Cemetery of Swallows (3 page)

As for the rest, as an experienced man used to the trials of life and the wrath of heaven, he has learned to guard against excessive hopes. He has given this meal that is advancing toward him one and only one objective, that of filling part of the void he has in his stomach. Period. But the naïve fellow has once again expected too much of the gods' magnanimity. An unidentifiable chunk of meat swims among the remains of lukewarm vegetables. He waves it away and closes his eyes again.

 

“I'm the one who has to take him home,” Julie had said gravely a few days earlier. Mallock had looked at her with tenderness, that particular tenderness he reserved for the marvelous little girls who had become women, courageous, beautiful women. Yes, her brother was a good guy and he had a wonderful sister. With her very light hazel eyes, her olive skin, her short hair, and her little, slightly hooked nose, she was beautiful enough to eat. But what made her still more beautiful was her lively mind, along with the methodical, stubborn side that is peculiar to feminine intelligence. Mallock was very lucky to have her on his team. And Jules was lucky to have her as his partner.

“You hadn't been able to track him down before these recent events?”

“Yes, I had, just before I learned about this murder business last night, I'd finally found out where he'd gone. Too late.”

“Why didn't you ask the whole team for help right from the beginning, instead of trying to find your brother by yourself? In the Fort, within the blood brotherhood, we take care of each other. You ought to know that.”

There was a touch of reproach in what Mallock said.

“You were all busy with the most recent developments in the ‘massacre' case, and I didn't want to mess up everything with a personal problem that was far less important than the horror we had to confront this summer. I took advantage of Jules's convalescence to put him to work. I really thought we were going to be able to handle it by ourselves.”

Jules was still recovering from the bullet wound that had sent him to the hospital during the previous investigation. It had struck him in the forehead but was small-caliber, and it had saved him by passing between the two lobes of his brain. He had only a small, crescent-shaped scar.

Mechanically, Mallock turned on the two tape recorders that he used so that he could listen to depositions again.

“Tell me about the beginning of your investigation.”

“ Jules and I began with the supposed contents of his bag, as it had been reconstituted by Kiko. She'd noticed the absence of certain clothes and toilet articles. Then we viewed together the videocassette that he'd constantly been watching and that, according to his wife, is supposed to have started it all.”

“What kind of video?”

“A documentary on historical and ethnological stuff. Manu not only watched it several times, but also took digital photos of it. He must have taken some of them with him, but the ones that remained allowed me to tell what he was looking at so attentively.”

“The parts of the documentary that interested him?”

“Exactly. There were one or two that seem to have fascinated him. In those pictures, we can see a town square, a few trees with trunks painted mauve, the color of a local political party, so far as I could understand, and a church constructed from pink earth. In fact, it is the presence in the photo of black people with green eyes and red hair that allowed us to identify the village: San José de Ocoa.”

“Because?”

“It's a specific ethnic group found in only four places in the world. Ocoa was the only one that had the same vegetation. The church provided the final proof. In the film, that was also the most obvious thing.”

“Can I see it?”

“No, the crime squad and the guys from Foreign Affairs came to Manu's house and confiscated all his personal effects. The morons even took fingerprints off the cassette and the tape recorder, as if they were weapons. Conservative steps, they said. They were meticulous.”

At the time, Mallock felt personally insulted by such a procedure. Then he calmed down. Wouldn't he have done the same thing?

“That's okay. I'll take care of that later. On the other hand, I'd like you to have your brother's blood tested as soon as possible. Have the authorities in Santo Domingo send us the blood. We have to find out everything about his physical condition. He might have been drugged or caught some disease there.”

Julie felt a little better. Mallock's use of the pronoun “I” helped her enormously. Not only were she and her close friends and relatives no longer the only ones, but the Mallock machine was in gear. And she was in a position to know how effective that was.

Somewhat reassured, she went on: “After discovering where and when he'd gone, I had no difficulty in confirming his departure. I borrowed Ken's computers and connected to the databases of the airline companies and the customs and immigration authorities. In two hours we found the schedule and the number of his flight. I also discovered that he'd paid for his ticket in cash and, more disturbingly, hadn't bought a return ticket.”

A one-way ticket to the ends of the earth, Mallock murmured, closing his eyes. And all those miles to go murder an old man whom he didn't even know. What could he have been thinking?

It seemed to Julie that she heard her superintendent's brain starting up, like a powerful steam engine. She felt the heavy circumvolutions of his imagination shaking the ground under her feet, eating up the steel rails she'd just put in front of him. She knew he wouldn't stop until he'd reached the terminus: the solution of the enigma.

She was infinitely grateful to him.

 

The food cart comes back to his row:

“Sorry to have awakened you again, superintendent.”

Superintendent! Damn, he's been recognized again. Since the last investigation, he's had trouble not being noticed.

“What would you like to drink?”

The flight attendant's smile is so dazzling that Mallock catches himself counting her teeth. It isn't possible that she has only thirty-two. At least twice that many.

“Whiskey, please.”

“Ice cubes?”

Mallock looks at the label on the bottle:

“Yes, please. And a little soda.” A nectar like that can be drowned ruthlessly.

 

After the past, the future. Mallock has started thinking about what he has to do when he gets there. Dublin, the big boss of the 36, the occupier of the prestigious Office No. 315 and his direct superior, had been clear. If he was okay with Amédée being responsible for this investigation, even though it involved someone who was close to him in a way, that was because his favorite superintendent had improved with age, like a fine wine whose bottle was embellished with the flattering label: “As seen on television.” His presence would satisfy the egos of the local authorities and it would be easier for him to get access to the investigation's files. The procedure of extradition might thereby be simplified. For its part, the chancellery had begun working to arrange the repatriation of its citizen, probably with the help of Interpol, the Dominican Republic having contacted the international police organization.

The old man Manuel had killed was named Tobias Darbier. He had a French passport. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had emphasized that the victim and the murderer were of the same nationality. A little incentive on the economic level had made it possible to foresee a satisfactory outcome. A “transfer agreement” had been signed, and then everything had moved very quickly. But many promises had been made in order to permit this extradition.

Far too many promises, Amédée was to discover later on.

For once, he thought he would play the starring role, that of the savior. The one who is awaited and who arrives at the right moment, with trumpets, drums, and lightning bolts. Zorro the horseman, the great superintendent, all askew, with his little cape flying behind him. Mallock the centaur and flawless knight. Obsolete and ridiculous, like a medieval hero with his plumes and revealing tights.

As a child in the schoolyard, Amédée was already the boy who gallops straight ahead, slapping his thigh, shooting invisible arrows and defeating a whole army of bad guys all by himself. Mallock had the hero's whole panoply. And while he'd gotten older, he hadn't grown up. So yes, he took pleasure in this mission. He would go find little Gandhi and take him home.

A mixture of Cyrano and Don Quixote, Mallock was poorly adapted to his time and to life on Earth as a whole. He had seen hypocrisy and mendacity win out and the words of the Just become inaudible, but he continued nonetheless to fight to save sand castles from the rising tide. An emperor of paradox and the king of the oxymoron, Mallock combined in a single heart modest pride, tears, and fierceness, tender hardness, empathy, and misanthropy. Thanks to a kind of melancholy-based glue, he managed to construct out of all these contradictions a homogeneous, almost monolithic whole. People talk about the hopes of youth; Mallock was instead the despair of age.

 

A questionnaire appears, falling from on high. Great, something to do. He starts to check the “tourism” box, but then chooses “business” instead, wondering what diplomatic intrigues and administrative complications—two redundancies in a row—he is going to have to cope with. The Dominican authorities no longer oppose Manuel Gemoni's extradition or having him tried in France, on the condition that they be allowed to send two observers to monitor the trial as a whole. Regarding that aspect of the accord, it only remains to choose the observers' hotel—the George V or the Crillon?—and to agree on the amount of their expense account. Aside from that, the Dominican officials ask that everything be done in due form and in conformity with their national prerogatives. Face has to be saved, and no one must be able to interpret this accord as an indication of weakness on their part. Dispatching someone like Mallock, and not a simple captain, helped calm the last local sensitivities.

When he gets there, he'll still have a few courtesies to perform, two envelopes to deliver in person and a raft of thank-yous, and then he'll be done, he thinks. The only thing that still worries Amédée, who is peacefully falling asleep, is how long it will take him to get through all these formalities. A day, a week, a month? What would a bureaucrat who was an islander be like? A day, a week, a month? Sleep, the humming of the engine . . . A day, a week, a month?

 

He wakes when the plane, after having touched down with a violent thump, is bouncing up again. Jesus! The guy must be a fucking beginner! Stupefied, Mallock hears the other travelers applauding like mad, congratulating the pilot. He sighs, almost philosophically. “After good judgment, the rarest things in the world are diamonds and pearls.”

Flight attendant's announcement that they have arrived in the Dominican Republic. A bunch of jerks already champing at the bit to get out. Bags by the dozens descending from the overhead compartments. Mallock stays in his seat, looking out the window. He wonders, once again, whether he'll be able to live out his life without becoming completely misanthropic, or even psychopathic, a mad killer mowing down passengers in a train, an air-conditioned bus, or—why not?—a plane landing in the Dominican Republic.

 

 

 

 

Except for the humidity, the noise, the gray, overcast weather, and the strong odors, the arrival in Santo Domingo was not all that bad, even for someone like Mallock.

In the main hall of the airport, there were a dozen passport-control booths, salmon-pink and numbered in yellow. A great idea—the booths, not the color—that would have been enough to control the flow of white tourists and swarthy businessmen had the authorities not decided, in obedience to the international agreement to ignore public convenience, to open only one of these lovely booths.

Arriving passengers found themselves forced to pass through the bottleneck thus produced in order to get the sacrosanct
tarjeta del turista
, full of typographical flourishes, gilt stamps, and royal watermarks.

Once they had this precious document in their hands, they all scattered, every man for himself, to try to take possession of one of the rare places that had a counter on which they could fill out the aforesaid questionnaire. This assumed of course, that everyone was the fortunate owner of a pen. Then all one had to do was keep a paranoid eye on his baggage while pressing hard enough on this carbon copy, which was very tropical in its quality.

Fortunately for Mallock, Commander Juan Luis Jiménez and his assistant,
el capitán
Ramón Cabral, had been assigned to meet
el comandante
superintendent from Paris. These two local police officers had been instructed to spare Mallock any hassles, and they gave him a warm welcome. The term was all the more apt because he was still wearing one of his usual suits, with a tie and matching socks, and heavy leather shoes. He realized how important the two officers thought he was by the simple fact that neither of them dared smile at his clothes, which were inappropriate to say the least.

They had straight white teeth beneath black mustaches. They took his passport and, without asking him to pay the ten-dollar entry fee, left to deal with his paperwork:

“Stay, we'll take care of everything.”

They spoke French about as well as Amédée spoke Spanish. They weren't out of the woods yet . . .

 

Imprisoned in his suit, Mallock feels sweaty and a little stupid. Then, for the first time since he was allowed to get rid of the horrible short pants his mother made him wear, he considers the possibility of buying himself that unimaginable article of clothing: Bermuda shorts. To make the idea acceptable, he has imported it into his brain only in the form of a simple working hypothesis, depending on a whole series of conditions: the shape, the material, the color . . . But the worm is in the apple, the idea is making its way, and the world may soon be able to see Mallock in shorts!