Cemetery of Swallows (19 page)

 

Master Long had often been called upon when judicial institutions throughout the world found themselves confronted by cases of amnesia that posed serious obstacles to the course of justice. Hypnosis in conjunction with acupuncture, as he practiced it, had been developed by his grandfather, who had worked in particular with the famous Charcot at the Salpêtrière. Later, with his son, he had enriched his knowledge by combining acupuncture and hypnotherapy. All his research sought to find a way to increase hypnotic hypermnesia while at the same time avoiding a disqualifying secondary effect: an increase in the memory's potential for fabulation.

The hypnosis Master Long practiced on patients prepared by acupuncture allowed him to bring to the surface the most hidden memories. More reliable than a truth serum or a lie detector, it allowed only actual facts to emerge. Master Long had only rarely failed, and he had always remained discreet. This assured effectiveness and confidentiality had made his reputation.

The old man began his work on Manuel by practicing a kind of
digitopathia
on the principal chakras and meridians. His fingers had a extraordinary power and a sort of autonomous intelligence. Under his hands, Manuel's body changed in form. His muscles relaxed and the expression of his face changed.

 

Two minutes later, the first sentences Manuel uttered left the audience frozen with fear. Everyone had been expecting to hear hours of incoherent gibberish, even an endless babble about his childhood, random memories in a hesitant language, but when Manuel began to speak it was nothing of the kind:

“I'm naked, lying on skulls, hundreds, thousands of bodies . . . ”

His voice was muffled, hoarse. It trembled slightly. And his face had taken on all the signs of suffering . . .

“Tiny skulls. They're birds' heads. Above me, there is a perfect circle, a halo of blue and clouds surrounded by shadows.”

Manu's neck twisted around to try to see the sky.

“I see a black triangle in the center of the circle. It seems to be growing larger. No, it's falling toward me! My God!”

Manuel's whole body twisted about.

“My God! I'm sinking into the swallows!”

Master Long, surprised by the craziness of this utterance, remained silent a few seconds before saying:

“And now?”

Manuel's breathing had quickened.

“I smell feathers and blood. I think . . . I think I'm dying. It's nothing, there isn't anything anymore . . . no more pain . . . it's fine . . . ”

“Could you go back a few days earlier?”

Master Long hadn't finished. Manu squinted as if to see better. Then he calmed down and smiled.

“I'm at the seaside. The sea . . . It's so beautiful. It's full of gray and blue, the color of oysters in July. It's so perfect.”

Manuel's face became tense again:

“There's blond silk in front of my eyes. It's the hair of a little girl in my arms. She's sucking on a strawberry candy. She's wearing a red dress with a big daisy embroidered on it . . . ”

“That's perfect, go on. Do you see something else?”

Master Long had now closed his eyes in concentration.

“In front of us, there's a parade of soldiers and Roman chariots. Everyone's smiling . . . Icarus is barking.”

“Is Icarus your dog?”

“No, my fiancée's.”

Mallock couldn't help sighing. Now the Roman Empire! He saw his worst fears being realized. They were going to get into earlier lives. With a little luck, Manuel would be Caesar and Cleopatra would soon be showing the tip of her pretty nose.

But Master Long kept control of the questioning. He asked calmly:

“Manuel? On what date are these facts occurring, and where are you exactly?”

“We're on the coast of Normandy. There's a parade with people in costume. But we're all a little sad, especially Marie. Instead of marrying her as planned, I have to leave . . . ”

“Where are you going?” Master Long continued, without showing the slightest emotion.

It was as if Manuel were drowning in his past. For him, the old professor's regular speech represented the surface of the water.

“Where are you going, please?” Long repeated.

“To Hell,” Manuel finally breathed.

When he said this, everything changed. His skin was covered with sweat. He was trembling. Then his hands flew up from the edge of the bed and covered his face.

“I've put shoe polish on my body! I think it's better that way. They mustn't see me.”

“Who are they, Manuel?”

“They're the dark and they'll be in the dark! I didn't know that such an obscurity could exist.”

His eyes opened wide and he shouted like a madman:

“It's done, de Gaulle is flying off . . . It's terribly cold, I'm falling in the wind.”

Master Long was surprised to find himself asking:

“Did you know the general?”

“What general?”

“De Gaulle?”

“Yes, the bird that flies,” Manu replied simply.

A minute or two passed. Kiko had kept her hand on her mouth. Julie's lips were pale and tight. Manuel's eyes never stopped moving under his eyelids.

But what was he seeing?

“No, I'm not alone,” he finally said. “I'm naked, but around me people are dressed. Very beautiful black suits . . . with glints of light.”

“Where are you, Manuel?” Master Long asked again.

“In the forest. I'm in the forest with the men in black . . . I think they haven't seen the pitchfork.”

“What pitchfork?”

“I have to sink it into the body of the woman, even if it's the last thing I ever do.”

“What woman?”

“Her! The one who's tied up between the two trees. She must be beautiful, but terror has distorted her face. Her thighs are garroted at the groin. The muscles of her legs have been cut with a knife . . . My God! What horror!”

Despite all his efforts to keep his distance, Master Long couldn't help quietly groaning.

Manuel went on:

“I've . . . I've eaten the flesh of that woman! I didn't know. They laughed as they served it to me. Raw meat . . . I liked it. I was so hungry. Now I have to kill her . . . ”

Manu's body twisted on the bed.

His legs flailed in the air.

“Fortunately, the pitchfork's tines went into her belly easily. I stuck them in again a little higher, to be sure I'd pierce the heart.”

“But who is this woman, Manuel?”

Manuel was over there, confined in his infernal past.

“‘K' wanted to prevent me from killing her. So I gave her a violent blow with the handle of the pitchfork and hit her face. Her nose and her mouth exploded . . . ”

“Who is ‘K'? Who is that woman? Could you be more precise, please?”

Long tried to bring Manuel back toward a purely factual account.

“‘K' is the ogre. Triple K is written on his hand: ‘KKK.' He's one of the Devil's nine reflections. I'm going to kill him, I have to. Afterward, everything will be over. The pitchfork has sunk into his forehead. Squeaking, it has slipped between his skin and his skull. I'm now pushing with all my strength. I've scalped this bastard.”

Manuel smiled. And this smile was terrifying.

“There are pieces of flesh stuck to the tips of the tines of the old pitchfork. But he's still standing. I'd like to hit him again, but a pain is resounding in my back . . . ”

Manu's mouth remained wide open, as if frozen by suffering.

“And now, Manuel?” Master Long said after three minutes of silence.

“Afterward? I don't see anything. Unspeakable things are happening. I remember only the moment when I found myself naked, lying on a bed of skulls, thousands of birds' bodies.”

Manuel's features, which had been marked by morbid elation, had resumed a look of fear. He'd gone full circle. He began to scream:

“My God, I'm sinking into the swallows!”

Worried, Master Long bent over Manuel to take his main pulses.

“We have to stop for the moment. He's exhausted and he has completed a cycle of revelation. It would be unreasonable to begin another one.”

“But isn't that nothing but a horrible nightmare?” Kiko asked.

Her voice was breaking with emotion. Julie was holding her by the shoulders and Jules, behind the two women, had put his hand on Julie's.

“No, I'm quite certain,” Master Long said. “With the chakras open and the meridians freed, a man can neither lie nor invent things. So far as I'm concerned, Manuel has experienced what he has just told us about. The reality may be masked by an oneiric coding, as in our dreams. But I'm not sure even about that.”

For his part, Mallock was lost and angry. Or rather angry because he was lost. Unjustly he cried in conclusion:

“If we follow you and accept your theories, Kong Long, this is not Manu's first murder. He has already killed, and in the worst of ways! Bravo, the prosecution is going to thank us for this.”

The day after the first interrogation, Margot met Mallock for lunch at La Coupole.
Outside, it smelled like exhaust.

The snow and cold were making things hard for cars.

They chose a special oyster platter. He liked the little ones, fat and milky with vinegar and shallots, while she preferred them green and translucent, with lemon. He saw in this still another reason for not expressing his feelings. They were too different, it would never work.

As if people had to be alike in order to love one another!

During lunch, he listened to Margot tell him about her latest travels. She was pretty when she talked. When she listened, too. All the time, in fact. Her mouth was like an incredible animal, a red octopus that sucked and smiled, unveiling white pearls and a pink tongue from which phrases and images departed. A word, a bite, an idea, a mouthful, a burst of laughter. She breathed mental strength and a disturbing physical appearance.

He ate little and did not speak.

He watched her.

He realized that he had never really looked at her. In any case, not like this. Without worrying about the emptiness. Looking at her until they were connected only by their eyes.

His love for Amélie and his feeling of guilt had prevented him from contemplating Margot like that, in all her brilliance.

His fear of happiness as well, probably.

She was magnificent, quite simply magnificent, with her too-bright eyes, her delicate neck and wrists. Her irregular teeth. Her cheekbones, her slightly jutting chin, her wide, slightly downturned mouth. And then her tanned skin that smelled of the open air, the sea foam, and all the suns of the world.

Mallock had a furious desire to eat her up.

Suck on her little ears.

Taste her breasts and her belly.

Spread her legs and enter her.

Ejaculate in her all his joys and sorrows, his love and his infinite desire for her.

And then caress her.

Mallock and Margot reappeared in their respective offices only around 4:30. What their hearts felt during the brief truce their bodies gave one another, neither of them had ever experienced before.

And neither had their skins.

Especially their skins, perhaps.

The second hypnosis session took place on Sunday.
After the retranscription of the first interrogation, the prosecution had filed a new charge of “the murder and torture of an unknown person, at an undetermined date, and by means that remain to be clarified.” The hypnosis sessions, instead of bringing to light possible extenuating circumstances, were producing further revelations. And, perhaps soon, further murders. But it was no longer possible to go back.

So a second session had been set up. Kiko, Jules, and Julie arrived together. They met again with Maître Pierre Parquet, the representative for the prosecution, and Maître Antoine Ceccaldi.

Master Long took his time preparing this session. He was not really nervous, but he was concerned. The wrinkles on his forehead were tenser and deeper. The first time, he'd been surprised, and he didn't like that.

As he began his questioning, he avoided returning to the episode of the woman's murder:

“Could you go back, please, to the moment when you had the little girl in your arms. You told us: ‘It was on the coast of Normandy. There's a parade of people in costume. But we are all sad because I have to leave.' Could you try to find the exact date?”

“July, 1939,” Manuel replied without the slightest hesitation.

“Which year?”

“1939,” Manuel repeated. “Or 1940 . . . ”

“Very good, Manuel. Think carefully. What was the date of the murder of this woman that you found tied to the trees?”

Manuel frowned and went on without stopping as if receiving instructions:

“May, '44.”

His voice was thick, but the words were clearly articulated. There was a thirty-second silence.

“In what circumstances did this occur? Try to remember precisely. Where were you?”

Manuel remained silent for three minutes, then began to tell everything. His voice was calm. No more cries or broken-off sentences, he spoke as if he were reading from a book:

“Four difficult years have passed since my last trip to Normandy. It's the month of May. I'm a lieutenant-colonel in the Free French forces. This is not a choice, it's normal, it's my duty. I've just volunteered for a more dangerous mission. I'm not afraid, I'm impatient.”

Mallock grimaced. What was he going to tell them now? He couldn't decide how much he should believe these statements, whether regarding their veracity or even the interest they might have. He was beginning to be sorry he hadn't forced everyone to limit themselves to research on Darbier, as he had intended when he returned to France.