Cemetery of Swallows (22 page)

The latter took into account not only discourse, but everything else: facial expressions, micro-tics, heartbeats, sweating, movements of the body, fingers, hands, legs, shoulders, and so on. Together, the two sisters quietly developed the absolute weapon against liars. Mallock had been watching them from a distance, determined to ask them to join his team and be part of the Fort. Two women of that type were well worth three men of normal stature.

And even more
, Amédée smiled as he thought about them again.

In Manu's case, Karyn and Clémence had been categorical. For them, an inventor of tall tales, especially in such a case, would speak using signifiers that were more general and had multiple signifieds. He would play on the ambiguity of meaning and use broad paradigms, highly dispersed syntagmatic sequences. He would use and abuse ruses at different levels of pronominalization. As for gestures and facial movements, there was no objection. Micro-expressions that they called “micro-tics” corresponded to the emotions conveyed by the discourse. No grimace of shame or fear, except when he was talking about the murder itself, and then only with a shudder of disgust, even though he claimed to have taken pleasure in it. His fingers were at rest, his legs heavy and motionless. Karyn and Clémence had arrived at an unambiguous diagnosis. In their humble opinion, the man was not lying.

For his part, Mallock, who had been in the trade for thirty years, limited himself to listening to music. Without even having to undertake a textual analysis, the truth resounded in a certain way on his eardrums. And today, his thirty years of experience constantly confirmed the Calmel sisters' convictions. Manuel was telling the truth, even though that truth was implausible.

 

As he was ruminating Mallock had been walking alongside the gardens of the Observatory. The ground was covered with a mixture of fresh snow and melted ice. His efforts to keep from slipping were beginning to make his back hurt again. Passing in front of the Port-Royal metro station, he hesitated a few seconds. But the snow started to fall heavily in big flakes, slow and vertical. Since he loved that, he resumed his walk, wondering whether he was going to go directly home or stop off at headquarters.

Malloc realized that there was now a kind of incontestable coherence in what Manuel was saying. This story of fighting with a pitchfork could explain part of the mystery. The first blow could very well have given Darbier's nose and mouth their postwar form. The second might have caused the strange scars on his skull, which were certainly not due to his mother's teeth, as the legend claimed. Moreover, this incident removed another implausibility: the fact that no one, including the Israelis, had found this war criminal. Disfigured in this way, he had been able to escape every attempt to find him. Especially if his hair had grown back in another color, probably white, and then been dyed yellow. However, this bastard in uniform had to have actually existed. But there again, Manuel had come through. He had given “KKK's” serial number. As he had for his alter ego, Jean-François Lafitte. There was now just one priority: checking the validity of the numbers and the names given. Seeing if they corresponded to something that actually existed or had existed. Afterward, there would still be time to construct risky hypotheses or die laughing.

It was in fact to eliminate the first possibility that he went by the office to assign Ken to do this research. Which was not without irony, since the latter's complete name was Ken Kô Kuroda: KKK, as he initialed his files. A mere coincidence but one that would leave a disagreeable taste in Ken's mouth.

As for Mallock, he would never have admitted it, but he was afraid of looking into it himself, for fear of coming upon these numbers and these names, fear of seeing Manu's wild ideas in black and white in the memory of history, fear of feeling all the madness, the terror, and the fear of being alone at that moment!

That was undoubtedly why he was so gentle in giving his orders:

“I have to have all that tomorrow at noon!”

“To put it politely, Boss, I'm totally wiped out.”

“I don't give a damn, you can sleep tomorrow when you're dead.”

Amédée knew how to be agreeable.

He left for home without offering further explanation, entirely aware of what he had done and feeling guilty and embarrassed about having taken out his frustration on his assistant in that way. He stayed angry at himself until he got home and swallowed a double dose of sixteen-year-old Lagavulin, neat, standing in the middle of his living room, the back of his overcoat still soaked and his boots covered with snow.

The next day, it was a very irritated Mallock who awoke at 4
A.M.
He sat down in front of his computer with a café-crème and a corona, which was also a double. It was high time for him to form an opinion regarding these stories of “reincarnation.” The first step was a Google search. Four other key words: renaissance, metempsychosis, transmigration, and palingenesis.

Mallock didn't like superstitions, or religions. Believing was not his thing, not in the Lord, nor in Man, nor in all the prostrate contortions people went through to forget time, corruption, and worms. Although he had finally adopted and cherished the values of Christianity, he hadn't adopted either its deacons or its god.

Whatever trials he might have passed through, Amédée had decided that his despair would have no Church.

A 8
A.M.
, Mallock finally let go of his mouse, not converted, but annoyed.

Concerning the theory based on the belief in the immortality of a soul that left the body only to reappear in an animal, vegetable, or human form, he had found everything and its opposite. As many versions as there were peoples and religions.

Reincarnation had been a favorite notion among believers in every age, well before the arrival of a providential man on Earth. It was found everywhere, from Africa to Asia, by way of Dorsetshire and Bengal. An incredible muddle that each person appropriated, adopted, and adapted in accord with his ritual or spiritual ideology.

As for the accounts, proofs, and testimonies, of which there should have been a plethora, they seemed to be poor relations. Nothing serious to get your teeth into, and only one researcher worthy of the name, a certain Stevenson. This psychiatrist had made searching for clues relating to reincarnation his specialty. All that to end up saying, eleven years after the first publication of his work: “Whether they are taken individually or as a group, these examples do not constitute even the beginning of a proof of reincarnation.” Even if, in most of the cases studied, “Metempsychosis remains the most plausible explanation.”

Xenoglossia, the ability to speak or write in a language one has not learned, had seemed to Mallock an interesting lead. If someone wakes up one day with such an aptitude, something bizarre must have happened. But there again, not a single proven case, nothing, zero, zilch, diddly-squat, except perhaps the gift of certain prophets or disciples of God speaking, in the Old Testament, unknown languages they had not learned. And there, it was even worse, since it was not a matter of xenoglossia but of glossolalia, an amusing variety of the phenomenon, because if the subject in fact started to speak a language unknown to those around him, it was also unknown to any human person, only God being capable of understanding it. A little facile as a sleight-of-hand.

 

As a last resort, around 9
A.M.
, Amédée decided to call his old pal Léon. Léon had read everything, and he might have learned something interesting. And Mallock trusted him without reservation.

“Listen, Amédée, I'm going to send you a list of the best works, but I can tell you there's nothing transcendent. Either it's written by groupies of this paranormal stuff, and then it's anything goes, or by skeptical-scientific types, and then it's the reverse certainty, and no more objective.”

“And you, what do you think?”

Long silence.

“Hello, you still there?”

“Yeah, I'm thinking . . . I don't have anything that resembles a proof in any way.”

“You don't believe in it, right?”

“Uh . . . yes, I do. In fact I should believe in it, or rather . . . Wait . . . ”

Then it was Mallock's turn to fall silent. He was both astonished by his friend's statement and aware that he had to give him time.

When Léon began talking again, his voice was different. The ironic tone that distinguished it from any other had disappeared. As it had on the day when he'd told Mallock his story, about the camps and his terrible journey.

“Back then, I almost died more than once, I already told you about that, and I'm not going to start complaining again. But one morning I simply didn't wake up. They thought I was dead and threw me into a grave that I myself had started digging the day before. In fact, I was in a coma . . . At least, that's the most plausible hypothesis.”

The sound of a lighter. Léon was lighting a cigarette, a corn-husk Gitane at the end of an ivory holder.

“During my . . . absence, I dreamed. A helluva dream. Much more real than life. I had the feeling that several years had passed. In that other existence, I was an astronomer. My name was Domenico and I worked in Bologna. A comet occupied most of my time, that and the construction of a meridian in a church. I had a friend, Giuseppe, who was a lens grinder.”

Mallock, who had looked everywhere for testimonies, particularly to xenoglossia, was not expecting to find one associated with his friend. However, with Léon, he should have been prepared for anything.

“When I woke up, it was dark and the smell was awful.”

“Could you speak Italian?”

“No, not really. In fact, I don't know, I already spoke Italian earlier. My grandmother was Italian. No, I didn't notice any change in that regard.”

“Too bad, I would have believed you. So, why do you believe in reincarnation?”

Another silence.

“In fact, I didn't notice anything at all unusual at the time, it was only later that I began to realize that something had happened.”

Léon liked to maintain suspense. Mallock played along and waited.

“When I woke up, there were thousands of stars over me.”

“So? They were already there before!” Amédée tried to joke.

“Yes, of course, but there you are. Without having learned anything about astronomy, I knew their exact placement. And better yet, I knew the exact name of each of those little pearls in the sky!”

 

At 11
A.M.
, Ken came into Mallock's office. His eyes were narrowed and swollen, even for a Sino-Pole, and he moved in a tired way.

“The baby?” asked Mallock, who had just come in.

“A hellish night. Nina had an acute earache and we kept her in our bed all night. Ninon is going to take her to the Children's Hospital at 2
P.M.
to see an eye-ear-nose-and-throat man.”

The little girl had barely escaped the name Ken had absolutely wanted to give her: Niwi. With a wife named Ninon, that seemed to him an obvious choice. They had compromised on Nina.

“She's seven months old, if I remember correctly? Tom had the same thing when he was a year old.”

Ken's mouth hung open. It was the first time the boss had alluded to his son since the boy had died. It was a taboo subject, a national security secret. The pain the superintendent had felt when his little Tom died was engraved on everyone's mind. A typhoon carrying off a butterfly. A two hundred and twenty pound sphinx full of tears. His return to police headquarters had surprised everyone. They had thought he would never hunt down criminals again. No one, not even Dublin, had ever dared mention Thomas to him again. Ken, worried, went on:

“I wanted to know if . . . ”

“Of course, you big dope,” Mallock interrupted, seeing in this a way of redeeming his behavior the day before, “if the doc has to drain the ear, the poor little girl is going to have a painful quarter of an hour. Don't leave them alone, the two of them. We can get along without you. And what about my results? Did you have the time, anyway?”

“My superintendent's desires are orders. The number Manu gave you matches up. After reaching the ministry's offices on the telephone, I spoke to an official who confirmed it for me: the serial number corresponds to a certain Lieutenant Lafitte, Jean-François Lafitte. It seems that he was reported missing in '44. But they don't know exactly when or where. In fact, they seemed reluctant to tell me more about it on the phone. So I went there early this morning and snooped around. Being very persistent and using all my charm.”

“I'll bet. I know you. Seducer and snoop, that sums you up pretty well.”

“Go ahead, make fun of me, but thanks to my physique and my handsome face, I was able to make them tell me a lot more. This Lieutenant Lafitte is supposed to have parachuted into the interior before the landing, at the head of a unit of French soldiers with an English carrier pigeon, “Lord de Gaulle.” I swear, I'm not making this up. The bird was one of 7,000 pigeons who took part in D-Day. The other names you gave me, Thibaut Trabesse, Gaël Guennec, and Lucien de Marsac are those of soldiers who were also part of this mission. It was a catastrophe, because no one came back. Worse yet, none of the bodies are supposed to have been found. They promised me a written confirmation, and maybe more details, within forty-eight hours, if we send them an official request signed by the big boss. As for the other number, it is in fact the serial number of a member of the Waffen-SS, Oberleutnant Klaus Krinkel. By an odd coincidence, he is also said to have disappeared in '44, and on French soil. It is assumed that he was killed during the landing. Nothing more! That's already pretty good, isn't it? So is that good or bad news for you? You're making a strange face.”

Something was trembling in Amédée's body.