and brought it down with all his remaining might on earth moist because it was so deep and felt the metal point shiver as it hit something solid, compact, definitely metallic, maybe divine. The sergeant’s spade dug hurriedly, spurred on by the tenacious Count, until a man-made surface revealed all its opaque brilliance, clouded by twenty- seven years of contact with soil. The Count thrust his hand into the mud and began to extract from the entrails of the world a nylon covering, which in turn contained a cloth wrapping, beneath which a heavy, almost round object slumbered, bound tightly round: the Count managed to retrieve the bag and cut the ropes securing the protective layer of cloth, and there, at the bottom of the pit, he pulled off the gauze that had begun to disintegrate, to reveal before the eyes of the police a yellow gleam capable of dazzling the world. Yes, it was lean and strong, like a real Buddha ready to distance himself from all non-transcendental materiality, and the smile on his face seemed to express sardonic satisfaction: and with good reason, thought the Count, for that pagan god had triumphed over the most incredible vicissitudes for fifteen centuries, and defeated a risk of death by melt-down that had threatened several times. Neatly draped in a metal cloak that fell in the most amazing folds, the body must have been over sixteen inches high, from the feet on the lotus leaf to the final twist of its Hindu headdress. Various men, over countless years, had risked their all for that smiling face, which was able to hallucinate, enrich and even kill those who tried to hold on to it, as if one could grasp the unattainable: old Forcade was right when he stated that the image of the Buddha was merely an illusory reflection of a truth situated beyond all dimensions and categories, because the creator of that powerful religion always recognized that his strength and permanence were rooted in his ultimate spiritual essence, far from the world of the terrestrial and tangible, beyond the realm of appearance: hence the triumphant smile. A right bastard, the Count told himself, keeping his eyes on the sardonic statue, but feeling his waist curse him as he reverted to the vertical. He turned painfully round to the house and on the upper floor balcony saw the old man on his wood and willow chair, and his wife, at his side, also watching the search. Then the policeman yelled at a volume the whole neighbourhood could have heard: “We’ve got the gold Buddha!”
He looked at his watch and the time gave him a fright: his deadline was running out; it was almost twelve o’clock and, though he had a Buddha, which was almost certainly golden, possibly T’ang dynasty, presumably extremely valuable, he didn’t have what he most needed: a murderer who had confessed. Or even a murderess. That’s why he decided to move his pawns quickly: while he dispatched Crespo and el Greco to find Fermin Bodes – wherever he is, he insisted – and take him to Headquarters. He called Colonel Molina and asked him to come to that house in Vedado, as they had uncovered something too important for him not to. Then he ordered Manolo to alert the Patrimony people who had authenticated the fakery of the Matisse to send their leading specialist in antique Chinese statuary. Finally, he left his sergeant next to the Buddha, drowsy, but still smiling, at the bottom of the pit, and got into the car they had sent so he could hotfoot it back to Headquarters.
“Step on it, if you like,” he told the driver, and, immediately, the Count discovered how much he’d been hijacked by the prickly feeling of shedding his own skin, of seeing himself in the third person, as he was consumed by a hot- blooded character at once admired and intimidating, living in a story already written…
From the day he’d become fond of reading and felt a corrosive envy of people able to imagine and tell stories, the Count learned to respect literature as one of the most beautiful things life could create. Perhaps the main reason for that respect was his own inability to throw himself into the ring and live on what literature brought. Because his desire to write was more a challenge than a dream and the extended deferral of his vocation found a unique relief in reading. At the end of the day, the sweet envy he felt of writers who wrote well was not so much a sickness as the conviction that he could perhaps never do it, even poorly.
However, that sublime, literary part of his life rarely connected with a real, everyday existence that was drab and downtrodden, which he tried to soak in rum in order to render it more bearable; consequently he was surprised by a pleasantly aesthetic feeling that he was embodying a literary character: though he had yet to test out the Buddha with a small knife to see if it was gold or lead, as happened with the bird of evil in the story he felt he was reliving.
It was then he remembered Washington Capote, his hot-blooded university friend who, unlike him, could see himself as a literary character, thanks to an astonishing memory for quotations and a facility for performance that allowed him to double theatrically as narrator and character in a novel. Because Washington would have loved to be in the Count’s place, repeating confidently and emphatically the eight reasons Sam Spade had to send Brigid O’Shaughnessy to jail: “Listen. This isn’t a damn bit of good. This is bad all round”, and Washington would review the detective’s barbed, cynical monologue till he reached the reason he preferred: “Seventh: I don’t even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker,” said that literary lunatic, smiling for the cameras even better than Bogart.
“ ‘One chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker,’” the Count repeated mentally, able, unusually, to recall that sentence straight off, in order to understand that he really had no right to feel he was a fictional character but should accept he was a sucker: literature’s uses in illuminating life were yet again vividly demonstrated to the policeman, who rabidly suspected one thing: almost a hundred per cent chance existed that several people might play him for a sucker.
The duty officer welcomed him with the best possible news: Crespo and el Greco had come in ten minutes ago with a man under arrest by the name of Fermin Bodes. “Good, good,” whispered the Count, who at last realized why he was beginning to feel totally in thrall to this case, and not just because of the way it challenged his intellect. From the initial story about an image of the Buddha hidden or transfigured more than a thousand years ago by the faithful who had publicly to deny their faith, if only to guarantee the survival of their god’s image, to these sadly contemporary characters waiting for him now, swayed by less altruistic ambitions, the serial deceptions that had dropped into his lap represented a heady mix. Betrayals, frauds, chases, and all manner of lies and fakery had become entangled in a farce that he, Mario Conde, would put an end to. Could this be the end…? But when he mentally reviewed the protagonists of the last act, he again felt angry at the insult to his intelligence – and even to his hunches: Miguel Forcade who feared the sea and accepted all the corrupt opportunities power sent his way; Gerardo Gomez de la Pena, the man with ugly feet and the petulance of those blessed by fate, blatantly opportunistic and indefatigably cynical; beautiful Miriam, perchance a blonde, a pawn crowned as queen and equipped with a voracious rapidity of movement that made her distinctly fearsome, with every histrionic resource necessary to live a life of lies, and even to throw her brother into the fire and her beloved husband into the sea; and Fermin Bodes, the sarcastic gymnast, always at half-cock, a joker, sometimes at his own expense, at other times at others’, only lightly punished for his multifarious crimes and sins… The Count had coexisted with such people, same city, same time, same life, looking up at the Forcades, the Gomezes, the Bodes from the lowly spot that they’d assigned him and so many other poor buggers like himself: they were right up at the top, while others were right at the bottom, they were surrounded by Tiffany lamps and Matisse paintings that might even be genuine, residencies swapped like second-hand books – and he regretted the bibliographical simile – and handled real and putative millions while they acted like implacable judges in tribunals driven by ethical, ideological, political and social purity (where those on trial were almost always the “others”); and silenced and manacled, those “others” suffered from the chronic, incurable disease of life in a hovel, like Candito the Red, or were confined for ever to a wheelchair like his soul brother, or persecuted in the hills for believing the truth of life was to be found in the spurs of a rooster, like his deceased grandfather Rufino; or definitively fucked because they wanted a bit of what was up top, like his old acquaintance Baby-Face Miki, a sinner beyond redemption, who prostituted his scant literary talents by writing self-serving stories of praise. And, what about you, Mario Conde? Better shut up he told himself, as the lift-doors opened.
Before entering his cubicle, the Count took a deep breath and surveyed his appearance: blue jeans mudstained from bottoms to knee, shoes that might be any colour from brown to black and his shirt, spattered with earth, had lost a button. But he went in without knocking and smiled, as if he were very happy, when he saw the faces of Miriam and Fermin turn round to look at him.
“And you can tell me now…” Fermin began aggressively, and the Count was quick to squash him.
“I can tell you lots and lots of things, and you and your sister can tell me lots too. To begin with, I can tell both of you that you are officially under arrest and investigation for homicide. Your status,” he pointed to Miriam, “will be communicated to the North American consulate, so no need to worry about that. As you see, you are under arrest until your innocence is proven or you rot in a jail,” and he looked at the ex-convict Fermin Bodes, and noticed he flinched slightly as he acknowledged what the notion of rotting in a jail might mean. “Got that clear?”
