I went back to my father’s workshop and applied myself to the cutting of soles, which was my specialty. I don’t know if I mentioned it already, but Salvatrio’s Cobbler’s Shop only made men’s shoes. My father refused to touch women’s feet. He noticed I was gloomy and he tried to get me to talk about it. I implied that it was a romantic problem, just to reassure my father. He smiled with relief, “Once you touch a woman’s feet, all is lost.”
In the days that followed my mother insisted I eat well. She prepared stews with long noodles, zucchini, and beef. I couldn’t touch the meat.
One afternoon a short boy about twelve years old, wearing a blue hat that was too large for his head, entered the shoe shop. He asked for Señor Sigmundo Salvatrio and it took me a while to answer because no one had ever called me “mister” before. He handed me a note written in a woman’s round, careful hand.
MY HUSBAND IS IN THE HOSPITAL, SUFFERING FROM AN UNKNOWN ILLNESS. I NEED TO SEND YOU ON ONE LAST ASSIGNMENT. I’LL BE HOME ALL AFTERNOON.
There was no heading or signature, as if Señora Craig feared the paper could fall into strange, enemy hands. I polished my shoes with the black cream my own father made—and which, it was said, also worked as an ointment for burns and wounds—and left the workshop.
The maid opened the door and as I went upstairs, I looked into the sitting room, where papers and dust were piling up. On the top floor Señora Craig, seated in a white chair, was waiting for me. The table on which she had her tea was like some sort of garden in winter; all the plants that surrounded it were dark and filled with thorns; the flowers were fleshy and enormous. The maid rushed to bring tea and a sugar bowl. When I opened it and saw that it was empty, I feared that Señora Craig was suffering hardships due to her husband’s illness.
“Please, help yourself,” she told me, and I pretended to serve myself. Two or three white grains fell into the hot tea.
“How is your husband?”
“The doctors can’t find anything. He is sick in spirit.”
“Can I visit him?”
“Not yet. But you can do something for him. The past few days he has talked of nothing else. Are you listening?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“In Paris, this May, the World’s Fair opens. I imagine you’ve seen pictures in the newspapers of the pavilions, and of the iron tower being constructed. The Twelve Detectives have been asked to participate.”
“All of them?”
“All of them, together for the first time.”
My hand shook and I almost dropped my cup of tea. The Argentine newspapers had followed the preparations for this new World’s Fair in detail, as if it were something that somehow belonged to us. I had read that the Argentine pavilion was larger and more magnificent than any of the other South American ones. Passage reservations had been sold out long ago. But news that the detectives were getting together was more important to me than all the treasures of all the countries, than the paintings hanging in the Palace of Fine Arts, and the inventions in the Galerie des Machines. I thought that what excited me should be exciting for everyone, and even the tower itself paled in comparison to the detectives’ meeting.
“Will they have their own pavilion?” I asked. For a minute I could even imagine The Twelve displayed in glass cases and on platforms, like wax figures.
“No, they are going to have their meetings in the Numancia Hotel and there, in a parlor, they’ll display the tools of their trade. Up until now, only a few of them have gotten together at one time, at most six, but this time they’ll be twelve. Well, eleven, since my husband can’t go.”
What was I hearing? Craig would miss the first meeting of The Twelve Detectives in history?
“He has to go, even if he’s sick. You could go with him. You and a nurse.”
“My husband was the driving force behind this meeting, along with Viktor Arzaky. They both wanted the art of investigation to be represented among so many other trades. With your youthful enthusiasm, my dear Salvatrio, nothing is impossible, but I know that my husband can’t take the long boat trip. Which is why you must go in his place.”
“I couldn’t take his place. I’m an inexperienced acolyte.”
“Arzaky, the Pole, as my husband calls him, has been left without an assistant. Old Tanner is sick; he plays chess, he grows tulips, and he sends letters. And Arzaky has to prepare the exhibition of the detectives’ instruments. My husband thought that you could go and help him in that undertaking.”
“I have no money.”
“It will all be paid for. The fair’s organizing committee will take care of the expenses. What’s more, my husband won’t take no for an answer.”
I had never traveled anywhere. The invitation both excited and intimidated me. I paused and then said, in a faint voice, “I know your husband would have preferred to send Alarcón. Today is his funeral. Are you going to go, Señora Craig?”
“No, Salvatrio. I am not going to go.”
I took a sip of bitter tea.
“I have something to confess to you. We envied him.”
“Alarcón? Why?”
Señora Craig sat up in her chair. Some sort of vague flush gave life to her face. I didn’t give her the answer she was expecting.
“Because he was your husband’s favorite. Because he considered him more competent than us.”
Señora Craig stood up. It was time to leave.
“You are alive and he is dead. Don’t ever envy anyone, Señor Salvatrio.”