Part 27 (1/2)
Mouse was squirming in his seat, staring straight into the police superintendent's eyes.
”Get through what?” he repeated in a louder voice.
”Well ... maybe you should tell me.”
”I have nothing to tell, Larry. Absolutely nothing. I'm happy that Jasmine Squirrel is no longer at rue de Cadix, but I have nothing more to say.”
Bloodhound looked out toward the horizon. He felt heavy, tired, and downhearted; he had hoped for something else. He had felt it, the reason he was sitting here was bits of evidence, all of which pointed in the mouse's direction. But the hope of being wrong had still been there. Well, no longer. Superintendent Bloodhound felt a premonition of the Lunch Breeze, which set his ear swinging, and he answered lightly, ”What were you doing at the police station yesterday evening, Philip?”
”Huh?”
”You heard me.”
”I-”
”You couldn't believe, after all the years at Chez Jacques, after having systematically gotten to know all the police officers in leading positions at rue de Cadix, that you could make your way into the building without anyone seeing you and recognizing you?”
Philip Mouse sat motionless, staring at his friend. He did not say a thing.
”What were you doing there? In my office?”
”You're bluffing,” Mouse said at last. ”You have no idea where I was yesterday evening.”
”s.h.i.+t into h.e.l.l, Philip,” the superintendent moaned. ”Remember who you're talking to.”
Bloodhound suddenly felt restless and stood up. He took a turn around an incomparably blossoming pink rhododendron, but Mouse remained sitting motionless on the couch.
”Bring out the head,” Bloodhound growled, sitting down again.
”Don't know what you're talking about,” Mouse replied.
”I can guarantee that I can ... It doesn't need to be more than a few years,” said Bloodhound. ”Bring out the head, then we'll sew it back on and suddenly we're talking about malicious damage, not murder.”
”I don't know what you're talking about,” Mouse repeated.
As soon as Larry Bloodhound showed up on the roof, Philip Mouse had lost all energy; it was as if his capacity to think and speak had been sucked out of him. But now at last he got up from the couch and pointed at the police officer with a sharp claw.
”You have nothing,” he said. ”You have absolutely nothing. If you had anything, you wouldn't have come yourself.”
”Philip, I-”
”Nothing,” Mouse repeated. ”What kind of craziness is this? You coming here and suggesting ... coming and maintaining that I ... no, the h.e.l.l you will.”
”Philip, there's no way out of this. I know. This requires more than just-”
”Bulls.h.i.+t,” Mouse spit out. ”Bulls.h.i.+t.”
And he turned his back on the superintendent, going with determined steps away toward the door that led down to the elevators. Bloodhound let him go. The private detective was right. There was no evidence. But that was only because Bloodhound hadn't figured out how things hung together until this morning. Producing evidence was easier when you knew the answer to the riddle.
And Larry Bloodhound-who had been hopefully uncertain when he'd taken the elevator up through Tour de la Liberte-was now convinced.
7.5.
No matter what time of day it was, the daylight never reached the corner next to the stove. That's why it was there Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago would pray. The cramped s.p.a.ce suited her religious temperament; it was as if she were standing in the corner for her faith.
She did not pray at fixed times, and she did not keep track, but she fell on her knees in the corner next to the stove at least four or five times every day. She performed these hours of prayer as a kind of meditation, letting her thoughts wander freely with a starting point in a text from the Proclamations. She would usually stick with the same text as long as she felt it engaged her, which might be for days or months.
Early in the morning on Sunday, the ninth of June, Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago woke up in her bed, filled with energy and desire. During the night, dreams had tormented her, and she longed for her place by the stove. Since early in May, she had repeated the same piece from the First Proclamation in her prayer. The rhythm and sound of the words calmed her, the text helped her ease the night's anxiety.
She stumbled into the bathroom, pus.h.i.+ng aside the piles of dirty laundry and heaps of old newspapers, and made her way to the toilet. Many years ago she had transformed the bathroom into a combination archive and closet. She did her business in the toilet, sometimes she stepped into the drying cabinet, but otherwise hygiene and cleanliness were not the sort of thing Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago was interested in. She hadn't turned on the faucet for many years, and were she to make an attempt today, it was doubtful whether the pipes would function.
In the darkness in the bathroom she found a pair of underwear, a skirt, and a blouse. She dressed herself quickly in yesterday's clothes. She neither laundered nor bought new clothes; she wasn't vain, what she already had was just fine.
Out in the kitchen she made a fire in the stove with a couple of dry sticks of wood and set a saucepan with water on the large burner. Then she fell down on her knees in her customary corner. Half aloud, she mumbled the words of Noah Whale from the First Proclamation: And Magnus heard the mighty sea, and understood its soul.At water's edge he felt the ocean cold intense.He opened wide his mouth, for questions crave defense.But it was not their fault, the seaweed and algae scold.
Horizon melded sky and sea together as a whole.Through the water came a golden fish swimming toward the strand,a creature true, but one that could not thrive on land.”A pitiful life,” said Magnus, ”but nonetheless a soul.”
”He knows not where he is.” Magnus looked into its eye.”He only recalls the now, and of that but a moment,his reasoning is stunted, his spirit is in torment,and to pray for him and for his life is pure futility.”
He spoke about Creation not as something to perfect;he raised up the fish and cried, ”Desirethat memory of the feeble-minded's life not expire,a life in harmony has nought to do with intellect.”
The more than three thousand verses in the First Proclamation followed the same patterns, simply rhymed and rhythmically wrought. After having mumbled four verses, Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago proceeded to wordlessly sing the rhythm and melody as a kind of mantra.
Before her mind's eye one of her students appeared, the mournful Agnes Guinea Pig. Hummingbird was flooded with hatred, an unreasonable jealousy that stuck in her wings and cut in her chest.
The inward image became clearer. Hummingbird saw before her Agnes Guinea Pig standing by the easel out in the greenhouse. The building's white paint was flaking, the beautiful gla.s.s roof had fallen apart in several places, and ivy and weeds had moved in and taken possession of the building. Agnes Guinea Pig-Hummingbird's oldest pupil-stood in the midst of this green decay in a blue dress with white lace at the throat, as if she were younger than she was.
And Agnes took a step back to observe what she had achieved. She had spent six months in front of the same motif, and the last few weeks she had concentrated exclusively on the sky. Like all of Hummingbird's pupils, Guinea Pig worked to become just as technically proficient as her teacher. To imitate, to the slightest detail, was to conquer. Esperanza-Santiago's pupils ended every term by painting their own large, new canvases in the style of Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago. It was these paintings-if they were sufficiently good-that Hummingbird signed and sold via Jake Golden Retriever and Igor Panda.
For Agnes Guinea Pig, however, examination day was far off. Her sky looked like a sea, her mixing of color lacked feeling, her technique was stiff and obvious.
Esperanza-Santiago is on her knees on the floor by the stove, praying. Before her she sees Agnes Guinea Pig, who observes her incomplete work, who squints and shuffles as if she were an artist, and who then exclaims, ”I think I'm starting to understand.” knees on the floor by the stove, praying. Before her she sees Agnes Guinea Pig, who observes her incomplete work, who squints and shuffles as if she were an artist, and who then exclaims, ”I think I'm starting to understand.”
A mockery.
It was nothing other than a mockery. Agnes Guinea Pig had not understood. Nothing in what she had accomplished, in her facial expressions, in her lack of development, suggested that she had understood.
Hummingbird saw before her how she slowly went up to the pupil, placed herself behind her, took her paw, and together they again approached the canvas. With a careful but determined wing, Hummingbird led the guinea pig's brush across what was supposed to depict a sky, and with all of her body the artist felt that Agnes Guinea Pig was, and remained, a lost cause.
Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago again experienced, in the corner next to the stove, all of the painful stages of jealousy.
To be Agnes Guinea Pig.
To be so free from talent, from compulsion, from self-insight. Hummingbird sank her forehead deeper down toward the floor. She was filled with feelings that were not only shameful, they were indefensible. From Magnus she had received a gift, a favor, and here she was, fantasizing about escaping it. To awake one morning without demands, without expectations, to live a day as spiritually empty as Agnes Guinea Pig. To get to experience what was talked about in the First Proclamation as ”the feeble-minded's fortune.”
Hummingbird Esperanza-Santiago wept.