Blood Crime

by Sebastia Alzamora

  “Comrade Escorza, Mother Abbess,” he greeted them with a nod.

  “You can call her Isabel, which is her name. And put on your cap. Have you finished unloading?”

  “Yes, Comrade Escorza.”

  “Did you remember the oil?”

  “Six bottles of oil that I left in the larder, Comrade Escorza.”

  “And the preserves?”

  “A barrel of herring and two dozen salted cod, Comrade Escorza.”

  “And the flour?”

  “One sack of barley and three of wheat, Comrade Escorza.”

  Manuel Escorza turned to his sister, who looked stiff, still awaiting an answer to her request.

  “There you are, sister: everything you and your fanatics need for your own upkeep. Sirga procured it all on the black market, on my orders. You know what that means, don’t you, sister?”

  The Mother Abbess shook her head. “No, I don’t know, Manuel. You tell me.”

  He leaned across the table until his large face was next to the nun’s. “That means it’s war booty, sister. Obtained by robbing and pillaging. Men have died so that you nuns and that girl-crazed bishop could cheerfully feast on all of this. It’s the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, sister. How does that strike you? Your little brother also performs miracles. Think you could reserve a chapter for me in the sacred scriptures?”

  He erupted into particularly offensive laughter; and even though the mother abbess had promised herself that she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she couldn’t keep two tears, thick as the veins on one’s wrist, from rolling down her cheek. Manuel Escorza stopped laughing, as if he had a sudden cramp, and addressed Sirga: “So, have you finished your job?”

  “I’ve finished, Comrade Escorza,” the redhead said, his cap still in his hands.

  “Well, let’s go then.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “We still have to put in an appearance at the meeting at the Tostadero, and time is short.”

  “Yes, Comrade Escorza.”

  Sirga grasped Manuel Escorza under the armpits to ease him out of the chair and get him onto his crutches, then moved ahead to hold the door for him. Manuel Escorza left the chapterhouse to the sound of his older sister’s sobs and the screeching of his shoe lifts dragging along the floor.

  •••

  “Ouch!” exclaimed Doctor Pellicer.

  “Mind your head, doctor,” warned Judge Carbonissa. “The ceiling is quite low.”

  “Thanks. If you hadn’t mentioned it I would never have noticed,” the doctor said sarcastically, rubbing his head with his left hand.

  His right hand gripped the torch he was carrying even tighter as his vision tried to adjust to the quivering, unreliable light. The judge led the way, three steps in front of him, and Doctor Pellicer struggled to keep up. At the bottom of the ladder they had reached a sort of crypt—vaulted ceiling, unhewn-stone walls, half-paved ground—where the judge had some torches ready, which he lit with a match and a gasoline-dipped wick. Then, without wasting a moment, they had crouched down and started along the passageway that began on one side of the crypt. A few seconds later they could no longer hear the distant sound of exploding bombs.

  The passageway was wide enough for a large man like Doctor Pellicer to move without any problem, but the ceiling was very low, to the extent that in some places the two men were obliged to kneel and crawl. The ground was full of weeds and scree, and it was easy to twist an ankle if one did not tread carefully. Though the entire crossing took less than three minutes, it seemed interminable to Doctor Pellicer; he was about to ask if they had much farther to go when he heard Judge Carbonissa’s reassuring voice: “We’ve arrived. Wait right there and come when I call you.”

  The doctor did as he was told and watched Judge Carbonissa disappear behind a bend. He waited, crouching in the strangest of positions beneath the light of the torch. A short while later a glimmer reached him from beyond the curve, gradually becoming more intense. Soon a bright glow flooded the passageway, making the torch unnecessary, and Doctor Pellicer heard the judge: “Follow the light, doctor!”

  Again he did as he was told. He made his way around the bend and discovered that a few meters in front of him the passageway opened into a brightly-lit natural gallery. He entered it and came to a sudden halt, his mouth agape in astonishment.

  His reaction was more than warranted. The short gallery gave way to a grotto of considerable size, large enough for the ceiling to vanish into the darkness overhead. The entire ground level, however—from the gallery to the end of the grotto—was brightly lit by lanterns that had been carefully placed two steps apart. There was not a single unlit corner.

  In that light, Judge Carbonissa looked even taller and thinner than usual, and his shadow on the ground was as long as a wolf’s howl in the dead of night. He stood there motionless, a nondescript expression on his gaunt face, beside a huge object covered top to bottom with white sheets.

  The doctor looked around, pleased to discover a space in which a morgue, similar to the one in the Gothic Quarter, seemed to have been combined with the workshop of a craftsman of exceptional skill. There were neatly aligned and duly tagged morgue slabs, as well as a couple of tables covered with crimson velvet cloths, atop which were displayed a set of surgical instruments: scissors, saws, scalpels, needles, drills, in every imaginable shape and size, ready to be used. The judge had devoted one of the smoothest walls to three hanging panels, each holding, respectively, the tools necessary for a cabinetmaker, a blacksmith, and a woodcarver: mallets, hammers, pliers, double-blade mason hammers, awls, chisels, gouges, screws, saws, concave and convex gouges, mortise chisels . . . There was even a forge and an anvil for shaping metals, and a collection of templates for pieces that would be made from the different kinds of wood—oak, jacaranda, walnut, cedar, cherry—piled in separate stacks in a hollow used as a woodshed. But what most impressed Doctor Pellicer were the two huge tubs filled with formaldehyde; he couldn’t imagine how they had managed to transport them from the outside world down to those catacombs.

  “I see it was no exaggeration when you said you had left nothing to improvisation.”

  A slight nod. “Shall we proceed?”

  “Please,” replied the doctor, rubbing his hands with glee.

  The judge jerked the sheets off the object and let them slide to the ground, uncovering an enormous black horse. It was magnificent: a powerful neck and loin, perfect belly, long legs that seemed to have been shaped by a sculptor’s chisel, and a dull-black mane and tail that contrasted admirably with the amber sheen of its coat. Its countenance, on the other hand, reflected a rigid stillness, and its eyes had a glassy, remote look, like the pupils of a dead horse. Flesh of misfortune. The phrase again crossed the doctor’s mind. But he couldn’t avoid an irrepressible emotion, a mixture of pride, admiration and gratitude that flooded his thoughts and spirit.

  “My dear Doctor Pellicer—I give you Hadaly!” the judge exclaimed.

  The doctor slowly circled the beautiful animal, stopping frequently to admire certain details—the precise contours of the thighs and legs, the meticulous outline of the ear, the texture of the horsehair, the delicate crafting of the muzzle and nostrils—and to hail its perfection by articulating occasional, indecipherable sounds.

  “So?” Judge Carbonissa asked, curious.

  “It’s . . .” stammered Doctor Pellicer without taking his eyes off the horse. “It’s even more perfect than I had dreamed . . . I . . .”

  The judge took the doctor by the arm and tugged on him gently. He picked up a scalpel from one of the tables with surgical instruments and held it to the horse’s ribs, as the animal stood there scrutinizing the void with eyes of ice.

  “Our automaton, dear doctor, has four constituent parts. The first, the internal one, is what I refer to as the living system, comprising balance, the capacity for movement,
the voice, the flexing of limbs, the various reactions to basic stimuli, and so forth. In a word, what in a horse we could call the soul, if it had one.”

  Doctor Pellicer followed the judge’s explanations with great attention.

  “The second part,” he continued, “is the plastic insulation, a covering that is designed to function as a frame, separated from the flesh and the dermis. It is a structure with flexible articulations and holds the living system firmly in place.”

  “A frame for the skeleton of sorts.”

  “Precisely,” the judge corroborated. “And, moving right along, the third part is the flesh and all that goes with it: the bone structure, venous network, muscles, digestive and sexual organs—in short all bodily systems. This is where the human remains proved to be essential, doctor, the parts you were kind enough to offer me, selected and classified. I have combined them with animal offal from slaughterhouses and farms, although, since the war began, human remains are more plentiful and easier to come by than animal matter.” He shrugged in resignation. “So, you see, the flesh covers the insulation and adheres to it, emulating the features of the body on which it is modeled: a three-time winner in the trotting category at the Ascot racecourse.”

  “A perfect cybernetic organism,” murmured Doctor Pellicer, nodding in admiration.

  “Yes, indeed.” Judge Carbonissa smiled and cleared his throat. “And now we come to the fourth and final component of the automaton, which is none other than the dermis. Here we find resolved outer aspects such as the coat and the oral system, as well as facial expressions, the mimicking of muzzle movements, every aspect related to the eyes and the animal’s gaze . . .”

  “The only flaw I detect,” interrupted the doctor, “is that its gaze is so inanimate, so . . .”

  “. . . so dead, perhaps?” the judge suggested. “Yours is a valid observation, but that’s because you haven’t witnessed our creature in action.”

  “A feat I’m impatient to see!”

  “You will shortly, doctor,” the judge said, shifting his scalpel a few centimeters. “But first I would like to mention Hadaly’s lungs, made from an alloy of gold and aluminum. They are in fact two phonographs placed at a convex angle so as to coincide with the center of the animal’s thorax. They function like the cylinders of a printing press through which a roll of paper is circulated; in this case, however, what is transmitted between the phonographs is the entire spectrum of sounds characteristic of an adult horse, recorded on a strip of tin: Hadaly thus neighs, paws the ground, snorts, in perfect concert with his movements and the situation.” Judge Carbonissa stood on tiptoes. “Forgive my vanity, but I am especially proud of this mechanism.”

  “I am very impressed,” Doctor Pellicer conceded.

  “Would you mind waiting a few more moments? The most impressive thing is yet to come.”

  He ran his hand along the horse’s back, stopping at a certain point to flip a switch; the clicking sound was clearly audible to the doctor in the silence of the grotto. The automaton emerged from its dormancy at once and with the elegance and grace of a fine competition horse shook its head and feet as though loosening them up. It pawed the ground and neighed briefly with what sounded like impatience. Doctor Humbert Pellicer, who did not miss a detail, was especially fascinated by the brusque transformation of the eyes: the gelid deathliness that had troubled him only a moment before had given way to undeniable vivacity. And yet . . . The doctor planted himself in front of the horse; he thought he had noticed a reflection in Hadaly’s pupils and wanted to investigate. Hadaly lowered his majestic head with well-tamed docility and gave the doctor a look he would have been hard-pressed to describe: that gaze, he would have said, was not completely animal, nor was it exactly human. Suddenly his brain lit up with the word he was searching for, the objectionable word that had been haunting him since he had first seen the automaton: monster.

  “Hadaly! Let’s go, Hadaly!” cried the judge.

  As if it were the meekest, best-trained saddle horse, Hadaly broke into a slow, graceful trot and made his way around the perimeter of the grotto. The great empty space reverberated with the echo of horseshoes clopping against the ground, and Hadaly raised his neck with a distinction that revealed perhaps a trace of petulance. The glow of the lanterns illuminated the automaton’s gait and multiplied its shadow on the ground and walls of the grotto. No one on this earth, thought the doctor, would have been able to distinguish Hadaly from a real horse: After all, what exactly was a real horse? Why were the only true forms and conditions those that man found already created, never the ones he himself might create? What could this magnificent animal—whose evolution filled him with pride—possibly begrudge any horse, in any stable in the world? Could it not be that creation was simply a blueprint, a rough draft, and the mission of the human species was none other than to perfect and complete the divine template? Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.

  Hadaly had moved to the entrance of the gallery in order to gain speed before racing at a gallop to the far end of the grotto, from which he emerged again at a trot, arrogant and lordly.

  Yes, some would dare to label Hadaly a monster. Many would consider Judge Carbonissa and Doctor Pellicer monsters for making use of human remains to build Hadaly. They would fail to understand that the glory of the project lay precisely therein: that its beauty resided in taking discarded human body parts, preserving it from putrefaction, and transforming it into raw material for the creation of new life.

  The doctor lit a cigarette and, as if the smoke from the first draw had got into his eyes, a couple of tears rolled down his reddened cheeks to his double-chin. He dried them with a linen handkerchief he took from his pocket. “We have fulfilled the mandate of the species, my esteemed judge. Wasn’t this what Darwin was referring to? At a time when everyone insists on death, we have summoned life . . .”

  “. . . and the resurrection of the flesh,” added the judge with a wry smile.

  “Well, well!” exclaimed Doctor Pellicer, blowing a thin stream of smoke out of his mouth. “Here we go again, my dear judge.”

  “We stand in the presence of a living being created from other, dead beings, doctor; we have devised it and created it. And you still dare question the existence of phenomena that unfold at the threshold between life and death?”

  “Not in the least. I am simply respecting another threshold: the one that separates science from magic. Hadaly is the fruit of science, not of some form of obscurantism. You and I both know that to be a fact.”

  The automaton approached the two men and started circling them like an attentive pet.

  “Precisely,” Judge Carbonissa agreed, still smiling. “What I meant is that I believe I am in a position to state that the success of Hadaly cannot be explained by purely scientific means.”

  “Is that so?” asked the doctor, who also maintained a patient smile. “And what other logic is in play here? Have you consulted a glass ball? Have you had your palms read, your cards, perhaps?”

  The judge gestured to indicate that the conversation was futile. He walked over to the automaton and stroked its back again; once more a click was heard, and Hadaly’s body instantly froze. Having admired him in the glory of motion, Doctor Pelliver was even more troubled now by the stiffness of his limbs and the return of the icy lack of expression in the eyes. But that did not keep him from pressing the matter.

  “You see? It is a switch that allows you to activate and deactivate Hadaly. Not some spell, not some ritualistic formula.”

  The judge pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You’re determined to make fun of me, doctor. I don’t reproach you for this, but I can’t say I agree either.” He pointed the scalpel at the doctor before adding: “I am merely heeding the precept that no possibility should be dismissed out of hand. For example, in the case of the murder the other day in Pension Capell . . .”

  The doctor o
pened his eyes wide and raised his eyebrows. “Yes, I know what you mean. And you also know my opinion on that.”

  “It’s not exactly a matter of subjective opinion, doctor. Testimonies regarding the existence of vampires abound in all known cultures and go back to the earliest of times.”

  “Fine, fine.” The doctor lingered over the last of his cigarette. “But I still believe that this vampire of yours, the one that killed Brother Gendrau and the boy and drank their blood, is not some creature from the afterlife, but a flesh-and-blood degenerate very much of this world. Like all the other cases of vampirism we hear about. The rest are simply tales to frighten small children. You want to bet?”

  “I would never make a bet with you, doctor,” exclaimed the judge with a hearty laugh. “Besides, this is a matter for our dear Superintendent Muñoz and our dear Brother Darder to elucidate, isn’t it?”

  “You’re right,” conceded the doctor. “And, then of course,” he glanced at the automaton and had to repress a shudder, “we have Hadaly. Our hands are full.”

  “It’s a real shame that this stupid war had to get in the way of Hadaly’s progress.”

  “You’re right again, judge. Do you think the bombing has stopped now?”

  “Comrade! Tell the busboy to come and take our order; when we’re parched we’re good for nothing!”

  The militiaman made a snorting sound as he sniffled, rose from the table and left the private dining room to look for a waiter.

  “And tell him to make it snappy, our brothers here don’t have all day either. Isn’t that so?”

  The man giving orders was Antoni Ordaz, pleased with his role of big wheel. He was running the show at the meeting at the Tostadero, and he exuded satisfaction. Ordaz was accompanied by the militiaman who had just stood up—a young volunteer in the surveillance patrols, a man everyone called “Burntface” because he had fallen into the brazier when he was little and half of his face was scarred—and by Comrade Gil Portela from Safe-Conducts. They represented Aureli Fernández, who had delegated the running of the meeting to Antoni Ordaz.