The Paris Enigma: A Novel

by Pablo De Santis

  "Grasshopper hunters?" asked Rojo. "Are you sure that's what you meant to say?"

  "I didn't misspeak. Grasshopper hunters are what we call those who incite others to take their own lives. They are the subtlest type of killers. I'll explain the origin of the name a little later."

  As he spoke, Sakawa slowly, and almost casually, moved toward the center of the room.

  "Grasshopper hunters kill without weapons. Sometimes they do it with a few lines published in a newspaper; other times it's an insidious comment or a gesture made with a fan. There are those who have murdered with a poem. And I have devoted my life to the subtle hunt for those who leave grasshoppers. But sometimes I ask myself: what if I've been mistaken about all this from the very beginning? Perhaps I should let men commit suicide, and not try to alter the course of things. Was I finding a puzzle to solve in behavior that wasn't mysterious in the least, in people who were fated from birth to their unique deaths? I don't have nightmares about crime; I dream about the blank page, I dream that I am the one who draws the ideograms where there was nothing, where there should always be nothing. And that is what I want to ask you all: Should we be not only the solvers of mysteries, but also the custodians of the enigma? Our Greek colleague gave Oedipus and the sphinx as an example. I say we are both Oedipus and the sphinx. The world is becoming an open book. We must be the defenders of evidence, the exterminators of doubt, but also the last guardians of mystery."

  Sakawa's words left the detectives perplexed. If he had been a Westerner, they would have argued with him.

  "Tell us about a case," said Arzaky. "Maybe that way we can understand what you mean."

  "A boastful display of my skill is unworthy of this forum. I will tell of a case that is not mine, and that way you will know why we call them grasshopper hunters."

  While Sakawa spoke, his assistant, Okano, bowed his head as a sign of respect.

  "Mr. Huraki was the manager of a bank in the city of S. I won't say the name of the city. In the spring it's overrun with grasshoppers, but the inhabitants of the region refuse to kill them, believing they are good luck. A large sum of money disappeared from the bank; Mr. Huraki was not accused of stealing it. When the police showed up at his office they found no evidence that incriminated him, and the only thing that drew their attention to him was that Huraki was extremely nervous and accidentally stepped on a grasshopper that had come in through the window. Huraki's accountant, Mr. Ramasuka, whose reputation was spotless up until that point, was put in prison. He confessed to nothing, nor did he accuse anyone else; he spent the years he was locked up reading the old masters.

  "Time passed. Ramasuka finished his sentence. By then Huraki was the director of a bank in Tokyo. Ramasuka was determined to take his revenge, but he couldn't imagine himself brandishing a sword or taking up a firearm. All that reading, all that thinking he had done wasn't to fill his head with ideas, but rather to clear his mind of trivial ideas and meaningless prejudices. He had learned to see what others overlook. Taking advantage of an open window, he entered Huraki's house one night: he didn't touch a thing; he just left a grasshopper in the middle of the room, on top of the tatami. Before dawn, the grasshopper's singing awoke Huraki. The banker instantly remembered a verse by a poet from his city (this memory was part of Ramasuka's plan) :The grasshopper you killed in your dream Sings again in the morning.

  "Huraki knew that he had been discovered. He killed himself that very night by drinking poison."

  The waiter, who had served wine to the detectives and water to the assistants, as dictated by The Twelve Detectives' protocol, offered a glass of wine to the old detective, who refused it.

  "Thus Ramasuka established the tradition of the grasshopper hunters: men and women capable of killing with insinuations, signs, invisible traces. But these warriors need a symmetrical oppositional force. I am part of that force. We don't send them to prison, of course, because no judge legislates on grasshoppers and butterf lies and poems with secret meanings. But we write and publish our verdicts, and we often drive those responsible to disgrace, exile, silence, sometimes death. But I wonder: what if the enemy is completely imaginary? What if I perceive this enemy--these men and women that conspire in a tradition of subtle murderers--only in my mind? What if I become the murderer by exposing them?"

  With small steps Sakawa moved out of the center of the room. Magrelli pointed mockingly at Arzaky, who was seated in an armchair and seemed to be either concentrating very intensely or sleeping.

  "Well, Arzaky, you are the one who organized all this. Now you've got some objects for your glass cases. Which one will you choose to represent our profession? Incomplete jigsaw puzzles, paintings that fuse fruit and faces, a Greek monster and an inquisitive sphinx, Aladdin's blackboard, a blank page. Which one will it be?"

  Arzaky held back a yawn.

  "He who speaks last always has an advantage: the sound of his voice still echoes. But apart from that, I choose Sakawa. I also fear that all investigation is a blank page."

  8

  I

  n spite of my exhaustion, it took me a while to fall asleep. I was surrounded by unfamiliar things, and my mind tried in

  vain to adapt to the continuous introduction of new ideas, people, and settings. Sleep refused to come, because there were too many things to dream about. I thought about what was said at the meeting: the detectives' statements, the assistants' covert remarks. Time and time again I imagined myself escaping the outer circle of the satellites, and walking with sure steps toward center stage. I was immensely lucky to be an acolyte, to have gotten to meet The Twelve Detectives, and that was enough for me during the day. But at night I wanted more.

  I finally slept for several hours, although I had the feeling that I had barely shut my eyes. I was awoken by noises outside the room: people running, and then doors slamming and voices. I washed up, shaved off my shadow of a beard, and dressed. I went out into the hallway still adjusting the knot in my tie. Linker, Tobias Hatter's assistant, bumped into me and kept running without saying a word, as if he had collided with one of those room service carts. Benito came charging up behind him.

  "They've killed Louis Darbon," gasped Benito as he passed me.

  I thought I must still be dreaming, nobody could have killed one of the detectives. Weren't they immortal? Weren't they immune to silent swords, to ice darts shot through locks, and perfect roses with poisoned thorns?

  I followed them down the stairs and then through the street. The morning was cool. I had taken the precaution of bringing my vicuna poncho. I secretly regretted having missed breakfast; it's the only thing I like about staying in hotels. The assistants had all left Madame Necart's hotel at almost the same time and were running toward the entrance to the fair. We would bunch up together, looking like a group of long distance runners, and then we would spread out again, separated by the obstacles posed by the future World's Fair: carts that carried materials to the tower, an iron cage that held a rhinoceros, fifty Chinese soldiers as still as statues awaiting the orders of an absent captain.

  It took us a full twenty minutes to reach the foot of the forged iron tower. Journalists and photographers pushed each other, jockeying for position, in some sort of collective dance. The morgue ambulance waited to one side, pulled by stolid, pensive horses.

  I wanted to see the corpse, but the crowd was impenetrable. Arzaky made his way over to me, shouting.

  "You, the Argentine, come here."

  I elbowed my way over to an area that was accessible only to a chosen few. I wouldn't have been able to break through the crowd if Arzaky's voice hadn't cleared the way, pulling me toward him like a rope. The photographers' f lashbulbs exploded over the dead man's face and the air was filled with the bitter smell of magnesium.

  "Now I have a case, but I don't have an assistant. I am the only detective without one. That may be a custom in your savage country, but in my city it is an oddity. I want you to work with me. Observe everything carefully. Any comment that occurs to
you, make it: there is no greater inspiration for a detective than the frivolous words of the hoi polloi."

  "What happened?"

  "Darbon was investigating the tower's opponents, who had recently sent hundreds of anonymous letters and caused some minor incidents. He came here last night, alone, following a clue; he fell from the second platform. We don't know anything more. Do you accept?"

  "Do I accept what?"

  "Working as my assistant."

  "Of course I accept! " I exclaimed, surprised. Without meaning to I had shouted my reply and, in spite of the racket, everyone turned to look at me. I had become an acolyte thanks to Craig, who had sent me to Paris; thanks to Alarcon, who gave his life; and thanks to Arzaky, who accepted me--but also thanks to Darbon, who was now being lifted off the ground by the morgue employees (gray uniforms, f lannel hats) with a mixture of ceremony and annoyance, to be transferred to the realm of deciphering and dissection.

  9

  T

  wo hours later we managed to get permission to enter the morgue, leaving behind the journalists and

  onlookers, who were crowded together behind the railing, waiting for some extraordinary revelation. Arzaky knew the building well. I would have gotten lost in the labyrinthine series of hallways which always turned to the left and stairs which always went down, but the Pole moved forward with broad steps, exuding that crazy joy of a detective on a case. It was as if, with each step, he was taking the world by force. But when he entered the room he lowered his head, as though he were in a cathedral. His face reflected both humility and defiance, like a saint who finds dissipation in temperance, overindulgence in moderation, ecstasy in renunciation.

  There were nine empty gurneys and one that was occupied lined up beneath the greenish light of the lamps swinging from the very high ceilings. A strong smell of bleach and maybe camphor hung in the air. Darbon's body, already undressed, had a lunar whiteness to it that was marred by the lacerations and bruises caused by his fall. Of his numerous authoritative features (his imposing voice; the seriousness that never deigned to smile, unless it was ironic; the gaze that dissolved any obstacle) the only surviving one was his white beard.

  The forensic doctor was a tiny man named Godal. He greeted Arzaky with a familiarity that was not returned. The Detective of Paris (now without any rival to dispute the title) half heartedly introduced his colleagues who were also there: Hatter, Castelvetia, and Magrelli. I was the only assistant in the room.

  "It is an honor for me to have members of The Twelve Detectives here," said Dr. Godal, looking at everyone except me.

  "I imagine that this case is something new for you, as it is for us. No one has ever fallen from so high," said Hatter with the air of an expert.

  "What are you saying, Hatter?" said Arzaky in a very rude tone. "Do you think there are no bodies in the crevices of the Alps?"

  "There must be . . . but no one has ever seen them."

  "I have."

  Godal began to point out the marks from the fall.

  "Observe the destroyed legs; this proves he was conscious when he fell. His feet plunged into the earth. Halfway down he hit some kind of protrusion, which tore his skin at the height of the thorax, but that didn't kill him."

  Castelvetia was ashen and looked around as if searching for a window.

  "Come closer. When I was young, we practiced autopsies outdoors. We had to rush to make use of the sunlight, before night fell and erased all the details."

  "Do bodies come in every week?" asked Hatter.

  "Every week? Every day. A thousand a year: suicides, accident fatalities, murder victims. Lately there has been an increase in poisonings: we've done about a hundred and forty autopsies already this year. We have to be very careful with poison: they used to use only arsenic, which we can easily identify, but they come up with new poisons every day."

  Arzaky picked up the dead man's hand. He pointed to one of the fingernails. There was something black underneath it.The Paris Enigma * 91

  "Louis Darbon was fastidious about his appearance. Why are his nails dirty?"

  "I'm sorry, his hands were black with oil, and it took us a lot of work to clean them. But there's always a trace left behind! "

  "A trace left behind? Everything is supposed to be left behind. How can we work if you clean up the evidence?"

  "I didn't think it was important. It was oil. He fell from the tower, and I imagine that that horrible tower is full of machine oil."

  Arzaky was going to say something, but he held himself back. When he left the room, furious, I followed him. He banged his head against the wall several times.

  "Incompetent! That damn Dr. Godal was always on Darbon's side. He's a forensic doctor who should have been an undertaker. What do you think we should do?"

  I was surprised that he asked for my opinion. What value could my thoughts on forensic practices have?

  "I think we should go to the tower, to the place where Darbon fell. And see where that oil came from."

  "No, no. You are supposed to be an assistant. You should embody common sense. For example, you should say: the oil isn't important. At the tower everything is oil-stained."

  "But I don't think that's the case."

  Arzaky hit his head against the wall one more time, but lightly.

  "Tanner was always spot-on with his comments. Craig failed in his school for assistants. Wasn't there a professor of common sense?"

  "I know I'm not as good as the other assistants, but I'll try my best to keep up."

  "The others? Don't worry about emulating your colleagues. The black man is a thief; the Andalusian, a liar; Linker, an imbecile; the Sioux Indian never says anything. I don't even think he's real, I think he's a wax figure from Madame Tussaud's."

  "And Castelvetia's acolyte? I still haven't seen him."

  "You have just mentioned an awkward mystery. No one has seen him. I would leave it at that, but it's inevitable that someone will bring him up at our meetings. And between you and me, I don't think that fop Castelvetia has an assistant. If he does . . . he must not be the same kind of assistant the others are. You know what I mean. That's a mystery you could solve."

  His anger vented, Arzaky went back into the room. Dr. Godal had turned the corpse over and was pointing to a wound on his back. Castelvetia, passed out on a metal chair, was being tended to by one of Godal's assistants, who was trying to bring him around with smelling salts.

  "I swear, gentlemen, this is the first time this has ever happened to me," he declared as soon as he came to.

  Arzaky looked at me.

  "I miss Craig," he said.

  10

  T

  hat night the detectives reconvened in the underground parlor of the Numancia Hotel. Between those

  four walls their grief took strange forms: without removing his white hat, Jack Novarius took long strides from one side of the room to the other, while his Sioux assistant remained immobile; Castelvetia laughed openly; Hatter waited for the meeting to start while taking apart a small mechanism that looked like an artificial heart; Sakawa was arranging f lowers in a vase, pulling out some petals and letting them fall onto the table. They were detectives, crime was their lifeblood, they couldn't be blamed for not shedding tears.

  Only Arzaky seemed to be grieving.

  "When Castelvetia goes out, follow him. I want to find out the truth about his assistant today."

  It was a job for a lackey, but I accepted it, even though I didn't like the whole business. I didn't want to get involved in the gossip between detectives.

  Arzaky took center stage. The shelves of the glazed cabinets had begun to fill with objects: a giant magnifying glass, a microscope, a small metal filing case with photographs of delinquents, a pistol that shot tranquilizer darts, a hypnotizing machine. Off to one side, away from the other objects, was Craig's cane, its powers concealed. Arzaky spoke.

  "As we all know, Louis Darbon died last night, falling from the stairs that led to the second platform of the
tower. For the moment nothing points to its having been anything but an accident."

  "And the railings?"

  "They had been found to be defective and were being replaced."

  "Come on, Arzaky. Who can believe it was an accident?" said Hatter.

  "I am going to be in charge of the case and when I know anything for certain, I will tell you."

  Caleb Lawson, tall and stooped, cloaked in the smoke from his pipe, stepped forward.

  "I don't think you should be in charge of this case. We all know that Darbon despised you. If anyone is a suspect, it's you. Captain Bazeldin has already been asking questions around here."

  "Shut up, Lawson! " said Magrelli indignantly. "Arzaky is one of the founders of our order, along with Renato Craig. You can't go accusing him just because that idiot, Captain Bazeldin, was asking questions. Have you never read Grimas's magazine?"

  In the pages of Tra ce s, Captain Bazeldin was always the butt of jokes. The clues he followed up on, which were the most obvious ones, always ended in failure.

  "Darbon was also one of The Twelve Detectives," said the Englishman. "And someone pushed him from the tower. What's more, Arzaky, his death left all of Paris to you."

  Arzaky shrugged his shoulders. Sakawa, who rarely spoke, said, "Arzaky should be in charge of the case. This is his city. What right do we have to investigate a crime in Paris? If someone was thrown from a tower in Tokyo, I wouldn't let any one of you investigate who incited the victim to jump."

  "In the West no one invites anyone to jump with f licks of their fan or seventeen-syllable poems, Sakawa," said Lawson. "Here, when The Paris Enigma * 95

  someone wants to throw someone off a tower, they push him. We know that we have to investigate those who stand to benefit from his death. Why shouldn't we suspect Arzaky?"