“Bloody brilliant, but it can’t be true,” said Nestor, since incredulity often precedes fear, and then: “But for the love of God, I can’t have been in here more than two minutes, three at the most, stacking away these boxes of frozen chocolate truffles.”
The following minutes went by in a blur, both inside and outside the cool room. A blur for Nestor, who started beating on the door with his hands and then his feet. Holy Virgin of Loreto, Merciful Mother of God, Santa Maria Goretti, and Don Bosco . . . I forgot to pull down the bolt so the door couldn’t swing shut. Meanwhile, outside, Chloe was thinking: There must be a way. There has to be a way I can make Eddie stay longer, instead of playing this cruel hide-and-seek. What can I do to make you stay forever? What game do you want to play?
LET’S SEE. I have to keep calm and think straight. Who could help me? Who’s left in the house? wondered Nestor on the other side of the metal door. There’s Karel and Carlos, and then four others I’m not so sure about: Ernesto and Adela Teldi, young Chloe Trias, and of course Serafin Tous. Nestor called out their names:
“Tous! Teldi! Trias!”
But the cold was gradually becoming unbearable, making his teeth chatter, so his tongue stumbled over the Ts and all that came out was an indistinct stuttering.
CHLOE TRIAS WAS holding her hands over her ears. I heard you, I heard you, just be quiet, please, she said, not out loud or in her usual tone of voice but mentally, the way she talked to her brother. She had to do it silently like that, it was crucial, otherwise her imaginary world might evaporate. So with that mute voice in her head, she begged the prisoner to wait a moment. Just a moment, Nestor. I can’t open the door now. You have to understand—he’d disappear forever. And Chloe couldn’t let that happen; it would be too stupid to let him go away again like on that afternoon when he set off in search of emotions, barely twenty-two years old, the age she would reach very soon.
This time the magic of the mirror promised to be more generous and lasting, so to make the most of it, she decided to replay what had happened on that last afternoon, in the hope of changing the ending. Tell me a story, she begged, as she had done years before, adding something she should have said then but hadn’t: Don’t go. Please, please don’t go. Stay with me. And this time her brother’s dark eyes seemed to be smiling at her, although he said nothing. Or maybe he was saying something. Staring into his eyes, her eyes, Chloe could see a kind of anger in them, like the rage welling up in her, and she refused to believe that death could snatch away a young life just like that, with all its promises unfulfilled. What happens to all those dreams and plans canceled by death? They can’t simply disappear. They must go somewhere.
THE BANGING ON the other side of the door interrupted Chloe’s speculations and reminded her of the chef. He’s such a bore, she thought. Just shut up, unless you want me to leave you in there for good. Maybe you could work this one out for me: Is there a way of fulfilling a destiny that death has cut short?
But Chloe was talking to herself, so no one could hear or help her, least of all Nestor, who could feel the cold gradually numbing his will and his mind, dulling all his senses. Which is why he had come up with an original form of insulation, to stop the icy torment creeping into his skull. Somehow, he needed to block off all his bodily orifices, to stop the ache driving him crazy. Santa Madonna de Alexandria. He had managed to get his moleskin notebook from the pocket of his jacket, the little book in which he had recorded a wealth of trade secrets: so many little indiscretions jotted down in his tiny hand. Don’t give up, Nestor. You have to stop your brain freezing. The paper will block out the cold and keep your mind from seizing up. That’s all you can do for the moment. And destroy an irreplaceable collection of dessert recipes? Worse still, you’d be destroying all the secret details of those . . . little indiscretions. Now, there’s proof your neurons are freezing up, you old fool. What use is all that to you now? Come on, it’s going to be all right. Remember what the witch said: “You have nothing to fear until four Ts conspire against you.” And that’s impossible, so don’t give up. Keep banging on the door. Someone’s bound to hear.
CHLOE WAS ABOUT to open the door.
Okay, okay, for fuck’s sake, she said to herself. So I have to risk losing Eddie again because of some old fool. Doesn’t he realize that as soon as the mirror moves, Eddie’s eyes will disappear? You’ll go away, won’t you, Eddie? Like you always do, leaving me on my own. You’ll say you have to go off somewhere to look for some stupid story like you did that afternoon, and I won’t be able to stop you. That’s what ghosts do, isn’t it? They repeat what they did on the last day of their life? Over and over, forever. That’s what Miss Liau Chi was telling me, something like that. Or was it that people who die young find a way of coming back to finish off the destiny that death cut short? Now Chloe dearly wished she had paid more attention to what Liau Chi had said, though it had sounded like bullshit at the time. She wished she could turn back the clock, rewind and listen to the ghost lady’s mad theories again, but all she could hear was Nestor’s banging and his muffled shouts.
He was kicking now. And she was confused: it wasn’t a ghost; it was coming from inside, and the door was shaking, so the image blurred and she could hardly see her brother’s eyes.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” said Nestor, trying to convince himself, just a few centimeters away in the darkest and iciest of hells. I’ll come through this; I know. I just have to stay calm until someone hears me. And someone will, because somewhere here, near the door, thought the cook, feeling around in the dark, there’s an alarm bell, and with all this banging I must have pressed the button. And when they hear it, one of them is bound to come and save me: Teldi, Tous, Trias, T . . .
If I could turn back the clock, find an explanation . . . sooner or later, people who die young come back to accomplish their destiny . . . the things they left unfinished. All these confused thoughts seemed to be swimming on the dark surface of the shiny door, which shook as Nestor thumped it, while Chloe stared at the blurry image until it all seemed to come clear, as if a brilliant solution were written there, in unequivocal letters, for her to read.
And now that she knew exactly what to do next, she burst out laughing.
Laughter. On the other side of the door, Nestor clearly heard someone laughing. My God, there’s someone out there, and that means it wasn’t an accident, he thought, launching into a panicky deduction. That’s when he noticed the three names beginning with T (and counting two Teldis, that made four Ts). Madame Longstaffe’s words came back to him: “Nestor has nothing to fear until . . .”
. . . And they’re all here, the four of them together, just as the witch foresaw, no doubt about it, he thought with the lucidity of those who are about to die. Teldi, Teldi, Tous, Trias: four Ts. Why didn’t I see it before? I’m such an idiot. The cold felt thick and heavy, pressing in from all sides, filling his lungs. In his mouth it had the bitter taste of poison. He wanted to let go. There was no point struggling now, but the cold had not yet extinguished the last flicker of reason in his mind. Wait a minute, hold on; there’s something that doesn’t make sense. Why would those four want to hurt you? You of all people: you’ve always been a model of discretion. You’ve never meddled with other people’s lives.
Absurdly, he could feel a sneeze coming on, rising and rising: Achoo! The paper he had stuffed in his ears felt as if it were exploding in his head. All those little indiscretions, those little secrets, trying to escape, he thought with a shudder. Of course, that’s it, cazzo. You know their shameful secrets: an adulterous affair that led to a death . . . cries in the night . . . an unspeakable desire . . . Adela Teldi, Ernesto Teldi, Serafin Tous . . . they all seem so respectable, but you know what they’re ashamed of. And that’s enough to get you locked in a cool room with someone laughing on the other side of the door.
The cold kept pressing in, turning Nestor’s fingers into claws gripping the notebook. Those claws would never straighten out again, nor would h
is legs, which had turned to ice and lost all feeling, so Nestor hardly noticed when they buckled and let his rigid trunk drop to the floor of the cool room. His mind, however, felt as if it were boiling, and with the blind hope of the dying, he thought: Hang on, it’ll be all right. It can’t happen like this. Listen, it can’t, because the prophecy hasn’t been completely fulfilled. I know shameful secrets about three of them, not about all four. I know Ernesto’s story, and Adela’s and Serafin’s, but the fourth T, Chloe, what can she have against me? She hasn’t done anything shameful, as far as I know, so why would she join the conspiracy?
Another laugh. On the other side of the door, Chloe laughed again, but under her breath, so it sounded to Nestor like a sort of fizzing, or a whisper, like a series of TTTTTTTTTTTTs promising that all would be well.
“There are only three Ts, three Ts, three Ts . . .” he said, repeating himself like a frightened child. Good old Madame Longstaffe made it perfectly clear: my time has not yet come, so I’ll get out of this pinch. Hang in there a bit longer, old mate, just a bit longer. The door will open. Hang on.
And then Nestor Chaffino heard the lifesaving click.
You see? I told you it would be all right in the end. Madame Longstaffe may be a crooked old witch, but even crooked prophesies are bound by the laws of fate, and there were only three secrets this time.
Every muscle in my body is frozen, thought the cook as he heard the door begin to open. Holy Mary, Mother of God, Santa Gemma, and Don Bosco, I can’t move a finger, but my brain is still working perfectly. It’s okay. It’s over now. A click, and then another click.
Not a moment too soon; just when the cold was getting to me, filling my head with stupid thoughts and fears.
5
A RAY OF SUNLIGHT ON NESTOR CHAFFINO’S BODY BAG
A SERENDIPITOUS ACCIDENT, thought Ernesto Teldi, alone in his room at the Lilies. Several hours had passed since they had all gathered around Nestor’s body in the kitchen. The police had spoken with each person present after dusting the door of the Westinghouse cool room for fingerprints, which, as one might have guessed, was next to useless given the number of prints they found. Nestor’s for a start, brown from the chocolate, then those of Carlos, Karel, and Chloe (lots of Chloe’s), and finally a smaller number of prints left by Adela, Serafin, and Ernesto. “It’s what you’d expect in this sort of case,” said the detective, scribbling in his notebook. “You were all in the kitchen yesterday. Now, what we need to know is whether any of you saw anything suspicious that might help us in our investigation.”
But they all remained silent, because the only thing that might have been considered suspicious, that is, the sheet of paper Nestor had been clutching, on which was written:
especially delicious with cappucci
lso be served with a raspberry coul
which prevents the mering
not to be confused with frozen chocolate
but rather with iced lemon
was sleeping innocently between the pages of the chef’s copy of Brillat-Savarin, while Karel, the only one of them who might have remembered that piece of paper and linked it with the death of his friend, was not trying to solve the mystery but admiring the serene beauty of Chloe’s face. Somehow that morning she seemed more mature, as if she had suddenly grown out of the PIERCE MY TONGUE, NOT MY HEART T-shirt she had just put on.
The kitchen was empty again. The police and the magistrate had finished their investigation, concluding that the death was due to a household accident, an unfortunate bit of carelessness. “There’s nothing more we can do here. They can take the body away now.” Looking out of his bedroom window, Teldi was dazzled by the unseasonably strong sun reflected off the shiny plastic body bag in which Nestor was being transported. He watched the bag proceed toward the garden gate, carried on a stretcher by two men in green coats. Resting on the dead man’s feet (or perhaps on his head) was a bunch of flowers that had been cut and gathered at Ernesto Teldi’s request. A naïve observer interpreting this as a kind gesture on the part of a thoughtful employer would not, in fact, have been too far from the truth. If it was not kindness exactly that prompted Teldi to have the bouquet made up, it was at least a kind of elegance: when an enemy abandons the field, or, better still, has the good manners to die before one is obliged to kill him, the very least one can do is send him off with a tribute.
Roses, wisteria, petunias . . . a simple but elegant bouquet, he thought, watching the flowers bob up and down on the mortal remains of his enemy. He even found the scene rather moving. It had a certain grandeur that reminded him of his treasured works of art, and in particular his most recent acquisition.
He moved away from the window, reached into his pocket, took out the love letter he had bought from Monsieur Pitou the previous evening, and examined it. There could be no doubt: it was definitely Oscar Wilde’s handwriting, his signature, his particular way of writing the letter C. All the signs were there, clear as day. How could I ever have thought, even for a moment, that it was a fake? he wondered, genuinely surprised. Because now that Nestor was dead, Ernesto Teldi could hardly even remember the inexplicable and uncharacteristic attack of insecurity he had suffered the previous evening, when he had started to panic, imagining that his colleagues might be trying to cheat him. Him of all people! How absurd! Who would dare? Teldi was a highly reputed collector and so he would remain until his dying day. His credentials were impeccable . . . The insecurity he had felt seemed remote to him now, as remote as the possibility that his reputation could have been threatened by that cook, who was now being carried off in a body bag as if he were wrapped in foil. All that worrying, the cold sweats, the terrible thoughts that had passed through his mind for a couple of hours; it all seemed like a bad dream. As distant and harmless as the screams he heard each night in his sleep.
How neatly it has all worked out, thought Teldi with a smile. Had he believed in such things, he might have attributed his good fortune to the helping hand of a sardonic god with a fine aesthetic sensibility. But Ernesto Teldi didn’t believe in gods, not even sardonic ones with aesthetic sensibilities; he believed only in himself, and that was why he had the bouquet made up, to congratulate Nestor, and himself, on such a happy (and sensible) ending.
The funeral procession was already approaching the gate of the property. Ernesto slipped Oscar Wilde’s letter lovingly back into his pocket, giving it a little pat. Life had to go on and things were looking up: tomorrow he’d be flying to Switzerland for a meeting of collectors at the Thyssens’ house. Next week he was off to London to do a difficult valuation (who else could they rely on?), and next month the Gulbenkian Foundation would be rendering him a well-deserved little tribute. Life is sweet, thought Ernesto, unable to resist the cliché, and he was so absorbed in his pleasant meditation that at first he didn’t hear the knocking at the door.
“THERE’S A MAN downstairs who would like to talk with you,” said Karel Pligh when Teldi finally opened the door.
But Teldi was still imagining delicious projects and triumphs, so rather than rushing down, he gazed over the boy’s head, appreciating the tasteful décor of the stairwell. It really was quite charming: the curtains gave off a subtle fragrance of lavender, while the yellow walls of the landing provided the ideal backdrop for a set of beautiful still-life paintings. Perfect, just perfect.
“What is it about, young man?” he asked, returning (how dreary!) to mundane matters for a moment. “Don’t tell me there are more policemen, I’m thoroughly sick of men in uniforms.”
But Karel Pligh said he didn’t think it was a policeman.
“He must be about seventy, an ordinary-looking man, and he’s insisting on seeing you today. Of course I didn’t let him in just like that. I told him to wait at the door, so he wrote this note (it was very hard for him—his fingers are all twisted), and he said he was sure that when you read it, you’d want to see him immediately.”
Karel was not familiar with Teldi’s refined ways, so he had not used
the little mail tray to deliver the note. He was holding it in his hand, and his fingernails were not quite as clean as the collector might have wished. But Ernesto didn’t notice these details, nor did he pay any attention to what Karel told him about the stranger’s appearance, because as soon as he saw the writing on that card, he was mesmerized by the green, scribbly letters that seemed to be peering back at him like a row of parrots on a wire.
IT WAS NOT by chance that the rooms occupied by Carlos and Adela at the Lilies were one above the other. Yet the walls and floors were so thick that no sound filtered through, making it impossible even to guess what was going on up- or downstairs. Had it not been so, Adela and Carlos would have been surprised to discover that while Nestor’s body was going out through the gate of the Lilies for the last time, they were simultaneously performing the same actions in their respective rooms, like a pair of dancers following the same choreography.
At the same moment both came to their windows to bid the cook a last good-bye and then leaned pensively on the sill. Yet although their movements were the same, their motives were quite different. Carlos was moved by sorrow, Adela by relief, one might almost say gratitude.
Suddenly a ray of sunlight struck the body bag and the reflection was so dazzlingly bright that Adela had to step back. Take a good look, Adela, she said to herself. Don’t turn away. There goes the last obstacle to your happiness. Take a good hard look, the way you looked at his lifeless face in the kitchen before, to make sure that his lips were sealed for good, to be certain that his eyes could never witness your foolish passion again. For better or worse, you’re free: the contents of that frozen brain no longer pose any threat to you. However terrible secrets are, they die with the people who keep them. So take a good look, Adela, and thank your lucky stars. This is the first day of the rest of your life.
Little Indiscretions Page 22
