he begins sewing the base of the macaque’s tail using overcast stitches, Fumagal stops and listens intently; the hand holding the threaded needle hovers in midair. This one did explode, he thinks as he goes back to his work. And not far away: somewhere near the Iglesia del Pópulo, probably. No more than five hundred paces. The possibility that a bomb might one day strike his house or even him has occurred to him from time to time. Any one of his pigeons might provoke a reply that could be dangerous or even fatal. The taxidermist has many plans for his old age—some likely, some unlikely—but the idea of sacrificing himself like Samson in the Temple of the Philistines is not among them. But every game has its rules, and this one is no exception. In fact he would not care if a bomb were to fall nearby, ideally on the Santiago church, silencing the bells which ring out every day—with particular insistence on Sundays and holy days—accompanying the hours he spends here. If there is an excess of anything in Cádiz—a microcosm of all that is bad about Spain—it is convents and churches.

  In spite of his affinity for those laying siege to the city—or rather for the Enlightenment tradition of the previous century, to which the Revolution and the Empire are heirs—there are some things Gregorio Fumagal finds difficult to tolerate, and the Napoleonic restoration of the cult of religion is one of these. The taxidermist is merely a humble merchant and artisan who has read books and studied creatures both living and dead. But he believes that mankind, ignorant of Nature and failing to abide by its laws, has rejected knowledge in favor of imaginary systems; inventing gods and the priests and kings anointed by them, meekly submitting to men who are their equals and who exploit this fact to enslave them; spurning reason and unaware of the key fact: everything that exists does so within the natural order, in which chaos is as common as its opposite. Having read the philosophers on these matters, and studied death at close hand, Fumagal is of the opinion that Nature cannot act otherwise. It is Nature and not some impossible God that dispenses order and disorder, pleasure and pain. It is Nature that propagates both good and evil, in a world in which neither screams nor prayers can alter the immutable laws of creation and destruction, their fearful inevitability. It is within the order of things that fire should burn; that is its nature. It is also within the order of things that man should kill and devour other animals whose flesh he needs. And that man should do evil, since it is in his condition to hurt. There is no more edifying example of his theory than death accompanied by terrible suffering beneath a heaven incapable of sparing one whit of that pain. Nothing could be more instructive about the nature of the world; nor more comforting when confronted with the notion of a superior intelligence whose intentions, should they exist, are criminally unjust. This is why the taxidermist believes that there is a consolatory, almost Jacobin moral certainty to be found in terrible disasters and atrocities: earthquakes, epidemics, wars, massacres. Even in the most terrible crimes which clarify the mind, and force mankind to face the cold reality of the Universe.

  “YOU SHOULD BE thinking about this in terms of physics, of concrete experiments,” says Hipólito Barrull. “Looking for some supernatural explanation is ridiculous in this day and age.”

  Rogelio Tizón listens attentively as he walks, head bowed, staring at the cobbles of the Plaza de San Antonio. He clasps his hat and his cane behind his back. The walk has cleared his head after the three games of chess at the Café del Correo: two won by the professor, the third a stalemate.

  “Question reason,” Barrull continues.

  “Reason laughs in my face when I question it.”

  “Analyze the visible world, then. Anything at all rather than resorting to this hocus-pocus.”

  The comisario looks around. The sun has already set and the temperature dips as the sky grows dark above the lookout towers and terraces. A number of caleches and sedans are stationed outside Burnel’s teashop and the Café de Apolo, and in the fading light crowds of people are strolling along the plaza and the nearby Calle Ancha; well-heeled families from the neighboring houses, children running and bowling hoops, priests, soldiers, penniless refugees slyly looking for cigar stubs in the gutters. Serene and confident, the city is taking its ease among the demi-columns, the orange trees and the marble benches, enjoying the leisurely summer sunset. As ever, the war seems very remote. Almost unreal.

  “The visible world,” Tizón protests, “i
mplies that what I’ve just told you is true.”

  “And therefore it is. Unless the visible world has tricked you, which is possible. You have to remember that sometimes unforeseen coincidences do occur. Effects whose apparent causes are utterly unrelated.”

  “There have already been four separate instances, Professor. Or perhaps three plus one. The similarities are obvious, and they are clearly connected. I simply cannot work out the key.”

  “And yet there must be one. In the order of things there are no unprompted actions. Bodies act upon one another. Each alteration is the result of factors both visible and unseen … Nothing can exist without them.”

  They leave the square, and still at a leisurely pace, head toward the Mentidero. Behind the window shutters and in some of the shops that are still open, lights are beginning to flicker. Barrull, who lives alone and usually has a frugal dinner, has a hankering for an aubergine tortilla from the inn on the Calle del Veedor. They go inside and lean for a while on the counter next to the lamp which emits an oily black smoke, among crates of overseas produce and wineskins. The professor drinks a small glass of pajarete*2 and the comisario a glass of cold water.

  “In general terms, your murderer is not an isolated case,” Barrull continues while he waits for his food to arrive. “Every human being acts by virtue of his own energy, and that passed on by the bodies with which he interacts. For every effect there is always a cause. A link.”

  The tortilla arrives, steaming and succulent. The professor offers some to Tizón, who shakes his head.

  “Think about men in ancient times,” Barrull continues. “They saw planets and stars moving across the heavens, but they did not understand why until Newton explained the forces that heavenly bodies exert on each other.”

  “Gravity …”

  “Exactly. Some forces or causes can remain beyond our understanding for centuries. Like the connection between these bombs and this murder. Their criminal gravity.”

  The professor pensively eats a piece of tortilla, reflecting on what he has just said. After a moment, he nods vehemently.

  “If a body has mass, it falls,” he goes on. “If it falls, it will collide with other bodies and communicate that motion to them. It acts upon them. Everything is governed by the laws of physics. Including men and bombs.”

  He takes a sip of wine. With satisfaction, he contemplates the contents of his glass in the lamplight, then takes another sip. When he sets it down again, a smile plays across his equine face.

  “Give me matter and motion, Descartes said, and I will create a world … or destroy it.”

  “But this time the crime was committed before the bomb fell,” Tizón points out.

  “That has happened only once. And we do not know why.”

  “Listen, the murderer has killed four times. Each time the manner was identical. And the fact is that shortly beforehand, a bomb fell in precisely the same spot. Do you really think coincidence has anything to do with it?… Reason tells me that this connection exists.”

  “You will have to wait for further proof.”

  At this, both men fall silent. Tizón turns and looks out of the door to the street. When he turns back to Barrull, he can see the man is deep in thought. Through the reflection of the lamp on his spectacles, his half-closed eyes glitter with curiosity.

  “Tell me something, Comisario … If you had the choice at this moment to catch the murderer or give him another opportunity to prove your theory, what would you choose?”

  Tizón does not answer. Holding Barrull’s gaze, he slips a hand into the pocket of his frockcoat, takes a Havana cigar from the Russian leather case and puts it between his teeth. He offers one to the professor, who shakes his head.

  “At heart you are a man of science,” Barrull says, clearly amused.

  Setting a few coins on the counter, they go out into the street where the last of the daylight is fading. Other shadows stroll unhurriedly along the street. Neither man speaks until they reach the Mentidero.

  “The problem,” says Tizón finally, “is that this reduces the possibility of catching him … Until now, we thought we might catch him by keeping an eye on the sites where bombs had exploded. Now, there is no way of anticipating his movements.”

  “Let us be logical,” argues Barrull after a moment’s thought. “The man has killed four times, and on three of these occasions, the bomb fell before the murder was committed. In the most recent case, however, it fell afterward. It is impossible to establish whether the connection was unfounded from the start, the result of an error or random chance, which would invalidate everything. A second possibility is that the connection is genuine, that the sequence has been interrupted or changed by chance or circumstances. There is a third possibility, that the modus operandi has changed—whatever that may mean—that this represents a new phase in the series, the reason for which we do not yet know but which must have a logical explanation. Or, at the very least, it must not conflict with the natural laws of the world in which both murderer and policeman exist.”

  “Careful with the word chance, professor,” warns Tizón. “You yourself told me it is a common excuse.”

  “That’s very true. It is the explanation that requires the least effort. All too often, we use the idea of chance to conceal our limited understanding of natural causes. Of the immutable law whose mysterious strategy moves the pawns on the chessboard … We use chance to explain observable incidents in which we are incapable of discerning order or method. Man, in fact, attributes to chance all those effects for which the connection to cause remains hidden.”

  Tizón has stopped to strike a match against the wall. He brings the flame to the tip of his cigar.

  “All is possible, when ’tis a god contrives,” he murmurs, blowing smoke to extinguish the match.

  In the darkness, he cannot see Barrull’s face, but he hears the laugh.

  “Well, well, Comisario. Still puzzling over Sophocles, I see.”

  They stroll across the Plaza Mentidero toward the ramparts and the sea, weaving through dark groups of people huddled on benches, on chairs, on blankets spread out on the ground, their silhouettes flickering in the light of oil lamps, lanterns and candles set in pots or glasses. Since the fine weather arrived, many families from neighborhoods threatened by the bombing have taken to spending their nights here on the Plaza Mentidero and the neighboring Campo de Balón, drinking wine and playing guitars into the early hours.

  “So, let us examine the facts,” says Barrull. “Since it defies reason that someone could deliberately and precisely predict the sites where the bombs will fall and use those locations to commit murder, there remains only one possibility: the murderer intuits the point of impact … or to put it in scientific terms, his actions are driven by forces of attraction, by probabilities we cannot formulate.”

  “You mean he is simply one element in something more complex?”

  “Perhaps,” says Barrull. “The world is full of elements which have no apparent relation to each other. But when some are mixed with others, the resulting force can produce surprising—or horrifying—results. Combinations to which we have not found the key. It seems likely that primitive man would have been astonished to see fire suddenly appear, whereas today we know we simply mix iron filings with sulfur and water. Complex actions are simply a combination of simple actions.

  “In which case,” Barrull concludes, “your murderer might be a physical, geometrical or mathematical factor … I don’t know. One element in relation to others: victims, topographic localization, the trajectories of the bombs, perhaps their contents. Gunpowder, lead. Some explode while others do not, and he murders only when they explode—or when they are going to.”

  “But only when the bombs kill no one.”

  “This further complicates matters. Why in some cases and not others? Does he make a conscious choice? What prompts him to act in those cases? Obviously, it would be useful to interrogate him. I am sure even he would not be able to answer th
ese questions. Some, perhaps, but not all. I doubt that anyone could.”

  “Some time ago, you said we could not rule out the idea that he is a man of science.”

  “I said that …? Very well. Now that we are dealing with a murder that took place in advance, I am not so sure. It could be anyone. Even a brainless, illiterate monster is capable of reacting to complex stimuli: though he must have something in his head that functions scientifically.”

  A slightly brighter area marks out the space between the artillery park and the Candelaria barracks at the far end of the plaza. In the distance, it is possible to make out the glow of the lighthouse at San Sebastián, which has just been lit. The comisario and the professor reach the small arbor of the Paseo del Perejil, near the waterwheel, and turn right. By the ramparts, people stand staring at the far shore of the bay, silhouetted by the last waning ribbon of sunset.

  “It would be interesting to know what is inside his head,” says Barrull.

  The glow of the comisario’s cigar lights up his face.

  “Sooner or later I will find out. That I promise you.”

  “I hope you do not apprehend the wrong man. For if you do, I foresee a terrible future for some poor wretch.”

  They carry on walking in silence, past the ramparts, wandering beneath trees on the Alameda. The Iglesia del Carmen is shrouded in shadow, the church doors closed, its twin spires soaring above the imposing facade.