by Mallock;
One of the twins, sitting alongside him, was wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. Mallock didn’t have to say anything, the question marks were evident on all of his features.
The twin explained to him:
“You are just under my mother’s house. My father discovered this natural grotto years ago. He closed it in and constructed this wooden hut just above it to protect the entrance.”
“But these amber plaques . . . How . . . ”
“You are going to learn all that. It takes time . . . Stay lying down, your heart has just started up again.”
Chameleons, the young man’s gray eyes had taken on, in the candlelight, the color of gold. He dipped the cloth in cold water again, and put it on Mallock’s forehead.
“The amber panels were stolen by el Diablo Darbier and his killers in a European city, just before it was destroyed. They brought this war booty to the island, where he thought it would be safe. My father happened by chance to find out where Tobias el Diablo had hidden it. The day Trujillo died, my father and three of his friends stole the crates and brought them all here. Only one of them was missing, the one that was supposed to contain a music box. It is thought that it was forgotten in Germany.”
Mallock listened, fascinated.
“Our father had always been very poor and full of love for his wife. He would never have been able to offer her all the gold in the world and the things that provide comfort. That pained him. After he discovered Darbier’s treasure, he conceived the mad plan of constructing the most beautiful palace in the world for her, and for her alone, in her honor and in the honor of what she represented for him. He did not leave the panels in the crates, where the amber was languishing; he reconstructed the room as he saw it in his head. My father was will and strength incarnate. For twelve years he worked on the cavity of the grotto in order to be able to reconstruct the room like the dream he had of it.”
He paused long enough to dip the cloth in the cold water again and put it on Mallock’s forehead.
“He died too soon. My brother and I finished the work in accordance with his plans. When our mother leaves us, we will leave her in it with the candles and fill it in with earth. No one will ever know.”
“But I now know the place . . . ”
The young man smiled and tapped him on the forehead in a friendly way.
“Now that you are dead, you’ve become much better, haven’t you? It is the awareness of the imminence of his own end that makes man a dangerous animal. And you are not merely a man, you are half bear and you were a cat, and also a precious stone, and an old baobab tree as well, my mother said. And she also said that your own serpent is a kind dragon! And then, without wanting to disrespect you, you have to be able to find your way back, gringo. We have seen you walking, you and your arms, in the swamps!”
“With my headache, my bad back, and my pale white calves, you mean?” Mallock added with a big foolish smile.
The twin broke out laughing. A laugh that ricocheted for a long time on the thousands of pieces of amber that formed the most beautiful marquetry in the world.
BOOK 2
14.
Saturday Morning, November 30,
Return to Paris with Manuel
Sitting in the fuselage of the 747, dry and clean, Mallock was wondering what he had actually experienced. A nightmare, a Mallockian vision, an opium dream? No, the object was very real. His left hand touched the strange vial cut from amber, a gift from the old witch. He had placed it in the middle of the tray and a ray of sun, amplified by the cabin window, gave it still more life. A very odd kind of energy. The stone seemed to contain a small electric lamp. All around it, the gray plastic Air France tray on which it was set was like a golden gouache.
He looked up and heard:
“Hello, Superintendent. Did you have a good stay on the island?”
A flight attendant was leaning over him, her body bent at the hip like a loving mother over her baby’s cradle. Her breasts were in position.
Mallock put the vial back in his pocket.
“Do we know each other?”
“I know you. I was on your flight over and I even woke you without meaning to when I served your meal.”
“You have an amazing memory,” Mallock smiled.
“Not really. I’ve often seen your face in the newspaper. If you need anything at all, please don’t hesitate to ask. I’m entirely at your disposition.”
Mallock mumbled a thank-you as he looked at her, and promised himself he wouldn’t hesitate . . .
“Wait,” he added, as she stood up to leave.
He finished his champagne and handed her the glass. She took it and gave him a splendid smile.
“Another one?”
She was really very appetizing with her satiny skin and her lovely hands.
Calm down, Mallock, he reprimanded himself.
“Thanks, that’s very kind. I’m going to stop there with the champagne.”
She disappeared down the aisle.
As much as Mallock loved wine, he had little liking for this acidic drink, a symbol of the farewell glass, the endless party, and Christmas without Thomas. On the other hand, pretty women . . . Even at Easter or Trinity.
His back told him that he must have been seated for more than four hours already. In fact, they had taken off at 8:07. This time, the plane had flown straight from Puerto Plata to Paris. A direct flight that avoided crossing the island and stopping off in Saint-Martin.
At the airport, where the Interpol officers were waiting for them, he had had time to buy a complete set of colorful shirts before checking in. They were all intended for his friends, including one for Anita, his housekeeper. She wore a size XXXL; she was adorable, but really not slim.
When he got on the plane, he hadn’t had time to look for his seat. The company had “spotted” him and insisted on putting him in first class: “Sorry about the flight over, but we’re going to try to make it up to you.”
Mallock had ambiguous feelings with regard to this fame. The antisocial part of him hated being recognized or approached in the street. Since the 1980s, the media had paid attention almost exclusively to self-declared VIPs and brainless celebrities. Being put in the same category as these mediocrities was in no way flattering. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that his new fame now allowed him to have less paranoid, more open relationships with the people he met. He had to be honest with himself: he’d long been afraid of others.
He’d been like that from the outset, and then for various reasons that had steadily piled up. This recognition, which he thought not utterly undeserved, opened up for him an area of conviviality he would never have been able to construct on his own. With what he knew about people, without that big slap on the back on their part he might never again have held out his hand to anyone . . . Now, things were different, as when you walk down the street with a dog on a leash. People smile at you and come up to you, thanks to this nice mediator.
That was how Mallock used his fame: “with a collar and a leash,” and taking care that it didn’t shit all over the place.
He looked at his watch and got up. It was time to see if everything was going well in the back of the plane. Given the small amount of traffic between the Dominican Republic and France, he had obtained the authorization to repatriate Manuel on a regularly-scheduled flight.
The last rows, isolated by a curtain, had been requisitioned and set up for the wounded prisoner.
Asleep, his body saturated with drugs, Julie’s brother was delirious:
“My God, please! In the fireplace . . . that’s not possible . . . ”
The two doctors turned to Mallock, their eyes reflecting the same professional concern.
“We’ve given him everything necessary to calm him. He should be knocked out. In fact, every injection we’ve given him has just made him even more absorbed in
his nightmare.”
“Try something else?”
“Sorry, but to keep the toxic effects of the drugs from becoming a problem, we have to wait a while. I’d give him Haldol, but he’s already on the edge of a coma. He remains coherent, but just barely.”
At that very moment, Manuel’s body tensed like a bow. He grabbed Mallock’s arm.
“Don’t you understand? It’s the ogre.”
Then he fell back on his stretcher, inanimate. One of the doctors pinched his arm, then stuck his middle fingers on each side of Manuel’s jaw.
“Damn, he’s going under! We’re going to have intubate him.”
“What did you give him?”
Mallock was dying with concern. He didn’t see himself bringing a cadaver or a vegetable home to Julie as the epilogue to his expedition.
“Nothing unusual,” the emergency doctor replied, “rehydration solutions, valium to calm him, and analgesics to reduce the pain. These reactions can’t be explained by the drugs alone. I’m afraid he’s still in danger.”
Mallock had a terrible foreboding:
“Did all your drugs come from Paris?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Are you sure?” Mallock insisted.
Then the other doctor said:
“To be precise, the rehydration solutions had been stolen when we arrived. But the Dominican authorities replaced them with equivalents.”
Mallock paled. What if Delmont was right? Did Darbier’s brutos really have arms that long? Just then, as if to confirm him in his most paranoid fears, the electrocardiograph sped up.
“Shit! The heart rate is taking off. We’re losing him . . . ”
“Ventricular tachycardia,” the second doctor said. “I’m going to defibrillate him, you ventilate him. Out of the way, superintendent.”
Mallock took two steps backward, then turned around and opened the curtains. The passengers had all turned around toward the place from which the sounds were coming, curious about the drama that was unfolding. Death at work, that always attracts customers.
He gritted his teeth.
Had the great superintendent allowed himself to be had, out of overconfidence, like a rank beginner?
15.
Monday, December 2, 7 P.M., 320 F.
When nothing really counts anymore, nothing has any taste, and barges full of sorrows rip up oceans of purple silk. When one doesn’t give a damn about anything and nothing gives a damn about us. Just try telling superintendent so-and-so that it doesn’t matter, that tomorrow will be better. Tell him all your bitter platitudes and your rose-tinted nonsense. Promise him swimming pools with children in them.
Under his funereal clouds, Mallock tries to go on living:
“I’m well aware that I shouldn’t talk aloud, my dear. I must seem like a senile old man, but I miss you so much . . . ”
Today, Thomas would be ten years old. Opening a can of peas, Mallock speaks to him, and his voice resounds, somber and hoarse, in the solitude of the apartment.
“You’ve never tasted confit de canard, my baby? I’m sure you would have liked it. I would have made it with little potatoes cut into cubes and grilled slowly with garlic and parsley. You’d have loved it, my little fellow.”
And then there would be a cake with ten candles, and he’d blow them out and laugh.
Mallock talks and Mallock weeps.
Amélie’s death reawakened in him the pain of Thomas’s. And he was now mourning both of them. In fact, one after the other, in a sad kind of tennis game. When he concentrates to stop thinking about Thomas, he starts thinking about Amélie. And, on the other side of the court, she strikes him in turn. In the street it’s the same thing: every child’s cry reminds him of his Tom, every woman’s skirt reminds him of Amélie. And then, all those faces that resemble theirs! When you lose someone, you see people who look like them everywhere, on every sidewalk. And in filmed crowds as well.
Outside, after having long wallowed in a kind of Indian summer, a substitute for spring, the weather had suddenly rushed without warning into a hard winter, an eternity of frost and ice.
In Mallock, everything is big—his belly and his heart, his hands and his fits of anger. So why would it be different for his sufferings?
His sadness weighs tons.
Heartache, sorrow.
Since his return from the Dominican Republic, Amédée has continued to live and act. To get up, eat, use his brain in service to the community. No revolt and no tears. Show nothing, fool people. Don’t forget to respond scrupulously to all these smiles. And then even laugh. Laugh with others. A perfect management of appearances for an existence from which all desire has disappeared. In its place, emptiness and depression.
Ice-cold cotton swab. Shot. Morning, noon, and night, the daily injection of sadness. The coldness of the ether evaporating. Bandage. And the irrepressible desire to weep all his body’s tears. To collapse in sobs, to vomit sad stuff. Amédée is well acquainted with sadness. It is a son who wakes up one morning, says, “Hello, Papa!’ and then dies.
Mallock wolfs down an enormous potted duck thigh, presented skin side down. A skin lightly cut into squares to make it easier to detach it from its grease. The waterfowl comes from the Dordogne, and was prepared by Jules’s mother.
Ten minutes later, he is startled by the ring of the telephone. Picking up the receiver, he says to himself that he really should adjust it. On the other end of the line, a smile is waiting for him. It’s Margot Murât, or Queen Margot, as her colleagues call her. A leading journalist, she has been assuming in the meantime the difficult role of the superintendent’s companion.
“You okay, teddy bear?”
“Okay,” Mallock lies, because he doesn’t like to complain.
And then, it’s almost true; just hearing her voice makes him feel better. Margot is doubtless the only person who can get him out of his moments of complete helplessness, instantly, by the simple miracle of her voice. How should he interpret that sign?
He decides not to answer that kind of question and instead asks a different one:
“Are you coming back to Paris soon?”
“Do you miss me, Superintendent?”
“Guess.”
That’s the best Mallock can manage in the way of a declaration of love.
“We can see each other, if you want. I’m landing at Roissy this evening,” Margot continues, “at 10:10. I’ve written a great report and I’m giving myself three days’ vacation.”
Mallock is happy, but the poor dope, he doesn’t show it. On the contrary, he can’t help adding an annoying question:
“And your husband?”
“My husband is not your problem.”
“You know that isn’t true,” Amédée insists.
““You want me to get a divorce? When are we getting married?”
“I didn’t say that, but . . . ”
“This kind of discussion has never gone anywhere.”
Margot is right and Mallock knows it. He’s acting like a jerk.
“Call me when you’re back in Paris,” he finally says.
“Maybe. You could also come get me, Mr. Grumpy.”
She hangs up without saying goodbye, annoyed. He gets a dial tone. Pensively, Mallock puts down the receiver. He’s happy that he heard her voice and that he will soon be able to hold her in his arms. Even if he’s sorry she’s married. The superintendent has trouble with the adulterous aspect of their relations. He wishes she were free.
“And why not a virgin, too, while you’re at it?” Margot would have asked him.
Mallock runs his tongue over an upper right molar.
He thinks he’s finished with his past, but his past hasn’t finished with him. When you finally understand that your love for your mother isn’t mutual, then you decide never to make the same mistake
again.
Being normal is too painful.
After returning from his first vacation with Margot a few months before, Mallock had bought the apartment over his. The big bear had decided to enlarge his cavern. He hadn’t asked himself why, not for a single minute! He’d had his apartment remodeled, made into a duplex, and at the same time he’d had all the doors reinforced. He’d had his little entry door transformed into a double security door with cameras. All the windows had been fitted with bulletproof panes, and detection systems installed in each room. A second Fort Mallock, so to speak. All that just for himself?
He hadn’t been able to protect Amélie.
He’d replaced his little bed with a king-size one two yards wide. Still without suspecting his secret conjugal thoughts.
The new second story, which had been completely renovated, opened out on the courtyard in a semicircle like that of the living room, and across from it, there was another large window looking out to the south on a private garden, Douanier Rousseau style. It was in this vast space that he’d set up the office he’d so long dreamed about: a center for reflection equipped with a computer and sound and projection systems, his collection of unpublished recordings of the Beatles and, finally assembled in one place, his personal collection of books on all the techniques of criminal investigation.
He was standing in front of the latter when the doorbell rang.
On the security screen, a motorcyclist wearing a helmet stood outside his door. He identified himself by looking up at the camera. Mallock let him through the first security door and then clicked him through the second after going down to the ground floor. The policeman gave him a big bubble-wrap envelope. It contained the film that had so much disturbed Julie’s brother and triggered his incredible punitive expedition to the Dominican Republic.
In the plane, he’d almost died.
Now he seemed to be out of danger. A miracle, the emergency doctor had said. Mallock was no longer concerned about that. He just wondered how he was going to untangle the whole affair in a rational way. He thought it was all over, not suspecting that the worst and most puzzling part was still to come.