The Paris Enigma

by Pablo De Santis

  “Did you bring the photograph?”

  I had expected a greeting, some friendly conversation, not just an urgent demand. Once I handed over the photograph, I had no power. I held it out to her but I didn’t let go of it immediately and she had to tug at it a bit. I was ashamed by my hand’s attitude, acting on its own, without even consulting me. The Mermaid looked at the photo to make sure it was the one she was looking for, turned it around and read her own handwriting: “I dreamed in the Grotto where the Mermaid swims.”

  She stared and stared at the green writing.

  “Does Arzaky know about this postcard?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “You are a gentleman, and you did the right thing by returning it.

  I am eternally grateful.”

  “I’m not a gentleman. A gentleman wouldn’t have stolen it.”

  “Why did you? Did you think it would help you solve the crime?”

  “No. I don’t know why. I’ve never stolen anything else in my life.”

  “Now that I don’t believe. There’s never a first time, we’ve always sinned, hinting at what’s to come.”

  The Mermaid had barely spoken those words when I remembered another slight infraction: two months before my trip, I had gone into the Craig family kitchen and found a pile of Señora Craig’s clothes on top of the wooden table, fresh off the line and still warm from the sun. I hadn’t stolen anything, but I had stroked the garments for a few seconds before I heard the footsteps of the cook approaching. If someone had caught me, what would I have been able to say to them? What worried me about these behaviors was not that they were my most shameful, my most illicit, but rather that they seemed more truthful than all my polite words and kind gestures.

  “Are you going to tell Arzaky about our conversation?” The Mermaid’s voice pulled me from my thoughts.

  “No,” I answered.

  “It’s better that way. Remember, I work for Arzaky too, but I can’t tell him everything. Arzaky wouldn’t know what to do with all the things I find. He sends me to the grottos and caves so I can bring him the clues that are submerged, the worn-out pieces of sunken ships.”

  “Did he send you to Grialet?”

  “Arzaky has his agents. But sometimes he doesn’t trust us. Viktor believes that Grialet killed Darbon.”

  “And that’s not true?”

  “No.”

  I felt her hand on my arm.

  “Come toward the light. Your boots are so shiny. Is that Argentine leather? ”

  “Yes, but that’s not why they shine. I polish them with a cream my father makes.”

  “It’s raining. But your boots still gleam.”

  “And my father says that this polish also cures wounds.” “I could use a bottle of that.”

  “I’ll send you one when I go back to my country. Do you have black shoes?”

  “No, but I’ll have to get either some shoes or a wound so I can test the cream’s effectiveness.”

  A creaking noise was heard in the dressing room. There was a coat stand, a shapeless mountain heaped with garments. For a moment I was afraid that she had led me into a trap because it was obvious that someone was hiding there.

  “You can come out,” said the Mermaid.

  I thought maybe it was a hidden lover, I thought maybe it was Grialet, maybe even Arzaky, but it was Greta. I felt a mix of rage and relief.

  “These theaters are labyrinths. She can show you the way out.”

  I was sorry that the show ended so soon. I was starting to be like the people who always leave the theater last. The Mermaid closed the door to her dressing room. Greta and I walked out together.

  “Are they hiring performers? It’s a good idea to try a new career. I don’t think Castelvetia can keep you much longer as an acolyte.”

  “The detectives have more important things to worry about,” she said in an untroubled voice. “Castelvetia’s secrets aren’t a pressing subject.”

  “Caleb Lawson is going to go after him, sooner or later.”

  “Castelvetia doesn’t care about Caleb Lawson or his Hindu. He beat him once and he’ll beat him again. He’s worried about Arzaky.”

  “Why Arzaky?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. But he talks about it in his sleep.”

  It looked like she regretted having told me. I didn’t dare ask her why she knew so much about Castelvetia’s dreams. Did she secretly go to the Numancia Hotel for clandestine meetings? Or was he the one who came to her?

  We arrived at the hotel, but had to keep a safe distance away because the detectives were talking at the entrance. The acolytes were getting ready to march, in formation, toward the Nécart.

  “Why did you go to see the Mermaid?” I inquired.

  “I wanted to ask her about the Case of the Fulfilled Prophecy.”

  “That’s an old case.”

  “It’s still unresolved. Castelvetia thinks that Grialet was the guilty party that time, but even though Arzaky sent the Mermaid over to investigate Grialet, they weren’t able to prove anything. Perhaps the Mermaid protected Grialet then. Perhaps she’s protecting him now.”

  “And what did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. She talked about Arzaky and she sang a song, the song she had sung the night they met. I thought after that she might be willing to talk. But something interrupted her.”

  “What?”

  “The footsteps of an idiot.”

  Now Greta looked at the detectives and assistants, who were disappearing into the night.

  “Is this the first time you’ve seen them?”

  “No. I’ve been here before. I like to watch them, to imagine the day when I’ll enter the circle of acolytes. If I can become a member, it will be as if my father did too.”

  I didn’t raise any objections to her fantasies. Who was I to pass judgment, among the ambitions and worldly matters, on what was possible and what was impossible? Greta took a step back and the streetlight illuminated her; but her face shone so brightly that it looked as if she were the one illuminating the streetlight. It was the face of a girl looking through a store window at a shiny toy she knew she would never possess.

  10

  The next day, at ten in the morning, I was in front of the theater again. Some acolytes were with me, as well as their respective detectives: Magrelli, Hatter, Araujo. Then Zagala arrived, wearing a hat that exaggerated his nautical air. He was complaining, saying that Benito should have been there but he was still sleeping. A policeman tried to keep the group from getting through, but Magrelli, used to wrestling with the carabiniere, had no problem getting rid of him. He f labbergasted him with convoluted pronouncements of authority, constantly pointing upward with his index finger, indicating his friendship with very important civil servants, and showing him papers affixed with bureaucratic-looking signatures and seals.

  “You always have to show the police some piece of paper. They are very sensitive to written documents,” he explained to us later.

  Captain Bazeldin went white when he saw the detectives burst into the room and climb the stairs toward the stage. I followed their impatient and happy march like an automaton. The fights had been forgotten and they were once again a cohesive group, now that crime had called to remind them that they had a purpose in life.

  “The show is canceled,” said the inspector. “We don’t need any actors.”

  But he couldn’t stop them; they surrounded him like a chorus, all questioning him at once, heaping on the praise and f lattery just to distract him. On the stage, large blocks of ice created a sort of frozen grotto. The Mermaid’s body was sunk into a circular lagoon in the center. Her black hair f loated around her. Blood had traced streaks in the water, like veins in marble. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were black, holding on to the kiss of death. I looked at her without sadness or horror, as if there were no relationship between the cold scene before me and the splendid woman I had spoken to the night before. I could still smell the mix of perfumes in her dressing
room. I looked at my hands, the hands that had touched the photograph. I wondered if it wasn’t that photograph that had been the passport to the frozen place she now inhabited.

  The captain, who was unable to contain the detectives, tried one last gesture of authority, and austerely gave the order for the body to be taken out of the ice. Four policemen knelt down and, after rolling up their sleeves, plunged their arms into the water. They reached hands and ankles and pulled up, insecurely and brusquely. The Mermaid hadn’t lost her beauty in death; one could imagine that all her arduous insistence on green costumes, grottos, and her stage name had been the preparation for this perfect scene of underwater sleep. But when she was pulled out of the water, with her hair oily and sticky and her slack limbs taking on the slapdash poses of a broken doll, we were keenly aware that she was no longer the Mermaid; she was a corpse. Bazeldin knelt down out of pity, wiped a handkerchief over her face, cleaning it of oil, hair, and blood. Her lips were now white.

  The rescue maneuver had left the nape of the Mermaid’s neck showing. It was covered in blood. Without realizing what I was doing, I took a step forward and almost fell into the water. Benito, who had just arrived and was still buttoning his shirt, held me back.

  “What’s going on? Did you know her?”

  I managed to say, after much effort, “No.”

  200• Pablo De Santis

  “And Arzaky?” asked Magrelli. “Where is he?”

  “He was the first one here,” the chief of police responded with annoyance. “I was ready to throw him out, because his arrogance aggravates me, but luckily that wasn’t necessary. He left on his own. As soon as he saw her he took off with those giant strides, as if he had urgent business to attend to. This case has nothing to do with you detectives, so if you don’t mind I’m going to have to ask you all to leave. The World’s Fair is expecting you.”

  “Of course it has something to do with us,” said Hatter. “This woman was Arzaky’s lover.”

  Captain Bazeldin started to say something, but when he opened his mouth no sound came out. He dropped the handkerchief he had used to clean the Mermaid’s face. Perhaps he was thinking about all those agents he had sent to follow Arzaky, all those reports that piled up on his desk, all the informers he had bought useless information from who weren’t even able to tell him the name of Arzaky’s lover.

  Zagala made a murmur of displeasure. He didn’t want Arzaky’s secrets aired in front of the police. Hatter realized he had said too much and tried to defend himself.

  “What? We all knew it. That’s why we came as soon as we heard the news.”

  Baldone made the sign of the cross, very quickly, so that no one would notice. I imitated him, unashamed: the detectives could fight with positivism, but we acolytes were allowed to be religious. I knelt down for a few seconds beside the body, to pick up the handkerchief Bazeldin had just dropped. I said two Our Fathers in a soft voice: one for the Mermaid’s soul and the other for the chief of police not to discover my sleight of hand.

  Madorakis stepped forward and bent down beside the body. He touched the Mermaid’s oiled hair with one finger.

  “First Darbon, Arzaky’s adversary. Then Sorel, whom Arzaky had sent to the guillotine. And now this young lady dressed up as a mermaid, Arzaky’s lover. The Polish detective finally has his series.”

  part v. The Fourth Rule

  1

  In the days following the Mermaid’s murder, no one saw or heard from Arzaky. I am sure that it had been the shock of seeing her body that made him disappear. He had gone to the theater, alerted by one of his informants on the police force; he had looked in to see the Mermaid’s drowned body and then, without saying a word, he had completely vanished. After a few hours, the detectives began to worry. Gathered in that room at the Numancia Hotel, they were now ensconced in an uninterrupted conclave. Caleb Lawson recommended that I wait in Arzaky’s study, in case he happened to show up.

  Arzaky’s absence had caused more worry than the crime itself. The next day representatives of the fair’s authorities began to arrive, with urgent messages that I piled into a cardboard box. What I had seen of Arzaky was a negligible portion of his real life, of the people he dealt with, of the numerous tasks that kept him busy: his absence made that hitherto buried world come to light. A parade of people came through the office: desperate women, men who owed him their lives, wives of the falsely accused and imprisoned, people selling secrets. I tried to get rid of them all calmly and quickly.

  “Monsieur Arzaky will be back any minute.”

  I grew tired of waiting and I went out to look for him. I visited all the taverns the detective frequented, I found informants who told me about other, more secret, spots; I left absinthe territory for opium dens. The more I asked around, the farther away Arzaky seemed. I wasn’t worried about the lack of clues, but rather the abundance of them. Arzaky had argued with a Hungarian, Arzaky had hit a woman, Arzaky had grabbed a dagger from a Chinese cook, that shadow on the wall is Arzaky’s shadow. A blind man, high on opium, opened his white eyes and said, “Arzaky is dead, and you are the one who killed him.”

  I couldn’t go through those lairs without tasting what they offered me, so the more debased the places were, the more debased I became. First the wine, then the liquors improvised in secret stills, adulterated absinthe, which made me forget life’s troubles, and finally opium, which made me forget everything. In a few days all my money was gone. Everything Arzaky had paid me I had spent searching for him.

  In my travels I noticed that what was said about Arzaky could have been said about anyone. A woman had whispered in my ear that Arzaky was sleeping in a whorehouse on the outskirts of town. When I went in, a drunken old man from Marseille attacked me with a butcher’s knife. I escaped, but I came back again the next night to ask for Arzaky. “He was here last night, a man from Marseille attacked him with a butcher’s knife,” they replied.

  Aware that my stupor was clouding my good judgment, I spent an entire day in my hotel room, cleansing my system. There was no reason to think that Arzaky had given in to his grief. He could be working in secret, going back over old clues. At dusk, finally lucid, I decided to pay Grialet a visit. He opened the door himself, dressed in some sort of long black outfit. I wondered if I had interrupted a ceremony.

  “Ah, my friend, the one who steals photographs. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m fresh out.”

  “I’m ashamed. I already returned that photograph to its owner.” “I was its owner. What are you looking for now?”

  “I wanted to ask you about Arzaky.”

  “Arzaky? They say he’s gone, disappeared, that he’s dead.” “Did he pay you a visit?”

  “I didn’t have the pleasure.”

  “The Mermaid was Arzaky’s lover,” I told him somewhat defiantly. He didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “I know. She was my lover too. He sent her to investigate me. And now he’s sending you.”

  “I’m here on my own steam.”

  Grialet laughed.

  “The more we think we are acting on our own, the more we are being manipulated by unknown forces. Come in. We’re all friends here.”

  There were three other men gathered in the living room. I recognized Isel’s birdlike profile. He greeted me with a nod of the head, leading me to believe that he remembered me too. Near the piano there was a man who wore a priest’s habit. His face was round and childlike, without any trace of a beard. The other, a younger man, wore a white shirt, open at the neck, and he looked around with the anxious eyes of a consumptive.

  “Here we are: Darbon’s bêtes noires. You’ve already met Isel; the others are Father Desmorins and the poet Vilando. Desmorins was expelled from the Jesuits for dabbling in necromancy, but he hasn’t accepted that decision and still wears the habit.”

  Desmorins spoke in a high-pitched voice. “The pope should go back to Avignon. Now, more than ever, the Catholic Church is not a stone, nor a cathedral, nor the nave at the heart of every cathedral.
It is a broken bridge leading nowhere.”

  “Desmorins insists on writing those kinds of things. He started out as the superior of all the order’s libraries, and his job was to burn all the inappropriate books, but some time ago he gave up the fire and gave in to the temptation of that literature. Young Vilando, on the other hand, has followed the opposite path: he once belonged to the circle of Count Villiers and Huysmans, but now he spends every night writing poems and then burning them. He wants them to exist only in the mind of the unknowable God.”

  Grialet paused. The four men looked at me. They enjoyed being observed by others. They had spent their lives cultivating secrets, and now they wanted their faces, their slightly outlandish outfits, and their conspiratorial gestures to illustrate the power of all they were keeping quiet.

  “These are the enemies of progress, the enemies of the tower and the World’s Fair,” continued Grialet. “The disciples of the secret teachings of Christ. We’re not so dangerous as Darbon suspected. Don’t you think?”

  He pointed me to an empty chair. I sat with them. Soon there was a glass of spiced wine before me.

  “We are against the World’s Fair. At least Darbon wasn’t wrong about that,” said Grialet.

  “Why? ”

  “Because we believe that secrets make the world exist. The city of Paris has been a refuge for esoteric knowledge for many years. Now they’ve decided to illuminate it. Electric light, positivism, the World’s Fair, the tower: they are all part of the same thing. Science no longer strives to collect answers, but rather to obliterate the questions.”

  I drank to the bottom of the glass. Since I wasn’t a born drinker, I liked the sickly sweet taste, the scent of cinnamon, and the other overlapping f lavors that I couldn’t name. When the rock crystal cup was empty, Grialet refilled it.