EXHAUSTED, BRUISED, COVERED WITH DRY mud and sand, my eyes burning, my head aching and congested, I made it to the hotel. I had managed to overcome the hardships of the walk, heartened by a single goal: I would not let anything or anybody postpone my hot bath, a witch-hazel massage, the tray of stew with eggs, salads, fruits, and mineral water that Andrea would bring to my bed.
How I had longed for the moment I would find myself beside the entrance to the hotel! To enter, I didn’t even have to knock on the door. It opened magically, though the Commissioner was there, with his hand on the doorknob, as well as Montes, welcoming and drunk. With what undeniable and serene conviction that interior and those objects formed part of the magic of which the poet never speaks: the magic of the domestic, of the everyday! I arrived at that hotel like a man who’s been shipwrecked boards his rescuing ship, or better yet, like Ulysses, “to his beloved island, to his hearth in Ithaca.”
“We’d already decided that you’d run away,” asserted Montes.
Again the sand, the crabs, the mud: now in my fellow man’s soul. “The winter wind is not as inclement as your brother’s heart.”
“Atwell didn’t come back with you?” Aubry asked.
“No,” I said, “we lost sight of each other. And the boy?”
They hadn’t found him. I asked about Manning.
“Here I am,” the latter replied.
He waved his pipe in greeting and smiled good-naturedly, amid a rain of ashes.
I hurried to answer: “I never suspected you.”
These words, brilliant and opportune in my conversation with Montes, were surprising to Manning. Barely concealing his reaction, he raised his eyebrow and looked at me glumly.
“The storm will pass,” affirmed the doctor, going over to the window. “I see a seagull.”
Manning intervened:
“What are your plans?”
I thought he was speaking to me. I was ready to declare “a bath, a massage,” etc., when the Commissioner responded:
“To recover the jewelry.”
While the others argued—carrying on in their perplexity, ignorance, poverty of imagination—I was receiving an inspiration. A dilemma presented itself to me: pleasures or duty. I didn’t hesitate.
“I know where the jewelry is,” I said, stressing each syllable. “I know who the criminal is.”
The effect of this declaration exceeded my most optimistic expectations. The Commissioner lost his composure, Manning, his impenetrability, Montes, his drunkenness. The three of them looked at my mouth as if they were waiting for the judgment of God to be pronounced.
“The criminal is the boy,” I finally announced. “He felt an unhealthy passion for Mary, and resentment, and fear of being exposed …”
“Do you have any proof?” asked the Commissioner.
“I know where the jewels are,” I replied, triumphantly. “Follow me.”
I walked ahead of them resolutely, and somewhat pompously. Now preceded, now followed by our shadows, we went down the stairs. We went along the dark hallway. We reached the room where the trunks were kept.
“A match,” I demanded.
We lit the candle. I pointed resolutely ahead with my index finger.
“There are the jewels.”
The Commissioner lifted up the bird.
“Too light,” he pronounced, shaking his head. “Straw and feathers.”
Before I could recover, an indisputable pocketknife opened the bird’s chest. The Commissioner was right.
I will always register my defeats and my victories with equanimity. May nobody call me an unreliable narrator.
My error—if this can be called an error—does not offend me. An ignorant person wouldn’t have committed it. I am a literato, a reader, and as often occurs with men of my class, I confused reality with a book. If a book speaks to us about an embalmed bird, and then the disappearance of certain jewels, what other hiding place would the author resort to without appearing ridiculous?