The Buddha's Return (14 page)

There was one other thing that seemed strange—the murder weapon. Pavel Alexandrovich had been killed with a knife to the back of the head, causing death instantaneously. At least, that is what I had managed to glean from the investigator. This, too, was a mystery. What type of knife could it have been? The instrument of death could not have been any ordinary broad-bladed knife. In any case, whatever the type of knife, the blow must have been
delivered with exceptional strength and precision. It was unlikely that the ailing, consumptive Amar would have possessed such an unerring eye or the requisite physical strength. Moreover, for the hundredth time, why on earth would he have done it? The most likely remaining hypothesis—absurd as it was, it could not entirely be discounted—was that Pavel Alexandrovich had been the victim of some maniac.

When I was next brought in for questioning, I waited impatiently to hear what the investigator had to say. He sat down, laid a piece of paper in front of him and asked me in exactly the same tone, as if he were continuing an interrogation that had been interrupted only a few minutes ago:

“You say you remember the gold statuette of the Buddha in minute detail?”

“Yes.”

“What was it standing on? Did it have a base of any sort?”

“No,” I replied. “There was no base. The underside of the statuette was a perfect square, the one difference being that the corners were slightly rounded.”

He handed me the sheet of white paper and asked:

“Is this the approximate shape of the underside?”

On the paper there was a faint line drawing of a perfect square with rounded corners.

“That’s it exactly.”

The investigator nodded. Then he looked me in the eyes and said:

“Whoever killed Shcherbakov must have taken the gold Buddha. There was a square imprint left on a shelf that was covered by a thin layer of dust. You’re holding a tracing of it in your hands right now. If we can find the statuette, you’ll be free to return home and continue your research on the Thirty Years War, the notes on which we found in your room. I must say, however, that I completely disagree with your conclusions, and in particular your appraisal of Richelieu.”

He then handed me a cigarette—this silent gesture immediately said more than any alteration in the tone of his voice could have done. He did it almost automatically, as one might offer a cigarette to a friend. I felt a strange sense of relief, and my breathing quickened.

“Let’s move on to another matter,” he said. “What do you know about the deceased’s mistress, her parents and her protector? I’d find it difficult to imagine that you haven’t given any thought to the possibility of their having some part in the murder.”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” I said. “I’ve got a fair idea of the people we’re dealing with, but least of all I know Amar, Lida’s ‘protector’, as you call him. Not one of them is a respectable sort. Although I have to say, I fail to see how Lida or Amar could stand to profit by this murder.”

“One could be forgiven for thinking that you’re completely indifferent to the outcome of this investigation.”

“My line of reasoning may differ somewhat from yours,” I said, “but this is because I’m in possession of first-hand information that for you isn’t proven
a priori
: I know I didn’t kill Shcherbakov.”

“At first glance, Lida and Amar appear to have a watertight alibi,” he said. “They both spent the night at L’Étoile d’Or, a dance hall. The waiters on both the first and second shifts remember Amar ordering champagne for them.”

“It happened on a Saturday night, when there will have been a crowd. An hour’s absence could easily go unnoticed.”

“Yes, and what’s more, we have reason enough to doubt any testimony from that lot. However, until we have proof to the contrary, we’re obliged to go along with it.”

“Still, I can’t see what Amar could have been trying to achieve by killing Shcherbakov.”

“Nor can we, and this stands in his favour. We searched their residence and questioned them, but to no avail. Lida’s parents spent the night at home, and in any case I see no reason to suspect them. What are you able to tell me about them?”

I told him what I knew. He said:

“Of course, that speaks volumes for their character, but frankly it doesn’t prove that either of them committed this murder, which has only left them out of pocket.
We have to find this statuette; it’s the key to everything. I shan’t pretend that finding it will be an easy task. I see no reason to question you any further. Now you must wait; time is on your side.”

Before sending me away, he added:

“If the murderer hadn’t been tempted by the golden Buddha, you’d be facing the guillotine or a lifetime’s hard labour. I doubt whether the knowledge that the annals of justice would have been enriched by yet another case of a man being convicted for a crime he didn’t commit would have been any consolation to you.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how long I would have to wait. But at least I was now certain that I was out of harm’s way. True, I had imagined that the investigator, now being convinced of my non-implication in Shcherbakov’s murder, might have restored me to freedom; however, placing myself in his shoes, I fancied that I should have acted in much the same way, if only so that Pavel Alexandrovich’s real murderer would continue believing himself to be out of danger. As I subsequently found out, this was indeed the case to a certain degree. It later occurred to me that in the realm of elementary logic every individual reasons in much the same way, and it is ultimately the arbitrary laws of this peculiar branch of mathematics that leads to the arrest of a killer or to a crime’s solution—especially as criminals are so often primitive people, incapable of any abstract thought, and
in this sense are defenceless against the slightest intellectual advantage of even a middling investigator. This ought to be a case in point, I thought.

I never gave any thought to the likely duration of my incarceration, nor did I keep track of the time I spent there; in spite of this, I was unconsciously prepared to believe that it might last for a couple of days. However, several weeks elapsed with no change in my circumstances. Sometimes it began to seem as if years could go by like this—not because I ought to have remained in custody, but because I was but one man among a crowd of millions in Paris and I had somehow found myself arrested, facing the prospect that I could simply vanish and be forgotten. This, however, was neither conjecture nor deduction, but a dark, vague presentiment; it was yet another obvious fault in my muscles, my vision, my hearing, my whole imperfect sensory apparatus. Days went by. At first I was unable to think about anything, but then I began to remember a whole array of things that were entirely unconnected with the murder. I always had to make such an effort to force myself to consider what it was that had played the chief part in my fate. It struck me that Pavel Alexandrovich’s tragic and untimely death had failed to stir in me any pity or sorrow, feelings that I should have been experiencing and that would have been only natural. A strange sensation suddenly took hold of me—I myself found it difficult to put my finger on—as if
everything had essentially been set in motion the moment it was revealed that Pavel Alexandrovich was no longer of this world. He had unsuspectingly, and now as though for ever, acquired that haunting, picturesque quality that had so struck me on the day I first met him in the Jardin du Luxembourg. I remembered all our conversations, his peculiar geniality, but now they somehow failed to provoke in me any emotional—I could find no other word for it—response. It occurred to me that he had come into my life at a time when everything was illusory and hypothetical, when the trees in the Jardin du Luxembourg had been no more real to me than the imaginary scenery in that far-off country I had never known. And yet what had taken place corresponded exactly with what I had been thinking about as I stood on that bridge across the Seine, on my way home from his apartment on the night of his death. Perhaps the very thought had coincided with the precise moment he died in that armchair, robbed even of the time to realize, perceive or comprehend that this was the journey into the other world that he had described to me in such lyric tones. This was the real crime—as it is with almost every murder: he had been deprived of what he had only begun to anticipate, the purpose of his long journey, a slow and gradual withdrawal from everything, the approach of nirvana, as he might have said during one of our conversations that was never to take place. And so it now struck me that I had been wrong in thinking it
would have been better for him to die before he stopped appreciating his newfound happiness: I had arbitrarily dispossessed him of the single most important period in his life. I had stolen—and my only consolation was that it remained purely in the realm of theory—his right to a natural death, which had belonged to him, and to no one else. But time had not been on his side—and who could have known that there would be no journey, no approach of nirvana, but a quick gasp and instant darkness? Who could have known that there would be no obituary, no “bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, but the rigid body of an old man lying in a dissecting room before an autopsy, the very same body that Lida had held in her limp embrace the previous evening, as she closed her eyes and thought of Amar?

I noticed in my current condition a single attribute that could perhaps have been linked to the fact of my incarceration: whenever I began to think about something, I would find it more difficult than ever before to transfer my attention to something else. Normally I would have done this almost automatically: now, however, the images that used to fill my imagination seemed to have lost their former lightness and, more importantly, they had stopped submitting to my will, on which their appearance and disappearance no longer depended. Perhaps this was the effect of exhaustion. I tried to fight it as much as I could, but evidently I had little remaining strength. The
moment finally came when I grasped the impossibility of distancing myself from what had long been approaching, from what I had tried to repress once and for all, because I knew nothing more painful or tragic. It began with three lines that haunted me:

Just then I heard the voice that had sung these words, a voice I had not heard for two years. Both the voice and these words emerged out of a sense of regret and loss, reminding me of my wilful and senseless rejection of the only chance I had to turn back the clock. How could I have thought then that I was unworthy of all this—the summer evenings, the intimacy with Catherine, her voice, her eyes and her diaphanous love? And how was it that these shadowy images, these descents into oblivion, my own shifting silhouette and the swaying instability of my life could seem so overwhelming that, fearing the inescapable illusoriness of existence, I would step into this abstract darkness, leaving that voice and these words behind, on the other side of this hateful expanse? Why did I do it? No one could have known for sure that I would have lost the battle. Had I really lacked the imagination to construct a seductive fictional reality? Would I really
have been too weak to embody the image that Catherine had vaguely glimpsed, the one she had forgotten, the one she had invoked?

And so I closed the door behind me in order to dissolve slowly in her troubled sleep, in her fading memory. She was absolutely innocent; it was not she who had left me. I had stepped out of her room late one evening, and I recalled how slowly I had walked down those stairs. Only now did the absurdity of this slow motion reveal itself to me—because it had not been a departure, but very nearly a suicide; it had been a jump into the unknown.

For the first time in my life I felt as if I needed her help and support. It occurred to me that she might have heard something about the incident. Had she imagined that now, accused of murder and tormented by regret, I was waiting to learn of my fate and what awaited me—the guillotine, a lifetime of hard labour, or perhaps the return of the golden Buddha with its ecstatic face, and then freedom? Whatever the case, our relationship was nothing more than an illusion. Perhaps I would change, and in several years’ time a remote convict, suffering terribly from malaria, would relate in that wretched criminal jargon the fantastic story of his love for this woman, whose existence would be believed by no one. But if by some
miracle I were destined ever to meet her again, I would tell her—as always, half in English, half in French—about my interrogation, my standing accused of murder and my incarceration in prison. And I would add that it had been then, as I sat there, locked within these four walls, that I finally grasped the most important thing of all: that the constant spectre of someone else’s existence, the accusation of murder, the remorse for being theoretically culpable before the shadow of my deceased friend, the prison, the prospect of a slow or instantaneous death—all this was far easier to bear than the memory of my departure from her room late that evening, than the disappearance of the only illusion for which, perhaps, it was truly worth defending myself to the bitter end.

I knew that over the course of these long days—which seemed to be filled with only my thoughts and memories, and which so monotonously transformed first into dusk and then into night—there, beyond the walls that confined my current existence, tireless work was being done. I concocted dozens of hypotheses, but of course I was unable to imagine even in the remotest, most abstract way possible what it would ultimately be that effected my return to freedom. Indeed I had no way of knowing that Thomas Wilkins was in Paris, much as I had no idea that he existed
at all or that it would fall to him to play such a significant role in my fate, which was in turn the result of certain character traits of his. Thomas Wilkins was the owner of a large flower shop in Chicago, and, as he himself said, he loved two things above all else: flowers and women. Those who knew him best, however, were inclined to say that his greatest weakness was in fact for spirits. He had come to Paris on business, installed himself in the Grands Boulevards and soon became a regular in all the bars in the area. He was a stout forty-year-old man with faded eyes, and would usually turn up accompanied by a young lady who would rank among those well known to all the waiters and proprietors of those bars. He was renowned for a certain forgetfulness when under the influence of spirits, and on departing would often leave behind at the bar a box of chocolates, a parcel or even his own hat. These would usually be returned to him the following day.

The search for the golden Buddha had been entrusted to an Inspector Prunier, who, after spending a number of weeks on the case, was unable to uncover not only the whereabouts of the statuette, but even the slightest mention of it. He searched—albeit not without difficulty—the premises of the antiques dealer, who confirmed the sale of the Buddha to Shcherbakov several months previously; his corroboration, however, did nothing to advance matters. He provided Prunier with a detailed description of the statuette, which corresponded exactly with the one I had
given to the investigator, and, thus having ascertained that the golden Buddha did indeed exist and was not a figment of my imagination, Prunier once again took to his searches. By the most elaborate and indirect of means he made enquiries with all the buyers of stolen goods, but they yielded no results. The golden statuette of the Buddha seemed to have vanished without trace.

Late one evening, as he was returning home, tired and sleepy, along one of the little streets near Place de l’Opéra, he stopped in front of a bar above which glowed a red neon sign. Muffled music could be heard coming from within. He pushed open the glass door and stepped inside. The place was nearly empty. He sat down on a bar stool opposite the cashier, greeted him—he knew all the staff there—ordered himself a grape juice and spotted to the right of the cashier a small object wrapped in crumpled tissue paper.

I learnt these details from Prunier himself, with whom I later became acquainted after inviting him to lunch at a restaurant. He related to me in vivid detail everything that had happened, the particulars of each interrogation and the trail of evidence that had led the investigation to its logical conclusion. Having had too much to drink, he was utterly candid and admitted to me that he was dissatisfied with his job and his lot, that he was compelled to do this work only because of a lack of sufficient means, and that what interested him more than anything in the
world was zoology. When he started talking about this he became uncommonly animated, and it was impossible to stop him. I fancied that if a question on the classification of mammals had come up at the start of our conversation, I would scarcely have managed to find out anything at all about matters that in this instance were more pertinent to me personally, but to which he was little inclined to ascribe any importance. He went into a veritable lyric ecstasy when he began on Australian fauna, of which he possessed a surprising knowledge: he described to me the behaviour of the viper, the temperament of the platypus, the ferociousness of the dingo and the tragic beauty—as he phrased it—of the black swan. He knew the dimensions of the Manchurian tiger, the colours of the ocelot, the extraordinary speed of the hyena—he apparently felt unhindered by the fact that I was manifestly ignorant in this area. After this we met frequently; he was a kind man and carried within him the seed of a distinct zoological poetry, which was imbued, as I once remarked to him, with a sort of elemental pantheism. Luckily, however, that evening in the bar, his thoughts were far from zoology. He looked at the package and asked:

“What have we here?”

“A customer forgot it,” said the cashier. “He only just left, I haven’t had time to see what it is. Something heavy, in any case.”

“Let me see it,” said Prunier.

The cashier handed him the near formless package whose shape was concealed by several layers of paper. Prunier unwrapped the crumpled layers of tissue paper, and his eyes opened wide: there, glittering dimly in the electric light, was the ecstatic golden face of the Buddha peering up at him.

“Ça, par exemple!
”
‡‡‡
he said.

Wilkins was questioned the following day with the aid of an interpreter—he spoke almost no French. At first he was reluctant to talk to the police, insisting that he was an American citizen, that he had committed no crime, and that he had contacted the American consul, requesting his protection from the tyranny of the French authorities. However, once the matter had been explained to him, he told them what little he could. He had bought the statuette for three hundred francs from the girl with whom he had spent the previous evening. He had been very taken with its unusual lively expression, as he put it, and for that reason he had decided to acquire it, although naturally it was not worth such a sum, as it was made of bronze, with an inset piece of red glass. The girl initially had no intention of selling it and had only agreed to it after he insisted. She was a very lovely blonde, and was called Georgette. Prunier thanked him for his statement and asked at the bar who exactly this woman was who had arrived with Wilkins that evening.

“Gaby,” said the barman.

Half an hour later, Gaby was standing in front of Prunier. She began by declaring that all her documents were in order, that she would say nothing, that she had nothing to say, and that she knew her rights.

“Cut it,” said Prunier. “And don’t waste my time. Where did you get that statuette?”

“It was a gift.”

“Very well. Who gave it to you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, but it is,” he said. “Well?”

“I’m saying nothing.”

“As you wish,” said Prunier. “But I’ll have to detain you for having been complicit in the receipt of stolen goods.”

“You must be joking,” said Gaby. “Who would steal a bronze statuette?”

“A person who can tell the difference between bronze and gold. Well?”

This remark made a peculiarly strong impression on Gaby. Tears welled in her eyes; she couldn’t forgive herself for having given away, practically gratis, such a precious object to this American who had been blind drunk, or at least made himself out to be so, and who also had no idea that it was gold.

“Gugusse told me it was worthless.”

“You may go,” said Prunier. “Just be sure not to go far, I may need you again.”

After this, Gugusse, Gaby’s official pimp, was delivered to that same room where Gaby had been only an hour ago. Prunier threw a sharp glance at him; Gugusse looked as he always did—his voluminous curls, the fruit of the hairdresser’s labours, that sinister shaven face, and the light-brown suit with the grey overcoat.

“Good afternoon, Inspector,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Gugusse,” said Prunier. “How are things?”

“So-so, Inspector.”

“Would you care for a cigarette?”

Such unexpected courtesy from the police inspector rather unnerved Gugusse; he was used to being addressed in quite a different manner, and this change in tenor betokened nothing good.

“You’ve always been a good lad at heart,” said Prunier. “Of course, you’ve had a few run-ins, but then who hasn’t?”

“Quite so, Inspector.”

“There you go. You know, we do all we can not to make any unpleasantness for you: you live as you please, work as you please, and we don’t inhibit you, because we’re convinced of your integrity.”

Prunier stared intently at him. Gugusse avoided his gaze.

“On the other hand, you must understand that since we’re doing you a service, we’re also counting on your loyalty. We know that if we were to require certain information, you’d give it to us. Is that not so?”

“Certainly, Inspector.”

“Where did you get the statuette you gave to Gaby?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Inspector.”

“Alas, you see, it’s impossible to have complete trust in you. A pity. For you must understand, of course, that everything will go well only so long as we believe you. But it wouldn’t be difficult if all of a sudden we wanted to find something on you. There would be questions—and you know what that means—your past would be subjected to scrutiny—you know what that means too—and so on. Do you follow me? And then I’d no longer be able to protect you. I’d say, ‘Gugusse, my hands are tied, because you abused my trust.’ I hope you understand this. Now permit me to add that time is not something I have in abundance. For the last time: where did you get that statuette?”

“I found it in a rubbish bin, Inspector.”

“Fine,” said Prunier, standing up. “I see you’ve grown tired of the quiet life. Well then, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Amar gave it to me for safekeeping, Inspector.”

“That’s another matter entirely. You know, only recently we were talking about you, and I said to my colleagues, ‘Chaps, I’m always ready to vouch for Gugusse.’ I’m so glad I was right to say so. When did he give it to you?”

“In the early hours of the twelfth of February, Inspector.”

Having been left alone with my thoughts, I knew nothing of these events at the time. I imagined that my fate would be decided presently, in these very days, and that nothing would depend on me in any way at all. Less than at any other time in my life was everything that lay before me defined by what I was or what I sought to be. I later returned to these thoughts and again established that they were truly insignificant. What was important was that there was a golden statuette with a square base, that the old antiques dealer with his spectacles and yarmulke had provided a detailed description of it to the police inspector, that Thomas Wilkins, the owner of that flower shop in Chicago, had a weakness for spirits and the fairer sex, and a tendency towards forgetfulness when drunk. What was important was the existence of Gaby, and that she worked in the Grands Boulevards. What was also important was that amid this unlikely pattern of drunkenness, flowers, prostituted women’s bodies and semi-literate
souteneurs
there had appeared this golden incarnation of a great sage, of whose teachings not one of its temporary owners—not Wilkins, not Gaby, not Gugusse—knew the first thing, yet whose physical restitution held the key to my freedom. Besides, what other than the blind, inexorable workings of chance could have connected my fate, my delirium, my wanderings to the clientele of a flower shop in an
American metropolis—a clientele whose very existence had enabled Wilkins to make his journey to Paris? What could have linked it to Gaby and Gugusse’s poorly treated syphilis and to the mysterious life of this Hindu artist to whose undeniable, and to some extent seditious, art the golden Buddha owed its existence? Perhaps this unknown master, as he worked on the statuette, had hoped that a hundred or a thousand years thence, having been resurrected and reincarnated dozens and dozens of times over, he would finally attain perfection and come to resemble that great sage of every age and nation—instead of dying, only to awaken as a pariah surrounded by spirits of darkness, having led an ordinary human existence, undistinguished by any particular service. It occurred to me that I had been far from the truth in telling Pavel Alexandrovich that under certain conditions I could become a Buddhist, precisely because my fate in this life interested me too much and I was anxious to regain my freedom.

The great day finally came three weeks later. Once again I was escorted to the investigator’s office. He greeted me—which he had never done before—and said:

“I wasn’t under any obligation to summon you, but I wanted to see you again and I had the time to spare.”

He opened his briefcase—and the next thing I knew, I saw the golden Buddha in his hands.

“Here is your saviour,” he said. “He did, however, prove rather difficult to find.”

He carefully examined the statuette.

“It’s a remarkable object,” he said, “although I’m unable to find in it any resemblance to St Jerome, and I suspect your comparison to have been an exceedingly arbitrary one. Exactly which painting did you have in mind?”

“I’ll admit I’m no connoisseur of paintings,” I said. “I was reminded of an anonymous painting that caught my attention in the Louvre. It was attributed, unless I’m much mistaken, to the school of Signorelli. The painting seemed to be the work of two artists, and it depicts St Jerome in religious ecstasy. He’s holding a stone to his bare chest, and blood is trickling down from under it. His face is raised to the heavens, his eyes are rolled back in a sacred frenzy, the lips on his aged mouth have almost disappeared; floating in the air, above his head, there is a vision of the Crucifixion. I thought it to be the work of two artists because the floating Crucifixion is executed carelessly and unconvincingly in comparison with the powerful expression inscribed in St Jerome’s face by the artist. The statuette struck me primarily because of its expression of ecstasy, which seemed so unexpected on the face of the Buddha, as in every other portrayal that I’ve seen his face expresses an Olympian calm.”

“I hope we shall have the opportunity to discuss this further at some point,” he said. “Tonight you shall sleep in your own bed. Amar has not yet been arrested, but of course it’s only a matter of time.”