Cemetery of Swallows (33 page)

These bones crushed by human brutality, these fractured tibias and teeth rising, like white cries, out of their gangue, had just made the scale's needle swing toward Manu and his incredible revelations.

Mallock climbed down into the grave and knelt down, both to avoid falling and to be at the right height to pick up a bit of bone. He chose a jaw fragment. He put it on the index and middle fingers of his right hand and caressed it slowly with his thumb.

“What are you doing, Amédée?”

Mordome, who knew him well, had noticed his friend's state of mind.

“Barbarism, you have to actually touch it for it to touch you, Barnabé. See it to know it. Damn and double damn!”

Mallock put the fragment of a jaw back exactly where he'd found it, and then added:

“There is so much passion in these bones, you understand?”

“If you say so.”

Mordome hated sentimentality, especially concerning his daily lot: the bodies of people murdered by his fellows. There's nobody in a dead body, he kept telling his students. Even if, paradoxically, he inculcated respect for the victims in them.

“Eleven bodies,” Mallock repeated, without taking offense at the apparent insensitivity of his friend. “Except for the youngest member of the unit, Gaston Wrochet, they're all there. Though we still have to prove that they're soldiers.”

Jo, who had come over to them, interrupted him:

“That's no problem. Not far from the well, the second team has just found the remains of a fire. In them they identified several partly melted pieces of metal: military insignias and uniform buttons. For the moment, they haven't been able to determine their exact origin, but they'll get there.”

At the same moment, Julie joined them.

“Boss? Isn't Lieutenant Lafitte supposed to have buried a chain? The one that held the famous heart?”

“According to Manu, yes. You know that as well as I do.”

“No, it was during the interrogation on Friday, the one with Long and Trencavel, that he's supposed to have told you that. I wasn't there. But I heard something about it.”

“Ah! Right, in fact. Well, he told me that he'd taken the heart off the chain so that he could swallow it, and then he threw the chain on the ground. He said he stepped on it so that the Germans wouldn't find it. You'll need to look for it near the . . . ”

Without saying a word, Julie slowly opened her hand. In it there was soil and, shining as on its first day, a golden chain.

 

Of course, Mallock didn't react as his collaborators expected him to. No sign of satisfaction, or even of astonishment. He turned to the gendarmerie captain and gave him an order that no one understood at the moment:

“Halt the search in the grave and around the well, Captain. We have what we need. A hundred yards to the south, you'll find the remains of a house. I would like you and the guys from Judicial Identity to dig around it. But carefully.“

“We'll get on it right away, Superintendent.”

Jean-Marie Mireille seemed to have adjusted to the situation. With someone like Mallock, you had to not try too hard to understand. And then one of the great joys of the soldier's profession is clicking his heels and obeying blindly, even stupidly. Only those who have never practiced this sport will scorn its frank and subtle pleasure. However, Mallock detained the captain and the head of the crime scene squad before they climbed out of the grave.

He searched for words and then said:

“We're looking for bones that have been burned and perhaps gnawed. Little bones . . . ”

“What do you mean by ‘little'?”

A deep sigh from Mallock.

“Bones of children, maybe even babies.”

Apart from Julie, who had been there when Manuel made his latest revelations, everyone present looked at Mallock as if he had finally lost all common sense.

Then he finished:

“What we're looking for is in fact the remains of a meal.”

Captain Mireille and the other witnesses took several seconds to accept the relation between the words “meal” and “babies.” When they understood, a new stage was reached in silence. As they moved away to mark out a new search zone, an immense wave of cold bore down on the clearing. The vanguard of a storm that was still gathering strength in the icy upper spheres of the Arctic.

 

At nightfall, the first little skeletons were found. Charles Coudret decided it was high time for him to go home. His wife must be waiting for him, and now he no longer had any forest. His woods were cursed from now on, forever contaminated. My God, babies eaten! Overwhelmed by what had happened in his forest, he left without saying farewell to his friend the superintendent.

There are times like that, when one doesn't dare look any more, ashamed simply to be a human being.

As the last bits of sky were melting among the branches, Mallock finally understood what there was at night in addition to everything you could see during the day. What terrorized Manu when he was young. The extra thing that was in his room.

This monster that came when night fell, the mysterious element that disappeared when the sun returned, was obscurity.

Thomas and two other children were in the courtyard outside the studio when the block of marble was delivered. Several tons of beige stone veined with traces of crimson. In his dream, Mallock began to work that same day. It was urgent. A commission from a Venetian prince. Naked women begging. He had a free hand as to the number and position of these figures. In the dream, days and nights passed and he, sweating, exhausted, worked on. Worked. Again and again. On his hands, hundreds of bruises, blisters, and cuts appeared without any pain weakening his determination. Sometimes he stopped for a few minutes to drink or urinate, before returning to work even harder. He slept little and ate at random.

Six months later, his statue was finally finished. Outside, autumn was turning everything orange. Mallock-the-sculptor had reopened the doors of his studio as he waited for the transporters. Soon these men would take his work all the way south, to the right of the Italian boot.

He felt both pride and sadness. They were going to leave.

As he was going back into the courtyard to look at his work one last time, Thomas came up to him. He had not seen the stone again since the day it had arrived. Putting his soft little hand in his father's bloody paw, he asked him solemnly:

“The ladies must have been imprisoned for a long time in the big stone. See, they're very thin.”

Mallock smiled at what he took to be a simple child's notion. It was a beautiful image, already-sculpted women waiting to be delivered from their gangue of stone. Then his mind shifted to another interpretation that was far more painful.

What if he was right? What if these figures were already there, determined by the veins and cracks in the marble. Hadn't he worked around all the weaknesses until he'd found his subject? And what about the urgency he'd felt? Like a rescue worker scraping the ground after an avalanche. What if everything was already written? Already sculpted? What if we were on Earth only to place our feet between the dotted lines, to follow the arrows in ascending order and unearth the clues to this kind of obstacle course that life was? What if we couldn't do anything about it? Neither the tragedies nor the happiness.

My God! What if even the dignity of choice was denied us?

 

As Mallock slowly emerged from his dream, he realized that someone was crying inside his apartment. He leapt to his feet and grabbed the revolver that he hid under the bed. He listened, feeling a little silly. The moans seemed to be coming from all over. Very close, like murmurs. He went into the bathroom. In front of him, the mirror revealed the truth to him, a face with puffy eyes full of tears: his face.

He set the gun on the soap dish and resting his arms on the two sides of the sink, facing the mirror, he violently closed his eyes. As if engraved under his eyelids, in the dark, he glimpsed the form of a cross. He was too used to these visions not to recognize the signs. Dry mouth, vibration in the ears, loss of balance. This one was rapid. Light, like the back of a cuttlefish surfing like a cork on the salt sea.

 

Mallock got dressed and went up to his office. He sent the photograph he'd taken of the cross, along with the reworked segment on which the inscription “MPF” could be seen, to three people, three historian friends, including Léon Galène. This crucifix was part of the solution, but in what way? Mallock preferred to leave his vision untouched by any mental manipulation. Intelligence not only straightens things out but also twists them.

 

By reflex, he turned on the television as he went back downstairs to make himself coffee. Captain Jean-Marie Mireille appeared on the screen, lit by flashlights. To his right, the inevitable judge. That must have been recorded the preceding evening, after Mallock's departure. Who had informed the television team? Mallock would have answered: “Who benefits from the crime?” Very handsome in his gray suit with a Mao collar, Judioni had adopted a hoarse voice:

“I've just spent the whole day and part of the night with these men (a little movement of the arm to let the camera make a quick panorama), digging up the earth on the urgent orders of Superintendent Mallock. It's exhausting work!”

So this was the reason for the yellow boots and the orange hard hat, the outfit of an experienced man who has sweat on his back.

“To avoid any new rumors, I want to state that although we have in fact found various . . . things, there is absolutely nothing that directly concerns the Gemoni case.”

Then, after a hesitant silence:

“And still less the body of a lieutenant from the Second World War that was supposed to be sought in the context of this case, as some of your colleagues have claimed.”

Having said this, the judge raised his right hand, spreading his fingers to signal that he would not answer any questions.

Now broadcasting live in the news channel's studio, the journalist, Jacob Callas, introduced his guest. The same judge, him again. Judioni hadn't lost any time. Being on television was the second thing he'd thought about when he woke up that morning. The third was to smile and the first was to groom himself down to the last hair. Judioni, who had been careful, for once, not to shave and even to set the famous hard hat within sight on the table, began by offering a caveat:

“I won't pretend not to be a little tired. If I have agreed to your request to spend a few minutes with you this morning, it is because I have the greatest respect for journalists in general and for you in particular, Monsieur Callas. But I cannot emphasize too much that my duty is to remain discreet and to scrupulously respect the secrecy of the investigation.”

“But what can you tell us, then? What did you discover? There has been talk of infants' skeletons.”

Contrary to what he had just said, the interview had been arranged on the magistrate's initiative. Jacob Callas was hoping the judge had come to unveil something.

“I'm only a citizen like others. A great deal of information is already publicly available and I understand very well why it raises so many questions. I also think that the French people are once again showing great wisdom in following, and in such detail, what is happening in our country. Personally, I think they are not given a sufficient voice.”

A short silence. A clearing of the throat in the back and a glance toward the high seas of demagogy.

“You know, Monsieur Callas, in my work as a judge I meet the French people when they come, as members of juries, to aid me in my difficult task. I am talking about the work I do every day in the courts of our beautiful provinces. And I can assure you that there is a true pertinence, a deep understanding and moral sense in our fellow citizens. I know that one must not lie to them or conceal from them a truth they have a right to know. But here, things are simple: I can't talk about an ongoing investigation.”

The journalist, after a broad smile of assent, tried to restart the discussion. Apparently the judge would not discuss this rumor about baby skeletons that had been circulating in editorial offices and on the Internet since the day before. But what about the story of the Second World War lieutenant? Callas let himself go a bit:

“I understand, judge, that you can't tell us everything, and that is entirely to your credit. But allow me to speculate in your place. Let's imagine that someday we find the body of this Jean-François Lafitte, of whom Gemoni is supposed to be, if we believe the rumors, a sort of . . . reincarnation. Let's grant that he has been found and identified, following only Gemoni's directions, and even though no one knows where he is buried. On that hypothesis, it would be difficult to doubt this reincarnation, and we would find ourselves confronted by an extraordinary situation, to say the least. If that were the case, we would have to conclude that Manuel Gemoni in fact killed Tobias Darbier, alias Klaus Krinkel, in legitimate self-defense, so to speak. How could that be translated into juridical terms?”

Judioni gave a great laugh that was as false as it was out of proportion:

“A fantastic idea, I agree. But if ifs and ands were pots and pans, Monsieur Callas, there'd be no trade for tinkers. No, let's be serious. I'm not going to evade your question, don't worry, but I have to inform you regarding certain facts that are apparently not yet in your possession.”

Jacob Callas's eyes began to shine. A scoop? The Holy Grail for a hack forever doomed to deal with trivia.

“Whatever we French discover, or rather imagine, I'm here to tell you that the accused, Manuel Gemoni, will be retried in the Dominican Republic. It is on that condition alone that the Dominican authorities authorized the departure of an individual whom they consider to be the murderer of one of their fellow citizens. Unless he is given the maximum sentence of thirty years in prison or the case is dismissed on sufficient grounds, as soon as his trial here is over, he will be sent back to the site of his crime. And over there, I doubt that the police will entertain the kind of woolly hypotheses that Superintendent Mallock, for whom I have the greatest esteem, is so good at forming.”