Cemetery of Swallows (10 page)

But he didn't feel like calling the ambassador back.

He was hungry enough to eat a horse, as the English say. He left to eat at Mister Blue's place. Under the door to his suite, somebody had slipped a two-day-old French newspaper. He opened it and automatically looked through the obituaries. He did not find his name. Good news! He must still be alive!

 

Mister Blue was there, faithfully at his post.

“I've just received a call from our friends in the police. They are very sorry, but they can't come to pick you up this morning. They left me a telephone number and instructions. Their whole office is at your disposal, but if you want a driver to come pick you up and take you to Puerto Plata, you'll have to call and ask for him. They themselves can't do it.”

“That's fine with me, I'm not in a talkative mood today anyway. I'll get along on my own.”

Jean-Daniel, who had his fits of misanthropy as well, didn't argue with Mallock.

“There are
guaguas
that go to Puerto, but they're very hot and packed to the gills. If I were you I'd take a taxi.”

Mallock noted that everyone, including Mister Blue, took care to address him with the formal
vous
. No matter how much people sometimes felt drawn to him, he was still a French police superintendent, with the rank of commander. In addition, he was a national hero, and potentially a big, nasty cop.

Jean-Daniel picked up the receiver of his telephone and negotiated for two minutes with a taxi driver connected with a company in the village nearest Sosúa, judiciously named S.O.Súa, to get him to take his friend to Puerto Plata. Then he let Mallock eat breakfast in silence.

Ten minutes later, the taxi arrived. The superintendent got up:

“See you,” he said, in the mood of a neurasthenic mastiff that came to visit him with a fidelity and regularity that had to be admired.

This morning, it was with a belly full of fried eggs, potatoes, bacon, and melancholy that Mallock traveled by taxi to Puerto Plata and its courthouse.

 

In the halls and waiting rooms of the courthouse a crowd of humble people was languishing. In rags, their eyes shining with naive hope, they were waiting for a justice in tatters, a whore with blindfolded eyes who would go upstairs only with those who could afford to pay for her charms.

Mallock was in a position to know that his own country had no lessons to teach. From the judges who cost too much and commercial tribunals that could be paid in stardust and a Scorpio luxury cruise to Saint-Martin, to venal Attorneys-General, crooked lawyers, and pompous magistrates. Wavy blue hair, long neck, and evasions for the 1
P.M.
news, then a waxed jacket at night, to read the meters. The feckless judicial system no longer fed on anything but warmed-over ideology, virtuous laxity, and categorical mistakes.

Here, on the island, it was similar, but on a smaller scale, and on a larger scale with fingerprints left almost everywhere. The everyday practice of baksheesh and “greasing palms” was much too developed to be able to claim the slightest discretion.

Mallock had himself announced. And, while he waited, he decided to spare the seat of his pants by standing. A good decision. After only three minutes' wait, two men came and escorted him to the office of Mr. Juan Antonio Servantes. Amédée felt a kind of regret. He would have liked to be forgotten in a corner so that he could scream and yell, have a pretext for being disagreeable. He was in the mood for that. He could pour into it his fear for Manuel, his sadness for Julie, and all the negative energy accumulated by his own impotence.

But a “Mistah superintendent from Paris” couldn't be abandoned amid the common people. He was an influential man and this status incontestably put him at the top of the social ladder, alongside the notables who did him the supreme honor of recognizing him as one of their own. Too bad that would have allowed me to avoid waiting, Mallock cynically concluded, following the two henchmen of the official in charge of the Puerto Plata courthouse.

Juan Antonio Servantes resembled the stereotypical image of a white neocolonialist in a banana republic. His shoes, his watch, and his belt were tobacco-colored, made from the same arrogant, duly tanned crocodile skin. He walked toward Mallock, his hand extended to greet him, his shoulders, neck, and chin held excessively high out of his awareness of his office and his importance.

“Superintendent, what a pleasure to meet you!”

His slightly rolled “r” didn't go well with his appearance. He was very much the handsome Aryan—the eyes, the imposing presence, and the blond hair. Stupidly, Mallock imagined him in an SS uniform. He would have been splendid. Maybe his father wore one of those beautiful black coats?

Prejudice, Amédee said to himself reproachfully.

Servantes's office was full of files. Clearly he was a busy man. After an hour spent talking and making phone calls together, Mallock revised his judgment. Juan Antonio Servantes wasn't his cup of tea, but like Delmont, he was doing everything he could, with a great deal of skill and persistence, to pave the way for Manuel's release and repatriation. Without any fuss or the slightest affectation. What would have already been astonishing in a French bureaucrat became admirable in the case of a tropical expatriate. Everybody made snap judgments on the basis of appearance, but Mallock had no excuse.

To redeem himself, he asked the young official:

“Would you like to finish this conversation over dinner this evening?”

He hoped to be able to take advantage of the occasion to question Servantes about Tobias Darbier.

“I'd love to, Mr. Superintendent. I also have things to tell you. Where would you like to meet?”

“At my hotel, there's a kind of bar, the Blue Paradise. Do you know it? It's not very luxurious, but it's quiet. How about meeting there around 8 o'clock?”

“That's fine with me, I'll be there at 8 sharp.”

Mallock thought he heard heels clicking. But with crocodile-skin loafers, that was impossible. He reflected that to make this diplomat really acceptable, the rest of the broomstick up his ass would have to be removed.

 

Late morning.

Amédée returned to the capital and its National Palace by way of the Matías-Ramón-Mella Bridge, the Avenue of Mexico, and Doctor Delgado Avenue. The famous palace, constructed in 1947 on Trujillo's orders, was the seat of the executive power. Mallock smiled slightly. Two big pretentious lions framed the royal staircase leading to the imposing, four-story building. Built in a neoclassical style, with all the options and supplements, it was topped by an impressive dome 35 feet high and 36 feet in diameter. The
Oficina Central Nacional
, Interpol's central office in the Dominican Republic, had been located there since the country joined the other two hundred-odd other members of the international police agency in 1953.

Superintendent Mallock was well received. He was given several papers to sign and two officials carried out the repatriation in his company. An hour later, he was already outside in the sun again.

He decided to eat lunch on the street: white coconut, red bananas, and green mangos. Enormous clouds were passing overhead in the sky, sweating. But Mallock wasn't. He was already beginning to get used to the climate and even to feel a certain bliss at having the great yellow circle always present above him.

At exactly 2 o'clock, he arrived at the clinic.

 

The authorities had posted policemen on guard duty in front of the main entrance and in the two hallways that led to Manuel's room. This time the superintendent didn't have to show his papers. The news of his presence, as well as his face, had spread all over the island. A message was waiting for him. Ramón and Jiménez were trying to reach him. A policeman dialed the number for him.

It was Ramón who answered:

“Jiménez says he has new information for you, Com­mander.”

“He didn't tell you what it was?”

“No, he wants to tell you himself. He told me it might help Manuel. He would like all four of us to meet.”

Mallock was intrigued. Was this finally a breakthrough in this case?

“I'm just about to question him, could you meet me here?”

“That's what Jiménez wanted, so far as I could tell, but he told me we'd need authorization to get access to Gemoni's room.”

“No problem, I'll put you on the list at the desk. I'll wait for you.”

Mallock hung up, feeling hopeful. Two halls farther on, he entered Manuel's new room. Julie's brother was lying on a makeshift bed. A brand new splint surrounded his knee and his shoulder was in a cast.

He smiled when he saw Mallock appear.

“I'm very glad to see you. Please excuse me for the day before yesterday, but I didn't even recognize you. I hope this trip around the world didn't tire you too much, at least? I'm going to try as best I can to help you in your investigation.”

Amédée smiled. This was the real Manuel he had in front of him. With his big, soft eyes and his slightly old-fashioned politeness.

“No problem,” Mallock replied, relieved.

“I must have caused everyone great concern. I'm truly sorry about that.”

Mallock had an idea.

“Wait, I'll be right back.”

Three minutes later he returned with a cell phone.

“We're going to try to call your sister. She's worried sick. I don't think anything would please her more than to hear your voice.”

“And I'd like to hear hers!”

Mallock dialed Julie's direct line at the Fort.

“Hello, Julie? Ah! Hi, Jules. Yeah, I'm fine, is Julie around? Thanks.”

He handed the phone to Manu. He realized, with dismay, that his fingers were still all sticky from the mangos he'd eaten for lunch.

“He's going to put her on. But don't talk too long, I borrowed the phone from a doctor here.”

Discreetly, he left the room on the pretext of wanting to smoke a cigarette. Something he never did. When he came back five minutes later, Manuel had hung up. His eyes were still wet.

“Thanks with all my heart, Superintendent.”

“Listen, Manu, if you can't say
tu
to me, or call me Amédée, at least don't call me ‘Superintendent.'”

Mallock had a fatherly feeling for Julie's brother. He'd seen him as a young man, as a young lover, a young husband, and a young papa. Being addressed with the formal
vous
bothered him a little.

In general, he couldn't get used to the idea that as he got older, it would become more and more difficult to get people to use the
tu
with him. Through a kind of pagan superstition, young people said
vous
to their elders as if, by putting them at a distance linguistically, they hoped to also distance themselves from death.

“Well . . . Amédée. I suppose you'd like me to tell you the whole story.”

“You think?”

Mallock, after hesitating between the indeterminate color of the sheets and the orange spots that stained the only chair in the room, decided on the bed.

“I'm listening. We all need to know what got into you.”

“I feel that I'm going to disappoint you. What I have to say makes no sense, not even to me.”

Manuel managed to smile. He did not intend to complain or bemoan his fate. He seemed to be more concerned to help this poor superintendent than the other way around, as if his own future were not really important, or in any case much less so than that of the people around him. Mallock remembered his sister's comparing him to a holy man, or his mother calling him her “Gandhi.” There was something exceptional about Manu, in addition to his big, ebony eyes: a kind of wisdom and sweetness, something tranquil, outside time. With his broad forehead and his brown hair always brushed back, he almost seemed to have come out of a prewar film.

Manuel began his story:

“I got up that morning, making as little noise as possible in order not to wake Kiko and my little honey. I made myself coffee and went into the living room. I slipped into the video player a cassette that contained the documentary my neighbor had kindly recorded for me. I'd decided to watch it before going to market. I always go early to avoid the crowd. And there's also more choice, isn't there?”

Mallock smiled his approval.

“Go on with your story!”

Manuel's eyes looked through Mallock's body into a dark corner of the room. It was the look of a man trying to extract from the past, from the back of his skull, true images and words, in order to bring them back for his friend.

“Everything is still a little confused, but I remember very well what was on the cassette. Just before the main report, there was a short, horrible piece about Haiti. Two guys in British uniforms were laughing like mad as they devoured the brains of living monkeys. The principal documentary, which was about the manufacture of cigars, took us to Cuba and the Dominican Republic. It was toward the end of the film that my life changed.”

He lowered his head under the weight of the memory.

“I saw an old man's face, and my heart stopped beating. When he appeared on the screen the first time, the camera followed him for three or four seconds. The second time he appeared, he was crossing a small square, with two swarthy men wearing white suits and dark glasses walking beside him. He passed in front of the camera, at a distance of less than two yards, without even seeming to notice its presence, and then suddenly he turned his head toward the lens. I have absolutely no idea what happened to me. There was no longer anything but that image in my life. For several days, I did everything I could to identify that man and that place. Believe me, I didn't know who he was, and I didn't even know then what I would do with that information if I succeeded in finding it.”