“Mrs. Arosteguy didn’t die at all. Mrs. Arosteguy is still alive. That’s what I’m suggesting.”
“Then what happened to Célestine’s left breast?”
“You’re closer to it than you could ever imagine.”
Nathan slid out from under Chase’s gaze and walked over to the body-parts table. From close up it looked like a makeshift autopsy table strewn with the rotting detritus of a particularly confusing homicide. He turned back to Chase.
“Am I getting warmer?”
“No. You’re cold. Very cold. You were warmer standing in front of me.”
Nathan returned to her.
“Okay. I don’t get it.”
Chase took his hand and placed it over her own left breast. She was not wearing a bra; the cotton of the sailor shirt was unexpectedly rough. “Do you feel it?” Nathan could only shrug. He was out of the game, not comprehending. “I ate it, Nathan. I ate her breast, at least most of it. What I could stand to eat. It’s not something I think any other animal would eat, not the milk glands anyway. They were horrible. We left the rest of it in the apartment so that the cops would have some flesh to do their DNA thing on. That’s why they think there was a murder.” He let his hand slip off her breast and onto her arm. The little scars felt like a bad heat rash. She twisted away from him, strolled over to the table, and leaned over the body parts. Using the penis as a comical viewfinder, she began making camera shutter noises by sucking air in past her teeth. Click, a leg, click, a hand, click, a foot. She swiveled back to Nathan. “That and the clever special effects photos.”
“It was actually hers? The breast? She was … alive when you ate it?”
“She had always wanted to amputate it. She was very passionate about that. She had some intense body dysmorphic disorder thing. I think Ari took her someplace where they helped him do it to her himself. A collaboration. They froze it and brought it back to the apartment. Left it in the fridge for the cops to find. There was still part of a nipple, a lot of skin, fatty tissue, not much gland.”
“If she’s still alive, where is she?”
“We don’t know. She’s an enigma.”
Nathan nervously wiped the back of his hand across his lips. He knew it was a revealing gesture but was compelled to prepare his mouth for his next words. “You do know that Aristide Arosteguy is not alive.”
Chase’s face lit up with the most radiant smile. “I looked at everything I could find on the net. Well, not the French reports, of course. And at first I was incredibly hurt and shocked and saddened. I wanted to vomit my heart out. Because he means so much to me. The professor. My philosopher. But then I realized.” Nathan thought her face would lift off her skull and float around the room with joy.
“And then you realized.”
“He’s not-alive the way Célestine is not-alive. They are together somewhere, and I will see them again. I don’t mean in some lame afterlife. They’ll call for me when they’re ready, when their new lives are ready to be lived. And I’ll go to them, wherever they are.” As if to begin that journey, Chase turned back once again to the paint table, where she dipped the larval root into the glue pot, then conveyed the thing to the wound in Célestine’s cheek just below the cheekbone. After a moment’s reflection, she gently eased it into the waiting socket, gave it its ceremonial twist, and took a step back to get a proper perspective. The new, shorter larva now competed directly for attention with the head’s swollen and bruised protruding tongue. Chase gave a little “ha” of satisfaction.
SAMUEL BECKETT, apparently, had Dupuytren’s contracture in his right hand, which caused his outer fingers to curl inward and made shaking hands difficult and embarrassing. This pleased Hervé Blomqvist, who, while researching famous people who had Peyronie’s, looking particularly for those who rode bicycles, had discovered that many Peyronie’s victims also suffered from Baron Dupuytren’s, which suggested an immune system pathogenesis rather than a bicycle-riding problem. Hervé could now count himself one of that exclusive club, noticing a new ugly chevron-shaped swelling of tendon sheath in his left palm (he thought of shark gills) which would undoubtedly lead to an eventual contracting of his little and middle finger—a condition called “trigger finger”—to the point where he would no longer be able to straighten those fingers. He was willing to bet that Beckett had Peyronie’s too—he seemed to have had an appropriately contracted sex life—but doubted that there would ever be confirmation of that fact. He hefted the Creaform portable 3D scanner, which he had just used to scan his penis, still partially erect, and fantasized scanning Samuel Beckett’s penis as well as those of any number of other famous Peyronie’s sufferers. His current scan was more detailed than the one he had sent Chase Roiphe earlier in the day, but she probably didn’t need it. No, this one he was sending to Romme Vertegaal, somewhere in North Korea that was not Pyongyang.
The FabrikantBot 2 was chugging away downstairs, printing out the latest parts for the Juche Idea People’s Universal Folding Bicycle, meant to replace the flawed components of the bottom bracket internals which had caused Hervé so much grief as he rode the assembled prototype around the confines of his Rue Beaubourg flat in the 3rd arrondissement. The tight, acrobatic turns that were required had managed to lock up the pedals, and the pedals would not let go until they and their cranks had been completely disassembled and reassembled. A detailed Skyping of the photos and videos documenting the problem drew a quick response from Romme, who had somehow become the Universal Bicycle’s project manager. So positive and helpful, really, and definitely meriting the gift of a return printable scan.
Romme was intimately familiar with Hervé’s sex organ, of course, having helped guide it into various orifices during the wild days of the Arosteguys’ séminaires, which inevitably drew the obvious puns involving the words séminal and semence, and anything else related to sperm and semen. Hervé imagined that they must be very prudish in North Korea, as such repressive regimes always seem to be, and hoped that Romme would be alone in whatever ramshackle studio had been provided for him when Hervé’s gift penis began to print out, though there was a perverse tickle of pleasure at the thought that Romme might be caught holding an ABS replica of his Peyronie’s-twisted member by a strict cadre supervisor, and as a result be cast into the darkness of a reeducation camp like Jongori, Camp No. 12, about as far away from the capital and humanity as you could get.
But perhaps Romme would apply to the Peyronie’s scan the special effects makeup required to turn an ABS or possibly bioplastic penile replicant—muted and bland in uniform gray or powder blue—into a vibrant, living thing full of color and pores and texture. He doubted that Romme himself had such artistic skills, the kind that Chase had shown under the tutelage of the SFX team they had been assigned: Arthropoda Souterrain Effets Spéciaux, a French-Korean firm specializing in gargantuan arthropods for schools and scientific displays. It was a strange choice to say the least, given that arthropods did not bleed red blood, nor did they have skin, but Romme had been steadfast in using them because they could be counted on to be reasonably discreet; and, to be fair, they brought great gusto to creating fleshly things that no lobster or cricket ever incarnated—torn tendons, ruptured blood vessels, exposed hormone glands, splayed muscles—bringing to life Célestine’s tortured body parts, photos of which had convinced the préfet that a murder had in fact been committed.
It had ultimately been Chase who did the dog’s work, the Souterrain boys needing to be kept at arm’s length so that they would not be tempted to blow the whistle on Hervé when the crime-scene photos hit the net. Only Chase could have been entrusted with building the edible prosthetic left breast and the wound-FX application worn by Célestine that had covered the mastectomy scar in the cannibal series of photos. And it had been the original of that breast that was the clincher, the only body part actually found in the Arosteguys’ apartment: a pathetic, mutilated bowl of flesh bearing tooth marks and half a nipple found in the fridge, which was easily DNA certified a
s belonging to Célestine Arosteguy (her distraught sister Sophie, manager of a group of chalets in Chamonix, had been desperate to provide samples). He wondered if the préfet had had the presence of mind to have the breast teched out for cancer, but public momentum seemed to be demanding a cannibalistic murder. More thrilling that the breast had been ripped off and eaten than surgically removed. Complications were not yet welcome; they would be, eventually.
The breast-in-a-soup-bowl evidence had not been formally released to the press (the delicate, handmade Astier de Villatte earthenware bowl had been chosen specifically by Célestine for the purpose, and was not a customary luxury), but when Hervé had been interrogated by a quite cool young guy wearing an extremely narrow, double-breasted, six-button Costume National suit, striped in black and gray, with a zippered black sweater and no tie (Hervé couldn’t help but wonder if the suit was a rental calculated to make him feel at ease with this cop), and then later by the préfet himself, who wore something navy, subdued and conservative, which Hervé suspected was Gucci, it became obvious that what Aristide had called the cheese in the mousetrap had been taken, and the police were quite confident that they had a major homicide on their hands, despite the lack of an entire body.
The cannibal photos would be released around the world at what Romme called “the politically effective moment.” (Romme had promised to digitally alter the faces of Hervé and Chase, but Hervé was now thinking he would like to be at the center of the ensuing firestorm, whatever the consequences.) What this meant, Hervé could only guess. He could see that the coronation of Aristide as a refugee in Pyongyang would be a slap in the face of the French government, which was currently harassing the DPRK over their nuclear testing; that would be even better than the actor Gérard Depardieu’s giving up his French passport in disgust over his tax rate and receiving a hastily mocked-up Russian passport from President Putin himself. But the cannibal photos? The very staging of Célestine’s death itself ? Were they comic-book illustrations of the horrors of capitalism, of the insatiable, all-devouring Western consumerist ethos? The expected pronouncement by Aristide on his safe arrival in the capital would undoubtedly clarify everything.
Hervé tapped the trackpad of his MacBook Pro and dragged the STL file encoding his penis into a special Korean version of Dropbox. The sending of such a file, no matter what its actual content, was the signal developed by him and Romme indicating that a Skype session was wanted. Despite the regime’s apparent affection for M. Vertegaal, he was constantly monitored by a pleasant team of five or six young cadres of both sexes, and was officially restricted to a living range of thirty-five kilometers from the center of Pyongyang, though Romme said that he had been able to bicycle alone beyond the first military perimeter, where the adolescent soldiers seemed shocked and flustered at the sight of a Westerner but were nevertheless very polite. Lately, however, Romme had been escorted in an elite “2.16” car (Kim Jong Il had been born on February 16, and the luxury cars whose special white license plates began with those numbers did not have to stop at roadblocks and checkpoints) to a research facility of some kind far from the capital, so secret that he would not talk about it even to Hervé, who was used to functioning as Romme’s safety valve; in this case, the valve had been firmly shut off. Hervé could sometimes feel the presence of the cute monitoring team, and could even see them hovering anxiously in the background of Romme’s Skype window, at which times Hervé and Romme would speak elliptically, often in English, knowing that the team was more adept at French. Their excuse, only grudgingly accepted, was that for technology, English was the appropriate language. At times, Hervé feared that Romme had in fact been exiled from the capital, a form of punishment that fell short of doing time in a reeducation camp but was scary enough.
Hervé had expected a coded email message appointing a time for a Skype session in return for his STL file, but almost immediately he heard the fishy Skype tone bubble up, and in no time was looking at the face of Romme Vertegaal in all its moody glory, Romme seeming fit and splendid in his many badges depicting members of the Kim dynasty. Hervé clicked the video-camera icon and a small window showing his own face popped up at the bottom right of the lower toolbar. He liked the way he looked, and thought that the two of them were very hot in an internationally subversive and dangerous way, definitely material for a big movie someday.
“Salut, Romme. Are you in Pyongyang?”
“Hervé. Thank you for your funny file. Amusing memories. I need eventually to talk to you about the FabrikantBot deal. My colleagues are worried about US sanctions against the DPRK, as usual, and are concerned to hide the North Korean origin of the FabrikantBot machines. Would it make sense to set up a French plant somewhere rather than a German one? It would be similar to the pending Eternal President’s Voice hearing instruments gambit we have with the FrancoPhonics corporation. This and other considerations.
“But now, we need to discuss the geo-coordinates of Aristide Arosteguy. We have lost him. We don’t know where he is. You’ve read the reports about his death; you’ve seen the tweeted photos. We’re not convinced. The detail of the exploding hearing instruments has made us cautious. We feel that this is meant to be a message to us. Madame A. is extremely upset and has been disturbing the peace of the Korean Friendship Association. She was working on my next film script with the Juche Idea Study Group Film Unit, and they were eagerly awaiting the input of Monsieur Arosteguy. As you know, they are both still much revered for their support of The Judicious Use of Insects at the Cannes Film Festival.”
“I’m shocked to hear this,” said Hervé. “I had some nice desperate emails from the Canadian girl saying that the philosophe had disappeared after leaving the Tokyo house for unknown reasons. We know that he was on his way to meet our DPRK agents under the guise of a hearing-aid appointment brokered by Elke Jungebluth. Of course, it would have been appropriate for him to disappear after that meeting. I thought that he would be with you, that I might even see him in this window with you and have some words with him.”
“We have lost him. He never arrived at the woman audiologist’s hotel in Tokyo. Our agents were with her, as arranged with Arosteguy himself.”
“Could there have actually been an electronic intervention? Could the hearing instruments have been tampered with, or perhaps substituted at some point with lethal intent? We know that Seoul did not want Arosteguy to end up in Pyongyang.”
“We cannot rule it out. It is known that the Soviets used exploding headphones in the 1960s in Bulgaria to kill the defecting orchestra conductor Solovyov.”
“And the Canadian girl? Naomi Seberg?”
“We do have her, thanks to you. She is in transit. An inconvenience meant a slight change of plans involving a long journey by train. We expect her within a week. Madame A. is curious to meet her.”
“Her mental state? The girl?” Hervé needed concrete details; he deserved them. He did feel a giddy twinge of guilt for having put Naomi in play with Romme and the North Koreans, but he was sure she would be excited by the drama, would thank him later, as they say. And perversely, he himself was excited by the drama, by the fact that he had actually influenced international events in a quasi-criminal way. It was he who had pointed out to Romme the danger to their exploit represented by Naomi, even though he had been instrumental in connecting her with Arosteguy. His motives were, as usual, mostly opaque, even to himself, but definitely involved the deliciousness of mixing volatile and explosive elements and then standing back to watch the cataclysm.
“Subdued. Our team has been gentle with her, but of course the events have been stressful. They told her that she would be with the Arosteguys, and that seemed to mollify her, but of course now that’s not entirely true. It will be interesting to see how she reacts. I’ll have her Skype with you when I can.”
Hervé observed Romme with some sadness, feeling that he had not seen the real Romme, the wickedly funny, engaging, and intellectually seductive one, in any of the Skype sessions from the
DPRK. He missed that Romme, and wondered if there was really any of that Romme left; he had spent so long there under surveillance, shaping himself to fit the requirements and the fantasies of the regime, that perhaps the new shape was irreversible. At some point, Hervé thought, he must surely travel to Pyongyang himself, even as a humble tourist, to see if his prince’s kiss could revive Princess Romme.
“But where did they pick her up? At the airport?”
“Strangely enough, they found her at the house rented by our operatives for Arosteguy in Tokyo. She had been living with him. She was sitting by the door with her suitcases all packed, ready to go somewhere but not sure where that should be. I’m reading the report right now.” Indeed, Romme’s eyes were not quite where one’s eyes normally were when Skyping. Few people actually looked into the camera, or even knew where it was on a Mac, so tiny and occult was it, sunken within the screen’s top bezel. Romme was looking far left of the Skype window, squinting with the effort of reading and translating the North’s very particular dialect. “Our people felt it was important that she had packed not only her own personal belongings but also all of Arosteguy’s, including electronics. There was barely any need for the team to strip the premises.”
“Another victory for Kimunism,” said Hervé, knowing he was treading on dangerous ground; irony and satire were not correct modes of discourse in the DPRK, though that made them very useful for monitored conversations, because, through lack of exercise, they were also not at all comprehended. It had been Ari who proposed the term Kimunism for the strange form of xenophobic nationalism practiced under the Kim family dynasty; it was not really socialism, nor was it communism in even the Maoist form, despite the heaviness of its cult of personality. Ari had felt that it was the severity and chimeric plasticity of the system, so provocative, that made it appealing to French intellectuals, and he did not exclude himself.
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