As I said this, I recalled images I had seen of the bombing of a church in Colombia with shrapnel-filled gas cylinders, a bombing carried out by the guerillas; I saw the mutilated bodies, the ground soaked with blood, the kind of thing that has been happening for centuries, although you never get used to it; I suddenly found it hard to breathe, and my eyes filled with tears, I was falling into one of those hypersensitive states all too common in convalescents, so I said, I’m sorry, but she came to me and said, cry as much as you want, there’s nothing more touching than a man crying; naked as she still was, she embraced me. I was afraid she would become aware of my erection, which was still there, but she did not seem to notice it, only hugged me tighter. One of my tears dripped onto her shoulder, trickled down her back and lodged between her marmoreal buttocks. The scene was like a Pietà, and was interrupted by some cries coming from the corridor; I thought at first that it was my neighbors, embroiled in another argument, but it was not them; these cries were more urgent and desperate, so I broke free of Marta and ran to the door.
A group of male nurses was shouting at the end of the corridor, outside the last room. The cleaner was crying and somebody was consoling her. What was all this? what was happening? Before long, a stretcher appeared. I went closer and saw the blood-drenched bathroom, the body emerging from the tub, lifted by four strong arms. On the pale skin with its ocher reflections I recognized the tattoos, the sun-like eye on the inert forearm, the town in the background: it was José Maturana.
I looked at him, incredulous, as they tipped him onto the stretcher, a bag of bones that seemed to have emptied, the skin like a damp cloth, that mysterious diminishing process that operates on lifeless bodies. They had tried to resuscitate him, but to no avail, which was understandable, judging by the vertical gashes on his forearms: anyone who slashes himself like that means business.
I moved aside to let the stretcher pass, then just stood there, unable to move. Marta came out a second after the elevator closed its doors and only saw the end of the funeral cortege. Who was it? what happened? Maturana, I said, he slashed his wrists. Marta opened her eyes wide, what?! She took a couple of steps along the corridor, then turned back and said, this is a bombshell! I have to call my newspaper. She placed a collect call from my room and, by the time she had hung up, her hands were shaking. I only have forty minutes to write an article! I told her what I had seen but she was so busy with the table lamp, switching on her laptop, plugging in the adaptor, that she did not seem to hear me. Then she said, what title should I give it? Let me see, how about something like Blood at the Conference? No, she said, don’t be so sensationalistic, that’d be fine for a crime report, this is for the arts section, it has to be a bit more poetic. Go ahead and write the article, I said, and then we’ll think of something, in the meantime I’m going to have a look around and maybe grab a bite to eat as well. You’re lucky, she said, I have to stay here, bring me a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke. If you see or find out anything call me, O.K.?
As I left the room, I was overcome with an intense feeling of danger. A strange wind was pushing me toward that room at the end of the corridor, the dead man’s room. Everyone seemed to have gone. I tapped nervously at the door and went in. The carpet was soaked in water and blood that had overflowed from the bathtub; I saw towels, tiles glowing red, a bathrobe with the hotel’s emblem. The bed still bore the imprint of a body. On the table were papers with notes for his talk, and some open books. I picked up one at random and it turned out to be Encounters with Amazingly Normal People, by Walter de la Salle. It was dedicated to José: “How absurd, me dedicating your book to you. With love, Walter.” There were penciled annotations. On page 267, for example: “The death of the fetus is an invention, a way of talking about the formation of life.” On page 347: “The addict is Millie, I changed her age from twenty-five to sixteen to make it more dramatic.” On page 560: “Complete passage from an astrological discussion between L. Ron Hubbard and Kaspar Hauser.” Maturana was the true author of the book. It was his magnum opus.
Among the other books on the table were works by St John of the Cross, with more scribbled notes in the margins (one said: “This is about the eye I saw”), the complete works of Feijóo, and The Life of Bartolomé de las Casas (another annotation at random: “He licked the Indians’ sores, why?”). I opened his briefcase and found a folder containing photographs; in one of them, two well-built young men were raising a crucifix in a garden, and on the side someone had written: “Sammy and Jairo in Oakland Road.” I shuffled through them quickly until I found one that had the word “Walter” on it: it showed a tall, well-built man, bare-chested, with powerful dorsal muscles and long hair gathered in a ponytail, just like José; in one hand, a crucifix covered in diamonds, and in the other, a microphone; tattoos depicting man’s quest for God. I thought of Marta writing in my room, a long way from the real story.
I stood there, looking at Walter’s photograph, because there was something in it that held me spellbound; after a while I noticed in the background, in the middle of a group of people standing behind him, a face that looked familiar, a woman, where had I seen her before? I was thinking about this when I heard a noise in the corridor and was immediately on the alert. Somebody had died in this room and sooner or later the police would have to come, so I rushed to the door, and looked out. A police officer was standing there with his back to me, talking on a cell phone, so I slipped out without making a noise.
Downstairs, in the lobby, there was a great deal of agitation. Some police officers were taking notes and the director of the ICBM was making a statement to a TV channel. I caught him saying: “. . . suicide is a mysterious, multifaceted, and very profound choice, an act of supreme freedom whose reasons, of course, we do not know; for the ICBM this is a great loss, and I can announce right now that we will take care of everything, the transportation, the funeral, etc., wherever his nearest and dearest decide.”
I went to the dining room, wanting to be alone. In the rush to get out, I forgot to say that I still had the photograph of Walter and the book, Encounters, in my jacket. I sat down at one of the tables at the far end, ordered an omelet and a beer, and settled down to read, but as I took out the book a sheet of paper fell out, it was a message on headed hotel notepaper saying: José, we’ve found you. I was stunned, and read it several times. The words boomed in my head like an echo in a cave: We’ve fooouuund yooouuu, oouund yoouuu, yoouu!
The message bore the time, 19:38 that same day. Everything was clear now: Maturana had decided to kill himself after reading it, perhaps because of it, who was it who had found him? I gulped my food down and went back to my room. Marta was drinking a Coke and chatting on Facebook. Seeing me, she cried, did you forget my sandwich? I can’t concentrate, damn it, I have less than ten minutes left and I don’t even have a title, this is a disaster, I’m just telling a Spanish friend I met on Erasmus all about it . . . Don’t write any more, I said, Maturana didn’t kill himself.
Marta looked at me incredulously, why do you say that? Look at this, I said, he received it today. Marta looked at the message with intensity and said, and what does this prove? It proves this is all very strange, don’t you think? At that moment the telephone rang and Marta said, it’s my newspaper, can you answer for me? tell them I’m doing an interview, and that I need more time. I lifted the receiver and gave the excuse, but they said, we’re getting the news on the wire, so it’s covered, just tell her to write us a good article for tomorrow. That solved everything. I showed her the book and the photograph and Marta said, good, let’s get to work, where do we start? I’ll help you on one condition, which is that you let me tell the story. I accepted and said: we have to start with the message, find out who sent it, the operator who gave it to Maturana may know.
We went down to the lobby, where, in spite of the fact that it was one in the morning, the agitation continued. We went to the offices where the switchboard operator worked, and found a young woman there. I asked her if she had b
een on duty at 19:38, and she said no, she had started at 21:00. Are you the only people who take messages for the guests? No, she said, another guest or a visitor can leave messages at reception, in which case it doesn’t go through the switchboard. Who distributes the messages to the rooms? One of the bellhops from the main lobby, she said. And is there a register of those messages? Yes, there’s a book with the destination and time of each one. I looked at her, pleased. Good, then you may be able to help me, was there any message at 19:38? The woman asked for my name and room number, then she took out a book and, making sure we did not sneak a look, turned the page. Can you confirm your room number? 1109, I said. She hesitated. There was a message at that time, but it wasn’t for you, you could ask my colleague tomorrow, were you expecting an urgent message? Yes, I said, very urgent, there may have been a mix-up over the room number, can’t you call your colleague? The woman was silent for a moment then said: I can’t call him, he’s working right now. If it’s very urgent you can find him at the Bamboo, near Rehavia. His name is Mordechai but everyone calls him Momo.
We thanked her and went out onto the street.
The Bamboo was a modern-looking bar, full of mirrors, indirect lighting, wooden recesses. We sat down at the counter to be close to the staff; it was really strange to see a place like this in the middle of a siege. Three young men were serving: one making cocktails, another taking them to the tables and bringing the orders, and the third taking the money. Put your intuition to work, I said to Marta, which one do you think is our man? She asked for a Herradura tequila, downed it in one, asked for a second tequila, and said: give me ten minutes, if I’m wrong you can ask me for anything you want. Anything I want? Yes, a blow job, money, whatever you want, just let me concentrate.
When the ten minutes were over, she said: that one over there. She pointed to a young man of about twenty-five, Caucasian in appearance, perhaps of Slav descent. She went to the other end of the counter to talk to him and came back after a while. I’m never wrong, she said, he’s Momo. How did you know? It’s something I’ve had since I was a child, I look at people for a while and suddenly I know who they are, as simple as that. I was amazed: I didn’t know you had powers, what else can you do? She gave a wicked laugh and said: many things, but you lost your bet. I ordered another double whiskey and said, did you tell him what we want? should I go and talk to him? Marta smiled smugly. He’ll come to us, but he’s already given me a lead: the message was left by a woman of about thirty-five in a long distance call, he doesn’t know where from, because he didn’t look at the caller ID. I wanted to know what her method was for obtaining so much information in such a short time and she said, the oldest and most traditional method of all, I asked him and he told me, and I’ll tell you something else, he’ll answer every question I ask him, I could smell his pheromones, he wants to fuck me and because of that he’ll tell the truth. I was stunned and said, can you always smell that smell? and she replied: always. It’s another of my powers.
Within a short time, most of the tables were empty and Momo came over to talk to us. The man you took the message to killed himself, I said immediately, just to see his reaction. He became nervous and said, I didn’t take it to him, there’s a bellhop who slips the messages under the doors, do you know why he did it? did he leave a note or anything? was it because of the message? who are you? I told him I was a friend of the dead man and a delegate at the conference, and asked him, could you describe the woman who left the message from her voice? Momo closed his eyes for a moment and said: I know enough about women to assume she’s thirty-five, single, an only child or maybe the eldest child . . . Marta interrupted him, an only child or maybe the eldest child? how do you know that? It’s easy, replied Momo, she doesn’t hesitate, she has a naturally authoritarian manner; when I asked her to dictate the message she did it in a very sharp way, as if she was saying it to me: “We’ve found you.” I can still hear the words in my head, my God, I’m not surprised he killed himself, who was he, another delegate? Yes, I said, it’s strange that somebody should decide to do that so suddenly, after a success like the one he had with his talk in the morning. Momo shrugged and said, it’s sudden for us, but maybe not for him; by the way, I almost forgot to tell you that the woman had called before, three times, she seemed really desperate to speak to him; she even asked to have the call transferred to the restaurant, it’s strange, she had to speak to him as soon as possible but she didn’t want to leave her name; when I asked her she said, that’s all you need, write it down just as I say it, thank you, and hung up. What Momo was giving us was worth its weight in gold. I asked: how did you know it was a long-distance call if you didn’t look at the caller ID? She told me herself when she called the first time, she wanted me to know how urgent it was and she said: this is a long-distance call, please try to find him; you could look at the caller ID, which has a memory, but that’s confidential information and we aren’t authorized to give it out to guests.
Somebody called Momo and he excused himself. Marta said to me, do you still think somebody killed him? It’s a possibility, I said, that phrase “we’ve found you,” could be taken several ways: we’ve been looking for you, you’ve been running away, you owe us something, you have to pay, why did you do it, all that time ago, you betrayed us, you hid from us, all kinds of things. But the basic question is a simple one, who are “we”? Marta polished off her drink in one go and said, well, after hearing his story it seems pretty obvious that “we” are the people from that Ministry, don’t you think? maybe the guru didn’t die, maybe things were very different than the way Maturana told it. It’s possible, Marta, it’s very possible, the next thing we have to do is gain access to the caller ID and see the memory, the number must have been recorded. As we were about to leave, Momo came and said, I’ve just remembered something else: the guest in that room, the one who killed himself, called the operator twice during the afternoon and asked if there’d been any messages for him, and when he was told there hadn’t he insisted, not even any calls without a message? and I told, him, no sir, not even without a message, so it’s obvious the poor man knew they were looking for him and was expecting to hear from them.
Another notable thing happened that night.
As we were on our way out of the Bamboo, we heard a voice from an inside table, somebody calling out Marta’s name; she turned and cried: Bryndis! It was Bryndis Kiljan, the war correspondent for her newspaper in Iceland. When we were introduced, Bryndis said: I know and love your country, oh, Colombia! it has the most cruel and unnecessary war of any I’ve seen in the world and therefore the stupidest, I’m sorry if I say it as I see it . . . If it wasn’t for the number of people killed, it would be laughable. She was with other journalists, they were drinking iced vodka. Bryndis had just come back from the front and was exhausted. She said: all I want to do is drink and cause a great scandal. They obviously had a lot to talk about, so I preferred to leave them to it and went back to the hotel.
The next day, I went to the switchboard operator’s office. At that hour the person on duty was an older man who looked at me with great reluctance when I asked to check the caller ID. I’m a delegate at the conference, I said, and I need to check something quickly, can I? The caller ID isn’t at the disposal of the guests, if you give me your room number I can tell you the source of the calls you’ve received, and I’ll send you a message about it, that’s all I can do. I thought to give him Maturana’s number, but the deception would be obvious immediately, he did not look stupid and he must have heard about what had happened the night before. The man was waiting for my answer, so I said, can you please check the calls from the United States, it’s code one, the person who was supposed to call didn’t know my room number, so that’s irrelevant, could you have a look yesterday between 19:00 and 20:00? I’ll be back in half an hour, thanks. As I got to the door he said, you don’t need to wait half an hour, at that hour there weren’t any calls from the United States, for you or anybody, is there anything else I
can help you with?
I went to the coffee shop thinking: if the call was not from the United States, where the Ministry had been located, well, that was understandable, I would cross check this with Momo later. It was time to make a few notes. This was what I wrote:
The message (we’ve found you) raises one basic question: who are “we”? Hypothesis: Walter de la Salle and Miss Jessica. They are looking for José for a reason we don’t know, something he concealed in the story he told, because it may be assumed that the death, if it really was a suicide, was a way of escaping. If it wasn’t a suicide–which is what I think–then the death was a punishment. What had he done? This poses another question: how did Walter de la Salle escape the fire? What really happened at the Ministry? The fact that José Maturana used pseudonyms for his books reinforces the theory that he was running away. For all we know, he may have only ever used his real name at this conference, but why?
One thing that argues in favor of the suicide hypothesis is that in the story told by Maturana he himself said that he had already tried to kill himself at least once, using the same method of slashing his wrists in a hotel bathroom. It was something he carried inside him, it was on his mind.
As for the telephone call, what to make of it? If it didn’t come from the United States, where was it from? Anything’s possible, even that it came from inside the hotel. It’s also possible it wasn’t Walter but Jefferson, why not? Or that it was the detective, or a blackmailer, or simply somebody who has no connection with the Ministry. The fact is, I know very little about Maturana’s life. Do we ever know much about a life, even after it’s been well told?
Necropolis Page 16
