Pablo De Santis - The Paris Enigma

At the entrance, Novarius tried to get the Sioux Indian in, but the guards insisted that he had escaped from a tribe of South American Indians who were set up on a piece of land on the other side of the fair, and they wanted him to return. To avoid being followed, I entered other pavilions and exited through side doors. I stopped to see the globe they had just finished putting together, and then I sidetracked toward the Palace of Fine Arts. When I was fairly sure no one had followed me to that point, I continued on to the Taxidermists’ Pavilion. Before I went in I saw a young woman waving to me from a distance. It was Greta, looking at me through binoculars. I waved back, embarrassed at being exposed, and casually entered the pavilion, which was built to look like an Egyptian temple.

At the entrance to the temple I was greeted by a stuffed bear, whose open jaws welcomed me to his world of simulated immortality. On glass shelves and large black wood tables nested birds as small as insects and insects as large as birds. A giraffe from Paris ’s zoo, whose death had been announced in the newspaper six months earlier, was still in the wooden box that had been used to transport it, sticking its neck out into the world at last and forever.

A short, stout man passed by me, dressed in a gray coverall. I asked him for the taxidermists and he muttered, between his teeth, the name Dr. Nazar and pointed to a closed door.

I knocked, and without waiting for an answer, opened the door. A doctor in a white coat was writing a letter, with his back to me. Next to him there was an empty gurney.

“Rufus, wait a second, I’ll give you this letter, it’s for the organizing committee…”

I stepped forward.

“I’m not Rufus, doctor. My name is Sigmundo Salvatrio, and…”

He put the pen down and turned to look at me. Nazar had a long beard and eyes reddened by long nights of work.

“I’m busy right now… Perhaps in the future I’ll be taking on apprentices…”

“I don’t want to be an apprentice. I was sent by Detective Arzaky.”

I assumed he would throw me out, but he stood up enthusiastically, as if I had uttered a magic word.

“That’s exactly what I need, a detective! A body has just disappeared. It was our best work and someone took it in the middle of the night.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I said with a smug smile.

Nazar stared at me.

“But how could you know that, when I haven’t reported its disappearance yet?”

“We are aware of everything that goes on at the World’s Fair,” I replied, happy that someone, in the midst of so much confusion, deemed me useful.

“Your accent and your arrogance are familiar to me,” said Dr. Nazar in perfect Spanish. “Are you Argentine? Me too.”

Dr. Nazar came closer as if he were going to hug me, his lab coat stained with chemical products, blood, and other substances I was not interested in coming into close contact with. Frightened, I backed up with the agility of a fencer and extended a tentative hand. The deferred embrace evaporated. Anyone who saw Nazar’s exuberance would have thought that it was extremely rare to find another Argentine in Paris, when really the city was full of us.

“So you’re working in Paris?” I couldn’t avoid Dr. Nazar’s presumptuously giving me a pat on the back.

“Just for a short while. I was sent by Detective Craig, for the first meeting of The Twelve Detectives.”

“I met Craig at a meeting of the Progress Club five years ago. He gave a masterful lecture on the difference between deduction and induction.”

“One of his favorite topics.”

“It was brilliant. I didn’t understand a thing, but I could tell he was a cut above. I understand that, in recent years, he has given up detective work.”

“Because of his health problems.”

“And because of the Case of the Magician. Well, you should know better than me.”

I was speechless. I often forgot that I wasn’t the only person who knew about the Kalidán case and Alarcón’s death. When that old business came to light I felt horribly ashamed, as if I had squandered that opportunity. Guilt, in many cases, has no relation to actual events. We feel responsible for things that have nothing to do with us, and don’t give a thought to our real sins. I abruptly returned to the matter at hand.

“I came because a body was found, and we believe it is the same one that was stolen from you.”

Nazar’s face lit up.

“I knew it couldn’t have gone far. Is it in good condition?”

I shook my head.

“Did they take the head off?” he asked. “It’s going to take a lot of work to get that head back where it belongs.”

“I’m afraid, doctor, that won’t be necessary.”

Nazar breathed a sigh of relief.

“They burned it.”

Crestfallen, Nazar sank back into a chair.

“What day is it?”

“Thursday.”

“The Grand Opening is in a week. A week. And I’ve had to do everything myself, this whole pavilion, getting the permits… The authorities from the Argentine Pavilion didn’t want to give me any space. The only thing they care about is showing their horses, their sheep, their wheat, and especially their cows… They have an unhealthy obsession with cows… but they don’t want my art displayed there. Life, life, they told me. Life, they kept repeating, rolling their eyes. But do they even know what life is?”

He shook his head slowly and stared at his fingertips.

“I’m the one who knows what life is. I’m the one who knows the decomposition process. I am the one who can stop it. Oh well. I’ll have to go see the disaster. Show me the way.”

“It won’t do any good. Besides, if you go now, they’ll keep you there with questions. Captain Bazeldin will call you into the police headquarters and you’ll have to spend a whole afternoon waiting for them to question you. You’re lucky that Arzaky still hasn’t told the police that the body is one of yours. Don’t you have other things you can show at the opening?”

“I suppose I do. Come with me.”

Nazar led me into a back room filled with the animals that hadn’t yet been classified. There was a lion with its jaws open, a stork, a large crocodile, and an ostrich. In the corners, there were many minor pieces: foxes, otters, pheasants, snakes. Some had no eyes, others had come unstitched. They each had a yellow card attached with a thread, showing their origin, a date, and the taxidermist’s name.

In the middle of the room were four gurneys, holding three bodies. The first was a mummy; the second, a stone statue; the third, a woman who seemed to be made of dust and about to vanish into thin air. The last gurney was empty.

“We were thinking about showing four bodies in different states of embalming. Now we’ll have to make do with three. This one, as you can see, is an Egyptian mummy, which we reproduced strictly following the traditional procedures. We even recited the ancient incantations. If you are interested, the jars with the entrails are around here somewhere…”

He got up to look for the jars in a closet, but I assured him it was unnecessary.

“This other body was embalmed using an ancient Chinese method that uses volcano lava to convert the body into stone. The method is interesting but the results are highly debatable. It looks just like stone, you see? There are taxidermists who don’t believe me when I tell them that it’s a human body, they think it’s a sculpture.” “How’d you get the lava?”

“We made it artificially, heating mud, limestone, and sand to high temperatures. It was an absurd amount of work. There wasn’t a single day that I didn’t burn my hands. Guimard, my closest collaborator, is still in the hospital. I hope they discharge him soon so he can come to the opening.”