Outside, it had been raining steadily since the day before. Tons of lukewarm water were striking the island, its houses, trees, earth, and inhabitants. There was nothing to do that day except wait for Delmont’s call. Still forty-eight hours to spend on this island, and there was only one question in Mallock’s head. How could he learn more about the ogre of the Dominican Republic?
Mallock thought again about Mister Blue’s proposal. What did he have to lose by going to see the old woman he’d talked about? He had no serious lead, no step to be taken, and not even the unlikely temptation of spending a day lying in the shade of the palm trees.
An old witch, even if she had no gift whatever, would at least make for memories.
He looked at his watch: 9 A.M. Would Jean-Daniel still be there? Mallock put on a shirt and linen trousers. He went out into the rain, running.
By a stroke of luck, or of destiny, Mister Blue had waited for him. Ten minutes later, they were crossing Ingenios and its cane plantations.
The valley of Cibao.
The air was fragrant with the perfume of brown sugar. Cinnamon-colored streams of mud were running along the road and torrents of rain were falling on their vehicle’s windshield. They continued to meet fast-moving cars, despite the fact that most of them were almost blind. Miracle upon miracle, they managed to avoid each other. Mallock began to wonder if, in the end, he had been right to leave the refuge of his hotel to risk his life by setting out in search of an old woman.
“I really need more information about this Tobias Darbier, in order to make connections. Do you think we’ll be able to see this famous woman of yours?”
“I really don’t know. First we’ll have to go by a cigar factory where a man works who can let her know and take us to her. He’ll be the one who decides, not me.”
It took them a good half hour to reach the cigar factory and to find the mysterious intermediary. When they arrived the old man got up from his sat. His body resembled a Panatela cigar. Dry, slender, and wrinkled. His skin, in perfect harmony, had all the nuances of a tobacco leaf. Zagiõ was his name, and his job was to keep the humidifier going in the holy of holies, the wrappers room. Each time he turned on the ancient machinery, the whole room and its occupants were invaded by an opaque watery fog. Mister Blue went up to the man and began to speak to him in a confidential way. Zagiõ listened to him, interrupting only to slip new questions into the hollow of his ear.
Fascinated by the factory, Mallock had forgotten his mission. The perfume of the damp wrappers, the powerful odor of the harvests compressed into hundreds of cubes made of canvas, their monochrome colors, ranging from green to dark brown, the variety in the form of the cigars . . . Mallock the cigar-lover was in heaven. He caressed, smelled, and then, in the packaging department, lit a few of different calibers. He declined the initial offer of a domingo turisto with a sweet, disgusting perfume, and had them open the special reserve for him. He dug around, asked for a stool in order to reach the higher shelves, where the oldest types were stored, came back down, and tested them again, until he had six different cigars slowly burning between his fingers. He finally selected three very large types with noble insides and perfect wrappers: maduros. He had two hundred of them packed up for him. And the same quantity of robustos, but with a still darker wrapper, almost obscuro. Finally, he asked that some of them be subjected to a special treatment that involved putting a bit of fabric imbued with cane sugar and rum on the end that goes into the mouth.
During all this time, Zagiõ had followed Mallock as he moved around. They looked at each other one last time. Zagiõ’s dark eyes seemed to be trying to penetrate the superintendent’s soul by way of his absinthe-colored irises. Apparently satisfied with what he’d seen there, he slipped his papery hand into the pocket of his tattered pants. He took out an object that Mallock would never have expected to be there: a state-of-the-art cell phone. He opened it and dialed a number. A few sentences later, he closed it and put it back in his pocket.
Mister Blue thanked him, patting him several times on the shoulder. Zagiõ finally replied with a big smile, revealing the presence of white teeth in a mouth with black gums.
“Zagiõ has sent the message,” Jean-Daniel said. “He has announced our arrival, but there will be no reply. We have to take the risk; she may not be there. In any case, during the time it will take to inform her, we can go eat lunch.”
“Is there any decent place to eat around here?”
Otherwise, Mallock preferred to go without.
“There’s an exceptional place. I’m going to take you to Camp David, on Trujillo’s summer estate. His old supporters have turned it into a museum glorifying their dictator, and above all, there’s a superb restaurant. It’s not open to everyone, but I know the chef. Jean Jeansac, known as Jeanjean, is French, a native of Ribérac, the land of foie gras, but he was already here when I arrived. I’m sure he knows more about Trujillo and your Darbier than most people do. We can try to question him as well, we’ll see. Okay?”
A quarter of an hour later, the mauve pickup drove through an old gate decorated with a series of surveillance cameras. The residence was usually protected by guards armed with riot guns posted all along the drive that led to the main building, but the rain had made them take refuge inside. Mallock and Mister Blue were checked only once, when they got to the top of the hill, in the reception hall of the restaurant. The residence was vast, flat, and white, a sort of gigantic cheese plate with red roofs over it. The first surprise was to find the place empty. Except for the guards and the employees, who were all standing, no visitor was seated at any of the twenty-one large tables, or on the glass-roofed terrace.
The second surprise was that a large part of the main reception room, which had been transformed into a restaurant, was occupied by cars, the tyrant’s old Chevrolets, with their personalized license plates: “BENEFACTOR OF THE FATHERLAND,” dusty little flags on the sides, and a big revolving red light affixed to the front fender. The chromed radiator grilles looked like the maws of voracious beasts. With their enormous silvery teeth, they expressed their owner’s desire to hold power and to devour. Only one of the dictator’s favorite automobiles was missing, the one in which Trujillo had been riding when it was pierced by the bullets.
In front of El Generalísimo’s bar, a big guy with cheeks streaked by broken veins was waiting for them. Jeanjean’s eyes did not contain the bonhomie that his body expressed. The smile was there, but frozen, blurred by an eternal sorrow. They were welcomed effusively. The Frenchman must be dying of boredom, alone on his hill after so many years.
Without having agreed to do so, Mister Blue and Mallock made the same decision: eat lunch first, then question. The man had doubtless been reduced to silence because of the privileged position he occupied. And maybe also by a sense of fraternity and complicity that all the years had finally caused to grow in him, perhaps in spite of himself. So the superintendent, like a good cop, told himself that a little patience and a few well-placed compliments about his cooking might calm Jeanjean’s fears and lead to two or three bits of confidential information at the end of the meal. After all, Darbier wasn’t Trujillo, and there was every likelihood that Jansac was not involved in the secrecy and veneration surrounding the former dictator.
In fact, Mallock didn’t have to force himself to praise the cuisine. The meats served, with their natural taste of grass and milk, were nothing less than exceptional, as was the way they were prepared. Mister Blue devoured a huge piece of lamb, as succulent as it was delicious. For his part, Mallock enjoyed an enormous rib-eye steak, more tender than the filet, but with the flavor and rareness of a back steak. The chef joined them for dessert and was showered with compliments.
Confronted by the enthusiasm of his compatriots, Jeanjean broke out in a smile again. He set his past aside and let his eyes shine. They talked about the different kinds of meat to be found on the island and the ways of preparing them. Mallock, who had quickly won the chef’s esteem by his display of culinary competence, thought it was finally possible to bring up the subject of Darbier. He did so by asking a question that was logical and, he thought, neither polemical nor indiscreet.
“What about Tobias Darbier? Which meat did he prefer?”
The response was as surprising as it was sudden. As if he had a flock of parasites under his skin, Jansac’s face undulated and turned vague.
He rose and stammered:
“I have to go now.”
At the back of the restaurant two hefty men in civilian clothing were watching them from a distance. The “chef” added, pronouncing each syllable very distinctly:
“Be careful, very careful.”
Three seconds later, Jeanjean was back in his kitchen. The subject was far more delicate than Mallock had imagined. Without pursuing the matter, the two Frenchmen paid the bill and left to look for the witch.
A rain squall. On both sides of the road, the green jungle was exhaling odors of mossy rot. Mister Blue’s minivan was navigating blind on this liquid mirror, drawing its own rails of mercury on it. In the drainage channels, the dead-drunk soil was puking up its excess ocean water in the form of slick, ochre-colored mud. All around them, in the vegetation, thousands of greedy mouths were swallowing the water.
Mallock and his guide met two or three jungle-taxis coming in the opposite direction. The rain was beating down on the minivan, making a tremendous racket. Inside, the two men remained silent, concentrated on the vehicle’s trajectory, mute and appalled by their insignificance and nature’s omnipotence, its discreet but crushing superiority over man.
In La Cumbre, the car took a red-mud track that led to La Toca. When it was no longer wide enough, at least for a car, the two men got out. Without anything to cover themselves, they courageously plunged into a nowhere of wet grass, passing through the green humps of the hills and the intoxicating odors of humus and licorice.
Mallock and Jean-Daniel were now walking on old mule-paths, following in the footsteps of the marrons, the fugitive slaves of the last century who tried to escape the cruelty of their masters. Each of them had seen one of those near him mutilated by the little white tyrants who cut off the noses or ears of their slaves with a machete to prevent them from committing suicide or running away. The masters concealed these bloody appendages somewhere in their sumptuous homes and returned them to the families only at the moment of their death. The poor creatures thought they would never find peace if all the parts of their bodies were not buried in the same place.
A dozen children emerged from the rain. There were smiles on their faces. In their hands they carried plastic bags full of pieces of amber caught in their gangue of coal and sand. Mister Blue greeted them with a nod of his head. They recognized him and understood that they would make no deals with him that day, or with the foreigner accompanying him. In this case, the latter was a Mallock concentrating on not falling on his face.
His blond hair was dripping wet. The next day, if he was still alive, if he had not slipped into the bottom of a ditch, he would leave for Paris with Julie’s brother on a stretcher, and without the slightest new lead.
Good Lord! What the hell was he doing there?
They walked for almost an hour. The sky had disappeared. The earth, the world, reality itself, seemed to be liquefying, while swarms of bare-chested children ran around them. The children ran ahead of them on the steep trail, then waited for them farther on. At every step, Mister Blue’s and Mallock’s feet sank into the mud without ever slipping. Finally, Mister Blue stopped at the edge of a large, strange hole and a little hill of lignite. He grabbed a piece of wood and began to strike a big, concave boulder with all his strength. Then he sat down on a rock and waited in the rain. Mallock did the same without asking any questions. He was simply done in by fatigue and the strange turn his investigation had taken.
Usually it was he, and he alone, who decided to stray into intuition, when he really needed it to resolve a difficult inquiry. Recently, on the contrary, it was events that had constantly led him further toward the strange.
This trip was the culmination of the strange, its metaphor.
The hole in question was one of the last amber mines Jean-Daniel had worked. In it he employed Dominicans whose whole production he had agreed to purchase. From this earthen mouth, barely supported by timbers and braces, one of these men emerged. Jean-Daniel moved forward to help him climb up the last few yards. And there, at the edge of what they called a mine, under the sticky, cold rain, the two men began to laugh and talk.
Mallock decided to take advantage of this pause to roll up his pants as far as the knee. By capillary action, water and mud were rising higher and higher: it was time to stop the inundation, even if he had to go back to Bermuda shorts.
A few minutes later, the group plunged back into the jungle, with the children behind and the miner in front. Seeing the new direction the adults were taking, the youngest children started to show signs of nervousness, which turned into fear when they arrived at the top of the next hill. Below it stretched a vast mangrove swamp.
Jean-Daniel briefly explained to Mallock that beyond this area of mud and brackish water there was another, higher hill studded with giant palm trees. It was there that they were to meet the old woman. When Mallock turned around one last time before beginning the final descent, all the children had disappeared.
Mister Blue, in a toneless voice, said:
“Let’s hurry.”
No time for politeness. Jean-Daniel was no longer the same man. His face was a solemn mask, and the water outlined on it a sheen of superstitious fear. Mallock would never have thought Mister Blue could be intimidated by anything, whatever it was, and especially not by an old woman on a hill. In Mallock, his guide’s concern was transformed into an increased interest in this expedition. Perhaps his day had not been wasted after all, if what was waiting for him way up there was capable of disturbing a guy like his companion.
When they arrived at the bottom of the hill, the two men were confronted by a new apparition: two splendid Blacks with gray, almost transparent eyes who had risen up out of the rotten vegetation of the mangrove swamp. Identical twins with muscular bodies covered with clay, licorice-colored hair, and ageless faces. Jean-Daniel, with water running down his face, explained to his friend that these two ebony statues were the sons of Niyashiika, the name given to the old woman by the island’s inhabitants.
“One of them speaks French, but I don’t know which one.”
No one was allowed go any further, except Mallock, whom the magician had agreed to meet.
“Good luck. Set your prejudices aside and take advantage of this interview,” Mister Blue advised him, addressing him for the first time with the familiar tu. “I’ve been around enough to know how right Shakespeare was.”
He turned on his heel and went off down the path to the mine.
Without turning around, he called through the rain: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Mallock smiled, caught his breath, turned around, and bravely entered the heart of the jungle in the muddy water of the mangrove swamp.