Cemetery of Swallows (11 page)

Mallock had said nothing; he hadn't made the slightest gesture. But Manuel couldn't help attributing negative thoughts to him:

“I'm not a liar, Superintendent, I even abhor lying. I know this story is absurd, but it's the truth.”

Mallock repeated: “Go on with your story,” as his only encouragement.

“The next day,” Manu continued, “I bought a professional video player and a Betamax-formatted copy of the documentary: “Tobacco and Cigars in the Dominican Republic: A Mirage or a New El Dorado?” Then I spent hours watching these two scenes, using the slow-motion and stop-frame functions. There was something insane about the fascination and hatred that this old man's face awakened in me. Then I ordered stills of them.”

“They found three of them on you, in poor condition, but still recognizable. Just so you know, that's enough to prove pre-meditation.”

“There's no point in denying it, there was in fact premediation,” Manuel admitted, “there's no doubt on that score. I had only one idea in my head, and that was to find him and kill him. But I swear to you and repeat that I hadn't the slightest idea of what led me to want to eliminate him.”

“Did he resemble anyone else, somebody who could have justified so much animosity?”

“That's impossible. I've never felt such hatred for anyone in my whole life.”

Mallock thought the young man was very lucky. As for himself, he'd detested more than one man. Enough to fill the four thousand holes of Blackburn, in Lancashire.

“Why did your neighbor record this cassette for you? Maybe he wanted . . . ”

A sad little laugh from Manu.

“My God, leave that poor old man alone. Since I love cigars, he recorded a program broadcast on a cable channel. It was about the breaking of the agreements between Davidoff and Cuba, and the development of the quality of Dominican cigars.”

There was no lack of dead ends in this case. Mallock moved on to another subject:“Do you feel remorse for having killed him?”

“No, on the contrary. I'm glad to have done it. Every time I think about it I feel a kind of ferocious joy, a sense of euphoria. And at the same time that's unbearable for me. The idea that I killed a man, his blood . . . ”

Manuel fell silent, overcome by emotion.

Mallock was confronted by either a brilliant actor—a possibility that could never be excluded—or one of the annoying enigmas that life sought to put in his way.

A third possibility: Manuel was simply crazy. Schizophrenia could explain the twofold feeling he had with regard to this crime. For a moment he began to hope that the psychiatrist would confirm the young man's insanity. Wasn't that the best solution? They take him home and have him cared for. He's put in a psychiatric hospital and the case is closed. Then he thought of Julie and was angry with himself.

Well then, since he cannot and must not be either mad or guilty, let's go with the enigma
, he said to himself.

That was the only choice left, and fortunately it fell within his competence.

It had grown muggy. Outside, a storm was building. The clock in the room showed 3 o'clock.

Manuel resumed his narrative:

“I spent my first week on the island in a kind of fog. The combination of heat, palm trees, rum, hate, and contradictory feelings seemed totally unreal. But I quickly understood that this man was anything but unknown in the Dominican Republic. People gave me strange looks when I showed them the photos.”

Mallock, who knew Tobias's history, was not surprised.

“I finally understood that they were afraid of him, terribly afraid. And that's what caused me the most problems. To get people to talk I had to pay them. A bad idea: they led me all over the island, telling me all sorts of nonsense. I was so blinded by my desire to find this guy and do him in that I didn't see anything. A stupid moth caught in the glass chimney of a kerosene lamp. Since I didn't want to use my credit card, for fear it would allow me to be located, I used my remaining cash to buy a weapon. That wasn't easy, either. All I could find was an old, prewar gun, half rust and half oil, with five bullets in it. After that, I was broke, so I left my lovely four-star hotel and slept outside. A bad trade. But things are odd. I should have been afraid, even terrified at the idea of being on the streets on an unknown island. But I wasn't. As I went out the door of the hotel, I felt an extraordinary excitement, a kind of blood-thirsty exaltation. Yes, that's it. The night smelled of blood and I loved it!”

Mallock listened to Manuel's account. Contradictory feelings coursed through him, each trying to draw him into its camp.

“It was at that point that I began to fall lower and lower,” Manuel went on. “From village to village, from garbage can to garbage can, I hunted my prey all over the island. I washed myself with water from the ditches or potholes. I ate rotten fruit that had fallen off trucks. I no longer had any pride, any desire, or often any strength, but I never gave up. After a rainstorm that covered me with mud, the sun reappeared and I set out again, coated with dry clay. It was really strange, Amédée, I left a trail of pottery along the road like bread crumbs. Partial molds of my body that detached themselves and fell to the ground, sometimes making a sound like a broken saucer.”

Manu's face was looking more and more serious.

“I wouldn't have lasted long if people I met along the way hadn't helped me. I always found, at the very last minute, someone who gave me a hand, made it possible for me to go on, as if they were aware of the mission I'd been given and approved of its goal as much as they shared the reasons for it. That was all the odder because I myself didn't know those reasons, and I still don't.”

Manuel clenched his jaw and furrowed his brow. Fear. Pain. His eyes grew larger and his lips disappeared in the chalky white of his face.

“I was hunting a dangerous animal . . . and on its own territory.”

Mallock saw the significance of this. Manuel looked like he was hallucinating, thus giving preponderant weight to the most rational hypothesis: a fit of madness.

Although puzzled, Mallock encouraged him:

“Go on, Manu.”

“Finally I was given the name of the place that corresponded to the photos I'd brought with me. The people who informed me said it must be San José de Ocoa. I went there and waited. For several days, I don't know exactly. A month or two, maybe. But one day, the bastard walked past me without paying any more attention to the bum I'd become than the donkey that people were burying. I got up and walked toward him. I recall the second when I was finally able to point my revolver at him. I see everything in my mind's eye–his suffering, the blue of the sky, the pink of the church, his yellow eyes, and the red impact of my bullets. His fucking revolting brains. Then nothing. I found myself in a hospital, my body imprisoned by pain and my mind submerged by that feeling of accomplishment I already mentioned.”

Manuel paused a moment to think before concluding his story.

“I have to tell you one last thing, Superintendent.”

Mallock was tempted to remind him of his request not to call him “Superintendent,” but changed his mind. On reflection, it wasn't a good idea to ask a guy who was half-crazy and probably a murderer to call by his first name the cop who was assigned to pick him up. For the moment, “Superintendent” would do just fine.

“In fact, I'm happy that this Darbier, if that's his real name, didn't die immediately,” Manuel went on. “He had to see his death approaching. It's terrible, but that makes me happy. Like the certainty that he suffered during his last moments. I can't stop replaying in my head the image of his blood in the dust, of his fingers torn off, of his brains on the ground and the urine that was leaking out between his legs. I can't help thinking with joy about his cries of rage, his gurgling with pain, at the same time that I hate myself for having taken a life. You're going to think I'm sick, Amédée, and you're probably right, but for me his miserable death agony was and remains something euphoric, at the same time exciting and calming, a moment of deliverance, not to say bliss.”

Mallock, embarrassed by this admission, asked an entirely different question:

“Weren't you ever afraid?”

“No, never. But there's nothing unusual about that; I was born like that. There's only one thing that scares me, and that's the dark. Put me in a forest at night and you'll transform me into a frightened little boy. I feel there's a presence, something terrible. My mother and Julie will tell you. They constantly explained to me that at night there were exactly the same number of people and objects in a room as in the daytime. They went so far as to count them. But I was convinced that there was at least one thing more, more than during the day, and that . . . thing always terrified me. During this whole business, nothing has frightened me, neither the unknown, nor poverty, nor death. The day on which I killed Darbier will remain the greatest day of my life, as important as the birth of my child. It's a kind of foundational act for me, even though I still don't know why.”

And then, as if all this still wasn't complicated enough, he felt obliged to add:

“You know that he seemed to recognize me, too, when I attacked him?”

It was at this point that Ramón and Jiménez knocked on the door to the room. It was 4
P.M.
Outside, heavy clouds were darkening the city. An initial grumbling resounded like a warning.

 

The two policemen seemed delighted to see the now famous Gemoni. Mallock even wondered whether they were going to ask for his autograph. If Ramón asked for one for each of his children, they weren't going to get out of there any time soon. Proving that they wanted to stay a while, they went out again to bring three plastic chairs back to the room. Ramón Double-cream arranged the chairs in a circle in front of Manu's bed. Mallock sat on the chair in the middle, with Ramón on his left and Jiménez on his right.

It was Amédée who opened the discussion by addressing himself to Manu:

“This is Commander Juan Luis Jiménez and his assistant,
el capitán
Ramón Cabral. They have served as my guides on the island ever since I arrived here. If I have asked them to come here, it's because the commander says he has interesting revelations to make regarding . . . ”

But Mallock didn't have time to finish his sentence. Manu had suddenly opened his eyes wide on seeing Jiménez. At the same moment, a dull explosion had resounded in Mallock's right ear. When he turned around, he saw Jiménez pointing an automatic at him. Out of the smoke emerged the silence that had been ended by the gunshot.

The storm broke and a lightning bolt illuminated the room. Instinctively, Mallock turned toward Ramón.

Double-cream was still sitting on his chair, his arms on the armrests. The bullet had penetrated his left ear, leaving a circular hole. His brains, which had splattered on the wall, were slowly running down toward the floor, licking the whitish paint on the partition.

 

For Mallock, it was clear. If he said nothing, if he did nothing, in a few seconds he and Manu would be dead as well. Following the lightning bolt, a first thunderclap, enormous and belligerent, exploded over the city. To gain time, Amédée held his open hands out to Jiménez, asking him:

“Why,
comandante
? Before you shoot, tell me, between policemen, why?”

Jiménez's hands were trembling. His eyes were wet and his jaw clenched. For Mallock, this was clear, too: he was acting on orders. And what he had had to do was far from easy for him.

“Why did you kill Ramón?”

“Ramón is collateral damage.”

Mallock doubted that. He'd shot him first because he was the only one in the room who was armed.

“Now I have to kill you two as well, both of you, I'm sorry . . . ”

Another lightning bolt. Mallock, who no longer had any hope, lowered his arms and looked sadly at Manu. The grumbling of the thunder, colossal, shook the windowpanes.

“I'm sorry,” Jiménez repeated, as he raised his automatic and aimed it at Mallock's head.

A third lightning bolt. Amédée started to say:

“Jiménez, I understand. Sometimes there are things in life that the meaning of the . . . ”

Then his arm shot forward as if to slap the air. His hand closed on the silencer, he twisted his wrist, and two seconds later Amédée was holding the gun and pointing it at Jiménez.

As he hoped, the third thunderclap had been even more violent. By counting twenty seconds, twenty syllables, he'd acted at the right time. In his heart of hearts, he thanked his friend Gilles Guédrout, who had made him repeat a hundred times the twisting motion of the wrist after having grabbed the barrel.

Then he called: “Guard!”

When the guards entered, they were stupefied.

Was that because they saw Ramón with a bullet in his head? Or because they didn't see Mallock and Manu in the same condition? Did they know what their
comandante
intended to do? Or did they have nothing to do with this attack?

Still more questions, Mallock thought, the answers to which he would not have for a long time, if ever. Didn't matter. Hardly had the guards come into the room, after three seconds of hesitation, before they pointed their weapons at Jiménez and put him under arrest.

When he thought about it, Mallock realized that he already had his answer.

They would have pointed their guns at him if they hadn't known what was going on. He was the only one who was armed, and he was a foreigner to boot. If they hadn't known otherwise, they would therefore have concluded that it was he, and not Jiménez, who had just shot Ramón. The soldiers in this country, as in many banana republics, knew the smell of putsches and failed assassinations.
Vae victis!
Jiménez, by failing, had instantly found himself alone.