Death and compass

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Death and the Compass
To Mandie Molina Vedia
Of the many problems which exercised the daring perspicacity of Lonnrot none was
so strange - so harshly strange, we may say - as the staggered series of bloody acts
which culminated at the villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the boundless odor of the
eucalypti. It is true that Erik Lonnrot did not succeed in preventing the last crime,
but it is indisputable that he foresaw it. Nor did he, of course, guess the identity of
Yarmolinsky's unfortunate assassin, but he did divine the secret morphology of the
vicious series as well as the participation of Red Scharlach, whose alias, is Scharlach
the Dandy. This criminal (as so many others) had sworn on his honor to kill
Lonnrot, but the latter had never allowed himself to be intimidated. Lonnrot thought
of himself as a pure thinker, an Auguste Dupin, but there was something of the
adventurer in him, and even of the gamester.
The first crime occurred at the Hotel du Nord - that high prism that dominates the
estuary whose waters are the colors of the desert. To this tower (which most
manifestly unites the hateful whiteness of a sanitorium, the numbered divisibility of a
prison, and the general appearance of a bawdy house) on the third day of December
came the delegate from Podolsk to the Third Talmudic Congress, Doctor Marcel
Yarmolinsky, a man of gray beard and gray eyes. We shall never know whether the
Hotel du Nord pleased him: he accepted it with the ancient resignation which had
allowed him to endure three years of war in the Carpathians and three thousand
years of oppression and pogroms. He was given a sleeping room on floor R, in front
of the suite which the Tetrarch of Galilee occupied not without some splendor.
Yarmolinsky supped, postponed until the following day an investigation of the
unknown city, arranged upon a cupboard his many books and his few possessions,
and before midnight turned off the light. (Thus declared the Tetrarch's chauffeur,
who slept in an adjoining room.) On the fourth, at 11:03 A.M., there was a telephone
call for him from the editor of the Yiddische Zeitung; Doctor Yarmolinsky did not
reply; he was found in his room, his face already a little dark, and his body, almost
nude, beneath a large anachronistic cape. He was lying not far from the door which
gave onto the corridor; a deep stab wound had split open his breast. In the same
room, a couple of hours later, in the midst of journalists, photographers, and police,
Commissioner Treviranus and Lonnrot were discussing the problem with
equanimity.
"There's no need to look for a Chimera, or a cat with three legs," Treviranus was
saying as he brandished an imperious cigar. "We all know that the Tetrarch of
Galilee is the possessor of the finest sapphires in the world. Someone, intending to
steal them, came in here by mistake. Yarmolinsky got up; the robber had to kill him.
What do you think?"
"It's possible, but not interesting," Lonnrot answered. "You will reply that reality
hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid
the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you
have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a
purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber."
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Treviranus answered ill-humoredly:
"I am not interested in rabbinical explanations; I am interested in the capture of the
man who stabbed this unknown person."
"Not so unknown," corrected Lonnrot. "Here are his complete works." He indicated
a line of tall volumes: A Vindication of the Cabala; An Examination of the Philosophy
of Robert Fludd; a literal translation of the Sepher Yezirah; a Biography of the Baal
Shem; a History of the Sect of the Hasidim; a monograph (in German) on the
Tetragrammaton; another, on the divine nomenclature of the Pentateuch. The
Commissioner gazed at them with suspicion, almost with revulsion. Then he fell to
laughing.
"I'm only a poor Christian," he replied. "Carry off all these moth-eaten classics if you
like; I haven't got time to lose in Jewish superstitions."
"Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions," murmured
Lonnrot.
"Like Christianity," the editor of the Yiddische Zeitung dared to put in. He was a
myope, an atheist, and very timid.
No one answered him. One of the agents had found inserted in the small typewriter
a piece of paper on which was written the following inconclusive sentence.
The first letter of the Name has been spoken
Lonnrot abstained from smiling. Suddenly become a bibliophile - or Hebraist - he
directed that the dead man's books be made into a parcel, and he carried them to
his office. Indifferent to the police investigation, he dedicated himself to studying
them. A large octavo volume revealed to him the teachings of Israel Baal Shem-Tob,
founder of the sect of the Pious; another volume, the virtues and terrors of the
Tetragrammaton, which is the ineffable name of God; another, the thesis that God
has a secret name, in which is epitomized (as in the crystal sphere which the Persians
attribute to Alexander of Macedon) his ninth attribute, eternity - that is to say, the
immediate knowledge of everything that will exist, exists, and has existed in the
universe. Tradition numbers ninety-nine names of God; the Hebraists attribute this
imperfect number to the magical fear of even numbers; the Hasidim reason that this
hiatus indicates a hundredth name-the Absolute Name.
From this erudition he was distracted, within a few days, by the appearance of the
editor of the Yiddische Zeitung. This man wished to talk of the assassination;
Lonnrot preferred to speak of the diverse names of God. The journalist declared, in
three columns, that the investigator Erik Lonnrot had dedicated himself to studying
the names of God in order to "come up with" the name of the assassin. Lonnrot,
habituated to the simplifications of journalism, did not become indignant. One of
those shopkeepers who have found that there are buyers for every book came out
with a popular edition of the History of the Sect of the Hasidim.
The second crime occurred on the night of the third of January, in the most
deserted and empty corner of the capital's western suburbs. Toward dawn, one of
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the gendarmes who patrol these lonely places on horseback detected a man in a
cape, lying prone in the shadow of an ancient paint shop. The hard visage seemed
bathed in blood; a deep stab wound had split open his breast. On the wall, upon the
yellow and red rhombs, there were some words written in chalk. The gendarme
spelled them out . . .
That afternoon Treviranus and Lonnrot made their way toward the remote scene of
the crime. To the left and right of the automobile, the city disintegrated; the
firmament grew larger and the houses meant less and less and a brick kiln or a
poplar grove more and more. They reached their miserable destination: a final alley
of rose-colored mud walls which in some way seemed to reflect the disordered
setting of the sun. The dead man had already been identified. He was Daniel Simon
Azevedo, a man of some fame in the ancient northern suburbs, who had risen from
wagoner to political tough, only to degenerate later into a thief and even an
informer. (The singular style of his death struck them as appropriate: Azevedo was
the last representative of a generation of bandits who knew how to handle a dagger,
but not a revolver.) The words in chalk were the following:
The second letter of the Name has been spoken
The third crime occurred on the night of the third of February. A little before one
o'clock, the telephone rang in the office of Commissioner Treviranus. In avid
secretiveness a man with a guttural voice spoke: he said his name was Ginzberg (or
Ginsburg) and that he was disposed to communicate, for a reasonable remuneration,
an explanation of the two sacrifices of Azevedo and Yarmolinsky. The discordant
sound of whistles and horns drowned out the voice of the informer. Then the
connection was cut off. Without rejecting the possibility of a hoax (it was carnival
time), Treviranus checked and found he had been called from Liverpool House, a
tavern on the Rue de Toulon - that dirty street where cheek by jowl are the
peepshow and the milk store, the bordello and the women selling Bibles. Treviranus
called back and spoke to the owner. This personage (Black Finnegan by name, an old
Irish criminal who was crushed, annihilated almost, by respectability) told him that
the last person to use the establishment's phone had been a lodger, a certain
Gryphius, who had just gone out with some friends. Treviranus immediately went to
Liverpool House, where Finnegan related the following facts. Eight days previously,
Gryphius had taken a room above the saloon. He was a man of sharp features, a
nebulous gray beard, shabbily clothed in black; Finnegan (who put the room to a use
which Treviranus guessed) demanded a rent which was undoubtedly excessive;
Gryphius immediately paid the stipulated sum. He scarcely ever went out; he dined
and lunched in his room; his face was hardly known in the bar. On this particular
night, he carne down to telephone from Finnegan's office. A closed coupe stopped in
front of the tavern. The driver did not move from his seat; several of the patrons
recalled that he was wearing a bear mask. Two harlequins descended from the
coupe; they were short in stature, and no one could fail to observe that they were
very drunk. With a tooting of horns they burst into Finnegan's office; they embraced
Gryphius, who seemed to recognize them but who replied to them coldly; they
exchanged a few words in Yiddish - he, in a low guttural voice; they, in shrill, falsetto
tones - and then the party climbed to the upstairs room. Within a quarter hour the
three descended, very joyous; Gryphius, staggering, seemed as drunk as the others.
He walked - tall, dazed - in the middle, between the masked harlequins. (One of the
women in the bar remembered the yellow, red and green rhombs, the diamond
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designs.) Twice he stumbled; twice he was held up by the harlequins. Alongside the
adjoining dock basin, whose water was rectangular, the trio got into the coupe and
disappeared. From the running board, the last of the harlequins had scrawled an
obscene figure and a sentence on one of the slates of the outdoor shed.
Treviranus gazed upon the sentence. It was nearly foreknowable. It read:
The last of the letters of the Name has been spoken
He examined, then, the small room of Gryphius-Ginzberg. On the floor was a violent
star of blood; in the corners, the remains of some Hungarian-brand cigarettes; in a
cabinet, a book in Latin - the Philologus Hebraeo-Graecus (1739) of Leusden - along
with various manuscript notes. Treviranus studied the book with indignation and had
Lonnrot summoned. The latter, without taking off his hat, began to read while the
Commissioner questioned the contradictory witnesses to the possible kidnapping. At
four in the morning they came out. In the tortuous Rue de Toulon, as they stepped
on the dead serpentines of the dawn, Treviranus said:
"And supposing the story of this night were a sham?"
Erik Lonnrot smiled and read him with due gravity a passage (underlined) of the
thirty-third dissertation of the Philologus:
Dies Judaeorum incipit a solis occasu usque ad solis occasum diei sequentis.
"This means," he added, "that the Hebrew day begins at sundown and lasts until the
following sundown."
Treviranus attempted an irony.
"Is this fact the most worthwhile you've picked up tonight?"
"No. Of even greater value is a word Ginzberg used."
The afternoon dailies did not neglect this series of disappearances. The Cross and
the Sword contrasted them with the admirable discipline and order of the last
Eremitical Congress; Ernest Palast, writing in The Martyr, spoke out against "the
intolerable delays in this clandestine and frugal pogrom, which has taken three
months to liquidate three Jews"; the Yiddische Zeitung rejected the terrible
hypothesis of an anti-Semitic plot, "even though many discerning intellects do not
admit of any other solution to the triple mystery"; the most illustrious gunman in the
South, Dandy Red Scharlach, swore that in his district such crimes as these would
never occur, and he accused Commissioner Franz Treviranus of criminal negligence.
On the night of March first, the Commissioner received an imposing-looking, sealed
envelope. He opened it: the envelope contained a letter signed Baruj Spinoza, and a
detailed plan of the city, obviously torn from a Baedeker. The letter prophesied that
on the third of March there would not be a fourth crime, inasmuch as the paint shop
in the West, the Tavern on the Rue de Toulon and the Hotel du Nord were the
"perfect vertices of an equilateral and mystic triangle"; the regularity of this triangle
was made clear on the map with red ink. This argument, more geometrico,
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Treviranus read with resignation, and sent the letter and map on to Lonnrot - who
deserved such a piece of insanity.
Erik Lonnrot studied the documents. The three sites were in fact equidistant.
Symmetry in time (the third of December, the third of January, the third of
February); symmetry in space as well . . . Of a sudden he sensed he was about to
decipher the mystery. A set of calipers and a compass completed his sudden
intuition. He smiled, pronounced the word "Tetragrammaton" (of recent
acquisition), and called the Commissioner on the telephone. He told him:
"Thank you for the equilateral triangle you sent me last night. It has enabled me to
solve the problem. Tomorrow, Friday, the criminals will be in jail, we can rest
assured."
"In that case, they're not planning a fourth crime?"
"Precisely because they are planning a fourth crime can we rest assured."
Lonnrot hung up. An hour later he was traveling in one of the trains of the Southern
Railways, en route to the abandoned villa of Triste-le-Roy. South of the city of our
story there flows a blind little river filled with muddy water made disgraceful by
floating scraps and garbage. On the further side is a manufacturing suburb where,
under the protection of a chief from Barcelona, gunmen flourish. Lonnrot smiled to
himself to think that the most famous of them - Red Scharlach - would have given
anything to know of this clandestine visit. Azevedo had been a comrade of
Scharlach's; Lonnrot considered the remote possibility that the fourth victim might
be Scharlach himself. Then, he put aside the thought . . . He had virtually deciphered
the problem; the mere circumstances, or the reality (names, prison records, faces,
judicial and penal proceedings), scarcely interested him now. Most of all he wanted
to take a stroll, to relax from three months of sedentary investigation. He reflected
on how the explanation of the crimes lay in an anonymous triangle and a dust-laden
Greek word. The mystery seemed to him almost crystalline now; he was mortified
to have dedicated a hundred days to it.
The train stopped at a silent loading platform. Lonnrot descended. It was one of
those deserted afternoons which seem like dawn. The air over the muddy plain was
damp and cold. Lonnrot set off across the fields. He saw dogs, he saw a wagon on a
dead road, he saw the horizon, he saw a silvery horse drinking the crapulous water
of a puddle. Dusk was falling when he saw the rectangular belvedere of the villa of
Triste-le-Roy, almost as tall as the black eucalypti which surrounded it. He thought
of the fact that only one more dawn and one more nightfall (an ancient splendor in
the east, and another in the west) separated him from the hour so much desired by
the seekers of the Name.
A rust colored wrought-iron fence defined the irregular perimeter of the villa. The
main gate was closed. Without much expectation of entering, Lonnrot made a
complete circuit. In front of the insurmountable gate once again, he put his hand
between the bars almost mechanically and chanced upon the bolt. The creaking of
the iron surprised him. With laborious passivity the entire gate gave way.
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Lonnrot advanced among the eucalypti, stepping amidst confused generations of
rigid, broken leaves. Close up, the house on the estate of Triste-le-Roy was seen to
abound in superfluous symmetries and in maniacal repetitions: a glacial Diana in one
lugubrious niche was complemented by another Diana in another niche; one balcony
was repeated by another balcony; double steps of stairs opened into a double
balustrade. A two-faced Hermes cast a monstrous shadow. Lonnrot circled the
house as he had the estate. He examined everything; beneath the level of the terrace
he noticed a narrow shutter door.
He pushed against it: some marble steps descended to a vault. Versed now in the
architect's preferences, Lonnrot divined that there would be a set of stairs on the
opposite wall. He found them, ascended, raised his hands, and pushed up a trap
door.
The diffusion of light guided him to a window. He opened it: a round, yellow moon
outlined two stopped-up fountains in the melancholy garden. Lonnrot explored the
house. He traveled through antechambers and galleries to emerge upon duplicate
patios; several times he emerged upon the same patio. He ascended dust-covered
stairways and came out into circular antechambers; he was infinitely reflected in
opposing mirrors; he grew weary of opening or half-opening windows which
revealed the same desolate garden outside, from various heights and various angles;
inside, the furniture was wrapped in yellow covers and the chandeliers bound up
with cretonne. A bedroom detained him; in the bedroom, a single rose in a porcelain
vase - at the first touch the ancient petals fell apart. On the second floor, on the top
story, the house seemed to be infinite and growing. The house is not this large, he
thought. It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the
years, my ignorance, the solitude.
Going up a spiral staircase he arrived at the observatory. The evening moon shone
through the rhomboid diamonds of the windows, which were yellow, red and green.
He was brought to a halt by a stunning and dizzying recollection.
Two men of short stature, ferocious and stocky, hurled themselves upon him and
took his weapon. Another man, very tall, saluted him gravely, and said:
"You are very thoughtful. You've saved us a night and a day."
It was Red Scharlach. His men manacled Lonnrot's hands. Lonnrot at length found
his voice.
"Are you looking for the Secret Name, Scharlach?"
Scharlach remained standing, indifferent. He had not participated in the short
struggle; he scarcely stretched out his hand to receive Lonnrot's revolver. He spoke;
in his voice Lonnrot detected a fatigued triumph, a hatred the size of the universe, a
sadness no smaller than that hatred.
"No," answered Scharlach. "I am looking for something more ephemeral and
slippery, I am looking for Erik Lonnrot. Three years ago, in a gambling house on the
Rue de Toulon, you arrested my brother and had him sent to prison. In the
exchange of shots that night my men got me away in a coupe, with a police bullet in
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my chest. Nine days and nine nights I lay dying in this desolate, symmetrical villa; I
was racked with fever, and the odious double-faced Janus who gazes toward the
twilights of dusk and dawn terrorized my dreams and my waking. I learned to
abominate my body, I came to feel that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as
monstrous as two faces. An Irishman attempted to convert me to the faith of Jesus;
he repeated to me that famous axiom of the goyim: All roads lead to Rome. At night,
my delirium nurtured itself on this metaphor: I sensed that the world was a labyrinth,
from which it was impossible to flee, for all paths, whether they seemed to lead
north or south, actually led to Rome, which was also the quadrilateral jail where my
brother was dying and the villa of Triste-le-Roy. During those nights I swore by the
god who sees from two faces, and by all the gods of fever and of mirrors, to weave a
labyrinth around the man who had imprisoned my brother. I have woven it, and it
holds: the materials are a dead writer on heresies, a compass, an eighteenth-century
sect, a Greek word, a dagger, the rhombs of a paint shop.
"The first objective in the sequence was given me by chance. I had made plans with
some colleagues - among them, Daniel Azevedo - to take the Tetrarch's sapphires.
Azevedo betrayed us; with the money we advanced him he got himself inebriated
and started on the job a day early. In the vastness of the hotel he got lost; at two in
the morning he blundered into Yarmolinsky's room. The latter, harassed by
insomnia, had set himself to writing. He was editing some notes, apparently, or
writing an article on the Name of God; he had just written the words The first letter
of the Name has been spoken. Azevedo enjoined him to be quiet; Yarmolinsky
reached out his hand for the bell which would arouse all the hotel's forces; Azevedo
at once stabbed him in the chest. It was almost a reflex action: half a cen tury of
violence had taught him that it was easiest and surest to kill . . . Ten days later, I
learned through the Yiddische Zeitung that you were perusing the writings of
Yarmolinsky for the key to his death. For my part I read the History of the Sect of
the Hasidim; I learned that the reverent fear of pronouncing the Name of God had
given rise to the doctrine that this Name is all-powerful and mystic. I learned that
some Hasidim, in search of this secret Name, had gone as far as to offer human
sacrifices . . . I knew you would conjecture that the Hasidim had sacrificed the rabbi;
I set myself to justifying this conjecture.
"Marcel Yarmolinsky died on the night of December third; for the second sacrifice I
selected the night of January third. Yarmolinsky died in the North; for the second
sacrifice a place in the West was preferable. Daniel Azevedo was the inevitable
victim. He deserved death: he was an impulsive person, a traitor; his capture could
destroy the entire plan. One of our men stabbed him; in order to link his corpse to
the other one I wrote on the paint shop diamonds The second letter of the Name
has been spoken.
"The third 'crime' was produced on the third of February. It was as Treviranus must
have guessed, a mere mockery, a simulacrum. I am Gryphius-Ginzberg-Ginsburg; I
endured an interminable week (filled out with a tenuous false beard) in that perverse
cubicle on the Rue de Toulon, until my friends spirited me away. From the running
board one of them wrote on a pillar The last of the letters of the Name has been
spoken. This sentence revealed that the series of crimes was triple. And the public
thus understood it; nevertheless, I interspersed repeated signs that would allow you,
Erik Lonnrot, the reasoner, to understand that it is quadruple. A portent in the
North, others in the East and West, demand a fourth portent in the South; the
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Tetragrammaton - the name of God, JHVH - is made up of four letters; the
harlequins and the paint shop sign suggested four points. In the manual of Leusden I
underlined a certain passage: it manifested that the Hebrews calculate a day counting
from dusk to dusk and that therefore the deaths occurred on the fourth day of each
month. To Treviranus I sent the equilateral triangle. I sensed that you would supply
the missing point. The point which would form a perfect rhomb, the point which
fixes where death, exactly, awaits you. In order to attract you I have premeditated
everything, Erik Lonnrot, so as to draw you to the solitude of Triste-le-Roy."
Lonnrot avoided Scharlach's eyes. He was looking at the trees and the sky divided
into rhombs of turbid yellow, green and red. He felt a little cold, and felt, too, an
impersonal, almost anonymous sadness. It was already night; from the dusty garden
arose the useless cry of a bird. For the last time, Lonnrot considered the problem of
symmetrical and periodic death.
"In your labyrinth there are three lines too many," he said at last. "I know of a Greek
labyrinth which is a single straight line. Along this line so many philosophers have lost
themselves that a mere detective might well do so too. Scharlach, when, in some
other incarnation you hunt me, feign to commit (or do commit) a crime at A, then a
second crime at B, eight kilometers from A, then a third crime at C, four kilometers
from A and B, halfway enroute between the two. Wait for me later at D, two
kilometers from A and C, halfway, once again, between both. Kill me at D, as you
are now going to kill me at Triste-le-Roy."
"The next time I kill you," said Scharlach, "I promise you the labyrinth made of the
single straight line which is invisible and everlasting."
He stepped back a few paces. Then, very carefully, he fired.