movements of killers in the night, guides our footsteps. Perhaps we should set aside crimes for a moment, forget about guilty suspects. Haven’t we realized that we all see different things in the same mystery? Perhaps, in the end, there is nothing to see. And even more in my case than in each of yours. As you all know, my specialty is finding something more ephemeral than the enactor of poisonings, gunshot wounds, or stabbings; I search for what we call grasshopper hunters.”
“Grasshopper hunters?” asked Rojo. “Are you sure that’s what you meant to say?”
“I didn’t misspeak. Grasshopper hunters are what we call those who incite others to take their own lives. They are the subtlest type of killers. I’ll explain the origin of the name a little later.”
As he spoke, Sakawa slowly, and almost casually, moved toward the center of the room.
“Grasshopper hunters kill without weapons. Sometimes they do it with a few lines published in a newspaper; other times it’s an insidious comment or a gesture made with a fan. There are those who have murdered with a poem. And I have devoted my life to the subtle hunt for those who leave grasshoppers. But sometimes I ask myself: what if I’ve been mistaken about all this from the very beginning? Perhaps I should let men commit suicide, and not try to alter the course of things. Was I finding a puzzle to solve in behavior that wasn’t mysterious in the least, in people who were fated from birth to their unique deaths? I don’t have nightmares about crime; I dream about the blank page, I dream that I am the one who draws the ideograms where there was nothing, where there should always be nothing. And that is what I want to ask you all: Should we be not only the solvers of mysteries, but also the custodians of the enigma? Our Greek colleague gave Oedipus and the sphinx as an example. I say we are both Oedipus and the sphinx. The world is becoming an open book. We must be the defenders of evidence, the exterminators of doubt, but also the last guardians of mystery.”
Sakawa’s words left the detectives perplexed. If he had been a Westerner, they would have argued with him.
“Tell us about a case,” said Arzaky. “Maybe that way we can understand what you mean.”
“A boastful display of my skill is unworthy of this forum. I will tell of a case that is not mine, and that way you will know why we call them grasshopper hunters.”
While Sakawa spoke, his assistant, Okano, bowed his head as a sign of respect.
“Mr. Huraki was the manager of a bank in the city of S. I won’t say the name of the city. In the spring it’s overrun with grasshoppers, but the inhabitants of the region refuse to kill them, believing they are good luck. A large sum of money disappeared from the bank; Mr. Huraki was not accused of stealing it. When the police showed up at his office they found no evidence that incriminated him, and the only thing that drew their attention to him was that Huraki was extremely nervous and accidentally stepped on a grasshopper that had come in through the window. Huraki’s accountant, Mr. Ramasuka, whose reputation was spotless up until that point, was put in prison. He confessed to nothing, nor did he accuse anyone else; he spent the years he was locked up reading the old masters.
“Time passed. Ramasuka finished his sentence. By then Huraki was the director of a bank in Tokyo. Ramasuka was determined to take his revenge, but he couldn’t imagine himself brandishing a sword or taking up a firearm. All that reading, all that thinking he had done wasn’t to fill his head with ideas, but rather to clear his mind of trivial ideas and meaningless prejudices. He had learned to see what others overlook. Taking advantage of an open window, he entered Huraki’s house one night: he didn’t touch a thing; he just left a grasshopper in the middle of the room, on top of the tatami. Before dawn, the grasshopper’s singing awoke Huraki. The banker instantly remembered a verse by a poet from his city (this memory was part of Ramasuka’s plan):
“Huraki knew that he had been discovered. He killed himself that very night by drinking poison.”
The waiter, who had served wine to the detectives and water to the assistants, as dictated by The Twelve Detectives’ protocol, offered a glass of wine to the old detective, who refused it.
“Thus Ramasuka established the tradition of the grasshopper hunters: men and women capable of killing with insinuations, signs, invisible traces. But these warriors need a symmetrical oppositional force. I am part of that force. We don’t send them to prison, of course, because no judge legislates on grasshoppers and butterf lies and poems with secret meanings. But we write and publish our verdicts, and we often drive those responsible to disgrace, exile, silence, sometimes death. But I wonder: what if the enemy is completely imaginary? What if I perceive this enemy-these men and women that conspire in a tradition of subtle murderers-only in my mind? What if I become the murderer by exposing them?”
With small steps Sakawa moved out of the center of the room. Magrelli pointed mockingly at Arzaky, who was seated in an armchair and seemed to be either concentrating very intensely or sleeping.
“Well, Arzaky, you are the one who organized all this. Now you’ve got some objects for your glass cases. Which one will you choose to represent our profession? Incomplete jigsaw puzzles, paintings that fuse fruit and faces, a Greek monster and an inquisitive sphinx, Aladdin’s blackboard, a blank page. Which one will it be?”
Arzaky held back a yawn.
“He who speaks last always has an advantage: the sound of his voice still echoes. But apart from that, I choose Sakawa. I also fear that all investigation is a blank page.”
8
In spite of my exhaustion, it took me a while to fall asleep. I was surrounded by unfamiliar things, and my mind tried in vain to adapt to the continuous introduction of new ideas, people, and settings. Sleep refused to come, because there were too many things to dream about. I thought about what was said at the meeting: the detectives’ statements, the assistants’ covert remarks. Time and time again I imagined myself escaping the outer circle of the satellites, and walking with sure steps toward center stage. I was immensely lucky to be an acolyte, to have gotten to meet The Twelve Detectives, and that was enough for me during the day. But at night I wanted more.
I finally slept for several hours, although I had the feeling that I had barely shut my eyes. I was awoken by noises outside the room: people running, and then doors slamming and voices. I washed up, shaved off my shadow of a beard, and dressed. I went out into the hallway still adjusting the knot in my tie. Linker, Tobias Hatter’s assistant, bumped into me and kept running without saying a word, as if he had collided with one of those room service carts. Benito came charging up behind him.
“They’ve killed Louis Darbon,” gasped Benito as he passed me.
I thought I must still be dreaming, nobody could have killed one of the detectives. Weren’t they immortal? Weren’t they immune to silent swords, to ice darts shot through locks, and perfect roses with poisoned thorns?
I followed them down the stairs and then through the street. The morning was cool. I had taken the precaution of bringing my vicuna poncho. I secretly regretted having missed breakfast; it’s the only thing I like about staying in hotels. The assistants had all left Madame Necart’s hotel at almost the same time and were running toward the entrance to the fair. We would bunch up together, looking like a group of long distance runners, and then we would spread out again, separated by the obstacles posed by the future World’s Fair: carts that carried materials to the tower, an iron cage that held a rhinoceros, fifty Chinese soldiers as still as statues awaiting the orders of an absent captain.
It took us a full twenty minutes to reach the foot of the forged iron tower. Journalists and photographers pushed each other, jockeying for position, in some sort of collective dance. The morgue ambulance waited to one side, pulled by stolid, pensive horses.
I wanted to see the corpse, but the crowd was impenetrable. Arzaky made his way over to me, shouting.
“You, the Argentine, come here.”
I elbowed my way over to an area that was accessible only to a chosen few. I wouldn’t have been able to break through the crowd if Arzaky’s voice hadn’t cleared the way, pulling me toward him like a rope. The photographers’ f lashbulbs exploded over the dead man’s face and the air was filled with the bitter smell of magnesium.
“Now I have a case, but I don’t have an assistant. I am the only detective without one. That may be a custom in your savage country, but in my city it is an oddity. I want you to work with me. Observe everything carefully. Any comment that occurs to you, make it: there is no greater inspiration for a detective than the frivolous words of the hoi polloi.”
