The Paris Enigma

by Pablo De Santis

  I read the second verse out loud.

  In the night of the Tomb, you who have comforted me, Give me back Posilipo and the sea of Italy,

  The flower that so pleased my desolate heart And the trellis where the branch and the rose meet.

  “I understand even less of this one,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised: detectives get lost in the written word. They can read what isn’t written, but when letters come into it, they go astray. The night of the tomb means the same as the black sun and melancholy: darkness, the rotting of the matter which will then be transformed. Posilipo is a red stone, which is to say, sulfur, the alchemists’ material of choice. And the sea of Italy is mercury. All in all, the entire poem speaks of the transformation of matter, the second alchemical operation.”

  The sonnet continued:

  Am I Eros or Phoebus?… Lusignan or Biron? My forehead is flushed from the Queen’s kiss; I dreamed in the Grotto where the Mermaid swims…

  And twice victorious I crossed the Acheron: Modulating alternately on the lyre of Orpheus The saint’s sighs and the fairy’s screams.

  “I’m not going to overwhelm you with the secrets contained in each and every word; every night I find new possible interpretations. But I want you to observe how the dark, star-spangled lute of the first verse turns into Orpheus’s luminous lyre at the end. Nerval set out to tell the story of an alchemical transformation, but here, in the penultimate verse, we see what really matters to him: when matter and work become art. Orpheus is the poet capable of giving and creating an allegorical version of alchemy and its mysteries; he is the artist capable of putting into words those other secret arts. And the result of that verbal operation is as important as if not more so than its contents. Nerval didn’t need to tell us the secret; he was interested in pointing out a puzzle that couldn’t possibly be solved.”

  I read the poem again and then said to Grialet, “But what’s interesting about enigmas is that they hint at the possibility of an answer. I like your interpretation, even though I don’t completely understand it. I like knowing that just as mysteries exist, so do solutions, even if I can’t figure them out. When I was a boy I used to read about the detectives’ great exploits and I loved the cases that seemed impossible, a locked-room case, for example, did have an explanation. The enigma exists only for the moment in which the detective unravels it with the strength of his reasoning.”

  “You said it: Arzaky and his friends want to unravel mysteries, not complete them with the revelation of the enigma. If they embraced the mystery instead of confronting it, don’t you think they would come to a better understanding of their cases? Arzaky always finds the killer, but he loses sight of the truth.”

  “Arzaky is a detective; like a scientist, he believes only the evidence.”

  “Do you believe that the evidence leads to the truth? Evidence is the truth’s enemy! How many innocent killers has Arzaky sent to the guillotine? It’s not just crime that makes us guilty, nor the lack of it that makes us innocent.”

  Grialet had raised his voice, surprising Greta, who moved closer to me. Then the occultist started to circle us, pressing us against one another.

  “I was partially deaf until they hacked off half my ear with a butcher’s knife. Since then I hear perfectly.” Grialet moved his greasy hair aside to show us his wound, whose irregular edges looked more like they had been bitten than sliced by steel. “With this pretty little ear I can hear your thoughts. I know what the detectives don’t. They don’t dare come here, sending you instead. Who do you work for, miss? For Lawson, or Castelvetia?”

  Greta, pale, bit her lips.

  “But your detectives don’t know what they’re doing,” he continued. “You are more than servants, more than assistants. Both of you will be the downfall of your mentor.”

  I felt that the accusation was directed at Greta, not at me, so she was the one who should respond.

  “You’re wrong,” said Greta. “And don’t speak to us as if we were some sort of a team. We just met, it’s only a coincidence that we’re here at the same time.”

  Grialet had lost all meekness. He left his slashed ear in view, and far from being a weak point, it seemed like a triumph, a point of pride, a mark that signified that he belonged to a chosen circle. I couldn’t take my eyes off his big yellow teeth.

  “I’m wrong? I recognize the voices of those who are due for a transformation. I see the pride that can’t be concealed by false modesty. You suspect me. It is you who are the suspects. You, who pretend to be the acolytes, the messengers, the assistants, the shadows… Now leave. You’ll find nothing more here than obscure phrases and obsolete verses.”

  9

  We left the house upset and confused.

  “My performance was perfect. Grialet would still believe my lie, if you hadn’t shown up.”

  “He knew who we were before we came in. Grialet pretended to believe you just so he could get a good gawk at your bosom.”

  “I used my bosom to distract Grialet, so that you could look around… Why didn’t you check the other rooms? Then we might have something now…”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave you alone with him. I thought he might bite you.”

  “I’m used to-”

  “Being bitten?”

  “To this job. I’ve dealt with men much worse than Grialet, men who wanted to do more than look at me. Now we’re not going to be able to get in again. Instead of looking for clues, you just stared at the walls…”

  “There was writing on them.”

  “But the clue wasn’t going to be there, on the wall, in plain sight.”

  “With everything that was written there, the wall could have easily read ‘I killed Darbon,’ and neither of us would have even noticed.”

  “Brilliant observation. And now we’re leaving empty-handed.”

  I took the photograph of the Mermaid out from where I had hidden it in my jacket.

  “I’m not leaving Grialet’s mansion completely empty-handed.”

  She looked at the image, her eyes wide.

  “It’s trick photography. No person is capable of such things. It must be some play of light and cameras…”

  “I’ve seen her.”

  “Like this?”

  “Dressed.”

  “I still maintain it’s impossible.”

  She turned the photograph over, as if she expected to find some confirmation that it was fake on the back. In green ink, a woman’s hand had written “I dreamed in the Grotto where the Mermaid swims.”

  “There are so many photographic tricks these days; they can make women look as perfect as statues.”

  “That photograph isn’t painted.”

  “Only fools fall for optical illusions.”

  She gave me back the photo and left, offended. But Arzaky was even more upset when I showed it to him.

  “How dare you enter a house using my name and steal a photograph? The idea is to send criminals to prison, not for them to send you and me there.”

  “I thought it could be a clue. Perhaps the woman’s handwriting indicates-”

  “It’s the Mermaid’s handwriting… No secret there for me. She’s known Grialet for some time. I asked her to help in an investigation a while back, that’s all.”

  “The Case of the Fulfilled Prophecy?” I showed him the magazine that Grimas had given me.

  Arzaky looked at me, annoyed.

  “Old cases are no concern of yours. Your job is to ask questions and, if it’s decided that we continue following up on this Hermetic lead, search for some oil-stained shoes. You don’t need to steal anything. I don’t know what strange things Craig taught you, but the assistant is a spectator, not an actor. The assistant watches life pass in front of his eyes, without getting involved. Now close your eyes. Imagine that life is a theater. Did you imagine the curtain, the orchestra, the actors? Good, now imagine yourself seated in the last row.”

  I told him about the conversation I had with
Grialet, but it was difficult explaining exactly what went on without mentioning Greta. Arzaky listened to me without interrupting. I told him of the writings on the walls, and the phrases written on them, I recited part of Nerval’s poem and I told him Grialet’s interpretation of it. But when I got carried away and acted like an expert as I explained the second of the three verses, Arzaky had a fit of anger and began banging the f loor with Craig’s cane.

  “Okay! ” I said to him. “I won’t recite any more! And be careful with that cane, it could go off.”

  Arzaky wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I can’t stand poetry.”

  “Maybe it’s my foreign accent…”

  “Your foreign accent isn’t the problem. It’s your mind; it’s foreign to all reason. Put all this in order. Gather these things into the glass cases and start writing out placards that explain the function of each object. And go to the parlor to see if you can find my colleagues and demand the objects that are still missing. The Japanese detective, Castelvetia, Novarius, Baldone… And did you find out anything more about Castelvetia’s assistant?”

  I shook my head no, without looking at him, as if I barely realized what he was asking me. Arzaky gave an indignant snort and I thought he was going to have another fit, but he sat down, dispirited.

  “I’m sorry to be so irritable. Grialet brings back bad memories.”

  “Because of the unsolved case?”

  “It was solved. But perhaps that case is the prologue to this mess we’re in now.”

  Arzaky took the magazine out of my hands and quickly reviewed the story, as though he had trouble remembering the names. Every once in a while he smiled bitterly, as if mocking those pages Tanner had written. For the first time I suspected that there might be quite an abyss between the published versions of the cases and the real investigation.

  “The Case of the Fulfilled Prophecy was the first time I had contact with Paris ’s Hermetic sects. The victim was a professor at the Sorbonne, who had one paralyzed leg. His named was Isidore Blondet. He lived alone in a large house, shut in with his books. He had spent his youth in Lyon, where he had contact with a Martinist order, a spiritualist group that he soon abandoned. Once he was living in Paris, he became obsessed with the myth of Atlantis, and began combing through histories of remote cultures for references to islands swallowed up by the sea.

  “One of Blondet’s most loyal friends was Father Prodac, a former seminarian who experimented with poisons and liturgical elements. He fed communion Hosts to rats and kept track of how long it took them to die of starvation. From his bodily f luids he extracted poisons that were said to be extremely powerful and could kill on contact. Blondet eventually got tired of Prodac’s experiments, and he kicked him out of his house.

  “This was the first enemy that the cripple Blondet made, but he soon discovered that constantly creating enemies was entertaining- an amusing way to fill his empty Sundays. He founded a satirical newspaper in which he was the sole writer and editor in chief, making fun of the leaders of the Paris Hermetic scene. His favorite target was Grialet and, of course, his former friend Prodac. In those days Prodac claimed to be a prophet. His prophecies were fairly banal (a storm on St. Peter’s Day, a vague shipwreck), but one day he made a prediction with a name and date: on the eighteenth of September, Isidoro Blondet was going to die.

  “Blondet, a bit frightened by the prophecy (not because he believed that Prodac could see the future, but because he feared that he was plotting to kill him) didn’t leave his house the whole day, didn’t open the door to anyone, and only picked up the newspapers and the mail. Nevertheless, when the maid came in the next day, she found him dead, seated at his desk, with his head resting on a large book.

  “For a few days Prodac enjoyed his fame as a prophet. Businessmen and ladies of leisure visited him at his house so he could predict their luck in investments, gambling, and love. It didn’t last long. Blondet’s autopsy, which I attended, revealed that he had been poisoned with phosphorus. I helped the police with their investigation, and found that the last book Blondet touched was impregnated with phosphorus. Blondet had climbed a staircase to get the book, gone back down, and looked through it. Then, when he slammed it shut, a cloud of dust rained out from its pages and poisoned him.

  “Prodac was arrested immediately. It was obvious that the murder had been well planned. He eventually confessed to the judge that before leaving Blondet’s house, five or six months earlier, he had poisoned the book. Then he waited for him to consult that particular volume.

  “The police were satisfied with the chain of events, but for me there was a missing element. How could Prodac know that Blondet was going to take out that book on that precise day? It was this investigation that led me to Grialet.

  “The book that killed Blondet was a thick volume about the Hermetic movements during the Renaissance. I combed through the newspapers from that day looking for some information about what could have awakened Blondet’s interest in consulting that particular book. One of the papers at Blondet’s house was The Magnetizer, which was run by Grialet. After reading it over and over, I found, on a footnote signed by someone named Celsus, a common pseudonym in the Hermetic circle, a mention of Marsilio Ficino, the philosopher to whom we owe the revival of Plato’s thinking in the Western canon.

  “At that time Blondet was preparing the definitive edition of his work on Atlantis. The author of the footnote, this Celsus, pointed out that Ficino (the son of the Medici’s doctor, who had founded his own academy and was vegetarian and chaste) had written a book about Atlantis, the fable created by Plato, when he was twenty-three years old, but later destroyed it. According to the note, Ficino had found earlier sources than Plato that proved Atlantis hadn’t been a chance invention by the philosopher. And it cited as bibliography the thick volume steeped in phosphorus. I realized that this footnote was the fatal weapon. As soon as Blondet read the false information, he sought out the work on Renaissance Hermeticism, to see if the citation was true. He didn’t find it and, slamming the volume shut, was enveloped in the phosphorus cloud.

  “I asked the district attorney to arrest Grialet, the editor of the magazine, but he defended himself, saying that the article had arrived in the mail and he knew nothing about the author. To prove his innocence he showed an envelope postmarked from Toulouse. The plan was too complex for Father Prodac’s limited imagination. I sent the Mermaid after Grialet. Although she managed to become his friend, she never found a single piece of evidence that linked him to the phosphorus, to the murderous citation, or to Prodac himself. As a last resort I went to see the killer at the Salpetrière Hospital (the judge deemed him insane due to his fits of rage), and on the day I arrived Prodac had been found hanging from the ceiling. He didn’t leave a note, nothing that implicated Grialet in the crime.

  “That’s why Grialet’s name brings back bad memories. With time, solved cases fade, diminish, disappear. But unsolved cases come back again and again, convincing us on sleepless nights that this collection of question marks, uncertainties, and errors is our true legacy.”

  10

  I returned to the hotel disheartened, with the feeling that Arzaky didn’t trust me and was only using me for minor tasks.

  He had kept the fact that he knew Grialet from me and he hadn’t told me anything about his plans for the investigation. I locked myself in my room to catch up on my correspondence. Even though I addressed it “Dear Mother and Father,” I couldn’t help thinking that I was really addressing only my mother, as she was the one who took a real interest in my letters. I told her about everything around me but I altered it, trying to restore the original patina, the glow of things seen for the first time, to this world that had begun to tarnish.

  After dining in a seedy bar, whose weak light was in cahoots with the chef ’s dark arts, I went to the hotel drawing room to see if I could find Benito or Baldone. Only the Sioux warrior was there, seated in an armchair and rigidly gazing out into space. I greeted him wi
th a nod of the head.

  Tamayak took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I had heard that some tribes smoked hallucinogenic herbs, and a scandal in Madame Nécart’s drawing room was the last thing I needed. It would have been the final straw that made Arzaky send me back to my father’s shoe shop. Maybe Tamayak noticed that I was looking at his cigarettes suspiciously, because he said, “Don’t be afraid, they’re from Martinique. I bought them right here in the hotel.”

  I was surprised that the Sioux spoke French, and I boldly told him so.

  “Four years ago Jack Novarius began studying French so he could join The Twelve Detectives. Knowing French is a prerequisite to anyone aspiring to be a full member. It’s not required for assistants but he made me learn as well so he would have someone to practice with. And how’s it going with Arzaky? Becoming the acolyte to the Detective of Paris should make you proud, but you just seem unhappy.”

  “I’m not a real assistant. I’m sure he has a plan, but he’s keeping quiet about it. He doesn’t trust me.”

  “But his silence is good. When I started working with Novarius, for the Pinkerton agency, he almost never spoke to me. Once in a while I would make some comment, but he always held his words for the final surprise.”

  “He never disclosed anything about the investigation?”

  “Not a thing. Our first case took place in a circus, in the Midwest. They had killed the Human Cannonball right in the middle of a performance. The acrobat had commenced his usual routine, greeting the audience, showing his helmet, and asking, ‘Is it shiny? Is it shiny? ’ And then he stuck himself into the cannon. But instead of shooting out and landing a few paces farther on, he blew straight through the circus tent and disappeared into the night.

  “The cause of death was clear. The cannon had two mechanisms: an explosive charge to make noise, and a spring, which was the real force that propelled the Human Cannonball. The killer had filled it with gunpowder, turning it into a real cannon.