Necropolis (18 page)

We went down to the lobby, where, in spite of the fact that it was one in the morning, the agitation continued. We went to the offices where the switchboard operator worked, and found a young woman there. I asked her if she had been on duty at 19:38, and she said no, she had started at 21:00. Are you the only people who take messages for the guests? No, she said, another guest or a visitor can leave messages at reception, in which case it doesn't go through the switchboard. Who distributes the messages to the rooms? One of the bellhops from the main lobby, she said. And is there a register of those messages? Yes, there's a book with the destination and time of each one. I looked at her, pleased. Good, then you may be able to help me, was there any message at 19:38? The woman asked for my name and room number, then she took out a book and, making sure we did not sneak a look, turned the page. Can you confirm your room number? 1109, I said. She hesitated. There was a message at that time, but it wasn't for you, you could ask my colleague tomorrow, were you expecting an urgent message? Yes, I said, very urgent, there may have been a mix-up over the room number, can't you call your colleague? The woman was silent for a moment then said: I can't call him, he's working right now. If it's very urgent you can find him at the Bamboo, near Rehavia. His name is Mordechai but everyone calls him Momo.

We thanked her and went out onto the street.

The Bamboo was a modern-looking bar, full of mirrors, indirect lighting, wooden recesses. We sat down at the counter to be close to the staff; it was really strange to see a place like this in the middle of a siege. Three young men were serving: one making cocktails, another taking them to the tables and bringing the orders, and the third taking the money. Put your intuition to work, I said to Marta, which one do you think is our man? She asked for a Herradura tequila, downed it in one, asked for a second tequila, and said: give me ten minutes, if I'm wrong you can ask me for anything you want. Anything I want? Yes, a blow job, money, whatever you want, just let me concentrate.

When the ten minutes were over, she said: that one over there. She pointed to a young man of about twenty-five, Caucasian in appearance, perhaps of Slav descent. She went to the other end of the counter to talk to him and came back after a while. I'm never wrong, she said, he's Momo. How did you know? It's something I've had since I was a child, I look at people for a while and suddenly I know who they are, as simple as that. I was amazed: I didn't know you had powers, what else can you do? She gave a wicked laugh and said: many things, but you lost your bet. I ordered another double whiskey and said, did you tell him what we want? should I go and talk to him? Marta smiled smugly. He'll come to us, but he's already given me a lead: the message was left by a woman of about thirty-five in a long distance call, he doesn't know where from, because he didn't look at the caller ID. I wanted to know what her method was for obtaining so much information in such a short time and she said, the oldest and most traditional method of all, I asked him and he told me, and I'll tell you something else, he'll answer every question I ask him, I could smell his pheromones, he wants to fuck me and because of that he'll tell the truth. I was stunned and said, can you always smell that smell? and she replied: always. It's another of my powers.

Within a short time, most of the tables were empty and Momo came over to talk to us. The man you took the message to killed himself, I said immediately, just to see his reaction. He became nervous and said, I didn't take it to him, there's a bellhop who slips the messages under the doors, do you know why he did it? did he leave a note or anything? was it because of the message? who are you? I told him I was a friend of the dead man and a delegate at the conference, and asked him, could you describe the woman who left the message from her voice? Momo closed his eyes for a moment and said: I know enough about women to assume she's thirty-five, single, an only child or maybe the eldest child . . . Marta interrupted him, an only child or maybe the eldest child? how do you know that? It's easy, replied Momo, she doesn't hesitate, she has a naturally authoritarian manner; when I asked her to dictate the message she did it in a very sharp way, as if she was saying it to me: “We've found you.” I can still hear the words in my head, my God, I'm not surprised he killed himself, who was he, another delegate? Yes, I said, it's strange that somebody should decide to do that so suddenly, after a success like the one he had with his talk in the morning. Momo shrugged and said, it's sudden for us, but maybe not for him; by the way, I almost forgot to tell you that the woman had called before, three times, she seemed really desperate to speak to him; she even asked to have the call transferred to the restaurant, it's strange, she had to speak to him as soon as possible but she didn't want to leave her name; when I asked her she said, that's all you need, write it down just as I say it, thank you, and hung up. What Momo was giving us was worth its weight in gold. I asked: how did you know it was a long-distance call if you didn't look at the caller ID? She told me herself when she called the first time, she wanted me to know how urgent it was and she said: this is a long-distance call, please try to find him; you could look at the caller ID, which has a memory, but that's confidential information and we aren't authorized to give it out to guests.

Somebody called Momo and he excused himself. Marta said to me, do you still think somebody killed him? It's a possibility, I said, that phrase “we've found you,” could be taken several ways: we've been looking for you, you've been running away, you owe us something, you have to pay, why did you do it, all that time ago, you betrayed us, you hid from us, all kinds of things. But the basic question is a simple one, who are “we”? Marta polished off her drink in one go and said, well, after hearing his story it seems pretty obvious that “we” are the people from that Ministry, don't you think? maybe the guru didn't die, maybe things were very different than the way Maturana told it. It's possible, Marta, it's very possible, the next thing we have to do is gain access to the caller ID and see the memory, the number must have been recorded. As we were about to leave, Momo came and said, I've just remembered something else: the guest in that room, the one who killed himself, called the operator twice during the afternoon and asked if there'd been any messages for him, and when he was told there hadn't he insisted, not even any calls without a message? and I told, him, no sir, not even without a message, so it's obvious the poor man knew they were looking for him and was expecting to hear from them.

Another notable thing happened that night.

As we were on our way out of the Bamboo, we heard a voice from an inside table, somebody calling out Marta's name; she turned and cried: Bryndis! It was Bryndis Kiljan, the war correspondent for her newspaper in Iceland. When we were introduced, Bryndis said: I know and love your country, oh, Colombia! it has the most cruel and unnecessary war of any I've seen in the world and therefore the stupidest, I'm sorry if I say it as I see it . . . If it wasn't for the number of people killed, it would be laughable. She was with other journalists, they were drinking iced vodka. Bryndis had just come back from the front and was exhausted. She said: all I want to do is drink and cause a great scandal. They obviously had a lot to talk about, so I preferred to leave them to it and went back to the hotel.

The next day, I went to the switchboard operator's office. At that hour the person on duty was an older man who looked at me with great reluctance when I asked to check the caller ID. I'm a delegate at the conference, I said, and I need to check something quickly, can I? The caller ID isn't at the disposal of the guests, if you give me your room number I can tell you the source of the calls you've received, and I'll send you a message about it, that's all I can do. I thought to give him Maturana's number, but the deception would be obvious immediately, he did not look stupid and he must have heard about what had happened the night before. The man was waiting for my answer, so I said, can you please check the calls from the United States, it's code one, the person who was supposed to call didn't know my room number, so that's irrelevant, could you have a look yesterday between 19:00 and 20:00? I'll be back in half an hour, thanks. As I got to the door he said, you don't need to wait half an hour, at that hour there weren't any calls from the United States, for you or anybody, is there anything else I can help you with?

I went to the coffee shop thinking: if the call was not from the United States, where the Ministry had been located, well, that was understandable, I would cross check this with Momo later. It was time to make a few notes. This was what I wrote:

 

The message (we've found you) raises one basic question: who are “we”? Hypothesis: Walter de la Salle and Miss Jessica. They are looking for José for a reason we don't know, something he concealed in the story he told, because it may be assumed that the death, if it really was a suicide, was a way of escaping. If it wasn't a suicide–which is what I think–then the death was a punishment. What had he done? This poses another question: how did Walter de la Salle escape the fire? What really happened at the Ministry? The fact that José Maturana used pseudonyms for his books reinforces the theory that he was running away. For all we know, he may have only ever used his real name at this conference, but why?

One thing that argues in favor of the suicide hypothesis is that in the story told by Maturana he himself said that he had already tried to kill himself at least once, using the same method of slashing his wrists in a hotel bathroom. It was something he carried inside him, it was on his mind.

As for the telephone call, what to make of it? If it didn't come from the United States, where was it from? Anything's possible, even that it came from inside the hotel. It's also possible it wasn't Walter but Jefferson, why not? Or that it was the detective, or a blackmailer, or simply somebody who has no connection with the Ministry. The fact is, I know very little about Maturana's life. Do we ever know much about a life, even after it's been well told?

 

I closed my notebook and left the coffee shop. From a window in the corridor I looked out at the city. Over it there hung a heavy curtain of fog, the smoke from fires, the smell of fuel, the thick air of war. In the distance, on a flat roof, I saw an old lady moving about, taking clothes off a line and putting them in a basket. At that exact moment a voice echoed in my brain: it's time to start writing again. I went to my room, ordered a Diet Coke and a chicken sandwich and started writing, quickly, not rough notes now but a narrative, everything I had lived through since I had received that invitation from the ICBM.

I had been scribbling away for just over an hour when there was a knock at the door. It was easy to guess who it was, and in fact, when I opened it, Marta gave me a hug and said: I need something strong, and I'm referring to alcohol. What happened? I asked, and she said, wait, wait, let me catch my breath, or rather, let me drink this, and she drank a miniature bottle of vodka in two gulps, and, having recovered her breath, muttered a few words of Icelandic, then said, you'll never guess what I saw this morning, something really heavy, really heavy, and I said, what did you see, Marta? and she said, I saw Maturana's body! I was in the morgue of the hospital, the Notre Dame de France, and I saw it, his arms with the cuts on them, his skin like a parchment, his mouth in a fixed grin, his face all sunken and expressionless, as if the flesh had been sucked in to his cheeks, I'd never seen a dead body before, do you think the bodies of people who've killed themselves are the same as those of other dead people? I don't know, I said, perhaps they have an expression of relief or sadness, but what made you think to go there, and how on earth did you manage to get in? Oh, my friend, we journalists have ways we can't reveal, even more if you're a woman journalist, so I said, I respect your reticence, would you like some more vodka? I opened the minibar, took out another little bottle and she said, you're a friend, I really don't mind if you know, so here's the story:

I found out that some bodies qualified as “select,” those that have nothing to do with the war, go to the morgue at the makeshift Notre Dame de France hospital, and so I went there this morning, on foot, because it's not far from Agrippa Street. I arrived, walked all around the outside of the building, and when I saw it was a bunker I realized it wouldn't be easy to get in the normal way; I was just pondering this when I saw a doctor walking toward one of the side entrances and had a brainwave, something that came to me out of the blue: I screamed as if something had happened to me and the doctor rushed to me and said, what's the matter, miss, and I said, I'm in great pain, I'm sorry, and started to collapse and of course he immediately caught me, and then I said, I have pains in my uterus, doctor, I can't move, I'm a journalist, I write for a newspaper in Iceland. I pretended to faint, which provoked an even stronger reaction, and he said, calm down, take deep breaths, come with me; he helped me walk to the door, and we went inside and along a corridor until we came to an empty office. He sat me down on a chair, but I said, do something, please; I pulled my jeans and my panties down to my knees, and the man, who was about forty, came closer, touched me, and said, take a deep breath, hold it, then let it out slowly, I'll see if you have any lesions . . .

He put his head between my thighs and discreetly explored the area; after a while he said: superficially at least, I can't see anything unusual, apart from that silver ring, are you feeling any better? It's easing off a bit but it's still there, like a stitch that keeps coming back, a dormant pain, and he said, I'll give you a pill, come, but I insisted, how can you prescribe something if you haven't even touched me? His face changed and he said, what is it you want? The moment had come to take the plunge, and I said: what I want most, only you can give me. He blushed, gave a smile, and said, well, you're in luck, ask me what you like, and he laid his hand on my belly. You may think that what I'm going to ask you is a bit strange and you may refuse, but he insisted, tell me, remember I'm a doctor, I live with the dark side of things, with life and death, pleasure and pain; then I raised my pelvis a little and said, I want you to take me to the morgue to see the body of the man who killed himself at the conference, I know you have him here.