The Paris Enigma: A Novel

by Pablo De Santis

  "You knock on the door. Convince me that there's something of interest within these walls."

  A servant let us in. He was tall and bald, with oriental features. He moved with his eyes closed, like a sleepwalker. We entered a vast monastic room, where everything appeared to be missing. There were marks where paintings had hung, where rugs no longer covered the f loor, where furniture had been taken elsewhere. The statues had gone, but the pedestals remained. We sat in hard chairs, like the kind you find in a church.

  "They're dismantling everything," I said. "Do you think Isel's dead? No, the servant would have told us."

  "Servants are no longer allowed to give such news. If the master has died and someone comes to visit him, they leave the person waiting in the living room, with some information left where they can find it--a newspaper, or a death notice--that fills them in on what happened. If the visitor doesn't think to have a look at those papers, the waiting continues indefinitely. I remember a certain count who was so offended at being made to wait that he challenged the deceased to a duel. Of course, the duel couldn't be fought."

  Someone coughed a few steps away.

  "That's not the case, gentlemen. This mausoleum houses a living man."

  Isel appeared before us in a tattered yellow robe. He wore round eyeglasses and a gray beard covered his face. From his neck hung an exaggeratedly large gold crucifix.

  "Have a seat, please. I'll sit as well."

  For a few seconds the three of us were silent. Since the chairs were next to one another, and all faced the same direction, the situation was a bit ridiculous. We looked like passengers waiting for a train. Was the silence deliberate? Was it part of Arzaky's strategy, or was he shy, or distracted? I coughed, and realized that I was the only one made uncomfortable by the silence. For different reasons, they were each used to provoking unease.

  Arzaky finally explained what we had come for, and then he asked if Isel had known the man who fell from the tower's heights.

  "Yes, Darbon had been here. He began by asking me about my youthful exploits. It is true that we founded groups and sects, and we ordered books from abroad and each had a library filled with banned volumes. But now I use those books to keep me warm in the winter. Although they're not even entirely good for that, since the leather covers smell terribly when they're burned."

  "Who else was a part of your group?"

  "Their names aren't important. Pseudonyms abounded. Names with alchemical or Egyptian echoes were the most common. There were many, they came, they left, they founded new churches . . . For most of them I was depravity incarnate. They blamed the devil for my sins. If there were a copyright office for vices, I would have registered mine there so that no one could attribute my inventions to the devil."

  Isel stood up and pointed to the mark a large painting had left on the wall.

  "You see this painting? These are my parents. I inherited a fortune from them and never worked a day in my life. I spent my time studying and collecting. I had exotic birds brought from abroad, which I often either freed or killed, depending on my mood. I had a large music box built, and I hired a blind girl to dance for me, repeating the same mechanical movements over and over. She danced naked, and never knew how many eyes were upon her. I would invite my friends to the meetings, some of which were held in the dark, and make them smell perfumes, sip drinks, and taste food without knowing what they were. When the lights came on, the real surprises were waiting for them. I was sick, I couldn't handle real life. I searched for corners where life still held an air of strangeness and artifice. Now I've stopped all that, now I devote all my energy to the Church of Tr ut h ."

  "What brought about your change?" asked Arzaky.

  "Three years ago, a young man who called himself Sinbad joined my domestic staff." He pointed to another mark on the wall that had been left by a small painting. "I painted his portrait myself. He had Arab features and called himself Sinbad for a circus act he had once performed. I let him keep it; it didn't bother me. He was dark, reserved, he cheated at every game, and I became interested in him. I had the strange idea of making him into a gentleman, because I sensed that, beneath his wild exterior, there was a hidden god. The statue within the marble block. I hired a tutor to acquaint him with math, Latin, and the French classics, particularly the funereal orations of Bossuet. He learned to fence, and I took him to museums and cathedrals. Meanwhile he helped me to maintain order in this castle where I keep, all muddled together, marvels and misfortunes. I had trouble getting him to enter my natural sciences room, where I kept stuffed birds, some turtles, and several tanks with fish brought from Brazil. Those fish devour anything that's put before them, and he trembled at the sight of them just cutting through the water with their fins.

  "I don't know what happened to him. Perhaps my efforts weren't enough, or he missed his old life, because one day he f led. I was undone; I felt that my masterpiece had been completely ruined. My good servant Joseph, whom you saw, was glad that the young man had disappeared. I thought of tracking him down and killing him; I thought of killing myself; I thought about burning the house down. Fortunately I'm not a man of action--except for the act of collecting--so I returned to my studies, my dusky evenings, and my disappointments.

  "One day I heard a rumor that a two-headed lamb had arrived in the market; I set out immediately to buy it. But something distracted me on the way: among the crowd I saw Sinbad, juggling for pocket change. He juggled the monkey skulls he had stolen from my collection. I hid my rage, which was also joy, and I embraced him without a second thought. I convinced him to come back with extravagant promises, which I didn't make to him so much as to myself. Once he was back at the house, it only took me a few minutes to notice how his French had been corrupted, how his manners had changed, how his gaze had become sidelong and given to surreptitiousness and betrayal. I could see it in his eyes: I was just an old eccentric he could get enough money from to run away again. It terrified me to think of him disappearing and I made Joseph lock him in the natural sciences room. With no windows and only one door, there was no way he could possibly escape. Sinbad begged me on bended knee not to lock him up, but he used such common words that I was reminded of how his foolish f light had nearly ruined my work.

  "I never knew if he slipped or if he threw himself into the water of his own volition. I heard a terrible scream in the middle of the night, the truest sound I have ever heard in my life. The words we use are nothing more than disguises to cover that scream, which is the essential expression of our soul. In the red water there was incessant motion, boiling. Incapable of moving, I stood staring at the depravity of nature, which was symmetrical to my own illness. When the movement stopped, I was empty, hollow. The great experience that life had in store for me was over. I didn't leave my room for ten days. I smashed the perfume bottles, I drank all the cocktails I had brought for him, I used up my supply of hashish. I destroyed that abominable tank. Then I pulled out all my collections, every little pleasure meticulously catalogued, and I buried it in the basement of this house. The emperor's cabinet of wonders would envy what I have stored here! I had nearly reached the most perfect of all experiences; it no longer made sense to continue. Now I devote myself to a different kind of pleasure."

  "Crime ? "

  "No. Louis Darbon had nothing against me. He considered me an enemy of the tower. Why would I care about something whose existence I don't even recognize? Could that tower compare with the bloody visions I see in my dreams? Darbon didn't understand. We are not men of action. We are a school of contemplators. We are the immobile, the useless, those who read books about men of action. I wish there were a true criminal among us. It's better if Grialet explains it to you. Grialet, now he has a golden tongue. But, of course, Arzaky, you know that full well."

  I had mentioned Grialet when I told Arzaky what I had read in Darbon's papers, but he never told me he knew him.

  "I haven't seen him in some time. Where is Grialet these days?"

  "I d
on't know where he lives, but I doubt he's stopped going to Dorignac's bookstore. That is the port through which all banned books arrive. Paris is filled with sects that are out to kill each other, but Dorignac's bookstore is a sort of common ground, a neutral zone where enemies observe each other from a distance. I miss Grialet. I used to take nighttime walks with him. He took me to see the many perversions the city has to offer and I paid the price. Now I prefer other sights. Once in a while I travel to see far-off oddities; in Naples I saw a church made entirely of human skulls. I go to see local miracles : in one chapel there's an intact cadaver, as fresh as if he'd died just moments before; in another, farther away, I watch a corpse decompose in seconds, right before my eyes. These are the only wonders that fill my free time these days. I'm consumed with death, because after Sinbad, I don't deserve any new pleasures. I've renounced everything."

  Arzaky didn't seem to take Isel's confessions very seriously, because he asked him, "And don't you want to renounce your servant as well, to make your contrition complete?"

  "Get rid of Joseph? Oh, please, no. I might be crazy, Mr. Arzaky, but not so crazy as to think one can get by without servants. What's more, he keeps me alive. On my nights of insomnia he tells me, in infinite detail, of Sinbad's spasmodic movements as he fell into the water, he describes how his face lit up with terror. He fills my sleepless hours with those few dreadful seconds. How could I go on living without that bedtime story?"

  6

  S

  ix days had passed since Darbon's murder, and the halls of Madame Necart's hotel were no longer filled with

  leisurely waiting assistants. The armchairs were empty, and even the Sioux Indian had set off on some mission.

  "Where are they? How would I know where they are?! " replied the owner. "Finally those savages are out of the drawing room. If my husband were alive, he never would have stood for having a redskin Indian in our hotel."

  The f light en masse had me worried. While they were there, I felt privileged to have a case. But with them out in the city, I couldn't help thinking that they were the ones with the real clues, and that I was left walking in the shadows.

  Arzaky didn't seem to trust the information we had either, because he sent me to look for Grialet and Bradelli on my own.

  "Grimas, the editor of Tra ce s, knows them well. He published several magazines for them. Ask him where they are."

  "But," I protested, "you can get the truth out of suspects with just a look. I'm a foreigner, I'm inexperienced, I'm only an assistant . . ."

  He dismissed my arguments with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

  "Detective's apprentice, son of a shoemaker: don't be so sheepish, just go and distract Grialet."

  "I'm better at distracting myself than anyone else. And even if I manage to, what do I do then?"

  "What do you think? Look for oil-stained clothes or gloves or shoes, of course."

  "If Grialet is the killer, he's had time to get rid of those things."

  "You are an Argentine spendthrift. No good Frenchman would ever throw away a pair of shoes, not even if holding on to them could send him to the gallows."

  Adrien Grimas's publishing house was located on the first f loor of a building in the Jewish quarter. There was a fabric store below. Grimas was eating a bowl of soup when I came in, and as soon as he saw me he hurriedly tried to hide the large blue notebook where he kept his accounts. The editor was supposed to give a percentage of his profits to The Twelve Detectives, but he claimed to have recorded a loss. Later I mentioned to Arzaky that it seemed very strange to me that the wisest men on the planet, capable of finding a killer from one hair or a cigarette butt, could be taken in by that little bespectacled man, who made only a cursory attempt to cover his tracks. He replied, "It's a well-known tale: Thales of Miletus was walking through the field, looking up at the stars, when he fell into a well. A Thracian slave who saw him laughed and asked, 'How can a wise man know so much about the distant stars and not notice the well that's in front of him? ' Well, in our case, we are twelve men who all fell into the well at the same time because we were looking up at the stars."

  Once Grimas had hidden his ledger book, he went back to finishing his soup of onions and meat.

  "Arzaky won't speak to me," he said. "I wanted to meet you so I could give you some copies of Tra ce s and remind you to take notes as you go along, so you'll be prepared when it comes time for you to write the story of Arzaky's case. I will ask that you maintain Tanner's style."

  "I don't have enough experience to be able to tell Arzaky's adventures, much less in Tanner's style. Besides, I can't write in French. I'm just a temporary assistant, until Arzaky can find someone permanent."

  "We're all temporary, Monsieur Salvatrio. We are all awaiting our replacement."

  I asked the editor about Grialet and Bradelli, and he in turn asked me, "Arzaky's following up on the Hermetic lead?"

  "Are you surprised?"

  "No. I knew that Louis Darbon was on the trail of the tower's enemies. Occultists are like detectives: they investigate the lines that join the macrocosmos to the microcosmos. But while detectives look for signs in corners, at the bottom of drawers, among the f loorboards, the occultists do the opposite: they search in gigantic things, in monuments, in the shapes of cities, or the pyramids. Then they try to find a relationship between those enormous things and their own private miseries. Detectives go from the tiny corner to the world, occultists from the world to the tiny corner. That's why the tower has made such an impression on them. Where others see beauty or ugliness, the steel or the height, they see the symbolism."

  "I thought they were interested only in the great monuments of the past. I wouldn't have thought that the Eiffel Tower would attract their attention . . ."

  "The Eiffel Tower is not the Eiffel Tower; it's the tower of Koechlin, his assistant, who had to work long and hard to convince Eiffel to get on board with the project. Maurice Koechlin, an engineer like Eiffel, was the one who made the first sketch and later designed the structure. Now everyone talks about Eiffel, but you'll see--in a few years it'll be called the Koechlin Tower. You want to make a bet? Koechlin is Swiss, maybe that's why he doesn't like to draw attention to himself. He first thought of devoting himself to medicine, and studied anatomy in Zurich. When he designed the tower he was thinking of the organization of the fibers in the femur, which is a very strong, lightweight bone, the longest in the human body. Pythagoras was also obsessed with the femur; he found its relationship to music and, as a result, a link between that bone and universe's hidden arithmetic. So our occultists are convinced that Koechlin is a Pythagorean devotee who divulged his greatest secret. The tower has always been a symbol of the center of the world, which is why these occultists believe ours is a false center that they must expose. Also, lately they've been leaning more toward the Catholic Church, and they don't like the fact that the tower is taller than Saint Peter's. It doesn't really matter though; it's a mistake for Arzaky to investigate them. I know them well, they're harmless, I've published several of their magazines. Everything goes fine through the second issue, and then the infighting starts. It's hard to work with people who want to publish their exploits and keep them secret at the same time."

  Grimas ate the last drop of soup and moved the plate away, onto a pile of papers. Caleb Lawson's name was on the top page. It seemed sacrilegious to treat The Twelve Detectives' material that way.

  "Well, I'd still like to know where Grialet and Bradelli are."

  "Of course, the more moves Arzaky makes, the more pages you'll write for me, isn't that right?" I shook my head no, but he ignored me. "Arzaky's adventures are the most chaotic, but our readers love them, who knows why. Tanner brought out the best in Arzaky. There was always a moment in his adventures when Arzaky seemed confused, about to admit defeat, sometimes he even disappeared for two or three days, and Tanner narrated the details of his absence with a master hand. He described his empty study on the top f loor of the Numancia Hotel, his unopene
d correspondence, and the dust that gathered on his desk. Then Arzaky would make a triumphant return and resolution would come swiftly. Christ also had to spend a good while in the desert before allowing the prophecies to be fulfilled."

  Grimas stretched out his arm and handed me some back issues of Tra ce s. It was obvious that it was a relief for him to be able to get rid of some of those papers.

  "So you can familiarize yourself with Tanner's style." "Thank you very much. I'd love to have them, although I'm already very familiar with Arzaky's cases."

  "You already know them? Oh, of course, The Key to Crime." Grimas said the name of the Argentine magazine disdainfully. He looked at the clock on the wall and leaped from his chair. "You'll have to excuse me, but I have to go to the printer's. I'm sorry I haven't been much help with the two occultists. After involuntarily becoming one of the protagonists in the Case of the Magnetizer, Grialet went to live in Italy."

  "He was involved in a criminal investigation?"

  "Yes, the detective was Arzaky. Didn't he tell you anything about it? Ask him, or look for the case in issue forty-five of Tra ce s, which I just gave you. The one with the green cover. As I said, Grialet went to Rome to live for a while. He became involved with the widow of a general, who gave him large donations for the Hermetic cause. I think the ruse he used was the publication of the complete works of Fabre d'Olivet. Once he had the money he returned to Paris, but he hasn't been seen much since he got back. And, of course, he hasn't published even a brief treatise. I don't know where he lives now, but he's not hard to recognize: his right ear is missing, lost in a fight at the now defunct Pythagorean Society of Paris. And as for Bradelli, he died three months ago."

  "A natural death?"

  "Natural for a man with his somber disposition. He poisoned himself. During the last few years he had tried to apply his knowledge of alchemy to painting. His frequent use of mercury provoked fits of madness and finally poisoned him to death. Three years ago he had promised the Autumn Salon a painting in which he had created new colors never seen before. To heighten anticipation, he published an article in one of Grialet's magazines, Anima Mundi, where he refuted Goethe's theory of colors as well as Diderot's. He announced the names of the new hues, which were a mix of Latin, Catholic liturgy, alchemy, and even necromancy. They were designed to alter the viewer's perception and provoke sensations in him that transcended the subject matter. Painting, he said, must be a secret message; in the color one finds true meaning. When, after much beating around the bush, and many announcements and retractions, he finally presented his paintings, he pointed out the new colors: diabolical topaz, larva yellow, mandrake green, and silentium blue, and a dozen more. We saw only grays and blacks, and large areas where the white of the canvas hadn't even been touched. That was Bradelli's last work."