Fever (21 page)

When Studer woke up next morning, fully dressed, he decided that the hotel owner had been very considerate. The bedbugs had only been able to get at his hands to bite them, and his forehead, a little bit.

The clairvoyant corporal begins to take shape

It was strange but true: all the senior officers of the French Foreign Legion seemed to be endowed with ample paunches. The only thing that Major Borotra, commandant of the Second Battalion of the First Regiment, who had four bands of gold braid round his kepi, had in common with the tennis champion was his name. He was an easygoing tub of lard with a sparse blond moustache.

“Collani?” he asked. “You're looking for Collani? How come a policemen from Lyons is interested in my corporal? My clairvoyant corporal?”

Studer put on an inscrutable expression and pointed to the forged signature of the Minister of War. Borotra flushed. The signature had magic powers.

“Go and see our doctor,” the fat commandant said. “Dr Cantacuzène will be able to tell you what you need to know. Then I hope you'll give us the pleasure of your company at lunch in the officers' mess. We are of course –” he cleared his throat – “always ready to be of service to, er –” even more clearing of the throat – “to the Minister of War, as far as is in our power, and we trust that, in your report to His Excellency, you will not forget to –” the clearing of his throat seemed to go on for ever.

“Goes without saying,” said Studer loftily, feeling like a marshall of the Great Emperor promising a prefect the Legion of Honour. Hadn't Joseph Fouché been Duke of Otranto? Studer could play the duke.
Sometimes a democracy can be the best school for aristocratic behaviour.

Dr Cantacuzène looked like a sly newspaper editor who would have difficulty convincing certain authorities of his Aryan descent. He wore a pince-nez with thick lenses which kept slipping off the bridge of his nose and which he kept catching, like a juggler, once on his finger, once on the back of his hand and once, even, on the toe of his boot.

“An hysteric,” said Dr Cantacuzène, who was of Greek origin, as he immediately emphasized. “Your Collani was a typical case of male hysteria. Which doesn't exclude the possibility that he did perhaps possess certain occult gifts. Almost all the experiments I conducted with him could have a perfectly natural explanation, still –” he raised his right knee just in time to let his pince-nez rest there precariously for a moment – “what is beyond doubt is that the man had a very murky past. And in that past there was definitely
one
incident that was a great burden on Collani's mind. He never discussed it with me, but for a while he was close to a certain priest. For my part, I refused to get mixed up in confessional secrets . . .” The pince-nez fell to the floor.

“He smoked
kif
,” the doctor went on, “and that wasn't good for his health, since he didn't have a very strong constitution. You know what
kif
is? Hashish.
Cannabis indica
. To many people here it looks as if Collani was abducted by a stranger. For my part, I think the man went off on a spree and smoked too much
kif
somewhere. A minor collapse would explain his disappearance . . .”

*

No, that could not have been the explanation for his disappearance, for at lunch in the officers' mess Major Borotra was delighted to be able to announce that he had been informed that very morning by Captain Lartigue, the officer in command of the Mounted Company of the 3rd Regiment in Gourama, that Collani had turned up there, fit and well. Collani claimed he did not know where he had spent the past few months and Lartigue believed him. He would, the captain had said, get the doctor to examine the clairvoyant corporal and then he could look forward to his discharge. He had qualified for a pension anyway.

“Is there no photo of this Collani?”

“I do not think so, Inspector Fouché,” said Borotra. “But we can give you a good description of him, can't we, gentlemen?”

Three captains, two lieutenants and six second lieutenants replied in chorus, “Yes, sir.”

Then it was like a party game in which everyone has to add one feature in turn: “Short.” – “Skinny.” – “Thirty-inch chest.” – “Grey hair.” – “Clean-shaven.” – “Ears sticking out.” – “Flat.” – “No lobe.” – “Olive complexion.” – “Blue eyes.”

“Thank you,” said Studer, “that will be sufficient. If I have understood correctly, his ears stick out, are flat and have no lobe? . . . Yes? . . . Thank you again. And how tall was Collani?”

A little lieutenant raised his hand.

“Lieutenant?”

“Five foot four.”

There didn't seem to be much going on in Géryville in the winter. The officers stayed sitting around until half past three. They refused to let Studer go. As a guest from outside, he was entertained and plied with drink. He thanked God that none of the officers came
from Lyons. But if the worst had come to the worst, the detective sergeant from Bern, who had illegally assumed the name of a French minister of police from the First Empire, might well have been able to bluff his way out of it.

Finally Studer managed to get away. He wanted to go and see Achmed, the mulatto Collani used to visit every evening to smoke
kif
.

Achmed, the mulatto, was such a giant he could quite happily have got people to pay to see him in a fairground booth. His complexion was the colour of a block of Swiss chocolate, specially made for a special occasion.

In a red clay pipe with a bowl no bigger than a thimble he was smoking some herb that smelt like cigarettes for asthmatics. He received Studer sitting cross-legged on a carpet, like some oriental king. It made you forget the shabby, empty room and the harsh light sprayed round by an acetylene lamp.

There was no air of suspicion to greet a strange visitor, simply a quiet, reserved serenity.

Corporal Collani? A good friend. Very quiet, didn't talk much. Made no close friends so he came to him, Achmed, every evening. Smoked two pipes of
kif
.

“No, Inspector, that amount is not sufficient to make you lose control of yourself. The very idea!” Achmed spoke standard French and Studer would have liked to ask him where he had got his education. “You sleep well after two pipes,” Achmed explained, “and the corporal suffered from insomnia. He used to sigh a lot. Not like a man who has something weighing on his conscience, no, more like a person who has lost a valuable pearl and looks for it everywhere. This summer it was particularly bad. Once he cried, really cried, like a little child whose favourite marble's been stolen.”

A mulatto! A simple man, and a poor one at that!
But what understanding, how well he talked about the workings of the human mind!

“I tried to comfort him,” Achmed went on. “I asked him to confide in me, but he wouldn't. He kept repeating, ‘If I open this letter, this letter here –' he showed it me – ‘then I'll be dragged back into the past and he will come to get me.' ‘Who will come to get you, Corporal?' I asked. ‘The devil, Achmed! The old devil! I killed him, the devil, but the devil's immortal, we never know when he'll wake up again.' So he posted the letter, on 20 July last year.

“The next day he told me he had a copy of the letter, but he didn't know where it was. ‘I've searched through all my things,' he said, ‘but I can't find it anywhere . . . And it's better that way.'

“Two months later a stranger came to see me, asking about Corporal Collani. He waited, but on that evening the corporal came late. He didn't notice the stranger, he just said to me, ‘Now I know where that copy is. I sewed it into the lining of an old woollen waistcoat. I've just seen it quite clearly.' – ‘Where have you been until now, Corporal?' I asked. ‘With the priest,' he replied. And then he saw the stranger.”

Achmed fell silent. With a guileless look in his brown eyes, eyes that were so dark they seemed almost black, he looked up at Studer, who was leaning against the wall beside the hissing acetylene lamp. So there was a copy of the temperature chart! Where was it to be found? And if it had fallen into the hands of the “opposition”, to give the mysterious people he had become involved with a name, where should he start looking for it? And if the opposition had the chart, why hire two petty crooks from Bern to steal it from him?

Studer had the feeling something inside his head had suddenly been set in motion. It was a strange
sensation: one cogwheel is turning beside another that is still; a lever is switched over, the teeth of the revolving cogwheel mesh with those of the still one, and now they're both turning. The wheels had been set in motion because the sergeant had suddenly seen the first card in the top row of the cards that had been laid out, both in Basel and in Bern: the jack of spades! Spades – the unlucky suit. The jack of spades – death. Strange how memory works sometimes, Studer thought. You store up images, then forget them, until suddenly one rises from the depths and is developed, printed out, in sharp focus.

Achmed sat cross-legged in his corner, puffing on his pipe. Sergeant Studer was so immersed in his thoughts, he did not notice that he had slid down on to the floor himself, though he couldn't manage to squat on his heels in the authentic posture. Too preoccupied with his deductions to fill a pipe for himself, he stretched out his hand, then sucked dreamily at a mouthpiece, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, then blowing it out again. “Another,” he murmured.

“Brother,” Achmed told him, “you have to say
amr sbsi
. That is, fill me a pipe.”

Obediently Studer repeated, “
Amr sbsi
.”

The smoke tickled his throat slightly, but inside his head it sparked off colours.

“
Amr sbsi
. . .” Achmed smiled. He had broad teeth. In the whitewashed room the light from the acetylene lamp was white. But when Studer looked through his eyelashes, all the colours of the rainbow danced a stately gavotte.

“
Mlech
?” Achmed asked. Studer nodded. He felt he could speak Arabic excellently.
Mlech
meant “good”, of course. He nodded vigorously and repeated, “
Mlech, mlech
.”

For a brief moment he sobered up again and tried to recall the date. He wanted to ask in Arabic, but his Swiss dialect got in the way, and even that refused to cross his lips. All his question produced was a mumbling stammer, although Studer was convinced he had spoken particularly clearly.

A smile of astonishment appeared on Achmed's face. And then he made three gestures that shook Studer's West European conception of time to its very foundations. He held out his hands, palms upward, lifted his arms, and let his hands fall back on his knees; next he raised his right hand with the index finger outstretched, his other fingers clenched; finally the outstretched index finger was placed on his lips and then pointed up at the sky.

And these gestures were so expressive, Studer had no trouble translating them: “My brother! How can you hope to hold time in your open hands? You can only despair when you think of eternity. What is time to Him, the Eternally Silent who sits enthroned above, to Him to whom eternity belongs?”

Having seen and understood these gestures, the sergeant had a vague feeling he would never be able to resume his activity in the Bern police force. He saw himself getting up in the morning, shaving . . . There was a smell of coffee in the apartment – half past seven already. He had to be at the police station by eight, in his office . . . But what was that? Two hands stretch out, palms upward, an index finger points to the sky. Go to the office? Why? The station, work, the blessings of Western civilization: keeping busy, working to the clock, being there on time, getting paid at the end of the month, what had happened to all that? What was the point? For the love of Allah, what was the point? You sank into the sea of eternity, you died. What was
the use of all that hustle and bustle? Why did you take yourself so seriously? Travelling with false papers, looking for people who had disappeared, trying to find buried treasure. You were just a tiny droplet in the bank of cloud that was humanity, you evaporated . . .

The mulatto was still sitting opposite the sergeant, and his face looked like the eternally young countenance of an alien god . . .

“
Amr sbsi
. Fill my pipe.”

The pipe, the tiny clay pipe the size of a thimble, was filled, and beside the sergeant a cup suddenly appeared, giving off the most fragrant odours. Studer was no longer capable of seeing that it was a plain cup of tea with a few mint leaves floating in it. He drank and he drank . . .

Where was that music coming from? There was the wild stamp of a dance right next to his ears and he could see women flinging their toes up far above their heads. Then there was the scent of roses, lots of yellow roses; the sergeant lay down on damp moss, a garden spreading out all round him with a smell of earth after a rainstorm. Once more the pipe was placed in his hand. Now he could see stars, swirling round in huge circles . . . And the music? The music ringing out?

It sounded like the Bern March played by the heavenly host . . .

Later, especially when playing billiards with Münch, the lawyer, Studer would often describe the delights of being high on hashish. Eventually, however, he would run out of adjectives and finish with the most emphatic superlative his Swiss dialect possessed: