spring, which was the real force that propelled the Human Cannonball. The killer had filled it with gunpowder, turning it into a real cannon.
“Jack showed me a lamp he always carried with him, which gave off blue light that allowed him to detect fake bills. With this lamp, he told me, he would catch the killer. Gunpowder, explained Jack, remained under the fingernails of anyone who touched it for ten days.
150• Pablo De Santis
Washing your hands was no use, said Jack. The only way to get rid of the powder was to burn it. He asked me to repeat the explanation to anyone who wanted to listen.
“Jack announced that the following night he would perform his great experiment, making all those who worked with the circus show their hands under the light. At nine o’clock, after the show, we gathered everyone in the arena and we stayed there in the dark, lit only by the blue lamp. No one’s hands shone and the detective apologized with a heavy heart. The circus artists, one by one, left the tent. The last one, a trapeze artist named Rodgers, I’ll never forget his crazy smile, had burns all over his hands, and the police officer stationed outside the tent arrested him immediately.
“Later we found out the details of the case: Rodgers’s wife, who worked as a horseback rider, had been planning to run off with the Human Cannonball. Rodgers found out and increased the cannon’s charge to get the Cannonball out of his marriage and his life. Mrs. Rodgers confessed to Novarius that when they were in bed, in the dark, he had asked her to look at his hands under the moonlight. And he asked her, ‘Are they shiny? Are they shiny? ’”
“Then Novarius tricked you too.”
“Yes, but my own faith in the trick had been essential to its coming off successfully. If I had been suspicious, if I had employed my cunning, I might have given away his plan. That’s why I’m telling you, my dear Salvatrio, that while you’re here, feeling ignored and neglected, you may actually be the key piece of Arzaky’s secret plan. It could ensure your own success as an acolyte as well.”
As if Tamayak’s words were a premonition, the next morning I was awakened by Madame Necart banging on my door.
part iv. The Fire Sign
1
Come on, Salvatrio! Get up! There’s a message for you! ”
I staggered over to open the door. The first thing I saw was Madame Necart without her makeup; it was not a good omen for the rest of the day. I snatched the message from her hands and read:
“Come to the Galerie des Machines as soon as possible.”
The yellow paper was dirty with soot, and stamped with Arzaky’s big black fingerprints.
The machines were grouped according to function inside the palace of glass and iron. But often a machine belonging to one sector was sent to another, since the boundaries of man’s disciplines have always been unclear. The operators moved them around, trying to place them according to blueprints that were constantly being produced, and then continuously modified by other blueprints brought by messengers sent from the organizing committee. The messengers were very young and wore blue uniforms and leather caps, and they sometimes had to consult the blueprints they were carrying to keep from getting lost amid all the pavilions and corridors. One wrong turn and they would be walking in circles for quite a while, and because of this, it was common for a messenger who had left first to arrive after a later one, so an already established decision could be taken as a last minute change. The dockyard workers, made up largely of foreigners, complained about the excessive work, and threatened to halt operations. In order to resolve the conf lict it was decided that the machines that hadn’t been correctly placed when they arrived would be sent to a special area. There they joined others, no longer united by their function, but by the circumstances of delays and confusion. So a digger used for mining was positioned next to an electric piano and Graham Bell’s metal detector. This area was the most popular with visitors to the World’s Fair because of its variety. That variety represents the world, filled with too many different things for them ever to be able to see them all. There must be a point in which strict classification finally crumbles and confesses that everything is just a dream. All alphabets are letters that don’t have a proper place, or that are hardly ever used, and could easily be overlooked. Their function isn’t so much to represent a sound as to unshackle the alphabet from the constraints of perfection. (In Spanish we have the
At the entrance to the Galerie des Machines I had presented my safe-conduct-a sheet of paper with the official seal of the organizing committee, but also the round seal, always in red ink, of The Twelve Detectives. The guards stared at the seal, unsure whether or not to believe it was real. Everyone had heard of the group but no one knew for sure that it actually existed; the red seal was like a postmark from Atlantis. Since I was in a rush to meet with Arzaky I couldn’t stop to look at the machines, but caught a glance at them while I walked past.
The more esoteric the object’s utility, the more brilliant and successful it seemed; it was magnificent to see the bronze chimneys, and the oiled gears, and the watches with blue hands that measured god knows what pressure, speed, or temperature, and the levers and little control switches. There was a strange effect created in the palace: as in so many other glass monuments, the sun that filtered in showed the myriad dust particles f loating in the air. The machines, while at odds with each other, seemed to be united by the dust that floated above them, confusing the connections and controls, the clocks and pistons, the cords and spark plugs into one common realm, as if the entire palace was inhabited by one single, sleeping machine.
I walked through the corridors admiring the infinite fields of knowledge that I would never master. At the back of the pavilion a group of policemen were waiting, and Arzaky was with them. At that end, in an almost hidden area, were the latest, and, to my mind, bizarre innovations in the funereal industry: the corpse cannon, which sent the dead to the bottom of the sea; the excavating coffin, which dug its own grave with the cadaver inside and disappeared below ground; and various cremation ovens.
Arzaky shook hands with a man who had just arrived; he was as tall as the detective, with a big nose and professionally dressed in a black suit.
“Monsieur Arzaky? My name is Arnesto Samboni; I’m a representative from the Farbus Company. They got me out of bed at dawn to tell me that someone had turned the oven on.”
The oven was built of firebricks and iron, and looked very much like a house. The controls and the emblem with the company’s name were on the front. On one side was a tray and on it lay a blackened body. The features were burned away. It reminded me of a stone idol, a god exhumed in the farthest corner of Asia by some archaeological expedition. The head seemed to be separated from the body, and it was hard to believe it had ever been human.
“It’s a campaign oven,” explained Samboni, with the same tone he used when making a sales pitch. “It reaches extremely high temperatures very quickly. It can run on gas, or with wood or liquid fuel. One of our ovens, I’m proud to say, was used to cremate the body of the poet Percy B. Shelley, after he was shipwrecked on the Ligurian coast.”
“It’s supposed to reduce the body to ashes, and this cor pse is merely blackened. Did something go wrong?”
“It was turned off too soon. Otherwise, Monsieur Arzaky, there would be nothing left but dust, and you wouldn’t have a single clue to start your investigation.”
“Don’t be so sure, Monsieur Samboni. Even ashes can hold clues.”
Arzaky took out a pencil and scraped at the skin of the body around the abdomen. The surface gave way and I could see something that looked like scorched wool.
“Who else knows how to use this oven, Monsieur Samboni?”
“It’s very easy, anyone who has read the instructions could do it. But it was already set up, because we were
