Роберто Боланьо - Cowboy Graves - Three Novellas

Monsieur Benoît Hernández, forty-three, married and a native of Avignon, who on the dates of this deposition was in Perpignan for the purpose of performing his professional duties, has provided documents confirming that he is a wine sales representative for the house of Peyrade, in Marseille, with no criminal record.

On the night of December 12, M. Hernández dined with M. Patrick Monardes, with whom he planned to finalize the sale of one hundred and forty cases of Grand Reserve XXX from the Viticulture Cooperative of Port-Vendres. Attached is a statement from M. Monardes corroborating this fact. It is noted that the house of Peyrade has had business dealings with the Cooperative of Port-Vendres for the past five years. M. Hernández and M. Monardes dined at Restaurant Coelho, where M. Monardes is a regular, known to the owner and employees. Attached are statements from M. Coelho; from the waiter who served M. Monardes and M. Hernández; and from the cook, who was twice visited by Monardes and Hernández (they stepped into the kitchen, in other words). The two men were delighted by the quality and originality of the food and also somewhat inebriated by the wine they had consumed.

When dinner was over, they proceeded to the Leather Clock, a fashionable dance club located in the center of our town. Here M. Monardes and M. Hernández remained until approximately five in the morning, though neither of the two is able to say exactly what time it was. Attached is a statement from Jean-Marc Rivette, waiter at the Leather Clock, who confirms that he served alcoholic beverages to M. Monardes, known to him before the date of this deposition, and to a male companion of M. Monardes’s, in all likelihood M. Hernández. In his statement, Jean-Marc Rivette mentions that he saw Monardes and Hernández dancing on the main floor of the Leather Clock in the company of two women. Interrogated on this point, Monardes and Hernández deny having danced at all, which leads to the assumption that Rivette was mistaken or that Monardes and Hernández were dancing in such a state of intoxication that they are incapable of remembering it.

From the Leather Clock, M. Hernández and M. Monardes took a taxi to the latter’s residence, having made the prudent choice not to drive M. Monardes’s car, parked two blocks from the dance club. Ahmed Filali, the taxi driver, confirms that he picked up a fare at the Leather Clock, but he was reluctant to give a precise time, estimating that it was between four and five in the morning. Attached is his statement, and let it be noted that the aforementioned driver neglected to record the time and location of the fare request, as required…

After they were dropped off at M. Monardes’s residence, M. Hernández paid the taxi driver and dismissed him. M. Monardes’s wife and daughter didn’t hear M. Monardes arrive. M. Monardes confirms that M. Hernández accompanied him to the elevator (M. Monardes lives in a third-floor apartment) and refused to come up, despite repeated entreaties. At seven a.m., M. Monardes’s wife found her husband asleep in the guest room when she got up to make breakfast. M. Monardes, a man of rather intemperate nocturnal habits, often slept in the guest room when he came home under the influence.

After leaving M. Monardes safe and sound, M. Hernández decided to take a walk through town rather than catching a taxi back to his hotel. Here we should note that M. Hernández’s hotel was less than one hundred yards from the station. It’s no surprise, then, that Mr. Hernández’s walk concluded in the general vicinity of the station.

At this point, M. Hernández’s statement becomes less precise, full of gaps and question marks. As someone accustomed to drinking, M. Hernández knew that a night walk would help to clear his head, especially when little sleep was likely to be forthcoming. According to M. Hernández’s schedule, he was supposed to leave Perpignan at eleven a.m., en route to Bordeaux, where he hoped to close another deal with local winemakers. As usual, he planned to make the trip in the same vehicle in which he had arrived in Perpignan, in other words, his own car. So far, so good.

What caused him to set foot in the station itself? M. Hernández hypothesizes that he wasn’t tired yet and that the morning chill made a cup of hot coffee sound appealing. Thinking that the only place open so early would be the station restaurant, he turned in that direction.

The main entrances to the station were closed. But not the side entrances, one of which leads to the post office and other agencies, and one to the platforms. M. Hernández doesn’t remember which he took, though it’s possible to deduce that it was the one leading to the post office. M. Hernández remembers seeing two sacks of mail in the hallway, but no employees. The post office manager, André Lebel, confirms this. At that hour, the employees—Lebel himself and Pascal Lebrun—were busy sorting the mail in the back room and it’s possible that an empty sack or two had been left in the hall. Sacks aside, all that can be said for certain is that no one saw or was seen by M. Hernández as he entered the station.

M. Hernández’s walk along the platforms was brief. He went in search of the restaurant and discovered that it was closed. It was at this point, M. Hernández confessed, that he began to feel a growing sense of unease. Was it something in the restaurant or on the platforms that sparked his unease? Did M. Hernández fear being the only person in the station, perhaps, and therefore the likely victim of some assault or other aggression? When questioned about this, M. Hernández responded that it never occurred to him that he might be assaulted, much less that he might be the only person in the station. According to M. Hernández, everybody knows that stations are never completely empty. The greater likelihood, given the early hour and the cold, was that the employees were all hidden away in their respective cubicles. So what did trigger M. Hernández’s stated unease? The only possible explanation is his discovery that the restaurant was closed.

Except that the restaurant wasn’t closed. When he didn’t see lights on inside, this was the conclusion that M. Hernández reached, but if he had pushed the door open he would have realized his error. (M. Hernández can’t remember whether the door was open or closed or whether he tried to open it, and he admits that it’s possible he assumed that the restaurant was closed just because the lights were off and there wasn’t a soul sitting at the counter, behind the counter, or at the tables.)

At the moment in question, the restaurant manager, M. Jean-Marcel Vilar, was in the kitchen with the cleaning girl and one of the station’s watchmen. None of them remembers hearing or seeing anything. The kitchen door was closed due to the morning cold, according to M. Vilar. The kitchen is a long, windowless room with two vents, isolated from the rest of the restaurant. And yet, if the light was on in the kitchen, which seems beyond dispute, M. Hernández would have seen it through the glass. (In his statement, M. Hernández says that he didn’t see any lights on inside the restaurant.) The cleaning girl, Aline Darcy, eighteen, arrested twice for drug dealing and an addict herself, currently in recovery, has her own explanation for why M. Hernández didn’t see light coming from the kitchen. According to her, they were working by candlelight, at the express request of M. Vilar, who was trying to save on electricity. Questioned about this, M. Vilar and the watchman emphatically denied the truth of this statement. In a side note to the main investigation, we note that two days after the date of the deposition, Aline Darcy exhibited contusions and bruises to her arms and back. The bruises weren’t the result of clumsy needle punctures but rather seemed to be caused by pinches or blows…